4 ms·

I was similar, not really interested in graphics, just a nice programming environment. PCs had that stupid segmented address space (which was not ignorable at t

I was similar, not really interested in graphics, just a nice programming environment. PCs had that stupid segmented address space (which was not ignorable at the programming language level), expensive tools, and crappy OSes. My Amiga 2000 had a flat address space, a nice C development environment, and multitasking actually worked. It really was ahead of its time, in combining a workstation-like environment and an affordable price.

snakeyjake 3y ago
>My Amiga 2000 had a flat address space Chip ram, fast ram, cpu ram, expansion board ram, or slow ram? Did too much ram force your zorro card into the slooooooooooow ram address space (mine did)? Tough cookies bucko! Macintosh, pounding on table: "RAM is RAM!"
- logicprog 3y ago
  As someone trying to get into Amiga retro competing as a hobby in today's day and age, I find it keeping all the different types of ram straight very confusing lol
- geophile 3y ago
  This was a loooooong time ago. I have no clue.
- geophile 3y ago
  One thing I do remember about Amiga RAM is that some (all?) of it would survive reboot! That was very handy.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    It's the same in most computers. Wiping RAM is effort. The feature here is that AmigaOS will try and reuse the ExecBase structure if found. Such structure has a checksum, which is checked. If the check fails, a new one is made. This happens e.g. on power on, or after running games that are not system friendly (i.e. most games). But if the check passes, this structure has important information, such as a list of memory regions, the "cold/cool/warm" vectors, which are function addresses that get called if non-zero at different points of the boot process (non-surprisingly a virus favorite), as well as and a list of reset-resident modules, which become allocated memory, thus protecting them. A popular such device implements a reset-resident memory-backed block device, which the Amiga is able to boot from.

snakeyjake 3y ago

>My Amiga 2000 had a flat address space Chip ram, fast ram, cpu ram, expansion board ram, or slow ram? Did too much ram force your zorro card into the slooooooooooow ram address space (mine did)? Tough cookies bucko! Macintosh, pounding on table: "RAM is RAM!"

logicprog 3y ago
As someone trying to get into Amiga retro competing as a hobby in today's day and age, I find it keeping all the different types of ram straight very confusing lol
geophile 3y ago
This was a loooooong time ago. I have no clue.
geophile 3y ago
One thing I do remember about Amiga RAM is that some (all?) of it would survive reboot! That was very handy.
- snvzz 3y ago
  It's the same in most computers. Wiping RAM is effort. The feature here is that AmigaOS will try and reuse the ExecBase structure if found. Such structure has a checksum, which is checked. If the check fails, a new one is made. This happens e.g. on power on, or after running games that are not system friendly (i.e. most games). But if the check passes, this structure has important information, such as a list of memory regions, the "cold/cool/warm" vectors, which are function addresses that get called if non-zero at different points of the boot process (non-surprisingly a virus favorite), as well as and a list of reset-resident modules, which become allocated memory, thus protecting them. A popular such device implements a reset-resident memory-backed block device, which the Amiga is able to boot from.