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Amiga Forever

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21–30 of 158 posts

Re: Amiga Forever

#21

Post by mattl »

rbanffy wrote: post #20

At the time Commodore made PCs, it could have been worthy to port AmigaOS to x86 (8088 was a bit too puny, but 286 and 386 could compare to 68K). An earlier lost opportunity was when Sun approached the offering to market the 3000/UX as a low-cost Unix workstation. The world could be a lot different had Commodore management been so boneheaded. OK. I'm being harsh. At the time, with the information they had, those deci…

I had a Commodore branded Escom PC running OS/2 in early 1996 but I’m guessing they made PCs before that in some parts of the world? In Europe it was all Amiga in the 90s

Re: Amiga Forever

#22

Post by dotancohen »

Just yesterday I was talking with the parents of friends, who have held onto the floppy discs that their children stored the music and art they created on an Amiga. I'm not sure if these are 5.25 or 3.5 inch discs. If I can dd these discs, is there any way to recover the data in the files, and to convert to modern file formats? Might the audio already be in wav?

Re: Amiga Forever

#24

Post by bogantech »

dotancohen wrote: post #22

Just yesterday I was talking with the parents of friends, who have held onto the floppy discs that their children stored the music and art they created on an Amiga. I'm not sure if these are 5.25 or 3.5 inch discs. If I can dd these discs, is there any way to recover the data in the files, and to convert to modern file formats? Might the audio already be in wav?

They will be 3.5" DD disks but they won't be readable by a standard usb floppy drive.

Using a Greaseweazle[1] you can create an .adf image of the disks then using xdftool[2] or amigaexplorer[3] you'd be able to copy the files out of the disk image.

Images will likely be .IFF files which I think you can still open with irfanview and gimp, the music files will most likely be some tracker format. There is software to play tracker files but I don't know about that myself.

[1]https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

[2]https://amitools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tools/xdftool.html

[3]https://www.amigaforever.com/ae/

Re: Amiga Forever

#25

Post by wslh »

rbanffy wrote: post #20

At the time Commodore made PCs, it could have been worthy to port AmigaOS to x86 (8088 was a bit too puny, but 286 and 386 could compare to 68K). An earlier lost opportunity was when Sun approached the offering to market the 3000/UX as a low-cost Unix workstation. The world could be a lot different had Commodore management been so boneheaded. OK. I'm being harsh. At the time, with the information they had, those deci…

Even enjoying a Commodore Amiga as a teenager we cannot forget Atari 1040ST competitor which included MIDI and was also innovative. Just read that was popular in some locations for CAD.

It is difficult to talk about failed business, business many many times are successful for reasons beyond the technology involved. Just look nowadays how organizations are using Microsoft Teams, they could be locked, have a high cost for migration, bad management, and the core business working seamlessly beyond this.

Re: Amiga Forever

#26

Post by Cockbrand »

mattl wrote: post #21
rbanffy wrote: post #20

At the time Commodore made PCs, it could have been worthy to port AmigaOS to x86 (8088 was a bit too puny, but 286 and 386 could compare to 68K). An earlier lost opportunity was when Sun approached the offering to market the 3000/UX as a low-cost Unix workstation. The world could be a lot different had Commodore management been so boneheaded. OK. I'm being harsh. At the time, with the information they had, those deci…

I had a Commodore branded Escom PC running OS/2 in early 1996 but I’m guessing they made PCs before that in some parts of the world? In Europe it was all Amiga in the 90s

They did in fact build PC clones from the 1980s onwards, starting with the XT compatible PC-10 and the AT compatible PC-20. These were made in Germany, IIRC. Apparently they weren't bad, but back then I didn't understand the point when they had the much more powerful Amiga platform.

Re: Amiga Forever

#27

Post by gbraad »

rbanffy wrote: post #20

At the time Commodore made PCs, it could have been worthy to port AmigaOS to x86 (8088 was a bit too puny, but 286 and 386 could compare to 68K). An earlier lost opportunity was when Sun approached the offering to market the 3000/UX as a low-cost Unix workstation. The world could be a lot different had Commodore management been so boneheaded. OK. I'm being harsh. At the time, with the information they had, those deci…

Harsh? Truth... Commodore under Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali was a sinking ship due to severe mismanagement.

Re: Amiga Forever

#28

Post by Cockbrand »

wslh wrote: post #25
rbanffy wrote: post #20

At the time Commodore made PCs, it could have been worthy to port AmigaOS to x86 (8088 was a bit too puny, but 286 and 386 could compare to 68K). An earlier lost opportunity was when Sun approached the offering to market the 3000/UX as a low-cost Unix workstation. The world could be a lot different had Commodore management been so boneheaded. OK. I'm being harsh. At the time, with the information they had, those deci…

Even enjoying a Commodore Amiga as a teenager we cannot forget Atari 1040ST competitor which included MIDI and was also innovative. Just read that was popular in some locations for CAD. It is difficult to talk about failed business, business many many times are successful for reasons beyond the technology involved. Just look nowadays how organizations are using Microsoft Teams, they could be locked, have a high cost…

Built-in MIDI and the excellent 100Hz monochrome screen were very strong selling points for the ST back then, for different niches of the market. Especially given the strong audio capabilities of the Amiga, including a MIDI interface should have been a no-brainer for Commodore to position it in the music production industry. On the other end of the market, the always slightly flickering 1081/1084 color monitor made the Amiga not very suitable for an 8 hour office job.

Re: Amiga Forever

#29

Post by Cockbrand »

mrwh wrote: post #4

I'm returning to my childhood home in a couple of days after many years away, and now I'm wondering about searching the attic for my A1200, and whether any of the games I wrote for myself way back when, in Amos and then Amiga E, are still recoverable. Probably not; if the disks exist they're almost thirty years old, and probably best kept running in some corner of my memory. I'll try though.

I can totally still read my 35+ years old Workbench disks, which have been booted from hundreds of times. It's amazing, really.

Re: Amiga Forever

#30

Post by bni »

dotancohen wrote: post #22

Just yesterday I was talking with the parents of friends, who have held onto the floppy discs that their children stored the music and art they created on an Amiga. I'm not sure if these are 5.25 or 3.5 inch discs. If I can dd these discs, is there any way to recover the data in the files, and to convert to modern file formats? Might the audio already be in wav?

You will probably be able to see the files on the Amiga. The hard part will be transferring the files off the Amiga.

Gotek in external drive enclosure + usb thumb drive is what I used.

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