CompuServe Thread

I would suggest an upgrade to 2.1; you will notice a solid increase in functionality without an overall performance hit. You can get gazillions of colors with a 3rd party 24-bit graphics card, but this will support only selected applications. The new generation (A1200/A4000) machines have built-in 24-bit graphics; there are rumors aflying of A2000 and A3000 AGA (the new standard) boards, but nothing solid. I would personally hold off on buying a 3rd party board unless I had some specific application in mind that could not wait a couple of months to test the waters. Your 2000 may be able to use 1.44 meg drives; I'm not sure on this. If you purchase a PC emulation hardware solution, most of them will support 1.44 meg drives. 68030 and 68040-based accelerators are fairly inexpensive; you can get an 040 for under $1000, and that will power you past any 486 on the market if you get fast memory for it. One important question to answer is "what am I doing with my Amiga? what do I WANT to be doing?" Then you'll have a much better grasp of what you need to do with your system, if anything. The equivalent of DOS' '*' is '#?'. To use your example, to get a sample of everything starting with T, you would type "dir T#?". The nice thing about #? vs. * is that you can repeat the #? pattern; IE, if you know there's a file in there somewhere that starts with a T, has a .FOX somewhere in the middle, and ends in .FLY, you could do "dir t#?.fox#?.fly" and it would find it. Pretty cool, huh? <g> Best of luck with your system, feel free to ask in the forums for help, you will find people to be quite supportive and helpful.

Nick, The 2000 is an older machine, but you can still upgrade it a good deal. First, the bad news – when the 2000 came out it blew the doors off IBM graphics. these days, 256+ color VGA displays have better color resolution than the 2000, although the generally can't display graphics as fast as the Amiga can. (Which means your 2000 is still far better at animation.) The good news is – you can upgrade your 2000's processer and get 486 class performance for as little as a few hundred dollars; you can get a new rom "2.05" is the latest, I think, and a new version of the OS (2.1). The rom and OS will cost you $90 – and the improvement to the OS is nothing short of incredible. Finally, depending on how much you want to spend, you can drop between 300 and 2000 dollars on getting a third party graphics board which will offer you greatly improved video; or you can do like most of us and wait for Commodore to release an add-on board for the 2000 that will give you the same kind of graphics the new amigas have. Your 2000 is a solid machine – I used mine for years until a lightening strike sent it to the computer bone yard. It will run all Amiga software except stuff written for the brand new models (the 4000 and the 1200), and it'll be far more enjoyable to use. Oh, and about the 1.44 drives – your 2000 probably doesn't have a 1.44 meg disk drive, but you can buy them and install them for about $100 each. PS – to do "wild cards" on the amiga, the "*" doesn't work (because they used that character to mean something else). Instead, type "dir T#?" the "#?" does the same thing as the "*" on a PC.

Danny (Nick?): The equivelent command under AmigaDOS would be DIR T#? In AmigaDOS the . is a character like any other, and filenames can be upto 32 characters long. #? is equivelent to * under MS-DOS, and as "." is a normal character there's no need to have it in the filename, so T#? is asking for all files that start with T just like DIR T*.* does under MS-DOS. // -Mike Schiller \X/ AMIGA! On AutoPilot in sunny Fort Lauderdale

"What ROM version should I get?" Well, I hear 2.1 is out now. 1.3 is dead. "Can my amiga use 1.44meg drives? or at least do so when emulating a PC?" Yes. Get Crossdos. I think it comes with 2.1 actually. "I heard that my amiga can beat a 386 IBM in graphics etc… but I can't seem to prove it to anyone." Why do you want to prove it to anyone? Do you want the Amiga to meet your needs or someone elses? "And what about acceleration? What should I consider there?" How about a board from Progressive Peripherals. I hear they are very nice and somewhat cheap these days. "How do I do a directory listing for specific files. I have been unable to find a way to do it with my cli or shell." Dir T#? will do the same as C:>DIR T*.* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . donovan . . .

Danny, First, it's policy to join the forum with your complete name. I also wondered if I made a mistake after buying my first Amiga. That didn't last long and I was soon wondering why I hadn't gotten one earlier. The 2000 is an older machine but still a workhorse. Provided you didn't pay too much, it should be good for discovering the Amiga, plus if you want something like a toaster, the 2000 is currently the machine to go with. Definitely get System 2.1 and roms. Also get a directory utility like DirOpus or SID. VLTjr is a good terminal program you can download from here and for logging on to CIS, I would recommend AutoPilot (functional demo available here) No, you can't get 16.8 million colors with a 2000. You can get 4096 colors in ham mode. Interlace allows for more resolution but it will flicker considerably on your 1084. You might consider getting a flicker fixer and a vga or multyisynch monitor. You might also consider a 24 bit card such as OpalVision. For acceleration, a Zeus 040 from Progresive Peripherals is priced right now. I would suggest that you gain some familiarity with the system and get a better idea of what you want from it before you go upgrading too much. It can be far more expensive in the long run than just buying a new machine. There's alot to learn, so don't get overwhelmed if everything doesn't immediately fall into place. Amiga Dos doesn't support the * wildcard. Try T#? instead. Also, the command name followed by ? will usually produce a template of use. -Richard

Your A2000 must be used; otherwise, if you bought it recently new, it should have come with Workbench 2.1. If not, upgrading the OS will greatly improve your Amiga and will only cost 80-90 bucks. As a confirmed PC and Amiga user, I have to say that the substitution in AmigaDOS of "#?" for the asterisk wildcard is neat but confusing. There are utilities out there you can run that will restore the asterisk to its rightful mission, if you insist. AmigaDOS other big confusing difference from MS-DOS command line lingo is that subdirectory slashes are backwards; that one confused me for a l-o-n-g time! Barring a 24-bit card, such as Opalvision or the like (or the hoped for AGA card upgrade, which may never happen), the single best investment you can make in your A2000 is in a flicker fixer to take care of the interlace flicker. Commodore's A2320 fixer really turns out nice video, is easy to install in the video slot and can be had mail order for under 150 bucks. Flicker is essential for video applications (you need interlace mode for output to NTSC composite video) but it's annoying for desktop publishing or other stuff. Flicker fixer cards typically require a multisync or VGA monitor, usually. If you have a Commodore 1084s or something similar, they probably won't work. The alternative is to wear polaroid shades or get a smoked screen or tune your colors to minimize flicker. A lot of folks, me included, own a DCTV graphics board, which lets you paint and digitize video in about 4 million colors on a composite monitor. It's rock cheap, too: around 300 bucks. Comes with a great paint program, DCTV Paint. However, it won't let you run games or applications or the Workbench in that mode, just imagery. Super for handling animations in real time. Stick with it; I did, and found the Amiga to be a great computer.