Another Amiga question

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Thu Jul 19 21:22:27 2001

> >There are MP3 players for 68k Amiga's?!?! That's either rather gutsy, or
> >pathetic, I'm not sure which. What do they do, decode them to another
> >format and then play them?
>
> Keep in mind that I'm running a 25 MHz Amiga as my main (only) machine. That
> doesn't mean I don't enjoy MP3s. =)
> They decode in real time. A French bloke named Stephane Tavenard deserves most
> of the credit for his tight assembler-coded MPEGA.library, which most players
> use.

Now that is *impressive*!

> Since my stock A4000 is probably the absolute low-end for getting moderate
> quality playback, I usually use a command-line player and a lot of buffering.
> A faster '040 or an '060 won't be so limitated. An '060 may even replay
> several MP3s at once, and there are pretty, skinnable programs such as
> AmigaAMP or AMPlifier. =)

Ah, now I see, you're running a A4000, which should mean a 68040 processor.
Well, there is more than a little difference in speed between a A3000/25 and
A4000/25 since I've got a 68030 and you've got a 68040. I'd love a faster
CPU, but I can't justify it for a machine that I quite honestly have no real
use for. I just like it :^)

Out of curiousity, what else can you do on your 68040 while playing MP3's
and how does it effect playback? I've got to admit to being curious about
that one.

> >The monitors I've got would probably crush a A3000! I might be able to put
> >it in the wooden rack next to the desk, but the PDP-8/m sits where it would
> >need to go, and I'm going to need to find more room in the rack for a
> >PDP-8/e and Papertape reader/punch.
>
> We're running a 17" Compaq monitor on top of ours. A friend of mine runs a 19-
> incher on top of his, IIRC-

I'm talking either a 19-20" IBM P200 or a 21" Viewsonic P815. Those are
*very* heavy monitors, and my A3000's case is already in bad shape. About
the only system I'd consider setting under either of them would be something
like my Sparc 20/712, which is built a lot sturdier.

> What's an A2002? Is that the one with the slow phosphor?

Not sure on what it is other than an Amiga monitor that can be used with
both an Amiga 500 and a Commodore 64, plus it makes a decent enough TV.
I've also got a 1702 and something like a 1802, I'm threatening to dig one
of them out this weekend for a project I'm working on. Though I doubt I'll
find the time.

> >Don't need a backup system, and I've no desire to run Linux on anything but
> >a fast x86 box. So I'm still trying to come up with a use for it. That was
> >one of the reasons I bought it a Catweasel, however, the board didn't
> >function as advertised thanks to the lack of software for it. Of course the
> >Catweasel board is also why it's sitting in a monster ALR Server Tower at
> >the moment!
>
> What software are you lacking?

The Catweasel board (at least when I bought mine had the software to read
Amiga, PC, C-64, and maybe Macintosh floppies. It was advertised as being
able to read a lot more different formats. The problem is, it doesn't (or
at least didn't) have any software to do that.

> Amiga: (noun) The most technologically advanced computer that hardly anyone
> cares about.
> Use in sentence: "I wanted to buy an Amiga for its low price and great color
> graphics, but everyone else seems to be using IBMs or Macintoshes. So, to
> remain compatible with the rest of the world, I spent three times as much on a
> Macintosh and got only half the graphics capability of an Amiga."

Unfortunatly, this is no longer remotely true. If Gateway had followed
through it might be, but they didn't. Which is why most of the Amiga
comunity has moved on to either the Mac, BeOS, Linux, or Windows. Times
change, what the Amiga did with style, modern Mac's and PC's do with brute
force.

Though as I was cursing this morning, even with MacOS 9.1 a Mac can't format
a floppy and do something else. I love my G4/450, but that's just plain
pathetic. I think that's the real reason Apple dropped the floppies from
thier systems, they didn't want to write decent software to work with them.
A 68k based system will blow the socks off of any Power Mac when it comes to
doing anything floppy related! And I'm serious, I've tested it! I've no
idea how pathetic Windows might be at this, as I try to avoid it.

                        Zane
Received on Thu Jul 19 2001 - 21:22:27 BST