You know that old story... Away and back again.

[ljmarent]

Hello all,

My very first Amiga was a gently used Amiga 1000 with 1084S monitor way back in 1989. Round about 1991, I swapped her for an Amiga 500 with 1MB RAM. Later on in 1993, I sold my Amiga for a 386SX and my Amiga days were over It took me a few years to realize my error, and in 2008 I transitioned to Apple Mac and abandoned Microsoft for all but work related tasks.

Well, I'm 45 years old now and like every generation before mine, I want my damn toys back! That said, I don't really want 30 year old hardware, yeah I became an EE somewhere along the line (it's a blur, there was a lot of drinking in those years), but I gave up Windows to get away from fix'n computer junk, so I don't see going back to a life of patching and repairing just to keep my toys booting So for me, it's going to be emulation

It's been a long five days of reading to get 'sorta' caught back up on the classic Amiga hardware and Workbench 3.1. I've bought myself a licence of Cloanto's Amiga Forever and Hyperion's AmigaOS 3.1.4.1. I've picked up an rPI4 with 4GB DRAM and 120GB enterprise archival grade SSD (client drive NAND flash is too flaky for my taste in intermittent use cases) an X825 SATA\USB3 power supply board for the rPI4 and a C64 retro style USB joystick, just in case I feel like playing a game

On the rPI4 I'm running uae4arm and on my MAC's I'm running fs-uae. I've decided to go with an Amiga 1200 emulation. I never owned an AGA machine, so I figured that would be an extra treat. There are a terrible number of decisions that one has to make in order to actually get started...like directory or file or dedicated drive storage for the emulator and then, choosing a partition size that's cross system portable and transportable.. Oh and that whole *.info file needed for each file you want to see in Workbench, that threw me for a loop, lost an entire day on that but I'm up and limping along now. I did find the "10 Minute Amiga" guy on YouTube's beginner guide, and that's been super helpful ever since.

I'm now on a quest to increase my basic Amiga knowledge..and I'm looking for some reference books for Workbench 3.1, AmigaDOS, Directory Opus, etc..
I found a website that offers exactly what 'I think' I'm looking for Amiga.net.pl However, I'm hesitant to buy the books or magazines sold there, because I can't find any reviews from people who have bought and liked or disliked their work.

If anyone has any experience with the above site\author, I'd really appreciate some feedback ?

Also, if you have other tomes of Amiga knowledge that might better serve me, I'd love to hear about those as well.

Thank you,
Les

[Daedalus]

Welcome along! Yes, when you're used to another platform's paradigms, the Amiga OS can feel a little confusing. But once you get used to it, it really is an elegant approach that made it an absolute joy to use compared with its contemporary platforms, and there are still many features of the OS that I miss to this day.

Books like those on that site are for a very small market as you can imagine, so you might be hard pressed to find reviews. The only one of them that I have is the Blitz Basic one, and I found it a little, well, basic. It essentially explained the fundamentals of working with Blitz, but it didn't really offer a great deal beyond the Blitz manual itself, and often was simply paraphrasing the explanations in the manual. I guess I'm not the target audience for the book, but even still I guess I expected a little more depth. Of course, that's just one book and there are many on the site by different authors so that experience probably isn't reflective of them all...

Anyway, for your purposes, there's always the Workbench manuals themselves. If you don't have a copy, they're usually easy to find since every Amiga came with one. They go through every part of Workbench, explaining the concepts involved from the very beginning for an audience who had potentially just bought their first computer. As well as this, Amiga Format magazine released a couple of excellent pocket guides with the title "Get the most from your Amiga", which are well worth checking out. They're summary versions of a full-sized book of the same title published by Future Publishing, but I found the free mini version excellent back in the day. You can read it here on archive.org.

If you upgrade your 3.1 installation at a later date, 3.9 includes a HTML version of the 3.1 manual that also covers the many changes to Workbench, though most of the content is still relevant to 3.1. OS 4 also has a HTML manual based on the 3.1 manual, and you can read this here on amigaos.net. Of course, there will be many parts that don't apply to the older versions, but the majority of the content and all the major concepts remain the same.

Edit: First tip though: to see files that don't have a corresponding .info file, just go to the menus and select Window -> Show -> All files in Workbench 2 and above, and you can see everything.

[ljmarent]

Thank you for your warm welcome and that first tip

It had taken me quite a while to figure out why files placed in a host directory mapped to an emulated hardfile were not going through the pipe. If I placed a file or directory into the hardfile from the emulator side, the files appeared on the host side, but not vice-versa, I thought perhaps this was a one-way only trip. Then on a fluke, I decompressed an LHA on the host side and placed the contents into the directory and voila , 'some' of them appeared on the emulator side. So now I'm thinking only 'magic' files get to go through the pipe. You can only imagine the search terms I was typing into Google in order to try to get help with this

Once I figured this *.info thing out, I also went looking for how to create them for my files and how to change the icons. I've got this figured out now, but what I've not found are comprehensive icon sets. Basic OS files, everyone has covered, but what about data types, like MOD, ZIP, LHA, TXT, JPG, etc..

There are many things I can do, graphic art is not one of them. Perhaps you know where I can find or buy a nice comprehensive set of Amiga icons in 16\32\256 colours ?

I've been building up a directory of files I want to send through the 'no longer magic' pipe, but without suitable icon graphics, I'm hesitant to do so.

I also decided that giving a few dollars to amiga.net.pl for an e-book was not the worst thing I could do with my money. I bought issue zero of Amiga User magazine and the Workbench 3.1 vol 1 e-book. I've only started reading, but I can say that the translation is 'technical', as ideas are conveyed, but the word choice and structure is not 'conversational', meaning the flow is often broken, requiring a second or third reading of a sentence.

My 'guess' is their translator is fluent, but Polish language first. It's a lot like 'talking' to someone originally from eastern Europe, who moved to Canada between high school and university. All the ideas are there, it's just going to take a bit longer to syncronize.

For the magazines, I can live with this, it adds a sort of multi-cultural flair, frankly it's charming. So I'll subscribe, but for reference books, I think will likely try to find some old original Commodore books like you mentioned, in reasonable condition. I do find I need physical books for my reference library.

[Daedalus]

Yep, I know exactly what you mean, there's the same lack of flow in the Blitz book.

As for filetypes, this is another area in which Amiga OS differs from other platforms, particularly in the older versions. Under Workbench (the Amiga desktop), Amiga files and other disk objects only really have a few fundamental types:
- Tools: These are other files that aren't projects, and are often executables (programs, apps) or support files for executables (libraries, device drivers, object code). This is also the default filetype for unknown files.
- Projects: These are files that contain information for a program (tool) to load, save, edit or otherwise use. For example images, text, audio.
- Drawers: These are directories, or folders on other platforms
- Disks: These are logical volumes, like removable media or hard drive partitions.
- Trashcan: These are optional, special drawers in the root of a volume where files can be moved before deletion.

Beyond this, the Amiga OS from 3.0 on has the concept of datatypes - essentially drivers for different filetypes. If you install a datatype for a particular format, e.g. PNG images, then any image program that supports datatypes can read and write PNG files, even if it was written before the PNG format was invented. These use file headers to identify files, not file name extensions, so from Workbench, the files will all just be projects.

Later versions of the OS added support for filetype recognition more similar to other platforms, where default icons are assigned based on the filetype if a specific .info file doesn't exist. This means that things like archives, JPEG images etc. will be given relevant icons and therefore be set to open specific applications when double-clicked. This was added in OS 3.9, though it's possible to add the functionality to earlier versions too. Check out NewIcons, which includes DefIcons and adds this functionality to OS 3.0 and 3.1.

As for nice-looking icons, OS 3.9 comes with a decent looking set of default icons, and there are plenty of packs around. The default icon engine of 3.1 doesn't support very colourful icons, but NewIcons patches it, and icon.library 46.4 also fixes it. OS 3.1.4 fixes this too if you're using that. Aside from that, NewIcons comes with a set of default icons in the NewIcons style, GlowIcon collections can be found for the OS 3.9 style, and there are various other collections of icons that can be found. Aminet is a good starting point for finding sets of icons.

[ljmarent]

I bought Hyperion's AmigaOS A1200 ver 3.1.4.1 , so that's my starting point.

I'll keep scrounging and see if I can find what I'm looking for in icons, thank's for the recommends.
Even if Workbench isn't datatype sensitive and treats all data files as projects...my brain is still going to ache to know 'visually' what type of file I'm looking at, without having to open up the *.info and see which program it's associated with.

[Daedalus]

Yep, 3.1.4(.1) will support any of the main icon styles. It also includes a set of GlowIcons for the standard programs on the Storage disk.

Adding DefIcons to identify filetypes won't have any effect if the files have a .info icon associated with them as this overrides the default. But the default icon images can be copied and used as the .info file for files that you want to manually identify.

[ljmarent]

Hum.. DefIcons you say... Looks like yet another rabbit hole that needs exploring. So, in theory, I wouldn't need to create all those *.info files manually, I just modify a script and appropriate looking icons get served up. Then, if I change the program I want to use to load JPG or MOD files, I don't have to edit all the *.info files again, I just change some script value. Very interesting.

I found a very cool looking set of GlowIcons, they came on a CD, approximately 3600 of them. Apparently a complete set of 48pix x 48pix. Trouble is, I could only locate one fellow on eBay that had the CD for sale, he's in Germany, and it looks like he doesn't do international shipping. I also reached out to the last online store that carried the 'GlowIcons Collection CD' to see if they can dig up another copy or put me in touch with the people that made the set. It's a little surprising that software and digital art are as hard to come by as functioning hardware. I'd have thought these things, being so easy to replicate would last forever.

[Daedalus]

Yep, that's basically what DefIcons is. It patches Workbench to check the file header for identifiers and assigns a default icon based on that. It's a little slower to display icons in a drawer for that reason, but it's not a massive deal unless you've got very large drawers with hundreds of files in there. The preferences program that comes with OS 3.9 is pretty good - I assume the one that's included with the 3.0/3.1 version is similar.

Basically, the default icons are stored in ENV:Sys (andENVARC:Sys), which is typically where the system settings are kept. They'll be something like def_jpg.info, def_lha.info, def_mp3.info and so on. By modifying these icon files (e.g. setting the default program for opening them or changing the image), you change the behaviour for every file with which they're later associated. So it's similar to what you're doing but applied en masse, no editing of scripts required.

I suspect it could be a case of CD icon collections not being particularly popular as a product and so being rare in the first place, rather than them disappearing. There are large collections available freely online - a good place to start would be the Aminet GlowIcon category.

Mason Icons are the official icon styles for OS 3.9 and 4.x, and he has some excellent collections too Go for the non-OS4 ones...

[ljmarent]

I can't be sure, but I read that the DefIcons preference tool does not work without 'ReAction', which I further read is a AmigaOS 3.9 'thing' and not included or easily added to 3.1.4(.1) at this time.

Although... I see that Hyperion has bought the rights to ReAction quite recently, so maybe there is a plan afoot for 3.1.4 users, or maybe the next release in another 18 years or so

Without switching to AmigaOS 3.9, I think I'm left to manually configure DefIcons. I found a couple videos specifically for adding DefIcons to AmigaOS 3.1.4 -> [ Show youtube player ] seems pretty comprehensive.

Thank you for the icon links, I've captured those files and stored them away.
I've also heard back on the icon set I want, they have offered to ship to me, still working the final details
I've won the auction, 39 Euro shipped for a CD of GlowIcons, hope they are good

[ljmarent]

This selection of GlowIcons does not appear to be for sale any longer, and I am unable to get the last known retailer to respond. The copyright marking on the back of the CD dates this work as being approximately 19 years old. I wonder if once it arrives and I make an ISO out of it, if it's the sort of thing I should upload to 'The Zone!' ?

[PeterK]

How about this ?

http://amiga-storage.net/?page=Icons...llection_2.iso
http://amiga-storage.net/?page=Icons..._Update123.lha
http://amiga-storage.net/?page=Icons...C2_Update4.lha

There is a list of places where to download iconsets in my iconlib_46.4 readme.

[ljmarent]

Awesome, so I have a licence of sorts in owning the un-opened disk and conveniently, someone has already posted the ISO files within my reach..
Now I don't have to wait for the package to arrive from Germany.

Being as new as I am to this hobby, I have no idea of all the places to search, I'll be adding Amiga-Storage to my list.
Thank you.

[a4k-oerx]

Originally Posted by ljmarent

The copyright marking on the back of the CD dates this work as being approximately 19 years old.

And in case you don't know already, that publisher went out of business long ago, more here.

[ljmarent]

Very good, I'll add http://hol.abime.net to my search list, that will make lighter work of searching for rights holders on old wares going forward.

Tracking down a German company when you only know English does not make things any easier, and it seems to me that the Amiga lived on longer and stronger in Europe, then in Canada or the US, so I'm sure I'll struggle with this again.