Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Hi,
    
       I only recently got myself an AMIGA, so I'm a "beginner" but here
    goes.
    
       MEMORY OR DISK ?? depends what you are going to do with your A1000
    really.  I would find a spare disk more usefull to start off with.
    
       VT241 ?? I should think that the A1000 monitor out put is the same
    as the A500, in which case it will work very well.  You will have to
    buy a 23 pin 'D' type connector and four 'BNC' connectors. Thats for
    the R,G,B & sync.  Then expand the screen.
    
       The PD stuff you are looking for is probebly on the following nodes,
    
       TAPE::USER2:[AMIGA...]
       WJG::DUA1:[AMIGA...]
       CGOU01::AMIGA:[*...]
       CRISTA::AMIGA:*
    
       There are a few VT emulators, I use HANDSHAKE212a.
    
    COL..
    

    
    
    re .1
    
    	The PD software on TAPE:: is in
    
    		TAPE::AMIGA:[AMIGA...]
    	and	TAPE::AMIGA:[UPLOAD]
    
    USER2 died a while back.
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    Hi, Richard, Tony Wilson here.  Remember me?  I was in your VAX9000
    class.  I've owned an Amiga 500 for 3+ years.      
    
    You'll find a lot of loyal A1000 owners here.  Keep an eye on your
    father's A500.  He may be able to provide you with a lot of stuff.  As
    I recall, you didn't say what was on the 1000.  If you don't have a
    harddisk, add that first, then memory.
    
    Regards, Tony.

    A DIRECTORY/TITLE=whatever (ie: VR241) will answer a lot of your
    questions as most of this stuff has been discussed in great detail.
    BTW, note 550 has a lot of good stuff regarding using the VR241.

�    I recall, you didn't say what was on the 1000.  If you don't have a
�    harddisk, add that first, then memory.

    IMHO, I'd have to recommend the opposite: memory first and then a hard
    disk. I've got an 512K A1000 here at work with a hard drive and it's
    really limited in the way of running multiple applications simultaneously
    or even singly in some cases. Even with only one partition mounted and
    the drive buffers cut way down, low memory can be a problem. A second
    floppy drive with additional memory might tide you over until you can
    afford the hard disk set-up.

    Pete

	Memory first with a second floppy can be faster than a hard disk.
	With 3 megabytes you can load the entire Lattice C system for 1.3
	into a rebootable ram disk,a nd save your files to df1: once every
	15-20 minutes.  The compilation would of course run faster than on
	a hard disk.  This goes for other stuff too, such as Dr. T's, 
	which may have overlays, can be copied into RAM: if you have enough
	ram and only needs the protected disk during startup, you can remove
	it after that.  

	hard disk drives have lower reliability than ram chips I assume
	(as a former chip test eng).  If you primarily run one session
	on one big application for a few hours, ram is primo.  If you
	run alternating between different little applications a harddrive
	is more convenient although those programs can be copied to RAM
	too (except deluxe paint II which kills the machine when run from
	a copy in ram.)

	Incidentally, I got a ad for a unprotected Dr. T's with more features.
	Dunno if I'll get it.
tom

I agree with the others - memory before hardrives. If that "other drive" is
a second floppy, I still agree. You can make memory pretend to be a fast
disk; you can't make disk pretend to be RAM.

Given enough memory, you can make RAD: be your "boot floppy", and copy
other things into either RAM: or VD0: (VDK: if you can find a copy) to work
on.

Given the extra hard disk, an interlaced workbench and a few background tools
will leave you feeling memory starved with no workarounds.

	<mike

Welcome to the ranks of A1000 owners.

I would be inclined also to go for the memory.

I have a sprinit inboard 1.5mb card, which is mounted internally - I think if
you look in one of the locations for PD S/W mentioned earlier, you will
find an ABLE price list. I would be inclined to get an unpopulated one, and
then do an internal purchase for RAINBOW memory. You can populate the card
in half MB increments up to 1.5 mb giving a total of 2mb (half chip 1.5 fast).

You also get a pretty good real time clock, and a disk with some PD goodies.

I would probably recommend a hard drive. I didn't myself at first, cause I was 
slightly broke, so I got a second floppy. I believe there is some PD S/W that 
will allow you to create a pseudo floppy on a hard drive.

From the tone of your note, I suspect that money is a raw sight in your wallet,
so for a hard drive you could do the following.

Purchase a Wedge controller. 
Purchase an AT controller for wedge (If wedge don't have one)
Purchase internally an RD52 (33 mb) or RD53 (70 mb)
Get a power supply
get some drive cables.

and you should be able to build a drive - DON"T PANIC - it's not that hard to
put together - I have a similar configuration, and I get somewhere between
60k and 80k per second transfer rate which is not quick, but much much better
than floppys.

Stan.

    
    	I'm a proud owner of a 1000 with 2.5 Mb of memory and 2 floppies.
    I've been at it for two years now. Considering the services and the fun
    that I get from it, it is one of the cheapest computer I ever had.
    
    	Take great care of your 1000 you will get a lot of milleage on it
    with the PD available on these networks. I will go with the added
    memory first if I were you .
    
    Jean-Denis

    UNCLE!!! - In fact, reflecting back 3 years, I did indeed get memory
    first.  But I also bought an external floppy from the get-go, so the
    problem was not as bad as it could have been.
    
    Tony

    
    For my A1000, I went for the external floppy drive first.  This avoids
    alot of the disk swapping.  Later I got a SCSI controller and a hard
    drive which, about a month later, convinced me to add more memory because
    the buffers consumed for the hard drive didn't leave enough memory to
    run applications that said 1mb required.
    
    So if money is really tight - Get a 2nd or 3rd floppy drive.
    
    dennis