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) 444-8075kudla@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 Andersonliberato@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 Andersondcr3567@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)