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- Name: Kostas Theodoropoulos
-
- Email: mc94066@central.ntua.gr
-
-
-
- Hello to all AF people out there. This is my second attempt for
- AF's CD. The first one probably lost somewhere in the way (damn
- amigamaniac postofficer!!! ;). Let's get serious...
-
-
- My AMIGA's setup: A4000/030/882 25/33MHz, 2MB Chip RAM, 16MB Fast 60ns
- RAM, kickstart v39.109, PicassoIV gfx card, Philips 107B 17" multisync
- monitor, Conner 540MB IDE HD, Mitsumi 6x Atapi/IDE CDROM drive, USR
- Sportster 14.4Vi, Star LC200-9pin Color Printer, MUI v3.8, MCP v1.32
- etc... and hopefully soon a PPC 233MHz!!!
-
-
- My Story
- ========
-
-
- I am computer user for over 15 years (BBC Plus, ZX Spectrum 48K,
- Amstrad CPC6128) and after I passed to the medical universiry of Athens I
- got my first Amiga in 1990 (A500, WBv1.3, 512KB Ram and 1084S monitor).
- Soon, I added another 512kb Ram, another disk drive and a Star LC200 9pin
- color printer. In 1992 I swapped my A500 for an A500+ with WBv2.04,
- which was owned by a friend. He wanted only to play games, and then
- there was a great problem of incompatible games, so...
-
-
- Late in 1993, I managed to buy an A4000/30 with 6MB Ram and 80MB HD
- (after a 6month wait, because the 2 first amigas were not... working, but
- the third was fine - with some exceptions 8(. I was interested in
- raytracing and animations mainly after the AF with Imagine v2 in the
- coverdisk.
-
-
- In September 1994 I decided that I could earn some money from my Amiga
- making gfx for small local TV stations (almost all of them had Amigas).
- So I started to work in 2-3 stations, making gfx in home and then
- transfer them to the station. But, some stations just had an A500
- Wbv1.3!!! with 20MBHD, some had A2000 with only 2MB ram and HD, only one
- station had an A4000/040 with 6MB ram and 120MB HD (TvK), another A1200
- 6MB ram with 40MB HD (Gtv), and last TeleCity had an A3000/030/882 25MHz
- 10MBRam, 512MBHD and an A3000/030/881 16MHz 6MB ram, 250 MB HD. I worked
- for the last 3 TV stations. It was impossible to make serious gfx with
- Wbv1.3 or tiny HD and little ram and 68000 (how else can you playback an
- 10MB anim in reasonable fps???).
-
-
- Soon, I added an 68882/33MHz and changed my 4Mb SIMM with 2x4MB 60nsec
- (Total 10MBRAM). But my Seagate 80MB HD was too little and I had to
- delete all the s/w except WB and gfx programs to sqeeze my anims in the HD.
- Then my Amiga's Video DAC chip broke. The service told me that there
- weren't any spare parts and I had to wait!!! I got my amiga back home
- and I managed to get picture making a cable that got the digital RGB from
- amiga's video port to 1084S digital input. The problem was that I had
- only 16 variations of each primitive color (Red, Green, Blue), so I
- DIDN'T know what color exactly had the anims I made!!! After 3-4 months
- and million of telephones to the service, my amiga was back with a new
- Conner 540MB HD (twice as fast and biiiig). So, forgive me if some anims
- have strange colors...
-
-
- In September 1994 I stopped from gfx and I used my amiga for
- wordprocessing. My girlfriend was studying History in the American
- College of Greece (DEREE) and had to write many papers. There was an
- advertising wall, where many PeeCee users were typing the papers and get
- payed by the page. So I made an advertise and started. The good think
- was that I worked entirly in home. I ended this job in May 1996 (I took
- my M.D.). I typed over 3000 pages in those 2 school years, all printed
- with my trusty Star LC200 9pin printer - it's a beast, never broke down,
- only if it was a little more quiet and fast... and as a present to myself
- I got the Mitsumi 6x CDROM drive and the USR modem.
-
-
- In December 1996 I was tired from the flickering of my 1084S, so I
- sold it and I got a Philips 107B 17" and another 8MB 60nsec RAM. But
- DBLPal was too slooowww and I couldn't play most of the games/demos, so
- in September 1997 I bought a PicassoIV. Mama mia!!! What a speed!!! I
- felt like I was getting a 060. Now I can play all the games and demos
- without any flicker (and 3-4 times faster in NemacIV or Gloom or Quake
- etc..), see all the WWW pages in 800x600 truecolor, have a huge WB space
- in 1024x768, make DTP in 1600x1200 (now my screen is much more detailed
- than my printer!!!). My advice: GET ONE!!! you wan't regret it!!! Tip:
- the minimum RAM today is 16MB Fast, huge 24bit screens are MUCH MORE
- memory hungry.
-
-
- The K(ostas) FILES
- ------------------
-
-
- In each directory there is a ReadMe with details for the files in the
- dir. Generally speaking:
-
-
- Animations (dir): Some of my anims from my TV years. There is no
- copyright problem (design, idea, making are mine). I had made several
- other anims, but due to limited backup space I don't have them anymore
- (you know there weren't any ZIP drives then...)
-
-
- Imagine (dir): Examples of some Imagine v2 and v3 projects with
- brushmaps, used to make some anims.
-
-
- Misc (dir): Miscellanus staff for DOpusV5, P96 s/w and Comms.
-
-
- Pictures (dir): Some pictures from my amiga years.
-
-
- If you use, or base in, any anims or projects or pictures for
- proffessional - job - money earning issues, please just give me a credit.
-
-
- Send any comment or ask any advice to the e-mail address in the top.
-
-
-
- HAVE FUN !^)
-
-
- IMPORTANT!!! Do not blame me if your amiga blows, you buy a PC after looking
- my files, your CD drive spins and cut your TV in half, your whole family hates
- you, etc...
-
-
- P.S. STICK with your Amiga. My brothers gave £1100 in October 1997 to
- buy a PC PentiumMMX 200MHz, 32MB Ram, HD 2.2GB, Matrox Millenium 220 2MB gfx
- card, SoundBlaster AWE32, 20x CDROM drive, Epson Stylus 400 and Diamond 33.6
- modem. Now, after 4 months, you can buy the same system with £200 less, that
- means a loss of 5% of the value of your machine EACH MONTH. W95 are eating
- memory like potato chips (HD spins like crazy to allow virtual memory deal with
- the mad OS's demants), booting is taking ages, multitasking sucks (imagine
- that: I run Scandisk to make a HD surface test and after waiting 5 minutes, the
- whole process had to start from the begining because the screen blanker loaded
- ffom the HD - no HD busy to lock the task), every application does whatever it
- wants, installations spread files allover the HD and change Taskbar settings
- without a warning, complete CHAOS!!! And the games... only beautiful gfx and
- sound and NO gameplay, complete crap... imagine that the game I play most is...
- Worms. So, upgrade your Amiga to be a mean machine and do not complain, there
- are much worst things out there... (I dare any PC user to come and say anything
- for my PPC 233MHz, 72MB ram Amiga...whenever I get one;^) Also, if U want to
- buy a modem, get a USR one. They are more expensive but their quality is
- awesome.
-