amiga

Apollo Vampire V1200 Review

After months of being on the waiting list, I recently recieved my Apollo Vampire V1200V2 accelerator! Since then, my Amiga has had a new lease of life so I thought I’d write an update covering all the stuff I would have wanted to know while I was waiting for the package to arrive. What follows is a review/retrospective on my first month or so of usage of this card - I’ll cover the ordering experience, hardware, installation, updates and software and wrap up with my thought...

Back To The Floppy

A few months ago, reading the news about Linux dropping support for floppy disks set off a whole bunch of memories and emotions around this long obsolete and “dead” data storage format. I hadn’t thought about or used floppy disks for around 20 odd years now, at some point I must have copied my last disk but I honestly can’t remember what it was or when. The floppy disk was one of those rare things that became part of my everyday life like my keys or school pencil-case. It...

Monitor upgrade for the A1200

When the Amiga was introduced in the mid 80s, pretty much all displays available to consumers were 4:3 ratio TVs, and you plugged your computer into your TV via a RF modulator box. Later, dedicated monitors like the Phillips 8833 Mk2 (which I originally had as a teenager in the 90s) became available and these offered a much improved, sharper image but were still in the 4:3 ratio as this is what the native Amiga, PC and gaming console screenmodes had been designed around.

My OS4 Development Environment

It’s been a busy few months here, but I’ve still found time to enjoy my Amiga systems. I’ve been grabbing the odd hour here and there to continue my efforts setting up an Amiga development environment and “dip my toe in the water” again. My setcmd utility is progressing nicely and I’ve learned a lot about the tools like AmigaGuide and the Installer that I used on my A1200 back in the day. I thought since it’s been a while, I’d write a quick “brain dump” post and cover two ...

SetCmd Amiga Development part 2

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been developing a new “SetCmd” tool for my Amiga systems, both for my own practical usage and also to serve as a re-introduction to the Amiga developer environment. This series of blog posts will cover the progress of this tool, as well as explore the challenges and technologies from my perspective of a returning AmigaOS fan.

Amiga project in progress - setcmd

I’ve been having a lot of fun with my X5000 over the past few weeks (more blog posts to come!) but I’ve been working on something recently that I wanted to share. I’ve been enjoying re-learning AmigaDOS and as an exercise for myself, set about building a tool I plan on releasing in the near future. Inspired by some Linux distributions’ “alternatives” system, It’s called setcmd (short for “Set Command”) and lets you easily and quickly switch between different versions of a ...

Backups on the Amiga X5000

Happy New Year everyone! I’ve got big plans for my Amiga projects in 2019, but thought I’d start off the New Year with a blog post on a not-particularly “exciting” topic, but an important one nonetheless: Backups. As I am experimenting more with my X5000 and Amiga OS 4.1, I’ve been getting particularly “twitchy” that I didn’t have a solid backup/restore plan in place, particularly as some of my experiments will invariably go wrong and I’ll need a way to roll back my change...

Fuse, SOBJS and Multiple Assigns: Amiga OS 4 learning curve part 1

A little while ago, an updated port of the FUSE ZX Spectrum emulator was uploaded to OS4Depot. My first computer was a ZX Spectrum 48k, although I eventually ended up with a +3 model before I upgraded to my first Amiga. I was looking forward to getting this emulator installed so I could re-visit some of the classic 8-bit games I used to play; my favorite game is still Manic Miner although I never manage to get past the “Eugene’s Lair” level on my first attempt!

Classic Amiga emulation on the X5000

While I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new software written specifically for AmigaOS 4, the bulk of my software is still “classic” titles that used to run on my A1200. One of the first things I did when I set up my X5000 was to transfer my old Amiga’s hard drive over so I could continue running this library of software. I also wanted to set up an emulation of my A1200 so I can quickly launch a classic Workbench 3.9 session and pick up all my old projects and bits of ...

New Amiga X5000

As you may have seen with my latest music project, I’ve been getting back into the Amiga scene in a big way over the last year. Granted, a large part of this is nostalgia on my part; the Amiga was a lifeline to me during my teenage years and was responsible for starting my twin interests of computing and music. But I’ve always been amazed by the sheer tenacity of the Amiga scene - nearly 30 years on from when I first got my Amiga 600, the scene is still going (albeit fract...

Flashback

This is my rock/metal cover of a tune from the classic Mahoney & Kaktus Amiga demo, “Sounds of Gnome” (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5583). Specifically, the tune was called “Jobba” and the intro also borrows from the intro song on The Great Giana Sisters.