From: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dan got the Amiga 1000!
Date: 23 Dec 92 21:54:52 GMT
Reply-To: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett)
Organization: BLAZEMONGER INCORPORATED

In article <1992Dec23.053811.10127@usl.edu> das9674@usl.edu (Stephenson Daniel A) writes:
>an Amiga1000, with half Meg, a 1080 monitor with a broken speaker, and an
>extra floppy drive.

	That's about the most minimal Amiga one can survive with. :-) When I
first bought my A1000, it was identical to this, except the speaker worked
and I didn't have the extra floppy.  It took only 24 hours to be convinced
to buy the second drive, which cost over $250 I believe!  Adding 2 MB of
extra RAM turned the Amiga into a *very* different machine.  Adding a hard
drive made it usable for 5 years.  I still have it.

>Yea, verily, this about the rock-bottom as far as Amigas go, and surely
>isn't representational, say, of Dan Barrett's mega-Amiga (wanna let me
>borrow it? 8) )

	Dream on. :-)

>Anyway, here are my First Impressions:
>1) FLICKER-O-RAMA

	No surprise.  But one can do a lot of work in the non-interlaced
modes, and never experience flickering.  That's how I survived on my A1000
for so many years.

>6) Real Low Res-Like.

	Yep.  But not simultaneously with the flickering.  You either get
200 scanlines (non interlaced) or 400 (interlaced).

	In general, with this base A1000, you're going to get terrible text
display, slow floppy access, an outdated Workbench, flicker in the interlaced
modes, and 68000 speed.  On the other hand, you get graphics that are better
than most other 68000 machines, a nice multitasking OS (though in 512K you
won't really experience the full benefits), *fast* windowing (faster than
the Sun workstations of its day), and excellent PD software.

	Today's Amigas are far, far, far better... even though they don't
have the cute keyboard garage. :-)

>How in hell do I kill a Shell?!

	Type "endcli" and press RETURN.  Today's Amigas let you click on
a close gadget to close it.

	Note that shells get more accessible and usable if you have a
program like "PopCLI" or "DMouse" running in the background.  Pressing a
hotkey will pop up another shell anytime you need one.  (Back in the old
days, it was easy to close the Workbench and all your shells and suddenly
realize that you needed one... but there was no icon to click on, and no
way to type "newcli" and open a new shell!!!  The only recourse was to
reboot!)

>Why can't I drag a window DOWN so that part of it 'hangs' off the side or
>bottom?

	Amiga (Intuition) windows don't do that; they must remain entirely
inside their screen.  Today's Amigas get around the problem by letting you
specify a screen larger than the monitor display, and you can drag your
windows all over it.

	Amigans have been arguing for years about wanting the ability to
drag windows "offscreen."

>I am Deluxe Paint II here.  I can 'drag' the screen down in it... is that
>supposed to do something? How do I toggle from the paint program
>and the WorkBench (which is 1.3.2, by the way)

	Screen dragging lets you work with any screens that are "behind"
your current screen.

	If you had more RAM, you would see the Workbench screen "behind"
DPaint and could use it simultaneously with DPaint.  However, with only 512K,
DPaint probably closes the Workbench screen while it's running (and reopens
it on exit) so it's not available to you.  Having 2MB or more of RAM makes a
huge difference in the usability of the system.

>Real quick like - how do I change the resolution of the workbench, and
>the colors?

	Double-click on "Preferences" to change various stuff like this.
Note that Preferences has improved *immensely* from 1.3 to 2.0, so you might
not have as much control as you'd like in 1.3.

>Also does someone know how I might hook this baby up to my 386 (which has
>an internal modem) and use a term program FROM the AMiga?

	You should be able to use a null modem cable directly between your
serial ports.  WARNING:  the A1000 has a nonstandard serial port.  Don't
connect things unless you know what you're doing or buy the proper cable.
(All later Amigas have a standard IBM-PC-compatible serial port.)

>Where can I get the Work Bench Lander thing?  Peter da Silva, you know what
>I mean?

	Fish Disk 114, available by ftp on grind.isca.uiowa.edu.

                                                        Dan

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Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy