Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

Originally Posted by dJOS

Grab a c.f. to pcmcia adapter for your 1200 and then you can easily transfer files from your Mac or PC to your Amiga.

I was thinking a PCMCIA network card would be more useful... also I already have one (somewhere...).
Anyone here worked out how to drive it?
Likewise a PCMCIA USB card...
Of course, in the old dfays we used to network them up over an RS232 link... I say "we", I can't recall if I ever actually got it working. :?

If your TV has scart and RGB support then you can buy an Amiga to scart cable too.

Is that significantly better than the video composite lead? Is a bit dear: I've seen a VGA adapter for less than that.

Emulation is for ppl that don't own real hardware.

Perhaps, or for those with hardware that doesn't work: I think the keyboard is going to be a problem, yesterday some keys worked, today it seems completely dead.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Hairyloon

I'm not trolling: I was a big fan about 20 years ago, but I was forced into some degree of conformity and my old A1200 found its way to the loft. It came to light the other day while doing some relocating so I've fired it up (more or less) and now I'm wondering what to do with it...

You can use it for the same things you used it for 20 years ago. Many of the games are still just as good as they were back then.

Originally Posted by Hairyloon

I was thinking a PCMCIA network card would be more useful... also I already have one (somewhere...).
Anyone here worked out how to drive it?
Likewise a PCMCIA USB card...
Is that significantly better than the video composite lead? Is a bit dear: I've seen a VGA adapter for less than that.

Only some PCMCIA cards can be made to work. They have to be 16 bit (Cardbus is 32 bit -> won't work) and it needs to have drivers for AmigaOS. I have never seen a PCMCIA USB adapter working in the Amiga, but Ethernet and Wifi adapters are relatively common. I have a PCMCIA ethernet adapter myself, but actually prefer the PCMCIA-CF adapter solution for transferring files.
VGA adapters will only work with a few monitors that understands the 16kHz signal coming from the Amiga. Since it is outside VGA signal spec, it is basically trial and error to find one that works, however there are some models that are known to work. I have a Dell 2001FP which works with such a VGA adapter.

Originally Posted by demolition

You can use it for the same things you used it for 20 years ago. Many of the games are still just as good as they were back then.

I used it for my university studies... I'm not convinced it'll match up to what I'm using now for any kind of work.

Only some PCMCIA cards can be made to work. They have to be 16 bit (Cardbus is 32 bit -> won't work) and it needs to have drivers for Amiga OS.

Is there a guide anywhere of which work, or how to tell if they are likely to?

I have never seen a PCMCIA USB adapter working in the Amiga...

I have seen some talk of USB adapters for Amiga, though not through PCMCIA, and I doubt that they're full USB support. Would be good to know.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Hairyloon

I used it for my university studies... I'm not convinced it'll match up to what I'm using now for any kind of work.

Is there a guide anywhere of which work, or how to tell if they are likely to?

I have seen some talk of USB adapters for Amiga, though not through PCMCIA, and I doubt that they're full USB support. Would be good to know.

One way to figure out if a PCMCIA card works with the Amiga is to simply search for it on some search engine. Alternatively, look up the model name on Aminet.

Yes, there are USB controllers such as Subway and RapidRoad which are connected to the clock port. I have the latter and it works quite nice with lots of stuff like USB storage, keyboards, mice, serial ports etc. Notice though that it can only be used with stuff that uses the OS libraries, so a USB mouse or joystick cannot be used in most games. There are adapters out there which will allow you to connect a USB mouse/joystick/joypad to a joystick port.

Slight change of subject: what are good fonts to use on a TV?
Before I mothballed the machine I had it on a monitor, and now I can barely read anything on it.
I've had a scan through the fonts, but none of them seem particularly legible in the preview and there is too many to try them all out.

BTW, one of the cards has just turned up: it's a 3Com OfficeConnect 3CCSH572BT...
Must go do some work now: I'll mess with it later.

[TenLeftFingers]

How do I view jpg/png images on OS3?

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[daxb]

Multiview with proper datatypes or any picture viewer like Visage, VT, V, ...

[Devlin]

What's the connector on the Blizzard 1230's SCSI kit for? (in attached image, blue connector)
It's the one that usually goes into the gap on the back of the 1200.

If that's not used, do I really need the SCSI kit actually attached to my 1200 besides for the additional RAM slot?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Devlin

What's the connector on the Blizzard 1230's SCSI kit for? (in attached image, blue connector)
It's the one that usually goes into the gap on the back of the 1200.

If that's not used, do I really need the SCSI kit actually attached to my 1200 besides for the additional RAM slot?

It looks like an external SCSI connector which would be used to connect scanners, external HDDs, ZIP drives etc.
You can also use the SCSI kit to connect an internal SCSI drive, or even an IDE HDD through an Acard SCSI-IDE converter like many people use. It is a lot faster than the A1200 IDE interface.

[zerohour1974]

So this is vaguely Amiga .... A few questions

Morph OS vs. IcAROS?

MorphOS is the more regularly developed of the two obviously but what does Icaros offer that MorphOS doesn't? Obviously it works with x86 hardware but why use it?

MorphOS has Trident which can run many 68k programs natively, Icaros seems to use EUAE. Will they ever get a wrapper like Trident?

MorphOS is expensive for licenses and seems to run on limited hardware. Is Icaros being x86 based any better for hardware compatability?

Wireless seems very intermittent on MorphOS is it any better on Icaros?

[kolla]

Why was it never fixed so that one can change screen mode without having to close all windows etc?

[turrican3]

It's not amiga but commodore why the gfx on c64 always seems 2 be 2 pixels on 1 or 1 pixel on 2 ??? I hope you see what i mean ?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by turrican3

It's not amiga but commodore why the gfx on c64 always seems 2 be 2 pixels on 1 or 1 pixel on 2 ??? I hope you see what i mean ?

It is a compromise between resolution and number of colors. If you are using sprites for example, you can have a 16x16 pixel sprite in two colors, or 8x16 pixel sprite in 4 colors. So to get 4 color sprites, you get pixels that are double as wide as they are high. This is quite simplified as you can also stretch sprites in either direction or put multiple on top of each other to effectively produce a high res sprite in many colors (but then you'll run out of sprites much sooner).

[B14ck W01f]

1. It happens on low-end models like the Amiga 500, but on high-ends like the Amiga 3000, does its internal drive click on the Kickstart/Workbench screen even if no disk is inserted?
2. On machines with Kickstart 3+, you get the black screen/red border crash similar to other KS models. Why does KS3+ errors automatically reset the machine after 20 or so seconds, even though it says "Press left mouse button to continue."?

[jPV]

Originally Posted by zerohour1974

MorphOS has Trident which can run many 68k programs natively, Icaros seems to use EUAE. Will they ever get a wrapper like Trident?

Trident is the preferences program of the Poseidon USB stack. Trance is the 68k JIT compiler on MorphOS, and it's not a wrapper, it just emulates the 68k CPU.

MorphOS itself is API compatible with Amiga, so 68k programs do run natively on the other parts except the lowest level CPU emulation. That's why 68k programs run much faster under MorphOS, pretty close to native speed. MorphOS doesn't need to emulate any other parts of the original Amiga hardware like UAE does, and that makes UAE much slower.

Icaros (AROS x86) has an endian issue to get anything similar, that's why you need to run all 68k software totally under UAE, or have totally new native ports of the old software (which of course is an issue, because you can't access most of the source codes of the legacy software). This is why MorphOS run on PowerPC architecture and why many people prefer it, PPC uses the same endianness with 68k. If MorphOS will be ported to for example x86 on some day, it'll lose its compatibility with the old Amiga binaries too.

MorphOS is expensive for licenses and seems to run on limited hardware. Is Icaros being x86 based any better for hardware compatability?

No matter what the architecture is, you'll always have to write the drivers for all of it, and with our resources it'll always be quite limited. If MorphOS would go to x86, that doesn't mean it would magically work on that wide selection of hardware, it'll be some carefully selected machines then too.

AROS has taken the route to run it as hosted over an another operating system too. That of course broadens the selection but causes some overhead to performance etc, but is it what people want is an another question...

Wireless seems very intermittent on MorphOS is it any better on Icaros?

My experiences with wireless on MorphOS is that it works pretty well with connecting to networks and solid to stay up, but the speed varies and can be quite slow in some occasions. I've successfully used it at parties, on public network on train, etc.

I don't know if the speed issue is mainly because of the hardware or software, but I recently found that it seems to be common that Mac hardware doesn't like certain frequencies, especially the higher ones. I also noticed that when I had automatic channel setting with my home router, it sometimes was unusable while sometimes it worked like charm. I started to experiment and found out that at least with channel 1 it's works at full speed all the time, and I left my router configuration at that and been happy since.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by kolla

Why was it never fixed so that one can change screen mode without having to close all windows etc?

It was alleviated somewhat with 3.0, but didn't go totally away. You don't have to close the windows Workbench itself has opened, but you do have to close the windows different apps opened.

The reason for this is, that the WB screen has to be closed and reopened for the screen mode to be changed. If you just swipe it from under the apps, your machine will become very unstable, as the apps will have orphaned windows on a non-existing screen.

Unfortunately there is no system friendly way around this. :-)

Originally Posted by B14ck W01f

1. It happens on low-end models like the Amiga 500, but on high-ends like the Amiga 3000, does its internal drive click on the Kickstart/Workbench screen even if no disk is inserted?

Yes, noclick is needed on every Amiga. Trackdisk.device is the same for everyone.

2. On machines with Kickstart 3+, you get the black screen/red border crash similar to other KS models. Why does KS3+ errors automatically reset the machine after 20 or so seconds, even though it says "Press left mouse button to continue."?

An alert timeout was implemented for KS3, but you can still get rid of it faster by pressing the mouse button. No point in taking the text out, it is helpful.

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by B14ck W01f

1. It happens on low-end models like the Amiga 500, but on high-ends like the Amiga 3000, does its internal drive click on the Kickstart/Workbench screen even if no disk is inserted?

The clicking is the drive mechanism searching for a disk in the drive, as soon as you put one in it knows it and it stops doing it.

[DisposableHero]

The numbers given by the Software Failure message of a crash gave clues to the programmer to prevent it - what the program was doing and in which memory address IIRC - so these were still needed.

[TenLeftFingers]

If a 68000, 68020, 68040 and 68060 were all set to tge same clock frequency, would there be any speed / performance difference or do they just differ by instruction set?

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[Jope]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

The clicking is the drive mechanism searching for a disk in the drive, as soon as you put one in it knows it and it stops doing it.

.. and why is this done? The drive mechanism doesn't update the status of the disk change sensor, unless the head is stepped.

Later on someone noticed, that you can keep on stepping it outwards and eventually the clicking will stop, as the drive's track 0 detector circuit forbids it from performing the actual step once track 0 has been reached.

It was not made default, as some of the oldest Amiga drives did not do the track 0 check and would become damaged or unaligned after stepping against the edge of the drive chassis long enough.