Questions tagged [amiga]
For questions related to the Commodore Amiga family of personal computers.
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How and why did Intel make the PCI bus "CPU Agnostic"?
Intel invented the original 32/64-bit PCI bus in the early 1990s to replace the decade old ISA bus used in PC's. It was immediately popular (in comparison to Micro Channel or EISA), being both faster ...
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3
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Was there ever a Kickstart that took advantage of 68020+ instructions that would work on an A2000?
Back in the day with my A2500/30, I always wanted to get the 68030 versions of software if I could because presumably I'd be able to get a few percentage more performance in some cases. However, I get ...
28
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1
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Who ended up owning Commodore's semiconductor IP?
The question of ownership of Amiga-related intellectual property post-Commodore is famously difficult to answer. My question is: does anyone "own" Commodore's semiconductor IP now, and if so,...
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1
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Did using a PAL display mode for Amiga Workbench slow down an NTSC machine?
Inspired by this question about the CPU frequency when booting the Amiga in PAL vs NTSC, I'm curious if the CPU frequency was affected by using the other display mode.
In other words, I used an ECS ...
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15
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1
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Did the Amiga change CPU frequencies when switching between PAL and NTSC mode?
Usually, computers that came in separate PAL and NTSC versions used slightly different CPU frequencies because the video and CPU clock were derived from the same crystal (the Apple II and Commodore 64 ...
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9
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1
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VIP Technologies Professional for Amiga, a Lotus 1-2-3 clone
I accidentally stumbled upon a programme named Professional by a company named VIP Technologies for the Amiga computer. It seems to be a clone (a quite accurate one) of Lotus 1-2-3. I cannot locate ...
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How were Amiga games cracked circa 1987?
I remember getting my Action Replay MKIII cartridge on my A500 in 1992, and from there I could remove protections (manual/code & physical) of a lot of games.
The MKI & MKII existed before 1991 ...
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How are Amiga Kickstart Relocation Files (.RTB) created?
Examples of Amiga Kickstart files (ROMs) can be 256k (1.2/1.3) or 512k (3.0/3.1) binary files, located at $FC0000-$1000000 or $F80000-$1000000
Several programs are able to "soft-kick" Amigas, i.e. ...
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0
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How can I replace the floppy drive mechanism in a A-1011/CD-1411
I have a Commodore CD-1411 external floppy drive which I connect to a CDTV. Unfortunately it is not reading any disks reliably anymore despite cleaning the heads.
Inside I found a Chinon FB-354 rev D ...
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How can you connect an Amiga 500/600/1000/2000 to a modern monitor?
I have an Amiga 500 that I'd like to get up and running again, but the 1084 monitor with which I used to use it has flyback transformer issues.
What options are available to hook it up to a modern ...
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Why does the Amiga 500 have half the HSYNC pulses separately compared to those in CSYNC?
After many years I bought myself a new old Amiga 500 (rev 5)
and wanted to hook it up to an LCD monitor (Samsung Syncmaster 152N) that has a VGA input.
I tried hooking it up directly by making an ...
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How did early computers handle mice?
Early computer mice worked by sending a series of pulses; the more rapid the movement, the higher the frequency. How was this handled at the computer end?
At one level, it sounds easy: just run a loop,...
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13
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1
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GCC to make Amiga executables, including Fortran support?
I have been compiling some command line programs to run on the classic Commodore Amiga. I started with GCC on WinUAE which worked but I realised I didn't have the understanding of the memory stack and ...
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Did Great Valley Products demonstrate full motion video on an Amiga streaming from a SCSI hard disk in 1990?
In 1990 I was fortunate to attend the World of Commodore trade show in Toronto Canada. The official show guide can be seen here. My best friend from high school was working for Free Spirit Software (...
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Examples for Amiga 500 newbie Programmers with the GNU C/C++ Compiler, or with FPC - the Free Pascal Compiler [closed]
Note: This is a review of me, to get the Focus, on which this Post stand.
My Amiga 500 is dead since 20 decades, but I loved the time with it, so I use the Windows UAE (Ultimate Amiga Emulator).
I'd ...
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Black Amiga 500 Keys
I am creating a black Amiga 500 casing for my retro pi unit. I have already bought the casing, a 1200 keyboard and keyrah unit to convert the keyboard to USB.
I have some vinyl dye paint for the ...
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Amiga-looking keyboard for PC
I would like to use an Amiga-looking keyboard on my PC. (I prefer not to use my old original A2000 keyboard with an adapter, partly because it lacks many keys present on modern 105-key keyboards, and ...
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Amiga multitasking - different resolution for each program on screen dragging
I'm wondering about screen resolution while having two or more multitasking programs - concurrently on screen using dragging such as:
Dpaint is on a 320x256 screen, 32 colours
Workbench is on a ...
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Were all Amigas except for A1000 un-upgradeable OS-wise?
In his latest video, "The 8-Bit Guy" on YouTube talks about the original Amiga 1000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjapiUQOi2s
One of the things he mentions is that, unlike all later ...
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11
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1
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What was Burst Mode on the 68030 and why didn't the A2630 support it?
Inspired by this question, I'm curious what burst mode was on the 68030 and why wasn't it supported on the A2630 accelerator card commonly found in the Amiga 2500/30? I had one of these machines and ...
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6
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1
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When were other inexpensive computers able to recreate "The Amiga Juggler"?
The Amiga Juggler was the 2nd very popular demo to appear for the Amiga Computer early in its lifespan. The demo was created by Eric Graham (who went on to develop Sculpt3D) using raytracing to both ...
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Was the Amiga ever used by any U.S. Government agency?
This is a long shot question, and I'm asking only because, well, I'm not entirely certain why I am asking...
NBC Nightly news did a short piece on April 18th, 2022 talking about the IRS being ...
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Looking for a multiline text gadget for Intuition on a 1.3 Amiga
I've come to understand that Intuition, the GUI framework on the stock A500 has 4 types of gadgets:
'boolean' - checkboxes and buttons
'Proportional' - sliders
string inputs
integer inputs
I'm ...
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How exactly did Amigas without a RTC "work around" this to produce "internally consistent" timestamps? [duplicate]
I recently read about how even the non-RTC-equipped Amiga computers has some sort of "clever trick" in them which caused the timestamps for saved files and whatnot to still be "...
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1
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On Amiga, what happens when I write to $DFC5A0 by mistake?
I'm fixing a game (TV Sports Basketball) that tries to write in audio data (using the range $DFF0A0 to $DFF0D0) but for some reason (bad programming), the index is sometimes (not always) bogus
MOVEA.L ...
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Are there any modern compilers that can generate Amiga/m68k executables?
I would quite like to resurrect my openkick project. As I note on that project's README.md, it is stalled because GNU GCC is not fit for purpose.
Sadly, there do not seem to be any other modern ...
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1
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What was an Amiga "X-Drive"?
In computer magazine personal ads from the 1990s, I notice multiple mentions of Amigas "with X-Drive". Searching online, I find no mention of this. (Possibly this is because search engines ...
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How to create fast an icon file for Amiga program in WB drawer?
I have copied one program from a floppy to a HDD drawer (I created for it) and I want to start this program directly, without going through [Window] → [Show] → [All Files] first in my Amiga Workbench (...
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Were commercial Amiga floppy disks shipped with write protection?
In this Amiga "quick kickstart guide" magazine thing that I have from when I bought an Amiga 1200 long ago (it seems to be printed in late 1995), they really go out of their way to point out ...
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Why did the stock Amigas not have a battery for keeping the time/date?
The Amiga computers were advanced machines meant to do all sorts of things, including file management. They had a GUI OS (Workbench) and everything right from the very start. They were not some games-...
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Amiga floppy disks and GCR vs MFM
According to the Wikipedia article on GCR, the Commodore 1541 disk drive used a particularly efficient GCR encoding scheme to cram 170K onto the same 5.25" disks that in an Apple drive only ...
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Cost of PC vs. Amiga 500 in Europe
Based on Commodore sales figures, and other historical claims, the Amiga achieved its peak popularity in 1990-91, with European sales being the leader. By 1990, with the rapid fall in PC clone prices, ...
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Amiga game about a detective or a spy in some kind of hotel building
There's a game I played as a young child in the 90s that I am 99% sure was on an Amiga. I've searched high and low and cannot find it, and am beginning to wonder if my memory is not accurate.
I ...
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Amiga 500 OCS/ECS vs Mega Drive VDP
Superficially the Amiga 500 and Mega Drive are similar. Both run a Motorola 68000 CPU at similar clocks and both have dedicated hardware for sprite and other graphics operations.
Comparing the arcade ...
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What happened to IntelliFont (i.e. Amiga vector fonts)?
One of the oft maligned weaknesses of AmigaOS 1.x was that the included bitmap fonts were not very good, especially when compared to those included with Classic Mac OS. Commodore closed this gap with ...
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What made the Amiga "Genlock-able"?
Right at the moment the original Amiga A1000 was being introduced, Commodore was already advertising its ability to use a Genlock peripheral, and promising that Commodore's own Amiga 1300 Genlock ...
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How to get the inner dimension for Amiga Intuition window with GIMMEZEROZERO Flag?
I am sizing the contents of my Intuition window relative to the space available in the window.
A regular window exposes its initial dimensions via my_window->Width and my_window->Depth, however ...
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What tricks or techniques were used to speed up AmigaOS boot
I did an installation of Workbench 3.1 grounds up. The system takes a moment to boot, well over a minute. I've watched a YouTube video where the system booted in seconds. I have another image of ...
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Which retro system controllers are compatible with Amiga out of the box
I read an article that people were using various means of user input in their Amiga 500 computers as an alternative to joystick. Most notable, Sega Mega Drive, Sega Master System, CD32 / Competition ...
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Python2.4 Amiga OS M68K restarting system and where to get libs
Just installed python 2.4 on my Amiga os3.9. sometimes when I run a script the machine restarts. Any idea why that may be? It has 030 with MMU, 64MB RAM and 1MB chip ram. All MMU libs are installed. ...
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Why do drives occupy memory on Amigas
I was reading this question, and it sparked an old memory. I had an Amiga 600 a long time ago. And I used to play Secrets of Monkey Island on it, great game. But then I upgraded the computer and ...
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Is it possible to expand Amiga 500 rev 8 to 1.5 MB with a 1MB trapdoor expansion?
Is it possible to expand an Amiga 500 rev 8 (not an Amiga 500 plus) to 1.5 MB of Chip RAM using an A501+ expansion?
It is plug and play or are modifications required?
This is the board:
Source: ...
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CF partitions not showing up in Workbench
4GB Compact Flash
KS 3.1 40.68
WB3.1
Latest WinUAE
I just created a Compact Flash (compatible Transcend) partitions under Workbench on latest WinUAE using this guide. Despite following the steps my CF ...
CommunityBot
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Should I use the internal or external drive for loading Amiga 500 games?
I have a working (I think) Amiga 500 system with an internal DF0 drive and an external DF1 drive. The Amiga 500 powers up with Workbench v1.3.
Can anyone tell me how to access a game disc (Marble ...
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What happened to ZIP RAM?
I have several retro machines and add-on cards for the Amiga that use ZIP RAM. This vertically mounted chip design enjoyed a brief popularity in the early 1990s, in between the original DIP DRAM and ...
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Did any significant programs or environments take advantage of the Rexx language which came with PC DOS 7 (aka PC DOS 2000)?
Being an Amiga fan, I have a fondness for the Rexx language. On that platform, almost every significant program supported ARexx, allowing a high degree of interoperability and customability. So when ...
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Can I image Amiga floppy disks on a modern computer?
Is there any way of reading Amiga floppy disks to a PC hard drive? Can I use a standard floppy drive with a firmware program that will translate it? Do I need an external drive or a working Amiga ...
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1
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Amiga A1050 schematic
I’m trying to resurrect a Craigslist Amiga A1000. After replacing Paula it now boots. Several basics still missing (RF shields, screws, port covers, etc.) but essential electronics are okay.
However, ...
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Save state systems
With an Amiga A500, Action Replay cartridge (v1.5 or later) and memory expansion, it was possible to save a copy of the state of memory, much like a save state in an emulator. Were there any other ...
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How does Amiga HDToolbox calculate size?
I've been toying around with various drive geometries using the classic HDToolbox from 2.x/3.1 on my Amiga. What I've discovered is the total size calculated is always 1 cylinder short of my own ...
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