Amiga 1000 expansions and PC Sidecar

The Amiga looks like the TI with all its expansions;)

Edo van Zanten

Hardware PC emulation was later achieved on Amiga 500 by using KCS Power Board.

DoktorNo

That PC sidecar is nuts, I love it! And arguably overkill, that had to have cost a bundle back in the day. I was only familiar with the DOS-compatible expansion cards for the later machines before, something I really hope to dive into once I get my A2000 going finally

LGR

I remember when BeOS came out. I really wanted to switch to that, but I think there were two problems. One, I was too broke to buy it. And two, I was too broke to buy the compatible hardware needed for it to run on. I never cared for the name either, but I really liked the technology and the user interface. It's a shame it never caught on.

The 8-Bit Guy

I completely missed out on the Amiga when it was happening--I was born just a bit too late, and we were a Mac house--but I love watching videos about them. It's like I missed an entire parallel reality of awesome computing hardware. I do have vivid memories of the rise and fall of BeOS, though... Great video. :)

John T Davis

Okay, found the actual files. They are called "AMax utilities" in SIT format on this page: https://crossconnect.tripod.com/AMAXHOME.HTML

Shachar Shemesh

https://crossconnect.tripod.com/AMAX10.HTML#DISKX This is the relevant section of the manual. I have not found the actual utility, but you might already have it on the version of A-Max you downloaded. You will need a 68K Mac, but being as it is that you were "The Apple guy" before you were "The 8-bit guy", I don't think you'll find that part challenging.

Shachar Shemesh

Try this page https://crossconnect.tripod.com/AMAXTOOL.HTML You do not need a specially formatted diskette. You just need the utility. It can create the diskette.

Shachar Shemesh

Well, that's totally news to me. I wasn't aware of such a format. Hopefully I'll be able to find somebody that has this utility disk.

The 8-Bit Guy

Understood. It was a *way* cool concept, of turning the Amiga into a Mac, instead of emulating it. As for the diskette, that should be solvable. A-Max had a way to transfer a floppy between Mac and Amiga that did not require any extra hardware. The Mac's variable speed meant that some of the disk was too dense for the Amiga to read, and some too spread out, but there was a third that was readable on both hardwares. So A-Max had a utility that would split a diskette to three diskettes, and then re-unite them on the Amiga hardware. They also had a utility diskette that used only the third of the diskette that was usable on both hardwares, so it was readable on both Mac and Amiga. It should be possible to recreate that utility diskette on a mac.

Shachar Shemesh

Indeed. I have a copy of the cracked version as well. But for a video I'd like to show the hardware working too. And another problem is I no longer have any MacOS on A-Max formatted disks, nor can I find them or how I'd even make them.

The 8-Bit Guy

I do not have an A-Max. Never had one. I did run it, however. The cracked versions required neither the disk-drive dongle nor the Mac ROMs. *ahem* so I heard....

Shachar Shemesh

I remember AmigaTransformer, yes. On the 1000, it was too slow to be of any serious use, but PCTask on my later Amiga 1200 was more or less useable, although also not for something serious... But why would you? Macintosh emulation on the other hand was much better, as it had the same processor. At the time, I read an article on the ShapeShifter, from its author, how he started it as just being curious, and was able to develop it in a seriously working emulator. Problem always was the limit of the DD floppy drive in the Amiga (and the inability to read DD Macintosh disks)

MrHammond

Watching the speed of the emulation (which is to be expected, emulation is hard) makes me think what the Amiga needed was a binary recompiler to convert PC software into equivalent Amiga software. I mean, it still would look like DOS software, but it wouldn't have to do the dynamic interpretation of the x86 instruction set (which I suspect is probably the biggest part of the slow down, but I'm guessing). Now I want to write an emulator for the Commander X16 so it can run old DOS software too! :)

Yes. We’ve just had some unfortunate schedule conflicts the last month or so. But we have a lot of topics planned.

The 8-Bit Guy

Are you guys still doing the podcast? It's been months since the last episode..

All the time I spent with those things and David still found stuff to teach me about them. Win!

Bo Zimmerman

Sweet! That's lunchtime's entertainment sorted.

Wizardling