Questions tagged [amiga]
For questions related to the Commodore Amiga family of personal computers.
37
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What modification is required from a PC floppy for use in Amiga?
Around the end of the time of Amiga popularity, obtaining a replacement Amiga floppy drive was a nuisance, while PC drives were ubiquitous and cheap. One could install a PC drive in Amiga after ...
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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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2
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How are Amiga libraries structured?
In this Crash course to Amiga assembly programming, the author loads A6 with a constant, and then regularly jumps to offsets from that constant. He explains: All functions within that library can be ...
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Why do all the Speech Synthesizers have that same Voice?
The first time I ever played with software speech synthesis on a microcomputer (not hardware synthesis, like in TI's Speak & Spell) was around 1983, using S.A.M for the Commodore 64.
A year later,...
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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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13
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5
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Preventing socketed chip corrosion?
I spent a couple hours repairing an Amiga A3000 that wouldn't boot yesterday. The fix was to remove Kickstart ROMs, clean the DIP leads and sockets with contact cleaner, and re-insert. Apparently a ...
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1
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How did the Amiga 1000 WCS (write controlled store) for Kickstart work?
Most Amiga computers have Kickstart (the core of the operating system) on ROM. But the original Amiga 1000 instead loaded Kickstart from disk. It had boot ROM that would run some self tests and then ...
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What graphics sytems used display lists?
As near as I can tell, there seems to have been roughly speaking two schools of thought when it comes to graphics hardware among early consoles, what I will call the Atari and Texas Instruments ...
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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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What were the differences in floppy disk formats between Amiga and IBM/PC compatible computers?
The capacity in Amiga Old File System format (OFS, OS version 1.x) was 840KB, with the Fast File System ("FFS" (!)) introduced for OS 2.x onwards able to store 880KB. The PC format stored 720KB on the ...
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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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29
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1
answer
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How do Amiga 600 CPU accelerators work?
The Amiga 1200 has a trapdoor expansion for CPU accelerators. The Amiga 500 has a side expansion port and its CPU is socketed.
But Amiga 600's expansion port is only useful for memory expansion ...
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Why is the Amiga ROM at a high memory location, and RAM in low memory?
When a 68000 CPU powers up, it reads a few words at memory location zero to get the initial stack pointer and program counter. That suggests to me that a computer system designer would put the system ...
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How to obtain 256 arbitrary colors with limitation of 64 per line in Amiga (ECS)?
The game Universe for Amiga boasted ability of use of 256 different Amiga colors available through the ECS chips, with only limitation of 64 colors in halfbrite palette (32 arbitrary + 32 at half ...
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4
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What exactly was the Amiga Ranger?
Amiga's history includes something called "Ranger" that supposedly was either meant to be the next generation system to be released after the Amiga 1000 was released, or the codename for the next ...
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1
answer
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Why are there two, different, Kickstart 1.3 ROMs with the same 34.5 version number?
The Kickstart 1.3 ROM file that is supplied with Cloanto's Amiga Forever (amiga-os-130.rom) is very slightly different to that which you'd get by dumping a real 1.3 ROM from an Amiga 500.
...
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22
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4
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How did the Amiga 500 left-side expansion port work?
On the Amiga 500 there is an expansion port
How did the expansion port work?
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22
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5
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Why were 3D games on the Amiga not faster than on similar 16 bit systems like the Atari ST
It seems that 3D games, especially simulations like Falcon, were not faster (fps) on the Amiga than on the Atari ST - even a bit slower due to the CPU clock.
I was wondering why this is the case, ...
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Were the custom chips in the Amiga exploited for their hardware bugs like the ones in the C64 and Atari 8 bit computers were?
Here we are some decades on from the C64, and other 8 bit computers.
New ideas that resulted in some new graphics effect or mode seem to happen, though we may be near the end of all that.
Took a ...
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19
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3
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What was the role of Commodore-West Germany?
Most of the history of Commodore in personal computers took place while East and West Germany were divided, and Commodore maintained a significant corporate presence in West Germany. While I believe ...
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Appropriate battery replacement for my A3000
I know the interwebs are full of information relating to the replacement of batteries for various computers, and the Amiga's are no different. But before I do anything rash, I wanted to ask for some ...
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I've taken my Amiga computer out of storage after several years and it doesn't work. What's the likely cause?
I've had an Amiga on a shelf for a long time. Today I took it down and tried to use it but it's not working. There's some basic activity - the power LED illuminates, and there is a video signal - but ...
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Booting an Amiga 1000 directly to the hard drive without Kickstart floppy
The Amiga computers such as the Amiga 1000 required a Kickstart floppy to be able to boot directly into a hard drive. I have a Amiga 1000 as well but missing the Kickstart floppy. I would like to ...
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16
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1
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Seeking details relating to Amiga 3000 serial numbers
I am the original owner of my Amiga 3000. As I remember it, I purchased the machine fairly early after release. I'm cleaning and detailing the machine, and I took a quick picture of the serial ...
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15
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2
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What information is encoded in the 22-digit barcodes on the Amiga's case?
What information is encoded in Amiga's 22-digit barcodes?
For example: 0103791363642010121234
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15
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1
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What is the Kelly chip?
The Amiga 3000+ DevCon 1991 notes says:
On the A3000+, these resources include the Amiga "Pandora" chip set
(Alice, Lisa, Kelly, and Paula),
However, a Kelly chip is not part of the official ...
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15
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1
answer
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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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13
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What is the benefit of increasing Amiga chip memory?
For example, an Amiga 500+ has 1MiB of chip memory, but it can be expanded to 2MiB. What would be the advantage?
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Extended ROMs on the Amiga CD32 and CDTV
Continuing my series of questions about Amiga ROMs :-)
The Commodore CDTV contained a normal Kickstart 1.3 ROM, plus an "extended ROM". From http://www.l8r.net/technical/cdtv-technical.html:
The ...
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13
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2
answers
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What exactly are the differences between Kickstart 1.2 and 1.3?
The only very known difference is that Kickstart 1.3 fixes the silly bug that prevented Kickstart 1.2 to boot from a hard disk (a routine in the boot code uses A6 loaded with an incorrect library base,...
- 3,636
13
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3
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What interface did Video Backup System use?
I remember the Video Backup System for Amiga advertized in Polish computer magazines of late 90s, "store hundreds of diskettes on a single VHS tape!"
I seriously considered buying it (and a ...
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12
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2
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What was the A1200 Flash ROM support meant for?
Question inspired by this answer's last paragraph: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/1307/2155
The Revision 1 A1200 schematics show that the system originally had support for a two internal ...
- 3,636
12
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3
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What are the Ultra-Highres registers in ECS and AGA for?
The Amiga custom chip set, in its ECS and AGA versions, seems to contain some registers for what is called an "Ultra-HighRes/DUAL" mode:
DFF078 SPRHDAT W Ext. logic UHRES sprite pointer and ...
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11
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1
answer
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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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10
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1
answer
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How to integrate an 512kB EEPROM on a A3660 accelerator board at $00F00000?
I am currently experimenting with Chucky's re-engineered A3660 accelerator board for the Commodore Amiga (3000(T) and 4000(T)).
My ultimate goal is to add an additional 512kB EEPROM to the ...
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7
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1
answer
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Which Amiga systems did access RAM with fast page access?
I'm pretty sure Chip and Fast RAM access on an Amiga 1000 does not support FPM access.
Which Amiga system, chipset or motherboard "glue logic" first introduced FPM access to Fast RAM? Which one to ...
- 3,636
6
votes
1
answer
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Could the Apple IIGS play any and all Amiga MOD files?
The Apple IIGS has a wavetable synthesis sound chip with dedicated 64 kilobytes of RAM.
I assume the sound architecture dictates that samples have to be loaded into that dedicated RAM to be able to be ...
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