From: Jarrett_Volzer@neonate.amiga.atl.ga.us (Jarrett Volzer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Subject: Re: AMaxII and upgrading my 500
Date: 5 Sep 92 04:24:41 GMT
Organization: The Village BBS

In a message dated Thu  2 Sep 92 17:08, Mld@kepler.unh.edu (michael L Dupui
wrote:

 MLD> How is AMaxII?  I had used Amax but that was a while ago.  Can it
 MLD> run system 7?

Amax II and Amax II+ run great.  Major programs seem to run fine.  The only
annoying thing is the flicker, since it uses Amiga interlace mode (unless
you get a Flicker Fixer or something).  You can use it in non-interlace,
but then you need to scroll around the screen.

 MLD> Do you still need to buy Mac roms to use it?  It doesn't support
 MLD> color yet does
 MLD> it?  How much is it?  Can the Amiga drives read Mac floppies now?

Yes you need Mac roms, but they've been selling used on the net for around
$75.  No, no color.  I don't know the new prices, but used, you can find an
AmaxII, Mac drive, Mac ROMS and software for around $250 for the whole
package.  The II, (the plus won't work with the 500 since it's a card for
an expansion slot) will not read/write Mac formatted disks in the Amiga
drive, which is why you should look for someone selling a package with a
Mac drive included.  You can use the Amiga drive for storage though, by
formatting the disks in a special Amax format which neither the Amiga or
Mac can read...only Amax.  You can also format a disk to a 'mini-disk'
format that allows you to put it in a real Mac to copy programs onto it,
then put it in the Amiga drive and read it with Amax, but you can only get
something like 270K on a disk, so copying a large program could take many
disks.  If you have a HD though, this would be an effective way to get
programs from the Mac to the Amiga for Amax, without having a Mac drive. 
Or, you could of course, wnload right onto the HD or an Amax formatted
(880K I think) disk.
 
If you upgrade to an A2000, you can get Amax II+, which allows you to read
and write true Mac disks in the Amiga drives.  It also has MIDI
capabilities built in, AppleTalk support, and Mac serial ports on the card,
to allow use of Mac devices.  I know someone who has both, and they work
fine.

 MLD> Now about upgrading my 500, how much does it cost to upgrade to the
 MLD> new roms and
 MLD> software?  I currently am running 1.3.  What's the best way to go
 MLD> about doing
 MLD> it?

Well, a lot of folks, like myself, are quite happy still using 1.3.  Almost
everything still run on it.  Very few things yet are for 2.0 only.  If you
don't have a hard disk, I would consider that much more important of an
upgrade than 2.04 ROMS.  If you'll get Amax, you'll probably want a couple
of megs of RAM too, if you don't have it, since the Mac likes to use up a
lot.  I found that my most useful upgrade to my 500 was simply activating
my Fatter Agnus (1MB), to allow me to have 1 MB chip RAM insead of 512K. 
This greatly improved the useability of D-Paint & some other stuff.  I
don't know that a speed upgrade would be all that usefull (at least for as
much as it costs) unless you do some ray tracing, but that's just my
opinion.
 
Jarrett_Volzer@neonate.amiga.atl.ga.us
 
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