Rediscovering my Amiga in 2021

Beyond all the blog posts I did this year covering my Amiga system upgrades, many new games and other programs like AmigaOS 3.2 and PiStorm hardware released in 2021, I also decided to spend some time finding and trying out software and games in 2021 that I have never tried before on Amiga. 

This included not only new games, hardware and applications released in 2021, but also historical software and hardware I never got to try out like Deluxe Music 2, Twist 2, DesignWorks, AMOS Pro, ProWrite, Professional Calc, or software I never owned the original boxed software and manuals for, like Final Writer and Final Copy II.

As anyone here who regularly follows Ebay would know, many popular boxed Amiga games and applications are becoming seriously expensive to buy on Ebay now. To get this software I tried to avoid paying too much, with varying degrees of success!

I remember buying AMOS 1.3 back in 1991, but could never afford the AMOS Compiler, AMOS 3D or AMOS Professional later on. I was glad to finally pick these up this year, and install them on my Amiga 3000, newly rebuilt this year and now working well.

I put AMOS 1.3, Compiler and AMOS 3D on the AmigaOS Workbench 1.3 partition, and AMOS Professional on the AmigaOS 3.1.4.1 partition on the A3000:

Having now installed them both, I can say for sure that the AMOS hard disk installers are awful.

That said, I like the idea of developing some software on AMOS in the future. Recent add-on tools like ALS have got me interested in doing something new with it. Need a lot more time than I have at the moment though!

I also picked up a local Australian made Amiga sound sampler and Audio Engineer software to try out on the Amiga 3000 too!

On the subject of sound, I also got into MIDI using a Roland SC-88 connected to my Amiga 3000 running Sequencer One Plus, which I managed to locate this year and loved listening to! 

I used to use Sequencer One (the full version released on Amiga format cover disk) on my Amiga 2000 back in 1991 to play MIDI through our Roland MIDI Piano. It is great now to have the Plus version with the extra channels and other features.

I have played with Page Setter desktop publishing before, as my Dad bought it for our Amiga in the late 1980's, but I never realised just how much other software Gold Disk made for the Amiga! I found and tried out Professional Calc 2, which is quite impressive Spreadsheet software for the Amiga:

Beyond Deluxe Paint, Deluxe Music 1 and 2 was also a popular program on the Amiga, but I never used it until now because my music work had been in MIDI (Sequencer One) or module trackers like Protracker and Octamed on the Amiga. 

I have only scratched the surface with it so far. Deluxe Music 2 is very cool software, and I plan to spend more time mucking around with it.

Having the manuals for these applications makes it much easier to learn all the features of the software that is for sure!

I also located and mucked around with DesignWorks this year. I was surprised how much application software there really was on the Amiga. It is a timely reminder that the Amiga is definitely not a games machine only - it can do so much more than just playing great games.

I used to use Photogenics 1.0 from the cover disk version supplied back in the late 1990's for graphic editing to replace Deluxe Paint IV, but in 2021 I was able to find a newer version Photogenics 2 CD boxed release. I know there were later HDR versions released too, but not as a boxed product, and I missed the opportunity to buy it from the (now gone) web site.

Speaking of Deluxe Paint, I was lucky enough also to find a boxed Deluxe Paint V, which I have never owned before and is quite hard to find boxed like this. I already had Deluxe Paint IV AGA, and it was nice to have the final version 5 of the most famous paint program on the Amiga, released in 1995, well after Commodore went under!

There is also a modern CD version of Personal Paint, available for purchase in 2021 from A-Eon (AmigaKit) for Classic Amiga systems, and also on PowerPC AmigaOS 4 computers. 

I already had the AmigaOS 4 version, but this year I picked up the newest Personal Paint for Classic Amiga to try it out.

Just to prove that not all application software is in Amiga's past - we have modern applications for sale still in 2021!

Some final older applications I found this year was Pixel 3D 2 graphics package, and Twist 2, which is a database program. I already have Superbase Personal Database software for the Amiga, but Twist 2 was released much later in the mid 1990's, and I had never heard of it!

Moving away from applications now, there were a lot of games I missed out on for Amiga, especially between 1994-1996 when I didn't have an Amiga to use, and it has been fun in 2021 to finally try some of these out too!

Buying original boxed old games and applications in 2021 for the Amiga really is a lottery - the disks might work, or they might not. 

Important part I think it not to pay too much for them, then it is not as disappointing if they don't work. Fortunately for me, only a handful of game floppy disks had gone bad.

Is it just me or is it scary that Impossible Mission 2025 is now only just over 3 years away?

I bought Impossible Mission 2 for Amiga 500 back in the late 1980's, played Impossible Mission a lot on the C64, but have never played Impossible Mission 2025 before this year!

I also never realised how prolific Core Design was in game releases on the Amiga in the period after Commodore went bankrupt. Some of these games are very good indeed, and I am glad I got to try them out in 2021.

Blob was an interesting game, but much harder than I first thought! I tried it out on the CDTV but the infrared CDTV controller is not great for this kind of game to be honest!

I have to say that postage costs skyrocketed in 2021, and shipping items to Australia became extremely expensive as a result. 

Once you added Ebay's "import costs" on top of GST payable for importing a second hand item (!), a game that was bought for $12 on Ebay cost over $50 delivered. A game that costs $40 ends up costing over $100 delivered!

This ridiculous situation meant I needed to combine shipping as much as possible and minimise the number of different sellers I bought from, to minimise the profiteering antics of Ebay's "Global ripoff shipping program"  and the government in Australia charging 10% GST on second hand items on top....it was definitely challenging. 

I tried to find items locally where possible to avoid these costs - I got a large shipment of heavy boxed Amiga applications outside Ebay from a seller in Tasmania, which saved me a lot of money trying to ship the items from overseas.

Back to the games though. I am a huge fan of Wizball, but I never actually played the sequel Wizkid! It is an interesting game, but I still prefer the original C64 version of Wizball. The Amiga version of Wizball was good, but the music was not a patch on the beautiful SID music of the C64 version.

I am also trying out Reunion and Seek and Destroy, two more games I have never even heard of, released after Commodore went under.

I enjoyed playing Vision's Roadkill AGA game back in the day, but this game from them I didn't know about. It is quite fun actually!

It has been a lot of fun this year re-discovering my Amiga, discovering a world of applications and games I never used before 2021!

On top of all this, I am currently working on a new mobile streaming setup using my old Alienware 15 R3 laptop when I occasionally get time, and hope one day to be able to use it to more easily stream live from my favourite computers. 

I dabbled with it last year with the AmigaOne X1000 and some streams from the Raspberry Pi400 and Amiga 1200/4000 for demos, but setting up streams for older computers from my main machines is very time consuming, pulling apart and setting up my machines in another room, which put me off doing more streams with my systems. 

I have high hopes for this new setup, which is more easily able to move between computers with minimal recabling. I have it working well now on the Amiga 3000, C64 and Pentium 200 MMX systems and will continue to work on getting it working well with more systems.

One last thing I have been working on recently with my recently purchased Amiga 600, is a scan doubler solution for it's video output for TFT screens. 

Originally I had planned to put a RGB2HDMI solution in it. I bought a 'built and configured ready to run" solution, and installed it, as below: 

There were no instructions included so I looked online for how other people did it.

With the Mini-HDMI converter and HDMI plug attached, it pushes down harder on the keyboard connector than I would like..

Unfortunately the RGB2HDMI solution didn't work at all - nothing outputted to the screen. Worse still, it started causing stability issues for the Amiga 600 with it attached, with red screens and other issues I had not seen until I attached this solution to it.

I pulled it out before it did any lasting damage. I then decided to buy a Indivision ECS v3 from Individual computers for the A600 instead. 

I previously had a Indivision ECS connected to my old (failed) A600, but I moved it to the A3000 when it's native output started having issues, and so I no longer had one for this A600.

When the new Indivision ECS v3 arrived, I was irritated that the instructions included no information on how to install it in the A600. When I checked online for the instructions, it just said "same as per V2". 

The problem I quickly found was that the Indivision ECS v3 is far too tall to fit on the A604 and still be able to close the A600 case. 

This seems a very obvious design flaw in the Indivision ECS v3....I show the gap with the top closed over the top below. Why say the v3 works on the A600 then?

After reading a bit closer on the Indivision ECS V3 product page (not the instructions) I found this:

With A604 or A604n, the bottom cover will have to be left open, otherwise the keyboard will not fit.

Right...why couldn't this be stated in the instructions included with the product?

Anyway, I found a solution to the problem. I opened my Checkmate 1500 plus A500 system case, and swapped it's older version Indivision ECS for the new Indivision ECS v3...the Checkmate A1500 case has plenty of room...

I then put the old Indivision ECS board in the A600:

My old A600 had the RF modulator slot de-soldered by a colleague a few years ago, but this new A600 does not have that, and I lack the desoldering skills needed to remove it myself. 

For now I fed the VGA output through the Gotek hole that normally contains the LED screen (which is on top of the A600 instead), to feed out the VGA connector via the floppy drive slot. 

The TFT screen output on the A600 is now great with the Indivision ECS in place. Very happy.

I enjoyed some clean scan doubled outputted demos on my A600 to celebrate!

With my Amiga 3000, Amiga 600 and Amiga 1200 all running well now, I think I will leave them alone for a bit upgrade-wise, and just enjoy them as they are. Heh, I almost laughed when I wrote that. We'll see how long that lasts...

I hope this blog entry and all the ones I wrote this year have been interesting! I am not sure if there will be any further blog posts before the end of the year, as my wife and I will take a well earned break from work at the end of this week to spend time with family and do non-computer related things for a bit.

So, I hope you and your family have a great Xmas and New Year, and I look forward to more blogging about computers on my return in 2022!

Replacement Amiga 600 has arrived!

This week saw the arrival of my replacement Amiga 600 computer, recapped and resprayed in a beautiful dual tone paint job!

The computer was purchased from Ami64.com, who sold it as a one-off build computer. They can do these resprays on A600 and A1200 systems. 

I was keen to secure a replacement Amiga 600 after the old one was damaged by running the Vampire 600 v2 in it. Which in turn was a replacement for the previous one that was also damaged by the Vampire...3rd time lucky?

I had tossed up the idea of shipping the damaged A600 board overseas to be recapped and repaired, but then saw this opportunity to secure an Amiga 600 already recapped and working well, and avoid all that expensive postage costs to send my A600 board which may possibly not be able to be repaired at all. The audio is stuffed and the IDE port pins all broken or brittle from heat damage being placed next to the Vampire 600...

It made the decision to buy this one easy - and of course, seriously, just look at it! It's beautiful! I bought a Competition Pro joystick at the same time, and it came with a Gotek drive built in, with 8MB fast memory expansion and 1MB chip memory expansion, CF card all setup ready to use.

Side view of the Amiga 600, showing the Gotek floppy drive and black paint applied to the bottom half of the Amiga 600.

The OLED display has been mounted on the top of the Amiga 600, which is much easier than looking into the floppy drive trying to read it!

Back view of the Amiga 600.

Here it is next to my old damaged Amiga 600. I noticed straight away that my Amiga 600 keyboard on the damaged one is much better than the yellowed one on the new Amiga 600. That will be first on the list to change!

I reckon the Red cased A600 and Blue cased A1200 look great together. Red, White and Blue :-)

Included with the Amiga 600 was a USB stick with a handful of ADF files on it, so I quickly checked it out.

I got a bit distracted playing Agony from the Gotek.

Distraction over, I booted from the CF card on the Amiga 600, which is running AmigaOS 2.0 ROMS and AmigaOS 2 Workbench.

That Kickstart and CF will also need to be upgraded! 

First though, I took a nostalgia trip back to 1990 and enjoyed the Australian demo from Decay called "Hinch Demo" that was on the hard disk.

Turning my attention (briefly) to the damaged Amiga 600 - it was time to strip it for usable parts in the new replacement A600. The A600 floppy drive failed and I put a OLED Gotek in its place. 

The disk drive became much more important since the IDE port no longer works thanks to the Vampire 600, and this became a disk only machine. I reverted it back to 1.3 roms to maximise compatibility for demos and games loaded via ADF on the Gotek. (I used an older style and then newer OLED version on it)

But the sound not working right meant it was rarely used. Time to retire it. Maybe if I can find someone local to recap and repair it, it might come good again...so I'll hold onto it.

I quickly removed the keyboard, which is much nicer on my old Amiga 600.

How much nicer? Well, here they are side by side...

I opened up the replacement Amiga 600 for the first time to see what is in there.

I can see the small A608 Mini 8MB fast memory expansion installed over the 68000 CPU.

There is also the 1MB chip memory expansion card in the expansion bay. Haven't seen either of these cards before. Pity the owner didn't spray the expansion bay cover the same black as the rest of the case - kinda stands out like a sore thumb. Anyway.

The hole in the case done by the previous owner for the gotek floppy drive OLED display is not that pretty to be honest, with hot glue to keep it in place. I couldn't see that when I bought it online, but having the OLED display where I can easily see it is worth this little damage to the case. You can't see it when closed.

Starting with the easiest thing first, I swapped the 1MB Chip memory card with my Individual Computers A604 expansion, which allows for two A1200 clock port expansions to be added to the A600, 1MB chip memory, Real time clock and connection for the Indivision ECS.

Unfortunately I don't have a spare Indivision ECS to put in it anymore, as I took it to put in my Amiga 3000 recently to fix it's native video output issues. I have also ordered a RGB to HDMI converter for this computer, and I will install it later on when it arrives. For now I am using an external scan doubler to get the output to my normal TFT screens.

Next job is upgrading the Kickstart 2.05 ROM chip to the latest AmigaOS 3.2 rom chip.

Job done!

I then put the lid back on with the replaced keyboard in place to test the AmigaOS 3.2 rom is working ok, and it is!

Decisions decisions. I have been tossing up whether to install the Individual computers A630 030 accelerator, Vampire 600 V2 or just leave it as a 68000 system for maximum compatibility.

For now I will leave it as 68000 native, but I expect that may change! 

With the AmigaOS 3.2 rom now installed in the Amiga 600, I need to redo the CF card to run AmigaOS 3.2. I elected to remove the old Workbench 2 CF Hard disk setup, and install a new 32GB CF card (well, it used to be a A1200 CF hard disk before I vampired it).

Accordingly I brought out my AmigaOS 3.2 floppy disk set I created previously for the A1200 build, and prepared the System partition (15GB) by formatting it, ready for fresh install. given the 68000 CPU in use, reinstall is easier than trying to remove all the 030 libraries and 030 version dependencies on the existing CF card.

AmigaOS 3.2 install from floppy disk is now underway. Yes I know I could have used the ADF versions on the Gotek, but I like installing the OS from real floppy disks! 

Besides, the extra time it takes gives me time to fired up the Amiga 1200 to watch some great AGA demos while I waited for the copy process to complete on the A600.

With AmigaOS 3.2 now installed on the CF hard disk, I could reboot into the new clean environment:

I set to work installing WHDLoad to run the games and Demos I already had on the existing Work partition on the CF card.

Yep, time for distracting myself with the game Agony again, now that the WHDLoad is installed and ready for use!

The new joystick works well too. I installed Delitracker 2 next for listening to my favourite mods - being a 68000, I have to avoid playing back XM or S3M's as they can hang the system due to needing a faster CPU to play them back.

I also ordered a new cover from AmigaKit for the Amiga 600, which fits great and should protect it from dust!

Being a 68000 system, I need to realistic about what I can load onto it. 

Recently I have found a Tasmanian seller who had a number of Amiga applications for sale. I snapped up quite a few applications that I didn't have, including Final Copy II and Proper Grammar II. I got them this week.

I realise that Final Copy II is been replaced by Final Writer and the multiple later versions of that, but Pen Pal and Final Copy II were my go-to Word processor back in the early 1990's for my High School assignments and general documents, including my first book I wrote at age 17!

I didn't own either of the Word processors back then (definitely didn't have the money to buy them at the time so I had copies from a friend who did), but very glad to own them now and the manuals too!

Unfortunately the external scan doubler on the Amiga 600 doesn't work as well as it used to 20 years ago, so the above output is grainy and with plenty of lines. It's only temporary of course. The RGB to HDMI converter can't come soon enough! I kept working on the installation from the original floppy disks.

Luckily, even all these years later the floppy disks worked fine and Final Copy II installed without a hitch. Proper Grammar II floppy disks unfortunately had read/write errors. I'll have to write them out from ADF to get a working set..

I also tried to install AMOS Professional, which appears never to be installed as no registration info was set on the program disk.

I kicked off the installation:

Of course I want to install everything - but a worry is the available hard disk space size is detected negative...

So it proved, the install wouldn't proceed. Not enough space. Hmm, 15GB free not enough space? Heh.

I will probably need to redo the partition setup on the CF card to allow a small 1GB partition to install AMOS Professional to. A task for another time.

There is a lot more work to do on this machine, and plenty of upgrades to come. I am excited to have a fully working Amiga 600 again and wanted to quickly share it mid-week!