A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

Hi. I'm new here, just registered.
I was active in the C64 scene some decades ago, but I was never active in the Amiga scene, although I had a couple (500/1200) and used to enjoy all the demos. Incredible machine for its time.
Is the scene still "big" ? And what's seems to be the most popular chipset in the scene, OCS/ECS/AGA ?

nbm.-

Hello..
It's a small scene these days. In total 60 new Amiga releases were added to pouet.net during 2009, about half of them beeing OCS/ECS... But I'd say that most of the "high quality releases" are using the AGA-chipset (and the 060 cpu).

Sorry for asking a question and just disappear..
Thats sad to hear, although I don't think 60 releases sounds too bad. I guess its about the same as the C64 scene these days.
I'm about to buy myself an A600 and will try to do some demo coding. I find ECS (OCS) most appealing and I guess I can make 100% A500 compatible code on a 600 (atleast if I don't use any of the "new" ECS stuff) ?
I will most probably be asking a few stupid and hopefully some less stupid questions in the coding forum later.

I want to thank for a cool site and hopefully(?) you'll be hearing more from me later :-)

nbm.-

The amiga scene is quite small and has been that way for the past couple of years. However, it seems quite stable and most of the groups that still produce stuff nowadays are really good at it. At breakpoint this year, no less than 4 groups from the past (10 or more years) returned which is always a nice surprise. The quality of the releases is generally very good. I still love the amiga scene. It will always have a place in my heart and it's a great platform in between "low-end" (c64, spectrum,...) and "high end" (pc).

I really do hope that you find the courage to start coding! Feel free to abuse the forum with coding questions. It's here for exactly that reason. And i do hope to hear more from you later (or sooner) :)

nbm: welcome to our small, but exclusive ( :-) ), gang of Amiga enthusiasts. As z5 points out the guys who are active, have been active for years now, and it seems we are in it 'till we die. But yes, the gang IS small. For instance, in Denmark you can count the number of active Amiga sceners quite easily - 3 active groups (Blueberry, Maytz, Farfar and Booster in Loonies (perhaps also Psycho), Curt Cool in Depth and then Optima and I in Focus Design).

Hey nbm - welcome :-)

Like z5 said - it would be really nice to see you start doing some Amiga coding.

I just started Amiga coding myself a while back - it's fun. :-D

If ever you want any help getting started feel free to email me - I can't say I'm as good or experienced as most of the other coders on here but I'd be happy to help you however I can. :-)

http://retro.untergrund.net

Thanks for the warm welcome :)

Nice to hear that old sceners are returning, hopefully many more will follow.
I saw the Breakpoint demos. Just mindblowing! Almost gave me cold feets about starting coding.. almost :)

I always kept an eye on and loved the Amiga scene back in the 80/90's and regret that I never really joined in. Back then the whole idea of a multitasking os, allocating memory, coprocessors and such was just a bit too much for me, I was used to the c64 where I just opened the monitor and coded away :). So I stuck to the c64 and kept buying and selling my Amigas.
Somehow the Amiga doesn't seem that intimidating anymore so maybe I get to fulfill a longtime dream of mine and make an Amiga intro/demo. The quality can definitely be questioned though :). But anyhow, its the fun of doing it that matters. That is also the reason for wanting a real machine and not do the coding on a pc/uae. The retrofeeling matters more than the comfort of a modern environment.

As I said, I am/was about to buy an A600, but a friend of mine said he has a 1200 with an accelerator laying around I could have. So I may drop the 600 and go for aga after all. The 600 is cool though, so maybe I'll get both (to my girlfriend's frustration as the house is already full of retro computers :-).

Do any of you use an lcd tv with your Amiga, how is that working ? I have a 1084S, but would like to have a better display which takes less space. Or how does the Indivision work, any good ? Would be nice to work in 1024x768 resolution.

@pmc Great intros! Its like taking a timetravel to the good old days, feel like a youth again when I see them :) Keep them coming please.

Ok, I'm off to read a little about libraries and hardware registers.. see you in the coding forum next :)

Most LCD screens will not accept the 15 KHz low resolution modes of the Amiga, but there is one recent screen from BenQ that will. You can find a good post with pictures of what usage looks like on the English Amiga Board.

A good advice is to look into cross developing before you spend money. I like ASM-One and find it very useful for quick testing with all its integrated tools, and I can be pretty zealous and even bigoted about this, but I learned the hard way it can be expensive to kit your A1200 out just to learn that you are more productive in your usual desktop environment that you've grown accustomed to using.

The WinUAE 68000 and OCS/ECS/AGA emulation is amazingly accurate, and the speed of the emulated 68020 is getting very accurate as well, so there's really no immediate need for doing all testing and development on the real thing. WinUAE also runs full speed through virtualization tools if you're not on Windows.

Now thats actually a bit funny. I already got that BenQ screen. So now I only need to get the RGB->VGA cable. How cool is that? :)

As for the 1200, I get it for free from a buddy of mine and its already equipped with a 50mhz (1230?) and 8mb fast or something (he couldn't remember). All I need is to get a new PSU.
I can see that the comfort of your usual environment can boost the productivity, but there is something about sitting on the real hardware. I already spend 8-10 hours a day in XCode or Visual studio so I like the feeling of something crude and different :). I can see myself use vasm/vbcc if/when I start on a bigger project though.

WinUAE is really great, I wish E-UAE was equally great as I prefer using OSX.

About the Indivision: It's awesome. :)

The installation is a bit cumbersome, but not difficult. You have to remove the metal cover from the A1200 motherboard. The Indivision is then attached onto the Lisa chip by simply clicking it into place.

The VGA output you get is super crisp. Much better than any other output I have seen from an Amiga. And it can be connected to any monitor, even if it doesn't support 50Hz refresh rate, since the Indivision has an option to multiply the refresh rate by 1.25 (so PAL becomes 62.5Hz and NTSC becomes 75Hz). Of course, this destroys the Amiga smoothness, so it is highly recommended to use a monitor which supports 50Hz (many do, even some that claim they don't).

I was fortunate to win one at Breakpoint 2009 (and another one in 2010), so my old, external scandoubler is collecting dust now...

A funny thing I noticed in the Indivision output: As any oldschool Amiga coder knows, if you change the background color too early in the scanline (e.g. copper wait command $0001), the color changes in the right border of the previous line. You have to use wait command $0007 or similar. However, Indivision hides this "bug", making the color change between the scanlines even with wait command $0001.