Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[ransom1122]

Great Interview

Such a shame MK came late in Amigas Life

To give you an idea, "Mortal Kombat" sold about 50,000 copies, "Mortal Kombat 2" 125,000 copies, "Primal Rage" 9000 copies. When "Primal Rage" was released the Amiga was dead as a commercial platform.

[s2325]

Mortal Kombat games had serious problems in Germany.

[ransom1122]

Originally Posted by s2325

Mortal Kombat games had serious problems in Germany.

Like what? Violence & Censorship?

[zipper]

like Qxxxx game...

[d4rk3lf]

Because, there was no beer friendship.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by ransom1122

When "Primal Rage" was released the Amiga was dead as a commercial platform.

It also wasn't exactly a great game in general, to be honest The fact that it still sold 9000 copies on the Amiga that late in its lifecycle amazes me.

[Lord Aga]

What is the height of WB bar?

[Daedalus]

It's the same as the window title bar, IIRC it's the size of the screen font +3 pixels, so if you use the default Topaz 8 font, the screen bar will be 11 pixels high. This isn't guaranteed though, changing the appearance using VisualPrefs or other patches, or newer versions of the OS (e.g. OS 4) can and will change this, and so you shouldn't rely on the size being calculated like that. Instead, it's possible to query the screen's structure and determine the title bar height, so if your program depends on screen height, you can always adjust to match any screen.

[Lord Aga]

Thanks I was doing the ol' fashioned 'count the pixels with your eyes' routine and I actually got 11 (1+8+2). But it seemed too strange to have an odd number. I'm fiddling around with overscan and maximum graphics size. So if someone has a non-standard bar with more pixels he would lose a couple of lines from the picture. But it's not a big deal.

[Daedalus]

Yeah, the odd number does seem unusual in digital environments, but it does make sense: The text is 8 pixels, one pixel either side for spacing, and then one extra line underneath to give a nice border line between the bar and the rest of the screen (assuming a standard OS 2/3 screen).

[-Acid-]

Does WB3.1 require KS3.1 to use?

[dJOS]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

Does WB3.1 require KS3.1 to use?

It'll run on KS 2.x iirc.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by dJOS

It'll run on KS 2.x iirc.

Yes, it will run on KS2.0 however I think there are some stuff that won't work 100%. With KS3.0, everything should work.

[Jope]

It will not boot up completely on 2.x. Some tools might work, yes, but not all CLI commands will run for example.

Always use the same major version of WB as is your KS for regular use.

[jizmo]

I remember reading from computer magazines of how one should be careful not to break floppy disk stepper motor, and how there were some programs or viruses that could potentially harm one's disk drive.

Now, after tens of floppy drives I've owned only a few have broken down and it's always been a problem with the drive head, not the motor. I've even misused many drives with hacks that play songs with the motor and they've worked just fine afterwards. Sure, there might be some tear and wear if I had them playing for 24/7, but otherwise I'm wondering if there's any truth to being able to wreck the motor with software.

[idrougge]

You could knock it out of alignment. This is the reason why the "no click" feature isn't activated by default in AmigaOS, despite being part of the OS — it works by stepping the head beyond track 0, which modern floppy drives will refuse to do but could potentially harm very old drives.

[Nosferax]

How many hard disk and\or partitions can a 3.1 system have?

[ajk]

Hard disks are limited by how many you can connect to the hardware. For IDE it's 2 per channel, for a SCSI controller it's 7 devices plus the host (or 15 in later SCSI implementations).

There isn't really a limit for the number of partitions you can have. I suppose there must be some limit to how many AmigaDOS can practically handle but it's probably large enough to not be a problem for most

[Nosferax]

Follow up question: is it possible to have more than one hdd controller in a big box amiga?

[Locutus]

Yes, and this is actually quite common. Say a Amiga 3000 or 4000 with its onboard IDE/SCSI controller and then a faster SCSI controller on the accelerator card.