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.
This coming Tuesday we are going to leave for Thailand which will be our holiday destination. Two things I am going to bring back which I left when we moved from Thailand to Holland are “Mastering Amiga AMOS” from Phil South and “Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer” from Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. Since I still have not found my Amos Professional manual I will also have a look around to see if maybe I left it in Thailand. I am almost sure I brought it back with us when we moved to Holland but since I still have not found it I better check while I am in Thailand anyway. For the first week we will stay in Bangkok and for that time I have internet access in the two hotels we will be staying. It will become a problem when we are going to stay on the north. I would have to us a dial-up connection to gain internet access. It is no problem for me when it comes to the speed since it is only for browsing the net a bit and retrieve my e-mails. I just need to have a modem for this and I had one before which was external and connects through usb. Up till last evening I was unable to find it at my parents place. It seems I should have let my wife look for it the several times I tried looking for it before since she just walked upstairs grabs a box out a hundred other boxes and says it must be in here. And of course it is. I will try the modem later today to see if it works. The problem is that I run Windows 7 on my laptop and the modem is from a time when Windows 98 was the standard. Let’s hope it works so I can save a bit of money for not having to go out and buy one.
Can you imagine going to a computer shop and ask one of the sales people if they have a modem? It would take you at least one hour, if not more, to explain what a modem is. Last year I walked into one of those shops looking for a IDE hard drive. Of course I already looked and did not see it but I thought maybe they have one in the back. After walking up to the sales person and asked if they had a IDE hard drive I was told that all computers today have a SATA connection for the hard drive so I should buy a SATA drive. After explaining to him I want a IDE hard drive he walked to the display with the drives and pulled out a SATA drive and said to me that I was better for me to use a SATA drive in my computer. Remember the times when the sales people in the shop actually knew it all? Clearly that was something from the past. After explaining once more to the sales person I really can’t use a SATA drive since I only have IDE connectors on my board we parted our ways. I went to another shop and walked up to the sales person and said I need the cheapest IDE drive you have after which he pulled one out of stock which I paid for and left the shop. You see it is possible but you just got to find one of those rare shops which knows what they are selling and actually know something about computers.
Thanks to oldschoolgameblog I got to know The Company which created easy to run Amiga games on your Windows machine. Just download the file and double-click on it to start the game. I had a quick try and it works really great. Certainly worth to have a look at the site and give it a try.
For once it is not a problem for me to post the column on a Sunday evening since I don’t go to work tomorrow so the weekend really does not end so to speak.
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