Retrocomputing Spray Paints: Amiga Beige, Commodore, And ATARI Grey

September 1, 2020 by Donald Papp 19 Comments

[retrohax] has provided vintage computer guidance for years, and part of that guidance is this: sometimes using paint as part of restoration is simply unavoidable. But the days of tediously color-matching to vintage hardware are gone, thanks to [retrohax] offering custom-mixed spray paints in Amiga 500 Beige, C-64 Beige, and ATARI ST/SE Grey. (At the moment only delivery within Poland is available due to shipping restrictions, but [retrohax] is working on a better solution.)

As a companion to making these vintage colors available, there is also a short how-to guide on how to properly prep and spray paint a computer case for best results that talks a little about the challenges in color matching to vintage hardware, and how getting custom paints mixed makes life much easier. Hackers may value making do with whatever is available, but we can also appreciate the value of having exactly the right material or tool for the job.

It’s not every day we see someone mixing custom spray paint colors, but off the shelf options don’t always cut it. Another example of getting specialty materials made from the ground up is custom plywood specifically designed for laser-cutting puzzles, something done because the troubles that came with off-the-shelf options were just not worth the hassle.

An Amiga Sampler 30 Years Later

August 8, 2020 by Jenny List 21 Comments

There was a magic moment for a few years around the end of the 1980s, when home computers were better than professional ones. That’s a mighty grand pronouncement, but it refers to the crop of 16-bit home computers that genuinely were far better than nearly all PCs at the time for multimedia tasks. You could plug a sampler cartridge into your Amiga and be in the dance charts in no time, something which sparked a boom in electronic music creativity. As retrocomputing interest has soared so have the prices of old hardware, and for those still making Amiga music that cart can now be outrageously expensive. it’s something [echolevel] has addressed, with an open-source recreation of an Amiga sampler.

As anyone who peered inside one back int he day will tell you, an Amiga sampler was a very simple device consisting of a commonly-available 8-bit A to D converter, a CMOS switch for right and left samples, and maybe an op-amp preamplifier. This is exactly what he’s produced, save fpr the CMOS switch as he points out that Amiga musicians use mono samples anyway. At its heart is an ADC0820 half-flash ADC chip, and the whole thing is realised on a very retro-looking through-hole PCB.

For a Hackaday scribe with a Technosound Turbo still sitting in a box somewhere it’s a real trip down memory lane. It was a moment of magic to for the first time be able to edit and manipulate audio on a computer, and we’re glad to see that something of those days still lives on. See it in action in the video below the break.

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Why You (Probably) Won’t Be Building A Replica Amiga Anytime Soon

June 16, 2020 by Lewin Day 68 Comments

Early in 2019, it became apparent that the retro-industrial complex had reached new highs of innovation and productivity. It was now possible to create entirely new Commdore 64s from scratch, thanks to the combined efforts of a series of disparate projects. It seems as if the best selling computer of all time may indeed live forever.

Naturally, this raises questions as to the C64’s proud successor, the Amiga. Due to a variety of reasons, it’s less likely we’ll see scratch-build Amiga 500s popping out of the woodwork anytime soon. Let’s look at what it would take, and maybe, just maybe, in a few years you’ll be firing up Lotus II (or, ideally, Jaguar XJ220: The Game) on your brand new rig running Workbench 1.3. Continue reading “Why You (Probably) Won’t Be Building A Replica Amiga Anytime Soon” →

Doom Clone Shows What An Alternate-Reality Amiga Could’ve Had

May 4, 2020 by Erin Pinheiro 31 Comments

Can you run Doom on the Amiga? No, not really, and arguably that was one of the causes for the computer’s demise in the mid-90s as it failed to catch up on the FPS craze of the PC world. [Krzysztof Kluczek] of the Altair demogroup has managed not exactly to remedy that status with the original article, but to show us how a potential contender could’ve been designed for the unexpanded Amiga hardware back in the day.

Many developers tried to emulate the thrill and ambiance of the id Software shooter, but they all required high-end Amigas with faster processors and expanded memory, limiting their player base on an already diminished demographic. Not only that, but even with fancier hardware, none of them quite managed to match how well Doom ran on your run-of-the-mill 486 at the time. [Krzysztof] isn’t trying to port Doom itself, but instead creating an engine custom-designed to take advantage of, and minding the limitations of the OCS Amiga as it existed in 1987. The result is Dread, a 2.5D engine that resembles the SNES port of Doom and uses assets from the Freedoom project in order to remain copyright-abiding.

It might not be Doom, but it’s a good peek at what the 33-year old hardware could’ve done in the right hands back then. Technically it already surpasses what the Wolfenstein 3D engine could do, so there’s an idea if someone ever aims to make a straight up port instead of their own game. If you like seeing Doom run on machines it wasn’t meant to, boy do we have some posts for you. Otherwise, stick around after the break for two videos of Dread’s engine being demonstrated.

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Expansion Board Puts Spotify On The Amiga 500

March 20, 2020 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

No doubt some purists in the audience will call this one cheating, since this Amiga 500 from 1987 isn’t technically connecting to Spotify and playing the music by itself. But we also suspect those folks might be missing the point of a site called Hackaday. With all the hoops [Daniel Arvidsson] hopped through to make this happen, what else could it be if not a hack?

This one starts, like so many projects these days, with the Raspberry Pi. Don’t worry Amiga aficionados, this classic machine hasn’t been gutted and had its internals replaced with a diminutive Linux board. But thanks to an expansion card known as the A314, you could say it’s received a penguin infusion. This clever board allows an internally mounted Raspberry Pi to communicate with the Amiga 500 through shared memory, making all sorts of trickery possible.

In this case, the Raspberry Pi is actually the one connecting to the Spotify Connect service with raspotify and decoding the stream. But thanks to a few pipes and an ALSA plugin, the audio itself is actually pushed into the Amiga’s sound hardware. In the video after the break, the process is demonstrated with tunes that are befitting a computer of this vintage.

This process is similar to how one classic Apple fan got Spotify running on their Macintosh SE/30 with a similar respect for the vintage hardware. Of course if you actually want to gut your Amiga 500 and replace it with a Raspberry Pi, we’ve seen some pretty good conversions to get you started.

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Serious Repair Work On The Amiga 600

February 5, 2020 by Lewin Day 4 Comments

The Amiga will be forever loved for bringing serious multimedia capabilities to the home computer market. However, these machines are now showing their age, and keeping them running can take a bit of work. [Drygol] isn’t one to shy away from the task, however, and set about repairing a few Amiga 600s that came his way.

First up on the docket is replacing the many electrolytic capacitors that tend to leak over the years. They can cause corrosion, destroying traces and other components, as well as failing themselves. [Drygol] is an old hand at this now, whipping out the hot air station and some copper shielding to protect delicate connectors from melting. A simple recap was enough to get one machine up and running, but the other was more recalcitrant. When swapping a dud CPU out, a pad was destroyed on the PCB. This necessitated some careful tracing, followed by a drill hole through the PCB to allow a bodge wire to run the signal from the other side of the board.

There’s also plenty of upgrades to be done; S-Video outputs instead of the crummy old RF modulator, and special interrupt switches that help when cracking games and doing assembly programming. Thanks to a rich aftermarket and vivid community, researching and performing mods is easy thanks to writeups and parts available online.

It’s a great example of the basic techniques one must master to keep old hardware on the boil. Learn to recap, refit, and hunt for problems, and you’ll be well on your way to maintaining your retro fleet for years to come. We’ve seen [Drygol]’s work before too – this vampiric A500 is a particular treat!

Writing Dance Bangers Like It’s 1990 Again

February 4, 2020 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

Dance and house music exploded in a big way at the end of the 1980s. Typically the product of well-equipped studios with samplers and mixers worth thousands of dollars, it was difficult for the home gamer to get involved. That was, until the advent of the glorious Amiga, as [cTrix] ably demonstrates.

Sampling on your Amiga often meant sneaking off with the family hi-fi.

The video explains the history of both the music and the hardware, and highlights just why the Amiga was so special. Packing stereo audio and a four-channel sound chip, it had the grunt to pump out the tunes. All it was lacking was an audio input – which is where third-party hardware stepped in. Parallel-port analog-to-digital converters hit the market in a big way, letting users sample audio on their home computer without breaking the bank.

[cTrix] then proceeds to demonstrate how one would go about producing a dance track on an Amiga way back in 1990. A home stereo is used to play records, hooked up to a Stereo Master parallel port sampler. With a bunch of drum, piano, and synth samples recorded and saved on disk, a tracker is then used to assemble the track. It’s then compared with other music from the era as a great example of how things used to be done.

Overall, the Amiga will long have a legacy as the machine that brought real multimedia capabilities to the home computer. It’s one of our favourites, though keeping them going can be tough sometimes. Video after the break.

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