With the Amiga 1200 being hooked up to my home network and having had the opportunity to test it (and finding out it works wonderful) it is time to get started on my disk magazine project. Since I am going to use Amos Professional I really need to get back in to the world of Amos programming. I already installed Amos Professional on my Amiga 1200. Now I really regret I did not bring my Amos books and other reading material with me from Thailand last year.
But I still have some reading material here so I should not worry so much. My plan is to have my mother in-law ship the Amos Pro manual and also the Mastering Amiga Amos book to me. Spending time on Amos really brings back some great memories. There is really something special about Amos. Just reading the Amos The Creator manual or fire up some Amos disk magazines has me all emotional. I really miss those days.
I have also started work on my next OS4.x programming article in case you are wondering if I am still continuing with that. It could still take a bit before it is done but I will really do my best to get it done as soon as possible. In the next article I will explore the world of IDCMP. One problem I have now since I moved upstairs is that I don’t have any network access on my A1SE. I can’t get the cable upstairs to give it access to my network. And the network is the only way I can transfer files since the USB does not work on my A1SE. The only solution would be to use a repeater with a LAN connection port connected to my wireless router downstairs. I would plug the A1SE in to that LAN port so it has network access.
Elbox 1200 4MB with clock
After installing the disk image device software I suddenly could not run my EasyNet software together with AmiTFP any more. It took a bit of memory which was the killer in this case. So I installed the Elbox 1200 4MB card to give it extra memory. I remember having problems with it before in which my Amiga 1200 would crash and not start any more. After I installed it I had no problems at first but after about 1 1/2 hours it happened. Even after switching it off I could not switch it back on any more. The lights would start flashing. The next day it started again but soon after about 10 minutes it happened again. I have placed another card in it at the moment with 8MB memory. At the time of writing this column it still works but I remember that this card had the same problem. If it fails I will try to remove the disk image device software to see if it frees enough up memory so I can transfer my files again.
It is now early Friday evening and this weekend will be all about programming in Amos. Time to get some work done on the disk magazine. I am really going to set some targets for this weekend. The plan for this weekend is to get some code done on displaying text on the screen. I would be really happy if I get some crude form of displaying text on the screen done so I can look back at a productive weekend. I will write all about in the column of next week. Happy weekend Amigans!
First thing I did when I arrived in Lampang (Thailand) was to check the book case for all my books I left behind when we moved to Holland. And to my surprise there it was; the Amos Professional User Guide. I can’t believe I left it behind in Thailand. When we moved I was working on some Amos related stuff for which I would require the manual. So what made me leave it here? I really can’t remember why I left it here. Besides the manual there was a lot more great stuff I left behind. There was the “Mastering Amiga Amos” book from Phil South. And also the “Mastering Amiga C” book from Paul Overaa. I also discovered the Amos Club Holland Newsletter 1, 2 and 3. And there was also the “Amos PD Catalogue November 1990”. I just had another look at the book case and I discovered my original “Amos the Creator” manual. I had an old 1.2 version of the manual in Holland which I bought, together with a lot of other Amos stuff, from another user some time ago. I already search for this manual for some time for which I was sure it was in Holland. Talking about a discovery of great significance.
I have some other books I left behind which range from the Microsoft history to Netscape and other computer related books. But my greatest love, and holy bible, is the book “Fire in the Valley – The Making of the Personal Computer” from Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. This is something I will save for back in Holland and reserve some time and piece for it each time I want to read it. I want to savour every page of that book once I read it again. I really recommend you to go out and purchase this book as this is a classic and great read. If you are like me and love the history about computers, especially the start of it, you will love this book. It tells you everything about the golden days of computers.
I started to read “Mastering Amiga C” and noticed (probably the reason I left it here) that the Amiga has a very small role to play in it. It does talk a great deal about the Amiga C compilers but when it comes too actually programming in C on the Amiga there is not much information. It mostly discussed C in general. There are better books out there that will teach you the skills of programming in C. None the less the Amiga info in the book is of valuable to anyone. I could have a lengthy blog posting about the lack of good programming information for Amiga OS4 but I better save it for another time.
Enjoy some pictures of my discovered treasures.
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