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Greets, Amigians!

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2017 10:49 am
by LambdaCalculus
Hey all, I'm Robert and I'm a massive Amiga lover, although I've been one of those "I love the system but damn I wish I owned it!" types for a long time. ;)

I'm from New Jersey, and have coveted an Amiga ever since I was a kid, but my family was all PCs for most of my life. I used to read Amiga magazines in bookstores on a near religious basis, always dreaming of owning a model like a 1200 or a 4000, but knowing that the "Well, you already have a computer; why do you need another one?" argument would win out every time I brought up the subject!

Recently I got an Amiga 500 which I am in the process of fixing up and restoring, and to get my Amiga fix, I bought a Mac Mini G4 for the sole purpose of running the AmigaOS-like MorphOS on it. MorphOS is excellent in iteself!

I also run AROS, in the form of Icaros Desktop, on an old IBM ThinkPad T42 for some x86 Amiga-like goodness!

I still covet an Amiga 1200, but they're always way more expensive than I can really afford! I hope to see the new Amiga 1200 board from Individual Computers come to light, because I'll jump on one of those in a heartbeat, pair it up with a nice, shiny case, and get myself the one computer I've always wanted. :)

Re: Greets, Amigians!

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2017 10:57 am
by intric8
Welcome, Robert! It's so cool to see you here and I really look forward to seeing you around the site. Like you, I also came to the Amiga party later in life. My family (single mom, absent dad) couldn't afford the Amiga BITD. I used my C64 for years before leaving home for the Air Force then being given a 386 upon my return home. I used Frankenstein machines for ages before seeing an Amiga in the TV Broadcast room of my art college. I'll never forget that moment seeing the C= chickenlips logo in the corner and being baffled before an old timer (who was smoking in the room) explained to me how it was a primo device that, sadly, was no longer supported but still used for TV production. That would have been 1997! IIRC he mentioned it was going to be moved out at the end of that school year. Who knows what became of it - it was the full-fledged video toaster setup.

In any case, thanks for joining Amiga Love! See you around the site (and Twitter et al). We're all about having fun here however Amiga floats your boat. It really is all about the community at the end of the day, and the never-ending love for the machine and the tech it still inspires to this day. And the games. :)

<3

Re: Greets, Amigians!

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2017 5:55 pm
by Shot97
Welcome aboard.

Re: Greets, Amigians!

Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2017 6:49 pm
by TenLeftFingers
Hi Robert,

I recognise you from Twitter! I run the Amiga Ireland account there. Welcome to Amiga Love.

I didn't realize how into Amiga you were at all. I must have a chat with you about AROS at some stage :-) I have it running here in a VM but haven't settled in at all. As for the 1200, I hope you get there some day, they are expensive at the moment.

Between the different Amiga (like) systems you use at the moment, what are the main attractions for you? I've never used MorphOS.

Re: Greets, Amigians!

Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2017 8:37 am
by LambdaCalculus
Hey, TenLeftFingers! Great to see you around the forums! :)

Of the Amiga OSes that I've used so far (AROS/Icaros Desktop, MorphOS, AmigaOS 3.9), here's what I can tell you about the different strengths and weaknesses I've encountered so far.

[*] AROS/Icaros Desktop runs on bog standard x86 hardware with little issue. It includes a transparent compatibility layer for m68k Amiga software, is compatible with the AmigaOS 3.1 APIs, and uses Directory Opus 5 with Wanderer and Zune for UI. However, native software for it is rather slim pickings. There's a fair selection up on Aminet, but it's not nearly as extensive as the software for, say, AmigaOS 4 or MorphOS. Hopefully this will change in the future as AROS/Icaros becomes more mature and feature-rich.

[*] MorphOS runs on most PowerPC Mac models (Radeon based video only; no Nvidia support!). On my Mac Mini G4 (1.25 GHz, 1.25GB RAM, 32MB VRAM), MorphOS feels lightning fast. Everything feels instantly responsive, programs open nearly instantly, and there's also built-in compatibility with AmigaOS 3.x applications that are system-friendly (i.e. no banging on custom chips). Supposedly, you can also run some AmigaOS 4 applications in MorphOS via a compatibility layer, but I haven't had much luck doing so. Native software for MorphOS is more plentiful than AROS, and everything under the hood pretty much works and feels like the AmigaOS should. My only quibble is that MorphOS is essentially trialware; you can run it for 30 minutes at a time until it slows to an absolute crawl and you need to pay 79 Euros to register it (although rebooting the machine gets around that time limit). I may pay for it though; it's too good to not be a daily driver OS.

[*] AmigaOS 3.9 runs on newer m68k Amigas and of course works the way you would expect AmigaOS to work. I'm currently playing with it in FS-UAE. If I had an A1200, I'd run it there, naturally. ;)