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1.5 Hardware |
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This article is from the Amiga Books FAQ, by Marc Atkin with numerous contributions by others.
o Warren Block:
A1200 Hardware FAQ
A4000 Hardware Guide
These two on-line documents answer common hardware problems with the
A1200 and A4000, and how to go about fixing them. They are both available
on Aminet ( hard/misc/a1200hardfaq.lha and hard/misc/a4khard.lha ).
o Commodore Business Machines:
A500/A2000 Technical Reference Guide
Commodore, [year?].
CATS part number: TECHREF01
$40.00
A 275-page reference manual that describes the technical features of the
A500 and A2000, as well as those features that differ from the A1000.
Table of contents includes: System Block Diagrams, Amiga Expansion,
Designing Hardware for the Amiga Expansion Architecture, Driver
Documentation, Software for Amiga Expansion, PC Bridgeboard and
schematics.
o Commodore Business Machines:
Amiga 1000 Schematics and Expansion Specifications
Commodore, 1986.
CATS part number: A1000SM
$20.00
Spiral-bound manual containing full Amiga 1000 schematics, timing
diagrams, PAL equations, and documentation for the auto-configuration
process.
o Grote, Gelfland, Abraham:
Amiga Disk Drives, Inside and Out
Abacus, 1988. ISBN 1-55755-042-5
lo@hawaiian.net (Lopaka), 7 Apr 1996:
"Came with a disk and some programs, lots of info about how the old file
system worked, ways to hack it, overcome copy protection etc. My gripe
was that 'Inside and Out' should at least cover what the jumpers do, tips
on fixing floppy drives, ways to make PC drives work on the Amiga etc. If
I had a chance to glance at it first, I would not have ordered it, but it
was mail order. I'm sure some coders would like the book, but ah well,
it's too dated now, I think."
lucadip@flashnet.it (Luca DP), 25 May 1998:
"It's simply a great book, and it covers everything from how the data is
physically stored on the disks to everything a programmer should know
about: programming under AmigaDos or directly `banging' on the hardware.
It includes plenty of examples (and there are 3 working programs at the
end of the book) and a disassembly of the ROM routines. Don't even think
about making your own boot disk without this book! If you can find it
now, even used, it's worth buying."
Randell.Jesup@scala.com (Randell Jesup), 20 Jul 1998:
"I was in charge of the disk drivers and AmigaDOS at Commodore from 1988
until the end. I did major rewrites on the floppy drivers, rewrote
AmigaDOS in C/ASM (from BCPL/ASM), etc. This book has more technical
errors and code-bugs than you can shake a stick at. Many of the specs
given (or more normally assumed without comment) are just plain wrong and
will fail on some subset of Amiga drives out there (people like this were
the reason some program's copy-protection code failed randomly or on
certain machines). I have a copy of it (in a box somewhere now) that had
yellow post-it's for each major bug. It was full of them. I considered
this book a hopeless case back in '88.
If you must program the floppy hardware directly, respect the timing
requirements. The code in the book was littered with busywait-loops that
might work semi-correctly on an A500 - maybe. Take over from the OS
correctly so you don't collide with it. [...] The [AmigaDOS] drivers come
within a few percent of the theoretical max, and have extensive
error-recovery code to manage to retrieve sectors off of damaged tracks.
Use the OS."
o [author?]:
A1200 Insiders Guide
Bruce Smith Books, [year?]. [ISBN?]
UKP 14.95
o various authors:
Specification for the Advanced Amiga (AA) Chip Set
1993.
On-line document, available from Aminet ( text/hyper/aga_guide.lha ).
Dirk@chessy.aworld.de (Dirk Kocherscheidt), 12 Apr 1996:
[...] includes a complete list of the registers of the AGA-Custom-Chips.
As far as I know, this guide is the only available documentation about
AGA. It's pretty useful for demo/game coders who already know how the OCS
works, because the guide doesn't give any real examples (except
explaining how the new display and sprite modes work). The registers are
both listed by address and by name. If you click on the register's name
you get exact information about what each bit means and how it has to be
used. All in all I'd say that this guide is pretty useful."
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