jac423@leah.Albany.Edu (Julius A Cisek) (11/03/88)
Hi. I just sold my 3yr old ST system and purchased the Amiga 500. But I
need some info to help start me off.
1. What are the differences between the 500 and the 2000.
2. What is the best (give me facts please, not opinions) C compiler for
the Amiga.
3. Can I hook virtually any hard drive to the A-500 without the need of
a special interface? (I'm talking about IBM compatible drives)
4. I need to have a MIDI and Video workstation, so what software and
hardware would you reccommend? I've seen D-Paint II and am very
impressed by it. But what about video work and MIDI software?
5. What books can you reccommend to get me best started with the Amiga
operating system.
6. I also need numbers for good Amiga BBS's, especially in the NY State
area.
Thanx!
J.Cisek
--
What about technology, computers, .------------------. J.A.Cisek
nuclear fusion? I'm terrified of |Spectral Fantasies| jac423@leah.albany.edu
radiation, I hate the television. `------------------' jac423@rachel.albany.edudoug@homxc.UUCP (D.SULPY) (11/03/88)
In article <1206@leah.Albany.Edu>, jac423@leah.Albany.Edu (Julius A Cisek) writes:
Hi. I just sold my 3yr old ST system and purchased the Amiga 500. But I
need some info to help start me off....
- - - - - - -
I'm in just about the same boat as this poster. Having finally purchased
an A2000, I find myself in need of some very basic kind of information
which will help me make productive use of the thing (All the User's
manual seems to want to do is to teach you to use the Workbench, which
I'm going to try and avoid as much as possible).
A couple of months ago there was talk about setting up something which
would answer frequently asked questions by new-users (perhaps this is even
one of them). Did that ever come about? If so, where can I find it?
Some of the major questions seem to be:
1) Gee. I just spent $1500.00 and Commodore doesn't see fit to throw
in a DOS manual. Do I get the official thing, or is there something
better out there I should use?
2) The address to obtain Fish Disks.
3) What kind of Hard Drive attaches to this thing? What's a controller?
Will it blow up my Amiga? How much does it run, and what's a good kind
to get?
4) What's the word on MIDI out there? What should I attach? What are
you people using? What are you happy with? How much does it cost?
5) Etc.
General Observations:
Obviously, there are a number of good reasons to choose an Amiga 2000
over a 500. But is it worth the extra amount of money? Taking into
account the fact that the two are basically the same machine in
different boxes, I'd say no. HOWEVER, taking into account the frequent
quality complaints here on the net about the 500 - it seems as if you'd
have to buy a 2000 just to have a reasonable chance of the thing WORKING.
Is this unjustified, or is it simply a case of reading 50 bad stories,
where there are 10,000 GOOD stories which aren't told? I'm actually
frightened for the health of my 1084S monitor. Has anybody had a
good experience with this thing, or is it just a matter of time
(like 91 days?) before it hits monitor heaven...
One final note:
Quality Control (or the lack thereof) is evidently not restricted to
the 500. The 2000 I got has the famous shrinkwrapped keyboard cable
(some kind of RF modification? What's the story behind this?), and
came with the disk drive mounting screws loose.
One final, final note:
Is New Jersey the only area of the country that has trouble stocking
the 1.3 software? It's not here. Anywhere. Honest.cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (11/04/88)
In article (Julius A Cisek) writes: > 1. What are the differences between the 500 and the 2000. Expansion slots, video slot, CPU slot, Bridge Card slot (aka PC expansion). These make it easier/more convienient to expand the box. There is also a detached keyboard, and bays for extra peripherals such as a hard disk or 5.25" floppy. Software should not be able to tell which machine it is running on. > 2. What is the best (give me facts please, not opinions) C compiler for > the Amiga. There is no "best" C compiler for the Amiga. You write down what a C compiler should have and then compare Manx and Lattice (and GNU if you want). Something to be aware of is that Lattice has announced that Lattice 5.0 will be available soon (they are predicting this month) and it *includes* such winners as a full source level debugger called "CodeProbe" and a global optimizer, make and an integrated editor etc etc. Then at the same time Jim Goodnow and Manx have been working hard on Aztec C 4.0 for the Amiga and while I haven't heard of a release date it too seems to be a winner system. My old standby is that if you are new to C (preferably haven't used cc on a unix machine) then Lattice will give you fewer problems and better diagnostics, if you have UNIX experience Manx will feel very comfortable and you'll come up to speed faster. Both generate about the same quality code, both support all memory "models", both can run from floppies or a hard disk. > 3. Can I hook virtually any hard drive to the A-500 without the need of > a special interface? (I'm talking about IBM compatible drives) No. If you want to hook an IBM compatible drive to your machine get the Wedge. If you want to hook a SCSI drive to your machine you can either get an expansion chassis and some sort of interface card. Depending on the expansion chassis you may also need a box for the drive mechanisim and some cables. This is one of the key differences between a 500 and a 2000, with the 2000 you buy a card for $300, and a drive for $300 and plug them in to have a drive. On the 500 you need to buy an expansion chassis for $400, the card for $300, the drive for $300, and a box for the drive for $100, a cable for the drive for $30, and then you are set. So you spend $530 dollars *later* for the money you saved up front when you bought the 500 over the 2000. It's worse if you want to upgrade the CPU. > 4. I need to have a MIDI and Video workstation, so what software and > hardware would you reccommend? I've seen D-Paint II and am very > impressed by it. But what about video work and MIDI software? Dpaint II is nice, so is Photon Paint and Express Paint. Video software is tuned for different applications. FantaVision is the best "moving pieces" software so far, another is The Director although it is a bit tougher to use at first. JDK Images Pro Video is nice for titling type effects, and then there are several "renderers" like VideoScape 3D/Modeler 3D and Sculpt 3D/Animate 3D. These are more model based. > 5. What books can you reccommend to get me best started with the Amiga > operating system. What does this mean? Programming the operating system? That would be the the Rom Kernel Manuals and the "Programmers Guide to the Amiga". If you mean just using it like you would DOS or something then the Bantam AmigaDOS manual and Rob Peck's Amiga Companion would be good first bets. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
hgm@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (Hal G. Meeks) (11/04/88)
The idea of an "Amiga Bible" has been bandied around many times. Currently,
I am writing a short user's guide for the speech department here. They have
an Amiga 500, with assorted goodies, and it really isn't getting used the
way it could be, because no one wants to take the time to read the manual.
So, I am making "magic disks" that will severly cut down on their options,
but make tasks like creating TV TEXT screens easy, and scripts in TV Show.
Fortunately, both programs are somewhat easy to use. Unfortuately, TV Show
seems to be somewhat unstable.
Things like xicon and Pete Da Silva's Browser will figure prominently into
the overall scheme of things. These people are used to Macs, if they have
even ever used a computer. I have been seriously tempted to do an Assign
Df0: a: , but I think that is going a little too far.
I am not promising anything authoritative, but it will be easy to read
without being insulting. I might make it available later, if anyone is
interested.
--hal
hgm@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu
dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) (11/06/88)
You can do better than C. Investigate other languages. It's worth your while, and even a learning curve. Look for object oriented languages in particular. Modula-2 isn't object oriented, but it's pretty good. Dan Hankins