My recent AMIGA

Created on 18 August 2011 Updated on 19 August 2011
The AMIGA 1200 screen You can see in the above image the snapshot of the Workbench of the AMIGA 1200, a computer that has an internal 2.5 inches 60 Gigs hard disk that it can use all thanking the OS 3.9 that I have purchased from Vesalia in Germany and that has also 128 Megs of fast ram.
On date Monday 19 January 2004 it has arrived to me from Virtual Works, an italian reseller, the SCSI KIT for the BLIZZARD 1230 IV at the fine price of 124 Euros plus 10 Euros for the shipping.
On date Monday 15 february 2010 I have purchased an used SCSI box and I have inserted into it a SCSI CD reader that I have purchased always from Vesalia; now, thanking the cable that I have purchased with the SCSI box, the AMIGA 1200 can read the CDs now!
The commands bar is changed; originally from AMINET (StartBar.lha) and currently improved by me using Blitz2, seen that it was made with this BASIC language.
I prefer it because the previous got crazy with spaces; this one has satisfied me as user and as programmer!
You can give it a look with AMIBLITZ2, the freeware evolution of Blitz2, the great BASIC language for the AMIGAs!
A little note: let you know that my version of StartBar runs correctly not only under the Workbench 3.0, but under the OS 3.5 and 3.9 also, as you can see!
This is the third AMIGA 1200 that I own, I have purchased it from AMIGAKIT; I have sold the second to an AMIGA italian user like me because the serial port was broken and so I cannot make music; the purchased was not intersted to the serial port damage.
The italian clock that you can see on the top right corner of the image is made by me with BLITZ BASIC 2 from a language example; if you are interested of my clock you can find it on AMINET (util/time/clockita.lha) and if you want to program with BLITZ BASIC 2 too, you can use AMIBLITZ2, that you can find one AMINET.
I have added the voice Giochi (Games) to my programs launch bar; there are now my eight games Avventura, Avventura2, JumpingAround, Mattonite, SimpleSamples, TilesSlide, TinyInvaders, that is the lastest arrived, and WoodenBars.
I have downloaded from AMINET the latest version of VISUALPREFS to make beautyful a bit the Workbench; you can see how are the windows now; my commands bar now has orange buttons instead of the back colour as normally.
I have installed on the AMIGA 1200 and on its mirrored copy on the PC with WinUAE the version 1.3 of Horny, a MIDI sequencer for all the AMIGAs with the OS 3.5 minimum, now freeware thanking its author.
Ay first start the buttons was missing, so I have contacted the author that has suggested me to download from AMINET a PNG images DATATYPE and after having done it I have seen his sequencer running on the AMIGA 1200 with the corrept graphics!
There are four new partitions, the first retains the demo that runs correptly on the AMIGA 1200, the following two retain my motifes in WAV format (the base audio format of all the Windows versions) that I have made with the PC, and at last the one that retains all the AMIGA archives I have downloaded since its creation the last year to now.
Now the Horny and SGrab icons are on the OS 3.9 official programs launch bar; I have found SGrab on the AMINET CD number 45 (look at the kind of processor your AMIGA has for the jpeg.library, if you want to save the screenshots in this format!).
Now the Workbench colours are sixteen and the backdrops are dithered with these; On this colours I have created a buttons array for the windows of the AMIGA 1200 Workbench, if you want them look on AMINET the EsseEmmeErreVisPre.lha archive, I have uploaded into this archive to share them with who likes them!
Now as you can see I succeeded to live Directory Opus Magellan II togheter with the OS 3.9; there are some problems still at start but I hope to solve these too; infact sometimes the alternative loading of Magellan stops and I have to reset the AMIGA 1200.
The AMIGA screen on the PC Here is the mirrored environment of the AMIGA 1200 emulated by WinUAE: do you notice any difference?
There are differences, the true AMIGA 1200 Workbench is fast, because it is true, however the same AMIGA emulated Workbench is usable.
An AMIGA mirrored copy is useful as safety copy, seen that all the data are the same; to obtain a whole AMIGA copy you must have a medium to transfert the data from one computer to the other; in my case I have used two cables, one trasformed from adaptor 9 pins female-25 pins male to null modem modified by me following the AMIGA FOREVER by CLOANTO documentations, the other a simple 25 pins female-female extension; I have connected the two cables and I have connected the 25 pin female side to the AMIGA 1200 serial port and the other side 9 pins female to the PC serial port.
After all, it is simple to copy data between the true AMIGA 1200 and the PC by AMIGA EXPLORER, a programma included with the 3.0 version and following of AMIGA FOREVER.
It is really easy to do so on the PC, it is sufficient to create a new directory and fill it of AMIGA data; then it must be edited every AMIGA configuration that will use that partition (the directory) giving the details into the WinUAE hard disk emulation, that's all!
Otherwise, on a real AMIGA like the AMIGA 1200, it is necessary to create a new partition on the AMIGA hard disk, deleting the partitions that was in the position of the new one, and to format the new partition and all the partitions that were been modified; after this, you must have again a medium to transfert the data to the new partitions.
Note: to avoid transmission errors using the cable with between AMIGA and the PC it is necessary to reduce Workbench colours because the AMIGA 1200 cannot use many colours while transferting data on the serial port!