41–50 of 158 posts
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'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 notice now the internal drive of said 2c isn't working and won't boot anything (I could get ADTPro onto a spare floppy without booting anything). I did use it to do the transfer in 2019. I can boot from an external drive with some patching from the monitor program. I suspect the drive either needs heads cleaning or some realignment, but I haven't had more time to try.
Sadly I no longer have my A1200 (or A600). I have a few disks from it still.
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 pl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
Commodore had an extremely expensive, weird 15Hz flicker free and very high resolution monitor. If I recall correctly, i̶t̶ ̶d̶i̶v̶i̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶c̶r̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶4̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶t̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶a̶i̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶e̶a̶c̶h̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶t̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶i̶n̶i̶ ̶s̶c̶r̶e̶e̶n̶,̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶.̶ ̶T̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶f̶l̶i̶c̶k̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶,̶ ̶e̶x̶c̶e̶p̶t̶…
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.
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?
Very likely 3"1/2 inches disks although most of my Amiga disks, which I still have, are 5"1/4 (5"1/4 were way cheaper than 3"1/2 so we'd mod our Amiga by adding an external 5" 1/4 drive and then we'd buy the much cheaper 5" 1/4 floppies).
Now... After all these years several of these floppies may not be fully readable anymore so don't wait too long before ripping them. My C64 5"1/4 started failing badly. I'd say maybe 2/3rd of them are still readable without errors. Haven't tried reading my Amiga floppies yet.
And I don't know if the 3"1/2 age better than the 5"1/4 or not.
But they'll eventually start failing.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Commodore had an extremely expensive, weird 15Hz flicker free and very high resolution monitor. If I recall correctly, i̶t̶ ̶d̶i̶v̶i̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶c̶r̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶4̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶t̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶a̶i̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶e̶a̶c̶h̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶t̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶i̶n̶i̶ ̶s̶c̶r̶e̶e̶n̶,̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶.̶ ̶T̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶f̶l̶i̶c̶k̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶,̶ ̶e̶x̶c̶e̶p̶t̶…
That would be the A2024 which is emulated by WinUAE. It did not flicker or have long persistence phosphor. What it did have was frame buffer RAM on-board. The video signal output by the Amiga determined which 1/4 or 1/6 of the screen was refreshed. The driver code had a feature where the pane containing the mouse pointer could be refreshed more frequently.
I have no idea why this is on HN - but anything Amiga would get my upvote.
It’s a new release: > Stable release: December 12, 2022; 5 days ago - Version 10
Here's an announcement: https://www.amigaforever.com/news-events/af-10/