AMax compatabilities
12 messages in this thread
I'm in the process of getting an Amiga, and I'm stuck in what seems to be a
classic college-student problem: my school really likes Macs. There are several
CS courses that require students to buy Mac versions of language compilers,
then use them on either their own or one of the school computers. I've been
looking into the AMax board.. can anyone relate their experiences with it? I am
not as concerned with it's compatability with games and such, after all that's
why I'm getting the Amiga. It's the languages that I have to be sure of. Has
anyone had problems getting compilers (mainly Pascal and C) to run on the Amax?
Thanks for any help you can give..
Brian Warner
Just curious, what college is this you're talking about?
Steve
Brian, I haven't heard any problem with compatibility. Just don't try to
print to anything but an Apple printer and there'll be no problem. The Epson
emulation really stinks.
You should know that your screen will be in interlace, although it is 50%
larger than a Mac screen. Also, you almost need an external Apple or compatible
drive. Many Amiga mail-order houses are offering complete packages including
AMax, 128K ROMs and a compat. disk drive for $450 or so.
— Ethan
Ethan, will AMax work with any PostScript printer? (Thinking of playing around
with AMax.. I really need an Arabic TypeSetting program.. Sigh.)
Khalid.
You can tell it to do no modifications to what comes through the parallel
and/or serial ports, so I assume any postscript printer.
— Ethan
Ethan, I noticed something strange about that myself….
I printed to my Pana 1124 printer when it was set up for IW LQ 24 emulation,
and that caused some minor problems —
Printing it out and asking for either "draft" or "best" mode got me the
slowest possible results. Both did exactly the same thing, a nice, neat,
slow bit map print.
Printing the same thing out and asking for the middle choice "faster?"
(memory fails me), got me the draft results I wanted, and was, as it said,
faster….
You might wish to explore that option as well, as I seem to recall that you
mentioned having the same type of printer.
Barry
Brian: I am an Assistant Professor of Physics at Community College of Phila. I
use an Amiga 1000 both at home and at work. I know what you are talking about
since some of my students transfer to Drexel University which requires that
they have access to a Macintosh. I have Amax for both of my computers and it
works fine. I use Macintosh Turbo Pascal with Amax and it runs without any
problems at all. There are various C compilers available for the Mac, and I
suspect they run just as well.
If you do buy Amax (I think an Amiga and Amax is a good idea, by the way)
be sure to get the 128K ROM chips and a Mac-compatible drive (such as the
Cutting Edge). I suspect that the college you want to go to has Macintoshes
with printers available for student use on campus, so if money's tight you
could buy a printer later. If you want to use the printer with Amax, buy one
which is Epson-compatible.
Well, I hope this helps. Just out of curiosity, which college did you plan
to go to and what is your intended major? Lots of luck.
-David Cattell
David,
Does AMAX take over the entire machine or does it run on the Ami in a window?
…Dave
AMAX takes over the machine.
-sja
Brian: One more remark about the printer: If you get an Imagewriter, you need
a special cable to hook it up to the Amiga's serial port. I forgot that the
Epson-compatible emulation in Amax is not so hot in this version. (I haven't
actually seen a sample output; this is what others have said).
-D. Cattell
Thanks to everybody for your responses. Steve and David: the college in
question is Stanford University.. probably an EE or CS major (undecided like
all proper freshmen).
Does the AMax function as a separate task? That is, does it run at the same
time as the Amy stuff, or does it take complete control of the 68000? I think
the PC BridgeBoard functions as a distinct task.. is this right? I imagine the
AMax would take more control of the system because it uses the same processor..
my point is, could you transfer files to be printed to an Amiga print routine?
Or does the AMax prevent Amiga programs from running while it is operating?
Thanks again for everybody's help…
Brian
Brian: AMAX takes over the entire machine. It turns out, though, that if
you are using a Bridgeboard with AMAX, the Bridgeboard will continue
running in the background while you are using Amax. Unfortunately, you
have no way of getting to the Bridgeboard screen because Amax does away
with the Amiga's oper-ating system. Software is included to transfer text
files to and from Amiga disks. I also bought MAC-2-DOS (from Central Coast
Software) to translate and convert other files as well. I have also heard
that Simon Douglas (Amax author) is working on Amax software to transfer
more file types as well (between MAC and Amiga disks). You can print with
Amax if you have an Imagewriter connected, but you need a special cable to
connect it to the Amiga. See the other reply (that fellow's name is Brian
also) for more info on this.