Amiga Love has had a few articles on getting various Commodore machines back online and into the BBS world. From C64s to Amiga 500s (et al) as well as the terminal programs we use; PETSCII capable (i, ii) in case you’re trying to hit an C64 BBS from your Amiga or ANSI capable, like A-Talk III, for most other boards. There are a lot of options out there, and the BBS scene is vastly smaller than back in the day, but it’s not dead by any stretch. Oh no, dear reader, it is not dead. (I see four lights!) If anything, the interest in this form of socializing and connecting seems to be growing lately as hardware options become easier to build and less expensive to source.
Tonight, I finally got my Amiga 1000 online for the first time ever and connected to some of my favorite BBSes. And oh my god, have you ever seen a more beautiful sight? I doubt it. Well, at least not for about 30 years, give or take.
About 2000 years from now, Amiga will be the object of a world religion. It just cannot die.
Is there a telnet ANSI terminal emulator with Zmodem support for Classic AmigaOS 3.x yet?
http://aminet.net/package/comm/term/AmTerm11
No, but there is a source code if you can compile it for AmigaOS: http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/
JRcomm was the best.
I remember ‘The Keep’ so long ago
Amigaa are like cockroaches. They’re everywhere but you never see them, and as much as you try, you’ll never kill them of..
Also, if you’re unfortunate to let one in your home, they multiply like crazy. I have 6 (4 1200’s and 2 500’s)
Edited 2017-08-19 16:06 UTC
Good analogy, but they’re nice friendly cuddly roaches!
I got an A500 to replace my Atari 400, then got an A4000, then two A1200s, then a CD32 (which was killed in a flood), then I managed to pick up an A1000 at a St Vincent De Paul’s, cheap!
year 2000 was no problem for Amigas since the date since they simply count seconds since 1970 … ok we will run out of seconds on 19 January, 2046, 03:14:07 … but a simple patch to unsigned integer will prolong that to 7 February, 2114, 06:28:15.
After that, we will simply set the year 0 to the birth of the Amiga in 1985.
(as every religion does…)
Have you seen the prices used 1000s go for?
I _so_ want a PAL one, but they cost way more than I’m prepared to pay at the moment (this could change…).
Feel sorry for me. My dream machine is a BeBox…
I sadly missed out on a free one because I was dumb enough not to have notifications emailed to me instantly.
But I still have my A4000 that’s nicely upgraded.
The BeBox is woefully underpowered and has pretty much no software being made for it anymore, due to the MetroWerks compiler it used. I had a 66MHz one for about 3 years. I loved it. It was my prize possession. But I also has a Power Mac 9500 200/MP (stock dual 604e processors, fully hardware SMP, unlike the 603’s in the BeBox that needed extra software to do true SMP), which I got first thinking I’d never get a chance to buy a BeBox, and it just made the BeBox look so horribly slow under BeOS R5. It was very sad. The 120 would have been better, but it was still way, way slower than the Mac. Last time I booted the PM, it also seemed really really slow, so I’d say the BeBox would have been like treacle by now. I ended up selling in circa 2007 for more than I paid for it (plus I retained a load of extra books and stuff that came with it.) Back then the 66 sold for over £400, and to be honest, it is probably worth closer to £1000 now, given the rarity and the collectors market.
I miss mine. Was a good machine in all of it’s PPC glory.
The Commodore Amiga 1000 was, in my mind, the best looking computer of the 1980s. The keyboard garage was a brilliant stroke.
I’m glad to see Amigas still being used but, again for me, there’s no going home again. I tried the Cloanto emulators, but it’s too much trouble re-learning all the commands I used 30 years earlier…
beautiful true.
Commodore released the 128D at the same time and it is also very beautiful.
Here is a picture with both – A1000 and 128D:
http://scacom.bplaced.net/Collection/128d/128d9.jpg
But just 2 years later Commodore managed to release the ugliest computer case of the 80s: the Amiga 2000
They recovered in 1990 with the A3000 – my personal favorite.
(don’t understand what commands you would need to lern…)
Edited 2017-08-21 22:01 UTC
It just cannot die.
Like Android 4.4 😀