Hello! This blog is all about my return to the world of Amiga. I have been clicking occasionally on Amiga stuff that I saw in my Twitter feed and was amazed to see that an Amiga print magazine was being launched in the UK. I was an avid user of the Amiga from about 1988 until about 1995. It was a really important part of my life and the hours of messing around I used to do with Workbench to get everything working are probably partly the reason why I do the job that I do (data scientist, which I absolutely love). I might do a nostalgic trip through what growing up with Amiga (500, then 1200 with 60MB hard drive) was like but that isn’t for today, this is just kicking things off.

I’m writing this blog for a few reasons. Firstly, because I cannot believe how strong the Amiga community is today. The Amiga lives on, 25 years later, and there are so many awesome helpful people in it. I haven’t met any of them or even written a message on a board but I can tell that they are my people. I feel like I’ve come home after a long absence. I want to be a part of that community and hopefully give something back.

Secondly, because the Amiga scene, even though it is full of awesome people sharing their knowledge, is pretty confusing. Some people are using old hardware, and I would absolutely love to get some original hardware, but there are a lot of options now. I haven’t done all the research yet (but I will, for this blog) but broadly the options are:

  • Original hardware
  • FS-UAE (emulation- Windows, Mac, Linux)
  • Raspberry pi (several options here)
  • A5000 (new hardware)
  • Vampire (new FPGA powered hardware)
  • MiSTer FPGA
  • A500 mini

There’s a new version of the OS out for original Amigas, another new one for Power PCs (whatever they are), Vampire have one (AROS I think?). And there’s an A500 mini coming out, that’s just for games but it’s still cool.

I’d like to write a blog that takes people from where I was a few months ago (vaguely remember the Amiga from 25 years ago) to being able to understand what’s going on now. And in the process I hope I will get some new knowledge, which I will also blog here.

And lastly I would like to use this blog to catalogue some unfinished business I have from 25 years go. I tried to write Space Invaders in AMOS (Amiga BASIC). It kind of worked, but when the aliens got the to edge of the screen they all just wandered off in different directions. It was such a weird bug, and I did persevere with it for a bit, but I just couldn’t figure it out and I gave up. I’m going to write that Space Invaders game, in AMOS, and it’s going to work, and it’s going to make me a better data scientist. And then, who knows, I may keep going with more games. See how I feel.

Join me next time when I describe all the different ways of getting your Amiga on in rough outline, and then I guess I’ll follow up with more details of each (I only use FS-UAE and a RPi at the moment, but a Vampire is on my shopping list).

I’m off to learn some AMOS.