Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[alkis21]

When two native English speakers are talking about the Amiga 1200 processor, how exactly do they pronounce it? Sixty eight oh twenty, six eighty twenty, something else maybe?

[diablothe2nd]

Originally Posted by alkis21

When two native English speakers are talking about the Amiga 1200 processor, how exactly do they pronounce it? Sixty eight oh twenty, six eighty twenty, something else maybe?

that's an interesting one.

for the processors in general i call them sixty-eight k's
when referring to a specific one i call them oh-three-oh, or oh-six-oh etc
i dont often say the prefix with the suffix but if i do its six-eight-oh-six-oh

be interesting to see if people say it differently

[Mrs Beanbag]

Here's one I thought of the other day... how do you get to the alternative functions on the numerical keypad? i.e. Home, Page Down, etc. instead of the numbers and symbols? Or were those things just printed on the keys without thinking it through. Because the weirdest one is Num Lock. How can you turn Num Lock off, if it has to be off in order for you to press it?

[thomas]

Or were those things just printed on the keys without thinking it through.

That's probably how it is. The OS does not allow to switch the numerical keypad into a different mode so that Home etc. work.

There are some applications, though, which allow to interprete the numerical keys as cursor movements. For example CygnusED. But this is not globabl but only inside CygnusEd. And it's not switched by the NumLock key but by an option in the menu.

[Cymru]

Originally Posted by Chat Rob 1

Yeah that's where the name comes from

A female Amigo

Er, slightly more complex: One of the original Boca Raton investors (mostly dentists) had a female "significant other" named Lorraine and the prototype was named after her. The designers and programmers finally got hold of the prototype chips (they had been working with software emulations on a Macintosh), they were upset with the hardware not working quite properly and were cussing out Lorraine very frequently. It was decided to refer to her as the Amiga (girl friend) so the investor would not be upset.

Originally Posted by merlin1968

Does anyone know where I put the screws from my A4000 when I took the board out to send it for repair?

Check the tea cup in your cupboard next to the flour tin.

Originally Posted by s2325

Is there more use to Amiga keys than to resetting machine? Why inserting and ejecting disk is so loud?

Don't forget that the LAmiga + n & m key combination act to switch program windows, somewhat vaguely like the Alt-Tab key in Windows.

You must have a loud FDD, most of mine are pretty quiet. Pretty much a standard amount of noise from all (including PCs) drives. Even a Mac's soft eject makes a noise.

Originally Posted by thomas

That's probably how it is. The OS does not allow to switch the numerical keypad into a different mode so that Home etc. work.

There are some applications, though, which allow to interprete the numerical keys as cursor movements. For example CygnusED. But this is not globabl but only inside CygnusEd. And it's not switched by the NumLock key but by an option in the menu.

As I recall, WordPerfect (one of the worse programs carried over) also uses these.


Threads merged - BippyM

[amiman99]

What's in the ROM, specifically what is the file structure in side the ROM?
What is executed firs in the ROM, and how does the computer know to execute that specific file?

[roy bates]

you can rip your rom and find out whats in it with remus
whats in the rom will depend on the machine it came out of.

i think exec is executed first.

[Cymru]

"What's a Nubian?"

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Cymru

"What's a Nubian?"

in what context?

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by amiman99

What's in the ROM, specifically what is the file structure in side the ROM?
What is executed firs in the ROM, and how does the computer know to execute that specific file?

I don't believe there is a file structure as such, it's not a disk-like device, it's more like a block of RAM that you can't change. It contains a program starting at a certain fixed address, so the CPU just jumps straight in when you turn it on.

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

I don't believe there is a file structure as such, it's not a disk-like device, it's more like a block of RAM that you can't change. It contains a program starting at a certain fixed address, so the CPU just jumps straight in when you turn it on.

have a look at whats in the rom image

its interesting.

say for instance the rom has multiple programs(it does) and if you see the programs as files that are launched in a specific order(and can be accessed at any time after boot),then wouldnt you agree the rom has a file structure.

[Leffmann]

Originally Posted by amiman99

What's in the ROM, specifically what is the file structure in side the ROM?
What is executed firs in the ROM, and how does the computer know to execute that specific file?

Elaborating a bit from what Mrs. Beanbag wrote:

The ROM holds the core operating system modules like Exec, DOS, Intuition and other libraries, drivers for mouse, keyboard, disk drive, the file system, etc.

The structure of each module is a header used to identify the module as such, along with other data such as name, where to look for the next module, etc., and all the modules concatenated is what makes up the ROM.

When the Amiga is turned on, the CPU will read an address from the ROM pointing into the Exec and start execution from there, and Exec then performs some basic initialization and runs the remaining modules.

[amiman99]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

Elaborating a bit from what Mrs. Beanbag wrote:

The ROM holds the core operating system modules like Exec, DOS, Intuition and other libraries, drivers for mouse, keyboard, disk drive, the file system, etc.

The structure of each module is a header used to identify the module as such, along with other data such as name, where to look for the next module, etc., and all the modules concatenated is what makes up the ROM.

When the Amiga is turned on, the CPU will read an address from the ROM pointing into the Exec and start execution from there, and Exec then performs some basic initialization and runs the remaining modules.

I would like to see detailed documentation how everything is executed, just for my curiosity.

[Cymru]

Yeah what they said.

Originally Posted by roy bates

in what context?

"Chasing Amy".

[Steve T]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

A500 power brick is maybe just a simple mains frequency transformer, meaning it has to be very big and heavy to carry the power. Newer one I guess is a high-frequency switching design, which requires more complex electronics but a smaller and lighter transformer.

The newer, smaller one is also way more efficient - drawing about half the power from the mains to generate those DC currents.

[diablothe2nd]

Why did Commodore choose to go for roms that aren't reprogrammable?? especially knowing that any bugs and updates cannot be fixed/applied?

[s2325]

You can still load Kickstart from floppy disk.

[diablothe2nd]

Originally Posted by s2325

You can still load Kickstart from floppy disk.

true, but that's a bit inconvenient, and so is the longer cold boot time for rom patches in os 3.9. i'd love to learn how to burn my own roms but that's a question for a separate thread

hangon a sec, how do you load a different rom from floppy on a 1200? does this mean i can test out custom roms before burning?

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by diablothe2nd

true, but that's a bit inconvenient, and so is the longer cold boot time for rom patches in os 3.9. i'd love to learn how to burn my own roms but that's a question for a separate thread

hangon a sec, how do you load a different rom from floppy on a 1200? does this mean i can test out custom roms before burning?

you know those relokick degrader disks you can get? that loads a kickstart from floppy so its the same thing.

im not sure it would work well with the update for for 3.9 though its a bit bigger.a disk is what,880kb(a custom rom for 3.9 is 1mb)

the older amigas used to load kickstart from floppy,im sure.(before they had roms)


as for them using burn once parts,i dont know maybe they where cheaper.



oh,you can test custom roms or any rom in winuae before you do a byte swap/split for the real thing in the programmer.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by roy bates

im not sure it would work well with the update for for 3.9 though its a bit bigger.a disk is what,880kb(a custom rom for 3.9 is 1mb)

no problem, just compress the data!