Good Amiga Software

[mancity]

Hi guys,

As im new to the Amiga im looking for some suggestions please

I mainly bought the Amiga to play games, but im wanting to do more with it and just wondering what good software there is that's worth me tracking down?

Im interested in any ideas really - graphic design, creating music, good utilities etc etc

[diablothe2nd]

Graphics:

Deluxe Paint
Personal Paint
Real 3D
Lightwave


Music:
Octamed
soundtracker


Utilities:
DirectoryOpus (Dopus for short)
Scribble!
Wordworth
or for a full suite of word & excel type software try Mini Office


there really is an endless list. the amiga definitely wasn't short of software

[mancity]

Thanks for the info.

Real 3D and Lightwave look decent i'll try and find them on e-bay. Watch them be about £100 each! lol

[fishyfish]

To add to the above

Gfx:

PPaint
TVPaint
Imagine
Cinema4d
VistaPro
Real3D


Video:

FroggerNG
Moovid
Riva
FFMpeg
Deluxe Video


Office/DTP/etc:

Pagestream
Final Writer
Professional Page
PenPal


Programming:

AMOS/Pro
Blitz BASIC/Amiblitz
SASC/C
Hisoft basic
Devpac
Macro68k
ASMOne
gcc
Aztec C


and about a million others
As alluded to already quality productivity software was plentiful on the amiga. All the above is just a small selection of the "A grade" type stuff,... in no way anything resembling a full list.
Its funny. Amiga became popular because of games, but its the quality of its serious software that really makes it shine (in my opinion at least). Had it relied soley n gaming it wouldve died a good 5 or more years earlier than it did.

[mancity]

Thanks! Will look into all of these

[mancity]

Seen as though none of the 3D graphic applications are on e-bay (and I wouldn't know where to start trying to burn a copy to floppy), are there any others that are good that aren't on the above lists?

[diablothe2nd]

software like real3d can be found on coverdisks and are public domain... so you are completely fine from a legal standpoint using downloaded adf's of those any any floppy coverdisk for that matter.

getting amiga software from your pc to a real amiga can be done several ways:

buy this:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=440

or plug a 2.5 inch hd to your pc, mount and format it from within winUAE, copy over needed files then plug in and run on your amiga.

or use a parralell or serial lead and transfer files directly between pc and amiga.

[mancity]

I could format a floppy on my pc using amiga forever and copy the file across?

[diablothe2nd]

no, because the pc floppy drive cannot physically write in amiga format.

you can however format a floppy under windows, copy the files and use crossdos on the amiga to read pc/windows formatted floppies. that's assuming you have crossdos already kicking around for your amiga.

EDIT - it would need to be a DD floppy, not a high density floppy though. which means you wont have enough space for the adf (DD on pc is 720k, not 880k) so you will have to break up the files with lha or something.

[mancity]

That sounds like quite alot of work mate, especially as I dont own CrossDOS.

You have however reminded me I own Amiga Forever so I can try these out at least first before I consider buying an original copy off e-bay.

[diablothe2nd]

indeed.

if you have a hd already installed in the amiga, i'd personally just hook it up to the pc and format it in amiga forever (not windows!) and go from there.

44 pin 2.5 inch to 40 pin 3.5 inch leads so you can plug it into your pc are easy enough to make or cheap enough to purchase.

edit - i think crossdos comes with workbench 3.5 maybe even 3.1. not 100% sure on that though

[mancity]

Just received some cover disks from a job lot on e-bay and full versions or Vistapro some other good stuff were included

[gunni]

Originally Posted by mancity

That sounds like quite alot of work mate, especially as I dont own CrossDOS.

You have however reminded me I own Amiga Forever so I can try these out at least first before I consider buying an original copy off e-bay.

You can use Amiga Explorer, included with Amiga Forever to use your Amiga's floppy drive to write ADFs to disk. Works for me with a USB-serial adaptor and my laptop

[prowler]

Originally Posted by mancity

That sounds like quite alot of work mate, especially as I dont own CrossDOS.

You might well have CrossDOS if you have a set of Workbench disks.

CrossDOS is bundled with AmigaOS 2.1 and later, and also it works under Amiga OS 2.04.

[Photon]

CrossDOS is fine for files, and those disk images that are not stuffed fully. Amiga has 880K and MS-DOS had 720K, so 720K is where you have to split disk images and muck about.

Didn't Amigakit.com have a serial cable kit with EasyXXX software disk? Or did I dream it?

Either way, a serial cable and a transfer software in your Amiga and PC is the quickest way to get started, I think.

If you can get a harddisk interface for your A500 (?), you can buy a CF card and one, or two, adapters. But it can be quite hairy to get it to work. It's easier on later models, and there's EasyADF if you have a PCMCIA port.

[mancity]

So, I could buy one of these for my laptop - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RS232-Expr...item1e629c6e26

And simply transfer files across to my amiga 1200?

If can, then could I have a blank floppy disk in my Amiga and transfer straight from laptop to the floppy and if so, would I need a piece of software? I dont have a Amiga HDD.

[gunni]

Originally Posted by mancity

So, I could buy one of these for my laptop - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RS232-Expr...item1e629c6e26

And simply transfer files across to my amiga 1200?

If can, then could I have a blank floppy disk in my Amiga and transfer straight from laptop to the floppy and if so, would I need a piece of software? I dont have a Amiga HDD.

I would imagine that should work fine, I use a usb-serial adaptor with my laptop and A500. You just need to setup Amiga Explorer on your laptop which then transfers the Amiga side of the software to ramdisk. Transferring ADFs to floppies is just a case of drag and drop on the laptop but its a pretty slow process.

[sneeker]

If you have a 1200, stick a compact flash card in as a hdd, it costs pennies and makes it a lot more usable...

One of these :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-CF-44-Pi...item5adad49135

A 4gb compact flash card. And another compact flash card and one of these:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CF-compact...item3cc5292688

Then once you have the hdd set up, you can copy stuff to the other cf card, then put that in the pcmcia adapter, and copy it to the amiga.

Ive only had my 1200 a couple of weeks and have set up workbench and stuff on a cf card as my hdd using winaue on my pc.. makes it a lot easier to copy things rather then trying to faff around with null modem cables and stuff.

[Photon]

Ebay links don't seem to work, but yes, if you have an A1200, things are easier. A 1-4GB CF card and an adapter to either the PCMCIA or the IDE inside is all it takes.

Like this: http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=883

Or this: http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=440

They prepare the technical bits for you, so all you need to do is plug it in, really. To transfer files you turn off the Amiga, plug the CF card in your PC and transfer files to it and plug it back in the Amiga.

[mancity]

I have a 1200 yes, but already have a 4GB HDD installed and I presume it is full, but cannot see how to check the amount of free space?