Playing Amiga Demos on Amiga
category: general [glöplog]
What kind of Amiga should I use?
I was hoping that an Amiga 600 could handle alot of classic demos(since they are nice and compact not a big wobbly pizza like my A500).
Would that work?
How could I get the demos downloaded off of here onto disks that I could just stick in the Amiga & play.(I was an ST user at the time so I haven't got the years of experience operating the Amiga)Hope someone can help(And only a 512k one, boo hoo, the sadness towards the end, nothing will work!)
I was hoping that an Amiga 600 could handle alot of classic demos(since they are nice and compact not a big wobbly pizza like my A500).
Would that work?
How could I get the demos downloaded off of here onto disks that I could just stick in the Amiga & play.(I was an ST user at the time so I haven't got the years of experience operating the Amiga)Hope someone can help(And only a 512k one, boo hoo, the sadness towards the end, nothing will work!)
I am just exactly at a similar state as you. I have bought an Amiga500 just one month ago and I want to pass software too. Finally I got Workbench 1.3 in Amiga disk from one friend of mine and I can continue my work now and I will try it these days..
It's truelly a pain in the ass with Amiga. I beleive it will be diferrent, much easier, a piece of cake with an Atari ST that will arive in one week or so in my home from Germany.
There are lot's of problems. If there existed a programm on PC that would read an ADF and format an 720kb Disk ready to run on the Amiga, things would be much easier,. but Amiga disks are 880kb, a PC drive cannot convert a disk to Amiga format disk. A PC cannot read an Amiga disk in generall, cause of diferrent drive hardware..
But an Amiga can read PC disks, so most of the work will be done in an Amiga.
- You will format a PC disk as an 720kb disk (You close the right gap of a 1.44Mb disk with Silotape and the format /f:720 /u from DOS, I think it's /f:720,. anyways, you will see it)
- Then you will copy amiga files in it, as raw files. Now you can read them from Amiga. But it needs something! Ugh! It needs that you have a workbench disk with CrossDos (MountMF) this will mount the drive to be able to read PC disks too. They are read as di0: E.g. Dir di0: ok I have to tell you more details later about this and the DOS of Amiga..
- BUT! I don't want multiple files, it's a pain in the ass! I want an ADF read and written on an Amiga. This is the problem now! I had a programm called Tequilla. It was reading an ADF on the PC, splitting it in too parts (Cause the ADF is 880kb (Around 902.120 bytes or something) and the PC disks that Amiga should read are 720 kb :P Then an additionall Amiga programm of Tequilla that I read and run through CrossDos, will ask you for the 2 PC disks (Arghh!) to get the files in memory and connect them in one. Ugh! Fortunatelly the Tequilla can compress the ADF sometimes to put it in just one disk. Strange thing is that it formats in a special format the 2 PC disks, neither read from Amiga nor from PC. I am confused.. but I guessed so and it didn't worked, in the final stage, where the Amiga should read the two Disks produced by Tequilla on PC, and reconnect the ADF and write it in a 3rd Amiga disk ready to use! That's what I thought bbut there was a message "Software error" or something when I wanted to read the 2 PC disks. Arrghhh! Perhaps I will need to run the Tequilla Amiga exe from Workbench (I have got it today from a friend as I told you,. now it's time to try again in a more good way)
And I had several disk programms, some loading few commands of DOS,. and there was Sadam virus which destroyed the validation and I was unaware not knowing what validation means as I am an irrelevant with Amiga before,. it was really a pain in the ass, but I am almost in the part to succeed running my first demos and I have learned few basic stuff about how amiga works and the programms and DOS a bit..
But I know more now and I can go on..
There are several things to explain. You may need an Amiga workbench disk to make your work better, (It's a vicious circle, you need Workbench to be able to do your work better about transfering files from PC and file management, e.t.c... BUT to have workbench by your own, you Have to transfer an ADF image of WB in the Amiga,. but you need WB and tools in order to transfer an ADF image of everything! Ughh!! Enough!!! Someone has to send you an Amiga disk with Workbench,. ugh! If you have Amiga friends there, ask them for Workbench 1.3 (WB 3.0 is incompatible with old Amiga's I guess,. you need 1.2 or better 1.3 for the old 16bit Amiga. I don't know about A600 and incompatibilities,. I have A500 with 2MB Ram (.5MB chip and 1.5MB fast,. that's what a demo and my friend who sold it to me told me. Wow!) and I am fine I guess)
Still I will try today with workbench, perhaps all these ADF to Real amiga utils there exists, needs to be run from real workbench.
Another way is via a serial cable to transfer from PC to Amiga, I don't know how this done, I prefered the software way from disks,. anyways. Btw,. does the Amiga have a HD? A second drive? Mine have neither of them, and it's more a pain in the ass...
You can contact me more, if you have problems, I will tell you... I can help you in any questions, cause I had the same problems with a new Amiga as an illeterate with Amiga's before, and I am finding the way anyways..
I have already ran very few demos but as raw files. A util opened ADF files and extracted them on PC, then I passed the files and ran it with Crossdos on Amiga. pain in the ass. Most of the ADF were not opened with this programm. The best demo I runned, Elysium. Lovely!
Cu
Optimus/Dirty Minds
It's truelly a pain in the ass with Amiga. I beleive it will be diferrent, much easier, a piece of cake with an Atari ST that will arive in one week or so in my home from Germany.
There are lot's of problems. If there existed a programm on PC that would read an ADF and format an 720kb Disk ready to run on the Amiga, things would be much easier,. but Amiga disks are 880kb, a PC drive cannot convert a disk to Amiga format disk. A PC cannot read an Amiga disk in generall, cause of diferrent drive hardware..
But an Amiga can read PC disks, so most of the work will be done in an Amiga.
- You will format a PC disk as an 720kb disk (You close the right gap of a 1.44Mb disk with Silotape and the format /f:720 /u from DOS, I think it's /f:720,. anyways, you will see it)
- Then you will copy amiga files in it, as raw files. Now you can read them from Amiga. But it needs something! Ugh! It needs that you have a workbench disk with CrossDos (MountMF) this will mount the drive to be able to read PC disks too. They are read as di0: E.g. Dir di0: ok I have to tell you more details later about this and the DOS of Amiga..
- BUT! I don't want multiple files, it's a pain in the ass! I want an ADF read and written on an Amiga. This is the problem now! I had a programm called Tequilla. It was reading an ADF on the PC, splitting it in too parts (Cause the ADF is 880kb (Around 902.120 bytes or something) and the PC disks that Amiga should read are 720 kb :P Then an additionall Amiga programm of Tequilla that I read and run through CrossDos, will ask you for the 2 PC disks (Arghh!) to get the files in memory and connect them in one. Ugh! Fortunatelly the Tequilla can compress the ADF sometimes to put it in just one disk. Strange thing is that it formats in a special format the 2 PC disks, neither read from Amiga nor from PC. I am confused.. but I guessed so and it didn't worked, in the final stage, where the Amiga should read the two Disks produced by Tequilla on PC, and reconnect the ADF and write it in a 3rd Amiga disk ready to use! That's what I thought bbut there was a message "Software error" or something when I wanted to read the 2 PC disks. Arrghhh! Perhaps I will need to run the Tequilla Amiga exe from Workbench (I have got it today from a friend as I told you,. now it's time to try again in a more good way)
And I had several disk programms, some loading few commands of DOS,. and there was Sadam virus which destroyed the validation and I was unaware not knowing what validation means as I am an irrelevant with Amiga before,. it was really a pain in the ass, but I am almost in the part to succeed running my first demos and I have learned few basic stuff about how amiga works and the programms and DOS a bit..
But I know more now and I can go on..
There are several things to explain. You may need an Amiga workbench disk to make your work better, (It's a vicious circle, you need Workbench to be able to do your work better about transfering files from PC and file management, e.t.c... BUT to have workbench by your own, you Have to transfer an ADF image of WB in the Amiga,. but you need WB and tools in order to transfer an ADF image of everything! Ughh!! Enough!!! Someone has to send you an Amiga disk with Workbench,. ugh! If you have Amiga friends there, ask them for Workbench 1.3 (WB 3.0 is incompatible with old Amiga's I guess,. you need 1.2 or better 1.3 for the old 16bit Amiga. I don't know about A600 and incompatibilities,. I have A500 with 2MB Ram (.5MB chip and 1.5MB fast,. that's what a demo and my friend who sold it to me told me. Wow!) and I am fine I guess)
Still I will try today with workbench, perhaps all these ADF to Real amiga utils there exists, needs to be run from real workbench.
Another way is via a serial cable to transfer from PC to Amiga, I don't know how this done, I prefered the software way from disks,. anyways. Btw,. does the Amiga have a HD? A second drive? Mine have neither of them, and it's more a pain in the ass...
You can contact me more, if you have problems, I will tell you... I can help you in any questions, cause I had the same problems with a new Amiga as an illeterate with Amiga's before, and I am finding the way anyways..
I have already ran very few demos but as raw files. A util opened ADF files and extracted them on PC, then I passed the files and ran it with Crossdos on Amiga. pain in the ass. Most of the ADF were not opened with this programm. The best demo I runned, Elysium. Lovely!
Cu
Optimus/Dirty Minds
I would suggest that you try to connect a CD-Rom to your Amiga 600 via the PCMCIA-Slot (get something like the Archos Overdrive). Then have all your ADF's on a CD (with sucky 8+3 names) and write them to disk as you need them. Also a 2,5" harddrive is really nice to have (search Google for A600HD) and doesn't cost much anymore.
To get a bit off-topic, an Amiga 600 isn't the ideal scene computer for two reasons:
1) It's running Kickstart 2.x which means that it is incompatible to a lot of older Amiga demos which prefer Kickstart 1.3. This could be solved by adding a Kickstart-Switcher (switch between 2.0 & 1.3 Kickstart ROM) to your Hardware.
2) It doesn't has the AGA-Chipset required to run decent demos from 1994+ (and it doesn't has neither sufficient memory nor CPU power to run them as well).
Conclusion: the A600 is somewhere inbetween the OCS-world and the AGA-world. It's good, as long as you don't expect it to run AGA stuff. Compatibility issues concerning Kickstart 1.3 can be neglected. Have fun!
To get a bit off-topic, an Amiga 600 isn't the ideal scene computer for two reasons:
1) It's running Kickstart 2.x which means that it is incompatible to a lot of older Amiga demos which prefer Kickstart 1.3. This could be solved by adding a Kickstart-Switcher (switch between 2.0 & 1.3 Kickstart ROM) to your Hardware.
2) It doesn't has the AGA-Chipset required to run decent demos from 1994+ (and it doesn't has neither sufficient memory nor CPU power to run them as well).
Conclusion: the A600 is somewhere inbetween the OCS-world and the AGA-world. It's good, as long as you don't expect it to run AGA stuff. Compatibility issues concerning Kickstart 1.3 can be neglected. Have fun!
Yeps.. Agree with NoName here. If you have A500 already it's no use of getting A600, too.
Go and get a A1200 directly and you can also watch newer AGA demos. Those don't cost much nowadays, but of course if you have some spare money getting a 030, 040 or even 060 turbo helps a lot. :)
And Optimus, please, we're not writing novels here...
Go and get a A1200 directly and you can also watch newer AGA demos. Those don't cost much nowadays, but of course if you have some spare money getting a 030, 040 or even 060 turbo helps a lot. :)
And Optimus, please, we're not writing novels here...
hmmm... its damn easy in fact.
build a parallel or serial cable from amiga to PC and use ami2pc proggy, this way you have PC: as a device and can use all HDs, floppydisk and cdrom of your pc as a directories on your amiga.
ADF files are easy to extract with adf2disk proggy on amiga too.
Some more help pleaz:
I got the workbench from my friend but still problems,. at least with the utils I have now.
E.g. Tequilla: I run it on PC, it copy's an ADF in 1 or 2 720kb disks (Strange thing is that it format's the disk in a special format, neither readable from PC nor on Amiga) I then run another programm on Amiga and asks for the PC disk(s). When I put the disk and press anykey, it says "disk error or something" Why? I have read the readme.txt and these where the steps I guess!
Tell me which other ADF programms you use. I had problems with some others, as crashes, e.t.c.. but anyways. Still kickin, it must be weeks since I wanted to finally pass some Demos from PC but still nothing :(
I have workbench now it works. Another question for the amiga people out there: It has the programm Mount. But I don't know additional keywords. Mount what? I tried some things like Mount df0: Mount di0: Mount everything,. but I don't know and there is no Mount ? /help or something to tell me what I should write there :P
Some help pleaz! (Ok,. I will ask also the guy who gave me wb1.3 but I will see him after 3 days again)
Hmm,.. raver told me perhaps. Where can I find adf2disk? Ftp's for Amiga programms???
you can find it on Aminet, where else ? :)
http://de.aminet.net/aminetbin/find?adf2disk
http://de.aminet.net/aminetbin/find?adf2disk
I think buying an A600 makes sense, as you can add a hard disk much easier than for an A500. You just have to check out the kickstart version (as early A600 cannot boot from HD : see http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_205.html). Otherwise you just have to buy a new 3.1 ROM which is quite cheap now.
For transfering datas from pc to a500, you can use wartrans. More info on http://amiga.nvg.org/warlock/wartrans/
For transfering datas from pc to a500, you can use wartrans. More info on http://amiga.nvg.org/warlock/wartrans/
intresting this big posters never used amiga... huh...
why not just plug in a pcmcia network card in a 1200 and look happy? serial is slow, parallel is like.. "huh, i got the printer connected to the pc.. ehh?"
why not just plug in a pcmcia network card in a 1200 and look happy? serial is slow, parallel is like.. "huh, i got the printer connected to the pc.. ehh?"
I finally got ADF to disk. But how? By borrowing an Amiga1200 :P
Anyways.. I have other problems. I really really want to watch some demos for the Amiga1200. I downloaded for example Ninja, the similar one that I had seen on PC. I don't think it doesn't work on Amiga1200. I run a file of it and it says "The file is no executable" or something..
Similar thing happens with some other demos, I don't think it is because they don't work on 68020? One of them said in the nfo file, 68020 requirred. So I guess there is something else? I pass my files in disks from PC to Amiga and then write them in a directory. I run them both from AmigaDOS or Workbench (From workbench it says there is no application connected on this file, or something (It's in greek damn!)) I beg you if you know! :)
If not,. never mind! I got severall oldies to amiga disks anyways for my Amiga500 and had real fun watching them =)
Optimus,
it seems as if you have killed the files protection bits.
You can check this with "list filename" which should print someting like "filename ----rwed date time" (where rwed mean Read Write Executeable Deleteable).
If it doesn't, you can easily fix the fault with "protect filename +rwed"
it seems as if you have killed the files protection bits.
You can check this with "list filename" which should print someting like "filename ----rwed date time" (where rwed mean Read Write Executeable Deleteable).
If it doesn't, you can easily fix the fault with "protect filename +rwed"
This is it. Thanx!
somehow the unzip program on amiga deletes the executable flag of files when unpacking. or winzip on pc does this, i don't know. but i always have this problem with zip files on amiga. might be that my unzip program is crap, too. i dunno.
Yop, i don't have any pb..
