1990-1999: Amigas are High end Graphic Multimedia Computers. They were sold for thousands of dollars.
2005: The exact Same Amigas are now outdated, But the Parts are still for the rich!
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Monday, August 22, 2005
The Old Tyme Revue
I have started another Blog-that's-not-a-blog. This time, It's The Old Tyme Revue, where I will be reviewing things, including the ever-important old stuff.
Coming Soon: A review of The Mad Greek Resteraunt.
Coming Soon Somewhere Else: A Page wasting Blogger's bandwith and space by not being a blog.
Coming Soon at my Home: An Amiga that I can use!
Coming Soon at Amiga.org: A working page!
Coming Soon at ShiningSource.org: Notes of Condemnent for my decision to use Amigas for a development platform. Please see the Project Candlelight Topic (starting at the near end of page 3) at the ShiningSource.org forums under General Projects.
Coming Soon: A review of The Mad Greek Resteraunt.
Coming Soon Somewhere Else: A Page wasting Blogger's bandwith and space by not being a blog.
Coming Soon at my Home: An Amiga that I can use!
Coming Soon at Amiga.org: A working page!
Coming Soon at ShiningSource.org: Notes of Condemnent for my decision to use Amigas for a development platform. Please see the Project Candlelight Topic (starting at the near end of page 3) at the ShiningSource.org forums under General Projects.
Friday, August 19, 2005
The Commodore Amiga
Today, while staying at my grandmother's house (Just gotta love grandma!), I got a "new" Commodore Amiga 3000. Of course, she didn't buy it ahead of time, But we bought it at the local thrift store. The only problem with it is the fact that it didn't come with anything. I bought a serial mouse to use with it while I looked for other stuff (after all, WorkBench is a GUI and there are serial ports in the side). I couldn't find anything else, though.
The A3000 is a pretty nifty computer, especially considering the date of manufacture. There is quite a number of ports on it so far. Here's a list:
2 Joystick ports (on the side; They look like modern serial ports, but will apparently work with many Atari joypads)
1 PS/1 keyboard port
1 23 pin (male) video port (marked 15 KHz)
1 mini 23 pin (female) mini (like most modern VGA cards) video port (Marked 31 KHz)
1 23 pin male serial port (My serial logitech mouse needs an adaptor and a driver)
1 Exterior Floppy disk drive port
1 PC-standard parallel port
1 SCSI port (I think it's SCSI-1)
4 Zorro-III ports (One seems to be mysteriously occupied. I hope it's a 233MHz PowerPC Expansion!
2 RCA audio outputs, one left, one right.
apparently, The A3000 is an EIDE bussed computer. There is a hard drive in mine (Of unknown dimensions and speed) There is a Floppy drive in the front of it, of which I am unsure if it's 880Kb or 1.44Mb. Some signs point to it being 1.44. Of course, it has the infamous module sound system (Of which I have not yet listened to yet.) Because of it's PS/1 Keyboard interface, I cannot yet use a keyboard (my grandmother has neither PS/1 keyboards nor adaptors). Of course, I don't have a mouse to work with it yet either.
There is a mysterious switch in the back. I am leaning on it being the CPU switch between (Don't blame me if these numbers are wrong) 16 and 32 MHz. There is some logical reasoning in this judgment. When I plugged in the Amiga into a monitor (with the Amiga's switch set to "Disable"), I got an "OUT OF SCAN RANGE" message from the monitor. When the Switch was flipped back to the "Enable" Position, The scan range returned. I say this points to the CPU switch because it's natural train of thought to use more CPU power for higher resolution.
I've went to the online shops and found out that I could modernize my Amiga. I could Give it an expansion board that would enable dual processors. Most people know that using two processors at a time will make your computer run faster then one processor running at the added speed. The Zorro-III seems up to the bus speed. Also, the theoretical memory expansion is 2 Gb! That's a lot even for today's standards. I could even put on a CD-writer and Video Digitizer, allowing me to publish Video CDs. With a bit of hacking, I could make it run with a full DVD writer. However, I wish to utilize this computer, not hack it. I can even put it on the internet with either a traditional modem or a network card (probably the X-link ZIII Ethernet) I might update the BIOS to 3.9 and add a CD drive, and with a PowerPC expansion, I could upgrade to the newest AmigaOS. Or I could use AMIX, Amiga UNIX, probably right now!
But right now, All I have is WorkBench, and I'm pleased (Especially because I can get a ton of applications in image format online!)
The A3000 is a pretty nifty computer, especially considering the date of manufacture. There is quite a number of ports on it so far. Here's a list:
2 Joystick ports (on the side; They look like modern serial ports, but will apparently work with many Atari joypads)
1 PS/1 keyboard port
1 23 pin (male) video port (marked 15 KHz)
1 mini 23 pin (female) mini (like most modern VGA cards) video port (Marked 31 KHz)
1 23 pin male serial port (My serial logitech mouse needs an adaptor and a driver)
1 Exterior Floppy disk drive port
1 PC-standard parallel port
1 SCSI port (I think it's SCSI-1)
4 Zorro-III ports (One seems to be mysteriously occupied. I hope it's a 233MHz PowerPC Expansion!
2 RCA audio outputs, one left, one right.
apparently, The A3000 is an EIDE bussed computer. There is a hard drive in mine (Of unknown dimensions and speed) There is a Floppy drive in the front of it, of which I am unsure if it's 880Kb or 1.44Mb. Some signs point to it being 1.44. Of course, it has the infamous module sound system (Of which I have not yet listened to yet.) Because of it's PS/1 Keyboard interface, I cannot yet use a keyboard (my grandmother has neither PS/1 keyboards nor adaptors). Of course, I don't have a mouse to work with it yet either.
There is a mysterious switch in the back. I am leaning on it being the CPU switch between (Don't blame me if these numbers are wrong) 16 and 32 MHz. There is some logical reasoning in this judgment. When I plugged in the Amiga into a monitor (with the Amiga's switch set to "Disable"), I got an "OUT OF SCAN RANGE" message from the monitor. When the Switch was flipped back to the "Enable" Position, The scan range returned. I say this points to the CPU switch because it's natural train of thought to use more CPU power for higher resolution.
I've went to the online shops and found out that I could modernize my Amiga. I could Give it an expansion board that would enable dual processors. Most people know that using two processors at a time will make your computer run faster then one processor running at the added speed. The Zorro-III seems up to the bus speed. Also, the theoretical memory expansion is 2 Gb! That's a lot even for today's standards. I could even put on a CD-writer and Video Digitizer, allowing me to publish Video CDs. With a bit of hacking, I could make it run with a full DVD writer. However, I wish to utilize this computer, not hack it. I can even put it on the internet with either a traditional modem or a network card (probably the X-link ZIII Ethernet) I might update the BIOS to 3.9 and add a CD drive, and with a PowerPC expansion, I could upgrade to the newest AmigaOS. Or I could use AMIX, Amiga UNIX, probably right now!
But right now, All I have is WorkBench, and I'm pleased (Especially because I can get a ton of applications in image format online!)
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