[comp.sys.amiga] Neophyte's Blues

mrios@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Rios) (04/19/89)

(...is there a line-eater for the Amiga?...)

I just (really, JUST...four days ago...) bought an Amiga 500 and a 1084S monitor
from my friendly dealer, trading in a C128, 1571, and monitor in the deal.  This
is one SWIFT machine!

So...I have access to the Fred Fish compilation, picked up Zork Zero (yay!), and
am hacking my way through CLI.  What now?  Is there anything that you'd wished
you'd known when you first bought an Amiga?  What can you tell a neophyte (to
the Amiga, not computers) that he might find helpful?

-- 
	Michael Rios		attih!ihlpb!mrios	AT&T Secret Police

20231192189121297114420851912920825201522219494725185114479132125914208523125

scobb@bti.UUCP (Steve Cobb) (04/21/89)

In article <12193@ut-emx.UUCP>, mjl@ut-emx.UUCP (Donald A Kassebaum) writes:
...

> 9) Don't hesitate to modify your default colors to improve the looks
> of text.  The default colors are pretty poor in this regard.  On a
> Commodore monitor, many people prefer dark chars on light background.
> Also, substituting a sans serif font for Topaz helps out 80 column
> text considerably.  Use 'FF' to do the substitution.  Some example
> fonts: clean, pearl.

    Over the past few months, I have seen several references to the pearl font.
    Some saying that pearl 11 is great for interlace screens.  Where does one
    find this font.  It's not on any of the workbenches I've seen. Is it PD?
    or from the original commercial FastFonts?  Any insight (or Email gift)
    would be greatly appreciated.

> Maurice LeBrun		      |   "So then I says to Borg, `You know,
> Institute for Fusion Studies  |  as long as we're under siege, one of us
> University of Texas at Austin |    oughta moon these Saxon dogs.'"
> Internet: mjl@128.83.131.1    |
>  (mjl@fusion.ph.utexas.edu)   |                   (Far Side)


	Steven Cobb

	Biomagnetic Technologies, inc.
MAIL:   4174 Sorrento Valley Blvd. San Diego, CA 92121  ----------------------
PHONE:  (619) 453-6300 x349                             | Disclaim all words |
UUCP:   {ucsd, hplabs!hp-sdd}!ncr-sd!bti!scobb          |  Ye who read here  |
                                                        ----------------------

davidb@utpsych.toronto.edu (David Brodbeck) (04/29/89)

In article <10251@ihlpb.ATT.COM> mrios@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Rios) writes:
>(...is there a line-eater for the Amiga?...)
>
>I just (really, JUST...four days ago...) bought an Amiga 500 and a 1084S monitor
>from my friendly dealer, trading in a C128, 1571, and monitor in the deal.  This
>is one SWIFT machine!
>
>So...I have access to the Fred Fish compilation, picked up Zork Zero (yay!), and
>am hacking my way through CLI.  What now?  Is there anything that you'd wished
>you'd known when you first bought an Amiga?  What can you tell a neophyte (to
>the Amiga, not computers) that he might find helpful?
>
>-- 
>	Michael Rios		attih!ihlpb!mrios	AT&T Secret Police
>
>20231192189121297114420851912920825201522219494725185114479132125914208523125



	First of all get an AmigaDOS manual.  I too had to basically hack
my way through the CLI since there was no documentation bundled with the
1000 (that I got in November of 86) that dealt with DOS.  There was that
cute tutorial, what ever happened to that?  I digress, I had to teach
myself AmigaDOS which was,   well,  A pain to say the least.  There is
some stuff in the Introduction to the A500 book about the CLI and it
could be helpful.  

	Welcome to the club!  Only Amiga makes it possible
-- 
***********************************************************************
      //  | Dave Brodbeck - University of Toronto Psychology |   GO     
     //   | davidb@psych.toronto.edu   davidb@ziebmef.UUCP      HABS
\\  //    | brodbeck@vm.utcs.utoronto.ca                     |  G O 

rap@rap.ardent.com (Rob Peck) (05/01/89)

In article <1989Apr28.174425.7221@utpsych.toronto.edu> davidb@psych.toronto.edu (David Brodbeck) writes:
>>am hacking my way through CLI.  What now?  Is there anything that you'd wished
>>you'd known when you first bought an Amiga?  What can you tell a neophyte (to
>>the Amiga, not computers) that he might find helpful?
>
>	First of all get an AmigaDOS manual.  I too had to basically hack
>my way through the CLI since there was no documentation bundled with the
>1000 (that I got in November of 86) that dealt with DOS.  There was that
>cute tutorial, what ever happened to that?  I digress, I had to teach
>myself AmigaDOS which was,   well,  A pain to say the least.  There is
>some stuff in the Introduction to the A500 book about the CLI and it
>could be helpful.  

The "stuff" in the A500 book about the CLI was extracted, almost intact,
from section 1.6 of the AmigaDOS Manual... which SECTION I wrote.  The rest
of the AmigaDOS Manual was written by the folks who wrote the DOS itself.
Three years since the AmigaDOS Manual had been written, I sincerely believed
that none of the books that had come out in competition with it had done
an adequate job of helping the new user... they copied the layout and
organization of the AmigaDOS manual, sometimes down to the table of contents,
i.e. a chapter on ED, a chapter on EDIT, then Un*x-style man-pages in
alphabetical order, with no information whatsoever telling a new user
WHY they might be interested in learning about the commands.

So with Amiga World, I created the Amiga Companion (blatant commercial
plug, but helpful to new users reading the net, so what the heck :-)
It is fully tutorial for AmigaDOS: type this, here's what it outputs,
here's what that means, and here's WHY you wanted to use the command.
For most everything.  Second edition in process, available RSN :-),
covers all 1.3 options and commands, AND was written with a single-drive
owner in mind for everything.  Some copies of first edition still
available, and Preface has an offer to obtain second edition updates
directly from me so as to have second edition equivalent weeks or months
ahead of actual availability of the (slightly) higher priced new book.

Rob Peck