Sebastian Bergmann recollects his journey into the wonderful world of Amiga retrocomputing.
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@s_bergmann if you order one, I'd join you (saves some €). Maybe Daniel likes to have one, too?
— sn (@s_n0) March 22, 2015
Today I ordered three MIST (aMIga/ST) FPGA computers: one for myself and one each for my friends Daniel and Sebastian.
Lets see how this adventure will turn out …
One of the things I want to do is get Linux to run on my Amiga 1200.
I found a forum post by Adrian Glaubitz that explains the installation of Debian. I followed the instructions but some of the required files were no longer available at the URLs given in the forum post. I contacted Adrian and got an immediate response (thanks again!) pointing me to the new location of the files.
Now I was able to boot into Linux on my Amiga 1200. However, as you can see in the video below, the kernel panicks because it cannot mount the root filesystem. I quickly received useful responses to a mail that I sent to the Debian project’s mailinglist for the M68K port. As it turns out, the Linux kernel that I used does not have support for storage devices attached to the Amiga via PCMCIA.
Installing Linux “for real” on my Amiga 1200 is a project for another weekend as I need to get a USB to RS-232 adapter cable first in order to use my ThinkPad X1 Carbon notebook as a serial console for Linux running on the Amiga.
Using the Micromys V4 I was able to replace the TecnoPlus TP173 mouse (unfortunately, even back in 1998 I did not have an original Commodore Amiga mouse anymore) that I found in the attic with a Logitech RX250 optical mouse.
The Micromys V4 is an adapter from the Amiga’s mouse/joystick port to PS/2. Then you need a PS/2 to USB adapter to connect a modern computer mouse.
I finally have a Competition Pro joystick again. My original one broke way back in the mid 1990s.
After coming across this video of a workshop on ProTracker at the Revision 2014 party I wanted to install ProTracker again. Of course, I just had to use “Guitar Slinger” by Jogeir Liljedahl, one of the best mods of all time, to try out ProTracker. I also recorded a short video of ProTracker in action.
I have fond memories of sampling vocals from 2Unlimited and Culture Beat songs in the early 1990s and then attempting to make remixes with ProTracker. However, I was never as good as my friend Bernd at this and soon solely focussed on coding instead of music.