Commodore Amiga 500 demonstration - Part 1: Intro and basic Workbench 1.2 features

[enigmaticbee]

This is a really good and informative video.

[retronostalgic]

Ahhh the Amiga 500 - what a classic machine!

[ryfodrea]

although loading things from the RAM disk are a ton faster, the more u put on the ram disk the more it will slow down, so be sure to check memory stats on it before u put it on there, otherwise no matter what is open it will run slow because ram space is being taken up.

[m3t4llord]

its the amiga 500+

[m3t4llord]

i have a problem with my amiga when i trun it on i get a flashing white screen and a flaching LED on the keyboard any help?

[LordFvckingHorst]

@m3t4llord Do you have any expansions installed (like RAM upgrade)? If so, try starting the amiga without it.

[m3t4llord]

@LordFvckingHorst no i didn't have any in the first place

[ryfodrea]

@m3t4llord maby try ur OS disk in a diferent computer, if u still have the issue on the other computer then its ur OS disk and it needs to be replaced. there may also be a problem with hardware.

[agltbialik]

Oh Fat Agnus, Denise and Paula. I miss those names. I had the 1000 with all the signatures on the inside of the case. If I remember correctly, I eventually got a 1200 (and CD32), but I remember using the 1000 more than anything. I miss the Amiga so much.

[MaximumRD]

Nice overview! Great machine.

[walter0bz]

capable games machine that happened to come with the most advanced OS of it's time .. a unique blend.

[an1man1ac54l1f3]

Seeing as manufacturing of floppy disks ceased in March this year, is there a way to mod an Amiga 500 to not need a floppy to boot it or something?

[jamesbooty]

@an1man1ac54l1f3 I don't know specifically of any A500 with such a mod, but I know you can use Compact Flash cards in place of an HDD on Amiga models that booted from a hard drive. I have seen several A600 and A1200s online that run this way. Since it was possible to get an Amiga 500 to boot from a hard drive, my guess is that something similar could be done for it too. I just don't know how to do it.

[GamleErik100]

Had to sell my A500 to afford an A1200. I still have the latter, it works and it has a 50 MHz 68030 CPU and also an FPU, plus a whopping 34MB of RAM. :P The harddrive went belly up though. Need to get a 2.5" drive and get it back up and running again.

[TeamRocketReviews]

Is this a PAL or NTSC model?

[jamesbooty]

@TeamRocketReviews This is a North American NTSC version.

[TeamRocketReviews]

@jamesbooty How much do these go for in the US?

[KaitainCPS]

I think I'm right in saying that no machine other than the Amiga has ever offered the split-mode video screen capability, even contemporary machines. Can anyone confirm or refute this?

[jamesbooty]

@KaitainCPS I have never seen it on any other platform. It was pretty cool back in those days to have two "screens" with completely different resolutions and color depth modes being simultaneously displayed on a single monitor. Now, with full HD and color modes on modern PCs, that feature wouldn't really be useful. The closest thing to this today is probably the multiple desktops you get with some Linux distros.

[walter0bz]

@KaitainCPS -

other machines could do it but not supported in the OS or with dedicated h/w, e.g. preceding 8bit commodore and atari800 machines could do similar effects with software interupts.

i think some of the apple machines had palettes selectable per scan line which is a subset of what the copper could do.

some could drive different screens with different display modes ,e.g. text mode on one and color graphics on another

[miniroll32]

Quick question dude: When you changed the preferences (like the mouse pointer colour, desktop etc) did you have to do that EVERY time you used the computer?

[jamesbooty]

@miniroll32 No, you will notice that there is a "Save" button in the Preferences window which would allow you to retain the current settings on subsequent boots.

[rtrgrl78]

Cool video, very informative. I like the speech bit, reminded of Arnold Schwarzenegger! I had the Commodor 64 both the biege 'bread bin' one, which was my dad's and I had the plain vanilla coloured one. I got mine with the light gun around '89. When I was younger I'd see in the magazines, the Amiga 500 and always wanted one. Then however I got into consoles.

[SuperNashwan75]

In Brazil on the 80's and 90's the Amiga Kicked Ass.

[samwyse2006]

I thought all Amiga 500s had Kickstart 1.3.

[sheridanmedia]

@samwyse2006 Earlier (1987) Amiga 500s and 2000s had 1.2. The one I originally owned had 1.3, but I sold that when I bought a 3000, and I acquired this older one after I started missing my old 500.

[321bytor]

Amigas came with a free mullet.

[jamesbooty]

@321bytor Damn. I wish I would have known that. I paid for mine :)

[321bytor]

@jamesbooty There's a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets...(look Millets up...). Respect. Nice video.

[zachthezombie]

do you need the workbench disk to play games

[jamesbooty]

@zachthezombie Most games had their own bootable disks, so you usually did not need to insert the Workbench disk in order to play the game.

[bar4122]

hello james thx for the help aim from belguim ai have a commodore amiga a500

[jamesbooty]

@bar4122 It's been a while, but here's how I remember doing it. If you have a PC with a 3.5" drive & WindowsXP you can install a floppy driver allowing it to recognize Amiga formatted disks. Then, download a utility called "ADF2DISK" and transfer it via floppy to your Amiga RAM disk. Copy the ADF file you want to a disk on your PC, then put it in your Amiga and copy it to the RAM disk. On the Amiga, use ADF2DISK to convert the ADF file from RAM to a floppy and the disk should be usable.

[jamesbooty]

@jamesbooty This is a condensed version of the instructions. I will make a video demonstrating how to do it.

[bar4122]

hello ai have a qeustion can ai download the software

ai have a commodore amiga to

[jamesbooty]

@bar4122 What Amiga model do you own? There are different ways to go about this depending on the hardware you have. You can probably Google "Workbench ADF" and find them, but I'm not sure about the legality of downloading an Amiga OS. My suggestion is to get a copy of Amiga Forever from Cloanto. As I recall, you get various Workbench image files with it, and you can convert those into floppies for your Amiga. I plan on making a video demonstrating that procedure.

[JLTSoft]

Good job on the A500 videos. I had an A500 in 1988 and an A2000 in 1991. Good times! Any chance you could post a video of the AmigaBasic program that played "Ave Maria" (Bach version) while displaying lines on the screen? I used to listen and watch that for hours... But then I guess I'm easily amused! :)

[jamesbooty]

@JLTSoft I probably have that on a disk somewhere. I also wrote a few programs in AmigaBasic. I think I will do a video dealing with Amiga BASIC, and perhaps one on the more memorable demos, such as the Juggler.

[willrobinsonensoniq]

0:52 I had that BoomBox too.

[jamesbooty]

@willrobinsonensoniq Sweet! I still have mine, and although it is a bit beat up and the cassette decks don't really work anymore, I actually have it set up with a switch to play audio from the computers in my collection, so it still occasionally plays Amiga audio through its speakers.

[willrobinsonensoniq]

@jamesbooty I used to "remix" on that machine back in the day.I never had an Amiga though I came close to getting an Atari ST.

[jamesbooty]

@willrobinsonensoniq I was certainly on the Commodore side of the Amiga / ST rivalry due to growing up with a C64. I was a fan of both Commodore computers and ENSONIQ synths, and didn't know at the time that there was a relationship between them. It wasn't until many years after both companies went under that I learned Bob Yannes, who designed the SID chip for the C64, was also one of the founders of ENSONIQ.