ldonahue@dante.nmsu.EDU (Larry Donahue) (06/28/89)
In response to the article DAEMON@UCBVAX.BERKELY.EDU
concerning the A-MAX for the Amiga...
A friend down here purchased an A-Max for his Amiga 1000. His
1000 has 'homemade' expansion RAM (1 Meg worth, total 1.5 Megs on the
machine).
A-MAX has no problems booting with the expansion RAM. In
fact, A-MAX allows you to partition internal memory. You can give 1 Meg.
to the Mac side, and allow the rest of memory to be used by A-MAX
(about 127k or so) and a RAM disk. A-MAX allows the Amiga floppies to
serve as Mac floppies, provided you format them under A-MAX.
A good review can be found in the Amiga Transactor (May or
June issue).
Anyway, pros...
Screen updates are faster than on a Mac SE. Also, if you
select Hi-Res interlaced at the A-MAX preferences screen, you get more
screen area than on a regular mac (excluding Mac II's). Many
applications seem to run as fast, OR FASTER than a Mac SE. But, I
failed to get some applications to run, such as Microsoft Excell.
Using your Amiga as a Mac, under A-MAX, works.
Some Cons...
The manual SUCKS! It doesn't seem to explain anything much or
to any degree complexity.
Printing is bad news. We havn't been able to get the sucker
to print from any application, except Full Paint and Mac Paint. It
won't even print at the Finder level. For now, we have to create a
document in Mac Write, Cricket Graph, etc. copy it to the Clipboard,
quit that application, go into Full Paint, paste the document, then
finally, print it. A royal pain! We don't know what is wrong. We
checked everything from the Amiga Preferences, A-MAX Preferences, and
the Mac System Folder. We're waiting to get a response back from
Readysoft...
If anyone has any suggestions to the above problem, I would
greatly appreciate it!
I was hopeing to use the A-Max as a file exchanger between the
Mac and the Amiga. I have a UNIX account at school, and can download
files (such as fish disks) via ftp on the Mac's at school. I then
wanted to use A-Max to read the zoo files on a Mac formatted disk and
transfer them over to an Amiga DOS formatted disk. There is a brief
discription in the manual on how to do this sort of conversion
(provided the files in question don't have a resource fork), but the
process is VERY long winded. After you go through the process, the
conversion just doesn't work that well. We took a small TEXT file
from the Mac side and converted to the Amiga format. We were able to
read the document, but you could see where an 'E' would be inserted
for '.' or other letters. Hence, transferring a zoo file just won't
work. It seems I'm going to have to purchase (or make) a null-modem
cable to transfer files.
It seems Readysoft was in a big hurry to start shipping the
A-Max units. The software is in sore need of some fine-tuning. They
also need to spend more time on their manual. If an A-Max user
doesn't know much about the Macintosh, I can see him/her getting into
some frustrating problems.
Overall, I think A-Max is a good product. It is worth the $125
(U.S.) for the unit. Be prepared to spend alot of time trying to get
the system up to a level you find adequate, and finding ROM's. The
prices are going up every day (for the 128k's).
Oh... Does anyone know how to download files from UNIX using a
modem? I failed to get ftp to work...
Larry Donahue (ldonahue@nmsu.edu) "Never said I could speel"
"Women...
When I want one, there are none.
When I see one, she will run.
If she's fine, she won't be mine.
If she's ugly, she wants to hug me."
--
Larry Donahue (ldonahue@nmsu.edu) "Spelling?!? Wa's
that???"aegnor@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (David C. Powell) (06/28/89)
In article <LDONAHUE.89Jun27214952@dante.nmsu.EDU> ldonahue@dante.nmsu.EDU (Larry Donahue) writes: > > In response to the article DAEMON@UCBVAX.BERKELY.EDU >concerning the A-MAX for the Amiga... > A friend down here purchased an A-Max for his Amiga 1000. His >1000 has 'homemade' expansion RAM (1 Meg worth, total 1.5 Megs on the >machine). > A-MAX has no problems booting with the expansion RAM. In >fact, A-MAX allows you to partition internal memory. You can give 1 Meg. {Tons deleted for brevity} >-- >Larry Donahue (ldonahue@nmsu.edu) "Spelling?!? Wa's > that???" Hello fellow netters, just a real quick question... I have recently upgraded my Amiga 1000 to a 68010, does ANYBODY know if Amax works with processors other than the 68000 (ie. 68010/020/030) I figure with ALL the people out there with expanded machines SOMEBODY ought to be using Amax with a 68010+ processor, so did/does Amax work correctly? I assume it does, because of the 020' support with the 128K roms, but as of NOW I only have the 64K roms (of off a 512K logic board.. anybody wanna buy a Mac 512K logic board sans roms? ;-) ) but, will Amax barf on the 010 with the 64K ones?? Thanks!! p.s. to Dan Schein, bad news, that fix that 'worked fine' for Transformer... well, it seems as long as the program reloads command.com in a standard way all is well, but if NOT, *BOOM* Workbench 1.3 please.. :-( *BUT* I got PSTransformer from (R'ykandar (sp?)) and THAT works fine, but I end up with a tad less ram... if anybody needs the PSTransformer for ANY version of the Transformer, let me know, I have them both.. Thanks again people!! David C. Powell M.I.S. Senior Ball State University Muncie, Indiana *-David Powell :ARPA: aegnor@bsu-cs.bsu.edu--------------------------* | \/ President :UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!aegnor | | /\etwnk Industries, Ltd. : | *-"If it doesn't work, we DIDN'T do it!"-----------------------------*
jjfeiler@tybalt.caltech.edu (John J. Feiler) (06/29/89)
In article <LDONAHUE.89Jun27214952@dante.nmsu.EDU> ldonahue@dante.nmsu.EDU (Larry Donahue) writes: > >concerning the A-MAX for the Amiga... > A friend down here purchased an A-Max for his Amiga 1000. His [lengthy description deleted] >Larry Donahue (ldonahue@nmsu.edu) "Never said I could speel" Last night at the ATUG mtg., I saw some stuff of interest to A-MAX users. The company that sells the TRUMP card SCSI interface, (don't know the name of the company), is almost finished with a program that allows the A-MAX to be used with a hard drive. Essentially you can partition a regular Amiga HD with a Mac partition, and the system will run off that. Even nicer, you can save a ram-image of the Mac OS to hard disk, then Autoboot the A-MAX from the HD. According to the guy that wrote the patch, It will be distributed as shareware, or possibly included with the A-MAX once it's finished. Another guy at the same company has hacked together a portable A500. Actually, It's even better, since he also hacked A-MAX into the box w/ a 20M HD, and a driver for a LCD display,and 2 amiga floppies, and a mac floppie. The only existing portable Mac!! Just for fun, someone hooked it up to one of those new SONY mini-vcrs with a 3" diag. color screen, and it worked fine Inother news, I have reliable info that someone is working on a hack to put an obese agnus into a A1000. I should know more next month... CYa ============== John Feiler "Life's like a jigsaw, you get the 709 Locust #7 straight bits, but there's something Pasadena, CA 91101 missing in the middle..." jjfeiler@tybalt.caltech.edu -- XTC What's the difference between a duck? ==============
scott@ssgp32.UU.NET (Scott Evernden) (06/30/89)
In article <7958@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>, aegnor@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (David C. Powell) writes: > ... using Amax with a 68010+ processor, so did/does Amax work correctly? With the 128K ROMS, A-Max works just fine with my 68010ed A1000. -scott -- Scott Evernden PRIME Computer Inc. scott@ssgp32.Prime.COM Commercial Systems Group uunet!ssgp32!scott Technology Drive (508) 478-8600 x2984 Milford, MA 01757