New Amiga "Walker" pages on-line

[minator]

I recently got hold of a Walker and I decided to see what I can find out about it.

The results of this can be found on my new Walker Pages.


Found Here.  Theres a short history of what it is, pictures of the other versions in development, what's inside (with High-res images) and where it's been shown.

Enjoy...


Note:
If you have any additional info on the Walker please let me know.

Also, if anyone knows how to get it to boot properly I'd really like to know how it's done!

[Lemmink]

You lucky {bleep}, that  one is still missing in my collection.

[Matt_H]

A real shame. The Walker would have been a good machine. I never knew there was a PCMCIA slot on it before.

It also looks as if there's a slot for a keyboard ribbon, like the 1200...

Is there an Early Startup menu on the Walker? You might get it to boot manually, with no startup sequence.

I've heard that 4GB+ support was built into 3.2, but maybe it's not working properly. What size drive are you trying to use?

[weirdami]

I've never heard it ever having been called the Mind Walker. That's some sort of Amiga web browser thing that I never heard of ever being finished. Who's been calling it Mind Walker?

[nOw2]

Here's Mindwalker, the webbrowser:
http://v3.vapor.com/

No, I don't suppose it ever has been finished..

[StevenJGore]

An excellent site!

Would it be possible to get a 3.2 ROM image from the Walker for use in WinUAE?!!

Unfortunately in 1996, the Walker would have required a much better specification than that shown to have stood any chance of being successful. IMHO, Amiga fans would have bought it anyway, but it would have attracted few new users with it's outdated (by 1996) AGA chipset and relatively slow processor compared to what was available from the competition. Remember that by 1996 the PC was hugely popular and there was also the Playstation for games!

Steve.

[Lo]

Whats the "S" in SDH0: for? SCSI?   I have never owned A1200 or walker.

[CD32Freak]

I think you could ask Amiga Walker related questions to MAZeT GmbH, who are the original designers of the board :-D

[bloodline]

Would it be possible to get a 3.2 ROM image from the Walker for use in WinUAE?!!

Normally I wouldn't condone such action. But This time I agree. I want an image also :-)

[BloatedOtter]

great, thanks for sharing! I always feel a bit sorry it wasn't put into production, maybe with slightly better specs, as that was an original idea which was faithful to the Amiga spirit imho. But anyway I doubt they would have had the funds to market it efficiently...

[Lo]

I'd like to put a MicroA1 in that case, put some thin wood vennier(sp?) on the face at least and place it next to my Antique Radio. (Its similar in shape)  :-P

[minator]

OK, tried the bootmenu thing (had to look how to do it - been a long time!).

It... didn't work.

But Walker has a weird boot sequence anyway so I played around a bit and eventually it booted!

Seems it's unstable but after the first boot it seems ok and will reboot fine afterwards.

Looks like a fairly standard OS install, but there are some apps to try out.  I guess they were testing them but one says Cebit preview 1996.

Most seem to work if slowly.
Scala MM300 is there but timing seems a bit messed up.
PPaint locks the machine solid.  
Photogenics 1.2SE - requires a registration code.
Mania (Pinball?) causes a reboot.

This is useful as there is no other way to reboot it apart from the power switch (3 fingered salute does not work.)

Floppy tries to mount discs and fails everytime, only have OFS and PC discs to try though.
Tried to format a floppy but it failed as well.

CD-ROM appears to do nothing.
No idea how to manually mount it and would it read PC CDs?

About gives:
HWG Beta ROM
KS 43.1
WB 40.42
Copyrighted to ESCOM AG

Showconfig gives:
Kickstart 43.1
Exec 43.4
Disk 40.42
16 MB Fast
2 MB Chip


I'll write a full report for the website...

[Akiko]

Maybe you have already stated somewhere, but i'd be interested to know exactly how you came into possession of this rare Amiga relic?

[minator]

Maybe you have already stated somewhere, but i'd be interested to know exactly how you came into possession of this rare Amiga relic?

I used to work at a certain company called Thendic-France and in the basement we had one of these machines.  Well, the problems are not exactly unknown but the end result was the company was put into bankruptcy.

There was a big sale recently and everything was sold off.  I turned up and bid on the walker, and got it - cheap :-D

--

Part of the reason was getting something very rare (I thought it was the only one but there's 2 apparantly).

The other reason was to look after it.  This thing does not have a normal computer casing, it is *very* fragile and if someone put it on eBay and put it in the post it'd be destroyed.

I thought I'd put some pictures on line but I got carried away, investigated it's entire story and ended up with 4 pages (and one or more to come now it's booted).

I thought there'd be some interest but I did not expect this:

Over 1000 visitors in 12 hours from Amiga* users, you took 1.5 GBytes (same rate as a slashdotting gave me last year!)


*actually 80% of you are are Windows users - at least I'm using an alternative OS!

[Ni72ous]

I would also like to try the rom in UAE. :-D
Have you tried to use a rom image in UAE yet?
Does it work?