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ADVENTURES IN RETRO - ISSUE 1
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Welcome to my new Disk Magazine for the Amiga, this is basically my ramblings
on retro stuff, not necessarily Amiga, but the Disk Mag itself is designed to
run on the Amiga.
Here's a few notes about running this
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SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
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I've done extensive testing on several different Amigas, and it works on this
specificiation as an absolute minimum:
- a PAL Amiga 500 or Amiga 1000 with Kickstart 1.2 or later
- stock 68000 CPU
- 1MB of RAM, this can be 512kb Chip RAM and 512kb Fast RAM or 1MB Chip RAM
I've also tested on a stock Amiga 1200 with 020, 2MB Chip RAM and Kick 3.0 so
it works on there too.
It's an absolute MUST that this requires a PAL machine (or, an NTSC machine
booted in to PAL mode) as the Disk Mag engine uses the extra screen real-estate
to display the button bar.
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HOW TO START IT
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For best results, I advise using your favourite tool to write the ADF to a
floppy disk on your real Amiga, or, you could use an emulator like WinUAE
Booting from the floppy (or ADF file in an emulator) - the simplest method:
1. Insert the floppy disk/ADF file
2. Turn on the Amiga/Start the Emulator
3. Wait for the program to load and run
Loading from the floppy (or ADF) from withing Workbench:
1. Boot up your Amiga (or Emulator) in to Workbench
2. Insert the floppy or ADF file
3. Double-click the disk icon that appears
4. Double-click the DMC.exe application
5. Wait for it to start
Installing / Running from a hard disk:
1. Boot up your Amiga (or Emulator) in to Workbench
2. Insert the floppy or ADF file
3. Open the hard disk partition or disk/drawer window where you want to install to
4. Drag the disk icon (for the disk mag) into the window you just opened
5. Wait patiently whilst the data copies
6. Now you can remove the floppy/ADF file
7. From this point onwards (including in the future), just open the hard disk/drawer
window where you installed the disk mag, double-click the DMC.exe icon
and that's how you run it.
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QUITTING FROM THE DISK MAG
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There's a "QUIT" button on the button bar, or, press SHIFT+ESC to quit
You will be returned to the Workbench screen once you quit the disk mag
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IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I NEED TO KNOW?
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No, just boot up and enjoy
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WHO IS INVOLVED IN THIS MAGAZINE?
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The majority of the work is done by me "Duncan 'woody.cool' Woodward" but some
of the content is from some friends of mine in the retro scene, namely the following
people:
- Brett 'Bapstarcade' Pritchard: Music, this is one of his tracks and it's superb
- Maddi (aka MsMadLemon): an article and quite a few background ideas
- Chris (aka CiH): several articles and a lot of input/experience
- Rich (aka Felice): an article, plus support and ideas
Note that any articles on the disk mag are the expressed opinions of the person
writing those articles, not necessarily my opinion (unless written by me) and these
articles were read by me and vetted to be included.
Whilst the main topic of this disk mag is "retro" or "vintage" tech, it is not limited
to the Amiga, and is "multi-platform" based, despite being made to run on an Amiga.
The "retro" topic and theme is to also include other retro-tech and also other forms
of entertainment, such as old films and music (as well as games of course)
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CAN I CONTRIBUTE?
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Well, I am interested in other content from other users who may want to contribute
You can contact me on 'dskmag@woodycool.uk' with your ideas and what you want to
contribute to the disk mag, however, don't just send your submission, I want to hear
about what you're interested in submitting first, to make sure it fits the theme of
the disk mag.
Written articles need to be in plain text format, just plain old ASCII text, but
please do make it clear where the headings are, so I can format them appropriately,
otherwise I'll just make my own mind up. Please avoid weird extended ASCII characters
as these don't convert well when imported in to the Amiga. English language only.
Artwork must be within the confines of the Amiga's screen resolution, either make them
320x200 (up to 32 colours) or 640x200 (up to 16 colours) - they don't need to be already
in IFF format as I can convert them, but they must be in something fairly easy for me
to open on any computer (like a GIF, PNG, BMP etc.) please do not use WEBP or HEIC
for example, as these are a chore to convert for me.
Music should be in the standard Amiga sound-trackcer MOD format, but please try
not to use any crazy extravagent features - AMOS (and therefore DMC, the disk mag
creator) only supports MODs that use standard features of the format, and therefore
some more extravagent MODs sometimes get corrupted or don't play as expected.
MEDs are not supported.
Ideas about the mag itself or the disk mag engine are also encouraged, but please be aware
that I'm currently using an off-the-shelf disk mag creator program, which was originally
written in AMOSPro, and I there's no source code available, so I am unable to make changes
to the code - however, depending on how well this does and who looks at this, I may consider
writing my own disk mag engine (or using another tool) at a later date.
The rules about the actual content submitted:
1. ABSOLUTELY NO POLITICS OR RELIGIOUS CONTENT - whilst this is off-topic anyway,
I will absolutely reject anything that falls in to this category. Reviews of
a piece of entertainment that is political is ok, but, I will read it and feedback
if I consider it suitable.
2. NO RAGE-BAIT OR TROLLING OTHER GROUPS IN THE SCENE - I think this speaks for itself
I'm not one of them demoscene or cracking groups of the 80s/90s where they flamed
other groups or flexed that they were better - this is just a bit of fun, lets
keep the drama out of it. No unnecessary drama in the scene please.
3. NO HATE SPEECH - I'm sure I don't need to tell you what this is, it should be pretty
obvious to anyone who's a grown adult, but (and this is not an exhaustive list), please
no: racism, sexism, misogyny, misandry, agesim, homophonia, transphonia, ableism,
or any other hate speech or exlcusion of a particular social or economic group of
people. I have a ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICY on this.
4. REVIEWS/OPINIONS ARE TO BE HONEST AN AUTHENTIC - I don't shill for any product, nor
do I expect anyone who contributes to, so therefore, no sponsored content. However,
don't be unneccesairily unkind either - if you have an opinion, be honest about it,
but justify it too - "this thing is shit" is not acceptable, "this thing is a bad
product because of reason xxxxx" is acceptable.
5. NO NSFW - this is NOT a pornographic disk mag, nor is it a graphic anime/gore fest.
I will outright reject anything that's NSFW - whilst we're not a "for kids" disk mag,
we're also not an adult-specific disk mag either
6. LANGUAGE: we're an English disk mag, so submissions should be in English only please.
Also, bad language (swearing, cussing) - I'm not against it, and I don't mind the odd
word slipping in there every now and again, however, show some class, don't make it
sound like a drunk chav on a Saturday night down the local.
7. SPELLING & GRAMMAR: I am not the spelling police, I'm not the grammar police, I'm not
looking for you to have a PhD or Masters in English Language, however, please do try
your best to make your articles at least readable to your average human being.
Try to run it through a spell checker first if you can, but also, please avoid using
lots of unkonwn terminology - I except tech terms and jargon, I expect our readership
will understand these, but no "you've got to be in the clique" terms that nobody but
you understands.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of rules, but it's not really, it should all be common sense
for the majority of adults nowadays.
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IN CONCLUSION
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So, insert the disk (or ADF) and enjoy, this is all just a bit of fun really, let's enjoy
the days of old.
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