I had to stop and really think about the contents of this tutorial. The Amiga was a unique machine, not only for the time in which it was produced, but also for the software its developers were inspired to create for it. But, realistically, the Amiga 500 was introduced 34 years ago, and in nearly every application category you can name there exists software today that is faster and better than anything you can run on an Amiga. There are no practical reasons to run an emulated machine for word processing, database, photography, music production or playback, 3D rendering, and so on. Web was at its infancy back then, and even with browsers for relatively recent versions of the Amiga operating system, navigating the web on an Amiga remains nothing more than a frustrating novelty.
However, there are some Amiga applications that are relatively unique to the platform, and have not really been brought into the modern age. I have chosen the following applications on this basis. They don't have modern analogs because what they did was specifically targeted at the Amiga's particular hardware design, or simply represent a moment of software development that for one reason or another was never updated.
Instructions here on are going to be less step-by-step and more just informative about where to get files needed, and recommendations as to what to install and why. Skills you learned in the previous tutorials will come into play here.
Gather Your Resources
Lets get some downloads. We want to collect the ADF or lha files for the following applications, put them in the /home/pi/Amiberry/adf folder and install them one at a time into our virtual Amiga environment. Be sure to pull a backup of the System130.hdf file in your /home/pi/Amiberry/systems/Workbench 1.3 folder from time to time - if something goes wrong it can render a machine unbootable. (Note: if this happens, remember that you can boot the emulated machine with the Workbench 1.3 Workbench floppy image mounted in DF0: so that you can go in and investigate what went wrong.)
Deluxe Paint III
The premiere art program on the Amiga for quite a number of years, and arguably the template for many programs to follow. There were newer versions of this application, but they were written for the evolving hardware of the Amiga platform. This version is perfect for the Amiga 500. Download it here: Disk1 Disk2 Disk3 (Note, you really only need Disk1 to run the application - the other two disks are full of demo images and animations.)
Scenery Animator 2
Scenery Animator is a unique rendering program that never made it out of the 16 bit era of bitmapped graphics. It isn't photo-realistic but it didn't need to be - it was rendering images and animations for a machine with 16 or 32 colour displays, in low resolution. Its specialty was landscapes. It could render its own type of self-generated fractal landscape, or it could render landscapes based on real-world Digital Elevation Maps (DEM files) that can be found and downloaded online. It has tools to allow you to create "flyover"type animations of these landscapes, with options to automatically bank the camera on turns, and to fly close to the ground while avoiding collisions. It could even populate these landscapes with trees. There is a more up to date version on this software designed for later versions of the Amiga chipset and faster processors, but this version runs well on the Amiga 500. Download it here: Scenery Amimator 2.06
Cinemorph
One of the first "morphing" programs available to the public, Cinemorph allowed users to create morph animations which were similar to effects seen in the then popular "Black or White" music video by Michael Jackson. Essentially the effect involves a controlled distortion of one image to conform to a second image, and a cross-fade between the images. There were more powerful versions of this class of software, but this one was designed for the abilities of the Amiga 500 and 2000. Download it here: Cinemorph 1.01
HippoPlayer
Mods are music files that the Amiga could play. Its a bit like a combination of music track patterns (instructions on when to play what notes in what voice) and samples of various instruments that could be played back on Amiga sound hardware. HippoPlayer is a multiformat module player that runs on any Amiga platform. Download it here: HippoPlayer
Very Sketchy Installation instructions
Deluxe Paint III has no installer. You mount the Disk 1 of the three disk set, create a place to put the software, and drag the icon from the floppy disk to the destination. I created an Applications drawer on the System: volume (by duplicating the Empty drawer), and in there, I created a Deluxe Paint drawer. Then I dragged the Deluxe Paint application in.
Scenery Animator has an installer, but all that it only a couple of fonts and libraries it uses To install the application itself you perform a similar task to that of installing Deluxe Paint - make a place to put the software, and then drag the icon of the application to the destination from the floppy. In the case of Scenery Animator there are two versions of the application - the one with the name ending in .881 is for Amigas equipped with a Floating Point Unit, which a stock Amiga 500 did not have. We'll get into the FPU enabled version of programs when we build an emulated A2500 in a future tutorial. There are a few other utilities on the Scenery Animator floppy that you may also want to copy - Display and ShowAnim, as well as a Picture folder that contains a demo image of Yosemite rendered with the program.
Cinemorph comes with a full installer that will install the application plus everything else it needs to run. However, I would highly advise backing up the .hdf file for your system before attempting to install this software. I recommend running the installer in full Expert User mode. Use the Installer's ability to make a new drawer for the application (with icon), and you want to install the non-accelerated version (because the Amiga 500 does not possess an FPU). Skip installation of the HAM-E library and the RenderHAM-E library. These are for a hardware device that is not available to emulated Amiga machines.
HippoPlayer
This application has no installer. Create a drawer for HippoPlayer in your System:Applications drawer, and then execute the following commands in WShell:
cd ram:
lha x transfer:hippoplayer
copy HippoSupport/Libs/#? Libs:
copy HippoPlayer/HippoPlayer#? S:
copy HippoPlayer/HiP System:Applications/HippoPlayer
copy HippoPlayer/HiP.info System:Applications/HippoPlayerNow, you can visit The Mod Archive and look around for music that interests you. If, like me, you have no idea what to look for, Go to the Music.../Charts/Top Favorites page, and grab whatever looks good on the list. Modules come in a very wide array of formats which can be determined by the file extension. I had the best luck playing the old style .MOD files. I am guessing some of the newer file types require more sophisticated player software, and a newer version of Amiga OS on a faster platform than the good old Amiga 500 running Workbench 1.3. We'll explore these other mod types when we build our Amiga 1200 system with Workbench 3.1.
Next post, we'll explore the games that made the Amiga 500 a success. Thank you for reading and I hope this tutorial was helpful.