Amazing things you've done with your Amiga

[mr_a500]

I'd like to hear some amazing things you've done with your Amiga (REAL Amiga only). I don't mean something like "used my A1200 to wedge open the bathroom door so I can piss from the hallway" - something technically impressive. The point of this thread is to show people who may not know - what is possible with an Amiga ...and a little bit of effort (..and money).

Here are some things I've done with my Amiga 500 that I think are amazing for an (accelerated) 80's computer:
(A500 in original case - original graphics, original sound, 33Mhz 020, 2Mb Chip, 8Mb Fast, DCTV)

Emulated MacOS 8.1, ran Mac software ClarisWorks, WriteNow3 and games (also emulated 7.5.5 and ran Mathematica, and 3D game Vette! at full speed)
Connected to my work's Microsoft Outlook Web Access through browser and sent office emails using A500 (connected browser with 128-bit secure HTTPS, javascript and images)
Digitized and converted images from DVD/VCR/Video Camera in 24-bit colour
Sampled and converted music from DVD/Compact Disc/Cassette Tape
Converted MP3s and played music in 14-bit stereo (with 8-bit Paula - no sound card)
Created and printed PDF documents (PDFs displayed perfectly in Adobe Acrobat)
Sent and received Faxes
Sent and received MSN instant messages
Scanned and printed 24-bit images at 720dpi
Processed huge 24-bit images up to 10Mb and 2048x2048 in size
Uploaded/downloaded files from the internet larger than 20Mb
Played DOOM, DOOM II, Plutonia and TNT, custom and patch wads with music and sound
Sent and received emails with large multiple attachments >5Mb
Sent and received over 2Gb of files through serial at 115200 baud (original A500 serial)

Then there's the more ordinary things like creating web pages and relational databases, playing Windows MIDI files, creating 24-bit 3D rendered animations, multimedia presentations and emulating 6 different 8-bit computers. I would have been able to do more if I had more than 8Mb RAM.


Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that I've used an Amiga 500 as my only computer for the last 5 years. (and used it for every post I've ever posted)

[Ironclaw]

Ehmm, donno, but once when I bought a A500, I got a external HD with it that had 4mb built in.... I was currious one day and opened it and discovered pins... they were set on 4mb... I changed their places and then got 8mb of real memory, yay! ...... I have never seen anything else than a 8mb version of that hd on the internet, so donno why it was set to 4mb..

guess, not such a story you want so let me think. hmm..

I can't remember I did anything technical impressive.... more than the time when I spilled some water on the HD and it shortcutted and a thick white cloud came out of it like it was a spirit of the harddrive or something.... look scary.. k, no impressive either.... kk... nvm..

[killergorilla]

I once went on a skiing trip to the Swiss Alps, we had such a good time.

[s2325]

Once I burned A520. Amazing thing is how long I keep without Amiga.

[spiff]

Well, it's not really technically impressive but more of a good "what I did with my amiga other then games thing"

We had an assignment in music class where we where supposed to present something with music that influenced us.

Being around 14 at the time me and my friend spent most of the day that we should have used for the assignment playing IK+. Around 20:00 we realized that we _had_ to do the assignment _NOW_. So using an AGP sampler, a couple of mini headphones as mic, (a mic is aprox an inverted speaker) his brothers guitar, CDs and a couple of ST discs we spent the night hacking/sampling away at our favourite artists.

The morning after, being done listening to 1.5 hours of mind numbing Mozart and Bach influences presentations written by parents for their kids, we where up for presentation.

So, we started our recorded results (cassette) a presentation on influences from rock to punk and metal. All in 4 channel glory at a hefty 3*1.6Mb mix. A tracker can do some really nifty stuff like crossfading samples, pitching the sound/ speed and so on… we then topped it off with smoke on the water on his brother’s guitar, a sheep sample going baaaaah in tone with the guitar riff and a teachers huffing as beat.

It was great, everyone (except the huffing teacher) loved it, we did get an A

[rare_j]

I was pretty impressed that I could use a PCMCIA ethernet card for the A1200 and get it working with FTP and telnet. Very useful for tranferring files when the only alternative is a floppydisk!

Most impressive though was getting samba running, configuring it using a web browser, and having the humble A1200 fully integrated into a mixed Windows/Linux/AmigaOS network.

Who'd have thought it?

[mr_a500]

I once went on a skiing trip to the Swiss Alps, we had such a good time.

Huh? Yeah, well I once had a pimple on my arse - but I don't see what either of these statements has to do with amazing Amiga achievements. (...unless you went skiing using A1200s as skis, one on each foot. In that case it is very impressive.)

@spiff

That's pretty good. I'm especially impressed by the fact that you added a sheep sample. I once tried to make a mod with different sheep making different sounds. When I tried to record it, the sheep wouldn't cooperate. They just stared at me and sniffed the recorder.

@rare_j

That's pretty impressive. I was going to attempt to run Samba, but then I decided I didn't have much use for it anyway.

[Zetr0]

I made a Video CV to get into computer graphics arts college

used my A1200 + 40MB hard disk (partitioned to 5 spaces *double spaced 2 of them, code and gfx compressed )

Video Tracker , Dpaint IV, MorphAGA, Imagine3d, Octamed, Roc Genlock and a whole slew of others and made a tight 10 minute presentation on video tape..

(this was in 1991.... a long LOOOoOOoog time ago )

got to the interview, they said they were impressed with the Video CV although perhaps to technical for the course and would like to offer me a place...

I looked at the facilites.... some ass-nasty skanky macs ..... and said thanks but NO THANKS.....

[Zetr0]

In 1993 my brother asked a favour of me and my A1200.

(a bit long winded this bit *sleep mode activated*)
he had a request to render elevations of new to build premises from an architect friend. as he needed a computer drawn image for what ever reason i didn`t ask.

since i loved drawning i though okies lets see. so I had the basic renders on A4 in front of me and 2/3 hours later I had done all elevations and included a 3dimensional render (all in DPAINT using the tools there )

i scaled up all the images into 4 tiled images each (top left, top right and bottom left, right etc ) each being 640x512x16 ( 1280x1024 ) saved them off and converted them to standard bitmaps (needed two 720k disks lol from 1 amga floppy with plenty of space left LMFAO how i cursed that win3.1 machine.)

I gave them to my bro, and didnt think nothing of it untill 4 or so later my bro said thanks and showed me the local EDP with the pictures I had done in them!!!! result... they looked good too

I think my bro got some good kudos outa that but I got enough thanks... you know i think my bro still has the paper it was shown in, if anyones interested (and i remeber ) i might scan it in LOL

[Photon]

I made the custom chip set do my bidding and accomplish demo effects no one thought possible at the time.

[Dastardly]

I think I once electrocuted a fly that flew into the cooling vents on the top of my A500.

That learned him.

[mr_a500]

I think I once electrocuted a fly that flew into the cooling vents on the top of my A500.

I think you're looking for the "Amazing things flies have done on your Amiga" thread. That must have been one hell of a fly. First of all, the fly would have to cram himself into a 2mm space to get into the A500 cooling vent, then find a way to electrocute himself by drilling into the plastic power connector and spreading his legs far apart to touch both connectors. Amazing.

[snowman040]

I did this

http://it.aminet.net/pix/trace/MB_Amooga.jpg
http://dk.aminet.net/pix/trace/MB_F1GP97.jpg

[Dastardly]

Originally Posted by mr_a500

I think you're looking for the "Amazing things flies have done on your Amiga" thread. That must have been one hell of a fly. First of all, the fly would have to cram himself into a 2mm space to get into the A500 cooling vent, then find a way to electrocute himself by drilling into the plastic power connector and spreading his legs far apart to touch both connectors. Amazing.

I sense sarcasm in your post

I think maybe you took my post too seriously although he was indeed one hell of a fly.

I suggest you get out more

[girv]

I made a neural net brain that learned to recognise the digits 0-9. Hardly SkyNet, but it was a start...

[mr_a500]

I made a neural net brain...

Well, that's better than a neural net ass. (I think Fred made one of those )

Seriously, was it a program to detect digit patterns in images? Did the "brain" actually learn or was it just a fixed algorithm?

[keropi]

a neural net ass.... that makes sense!

[Ray Norrish]

Well, I managed to get my modulator and AR completely inside the A500 chassis.. the AR was activated by pressing rhe C= "button"

[P-J]

I managed to get my A1200 on the net using Miami and an external modem. Hardly exciting, but at the time it was amazing.

Then I found out all the best browsers were commercial. So I think I used Lynx

[gary]

Not "amazing" but..
Back in 1995 I had an old A500 running in a real arcade cabinet (ex Double Dragon) with the action replay cartridge rigged up to the player 1 & 2 buttons for activation. Later on I replaced it with a second hand amiga 2000 with genlock and hard drive and an A1200HD. I made up a menu system to load games from the hard drive but also had the A1200 playing music (controlled by the A2000 via a serial cable) and running full screen animations that were shown on screen via the genlock while the A2000 played the games. The result was playing games like Xenon2 in an arcade cabinet with the real bomb the bass mix played in full by the A1200 with looping animations of starwars flight sequences (transferred and converted to anim5 from AVI files from my PC) 'underneath' the xenon2 graphics. It was great fun to play and nice to be able to combine amiga hardware to add more effects to the old games.
I ended up having 2 arcade cabnet amiga combinations linked via a null modem cable to play linked games like super skidmarks/lotus2.
Later on I had a PC/mame cabinet (ex super street fighter 2) but while technically more impressive because of the 'real' arcade game emulation it wasn't as much fun to work on as the older amiga projects.