My new years resolution. Amiga only for as long as I can

[runequester]

Sounds like an interesting experiment.

Don't forget to update your amiga.org blog

yeah, going to try and get started on the formal blog tonight.

[Khephren]

Really looking forward to the blog on this!

Also, I notice a lot of demo's are using ADPCM for their tracks, which apparently has a lot less processor overhead to play than mp3, but similar sound quality. File sizes are about double. You might want to convert some of your music to this for the experiment.

eg: Lightshaft soundrack (by elude) zips down to 7,890K (16 bit, 230 kbps).

[runequester]

Really looking forward to the blog on this!

Also, I notice a lot of demo's are using ADPCM for their tracks, which apparently has a lot less processor overhead to play than mp3, but similar sound quality. File sizes are about double. You might want to convert some of your music to this for the experiment.

eg: Lightshaft soundrack (by elude) zips down to 7,890K (16 bit, 230 kbps).

I'll look into that. THank you for the heads up!


Unfortunately, it'll probably be another month or so before I can get the internet set up, and I am sure configuring the TCP/IP stuff will be an adventure in itself

Going to start the process small though as we go along.

[redrumloa]

Excuse me, but why bother? Use it as a games machine, there is hardly any development on classic Amiga.
Load it up as a backup computer.

Why use any old computer? Because it is fun.

[Tenacious]

Excuse me, but why bother? Use it as a games machine, there is hardly any development on classic Amiga.
Load it up as a backup computer.

There are diverse motivations on this site, not everyone is a gamer (I never would have found the Amiga or cared for its unique OS and hardware, if I had approached purely from the game direction).  

@ runequester

Apparently, MasPlayers have again become hard to find, but, they work well even on stock A600s.  There is another hardware Mp3 decoder that works with the Amiga and C64, too.  I forget the name as I have no experience with it.  

You will probably want the ram (acceleration, too) to improve web browsing.  That's the catagory that continuously sprouts new standards and complexity (some call it innovative).  Everything else you want to do will probably involve less compromise.

[giZmo350]

I'm performing the same experiment with an AmigaKit A1200 (Escom). If I may suggest, an optical drive is just impractical when used with USB. I installed the internal USB controller and I LOVE it for any thing other than CD-DVD (I simply couldn't find any USB optical drive that would work - plus, most people report that it is just WAY TOO SLOW). So, I'm in the process of installing a SATA laptop cd-dvd drive using a 4 way IDE buffer with a SATA interface. I bought a SATA laptop drive which should work very well. I also bought an accelerator and an Indivision AGA. The Indivision is giving me fits when used with an Escom A1200. Lots of color jitter after it warms up. Now, apparently, I have to completely tear down everything an perform this... http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=41376 before I can get the IDE buffer and CD-DVD installed. I do have the unit operating on the internet with no problem but the browser I'm using has lots of page formatting issues. My goal is pretty much the same as your - use as a practical computer. I did buy Word Perfect some time back which I hope will work as a WP. The easiest way to print it seems is with an IP addressed network printer. There's a good program on Aminet. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to following your blog! Cheers!

[Cammy]

gizmo, before you go hacking away at a perfectly good A1200, try and see if you can avoid or fix the problem in software. A palette with 0,0,0 black and 255,255,255 white will cause an A1200 to have all sorts of graphical corruption and glitches in some modes, like DBLPAL and HighGFX. If you experience the same corruption in PAL or NTSC modes it may be a hardware problem though. Also, do you have AmiCDFS installed? If you don't have a CD Filesystem, Poseidon won't be able to access a CD/DVD drive that's connected even if it detects it.

Try these:

http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/BitmapShades
http://aminet.net/package/disk/cdrom/amicdfs240

runequester, I use my A1200 online every single day so if you need any advice join one of the Amiga IRC channels and have a look for me. For those websites that IBrowse can't view, there's always iCab under ShapeShifter. I'm going to try getting this all set up nicely today and see if it's a viable option for web browsing on a 030/AGA machine.

[runequester]

I'm performing the same experiment with an AmigaKit A1200 (Escom). If I may suggest, an optical drive is just impractical when used with USB. I installed the internal USB controller and I LOVE it for any thing other than CD-DVD (I simply couldn't find any USB optical drive that would work - plus, most people report that it is just WAY TOO SLOW). So, I'm in the process of installing a SATA laptop cd-dvd drive using a 4 way IDE buffer with a SATA interface. I bought a SATA laptop drive which should work very well. I also bought an accelerator and an Indivision AGA. The Indivision is giving me fits when used with an Escom A1200. Lots of color jitter after it warms up. Now, apparently, I have to completely tear down everything an perform this... http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=41376 before I can get the IDE buffer and CD-DVD installed. I do have the unit operating on the internet with no problem but the browser I'm using has lots of page formatting issues. My goal is pretty much the same as your - use as a practical computer. I did buy Word Perfect some time back which I hope will work as a WP. The easiest way to print it seems is with an IP addressed network printer. There's a good program on Aminet. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to following your blog! Cheers!

Maybe we can share some experiences

Someone else suggested a IDE buffer as well for CD ROM, so maybe that'll be the way to go. Honestly, the CD ROM will be fairly limited use, its more of a nice thing to have.

Obviously if I go with 3.9, it'd be required.

[runequester]

runequester, I use my A1200 online every single day so if you need any advice join one of the Amiga IRC channels and have a look for me. For those websites that IBrowse can't view, there's always iCab under ShapeShifter. I'm going to try getting this all set up nicely today and see if it's a viable option for web browsing on a 030/AGA machine.

hey awesome

I am prepared for things to be pretty slow. My main web needs will be some web forums (this one being one of them) and a few others.
I imagine if images aren't loaded, the text bits shouldn't be too bad.

An indirect benefit of the experiment will be to hopefully cut down the amount of time fapping around on the internet.

Instant Messaging will be more of a "must" for me, but I imagine that wont be too resource intensive.

[giZmo350]

gizmo, before you go hacking away at a perfectly good A1200, try and see if you can avoid or fix the problem in software. A palette with 0,0,0 black and 255,255,255 white will cause an A1200 to have all sorts of graphical corruption and glitches in some modes, like DBLPAL and HighGFX. If you experience the same corruption in PAL or NTSC modes it may be a hardware problem though. Also, do you have AmiCDFS installed? If you don't have a CD Filesystem, Poseidon won't be able to access a CD/DVD drive that's connected even if it detects it.

Thx Cammy, to tell you the truth, I havn't patched anything in software after installing the Indivision (just went searching for the obvious problem I was having immediately after installing the Indivision). I connected the machine up to an LCD right after getting the Indivision installed and have the exact same symtoms described in the link I posted (Escom Unit). I did read your previous software suggestions in prior posts regarding this and that's exactly why I didn't just go tearing into it. I havn't even got it to work in 1024 x 768 - (easiest way to do that? Software patch?) - so that I can view WB in full screen on the LCD. You know what happens? I search, find the answers, run out of time, forget where I found the answer, and so on...  I have a million bookmars in my Amiga tab! hahahaha! This is why we need an A to Z! BTW, yes Cammy... I have AmiCDFS installed. Now that I remember I did get the CD working but there was now way to hook into MakeCD burning siftware.

@Runequester
Yea, comparing and sharing notes is a great idea...  I'll also start a blog. I would like to start a "How to do" list from A to Z. Another thing I've learned along the way... when starting WB install from WB3.1 and progressing to WB3.9, there are a lot of software patches that are taken care of withing WB3.9. Plus, AmigaKit showed me a great shortcut to getting a USB flash drive working right after you install your USB adapter that makes it much easier to get software installed that doesn't fit on a floppy disk. Get the flash drive working and simply transfer software to Amiga. I really need to (keep my current installed HDD - Unless I want to go with super duper cool desktop icons - Radioactive Workbench) pop in another HDD and start the whole process over again with documentation on a blog from "A to where I am now in the process). I hope Cammy and Rebel-CD32 get a blog going for Radioactive WB! I want to get to this point too http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=580336 . I'll have to work that into the whole install process. Sometimes I wish I could save each stage of the install process to a virtual machine so that I could go back to any preferred build. Hmmm, I probably can with a flash drive - just don't know how to save a machine brick build. Anyway....  this will be fun! Ciao!

[Khephren]

As Cammy points out, shapeshifter can be really handy (and fun).
When I was doing my HND in graphic design, I could not afford a Mac, but my Amiga handily filled the gap with Illustrator and photoshop through shapeshifter.

[Cammy]

I've got iCab running on my A1200/030 but having trouble connecting to the net through vlink. I get a network error any time I try connecting to a website, but I haven't got or tried any extra internet software yet, so if I can't work this out soon I'll try Nutscrape or something.

[Tripitaka]

@runequester
Great idea and I'll read your blog with interest. I have no choice but to use Windoze, my University software only runs on MS bloatware, what a shame.
Anyway, good luck with it and I hope you have a lot of fun.
BTW, is your forum tag a reference to the tabletop RPG "Runequest" by any chance?

[fishy_fiz]

Cammy beat me to it. I was going to suggest iCab to suppliment browsing issues. It's not perfect, but its probably the best 68k browser out there for any system. Some years back when I only had amithlon/os3.9 and my a1200/bppc/grex/etc system I used it not infrequently and I found it to be a pretty nice browser. As for yahoo/aim clients there's always jabberwocky, which supports a nice amount of different IM protocols (yahoo/msn/aim/etc).
I had a lot of fun becomming "amiga" only again back when Amithlon was released, and although I'd always considered myself fairly amiga literate being restricted soley to the format taught me quite a bit. It was surprising to me at the time just how capable amiga os is, and there's workarounds for most stuff that on the surface there appears to be bo solution for. Working out how to do stuff that at 1st appears not possible was a lot of fun. Having said all this though Amithlon opened up extra doors for me that mightnt be options on an a1200 (I barely touched my bppc based a1200 for example, such was the contrast), but with some time and effort Id imagine most things can be done on "real" hardware if you put in the effort. Even video has (cumbersome) workarounds if youre that keen (and have decent amounts of harddrive space)  
Have fun  :-)

@Cammy
If memory serves me correctly you need to use the mac os network stack with shapeshifter rather than the amiga one.

[runequester]

@runequester
Great idea and I'll read your blog with interest. I have no choice but to use Windoze, my University software only runs on MS bloatware, what a shame.
Anyway, good luck with it and I hope you have a lot of fun.
BTW, is your forum tag a reference to the tabletop RPG "Runequest" by any chance?

Yes, yes it is
Runequest to me was always like the amiga. Far superior to the mainstream but just didn't make it the same way. At least its still being published.

[runequester]

aaand, first blog post is up.
Not a ton of stuff yet but you gotta start somewhere right?

http://www.amiga.org/forums/blog.php?b=213