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[sharke]

I know this is a long shot but what the heck.

During a period of unemployment around 8-9 years ago (I think!), I borrowed a friend's Amiga 1200 (with tower and 4GB HD!). He had a copy of AMOS Professional and having never programmed anything before, I flicked through the manual and 3 months later I'd written a full-featured utility for guitar players which had a massive database of chord and scale fingerings, the ability to fully analyze chords you threw at it, a "suggest" feature which gave suggestions for "possible next chords" if you were writing a song, plus a practice feature with a metronome.  It also worked out every possible fingering of a chord within a given fret range.

I don't mind telling you, I was as proud as hell of it considering it was the first program I'd ever written. Alas, a few years later I got evicted from my flat while I was living abroad and although my family were able to recover most of my stuff, I totally forgot about the Amiga under the bed and so I lost it all.

If anyone has some of the final cover CD's from Amiga Action magazine before it went out of print (or was it Amiga Active?), I would be grateful if they could take a look and see if a program called "FretKnot" is in the "reader submission" drawer. A cruder version of the program was on the last cover CD of Amiga Format too, but this was before I upgraded it to look better with 3D buttons and what not. I'm thinking about rewriting it today in Python, but I'd love to see my old version again!

Oh man, happy days! I spent many long nights messing around with co-ordinate graphics and plasma and the like. I think I even wrote a routine to convert a bitmap image into a bas-relief effect. Now how in the hell did I do that?

Well, I can but hope. It's great to see that there is still an AMOS community up and running. It's a great language and incredibly easy to learn, seeing as how I was able to write a complete program like that as a complete beginner having just read through a list of the syntax from A-Z.

[straycat]

Hi Sharke, I did a quick search on Aminet but no luck. Some of the other guys on here might have some more ideas but I would keep an eye on eBay - quite a few old cover disks appear on there.

[sharke]

Thanks man. I had a look at Aminet a couple of years ago with no luck. I guess the thing to do is just to move on and rewrite the damn thing - but those memories! I still have all the notes I made, piles and piles of them...maybe I could piece the source together from those...but then there's all the graphics which I did in D-Paint.....

[straycat]

Have you tried looking on all the search engines? I managed to track down some of my old programs as ADFs that way. I just tried an eBay search for Amiga Cover and got a few results back (including dust covers!  ) but I reckon if you keep an eye out you might get lucky in a couple of weeks.

[Hungry Horace]

i have some CU Amiga and Amiga Format cover CDs.... but definatly not Amiga Action ones. 

it rings a bell though, so i will check the CU Amiga ones when i get the chance.

[Spellcoder]

You might try looking on Amiga Magazine rack: http://amr.abime.net/
They have a lot of magazine scans, but not all coverdisks. Amiga Active used cd's
so those are to big to be on the website I think.
(they had nice and bright magazine logo on it and a cheap plastic cd cover (not jewelcase) to keep cost low
if I recall correctly.)
I might have all Amiga Active's and CD's somewhere, probably in the basement.
Let me know if you don't have any luck on Amiga Magazine rack, I'll try to look on the Amiga Active CD's.

p.s.: I see you also tried to find the program four years ago?
( http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=13997 )

[sharke]

Ha ha! I'd totally forgotten about looking for it all that time ago.

Thanks guys, I'll try all of your suggestions. I don't think it was on CU Amiga though, I'm pretty sure the final version was on Amiga Action.

[sharke]

The Amiga Magazine Rack is great, thanks for that! I'm in a complete dream world after having a look at scans of the first issue of Zzap! 64 - I remember it as clear as a bell, I even remember being sick in bed and hearing the sound of it falling on the doormat for the first time, all of a sudden I was sat up in bed as bright as a button. I had a letter published in one of the first issues and they sent me a copy of Andrew Braybrook's "Gribbly's Day Out", whose title tune I still whistle to this day (and hearing it on a SID emulator recently, I discovered that I'd even retained the same key it was in).....memories!

Julian Rignall and Gary Penn - I even remember their names! And all those great Oliver Frey covers....

Does anyone remember the short lived LM magazine?

PS I just found the scan of my letter in the mag, written at age 12. Oh man......I love the internet.

[Lonewolf10]

I have loads of Amiga's CDs, so will try and keep an eye out for it. Am going through them searching for AMOS stuff at the moment. On CD 2 of 100+!


Regards,
Lonewolf10

[sharke]

Thanks, appreciate it. It was in the "readers submissions" section so I doubt that many people saw it.

I'd love to have 100 Amiga CD's to go through!

[Sestun]

Hi sharke,

I've just come across your post but I think I may be able to help.

The last Amiga magazine in print was called Amiga Active, and I bought every copy. There were 25 in total and the last issue was October 2001. I have searched them all for Fretknot but couldn't find it, also there was no "readers submissions" drawer on the coverdisks.

I also have a copy of the last Amiga Format coverdisk which was for May 2000. This does have  a "readerstuff" drawer in it and your program is in it. The Readme file in it is dated Feb 2000. Could this be the final version of your program and your memory is playing tricks on you?

I don't think you submitted it to Amiga Action because this was a games mag. and closed down in 1996.

I have submitted an attachment containing the program.

[sharke]

Hi sharke,

I've just come across your post but I think I may be able to help.

The last Amiga magazine in print was called Amiga Active, and I bought every copy. There were 25 in total and the last issue was October 2001. I have searched them all for Fretknot but couldn't find it, also there was no "readers submissions" drawer on the coverdisks.

I also have a copy of the last Amiga Format coverdisk which was for May 2000. This does have  a "readerstuff" drawer in it and your program is in it. The Readme file in it is dated Feb 2000. Could this be the final version of your program and your memory is playing tricks on you?

I don't think you submitted it to Amiga Action because this was a games mag. and closed down in 1996.

I have submitted an attachment containing the program.

Hi Sestun -

My apologies for such a late reply and my apologies to everyone else for dredging up an old thread! I had absolutely no idea that you'd replied and just happened to check back tonight by chance.

Many thanks for finding the program and posting the attachment! I'd given up all hope.....

One thing though - I have absolutely no experience with UAE and how to use it, and also how I would go about launching the program through an emulator. Would I have to somehow convert the program file to a disk image? If so, how do I do that? I have UAE with Kickstart 1.3 but I don't know where to go from here. Do I have to have Workbench too?

[Hungry Horace]

hi there sharke,


many magazines coverdisks can be found on; http://amr.abime.net - already in disk image format, although I dont know about CDs.

my guess would be that, being AMOS, most UAE settings would run the program. I cant (due to legal reasons) tell you where to obtain Workbench Disk images, but google, and sites like planetemu.net ar often very helpful

You may find running kickstart 3.0 and emulating an A1200 setup with HD (maybe with extra fastram) more beneficial. a pre-installed workbench (still requires a WB disk image for "verification") can be found at; http://classicwb.abime.net

hope some of this info helps. I'd tell you other bits and pieces, but i'm just about to run out the door!

[sharke]

Thanks for the info. Hunting around I've managed to find everything I need as well as a lengthy tutorial on how to get a HD set up on UAE. All that remains is to find the time to get it all done!

To Setsun - it's strange that you didn't find it on Amiga Active because I'm positive it was on there. Amiga Format included my first version of the program (the one you attached) which was very visually basic compared to the second version, which Amiga Active put out. It wasn't in a reader's stuff drawer because as you pointed out there was no such drawer on the Amiga Active disks, but it was definitely there somewhere (unless there was another Amiga mag at that time in the UK which featured cover disks, though I doubt it.) Maybe it was hidden away under another name or something?