Post by Je Suis Class APost by Stephen Thomas ColeSure, but your "93/94" assertion was patently false as the earliest
PCMCIA CD drive, the "Zappo", didn't hit the market until October
1994 with more manufacturers following suit through the first half of
1995. So, if you didn't have the "Zappo" drive (and even if you did
and had bought it at the earliest opportunity, which was mid/late Oct
94), you didn't have PCMCIA CD until 1995, which shifts the
perspective of the whole discussion as, in 1995, alternative
solutions became available that would have allowed you to rig up CD
to your 1200, which you've insisted upthread wasn't the case. I'm
prepared to give your intentions in this thread the benefit of the
doubt seeing as how we're talking about two decades ago, but the
proven facts don't marry up with what you've said.
What I said was my first CD was had a PCMCIA interface which Reay tried
to rubbish. In a later post I said 93/94, which fits with the Zappo
being available in late 94, I will say this though I was in no rush for
a CD drive for the Miggy, there just wasn't the software for it
There never was, really, not much that wasn't also released on floppy
(which makes sense seeing as many more users were without CD-ROM than had
CD-ROM). With Commodore's demise in '94, and Escom's a year later, major
software developers pretty much lost interest; the Amiga was regarded a
dead system. The one area that CD did make a difference in was
PD/shareware. It's really interesting to flick through these old mags and
see, pretty much over the course of a couple of issues in early-95, how
enthusiastically the PD houses took to the new format now that drives were
available to the A600/A1200 owning masses. Page after page of adverts of
all manner of PD games or utilities compilations, Fred Fish libraries,
650MB of fonts/Clipart/saucy pictures etc, all for just £20 each plus p and
p! These sort of things came to be pejoratively known as "shovelware", a
reference to the vendor just shovelling any old shite on the disks, and
they eventually went out of fashion. Interestingly, those greedy
capitalists at the PD houses actually did a sterling job of ensuring the
digital preservation of a lot of obscure software. Jason Scott wrote a good
article about that a while ago on his blog at textfiles.com, it really is a
boon that so much data was put from floppies on the much more long-lived
CDs, it saved so much stuff from bit-rot. Kinda related; I'm just about
finishing up a vintage Mac project where I've been hauling off all of the
shareware software from my collection of 450 or so Mac magazine cover
disks. I did the games a while ago (ended up with 4,092 individual
programs!) and have been going through the CDs again over the last few
months hauling off all the other shareware stuff; all manner of utilities.
Once the dust has settled and I've sifted out doubles, I think I'll have
20,000+ Mac applications in addition to the 4,000 games! So, big thanks to
the magazine coverdisk compilers for doing such a good job of filling the
spare space on their CDs with all this lovely shovelware!
Now, how's *that* for a wall of text?
Post by Je Suis Class Aand the
first CD based games actually increased the price (I was never much of a
game player on the Miggy anyway). Money was better spent on a then
hugely expensive hard drive or an accelerator card and Work Bench was a
joy to use with a hard drive. A hard drive transformed an Amiga.
I never had a hard drive Amiga in the 90s, I was doomed to swapping
floppies. But I was just a kid and mostly gamed on it so it wasn't the end
of the world. Was probably around 2007/8 when out of nostalgia I got an
Amiga with a hard drive from eBay. It was a revelation. Truly a joy to use!
Post by Je Suis Class APost by Stephen Thomas ColeMy Miggy was well hacked, I used it on packet for a long time with
a home brewed Digicom modem (modified for the Amiga) and Amicom and
with a US Robotics modem (14k4 was soooo fast after 1200 baud
packet!) on the BBS scene and Fidonet (with Trapdoor and Spot).
There are only so many things you can dangle off a Miggy before it
becomes an untidy mess.
You should see the state of my 1200/500 project, it's been a work in
progress for several years now. At some point, I'm going to have to
decide that it's expanded enough and then fit everything into
permanent place and mod the lid and paint the thing. It'll be
beautiful when it's finished but it looks mental at the moment.
I never towered an Amiga due to the bang per buck factor, it was clear
the Miggy's days were numbered and PC's were rapidly becoming more
affordable, sound become half decent and 24 bit graphics cards become
the norm - and cheap! Still hate Windows though!
I went exclusively Mac nearly a decade ago and have only very sparingly and
with great distaste used Windows since. 7 is just about bearable for the
short exposures I've had to it, but 10 is an absolute sack of shite. I've
used it twice, never again. What are they thinking?
Post by Je Suis Class APost by Stephen Thomas ColeI went the PC route eventually - cheaper, faster hardware and loads
of amateur radio software
The tragedy of Amiga is that Commodore fumbled it so badly that they
ended up killing it. The end was set up years before it actually
happened, though, when the bean-counters cancelled the AAA (Advanced
Amiga Architecture) development and went with the AGA chipset
instead. AGA was a massive improvement but, from all that I've read,
AAA would have had a chance of changing computing if it had been
allowed to have been completed.
The Amiga was so far ahead of its time no one really knew what to with
it, certainly not Commodore! AGA was too little too late and the 1200
really should have had an 030 instead of an 020. Have a look at some of
http://youtu.be/8D2JEkcdLNw
half an hour of video graphics on a thumping sound track on two double
density floppies with the original chipset!
http://youtu.be/89wq5EoXy-0
The Black Lotus group really showed what the AGA chipset could do.
Here's one of their demos, jaw dropping really. I think you probably
need an 060 based miggy to run the thing :)
http://youtu.be/W5_NMxW5UfE
http://youtu.be/8S3B8a8N83k
Yeah, I remember having some demos on floppy, blew my mind what they made
my rickety old A500+ do!
Post by Je Suis Class ABTW in a fit of madness I once bought a new A4000 030 - wish I still had
it, it would be worth a fortune today..
It'd get good money, even if just stock configuration. The A4000T, those
bad boys are worth serious money. A while ago a very expanded (including
060/PPC accelerator) one was on eBay for, I think, several grand. It sold,
too! If I had the money to burn, I'd have bought it...
Post by Je Suis Class APost by Stephen Thomas Colebut the Miggy still has a special place in my heart.
Incredibly, we've found something we agree on!
Oh I'm sure there's lots we agree on!
Amiga still Rulez!
Damn straight!
--
STC / M0TEY /
http://twitter.com/ukradioamateur