Amiga

[Note: these pages are somewhat old!]

I bought a Commodore Amiga computer back when it was the latest and greatest, and all the PC owners were green with envy... Things have changed a bit since then! I still think it was a great machine, and used it for most of my own computing needs (email and word processing mainly...) in the early 1990s.

Programming

I've written a number of programs, mostly in C, both graphical and text based. One of the one's I'm most proud of is rather eccentric; "ftree" translates a simple database of people and their relationships into a family tree, with many options on how it's laid out and which fonts to use. Some assorted Amiga links:

MUI - Magic User Interface

I've also become a bit of a fan of MUI - the Amiga's equivalent of Motif on Unix. I would be keener, but on a mere 68000 it is a bit slow and using the 4 colour screen which is the standard on my system the benefits of good colour use are largely lost. However it is perfectly usable, and for anyone who can afford even slightly better hardware it is well worth a look.

Linux-m68k

I've also become interested in the Linux-m68k project, which has succeeded in porting the (originally) PC based Linux to the Amiga and Atari machines. Linus is a freely available Unix clone, and has achieved a great deal of popularity, partly because it offers a version of Unix which is just as good as many, and possibly better than some commercial ones! Linux now (or will soon) run on the 68K mac, Sun 3/80 and Sun 4 machines, DEC Alpha PC's and several of the Motorola VME cards as well as the original Intel PC version. The 68k Linux runs on Amiga and Atari machines using a 68020 and above which include an MMU and FPU (which, sadly rules out mine!). Mode information can be found at the Linux 680x0 pages.