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bwldrbst

Posted Fri Feb 08, 2019 6:22 pm

Hi, my name is Andrew and I'm from Perth, Australia.

I got my first computer, a C64, for Christmas in 1988 and upgraded to an A500 a couple of years later. I still have the A1200 I bought when I was about 17.

I eventually had an 040 powered A4000 that was my main PC until 1998 or maybe early '99. Unfortunately I didn't know about the dangers of the battery so the motherboard was wrecked and the machine eventually thrown away :(

About 4 years ago I became interested in Amigas again and dug out my old A1200. Since then I've acquired an A2000 with a nice GVP 030 card and an A1000 in which I've installed a Vampire as well as a few non-working machines/piles of spare parts.

I've been thoroughly enjoying writing Amiga code again - this time in C instead of Blitz Basic - and gaining a far deeper understanding of the machines than I had back then.

This year I've decided to give a bit of love to my old A1200. I'd like it to be a great WHDLoad machine so I've ordered a 1200SDE expansion from Amiga On The Lake and fixed a busted keyboard switch. I've also been playing around with a GBS-8200 video adaptor for it. It's not brilliant but for the price it's worth a shot.

This is a recent picture of my setup:
IMG_20190126_151924.jpg

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Feb 08, 2019 6:33 pm

Welcome, Andrew! So glad you've joined and added your experiences to our community here. And I love that pic!
Since then I've acquired an A2000 with a nice GVP 030 card
I, too, have an A2000 with the GVP 030 clocked at 40Mhz and I just love that machine to death. It's my daily driver Amiga. My other is a constantly swapped Amiga 1000 (I have 5, each in a different stage of awesome - including the Phoenix, made in Australia!).
I've been thoroughly enjoying writing Amiga code again - this time in C instead of Blitz Basic - and gaining a far deeper understanding of the machines than I had back then.
I really envy this skill. Do you plan on writing games or software for classic Amigas? I think a lot of folks write them on emulators these days so they can more easily test across all the various versions out there. But if it were me, I'd aim at a stock A500 running 1.3 and go from there. That usually seems to work across the board. But - that's me dreaming. I'm a designer, not a programmer. Although, if 81 year-old Samia Halaby can do it, maybe I can someday, too.

Great to have you here and I very much look forward to seeing you around amigalove.com!

User avatar
bwldrbst

Posted Sat Feb 09, 2019 5:39 pm

intric8 wrote:
Since then I've acquired an A2000 with a nice GVP 030 card
I, too, have an A2000 with the GVP 030 clocked at 40Mhz and I just love that machine to death. It's my daily driver Amiga. My other is a constantly swapped Amiga 1000 (I have 5, each in a different stage of awesome - including the Phoenix, made in Australia!).
My A1000 is my daily driver. The Vampire makes it a lovely machine to code on. The 2000 has a heap of slots that still need filling. I've got plans to get a bridgeboard for it and basically stuff it full of hardware I could only dream about in the early 90s.
intric8 wrote:
I've been thoroughly enjoying writing Amiga code again - this time in C instead of Blitz Basic - and gaining a far deeper understanding of the machines than I had back then.
I really envy this skill. Do you plan on writing games or software for classic Amigas? I think a lot of folks write them on emulators these days so they can more easily test across all the various versions out there. But if it were me, I'd aim at a stock A500 running 1.3 and go from there. That usually seems to work across the board. But - that's me dreaming. I'm a designer, not a programmer. Although, if 81 year-old Samia Halaby can do it, maybe I can someday, too.
I've been writing some OS friendly stuff like a simple Dock for OS3.1 that I should tidy up and put on Aminet. For a while now I've been hacking away at a project to allow an Amiga to share resources with a Raspberry Pi (or any modern machine, really) I've recently got filesystem support going so directories on the Linux machine can be mounted as volumes on the Amiga. Next up: Networking... then a faster hardware interface than a null modem cable.

I have some ideas for games but don't think I have the skill and commitment to pull off a decent one :)

What I would like is a modern terminal application with support for unicode and more colours... that might be my next project...

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Mr.Toast
Roseville, CA

Posted Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:27 pm

Welcome Andrew! Great collection of kit you got. You'll really love the A1200 with WHDLoad. That is still my go to machine for fun with a small footprint! I found a memory expansion was an absolute must for it, however. I picked a kipper2k SDE+ board from Amiga on the Lake folks when they were visiting for AmiWest 2018 in Sacramento. It only adds 8mb but it really really helps the 1200 feel cozy. You can add a second HD in the form of an SD card on the board. And it sports an SPI for an ethernet expansion which I've yet to actually use. That is my recommendation, at least. Oh, and a Gotek ftw.

Would love to learn more about your experience with a Vampire upgraded 1000!

Upscalers are pretty expensive and I know that the GBS8200 does the job in a pinch (I have two). But they're really less than ideal. If you want an absolutely awesome solution, I really recommend the OSSC upscaler. It makes a good SMT kit if you're pretty decent with a soldering iron.

Welcome!

User avatar
bwldrbst

Posted Sat Feb 09, 2019 10:03 pm

Mr.Toast wrote:Welcome Andrew! Great collection of kit you got. You'll really love the A1200 with WHDLoad. That is still my go to machine for fun with a small footprint! I found a memory expansion was an absolute must for it, however. I picked a kipper2k SDE+ board from Amiga on the Lake http://amigaonthelake.com/a1200sde-fast-memory-card/ folks when they were visiting for AmiWest 2018 in Sacramento. It only adds 8mb but it really really helps the 1200 feel cozy. You can add a second HD in the form of an SD card on the board. And it sports an SPI for an ethernet expansion which I've yet to actually use. That is my recommendation, at least. Oh, and a Gotek ftw.
Yeah, there's one of those winging it's way to me right now, I can't wait! I did have an 030 card in the 1200 back when it was my main computer but I sold it when I'd moved on to an A4000.
Mr.Toast wrote: Would love to learn more about your experience with a Vampire upgraded 1000!
I've been really happy with it. I got the Vampire about a year ago and initially had it in an A500 but the keyboard was a bit flaky. It fits nicely in the 1000 with a few risers to get it above the height of the daughterboard. OS3.9 with P96 is pretty slick on this machine. Everything is lightning fast.

It's not so great for games unless they're RTG or are happy with 512K chip ram. It'll play Quake but not many WHDload games! I had a play with the Core 3 alpha and it played all the AGA games I tried but for daily usage it was too alpha.

As a development machine, I love it. My dev environment is a text editor and a couple of shell windows so having a widescreen HDMI display is awesome.
Mr.Toast wrote: Upscalers are pretty expensive and I know that the GBS8200 does the job in a pinch (I have two). But they're really less than ideal. If you want an absolutely awesome solution, I really recommend the OSSC upscaler. It makes a good SMT kit if you're pretty decent with a soldering iron.
Yeah, I was lucky to score an A2320 scandoubler in an A2000 I bought. The GBS8200 will do for now. I'd love to get an Indivision AGA eventually.

I've read about the OSSC and can't really justify the expense. Unfortunately my soldering skills and equipment are limited so I wouldn't tackle an expensive SMT kit :)

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BloodyCactus
Lexington VA

Posted Sun Feb 10, 2019 9:31 am

hey from a fellow Aussie! (well ok I now live in the USA). I have fond memories of ACAR if you were ever a reader of that. (I had regular hints n tips + solutions in the Adventurers Realm part)

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bwldrbst

Posted Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:44 am

BloodyCactus wrote:hey from a fellow Aussie! (well ok I now live in the USA). I have fond memories of ACAR if you were ever a reader of that. (I had regular hints n tips + solutions in the Adventurers Realm part)
I bought a couple of issues of ACAR but I think I was usually an Amiga Format reader - the bright, shiny covers and attached disks were pretty attractive to teenage me! Those magazines are something else I wish I'd kept!





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