Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[Estrayk]

Question:

Why 99% of Amiga users called their second hd-partition Work: ?

thx.



P.D. In my old days, I also called it "Work:" because all my friends called it that, but what is the reason?

[idrougge]

They used to come partitioned like that from the factory.

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by Mark36

Sorry if its been asked before but back in 1989/90 a guy at work used his amiga with a modem to download games. Just curious how this procedure worked and what file format were the games...dms or lha?

The disk compressor was Warp (WRP) and LZH was the file format of choice. From memory DMS didn't come on the scene until 1991.

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Question:

Why 99% of Amiga users called their second hd-partition Work: ?

thx.



P.D. In my old days, I also called it "Work:" because all my friends called it that, but what is the reason?

Opinion but backed by experience - A3000 was delivered with hard drive partitioned that way. Workbench 2 was pre-installed.

Everybody copied the pictures in the magazines so that their hard drive setup was the same.

Same with A4000 (with Workbench 3 of course), so MAYBE it was an aspirational thing.

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by xArtx

Question:
Did anyone ever see the CD32 spectrum analyser working?
I think it could only have been shown at one of the trade shows introducing it.

The ROM CD player was originally intended to play VCDs as well as audio CDs until they
were split into two different programs, and the spectrum analyser was also canned for some reason.

I have read somewhere they trimmed down the CD drive interface at some stage.
Maybe that had something to do with it.

I did not, but I did see the CD32 playing the "BoRAP" video from Queen with an FMV cart installed.

Perhaps the Spectrum Analyzer was more impressive, but in those days FMV was like the Holy Grail. Or that's what people seemed to expect.

Anyway, got something better... kinda like TripATron. But more Amiga flavoured.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Why 99% of Amiga users called their second hd-partition Work: ?

Perhaps naming it something serious like that helped justify spending too much time with it. 'Honey, I'm working'

[Jope]

Originally Posted by idrougge

They used to come partitioned like that from the factory.

Also the Commodore supplied install scripts partition the disk into a Workbench: and Work: partition.

[Estrayk]

Originally Posted by idrougge

They used to come partitioned like that from the factory.

Are you sure?

Originally Posted by Pat the Cat

Opinion but backed by experience - A3000 was delivered with hard drive partitioned that way. Workbench 2 was pre-installed.

Everybody copied the pictures in the magazines so that their hard drive setup was the same.

Same with A4000 (with Workbench 3 of course), so MAYBE it was an aspirational thing.

I used the word "Work" in My SupraDrive 500 from 1988. The A3000 did not exist yet. Anyway thx.

Originally Posted by Jope

Also the Commodore supplied install scripts partition the disk into a Workbench: and Work: partition.

You mean In Commodore A2090?


thx to all.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Question:

Why 99% of Amiga users called their second hd-partition Work: ?

I think "PrepHD" had those names as default, since I never used 1.3 I don't know how far it goes, but at least 2.0 PrepHD or whatever tool you used to install a hard drive fresh, the system in two partition as "System 2.0" and "Work"

I think the name "Workbench" was used from 3.0 on. Clearly recall my 2.05 disk installing the system partition as "System 2.0" which is why I kept that convention throughout (my system disk is always either System, System3 or System3.0)

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Are you sure?

Yes.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

You mean In Commodore A2090?

It depends. I have some spare time while waiting for a build to complete and for some reason I'm interested in this, so I'll record these for posterity.. :-)

If you use the oldest generic (non hdtype specific) A2090 disks, it is up to you what you call your OFS DH0: or DH2:, as the prep and format tasks are manual. The install disk only modifies your WB1.2 disk to be an A2090 bootdisk. Additional partitions require you to create your own mountlist entries based on the example entries it gives you.

If you use one of the hard disk type specific A2090 prep disks, it gives you an OFS DH0: called Boot, a FFS FH0: called Workbench, and a FFS FH1: called Work. If you have a SCSI disk, you must do it manually.

The A590/A2091 scripts give you a single all disk FFS DH0: called Workbench.

The A3000 2.0 install disk gives you a FFS WB_2.x: called System2.0 (6MB), a FFS WB_1.3: called System1.3 (2MB) and a FFS Work: called Work (rest).

The 2.04/2.05 install disks give you a FFS WB_2.x: called System2.0 (6MB) and a FFS Work: called Work (rest).

The 2.1 install disk gives you a FFS WB_2.x: (8MB) and a FFS Work: (rest), but you format them yourself.

The 3.x install disks give you a smaller FFS HD0: called Workbench (8MB) and a FFS HD1: called Work (rest). However if you have an A3000(T), the script takes a detour and you get a FFS WB_2.x: called Workbench and a FFS HD1: called Work instead.

Sorry, can't be bothered to work out the partition sizes for the various A2090(A) HDs, neither is it very interesting. :-D

This actually reminded me of something I've been meaning to try. I'll do my custom hd prep floppy based on the 3.x install disks now. The prod_prep tool is quick to use for making a single PFS3AIO DH0: that spans the entire disk, which is what I always do anyway. Let's see what is the maximum HD size it supprts.. :-)

[Genlock]

Question !
In the past week i have been trying to get ADPRO The art department and MorphPlus working on Winuae (os3.9) but the operators and plugins dont seem to work..

I had them running in 96 on my os3.0 1200 but i cant seem to get it to do anything now , The Operator i have been trying is the Twirl but sadly no luck , thanks in advance guys !

[Anakirob]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Question:

Why 99% of Amiga users called their second hd-partition Work: ?

thx.



P.D. In my old days, I also called it "Work:" because all my friends called it that, but what is the reason?

Well personally I have had more than one Amiga HD with the three partitions System: Games: and Work:

System contains system files
Games contains HD installed games
and Work, believe it or not contains my work.

For example files I created such as music, graphics, text and code all count as work, because I worked on them, not because I was getting paid.

[Amiga1992]

The way I always considered it as is that Work: is my work disk, where I can mess with to my heart's content.

Kind of like when you bought an original app and it says you should make a "work disk".
Leave System alone, and do all your stuff in your "work disk".

Thanks Jope for that historian's approach to Amiga hard drive partition volume names and labels

[volvo_0ne]

Never really thought about partition names after I'd named them...

As long as I knew what they were and what was on them, I didn't conciously read them ......

[Estrayk]

Thanks Jope for the work!

[jizmo]

Originally Posted by Estrayk

Thanks Jope for the work!

Jope (and idrougge as well) both deserve a rainbow hued double checkmark medal for all their informative, to the point answers in this thread. Cheers!

[Jope]

Thanks for the kind words. I'll wear my medal with pride. :-)

[E-Penguin]

Question : when reading documentation for many Amiga CLI programmes, they specify the options with things like /S or /K. The commands seem to work without typing in the /S bit... What do they mean?

Eg http://whdload.de/docs/en/opt.html#Config

[Jope]

Those two signify whether it is a boolean argument and whether you're supposed to type in that keyword before the argument or not. Look at the UI style guide page 111 onwards.

http://commodore.bombjack.org/books/...rd_Edition.zip