Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by gimbal

So basically you need to have a good memory or do a file listing in a shell before you can know which filename to type in there. Damn, that's gangster.

Heh, it seems it now, doesn't it. Combine that with the fact that many people forgot that you could actually bring up a CLI and do a directory listing (multi-tasking being a concept that many people were not familiar with back then), and also that many people would have considered that a distraction.

But we're talking in the mid to late 80s, so many people would have been used to Sinclair Spectrums, Commodore 64s, BBC Micros, and other 8-bit machines, where the concept of a 'file requester' didn't really exist - at least, most of the time.

However, some of the Amigas siblings had working file requesters as standard. I don't know about the Atari ST series, but I believe the Macintosh had rather nice file requesters before System 6, and I know for sure Windows 2 had them.

ASL.library was more than welcome when it arrived along with release 2.0 of Amiga OS in my opinion, giving us standard file and font requesters, although not all programmers chose to use this for various reasons.

[idrougge]

The ST does have a standard file requester, and lots of replacements.

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by idrougge

The ST does have a standard file requester, and lots of replacements.

Ahh, cool, I've always been curious about the ST to be honest...

[daxb]

Isn`t reqtools.library the quasi standard for requester since early '90 on OS <=3.1? At least here it is. ASL wasn`t really good to use. Later (OS 3.5?) it got an update as far as I know but how good compared to ReqTools?

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by daxb

Isn`t reqtools.library the quasi standard for requester since early '90 on OS <=3.1? At least here it is. ASL wasn`t really good to use. Later (OS 3.5?) it got an update as far as I know but how good compared to ReqTools?

You could be right, I did a quick search and a bit of reading and it indicated ASL was the standard introduced with system 2.0 for standard file and font requesters, but you could be right, I forgot about reqtools.library

[idrougge]

I don't see what's wrong with ASL, but then again I have a three button mouse.

[Cobe]

Is there a patch for 2.04 kick so it could get at least pcmcia support or even ide? I know it can probably be soft kicked but I'm thinking about something that wouldn't eat 512kb.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Cobe

Is there a patch for 2.04 kick so it could get at least pcmcia support or even ide? I know it can probably be soft kicked but I'm thinking about something that wouldn't eat 512kb.

Run romsplit on 37.350 and use loadmodule to get the relevant modules into memory. Might work. Then again why not just upgrade to 37.350 or even 40.63..

[demolition]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

But we're talking in the mid to late 80s, so many people would have been used to Sinclair Spectrums, Commodore 64s, BBC Micros, and other 8-bit machines, where the concept of a 'file requester' didn't really exist - at least, most of the time.

I was trying out some C64 word processing software a few days ago and when you wanted to load a file from disk, you simply got a requester where you could type a file name, just like the above. Of course there is no multi-tasking and the program did not offer the option of listing the directory together with the file requester, which should have been relatively simple to implement. You could exit the requester and choose another option to show the directory. After pressing a key, the directory listing would disappear and you could type the file name. Doesn't seem particularly user friendly, but that it how it was back then. This is why mainly 'geeks' like us used computers back then, but things surely have come a long way.

Originally Posted by Jope

Run romsplit on 37.350 and use loadmodule to get the relevant modules into memory. Might work. Then again why not just upgrade to 37.350 or even 40.63..

Yes, the main difference between 2.04 and 2.05 is the IDE and PCMCIA support, so just upgrading to 2.05 should be what he wants.

[Cobe]

Originally Posted by Jope

Run romsplit on 37.350 and use loadmodule to get the relevant modules into memory. Might work. Then again why not just upgrade to 37.350 or even 40.63..

Nice idea. I'll have to try it. Thanks.
I have other roms and Amigas but I want to see if its possible on 2.04.

[Cobe]

Ok, I was all set up with extracted modules to try this when I realized it's not 2.04 rom I have but early 2.05 37.299. So it mounted CF through PCMCIA without interventions.
Any idea how HD would behave with this rom? Would it just not be bootable but accessible or to be both I would need to load some(scsi.device) module before from floppy?

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

But we're talking in the mid to late 80s, so many people would have been used to Sinclair Spectrums, Commodore 64s, BBC Micros, and other 8-bit machines, where the concept of a 'file requester' didn't really exist - at least, most of the time.

Somehow I never had a problem with it. There was always some way to select a file in Amiga programs. But then we're talking about late 80's early 90's.

[Cobe]

Yup. All that is needed is scsi.device and 5 sec to load it from floppy.

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Somehow I never had a problem with it. There was always some way to select a file in Amiga programs. But then we're talking about late 80's early 90's.

Yeah, as time went on, file requesters rapidly gained popularity amongst programmers, and very quickly became expected amongst end users.

I'm actually finding it challenging to find out what was the first file requester commonly used on the Amiga, if it was ARP, or Reqtools, or something else. I know ARP was designed to work under versions of Kickstart/Workbench earlier than 2.

In fact, it seems a lot of Amiga history appears to be lost, which is why I'm working on gathering as much information as I can to put up on my own web site (which at this point, does not exist).

[Toni Wilen]

I think it was either arp or req.library (not same as reqtools.library).

[TroyWilkins]

Yeah, from what I've found so far it appears to have been arp.library, but I don't know for sure.

There is a lot of conflicting, and often wrong information out there on the internet about the Amiga.

[Gerry]

I always wondered how MIDI interfaces for the serial port worked on the Amiga 500 speedwise.

The MIDI port normally uses a speed of 31.500 baud. AFAIK the maximum speed of the Amiga 500's serial port is 19.200 baud.

Is the MIDI connection (for example to a syntheziser) slowed down to 19.200 baud when you are using a serial MIDI interface on the Amiga 500 or is the interface kind of speeding up the transmission to 31.500 baud (although I wouldn't know how that should work)?

[Jope]

No, it is not slowed down, the Amiga supports the 31.500bps non-standard speed over the serial port, and MIDI software selects that bit rate.

I'm guessing MIDI software didn't use serial.device for much more than port setup and resource allocation.

[slaapliedje]

Speaking of this line of questions, I tried getting ScummVM to run through USB to MIDI at one point, but didn't have much luck. Anyone else get this working? (Spider/Mediator/Poseidon).

[Gerry]

@Jope

Thanks :-).