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Author Topic: Better Late than Never - Aussie Intro  (Read 3827 times)

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bruceuncle

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Better Late than Never - Aussie Intro
« on: February 02, 2012, 08:49:23 AM »

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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Re: Better Late than Never - Aussie Intro
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2012, 07:51:16 PM »

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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DonAmiga

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Re: Better Late than Never - Aussie Intro
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2012, 09:18:27 AM »

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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Hungry Horace

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Re: Better Late than Never - Aussie Intro
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2012, 04:31:49 PM »

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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MadAngus

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Re: Better Late than Never - Aussie Intro
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2012, 05:02:53 PM »

Hello and welcome to the AMOS tinkerers world, the world of PSPUAE and many other great projects. :)
« Last Edit: February 04, 2012, 05:25:44 PM by MadAngus »
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