Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask - Page 144

NLS · 19 July 2021, 17:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Velstadt

hmm

??

Daedalus · 19 July 2021, 18:05

It was less a case of games and software demonstrating stereo, than not going out of their way to create mono sound. To output mono, you need to use twice as many channels as a single left or right sound. And with only 4 channels available for all your music and sound effects, throwing half of them away just to have a mono output would be silly.

Foebane · 19 July 2021, 19:59

I had an issue with Amiga stereo sound back when I had my real Amigas in the 1990s.

I actually made up a cable, which I soldered myself, that let me plug in the stereo sides and allowed me to plug in any 3.5mm cable, or earphones, directly into the Amiga. But most of the time, I would record the Amiga audio in mono, as when I tried stereo recordings, I quickly learned from both listening and from reading articles about the audio that there were only two channels per side, totally separated, and I HATED that. So I stuck to mono only, 99% of the time.

The solution came with discovering WinUAE in the early Noughties, but I didn't quite trust WinUAE at the time, as I found it hard to believe it could emulate an Amiga as accurately as it can, but after extensive use I grew to use it as my main Amiga means of use, and the Stereo Separation option was a godsend. I have it set to 50%, always - a nice compromise and sounds great on earphones.

Then again, there was the issue of getting Amiga audio recordings on MP3, and I relied on varying qualities of YouTube videos so much, it was annoying the way some used no stereo, mixed stereo and separated stereo. But now I just record straight from WinUAE the audio I want from Amiga.

I should point out that those who still use real Amiga hardware and want to mix the stereo sides have an option available on Amazon. I have two HDMI displays in 1080p, and I have plugged both into something called the Stereo Mini Mixer which allows the mixing of both outputs at varying volumes (via control knobs) and the results sound great! I figure one of these units could be used to take the separate stereo sides of a real Amiga's audio output and merge them, or mute either side if necessary. I'll provide the product link in a later post.

alkis21 · 21 July 2021, 09:16

Persian Gulf Inferno has my favorite cry in any Amiga game (15th second in [ Show youtube player ]), it was really atmospheric and scary when the enemies sneaked up on you shouting it. Does anyone know what they said?

Lord Aga · 21 July 2021, 17:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by kremiso

Never had a real A500 plus, so i'll ask here
it is possible to connect the old halfmeg expansion (a501 or compatibles) also on this?

can't remember at all

Yes, 100% confirmed. You will have 1.5MB of chip RAM. I used to rock it on my A500 Plus for a while

kremiso · 22 July 2021, 14:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Aga

Yes, 100% confirmed. You will have 1.5MB of chip RAM. I used to rock it on my A500 Plus for a while

thanks for the double confirm

seems that having that connected, 'unlocks' the loading of some old picky games, address/type memory talking
at least, winUAE tests say so

slaapliedje · 22 July 2021, 15:15

This is more of a recent embarassment... but why does a 10k U320 drive seem SO much faster than an SSD connected through an Acard adapter? It is defying logic, but this set up is scary fast with 3.2, a Fujitsu MAP3735NP and my CyberstormPPC. Disk access is insane. I need to benchmark the two, which is the best program for it?

Daedalus · 22 July 2021, 18:00

There are a couple of factors: The ACard interfaces are generally pretty good, but SCSI will run at the speed of the lowest common denominator, so if your ACard interface peaks at 10MB/s, then that's what you'll get. If you have an ultrawide ACard adaptor, it should in theory go as fast as your drive and SCSI controller can (maximum 40MB/s). That then leaves the setup of the drive itself, some of which is controlled by flags in the RDB or by commands in the startup sequence. Is it running in synchronous or asynchronous mode? Do you have any different commands regarding the SCSI modes in the startup sequences for each drive?

It could also simply be a massive cache on what's probably a server grade hard drive, versus little cache on the SSD, meaning sequential or near-sequential accesses could simply be faster to/from that cache than the flash of the SSD.

There are a few benchmarking programs - SysInfo has one, diskspeed, scsispeed are others. I'm sure everyone has their favourite, but for comparative purposes, I'd say pretty much any would be suitable.

slaapliedje · 22 July 2021, 19:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daedalus

There are a couple of factors: The ACard interfaces are generally pretty good, but SCSI will run at the speed of the lowest common denominator, so if your ACard interface peaks at 10MB/s, then that's what you'll get. If you have an ultrawide ACard adaptor, it should in theory go as fast as your drive and SCSI controller can (maximum 40MB/s). That then leaves the setup of the drive itself, some of which is controlled by flags in the RDB or by commands in the startup sequence. Is it running in synchronous or asynchronous mode? Do you have any different commands regarding the SCSI modes in the startup sequences for each drive?

It could also simply be a massive cache on what's probably a server grade hard drive, versus little cache on the SSD, meaning sequential or near-sequential accesses could simply be faster to/from that cache than the flash of the SSD.

There are a few benchmarking programs - SysInfo has one, diskspeed, scsispeed are others. I'm sure everyone has their favourite, but for comparative purposes, I'd say pretty much any would be suitable.

I always found that I would like more from Sysinfo's disk speed benchmark for some reason, but Diskspeed seemed to work well on the FastATA.

The large cache on the 10k drive was the reason I was thinking it was so fast. Other thought I had is I think I set up the SSD on 3.9 instead of 3.2, so the newer FFS may also play a factor.

Edit: I looked up the specs of the drive, it has an 8MB buffer cache on it! I think that pretty much confirms why it is faster...

wiz12 · 29 August 2021, 13:12

Is it possible to read 1.76mb Amiga HD floppy disks on a PC?

demolition · 29 August 2021, 14:46

With something like a Kryoflux or Greaseweazle yes. With a floppy drive on a regular PC floppy controller, no (for the same reason that you cannot read an Amiga DD disk).

Foebane · 19 September 2021, 12:43

I just had a quick race on Stunt Car Racer TNT, but I've always wondered about one thing about Stunt Car Racer in general:

Is your rival "Road Hog" meant to poke fun at John Major, the former Prime Minister? Because that character looks just like him, or reminds me of him. Was that intentional?

Nobby_UK · 19 September 2021, 19:49

Could be...
I thought Barry Took

Foebane · 20 September 2021, 01:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nobby_UK

Could be...
I thought Barry Took

Could be, it does look closer to him.

lordofchaos · 02 October 2021, 10:31

Just curious but is the current WinUAE 4.9.0 beta series, the longest running beta so far?

NLS · 02 October 2021, 10:33

possibly

lordofchaos · 02 October 2021, 10:39

It feels like it, could be the pandemic distorting time and throwing chaos around.. Can't quite remember one being this long and so extensive. Still amazes me today that this emulator has matured to the level it has.

Think Toni should get some sort of life time achievement award.

NLS · 02 October 2021, 11:18

It's his baby.

Nightshft · 02 October 2021, 21:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

...Still amazes me today that this emulator has matured to the level it has.
Think Toni should get some sort of life time achievement award.

Second that. What this emulator - especially in all it's required complexity - delivers to the Retro community is worth its bytes in gold.

kremiso · 22 October 2021, 15:16

i see a lot of cool new CPC 128k games, coming out occasionally
something good also for the Speccy 128

almost zero for the Commodore 128, why ?
has a great arcade game ever been released specific for the c128?

22 October 2021, 15:16	#2880
kremiso Registered User Join Date: Dec 2020 Location: Italy Posts: 1,898	i see a lot of cool new CPC 128k games, coming out occasionally something good also for the Speccy 128 almost zero for the Commodore 128, why ? has a great arcade game ever been released specific for the c128? Last edited by kremiso; 22 October 2021 at 15:22.

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19 July 2021, 18:05	#2862
Daedalus Registered User Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Dublin, then Glasgow Posts: 6,334	It was less a case of games and software demonstrating stereo, than not going out of their way to create mono sound. To output mono, you need to use twice as many channels as a single left or right sound. And with only 4 channels available for all your music and sound effects, throwing half of them away just to have a mono output would be silly.

19 July 2021, 19:59	#2863
Foebane Banned Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Cardiff, UK Age: 51 Posts: 2,871	I had an issue with Amiga stereo sound back when I had my real Amigas in the 1990s. I actually made up a cable, which I soldered myself, that let me plug in the stereo sides and allowed me to plug in any 3.5mm cable, or earphones, directly into the Amiga. But most of the time, I would record the Amiga audio in mono, as when I tried stereo recordings, I quickly learned from both listening and from reading articles about the audio that there were only two channels per side, totally separated, and I HATED that. So I stuck to mono only, 99% of the time. The solution came with discovering WinUAE in the early Noughties, but I didn't quite trust WinUAE at the time, as I found it hard to believe it could emulate an Amiga as accurately as it can, but after extensive use I grew to use it as my main Amiga means of use, and the Stereo Separation option was a godsend. I have it set to 50%, always - a nice compromise and sounds great on earphones. Then again, there was the issue of getting Amiga audio recordings on MP3, and I relied on varying qualities of YouTube videos so much, it was annoying the way some used no stereo, mixed stereo and separated stereo. But now I just record straight from WinUAE the audio I want from Amiga. I should point out that those who still use real Amiga hardware and want to mix the stereo sides have an option available on Amazon. I have two HDMI displays in 1080p, and I have plugged both into something called the Stereo Mini Mixer which allows the mixing of both outputs at varying volumes (via control knobs) and the results sound great! I figure one of these units could be used to take the separate stereo sides of a real Amiga's audio output and merge them, or mute either side if necessary. I'll provide the product link in a later post.

21 July 2021, 09:16	#2864
alkis21 Zone Friend Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Athens, Greece Age: 49 Posts: 1,408	Persian Gulf Inferno has my favorite cry in any Amiga game (15th second in [ Show youtube player ]), it was really atmospheric and scary when the enemies sneaked up on you shouting it. Does anyone know what they said?

22 July 2021, 15:15	#2867
slaapliedje Registered User Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Utah, USA Posts: 516	This is more of a recent embarassment... but why does a 10k U320 drive seem SO much faster than an SSD connected through an Acard adapter? It is defying logic, but this set up is scary fast with 3.2, a Fujitsu MAP3735NP and my CyberstormPPC. Disk access is insane. I need to benchmark the two, which is the best program for it?

22 July 2021, 18:00	#2868
Daedalus Registered User Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Dublin, then Glasgow Posts: 6,334	There are a couple of factors: The ACard interfaces are generally pretty good, but SCSI will run at the speed of the lowest common denominator, so if your ACard interface peaks at 10MB/s, then that's what you'll get. If you have an ultrawide ACard adaptor, it should in theory go as fast as your drive and SCSI controller can (maximum 40MB/s). That then leaves the setup of the drive itself, some of which is controlled by flags in the RDB or by commands in the startup sequence. Is it running in synchronous or asynchronous mode? Do you have any different commands regarding the SCSI modes in the startup sequences for each drive? It could also simply be a massive cache on what's probably a server grade hard drive, versus little cache on the SSD, meaning sequential or near-sequential accesses could simply be faster to/from that cache than the flash of the SSD. There are a few benchmarking programs - SysInfo has one, diskspeed, scsispeed are others. I'm sure everyone has their favourite, but for comparative purposes, I'd say pretty much any would be suitable.

29 August 2021, 13:12	#2870
wiz12 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2017 Location: Ireland Posts: 752	Is it possible to read 1.76mb Amiga HD floppy disks on a PC?

29 August 2021, 14:46	#2871
demolition Unregistered User Join Date: Sep 2012 Location: Copenhagen / DK Age: 43 Posts: 4,190	With something like a Kryoflux or Greaseweazle yes. With a floppy drive on a regular PC floppy controller, no (for the same reason that you cannot read an Amiga DD disk).

19 September 2021, 12:43	#2872
Foebane Banned Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Cardiff, UK Age: 51 Posts: 2,871	I just had a quick race on Stunt Car Racer TNT, but I've always wondered about one thing about Stunt Car Racer in general: Is your rival "Road Hog" meant to poke fun at John Major, the former Prime Minister? Because that character looks just like him, or reminds me of him. Was that intentional?

19 September 2021, 19:49	#2873
Nobby_UK Registered User Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Liverpool Posts: 2,595	Could be... I thought Barry Took

02 October 2021, 10:31	#2875
lordofchaos TinkerTailorContentMaker Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bedfordshire Age: 45 Posts: 1,205	Just curious but is the current WinUAE 4.9.0 beta series, the longest running beta so far?

02 October 2021, 10:33	#2876
NLS Ancient User Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: GREECE Age: 50 Posts: 757	possibly

02 October 2021, 10:39	#2877
lordofchaos TinkerTailorContentMaker Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bedfordshire Age: 45 Posts: 1,205	It feels like it, could be the pandemic distorting time and throwing chaos around.. Can't quite remember one being this long and so extensive. Still amazes me today that this emulator has matured to the level it has. Think Toni should get some sort of life time achievement award.

02 October 2021, 11:18	#2878
NLS Ancient User Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: GREECE Age: 50 Posts: 757	It's his baby.

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