How can use an Amiga in XXI century

Hi everybody:

I am thinking to use a Amiga 1200 (or A500) to my fiction writing and journalist articles works. I know that this is a really old hardware but I like to use vintage hardware. One of the main reason is that I hate to see myself wasting time in internet. I can´t avoid it if I have the oportunity to surf the web. So I want only to have email software. So my question is: is it possible to use a amiga 1200 or 500 for this jobs:

Read PDF
Print articles
Read / Write emails
Write articles and fiction (in rtf format)

Important also is to send the articles that I will write to my wifes PC to change the format to docx (a lot of newspapers use this format only)

I know that is possible to write and article but I am afraid that after that I can´t send the article to a PC to open the file in for example abiword word processor. Is there a possibility to send archives to a Windows pc (by USB, by Pararell port, using USB Flash Disk, external harddrive, etc.)

Thank so much!

[eva]

Welcome to the forums!

Originally Posted by lubas

Hi everybody:

I am thinking to use a Amiga 1200 (or A500) to my fiction writing and journalist articles works. I know that this is a really old hardware but I like to use vintage hardware. One of the main reason is that I hate to see myself wasting time in internet. I can´t avoid it if I have the oportunity to surf the web. So I want only to have email software. So my question is: is it possible to use a amiga 1200 or 500 for this jobs:

If you have an Amiga 1200 - which is a good suggestion over A500, you can definitely transfer files by using a special PCMCIA network card. If you are thinking about getting an Amiga, definitely go for the A1200 - or, if you have money to spend, A4000T...

In either case, sooner or later you may need to upgrade, even if you have an A1200 and I regret to say that the "upgrades" are excessively costly. You will be literally dishing out a lot of money for hardware that was made 10-20 years ago which is underpowered by today's standards but sold extremely overpriced just for the fact that it is sought after and "vintage". You can take a Blizzard card, which is roughly an old Motorola CPU with RAM ranging from 16-128MB and you will be paying more for it that you would be paying for, say, a modestly older Mac computer with lots of power and updated software. Perhaps the best expansion card is the Blizzard PPC which is sold as roughly the price of a new MacBook Air - yes, just the card... A Motorola stepping 60Mhz and a PPC stepping 275Mhz... 800 USD

Originally Posted by lubas

Read PDF
Print articles
Read / Write emails
Write articles and fiction (in rtf format)

Important also is to send the articles that I will write to my wifes PC to change the format to docx (a lot of newspapers use this format only)

I am unsure about PDF, it is proprietary Adobe - however, I know that you can use LaTeX. M$ Word from my publishing days is rarely used, most journalists I've met use some professional software (I forgot the name, I was not much into publishing back then).

Otherwise there are Amiga solutions such as Wordsworth 7 which are fully blown text editors. There is also PageStream which is something between M$ Word and M$ PowerPoint which allows you to create nice publishing pages. In fact, PageStream is one of those special publishing software and that was its intent.

You also have TurboCalc on the Amiga, the equivalent of M$ Excel.

Originally Posted by lubas

I know that is possible to write and article but I am afraid that after that I can´t send the article to a PC to open the file in for example abiword word processor. Is there a possibility to send archives to a Windows pc (by USB, by Pararell port, using USB Flash Disk, external harddrive, etc.)

Thank so much!

The Amiga 1200 has a PCMCIA slot which means that you can easily hook-up an MMC card and transfer files around. For USB support, you would need to mod the machine - that is open it up, remove some things, install a card from AmiKit cca. 100 euros and then you have USB as well.

I guess that the cutoff point for outdated hardware is actually the software that your run - if the software is limited or dies off, then there is no point in getting the hardware in the first place. However, on the Amiga you already have most (if not all) of the software easily available. You will definitely not run out of software any time soon. There are many archives around (TOSEC), as well as EAB's file server that host a bunch of outdated applications that are very good for a lot of tasks similar to what you are trying to accomplish.

[Nobby_UK]

As for e-mails, I used to do it all the time with YAM (2.6 ?)
but when I switched from Dial-Up to Cable (ADSL ?)
it would not work and I never used it again.

If anybody knows how to get it to work - I'd be interested.

[PUMA]

@Nobby_UK
Settings Menu>>Configuration>>TCP/IP
Get your Internet Service Providers' email server address from their web page or setup info (usually mail.xxx.xxx). Then the port numbers for outgoing and incoming email. If using SSL you need AmiSSL installed.
Save settings. Note: gmail server is pop.googlemail.com port 995.

[Bugala]

Yes, to all your questions. However, if you are planning to make PDF, i suggest you send that file to PC first and then make PDF using some PC software, since it might be that making PDF in amiga can either be bit tricky, or bit out of date (Just a hunch - not knowledge).

To set up Email, I would suggest YAM as well, i have used it myself in past and it was very good, and it have even developed further.

YAM is similar to outlook, in that it grabs your email from your mailboxes and takes them to your computer to read there.

Of course, if you wish to read email through browser, you can do that too, but then you risk browsing around the interent.

Notice that to connect Amiga to internet, you need TCP/IP software to be started first. PCs need that do, but that have been automated for them. IN Amiga you first need to double click to start the internet, then you can start YAM and get your / send your emails.

Since you are planning to make PDFs, I suppose you are planning to write on modern looking text editor, instead of notepad kind of thing. You can do that with A1200, as well as even with A500, but I would suggest getting one of those 68030 turbocards, preferably 50 Mhz versions. Those make your machine work about 10 times faster, and make using those wordprocessing programs much nicer. But as long as you dont mind little slowness, even A500 is just fine.

This all might sound bit complicated, but it is actually not very hard. Just that you would need someone to give you easy to follow instructions.

If someone would write you where to get the internet software, YAM, and word processor, and then also tell how to set up that Internet software, you would be all ready to go. I dont plan on doing that, since I dont know which are best ones anymore at this point, so rather someone who knows what he is talking about do that.

[Daedalus]

It looks like he's only looking to *read* PDFs, which shouldn't be too much of a problem once there is memory available to do it. It'll be a bit slow and the reader is probably a bit out of date but I never had much trouble reading and printing PDFs on my A1200/060...

[Hodor]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

It looks like he's only looking to *read* PDFs, which shouldn't be too much of a problem once there is memory available to do it. It'll be a bit slow and the reader is probably a bit out of date but I never had much trouble reading and printing PDFs on my A1200/060...

I think the proper reading of PDFs would depend on the size and complexity of the document. Am I wrong?

Just curiosity, by the way.

[Nobby_UK]

Originally Posted by PUMA

@Nobby_UK
Settings Menu>>Configuration>>TCP/IP
Get your Internet Service Providers' email server address from their web page or setup info (usually mail.xxx.xxx). Then the port numbers for outgoing and incoming email. If using SSL you need AmiSSL installed.
Save settings. Note: gmail server is pop.googlemail.com port 995.

No place to enter Port numbers (actually version 2.3p1 [040])
So 2.6 > 2.9 might work ?

[Daedalus]

Yes, more complicated PDFs will take much longer to render in AmiPDF, xPDF or whatever. Lots of newer features won't be supported either but in general this isn't a problem because they tend to be mostly features like form filling, 3D etc. that most normal PDFs don't use.

[alexh]

Possible Yes. Pleasant experience No.

If you want to use something exotic, use a Raspberry Pi 2? Just un-install the browser?

1080p resolution, open office, good PDF support.. no browser..