Category: Computers

Related to computers. Unsurprisingly.

My Amiga drive! It lives!

Today is a joyous day. well, yes, technically, it was yesterday now, but quite unbelieveably, my Amiga drive survived, and I’m over the moon to confirm that it actually works.

I know, over the last few days, I’ve promised some type of fanfare, or some type of great reveal about it. I decided that it would just be the worst thing, that I spent the time setting up a live stream, getting all excited, and finding that the drive didn’t work, or not spin up, or anything like that. Obviously, I’m typing this now, so I can confirm none of this actually happened. But still, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

On the off-chance, anyone is here to find out how to convert an A1200 hard drive to a machine readable format, let me give you a quick run-down. Now, unfortunately, despite me slamming the “PrtScr” button for all its worth, I totally forgot that UAE and Dropbox don’t play nicely when it comes to taking screenshots, so sadly, I didn’t get any of the procedure, but it was unbelievably painless. The one thing to remember is that you *must* run WinUAE as administrator, otherwise the drive will appear with [ACCESS DENIED] next to it.

I initially had a panic about having to set the amount of heads and cylinders, but thankfully, this never materialised. Despite the drive’s age, it still had an automatic config, and WinUAE picked it up correctly. It’s then just a case of creating the image fine, and sitting back while it chugs though.

I was almost certain there was one bad sector on the drive, so I watched with baited breath, as the bar chugged its way across the disk, and eventually to the end. Nothing reported, we were all good to go. I hoped.

I mounted the image, held my breath, and pressed “Start”…

It’s a picture of a street light. I have no idea where this streetlight was (EDIT: See the end of the post). It caused me mto let out the biggest yelp of excitement in a very, very long time. This was the image I chose to display, way back in 1996ish, while my amiga went through its “startup-sequence”. It looks low-quality now, compared to the megapixels of 2021, but back in the day, to have a full colour image showing on your TV was quite a sight to behold. The image is slightly broken, as it turned out I was using the standard non-Commodore / Cloanto ROM that comes with WinUAE. It proved, at least, the drive image worked.

A quick switch over to a better ROM, and oh-my, away we went. This is where I would have left it so many years ago.

Turns out I was slightly wrong in my years, about the last time it booted up. Turns out the last time it was properly used was December 2000 – in one of the first posts I ever did on this site, I slapped this image up… (EDIT: Hopefully I’ll remember to fix this at some point, oops)

I’d forgotten about this, and was surprised to see a webcam image (oddly not mine, an image I saved of a mate and his ex from back in the day), with a timestamp of 2000, then yes, I had flashbacks of connecting a modem to my Amiga’s serial port, then transferring data using the two landline numbers we had back in the day. While this allowed SOME data to come off, the speed, and technical issues meant that I was only able to pull off a few megs of info, nothing close to the funn contents of the drive.

There was also a brief connect of the computer back in the mid 2000s, but this was only for a few minutes, as I’d discovered the graphics failure my Amiga had suffered had got considerably worse. From what I’ve seen, this could be leaky capacitors, but to me, at least, at the time of typing, the value of keeping my Amiga, all lived in the data stored on this drive. My worry about never being able to power it on again, all came from the worry about not seeing what was on here.

Amiga emulaton has came on leaps and bounds since I first heard about UAE – back when its name stood for “Unusable Amiga Emulator” because all it would display is a black screen. It’s 2021 and it’ll play everything I’ve thrown at it, but most importantly, I’ve got my hard drive. I can access everything that was on it. I’ve already got several security copies of the image on servers all around the world (y’know, just in case I was to listen to some .mods during the apocalypse), and the whole thing just feels like the end of a 25-year chapter.

Saying that, it also opens a new one. Granted, now, 240Mb is barely any information at all, but it’s not the size, it’s what you do with it that counts. The next few days will be just exploring the drive, and seeing just exactly what has survived over the years

EDIT: Naaaah. You won’t have believe that I’ve just found, because I can’t believe it either. That image above…. STILL EXISTS on the internet. Now, all I have to go ff was the name, SUNSET.JPG. Not really very descriptive. Tonight, for some unknown reason that’s not even coming to mind, I started doing a Google Maps wander around Los Angeles. I noticed, concidentally, that the lighting columns looked very similar to what was on my Amiga’s startup screen. Just for giggles, I typed into Google Image search “Los Angeles Sunset 1996”. I incremented down the years, and sure enough, when I reached 1992, up came the original image…

So, I feel I absolutely must give credit to the fine folks at the City of Los Angeles Public Works – Bereau of Street Lighting (Updated link March 2022 – you have to click the “General Interest” section now to see it) for this almost 30-year-old image, and I hope you don’t mind me using this image for what is, essentially, one man’s lonely deep-dive into his own braincells during a desperately lonely lockdown period. Thank you for keeping it alive.

Cable’s arrived…

Not much of an update on my previous post, but just to say I now have the cable, Mr Amazons dropped it off at my door this morning….

I was going to do the big plugin tonight, but I’d slept like cack last night (can’t deny that part of it was excitement about this bloody cable arriving), so I went to bed straight after work, and went on my weekly lockdown Teams call with The Winnits (my only social interaction this week – I even considered asking Mr Amazons if he wants to talk for a bit, but he’d left the package outside, and he was already halfway down the gravel driveway of Mercuryvapour Towers by the time I got to the massive oak front door).

Therefore, I’ll likely get this all sorted tomorrow (Saturday). Don’t know how I’m going to go about this, whether it’s worthwhile doing any type of livstream for it, after all, the only person that’s going to have any interest on what’s on this bloody drive is me. I don’t know. Naturally, I’ll post my findings on here….

Bricking it, in case I brick it….

Right, let’s start with a post I wrote a couple of nights ago….

Here’s something I never thought would be possible. A blog entry entirely typed on an Amiga. Well, sort of. As you know, I’m a massive fan of the humble Amiga. A love that has never died, despite Amiga being locked away in a cupboard for the past 20 years, and only seeing the light of day several years ago to stop the battery from leaking. It’s always been at the back of my mind that I should do something with it, and I’m so much more closer it’s untrue.

Now you notice above, that although I said that I typed this on an Amiga? Well, it’s a half-truth. I’m typing it on an emulator, but still, everything is there. This is genuine Amiga software, being saved onto a floppy disk (image), which, if this works, will be copied over to a network drive and uploaded to MV. If you’re reading this, I managed to do it. If not, then… erm. wasn’t this a waste of a Tuesday night?

So, anyway, I bet you’re wondering why the sudden interest in the Amiga again after all of these years? I’m sure I’ve mentioned along the years that one of my favourite games was “Arcade Pool” by Team 17. A cracking little top-down pool game, and definitely one of my most played games, especially seeing as it was one of the few games I actually bought from a shop.

Anyway, I was bored on Sunday afternoon. The “Snooker Shootout” had finished, and I fancied something to eat. I popped downstairs, and Daddykins happened to be watching a train video. The background music just happened to be that exact same music used in Arcade Pool! I always thought it was an original composition used especially for the game, but apparently not! It turns out the music used is the “Fig Leaf Rag” by Scott Joplin. Huh!

Well, all of those memories just came flooding back. I just had to play it again. Off I pop to download UAE, I dig out my A1200’s ROM dump which I created back in 1996, and also a disc image of Arcade pool, and I was in AGA enhanced, ball clacking heaven once again.

The fun didn’t stop there, however, as one thing I remembered, was that a while ago, I’d downloaded some disk images, from some old machines that, coincidentally, Team 17 had left over from their Worms development days. If I remember, I’ll insert a link here to where you can find them – there’s a whole video on YouTube. I was surprised to find that the one I tried (an image from an A1200’s hard drive) actually worked! It loaded up, booted, and I could use the machine just like it had been, when it was switched off for the last time some time in the 1990s. In fact, one of the pieces of software stated that it was something like 8,000 days over its 30 day trial period. Ooops.

I played with it for a bit, got bored, and seeing that it was only a copy of the image, I decided to just “wipe” it, and install Workbench 3.1 on it. Something I hadn’t done since I got my Amiga hard drive some time around 1994, early 1995.

You know, this has got me in one of those memory rabbit holes. It must have been after Christmas 1994, but can’t have been much after. Daddykins and I had been down to a shop in Leeds to get the drive. I’ve got conflicting memories of having my CB radio in the car with me, something I got for Xmas 1994, but I also remember getting this HDD for my birthday that year, which is before Xmas. It was also the first time I heard “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” by Bryan Adams. I remember it being months before I’d heard it again, and apparently it was on general release in April of 1995, so it must have been before then. Dunno. If only Google was tracking my every move back then. I might have still had a record of it!

Anyhoo, that was almost a post on its own. Back to my experimenting. It turns out that I couldn’t properly format this disk image. Amusingly, the disk image was damaged, so it wouldn’t format properly. It’s the first time I’ve had a physically damaged disk image that couldn’t be fixed by a format!

Yeeeeah, well it went on for a couple of more paragraphs without not really saying anything else, and I’m back typing this into lowly old WordPress. Such a come-down. I’m happy it worked though. There were a couple of keymap challenges on the way – despite installing the GB keymaps, it still gave me all of the settings for the US, and I had to change them manually. I forgot that was a thing. Also, the # key seems to have vanished. Anyway, onto the main part of the post…. the HARD DRIVE!

Yes, I mentioned that my Amiga’s been sat in a dusty cupboard for many years now. Tonight, I pulled it out of its cupboard, and ripped the plattery goodness from its deep underbelly.

There’s a date code of April 94 which would coincide with what I thought. The next step is wiring it up The drive is a Conner CFN250A, though I’m sure you can work that out from the pic above. Apparently it’s just IDE, so I’ve literally just ordered a cable set from Amazon. Could it be money down the Kermit, or am I going to spend the weekend wallowing in so much nostalgia, the grey hairs in my beard will retract? You’ll have to wait and see…

Day 12 – FFS.

That’s right. There was no day 11. I just found it far too exciting to type about. And by that, I mean, I started typing a post, I got so bored with it, that I abandoned it. Basically, yesterday was the day that I did all my backups. It’s something I’ve neglected in doing for a couple of months, mainly because I couldn’t find the power supply for the external drive. Then I found the drive, then couldn’t find the power adapter, then I couldn’t find the USB lead.

Anyhooooo, the post was about what I use to backup, 2020 style. It got boring very quickly.

Today, however, was a bit of a shit day. Yesteray, I posted on Facebook about the unknown song, and shortly got some disturbing new back about Tom Davies, the DJ whose show this was taken from.

Let’s just say he won’t be doing much radio work in the near future.

Day 10. Watching someone fix an Amiga

If today (well, yesterday now… but stick with it) makes it past a couple of sentences, I’d call that an achievement. I wouldn’t say that’s been the most boring day so far, as I actually left the house. I went to Iceland again. I needed bread, and some more bits for the house. Some of the stuff that I couldn’t get last week because I didn’t have a pound for the trolley.

The day started off late. I don’t think I got up until about 12. This was mainly because I didn’t go to bed until at least 5. My sleeping pattern’s all messed up, but then it doesn’t really matter does it? Daytime and night time are both the same at the moment, there’s absolutely no need to stick to a timetable. I’ll be doing the same thing whether it’s day or night, so it doesn’t really matter.

So, yeah, Iceland, then. Once again, they have the queuing system in place, which is unsurprising. The lady at the door was keeping the amount of shoppers to a bare minimum. I think she was only letting about 5 people in the store at any one time. Can’t say I minded. It’s obviously for a reason, and there were only two or three people in front of me, so I maybe waited 10 minutes or so? Daddykins handed me a shopping list of thnigs he needed too… Cheese, eggs, dilutey juice, some frozen meals, and of course, the bread. I actually remembered all of that. In fact, it was the high point of the day.

One thing I did watch was one of by favourite Youtubers, GadgetUK64 try to fix and Amiga 4000 motherboard by replacing the “Super Buster” socket on the motherboard. Before he did this, and with the chip in place, the machine would only boot up to a yellow screen. This usually means that there’s some type of issue / exception that’s stopping the Kickstart ROM from booting. Usually this is a hardware fault.

In the end he didn’t fix it, but it gave me something to look forward to tomorrow. Which is today, as I never got this published on time. Oops

Day 9… almost double figures

Another day stuck within the confines of Mercuryvapour Towers. Of course, this isn’t new, as the world has to put up with the same restrictions now, but still the novelty wore off a long time ago. And I’m sure the novelty of reading these wore off a while ago did too. Writing them certainly did.

Today, I ventured as far as the kitchen. Other rooms visited include the living room and bathroom. All good stuff.

One thing I did forget to mention is that I cleaned my housemat yesterday. Well, I say mousemat, it’s actually a rubber drip cloth, taken from a nearby pub. Well, I say taken, I did actually ask if I coyl have it. I didn’t just roll it up off the bar and stick it in my pocket.

As you can see in this picture, it’s pretty dusty. I can confirm that this dust has all gone, and it’s currently drying in the bathroom.

So, back to today, then. I’ll give you three guesses what I did. Yes, that’s right. Euro Truck Simulator Not much of a surprise there. What was a surprise to me, however, is that I found something new in the game. I’m not sure if it’s a new addition, but there was an actual accidident in the game, and the road was blocked by a helicopter!

Spoiler alert, there’s no “collision detection” on the rotor blades of the helicopter, so you can easily get past by going over the hard shoulder. Of course, I saved the game before I tested this out.

I also went past another accident on the other side of the road…

Yeah, it’s come to something where I consider this blogworthy, but I insisted on keeping you updated. Bet you wish I hadn’t.

Well, that lasted long. (Days 5-8)

Tsk. There I was, planning to do a detailed description of every single day in lockdown, and I got bored after about 4 days. Actually, I tell a lie. I wrote the posts. I just couldn’t bring myself to post them, because they were just too dull for even this blog….

Of course, nothing’s TOO boring for this blog. In fact, here’s what I wrote for Day 5…

It’s bloody beautiful out here at the moment. Sat in the back garden while my dinner cooks, and it really is spring like. The sun is warm and bright. Today’s the type of day that I’d have gone for a walk on my dinner hour. Instead, I’m sat in the back garden, watching the birds peck away at some leftover bread

Leftovers. That’s a phrase you don’t hear much of these days. Especially bread.

I was never a big bread eater anyway, so all of this bread shortage stuff isn’t affecting me anyway. Now, a pot noodle shortage, that’d be terrible.

The weather really is nice today. I’m sat in the back darden as the remainder of the sun disappears behind the houses. There’s the sound of the birds tweeting, against the low rumble of the dual carriageway. Hardly anything compared to its normal noise.

I’ve not long returned of having my foot checked. It’s looking great, apparently. I think this period of rest is really helping matters. It’s strange how I’m now starting to see positives in all of this.

That was was the Wednesday.

Day 6, the Thursday, consisted of this….

In contrast to the almost summer-like day we had yesterday, today has been pretty dull and cold. It didn’t start off to bad, with a nice sunny morning, but as the day has gone on, the mist has rolled in, and it’s got pretty chilly, which is a bit of a shame.

It’s one of those days where it looks like it could be nice and warm if it wasn’t for the mist sticking about.

I’m so bored. While I was 9n my lunch break, I wondered if Julian Pettifer is still with us. He is. You may remember him from hundreds of news reports from the 60s, and also presented Busman’s Holiday before Sarah Kennedy and Elton welsby.

He’s written a few books and has an OBE now.

That alleviated the boredom for a few seconds

Yeah. So, there wasn’t much happening on the afore-mentioned days. Friday rolled around, and I didn’t type anything. This so far has been the most interesting of the days, as I actually left the house, so I thought I might as well type out that. For you see, us plebs are allowed out of the house to shop for essentials such as food, and to do a minimal amount of excersise. Well, I clearly wasn’t going outside to do the excersise, so off I went to Lidl. Despite it only being a short walk, I got Daddykins to take me in the car, and shortly noticed that I shouldn’t have bothered. For you see, seeing as us humans are such filthy, disease ridden rcreatures, we’re now only allowed within two metres of one another, and to keep our spread of disgusting microbiorganisms (is that a word?) to a minimum, they were only allowing a few people in the store at any one time. It was quite a surprise to see the queue going around the car park, ending near the edge of the car park where Grayfields is. ABANDONED.

I quickly jumped back in the car, and we headed off to Iceland. There was a queue, and once again, our unclean hearts and minds were not permitted to be within two metres of one another. There were only five other people in the queue, and it quickly went down. I was finally able to get some essentials. Bog roll, bread, eggs and Monster Munch. All things that had been sadly lacking. Well, we still had a few bog rolls left , but it always pays to get some more I suppose when the opportunity is there. No, it’s not panic buying, it’s just covering for all eventualities. The shops have finally took the approach of restricting the amount of things you can buy like that anyway, which hasn’t came a moment too soon. Honestly, the mentality / greed of some people astounded me.

It’s funny that I mentioned not really eating bread on Wednesday. I can report that this, for some unknown reason, is the softest, most delicious loaf of bread I’ve had for some time, and I’ve nearly eaten it all by myself. I’m one of those complete weirdos that completely flatten the bread with my hands (yes, I washed them beforehand!), roll it up, then flatten it again. I know of only one other person that does this.

Anyhoooo, enough about that. The front door closed, and I’m now on full lockdown. I’ve became acquainted with an old friend called Euro Truck Simulator again, and I’ve had… some time playing it. Here’s my current “ride”.

Yes, I’ll admit it. I paid 39p to have the Chinese / Year of the Rat paint pack….

Worth every penny (It wasn’t though, was it? Ed).

One game feature is that you can have live music from online radio stations playing, basically acting like the stereo in your cab. Since I discovered this feature, I’ve been listening to Clyde 2. It was one of the only English ones I could find at the time, and I’ve been using this in the game ever since. Last night, it really got on my wick. I’m obviously playing this game to escape the fact that we’re in lockdown for the foreseeable. Unfortunately, the radio station liked reminding us, the listener, of this every five seconds. After a song finished, it was either a mention that we should stay in, or an advert telling us that we should wash our hands at every given opportunity. One slice of good fortune is that the news bulletins for this particular night didn’t play properly, leaving the radio silent, thankfully.

Saturday came, eventually. I didn’t actually go to bed until 3. There’s not much point sleeping at a particular time, as I’ve got nothing to get up for. I think it was about 10 when I finally surfaced. Again, computer on, and Euro Truck similator got loaded back up. Of course, this time, I gave the English stations a miss. If I’m going to have some escapism, I’m going to do it without getting reminded of the thing I was escaping from every 2 bloody minutes. This time, I just happened to put one on called Mint FM, and to pardon the pun, it was mint. Some really good songs, some I hadn’t even heard before. Even better was the fact that it was all automated, and without adverts too. Not a single mention of that bloody C word…. you can make your own minds up which word I’m referring to… 11 letters, or 4 letters…

I even tried my hand at “broadcasting” – streaming your game to anybody who wants to watch it. Apparently, it’s something that the cool kids do, but I had no idea if anyone was watching, so it was all a bit pointless really. Maybe it’s something I’ll experiment more with in the future, but more than likely it’ll be something I forget entirely about.

So, as I’m typing this, we’ve broken into Sunday. Officially the shortest day of the year, as I’m sure that by the time I get this typed, edited and published, the time will have jumped from 1AM to 2AM, and we’ll be officially in British Summer Time. Not that we can actually do anything with it. Sigh.