YAY i got an amiga.. where do i start?

dudex77 · Post by **dudex77** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 11:43 am

ok tosay at the market i got a working amiga 500 with 2 joysticks a mouse and all hookups for 15 euros. i dont have the workbench disk or any floppys so i cant do anything except checkout the awesome kickstart thing so does anyone have any suggestions of what i should get?

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 12:46 pm

one of my favorite games is on amiga, Dreamweb. you need to play it, all the way through. It's so depressing, and by the end of the game, you really start to think like him. I still remember the end of that game, some experiences just burn themselves into your brain like that. Dreamweb is very cyberpunk and very 'unmedicated'.

it was only out on PC and amiga, and I hear the amiga version is prettier. Dos version was one of those horrid trainwrecks that involved building a bootdisk--amiga owners had it so good.

otherwise on amiga, canon fodder and It Came From the Desert are okay too, but they're not 'life changing' like dreamweb was for me. It's really an experience you only want to have once, so it's replay value is closer to zero than any other game I can think of.

Unidentified Assilant · Sun Apr 22, 2007 1:05 pm

Get Deluxe Galaga. Just... get it.

Post by **Triton** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:14 pm

lol, talk to me on AIM or MSN, i have plenty of suggestions!

dudex77 · Post by **dudex77** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:33 pm

yeah triton i know YOU do. can the games be downloaded off the internet? and theyre all on floppys right? also triton could you post a couple of really good ones here because i dont have access to a comp with messenger right now. im gonna go check out dreamweb

Post by **Triton** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 5:54 pm

unfortunatly getting games on the amiga is harder than just writing the floppys with a floppy drive, because of the formatting the amiga used (880k double density i think and different than standard pc formatting) there is a peice of hardware you can buy called the catweasle mk4 that will allow you to use a standard floppy drive to write amiga and other classic computer formats, unfortunatly for both of us the catweasle cost 115$ from amigakit plus shipping, i plan on buying one eventually because all i have are OLD copies of software and most if not all of my disks are from 1986-1994 at the newest, and unfortunatly they are not aging well. like i said IM me for more amiga info

games i would sugest

major motion, the killing gameshow (by psygnosis), shadow of the beast(also psygnosis), the great giana sisters, stunt track racer, torch 2041, tetris, shanghai (mah-jong) 4x4 offroad, chuck rock, crystal hammer and arkanoid and of course Out of This World which is just plain amazing

warmachine · Post by **warmachine** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 12:33 am

Hey Triton, I've picked up an Amiga 1000 (with monitor and requisite hardware) and I'm hitting a problem. It asks for Kickstart, and apppears to boot, but the screen goes blank (read: white) and never gets around to ask for the Workbench disk. I've got two additional external daisy-chainable floppy drives as well, but, like I said, I'm new to the Amiga and am a bit lost. It has Kickstart and Workbench versions 1.1 and 1.3; both do the whole "white screen" thing.

I also recently obtained:
+Commodore 64, near mint condition, in box w/all cables, packing materials, and documentation
+Commodore SX-64, near mint condition, no box, currently restoring (faulty keyboard - repairing; misaligned 1541 - repairing; had to borrow the PLA from the C64 above to get it's CRT working)
+Amiga 1000, near mint condition, in box w/all original documentation and packing
+At least 200lbs of books, software, and peripherals for the 64 and Amiga.
+Vectrex, mint condition, in box w/all paperwork, about a dozen games, and the light-pen

That was only about one-third of what the lady had; I just couldn't afford the rest at the time. Coming up in two weeks (for free, she's moving and if she still has it, it's mine

), numerous boxes of old Mac stuff; another 1000; a 500; a beaten up, yet working C128; a Commodore 10XX monitor; a few disk drives; and the piece de resistance... a working 4000 series PET, which will repair my broken 2001-8 PET with it's sweet, sweet innards. If anyone has around $500 and wants a working 2001 PET with all its docs, box and packing, and tutorial cassettes, gimme a couple months and drop me a line.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 8:25 am

To be able to move files from a PC to an Amiga I would suggest using a linux distro. You will be able to format floppies or hell any storage to the Amiga file system structure. I would suggest using the "mkfs" command, and read the man page to see what flags/parameters you need to set it to the Amiga FS.

This can be done from a live-CD so if you don't/can't install a distro use something like Knoppix or Ubuntu.

Post by **Triton** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 10:53 am

Linux supports AFFS hard-drive partitions only. Floppy access is not supported due to incompatibilities between Amiga floppy controllers and PC and workstation controllers.

sorry sparkfist, good idea that doesnt pan out unfortunatly, it takes special hardware like the catweasle or stuff like amiga explorer with a null modem cable to access or edit amiga floppies on PC

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 12:02 pm

speaking of getting started, I've never had an amiga (I was an ST kid), is CD32 a good way to get into them? They can function as full amiga computers, right?

or is there an easier/better way? and pc's can burn cd's for it, yes?

Post by **Triton** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 12:27 pm

in all honesty if you want a very capable relativly cheap and EXTREMLY expandable system go with an a1200, they usually run under 200$ on ebay and you can get tons of ram and processor upgrades and other addons for them. some of the high end addons tend to cost a lot tho (read: in excess of 400$) but having a pc from 1992 be as powerful as imacs from 1999 is cool (blizzard PPC card adds a powerPC 603e at 240mhz plus a 50mhz 68060 and up to 256mb ram)

Unidentified Assilant · Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:10 pm

*Hugs A1200*

I like A600, but the ECS Chipset is limited, A500 is huge lol. I didn't know an amiga could be so powerful though, what kind of games are available for it?

BTW, CD32 is own.

Post by **Triton** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:51 pm

a500 isnt huge! its only mebe 20% bigger than the 600, the a1000 on the other hand is massive lol. i dont know much about post a500 games tho sorry, other than like turican and stuff

@warmachine im not sure what might be wrong, after you put in kickstart it should after a little bit blink to white then go to a workbench prompt, you might have a bad copy of kickstart. AWEOSME haul btw, almost equals my amiga one

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 2:53 pm

Triton wrote:in all honesty if you want a very capable relativly cheap and EXTREMLY expandable system go with an a1200

I thought the cd32 was a 1200. I see your point about expandability, but I don't think I need to expand so far. I just want a taste of the amiga exclusives, I have my 8/16-bit ataris for retrocomputing. that, and I've noticed cd32's hover around the $100 range, which still seems a bit steep, but it's half what a 1200 costs.

now if cd32's don't take 1200 software then I'd probably agree much faster. I wonder if they'll take software installed to CD, or if I'll need to connect a floppy or HD. Finding either of those would get expensive fast. i don't suppose they'll take a spare 60-gig without some help.

anybody have any thoughts on how they comared to, say, 3do or jagcd?

Post by **Triton** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:20 pm

it is basically an a1200 specs wise and i dont know anything about the software side of things really lol, all my experience is with a1000/500