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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 11:55 pm

If you've read Shot97's excellent post on Getting the Amiga 500 Online - The You're Not Stupid Guide or watched his video, then you've seen and heard ample mentions of A-Talk III.

If you aren't familiar, in April, 1988, AmigaWorld magazine wrote that "A-Talk from Oxxi... is one of the most powerful telecommunications packages on the market... A good package with few flaws, A-Talk [iii] is probably the most complete telecommunications program available." In the same article they went on to say, "Terminal emulators are A-Talk [iii]'s forte."

Maybe you've got an Amiga online already and don't want to browse (painfully) on the internet, but want to hit some BBSes instead where a lot of social interaction still exists. Yes, BBSes are quite in vogue these days, believe it or not.

Or, maybe you just want an Amiga terminal program and aren't sure where to start. There are few that stack up to A-Talk III in terms of intuitiveness, user experience and depth of capability. The software had contributions from Amiga heavy-weights like Dave Haynie and Robert J. Mical, if you need further convincing.

A-Talk III was developed by Felsina Software in the late 1980's, and was published by Oxxi, Inc.

As of 2010, the software was permitted to be shared publicly by Marco Papa of Felsina Software.

I happen to have found a full-copy of the original Disk 1, with complete HD-install routines.

A-Talk III (Complete full-disk ADF)
A-Talk III Manual

It's worth noting that A-Talk III was later ported to Windows NT in 1995 (which required 16MB of RAM, while the Amiga (I think) needed 200KB).

User avatar
TenLeftFingers

Posted Sun May 07, 2017 8:40 pm

This sounds very promising. The link to the manual is broken for me though.

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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Sun May 07, 2017 9:01 pm

There would be an alternative link to the manual in the original guide article... But you might be forced to read in order to find it... (AKA Shot97 - Author of guide is not wasting his time to post direct link here when it's in his guide)

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon May 08, 2017 7:43 am

@TLF I do appreciate you letting me know about the dead link - Google frowns on those (and their bots find them). I need to pay more attention to that report.

I'll try to hunt down what is going on later today.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon May 08, 2017 9:22 am

Update: That link has been repaired. Stupid typo!
:oops:

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TenLeftFingers

Posted Mon May 22, 2017 7:04 am

intric8 wrote:Update: That link has been repaired. Stupid typo!
:oops:
It happens :) My pleasure!

User avatar
leighb2282

Posted Fri Jan 05, 2018 2:41 pm

I don't seem to be able to get a valid copy of this to my Amiga :( every time I try and write the adf file to disk it either does the whole 'this is not a DOS disk' or it seems to write the disk but gives me a load of jibberish for the name of the floppy and when I click on it it tells me the icon has no default tool.

Am I doing something wrong?

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Jan 05, 2018 3:17 pm

How are you moving it over? Are you doing the null-modem cable process?

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leighb2282

Posted Fri Jan 05, 2018 3:33 pm

intric8 wrote:How are you moving it over? Are you doing the null-modem cable process?
Correct, right now I'm using a null modem cable and a rexx script called receive.rexx I found somewhere, and then catting the files I want to transfer to the /dev/ttyUSB0 on my laptop, the script then receives the file on the Amiga side and i've been having a reasonable degree of success with this method.

On further investigation though it seems right now ALL .adf files I'm trying to put on disk are funky, they ALL come up with the same weird characters in the disk name so I think its the program I am using (ADF-Blitzer) but I know its worked in the past (i've successfully moved over .adfs and put them on disk before)

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Jan 05, 2018 3:41 pm

Hm, I'm not familiar with that program.

I use Amiga Explorer, which cost me $10. It installs a small program on your Amiga for you, and you launch before any transfers. I think my AE copy came packed with Amiga Forever when I bought that... In any case, AE works wonderfully. It creates a GUI of what looks like Windows Explorer on your machine and you just drag/drop your ADF onto your blank ('Empty') floppy disk on your Amiga.

Takes about 3-4 mins to write the ADF over. It's pretty painless.

But there are other free tools, too. Like transdisk.





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