Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask
 

Did you ever have an Amiga related question that seemed too simplistic, something you should normally know the answer to and are therefore too ashamed to ask? I thought it would be nice to have a thread for such questions. Thread rule: nobody is allowed to laugh, no matter how stupid the question is.

Here's mine:

What does Game & Mini Mag mean?

If nobody else posts a question in a week, I will kill myself

I too would also like to know the answer to this question ;)

Please don't kill yourself :laughing

"Game & Mini Mag" refers to a kind of 'magazin' that basically only had one or more games on a disk and 1 or 2 pages of printed instructions :) I'm not sure about other coutries, but they were quite popular here (most popular Amiga one was 'Amiga Fun'). The games on them varied from shareware to 'close-to-commercial' quality.

What does paralax-scrolling mean? Pretended to know what it is when others talked about it but never really understood. :o

You have multiple layers of your 'playfield' and once you move they scroll at different speeds (to create some kind of depth). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scrolling#Example

Parallax scrolling is a way to create a depth feeling using only 2D planes. Consider cutting out some shapes in cardboard. In the back you put the background, then you might add some trees in the next layer, then some grass etc. When you move sideways, you move the front layers faster and the back ones slowest relative to their distance, thus creating a sense of depth, South Park style. This is used in most platform games.

Edit: I was slow :)

Play Shadow of the Beast and watch the background as you move around, parallax scrolling at its best. :)

Regarding parallax. Without using more technical terminology..Next time you sit in a moving train, look out of the window, you will notice objects closer to you are moving faster than objects that are further away. This is what programmers hope to achieve when they use parallax scrolling.

How is an A4000 different from an A1200? I mean from a software point of view - I heard many times that some software or game works on A1200 but not on A4000. Isn't the AGA chipset exactly the same as on A1200, the only difference being Budgie / Buster?

@Chaos. AFAIK the only real difference is the processor. The A1200 houses the "68020" and the A4000 it's the "68040". One is faster than the other with subtle differences in how they operate, these differences are enough to cause incompatibility problems..I'm not 100% on this so I'm sure someone can better explain.

You are right, and also the fact that one usually has fastmem and the other hasn't, has caused problems in the past...
budgie, buster and gary/gayle differences rarely cause issues for games/demos..

Why the Amiga diskdrives periodically click? There are tools that reduce that clicking and the drives recognise floppy insertion and load it, so why the drives from A1000 thru the whole range up to A4000T do click?

I understand Parallax-scrolling now, thanks. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8jucz9eTWE

The drive moves the head one track up or down. This is the click you hear. AFAIK if the head moves over the magnetic surface of a disk, even if the disk is not rotating, a small electric pulse is generated and the drive knows that a disk is in. If no such pulse appears, then there is no disk in the drive. This is how the drive checks for disk changes.

The programs which switch off the clicking make the head move from track 0 towards track -1 (which does not exist and thus the head is not really moved). Some drives however try to really move the head this way and will damage the head.

That said, the big question is: why does the drive not need to click when a disk is in the drive?

pretty sure it will also detect if a plastic dummy disk is inserted. or those drive head cleaners. there is a physical switch in there somewhere that detects the disk but for some reason the drive doesn't sent the status until it receives a command.

I've always wondered what made the weight of the power unit on A500 and on A1200 so different, with the former being a brick and the other being so light: since I burned a couple of the A500 ones, in very little time, with them being so expensive, I was kind of let down when I got the A1200, because its power unit seemed so cheap.

But I don't remember if the A1200's one never broke down: if it has not, then it is the same I bought in 1994, still working now.

My A1200 has the same power brick as the A500. Hmm. They really look the same and have the same connectors. :confused

As far as the disk drive is concerned, there is a small black pin or switch in the drive to notice if there is a disk in it, so I always wondered about the clicking, too.

Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask
 

A500 and a1200 puss are interchangeable. The 500 ones are better

Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask
 

What's an "Amiga"?

There, I've said it.

Really I'm sure about it: A500 one weighed a ton. Maybe different models then.