Getting An Amiga..

[skeezix]

I've got a lad here selling me an Amiga 2500 dirt cheap (with no mouse, but with monitor and keyboard and PC bridgeboard or somesuch). Getting a mouse via ebay should be easy. Should be fun

No game software is included however; getting disk images will be a snap.. but can the Amiga boot games straight from a disk image? I'm betting not :/

Is it better to score a machine with a pile of games instead?

jeff

 

[Iorgy77]

You can mount ADFs as virtual Floppies on a higher spec Amiga, but I doubt you will be able to boot from them. You need to convert the disk image to a disk.

You can transfer ADFs over to the Amiga diskdrive with a serial null-modem cable - SLOW!.

The PC Bridgeboard allows you to install a certain old PC network card so you can transfer ADFs over that way - FAST

If you have a hardrive installed it is most likely SCSI so you can whack a SCSI cd-rom in and burn a CD full of ADFs and transfer them to floppy that way - FASTEST.

You can use HD floppy disks formatted as DD as long as they are cheap ones with no logo on the metal bit, they should last a while, others will say they won't but mine have lasted a while.

If you don't have a hardrive you will need a copy of workbench though, unlike the ST the Amiga equivalent of the GEM desktop is not on the ROM.

Let me know if you need a mouse, the transfer software and a copy of workbench.

For more information check out: http://eab.abime.net/faq.php?faq=amiga_faq..._games_xfer_faq

 

[Jarska333]

2500? Is that like a towered A2000? :huh:

 

[Iorgy77]

2500? Is that like a towered A2000? :huh:

​

Nah it's just a 2000 with a different name, there was also an A1500 something to do with the country of purchase IIRC.

A1500
A2500
A2000

I hope Skeezix's comes with the A2091 SCSI card, would make things a whole lot easier.

 

[Huxley]

Infact on many A1500's you can peel off the A1500 sticker to reveal "A2000" underneath.

Ahahaha...I like it.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, problem is: It's not that easy creating bootable disks for an Amiga.
A PC disk drive can't do it, as the Amiga drive is able to change the rotating speed (which it does while reading/writing from/to disk).

So you can't download Disk Images and write them to a 3,5 Disk Drive, you need to transfer them somehow to your Amiga and write them using the Amiga.

You can transfer them via a parallel cable, a serial cable, CD burning (which is probably easiest way to do ) or network (though a network card for the Amiga is hard to get and you need to setup Samba...).

So burning a CD would be easiest.


Regarding direct booting from a disk image:

AFAIK not possible. But you can do it with a little trick:
Since Kickstart 1.3, there exists something called a "RAD:" which is a RAM-Disk which acts like a diskdrive, stays resident and is able to boot.
You can transfer your image to the RAD and reboot.
This should work with most DOS-based games and even some non-DOS-games.

A lot of DOS-Bases games can also installed on harddisk, often, you simply need to assign the name of the disks to the proper harddisk and run the game (similar to a symbolic link).

If you need help, just feel free to ask

 

[skeezix]

Making disk images has always been a drag; I do it enough for the ST But if I must I must

Someone tell me the top-5 games for Amiga (that thread I started is enormous!)

I can burn a CD easily enough (I've been compacting rips of my various carts and disks into DVD for denser storage and preservation anyway), but the tirck becomes getting a CDROM for the Ami. I'll have to check if it has an exposed SCSI port on the back, and then try and obtain a cable of the right type (SCSI is a pain that way, with so many cable endpoints.)

Thats the best approach, then? Copy a pile of ADF's over on CD, write them out with some app (which app?) on the Ami, and then boot them up. (Not that I know how to boot them up; I'm assuming popping the disk into the drive will bring up an icon for the floppy, which launches the game or demo. IT doesn't 'boot from floppy' like other machines do I presume.)

(I never had an Amiga, and will get this one in a few days likely.. $25 for the machine and monitor

jeff

 

[Iorgy77]

It does boot from floppy.

Wait and see what version of Kickstart you have, that will determine which Workbench you need and which tool is best for writing the image to the floppy.

 

[EvilDragon]

Yep. Just tell us, what you get, and we help you setting up your Amiga... you'll also need a CDROM driver, btw

 

[skeezix]

Could be a goofy couple of weeks.. if everything sorts out, I might end up getting an Atari 800xl, a TT030, and the Amiga 2500. Wicked

jeff

I'll keep you guys filled in of course, just can't reply too much now.. gotta run

 

[skeezix]

I am so _buried_ .. as in, my car is full.

See, part two was getting the Amiga from some nice fellah; part one was getting some Atari gear from another super nice chap. That happened last night.

I thought he was giving me an Atari TT030 (one of the killer followups to the ST line) and an Atari 800XL. All told, after all the boxes were shoved into my little car, he passed along the TT030 and a 19" mono monitor to go with it (achieves 1280x960 mono or somesuch), an Atari 800, an Atari 800XL, a floppy drive, a casette dataset drive, a printer (eegad), and two large boes of goodies.. including paddles, joysticks, mice, floppy and cart games, manuals, expansions (like a PC-mouse to ST-mouse adapter, a PC-keyboard to SRT-keyboard adapter), etc etc.

Holy keeeee-rap! I've no room for it all Andf the Amiga is next week..

jeff

 

[DaveC]

Could be a goofy couple of weeks.. if everything sorts out, I might end up getting an Atari 800xl, a TT030, and the Amiga 2500. Wicked

jeff

​

..And you will be getting a GP2X soon too..

 

[skeezix]

*g* yeah; I'm thining of upgrading my PSP, so that it cannot be homebrewed for anymore, but can play the latest games. (ie: Looking forward to Legend of Heroes and a couple other titles coming soon, and they need OS2.0). You can still dev for OS 2.0 in a limited way, and you can downgrade to 1.50 again to be fully moddable.. but I'm expecting later games to need 2.1 OS and then its not craked at all...

jeff

 

[Steve-O]

Just use 2.00 Firmware like me .... Look at all thats supported now!!! ( Plus more as not all has been tested )

Working Homebrew:
AOTM v0.2:Works
PSPong: Works
PSP Blackjack: Working
Original JP Tetris: Working
BMP loader 0.2: Working
PSP Mandel Explorer 1.0: Working
PSP-QUAKE: Working!!!
Casino Addict: Working
SMS PSP Emulator: Working on EBOOT Loader 0.3, not on 0.4
PSP Calc Ver 0.1: Working
PSP SimpleTurn: Working
PSPectrum V01 (succesfully ran 'Ghosts n Goblins'): Working
PSPaint: working
SNEX9X 0.2y32: Working
Megadrive Emulator-Generator v0.22: Working on 0.5
Ghost in the Matrix: Working
NesterJ: Working
UOSNES: Working
Polygon 3: Working on 0.4 (Maybe Others)
Dual Tetris: Works
PSPuzzle: Working
AVI PLAY: Working
VMU: Working
Castaway: Working
Special User Mode Lua Player: Comes bundled with 0.6
Scorched: Working
PSPSet: Working (Not sure if i would recommend flashing files)**Have heard reports of working and not, guess depends on loader version and pspset version**
Attack of the Mutants (0.4 Does work!)
Bookr 0.6 (PDF support works fine now)
Casino Addict (was broken in 0.6)
Freecell
NeoCDPSP 0.1
Noiz2SA 0.5
Polygon
PSP Pacman
PSP Rhythm Composer
PSPRemote - hopefully. Let me know if you are able to test it.
PSPdePon
Puyo Puyo
Robotorn 3D
Snakman
Sega Master System / Game Gear emulator (was broken in 0.4-0.6)
SNES9x TYL 0.1
Terra Incognita
NOIZ2SA
Hue
File Assistant 0.1
DOOM-PSP


list is from PSPUpdates

 

[skeezix]

Can you try CaSTaway? Thats mine .. if it works in 2.0, I'll upgrade. If it doesn't, well, I'll have to find out if I can make it 2.0 friendly, or decide between homebrewing or gaming :/

Once the gp2x arrives, I expect that'll take over for me anyway, and the PSP will just be for Legend of Heroes and LotR: Tactics

jeff

 

[Steve-O]

had a quick try but keeps saying - "can only be loaded from /psp/game/atari_st "

will try tomorrow, need sleep now Cya

 

[Steve-O]

ok, it runs .... just had to put the Eboot file from the castaway folder into the ATARI_ST folder and run it from the ST folder... maybe add a 2.00 version to the Zip file on your site and just put the eboot file into the ATARI_ST folder ready for 2.00 users

Unfortuntaly I think im using a dodgy TOS file as games dont want to run.... But the Emu Runs so once its booted up it should run just like it would on 1.00 / 1.50

 

[craigix]

Hang on, what kickstart does a 2500 have? isn't it going to run next to nothing game wise? You will need to make sure it has about 2meg of ram and get a copy of relokick to switch the firmware.

 

[Mark1970]

On getting an Amiga, if you get a harddrive and Kickstart 3.x/Workbench 3.x it might be possible to run quite a few games using WHDLoad. Which means booting games from harddisk using a special bootloader. A whole sh*tload of games have been converted to work this way. One doesn't have to convert all those adf images to real floppies.

 

[Iorgy77]

On getting an Amiga, if you get a harddrive and Kickstart 3.x/Workbench 3.x it might be possible to run quite a few games using WHDLoad. Which means booting games from harddisk using a special bootloader. A whole sh*tload of games have been converted to work this way. One doesn't have to convert all those adf images to real floppies.

​

yeah, and an accellerator and extra memory... etc... otherwise whdoad isnt very compatible.