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Customizing / Expanding a Workbench 3.1 Install on UAE


WhataKowinkydink

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Hello there Amigos - noobie Amiga user here.  Over the last week I've got a nice little Amiga 1200 system going, running Workbench 3.1 with 74 MB RAM (8 MB Fast RAM [onboard?] and 64 MB on Zorro III [card?]) and UAEGFX card.  I have the UAEGFX driver installed and the resolution set to my liking.  I've installed tools like LHA, Installer 43.3, and Guidance as well as some graphics programs like Deluxe Paint 4, PPShow, and ShowPicasso.

 

So now onto some customization, which is where I need some assistance.  I'd  like to install some replacement icons, but looking at Aminet for icons is a bit overwhelming (actually for a few things it is), especially being fairly green with Amigas.  By the looks of things I suspect there are several replacement versions out there, for several versions of Workbench.  I'd like to go with something that takes advantage of the graphics card and extra RAM without slowing things down too much.  I'd also be interested in any recommended updates / expansions  for the OS.

While graphics are (and have always been) what attracts me to Amiga, I'd like to find some useful programs like the obligatory text editor (something a little more feature rich than "ed") and spreadsheet.  And last but certainly not least are games.  My understanding is that most games are designed to run on Kickstart < v3.1, which I'm running.  Does this mean i should just set up an A500 system for games and leave the graphics for the A1200?
 
Any advice / suggestions would be greatly appreciated - thanks for stopping by!

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Welcome along :) Emulation is certainly a convenient way of doing things, allowing you to have pretty much any Amiga of your liking. First point though, the RAM setup you have doesn't really matter in emulation terms, but the 8MB is Zorro-II RAM. This is the area of RAM that can be accessed by all CPUs, whereas the Zorro-III RAM area can only be accessed by fully 32-but CPUs. Some Amigas, e.g. any with a 68000 CPU and the A1200 with its 68EC020 CPU, only have a 24-bit address bus which limits them to 16MB of total address space, of which 8MB is typically used for RAM cards on the A1200. On a real A1200, Zorro-III RAM is only available when you also fit a 32-bit CPU, which is how most accelerators offer more than 8MB, and in the emulation it simply means selecting a full 68020 or higher. Performance-wise, on an emulation it won't make a difference, but I prefer to just use Zorro-III RAM for my emulated setups since it's in a single chunk.

 

Regarding customisations, one of the first things to note is that there have been several updates of the OS since 3.1. There were two major updates towards the end of the '90s (3.5 and 3.9), and then two major updates in the past couple of years (3.1.4 and 3.2). All of these options will give you a revised look with updated icon support as well as massive changes under the hood for a nicer Workbench experience. 3.9 is an evolution of 3.5, and is the OS I've been using on my main Amiga for >20 years now. 3.2 is an evolution of 3.1.4, which is a more stripped back update to 3.1 than 3.9, but includes many of the same core components, including the updated Workbench and icon systems.

 

Icon-wise, there were two main extensions to the original icon format and style that people used on 3.1. These were MagicWB and NewIcons. MagicWB made good use of 8-colour screenmodes to get nice looking Workbench screens on the native chipset. NewIcons patched the icon system to allow more colourful icons, and also introduced a forced isometric style not unlike BeOS.

 

3.5/3.9 introduced the "GlowIcons" format for icon files as well as a new icon artwork style, and there are many collections of GlowIcons that will typically match this style (these will usually be called 3.5 or 3.9 GlowIcons). The icon system also supports the older formats mentioned above. 3.9 example:

 dany5e-f4c64c0f-94d6-4952-af08-e500553f0

 

Amiga OS4 (which is a different beast entirely) also uses the GlowIcon format but a different art style, but some people still use them on their OS 3.x setups. OS4 example:

workbench4.png?itok=TLtzhbpA

 

3.1.4 and 3.2 use the GlowIcons format as well, but introduced a revised version of the 3.5/3.9 look. 3.2 example:

amigaos3.1.4B.png

 

If you do intend to stick with 3.1, installing the replacement icon.library 46.4 will give you compatibility with all of the icon styles above so you can still use them. I would suggest deciding on whichever icon style you prefer, then looking for packs specifically in that style. That should narrow your search somewhat.

 

Aminet can indeed be overwhelming, but it's a great resource and sometimes worth spending a bit of time browsing and trying a few things out. Text editors are something that the Amiga has a lot of, and some are better than others. OS 3.9 comes with a decent but basic editor, 3.2 comes with an excellent editor. Personally I use Redit for most things. It's small, fast and lightweight with basic but useful features. At the top end of the scale, you have editors like CygnusEd, which is very sophisticated and has lots of features for developers, but it's commercial. GoldEd is similar, and also very good (and is commercial), but I don't think that can be found for sale (legitimately) - the author's website has disappeared.

 

For visual updates to all versions of the OS, there are a few options, all of which patch the system but are mostly well behaved. MagicMenu gives you customisable drop-down menus. Arq or ReqAttack will give you customisable requesters. VisualPrefs will let you customise the appearance of many aspects of the GUI, like window borders, gadgets, etc. Birdie lets you apply bitmap patterns to the window borders. All of these benefit greatly from a nice graphics card screen.

 

Finally, for games it really depends on how you want to handle it. Most games will run on any Kickstart, but some older games are troublesome with anything above 1.3 (or the AGA chipset, or a fast CPU). Having a separate WinUAE setup for an A500 is probably a safe bet, and also the most compatible. But for running games on upgraded Amigas (including emulated machines), there's a package called WHDLoad that patches games to make them hard drive installable as well as compatible with higher CPUs, newer Kickstarts and chipsets. Many games also include optional patches for trainers, improved controller support and a key for quitting back to the OS. Installing games from scratch with WHDLoad requires the game-specific installer and the original disks (so in many cases, the ADFs, which are typically images of cracked disks, won't work. Fortunately, you can easily find most games pre-installed so you can just unpack to your Amiga's hard drive and run them. Some might need tweaking, but for the most part they should just work. Personally, WHDLoad is the way I play most of the floppy-only games.

Edited by Daedalus2097
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Thank you for the tour-de-dorce of a response!!  ?

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

the Zorro-III RAM area can only be accessed by fully 32-but CPUs. Some Amigas, e.g. any with a 68000 CPU and the A1200 with its 68EC020 CPU, only have a 24-bit address bus which limits them to 16MB of total address space, of which 8MB is typically used for RAM cards on the A1200. On a real A1200, Zorro-III RAM is only available when you also fit a 32-bit CPU, which is how most accelerators offer more than 8MB, and in the emulation it simply means selecting a full 68020 or higher

This is good to know -- I wish they'd made that more clear about the option actually being "Zorro II" RAM.  I neglected to mention that I set up the A1200 with a 68020, so it's got the full 32-bit address space.

 

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Regarding customisations, one of the first things to note is that there have been several updates of the OS since 3.1. There were two major updates towards the end of the '90s (3.5 and 3.9), and then two major updates in the past couple of years (3.1.4 and 3.2). All of these options will give you a revised look with updated icon support as well as massive changes under the hood for a nicer Workbench experience. 3.9 is an evolution of 3.5, and is the OS I've been using on my main Amiga for >20 years now. 3.2 is an evolution of 3.1.4, which is a more stripped back update to 3.1 than 3.9, but includes many of the same core components, including the updated Workbench and icon systems.

I assume these are all C.O.D. updates, which is probably fine in the long-run.  From what I understand and for my "needs" I think 3.9 with its modernizations would be nice to have.  Kind of confusing at first blush all the different companies involved and version numbers and where all the rights lay.

 

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

If you do intend to stick with 3.1, installing the replacement icon.library 46.4 will give you compatibility with all of the icon styles above so you can still use them. I would suggest deciding on whichever icon style you prefer, then looking for packs specifically in that style. That should narrow your search somewhat.

Indeed I think that is how I'd like to start.  Until I decide on an OS upgrade, I'll definitely use this (i've got a few snapshots of my Workbench partition just in case).

 

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Aminet can indeed be overwhelming, but it's a great resource and sometimes worth spending a bit of time browsing and trying a few things out. Text editors are something that the Amiga has a lot of, and some are better than others. OS 3.9 comes with a decent but basic editor, 3.2 comes with an excellent editor. Personally I use Redit for most things. It's small, fast and lightweight with basic but useful features.

I'll give that Redit a try.  Last night I was trying out Annotate (3.0.1) and wasn't very impressed - it doesn't play nicely being launched from the shell or as an executed command from the Workbench menu.  That said, it does seem like just trying things out - slowly but surely - is a  good way to familiarize oneself with the software library. 

 

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

VisualPrefs will let you customise the appearance of many aspects of the GUI, like window borders, gadgets, etc. Birdie lets you apply bitmap patterns to the window borders. All of these benefit greatly from a nice graphics card screen.

Now that would be nice to be able to do too.

 

8 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

there's a package called WHDLoad that patches games to make them hard drive installable as well as compatible with higher CPUs, newer Kickstarts and chipsets. Many games also include optional patches for trainers, improved controller support and a key for quitting back to the OS. Installing games from scratch with WHDLoad requires the game-specific installer and the original disks (so in many cases, the ADFs, which are typically images of cracked disks, won't work. Fortunately, you can easily find most games pre-installed so you can just unpack to your Amiga's hard drive and run them. Some might need tweaking, but for the most part they should just work. Personally, WHDLoad is the way I play most of the floppy-only games.

Thought I've heard that package name before floating around - cool to know what it does.  I think I'll try things out on the A1200 first, and if I can't get them to work I'll fallback to the A500.

 

Thanks again for the detailed reply!  It was the church we went to when I was in late grade school / middle school that introduced me to the Amigas.  They'd first had some C64's in their "computer lab" which eventually got upgraded to A1000s (if I recall correctly) that always seemed really impressive to me.  Unfortunately we moved before high school where I really got the computing bug.  Who knows, perhaps if we had stayed there longer I might picked one of them up instead of a 486 machine as I did.

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Also note that Zorro-II RAM will conflict with some peripherals.  For instance, if you have a 4MB video card on a Zorro-II system you cannot have more than 4MB of RAM.  Only 8MB of space off Zorro-II is reserved for user space, if you will.

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1 hour ago, OLD CS1 said:

Also note that Zorro-II RAM will conflict with some peripherals.  For instance, if you have a 4MB video card on a Zorro-II system you cannot have more than 4MB of RAM.  Only 8MB of space off Zorro-II is reserved for user space, if you will.

Gotcha - interesting the quirks of old machines.  Thanks!

 

I was actually considering disabling the Zorro-II  and going "pure" Zorro III, after reading @Daedalus2097 's comment ;)

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No worries :) Like I said, under emulation it will make little difference unless you want to emulate older Zorro-II peripherals... Because the earlier CPUs were limited to 16MB of address space, those Zorro-II 8MB are reserved for hardware add-ons because the CPU can't physically reach addresses above 16MB. If something uses half that space up (e.g. a graphics card), then an 8MB RAM expansion can't work so it would have to be 4MB instead, for example. 32-bit-addressing CPUs like the full 68020 and up don't have that limit, so all Zorro-III stuff can fit in the 2GB of space above that 16MB. The virtual graphics card of WinUAE sits in Zorro-III space, as does the 64MB of fast RAM.

 

The OS situation is a little funky alright, but here's a little run-down of the versions, largely ignoring the politics etc.: Back in the day (mid-'90s), the intention was to follow Apple's path and move to PPC CPUs as the 68K line ended with the 68060. (incidentally, the 68060 was a beast of a chip for its time - I had one back then and still have a couple in my Amigas.) To this end, a roadmap was laid out to upgrade the OS to better match upgraded Amigas, with a goal of eventually porting it to PPC. This PPC version was to be Amiga OS 4.0, so 3.5 and then 3.9 were created as stepping stones.

 

3.5 introduced the new Workbench, icon system, and a massive rework under the hood for things like large hard drive support, CD-ROM & printer support, basic internet suite, optional PPC support, better datatypes, longer filenames and a new GUI engine.

 

3.9 improved on this by fixing bugs and adding more user-facing features like customisable menus, dockbar, automatic filetype identification, GUI archive unpacker, new Shell, comprehensive Zip drive support, file search, better image datatype handling, asynchronous Workbench operations and things like CD audio players, MP3 players and even a video player.

 

OS 4.0 is essentially an elaborate PPC port of 3.9, but it has grown since then. A dwindling Amiga userbase, delays with OS 4, and then Apple moving away from PPC meant that OS 4 received a lot less attention than desired, and development slowed to a crawl (though it's still ongoing).

 

Since then, there has been a resurgence in interest in the lower end of Amiga computing (along with the rest of the retro computing world). As a result, there was interest in a new update of the 68K versions of the OS (the "Classic" line). The rights of much of OS 3.9 had since defaulted back to the various creators and developers, so updating that wasn't really a runner. In addition, with the more retro vibe going on, there was less interest in a system like 3.9, which was seen by some, perhaps unfairly, as a bit bloated. So a new update was planned that was intended to fix a few of the glaring issues with 3.1, such as large hard drive support. This update, 3.1.4, used many of the core components of 3.9 however since the developer of those parts also worked on 3.9. So it got the new Workbench, new icons, large hard drive support, better CrossDOS and CD support and a few other upgrades, but was closer in feel and weight to 3.1. The new, colourful icons were optional instead of default as they were with 3.9.

 

Finally, 3.2 took 3.1.4 and re-added some of the key 3.9 features like filetype recognition, the GUI engine, asynchronous Workbench operation and more, including some OS 4 features backported. This is the most up-to-date version of the classic OS, but it still lacks some of the more visual 3.9 features and some people using it have created a sort of hybrid version with some parts of 3.9 brought over into 3.2.

 

Starting with the replacement icon.library is a good option if you're sticking with 3.1. Read the documentation as it's not as straightforward to install on 3.1 as it is on later releases. With the newer icon system from 3.5+, you can simply drag it into SYS:Libs/ and reboot, whereas 3.1 needs it to be loaded during the boot process with a special command. Additionally, 3.1 lacks some of the relevant preferences available in later versions, such as icon colour precision etc. It shouldn't matter much on a graphics card screen however...

Edited by Daedalus2097
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Oh, just remembered that I didn't mention any spreadsheet programs :) Like the main word processors, spreadsheets on the Amiga still work quite well on their own, but their ability to share data with modern applications is limited. There were a couple of good ones back in the day: TurboCalc was one that I used from a magazine cover CD, and it was pretty decent. FinalCalc was its main competitor so should be of similar quality. Both should be easy enough to find.

 

There is a "modern", independent spreadsheet package that was developed recently. I've fired it up under OS4 and it looks good, but I haven't used it in anger. It's called Ignition and might be worth checking out.

 

Since you're interested in graphics, I can recommend a couple of packages. You probably already know PersonalPaint, which is similar to DPaint but offers some nice additional features like working well with graphics cards (albeit still up to 256 colours), and loading and saving almost any image format. Version 7.3 is commercial, but the last Cloanto version (7.1) is still free to download (scroll to the bottom). TVPaint 3.59 was made free for the Amiga when the developers left for other markets, but I can't find the download handy now. I'm sure it can easily be found. That supports 24-bit drawing on a graphics card with some layer support. Photogenics was an excellent, commercial 24-bit paint package for use on a graphics card, but was abandoned some time ago - I'm sure it can be found... Art Effect is still sold, and is another very capable 24-bit package that makes good use of a graphics card.

 

3D graphics are worth a look too with what is essentially an insanely fast Amiga. Lightwave is the obvious go-to, and was a super high-end product back in the day. The interface is hard-coded for a native resolution though, so while I think it can use a graphics card screen, it doesn't take full advantage. Cinema 4D on the other hand, makes full use of a graphics card screen and has a surprisingly modern feel to it. It was released on a magazine cover CD when they left the Amiga market in the late '90s - I think the serial number was included in the magazine itself so you might need to hunt, but it's worthwhile because IIRC the magazine also ran a series of tutorials for it.

 

Edit again: Finally, some recommendations for "modern" Amiga games that really needed a powerful machine to run, so not many people played them back in the day. You should be able to find them, and if you can find full CD images (including audio tracks) as opposed to just the data track, that will improve things as the soundtracks will be missing otherwise.

 

Payback is an excellent GTA-style game with a great soundtrack and some very nice touches. Be sure to install the update because it fixes many gameplay issues found on the original CD version.

Napalm is a very nice RTS game, steep difficulty curve but well worth checking out.

Exodus: The Last War is another nice RTS game, slightly quirky at times but worth a look anyway.

Foundation is a sort of Settlers / C&C hybrid that's great but can be frustrating and unforgiving at times. The Director's Cut or Gold edition includes updates and tweaks to the gameplay.

OnEscapee is a very nice Flashback-style platform adventure/puzzler.

 

 

There are some very good PC ports too, though there's not a huge point in running them on the Amiga emulation other than "just because": Doom and Quake obviously, Earth 2140 is excellent, Descent: Freespace is good but needs 3D acceleration, Shogo: MAD and Wipeout 2097 are very good too but require PPC and 3D accleeration.

Edited by Daedalus2097
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10 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Oh, just remembered that I didn't mention any spreadsheet programs :) Like the main word processors, spreadsheets on the Amiga still work quite well on their own, but their ability to share data with modern applications is limited. There were a couple of good ones back in the day: TurboCalc was one that I used from a magazine cover CD, and it was pretty decent. FinalCalc was its main competitor so should be of similar quality. Both should be easy enough to find.

 

There is a "modern", independent spreadsheet package that was developed recently. I've fired it up under OS4 and it looks good, but I haven't used it in anger. It's called Ignition and might be worth checking out.

Huh, i'm surprised there aren't more conversion tools for that.  Anyway, not  a  big deal since that's really more for checking out.

 

10 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Since you're interested in graphics, I can recommend a couple of packages. You probably already know PersonalPaint, which is similar to DPaint but offers some nice additional features like working well with graphics cards (albeit still up to 256 colours), and loading and saving almost any image format. Version 7.3 is commercial, but the last Cloanto version (7.1) is still free to download (scroll to the bottom). TVPaint 3.59 was made free for the Amiga when the developers left for other markets, but I can't find the download handy now. I'm sure it can easily be found. That supports 24-bit drawing on a graphics card with some layer support. Photogenics was an excellent, commercial 24-bit paint package for use on a graphics card, but was abandoned some time ago - I'm sure it can be found... Art Effect is still sold, and is another very capable 24-bit package that makes good use of a graphics card.

 

3D graphics are worth a look too with what is essentially an insanely fast Amiga. Lightwave is the obvious go-to, and was a super high-end product back in the day. The interface is hard-coded for a native resolution though, so while I think it can use a graphics card screen, it doesn't take full advantage. Cinema 4D on the other hand, makes full use of a graphics card screen and has a surprisingly modern feel to it. It was released on a magazine cover CD when they left the Amiga market in the late '90s - I think the serial number was included in the magazine itself so you might need to hunt, but it's worthwhile because IIRC the magazine also ran a series of tutorials for it.

Excellent! Thank you for the extra suggestions - yes, graphics are where these things do shine for me.   I've not actually heard of PersonalPaint - I just downloaded it to give it a try.  Everything being such, I think it might really be worthwhile (eventually) getting some of the commercial packages.  I'll of course post what get when the time comes. ?

 

10 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Edit again: Finally, some recommendations for "modern" Amiga games that really needed a powerful machine to run, so not many people played them back in the day. You should be able to find them, and if you can find full CD images (including audio tracks) as opposed to just the data track, that will improve things as the soundtracks will be missing otherwise.

 

Payback is an excellent GTA-style game with a great soundtrack and some very nice touches. Be sure to install the update because it fixes many gameplay issues found on the original CD version.

Napalm is a very nice RTS game, steep difficulty curve but well worth checking out.

Exodus: The Last War is another nice RTS game, slightly quirky at times but worth a look anyway.

Foundation is a sort of Settlers / C&C hybrid that's great but can be frustrating and unforgiving at times. The Director's Cut or Gold edition includes updates and tweaks to the gameplay.

OnEscapee is a very nice Flashback-style platform adventure/puzzler.

Heheh - it's funny you mention Payback as I just recently heard about this one - yeah i should totally check that one out.  Foundation sounds interesting too - I'm not familiar with Settlers but a quick glance looks like it too is bit of a mash up of things: War Craft and SimCity,so that looks promising.   Actually these all look good. And it is getting close to time to start concerning myself with games.


But first i thought  i'd show a  screenshot of my NewIcons install :D

 

a1200basic8mbfastram-full-2201131530-01.png

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10 hours ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

Huh, i'm surprised there aren't more conversion tools for that.  Anyway, not  a  big deal since that's really more for checking out.

Well, the spreadsheet programs can usually import and export to a certain extent - you'll have no problem getting raw data in and out, though you might have to resort to CSV format files. It's things like fancy formatting, graphs and the likes that won't transfer well or at all.

 

10 hours ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

Excellent! Thank you for the extra suggestions - yes, graphics are where these things do shine for me.   I've not actually heard of PersonalPaint - I just downloaded it to give it a try.

Cool - it's my pixel art package of choice. It does most of what Deluxe Paint can do, but the added support for many image formats and the excellent colour reduction methods put it ahead of DPaint for me.

 

10 hours ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

Foundation sounds interesting too - I'm not familiar with Settlers but a quick glance looks like it too is bit of a mash up of things: War Craft and SimCity,so that looks promising.

Oh, you haven't played Settlers?  It's one of my favourites from the Amiga years. It's excellent! Gorgeous detail in a low-res screen. Download the manual though because identifying icons and building might be tricky without it, and the game doesn't give you tooltips. Settlers 2 for PC/Mac is really good too, and has a special 10-year anniversary edition that shows up for next to nothing sometimes. As a game genre, it was the start of something new - like you say, a cross between Sim City and Warcraft. You don't control the people directly, whereas in Foundation you do. Indeed, Settlers was actually sold under the name Serf City in the US :) Incidentally, a couple of my Amiga friends were saying they didn't play it much because they couldn't understand it (no manual with pirated versions ;) ), so we were talking about doing a tutorial stream at some point... I might post details here if it happens.

 

10 hours ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

But first i thought  i'd show a  screenshot of my NewIcons install :D

Nice ?

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Just had a look at PPaint - excellent suggestion! 

Now off to install WHDLoad and start checking out some games.  I'll report back with what I find. :D

 

15 hours ago, Daedalus2097 said:

Nice ?

Hehe - glad you like - I thought it turned out clean as well.  (I had to try the installation a few times as I stepped through it too quickly and you can't go back to select a different drawer/volume ?).

 

Thanks again @Daedalus2097 ?

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43 minutes ago, Pokeypy said:

You may want to take a look at the good old AIAB ("Amiga in a Box"), which has glow icons and many other features.

Seems, in the meantime someone has also done a "Remake" version of it.

Whoa - Cool stuff!!  I like the looks of Workbench there in the "original".   (Looks like there's some games on that first link too :) )
Thanks!

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On 1/14/2022 at 6:30 PM, WhataKowinkydink said:

I'll report back with what I find. :D

Well, things are coming along nicely.  I have WHDLoad installed and working (not as much a terror as I thought it might be), and even installed some games from whdownload.  I also installed some other goodies like MagicMenu (see the screenshot below):

PrB7r7o.png

 

Now for the embarrassing part: I forgot to ask about one of the most important things to add: Programming, namely some sort of BASIC seems appropriate.  What would you suggest there @Daedalus2097 ?  Something that is reasonably documented would be especially nice (I know a few BASICs, but each has their own quirks) and from my basic (pun intended) look into things on aminet, it looks like there are compilers - so that's an even bigger bonus.  I like and still use FreeBASIC - perhaps that helps in your suggestion.

 

On 1/14/2022 at 6:52 PM, Pokeypy said:

You may want to take a look at the good old AIAB ("Amiga in a Box"), which has glow icons and many other features.

So I thought try out one of those.  Nice little pre-configured setup there.  It definitely should serve as a guide for more advanced stuff.  Here's how I've tweaked mine so far:

ZJgwia2.png

 

 

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There are many different "distros" out there like AIAB, ClassicWB, BetterWB, AfA and so on. Some of them really are excellent, but they can also be problematic if you don't really know your way around the OS because they typically use a house of cards of patches. If you then go to change something or install something and it doesn't work as it should, it can be very tricky to tease out what exactly is going on.

 

The screenshots look good :) With the power of an RTG true colour screenmode and a fact CPU / WinUAE, MagicMenu supports textured menus and even semitransparent menus - obviously a matter of personal preference, but on my real A1200 with a graphics card I have a subtle texture, and on WinUAE I use the semitransparent effect. Also a couple of other personal preferences of mine: I prefer to have no border on the Workbench window (as AIAB is set up), and to do that you select the Backdrop option from the Workbench menu. If you want to keep the setting, use the Window->Snapshot->Window menu item to save it. The other thing that I do before anything else is enable the ClickTo Front commodity. This lets you double-click anywhere in a window to bring it to the front, and I'm lost without it. It's not a single click like Windows or Linux, so you can still keep overlapped windows when you want. Best of both worlds IMHO. (You enable commodities like that by dragging them from Tools->Commodities into the WBStartup directory. Any program in there gets run as soon as Workbench starts.)

 

11 hours ago, WhataKowinkydink said:

I forgot to ask about one of the most important things to add: Programming, namely some sort of BASIC seems appropriate.  What would you suggest there @Daedalus2097 ?  Something that is reasonably documented would be especially nice (I know a few BASICs, but each has their own quirks) and from my basic (pun intended) look into things on aminet, it looks like there are compilers - so that's an even bigger bonus.  I like and still use FreeBASIC - perhaps that helps in your suggestion.

Yes, there are plenty of options for Basic on AmigaOS. Some are interpreted, but most have at least the option of a compiler. Whatever you do though, avoid the official AmigaBASIC that shipped with early versions of the OS. It's Microsoft BASIC so is competent from a capabilities and compatibility perspective, but it's coded terribly and will give you massive headaches on anything newer than a stock A500 (or emulated equivalent).

 

There are a couple of stand out languages that were the big hitters for Basic back in the day: HiSoft BASIC, AMOS and Blitz Basic:

 

HiSoft has a primarily system-friendly focus and is a solid, professional-feeling package but is limited in capability and so wasn't as popular as the other two, and has largely been forgotten in more recent times. Very little was released that I know of that was developed with HiSoft BASIC. The HiSoft BASIC environment is quite decent from memory, it's all system-compliant and uses the standard OS interface, which should be nice on a graphics card screen, though I haven't ever tried it on one.

 

AMOS is the Amiga version of STOS for the Atari ST, and is primarily aimed at games creation. It has some nice support for things like animation and virtual sprites / BOBs, but is poor for system-friendly software and has little-to-no support for newer machines with AGA chipsets. There's talk of some updates being worked on over the past while, but nothing major has come of it as far as I'm aware. Development is done in its own semi-system-friendly environment, and by default is interpreted, but a compiler option is available (AMOS Pro). There were many PD games made with AMOS, to the point where the games often had an AMOS "feel" to them, and that wasn't always looked upon favourably. Still, it's probably the easiest language to get stuck into for games. One of the big releases that used AMOS was Valhalla, which will give you an idea of the capability, and Super Foul Egg was a very popular AMOS PD game.

 

Blitz BASIC was created to be the all-rounder, and so supports system-friendly coding for applications, and hardware-banging code for games. The command libraries have lots of commands for both options, and many extensions are available, but you can also access the OS directly as you would in C, or include in-line assembly language for extreme performance. It supports perhaps the most modern syntax of the three, and includes many constructs similar to C as well as a semi-object-orientated approach for many tasks, so is probably the closest you'll find to FreeBASIC or VB. Compilation is mandatory; there's no interpreter option, but you compile and run directly from the IDE without any faffing with command lines or anything like that. The default editor isn't great, but it was intended for A500-class machines. It shipped with a replacement editor on the Extras floppy that was much better, as well as better command libraries and debugger, and various components were updated after that. 2.1 is the last commercial release, but there's an Ultimate Blitz CD image that was created in the last couple of years to include all the latest updates. I can't find a download link right now though... Blitz was open-sourced some time ago, and there's a continuation called AmiBlitz that's in active development, currently at version 3.8. This has a totally revamped editor with some quite nice features like syntax highlighting, code completion and inline help, and has some really good include files for doing OS-friendly stuff, but needs a more powerful Amiga as a result, and benefits from a larger screenmode. This doesn't really affect the executables though - if you write something that only uses A500 features, it should run on an A500 no problem. For examples of what Blitz BASIC can so, have a look at the games Worms (yes, *that* Worms), Super Skidmarks and Foundation. And applications-wise, HD-Rec is an insanely complex and heavyweight DAW package written in Blitz. <shameless plug>I did the Amiga port of Dodgy Rocks in Blitz :).

 

Personally, I've been coding Blitz Basic for decades now and will recommend it over the other BASICs. With WinUAE, AmiBlitz 3.8 makes a lot of sense. There's built-in AmigaGuide documentation (press Shift+Help with the cursor on a keyword to open the documentation on the page), and the original Blitz 2 manual, while it wasn't great, is also available in AmigaGuide format from the editor.

 

Documentation-wise, these older languages are never terribly great, but a good source of material is old magazines, which often ran tutorial series on different languages, often accompanied by a demo version on the coverdisk. amr.abime.net is a good source of magazine scans, and for Blitz, a couple of years ago I wrote a series of tutorials for the Amiga Future magazine (which still exists!) <another shameless plug>. They've made them freely accessible along with lots of other workshops here.

 

Oh, and finally there's also AQB, which is a new project that started out as similar in concept to Microsoft's QuickBasic and has similar constructs and syntax. It's early days yet, but might be worth playing with if you like that sort of environment or want to be involved in the development of the language itself.

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On 1/17/2022 at 8:18 AM, Daedalus2097 said:

The screenshots look good :) With the power of an RTG true colour screenmode and a fact CPU / WinUAE, MagicMenu supports textured menus and even semitransparent menus - obviously a matter of personal preference, but on my real A1200 with a graphics card I have a subtle texture, and on WinUAE I use the semitransparent effect. Also a couple of other personal preferences of mine: I prefer to have no border on the Workbench window (as AIAB is set up), and to do that you select the Backdrop option from the Workbench menu. If you want to keep the setting, use the Window->Snapshot->Window menu item to save it. The other thing that I do before anything else is enable the ClickTo Front commodity. This lets you double-click anywhere in a window to bring it to the front, and I'm lost without it. It's not a single click like Windows or Linux, so you can still keep overlapped windows when you want. Best of both worlds IMHO. (You enable commodities like that by dragging them from Tools->Commodities into the WBStartup directory. Any program in there gets run as soon as Workbench starts.)

Thanks and sorry for the delayed response - I always like to have something accomplished before moving ahead.  To that end I followed your suggestions and "finished" setting up ScreenTab all nice nice.  It took a minute to figure out how to use the ClickToFront but then realized there were options under the file "Information".   Both removing the Backdrop and enabling ClickToFront do seem like "first things to do on a fresh install".  Surprised how I ever got along without it now that I've been using it for a day. Thank you for those very useful suggestions ?

 

On 1/17/2022 at 8:18 AM, Daedalus2097 said:

Yes, there are plenty of options for Basic on AmigaOS. Some are interpreted, but most have at least the option of a compiler. Whatever you do though, avoid the official AmigaBASIC that shipped with early versions of the OS. It's Microsoft BASIC so is competent from a capabilities and compatibility perspective, but it's coded terribly and will give you massive headaches on anything newer than a stock A500 (or emulated equivalent).

 

There are a couple of stand out languages that were the big hitters for Basic back in the day: HiSoft BASIC, AMOS and Blitz Basic:

 

HiSoft has a primarily system-friendly focus and is a solid, professional-feeling package but is limited in capability and so wasn't as popular as the other two, and has largely been forgotten in more recent times. Very little was released that I know of that was developed with HiSoft BASIC. The HiSoft BASIC environment is quite decent from memory, it's all system-compliant and uses the standard OS interface, which should be nice on a graphics card screen, though I haven't ever tried it on one.

 

AMOS is the Amiga version of STOS for the Atari ST, and is primarily aimed at games creation. It has some nice support for things like animation and virtual sprites / BOBs, but is poor for system-friendly software and has little-to-no support for newer machines with AGA chipsets. There's talk of some updates being worked on over the past while, but nothing major has come of it as far as I'm aware. Development is done in its own semi-system-friendly environment, and by default is interpreted, but a compiler option is available (AMOS Pro). There were many PD games made with AMOS, to the point where the games often had an AMOS "feel" to them, and that wasn't always looked upon favourably. Still, it's probably the easiest language to get stuck into for games. One of the big releases that used AMOS was Valhalla, which will give you an idea of the capability, and Super Foul Egg was a very popular AMOS PD game.

 

Blitz BASIC was created to be the all-rounder, and so supports system-friendly coding for applications, and hardware-banging code for games. The command libraries have lots of commands for both options, and many extensions are available, but you can also access the OS directly as you would in C, or include in-line assembly language for extreme performance. It supports perhaps the most modern syntax of the three, and includes many constructs similar to C as well as a semi-object-orientated approach for many tasks, so is probably the closest you'll find to FreeBASIC or VB. Compilation is mandatory; there's no interpreter option, but you compile and run directly from the IDE without any faffing with command lines or anything like that. The default editor isn't great, but it was intended for A500-class machines. It shipped with a replacement editor on the Extras floppy that was much better, as well as better command libraries and debugger, and various components were updated after that. 2.1 is the last commercial release, but there's an Ultimate Blitz CD image that was created in the last couple of years to include all the latest updates. I can't find a download link right now though... Blitz was open-sourced some time ago, and there's a continuation called AmiBlitz that's in active development, currently at version 3.8. This has a totally revamped editor with some quite nice features like syntax highlighting, code completion and inline help, and has some really good include files for doing OS-friendly stuff, but needs a more powerful Amiga as a result, and benefits from a larger screenmode. This doesn't really affect the executables though - if you write something that only uses A500 features, it should run on an A500 no problem. For examples of what Blitz BASIC can so, have a look at the games Worms (yes, *that* Worms), Super Skidmarks and Foundation. And applications-wise, HD-Rec is an insanely complex and heavyweight DAW package written in Blitz. <shameless plug>I did the Amiga port of Dodgy Rocks in Blitz :).

 

Personally, I've been coding Blitz Basic for decades now and will recommend it over the other BASICs. With WinUAE, AmiBlitz 3.8 makes a lot of sense. There's built-in AmigaGuide documentation (press Shift+Help with the cursor on a keyword to open the documentation on the page), and the original Blitz 2 manual, while it wasn't great, is also available in AmigaGuide format from the editor.

 

Documentation-wise, these older languages are never terribly great, but a good source of material is old magazines, which often ran tutorial series on different languages, often accompanied by a demo version on the coverdisk. amr.abime.net is a good source of magazine scans, and for Blitz, a couple of years ago I wrote a series of tutorials for the Amiga Future magazine (which still exists!) <another shameless plug>. They've made them freely accessible along with lots of other workshops here.

 

Oh, and finally there's also AQB, which is a new project that started out as similar in concept to Microsoft's QuickBasic and has similar constructs and syntax. It's early days yet, but might be worth playing with if you like that sort of environment or want to be involved in the development of the language itself.

Quite a thorough response -- thank you!  I think I will go with AmiBlitz from both your description and suggestion.  It sounds really rather perfect in all regards.  I look forward to checking it out - which should be sooner rather than later now that I've made some headway on my custom install:
Zx0Lr4x.png

 

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