Ultimate Amiga
Other => Introductions => Topic started by: bruceuncle on February 02, 2012, 08:49:23 AM
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Hi everybody. I've been asking questions in the AMOS Factory forum and only just started looking around the Ulimate Amiga forums.
So I'd better put a few words in here by way of an intro.
I'm Australian and an Amiga user from long ago.
My first 'machine' was a DREAM 6800 that I built myself from a magazine article way, way back. A massive 1Kb RAM and 1Kb ROM with a 64 x 32 pixel display! Magic stuff. Still managed to write a very good Space Invaders in 6800 machine code ("What's an assembler?" was the cry back then - used lots of graph paper and a pencil). It saved and loaded code to a cassette player and the display was a direct input to a portable B&W TV. Input was from a hex keypad (luxury! :)).
Got hooked on computing straight away. Next acquisition was an Hitachi Peach with a 6809 processor and a colour display. I wonder where they got the idea of naming it after a fruit from? Got into commercial programming in COBOL and worked my guts out. Don't remember much about the Peach apart from its BASIC and a nice language called Comsol that I used. Amazed at the time to realise that Comsol was written in itself. I do remember getting heavily side-tracked by games (in colour!).
An Amiga 500 by proxy with a good mate came next - he owned it, I programmed and played with it.
My own Amiga came next - an A2000 with two floppies and a hard drive. Had great fun and was totally gob-smacked by the capabilities. Played around with Lattice C without much success in the more exciting aspects of Amiga capabilities - a bit too impenetrable for someone used to COBOL and Basic. Then came AMOS. Beautiful! I programmed a music composer. "Not another tracker!" do I hear? No. This composed directly into the AMOS Music Bank format and had an interface more like a piano roll. The aim was to be able to simply 'draw' music with the mouse. It worked well. Wish I still had the source as I can't remember much about it now. One bit I really felt good about was a bit of assembler that would re-sample a sample file into any other pitch in just 32 bytes of code. It used a similar method to the early algorithm for drawing lines on a raster screen - incrementing registers and actioning the output on overflows. I really wish I still had the source for that! "Eat yer heart out Messysoft" with all your modern PC 'bloatware'.
COBOL went out of fashion and the dictates of work meant a PC had to be purchased. The A2000 went into retirement to a good home and VB, VBA and Office stuff replaced my programming ventures on a PC. In commercial-land I worked in Oracle and Sybase databases. Unfortunately the A2000 quit in its new home years ago and the sources, etc went with it. Damn!
More than 20 years passed...
Then I discovered WINUAE and the Amiga Forever launcher and it's all come flooding back. Primary tool will be AMOS with a bit of assembler if required. Approaching full retirement, I should have more time to have a good soak in nostalgia. All I need to do is drag myself away from all the Amiga games stuff (playing them, not coding them ;D ).
It's easy to forget how good that stuff was. Just last weekend we had a great time around the PC re-living Amiga games nostalgia with a couple of friends (ex Amiga owners). We hadn't had such a great time for years. We don't get that same feeling from modern over-complex PC Games.
Don't get me wrong, I also love my PC and the huge amount of power I've now got on the desktop. I use Visual Studio 2010, Office Pro 2010 and SQL Server 2008 think they're great. It's just that the Amiga had so much personality and potential. A bit like the difference between an E-Type Jaguar and a modern Aston Martin. (A bit of ex-pat Brit showing there ;) .)
Many thanks to all those posting to these forums. You've all been a great help in my getting back into the Amiga and AMOS.
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Awesome intro.
Welcome, its a bit quiet here lately.
Spose alot have moved on or have little time to play.
I still do the odd stuff here and there, really need to finish next release of PSPUAE.
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Hello and Welcome :) its great that you've found your way back, like many of us ;) and the fun begins ;D
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Hi bruceuncle - glad you found us!
we have a few die-hard people still here constantly, and i'm really glad you've found the place helpful!!
There's a lot of different projects here tinkering away in the background, and (i hope) quite a bit of information floating around.... it's always nice to have more people on-board and getting involved!
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Hello and welcome to the AMOS tinkerers world, the world of PSPUAE and many other great projects. :)