mcheyser@cadnetix.COM (12/18/89)
Hello out there in Amiga land -- I was just looking at the September 1989 issue of Computer Graphics World in which a number of Amiga fans respond to an earlier issue's article on the Amiga. (The article had been mostly complimentary). In his response to the reader comments, the author made the statement that "The Amax Macintosh simulator is a neat hack, but it suffers from a long list of incompatibilities with Macintosh software ..." Before I buy an Amiga, I want to know more about what this fellow was talking about, because a Mac simulator is an important component that I'm counting on being able to work with. I've been told that the Amax simulator is 100% compatible with all software which concientiously follows the Mac software developer guidelines, and that most reputable Mac software does, in fact, follow these guidelines. This seems a far cry from "a long list of incompatibilities with Macintosh software". What's the deal here? Please send mail (perhaps in addition to posting to the net) because I've got a lot of reading to do before I can get to the end of this newsgroup. Thanks much. Jim McHeyser UUCP: ..!{uunet,boulder}!cadnetix!mcheyser Daisy/Cadnetix Inc. Internet: mcheyser@cadnetix.com 5775 Flatiron Pkwy. Boulder, CO 80301 Voice: (303) 444-8075
kudla@pawl.rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) (12/19/89)
I've been told that the Amax simulator is 100% compatible with all software which concientiously follows the Mac software developer guidelines, and that most reputable Mac software does, in fact, follow these guidelines. This seems a far cry from "a long list of incompatibilities with Macintosh software". I haven't found any software thus far that runs on a Mac Plus but doesn't run on the Amiga running Amax. I haven't tried any games, but presumably one doesn't emulate the Mac to play games. Cricketdraw, Macdraw, and Versaterm seem to work well. Oh yes, and someone gave me MacPlayMate, which is amusing at best but works fine. All the utilities for transferring files like Stuffit, Packit, Binhex 5.0, and Ultraterm seem to work without a hitch. I haven't experimented with MIDI or printing. The audio is only partially emulated- there's one set beep that you can't replace, and it's not all that impressive. You also can't directly read Mac format disks (Amax uses a slightly different format; if you hook a Mac drive (or better yet, an Amigatosh drive which is Amiga and Mac drive all in one) up to the back of the cartridge you can read Mac disks to your heart's content. Annything that directly accesses any hardware will die horribly, however.... and I do take issue with the keyboard layout (no F-keys, ESC key disabled... Ctrl key disabled... only slightly better than the Mac Plus keyboard). Luckily, I have yet to clutter my disks with any hardware-specific programs, and the DA's etc that I've FTPed seem to be content with calling DOS functions. Oh, one minor other beef: I have a 500, and Fast RAM is installed at $c00000. Can you guess what happens when I try to configure a ramdisk that's too smart for its own good? You got it.... it assumes I have 12 megs of memory. Bad. You can turn that off by selecting "No $c00000" or "No fast mem" on the Amax menu, but that limits you to 512k. A friend of mine has found a ramdisk that doesn't have that flaw (I forget its name) and I'm running just fine now. In short, although I have only 896k to emulate the thing in and one drive, it seems to work well. I'd recommend it, though you better have a spare mac drive if you want to make sneakernetting things to work or other Macs and back easy. -- Robert Jude Kudla <kudla@pawl.rpi.edu> "Famous? I'm not famous. People come up to me after a show and say 'Hey, Steve!'" -Jon Anderson
liberato@drivax.UUCP (Jimmy Liberato) (12/20/89)
kudla@pawl.rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) writes: >... >You also can't directly read Mac format disks (Amax uses a slightly >different format; if you hook a Mac drive (or better yet, an Amigatosh >drive which is Amiga and Mac drive all in one) up to the back of the >cartridge you can read Mac disks to your heart's content. >... RE: MAST's Amigatosh drive. I was under the the impression that it simply allowed you to eliminate the awkward hardware portion of AMAX by allowing the installation of the Mac proms inside the drive. Can anyone verify if the above statement: "Mac and Amiga drive all in one" is correct? Thanks! -- Jimmy Liberato ...!amdahl!drivax!liberato "Truly great madness can not be acheived
kudla@pawl.rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) (12/21/89)
RE: MAST's Amigatosh drive. I was under the the impression that it simply allowed you to eliminate the awkward hardware portion of AMAX by allowing the installation of the Mac proms inside the drive. Can anyone verify if the above statement: "Mac and Amiga drive all in one" is correct? It appears I was a bit confused. The Amigatosh drive probably only has a place to store the ROMs. However, I'm almost positive that there's a product from another company that is indeed a mac and amiga drive all in one. -- Robert Jude Kudla <kudla@pawl.rpi.edu> "Famous? I'm not famous. People come up to me after a show and say 'Hey, Steve!'" -Jon Anderson
dcr3567@ultb.isc.rit.edu (D.C. Richardson) (12/23/89)
There re two forms of the AmigaTosh Drive. One is the AmigaTosh, which is just a MacCompatible drive, and the second is a Mac Compatible drive that also has an eject button (So Amigaoids can use 'em). It automatically ejects under A-Max (weird to see a button depress itself! ;-) , and works quite well. I don't know if it's Mac only under AMAX or not. Word About AMAX 2.0, from GEnie: 2.0 SHOULD be out in December or January 1990. It will be a paid upgrade (BOO!!!!!!!!!!), and will include HD Support for most st-506 and SCSI drives, as well as binary transfer between the Mac side and Amiga side. Appletalk/LocalTalk (which?) is considered, but sound support will probably not be included (BOO, Again!). Oh yeah, the second AmigaTosh drive is called the AmigaTosh Plus. I'd reccommend it (as you no longer need that gaudy hardware sticking out from the back, or stuffed inside the 2000 like mine is) -Dan Richardson RIT, Mechanical Engineering P.S.: Could someone tell me how to fix an intermittant 'a' key? (if I press real hard, it works, otherwise, it might not)