Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

Do you have a problem? Do you sometimes
find yourself poised over your Amiga with axe
In hand, spouting profanity at the stubborn
refusal of your Amiga software or hardware to
behave property?
Well, calm down and swap the axe for pen
and paper, jot down your problems, along
with a thorough description of your Amiga
setup. and send It off to Amiga Computing Advice Service. IDG
Media. Media House. Adlington Park, Macclesfield SKI() *NIP. Or email
us at ACAStfacomp.demon_co.uk
AssignPreis gives you a nice GUI
front-end to add, change and remove
assigns. which makes looking after
your assigns a lot easier.
A500 PHRI151011
i have an A500 and would like
to know what is involved in
upgrading to OS 2.04 or 3.1. I
know you can buy ROM kits and that
they come with fitting instructions, but
are they easy to understand by a complete
novice like me? Do they need
speoal tools, and do they come with the
Workbench disks as well? Is it also possible
to use the 3.1 ROMs in conjunchon
with a ROM switcher?
At some point in the future I would
also like to lit a hard drive, but there
seem to be so many different sorts
!Owl really know which one would be
best.
Rose &lasted, Oxon
r With regards to upgrading
your A500's Kickstart
chip. I would suggest you
went for the OS 3.1 kit. How difficult
this is depends on what revision
your A500 is. Basically, if your
Uiorkbenth blue5
I have an Amiga 500 and a ROM switc-
\ „, her fitted with Kickstart 1.3 and 2.05. I
have just Increased my hard drive from
40 to 350Mb and have a Megachip
installed. My problem is that on the initial start
„o I am getting the message 'pure bit not set'.
y'inat is this pure bit and how do I set it?
If I switch to 2.05 and boot my system, everything
becomes very slow and jerky. I am told this
is because it is still booting Workbench 1.3. How
can I get my system to detect which ROM I have
selected, and automatically boot the correct
Workbench?
Finally, when using Pen Pal I find it very useful
to use the CMD function to redirect the output
to my hard drive, and then print later. This
always worked fine, but since changing the hard
drive, every time I use ill gel a blank screen and
a redirecting data message. When I then quit
Pen Pal I am left with just the blank screen and
Workbench cannot be found.
M Dennett, Somerset
oue5tion5?
Morkben oh release
Amiga is no more than six-years old
It should be a revision six machine.
The only way to find out for sure is to
open your machine up, remove the
metal shield by carefully bending all
the tabs up. and somewhere on the
mother board, normally on the righthand
side, there will the revision
number.
If it is an earlier version than six
you are going to have to do a bit of
amateur electronics, and depending
on how adventurous you are it may
be best to get a qualified electrician
to do the job. If, however, you have a
revision six machine, fitting the ROM
is a case of carefully prising the old
ROM out of its base - a flat head
screwdriver pushed carefully
between the chip and the base at
each end should do the trick - and
then replacing it with the new ROM.
making sure you place it the correct
way around. There are clear markings
on the chip and its base. so this is
obvious.
It is possible to use a ROM switcher,
but why do want to? I am sure
once you use 3.1 you will wonder
how you ever managed using 1.3.
When OS 2 first appeared there was a
legitimate use for ROM switches, but
nowadays every program will run
under OS 3.
As for fitting a hard drive In the
future, five years ago you could not
move for Amiga 500 hard drive
adverts, but now A500 stuff is getting
pretty thin on the ground. The easiest
way to add a hard drive to an A500 is
to choose any of the ones that fits
Into the side expansion slot. You
should also consider getting some
extra memory, as each hard drive
partition uses up some memory and
Bigger, be tte r a nd Va ste r. Eve ry a spe ct of Workbe nch
3.1 iv a n improve me nt ove r the now de cropild 1 .3
Normally, the pure bit error is associated
with the pure protection bit of a
r, file not being set. A quick cure for
this is to simply type from a shell, 'protect
C:*? +p'. This will set all the pure bits of
all the programs in the c: directory. However,
running the 1.3 tiles under Kickstart 2.05
should not make any difference to the speed
Amiga Computing
OCTOBER 1995
TECHNICAL
AROD ethernet
1 Is there an ethernet adapter
available for the Al200
which plugs into the PCMCIA
slot or the parallel port? I know
these are available for the PC, but I
have not seen any advertised for the
Amiga. I hope to buy an Al200 when I
go to university and would like to connect
to the campus network, if I can.
Philip Chung, Cambridge
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-
You will be glad to hear that
., able called the I-Card. This
is only half the story, as you
have to find out what type of network
the university uses so you
can purchase the correct network
and driver software. Unfortunately,
the card is expensive at £249. If
you give White Knight Technology
a call on 01920 822321. I am sure
they can help.
There is another option, but this
involves more work_ You could get
hold of a PC PCMCIA ethernet card,
which is much cheaper, but you
then need the driver software and a
copy of AmiTCP. The problem here
is the driver software for the card.
Apparently, Erik Quackenbush has
written a driver. but I have been
unable to get hold of him - keep
you informed.
you will be stretching 1Mb to the
limit, You can normally fit extra memory
into the hard drive, but It is
something worth checking before
you buy one.
of your computer. The error message you are
getting, and the fact your computer is
running slower, is indicative of a keyboard
problem.
It could be that when fitting the Megachip
you dislodged the keyboard connector. Does
your caps lock light flash when you boot
your computer? If it does then this definitely
means you have a keyboard problem. All I
can suggest is that you check the keyboard
Is correctly connected and make sure none
of your keys are trapped by the computer
casing. As for your problem with CMD, are
you running Pen Pal under 1.3 or 2.05, and
which OS version of CMD are you running?
Earlier versions of Pen Pal do not run under
version 2, but it is possible to upgrade to
either the last version of Pen Pal, or the
much more recent Final Writer.
I do wonder why you are still using 1_3. If
its just to run Pen Pal then you really should
upgrade and dump all the 1,3 stuff on your
hard drive. If you have to run 1_3 then there
are a number of small CLI utilities that can
detect which ROM you have running, and
then execute the correct startup-sequence.
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