Amiga Transformer

[curtis]

I'm working on an Amiga 1020 5.25" floppy drive getting it ready to sell.

I have an original disk of Amiga Transformer that came with it that has become snarky and won't work anymore.

I would really like to get the AT working again even though I know it's dead slow.  I figure AT would be the best way to check the drive out.

Does anyone know where I can get a copy to refresh  my ORIGINAL diskette?

Thanks,

Curtis

[danbeaver]

The A1020 drive will work as a regular Amiga drive (although only half the space).  As I recall the Transformer program ran at PC/XT speed with slightly slower I/O access, in monochrome green, and only with KS version 1.1 -- but that has been 30 years ago.

[scuzzb494]

Mail me with an email address and I can send you an adf.

[Pentad]

I ran Transformer on my Amiga 500 while I was a freshman in college for my programming class (GWBasic, yuck).  It was running Kickstart 1.2 or Kickstart 1.3 at that point.

I wish we knew the names of some of the people that worked on it.  I know most people found it a disappointment but I thought it worked pretty well for what I used it for.  I mean it was a software emulator running on a ~8 Mhz 68000.  How fast did they think it was going to be?  

I, of course, ah, got it for free so I'm seeing it from a different price point than whatever it originally sold for.

However, I thought it would be interesting to hear from the folks who actually wrote it.  I would be really interested in hearing their interaction with Commodore.

I know I'm rambling but I would love to hear about the MS folks who wrote AmigaBasic as well.  

-P

[Amiga_CDTV]

The A1020 drive will work as a regular Amiga drive (although only half the space).  As I recall the Transformer program ran at PC/XT speed with slightly slower I/O access, in monochrome green, and only with KS version 1.1 -- but that has been 30 years ago.

In Workbench format it will require manually indicating diskchange df1: etc. whenever a disk is inserted.

Attached is a page from the AT manual, where it gives a list of compatible software and a numeric indication how many times slower it will run compared to an IBM PC :lol:

I have been playing around with the Amiga Transformer, too. I think it is a pretty cool piece of software, remembering that it came very early with the A1000. I still haven't been able to find myself a copy of the contemporary Lotus 1-2-3, Version 1A, that would be cool

[curtis]

Yeah, it'll work as an Amiga PC drive, if I remember correctly.

Capacity is only 360K.  Standard DSDD PC floppy capacity.

Guess it would still be usable for PC task or such.

And the Transformer program was REALLY slow.

Not sure about which Kickstart, but I do seem to remember there was/is a patch on aminet to make it more compatible.

The A1020 drive will work as a regular Amiga drive (although only half the space).  As I recall the Transformer program ran at PC/XT speed with slightly slower I/O access, in monochrome green, and only with KS version 1.1 -- but that has been 30 years ago.