
DJ rig with two Amiga 1200 PCs - glitcher
http://cdm.link/2018/07/dj-mod-amiga-1200-commodore/
======
milkmiruku
Mixxx can mix modules, though needs to be compiled with modplug=1 in the scons
arguments. AUR mixxx-git and Fedora RPM Fusion packages at least have that
enabled.

\- [https://www.mixxx.org](https://www.mixxx.org)

There's also Chipdisco, in Java, but mono (one channel for preview, one for
live).

\-
[https://echolevel.co.uk/post/1486312636973-Chipdisco](https://echolevel.co.uk/post/1486312636973-Chipdisco)

Some links to module repos and a download script:

\-
[https://gist.github.com/milkmiruku/32a9d023c3e05fdb41c4dc8a9...](https://gist.github.com/milkmiruku/32a9d023c3e05fdb41c4dc8a9a168d50)

~~~
grawprog
I love mixxx. It's an awesome program. I really appreciate the work that's
gone into it. Especially after adding 4 decks and additional effects plugins.
Combined with JACK it becomes extremely powerful It's definitely fully capable
of competing with serato or traitor. I'm really impressed and very
appreciative o all the work the devs have put into mixxx.

Actually, how does sound work on the Amiga? Is it more like ASIO or JACK in
the way it works? Or something totally different?

~~~
wk_end
It's not really comparable. There's no driver or abstraction (or memory
protection, or anything) on the Amiga - you're bit-banging against the
hardware directly.

~~~
Annatar
There is a driver, has been for the past 25 years: AHI. It then has
specialised drivers for different types of hardware, Paula included. Sotware
targeting AHI has audio hardware abstracted away. The user picks the output
driver, which could be one of the Amiga audio cards which AHI supports or the
Paula chip. For all intents and purposes, AHI treats the Paula chip as yet
another audio card.

------
jgh
When I was in my early 20's (in the early 2000's) I did a lot of DJing at
raves, one thing that really stuck with me was one night the 'DJ' after me had
a toolbox. He plugged it in to the mixing board and opened it up and it had 8
gameboys in it (original Gameboy), and that's what he performed his set using.
It was pretty amazing to see.

~~~
posting2fast
Was it DJ Scotch Egg by any chance?

~~~
jgh
I honestly don't remember, we're talking like 15 years ago or so. If he was
using gameboys around that time it's certainly possible, there couldn't have
been too many people doing it.

~~~
posting2fast
DJ Scotch Egg is a Japanese fella who doesn't mind crowdsurfing even when
there is hardly anyone there. Even if the music isn't your cup of tea (it
isn't really mine), just the person himself is worth checking out.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1EpOqe-
Ym0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1EpOqe-Ym0)

~~~
laumars
Oh man that is the oddest set I've watched in a while. I absolutely love it.

It makes me want to hook my Gameboy and midi controllers / keyboard's back up
to my Atari STfm

------
zerohp
Article is wrong about Amigas having mono output. Every Amiga model has stereo
output. It was one of the many things that set it apart.

~~~
puzzle
Indeed. But the Amiga had hard panning: two voices played on the left output
(and only there), while the other two on the right. And listening to music on
headphones was always awkward because of that.

Perhaps the author meant that they use a special cable to blend the two
outputs a bit (e.g. 70/30% like some software MOD players do). Or perhaps the
tracker plays the same sample on two voices?

Looking at the demo video, it does look like they have a splitter plugged into
one of the audio outputs.

Edit: I seem to remember that later Amiga models automatically mix to mono if
only one connector was in use. They must be doing this because of the hard
panning. It makes sense for a DJ, too, because at times you might be wearing
headphones only on one ear.

~~~
soegaard
> Perhaps the author meant that they use a special cable to > blend the two
> outputs a bit (e.g. 70/30% like some software > MOD players do).

That's what Ravi shows in the video at 4:30.

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beagle3
(semirelated): The Amiga, all the way back to the Amiga 1000 from 1985, had 4
channel (2 on the left, 2 on the right, no configuration here), 8-bit DMA
output with a 6-bit analog amplifier.

I've heard claims that the 6-bit analog amplifier was sufficiently precise
that you could combine two 8-bit channels into one 14-bit channel (in 1985!)
per stereo channel. I guess it's possible, but I still question this. Anyone
here know if that's actually true?

~~~
posting2fast
Very much looks like it's true, but I don't know when that trick first was
discovered:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=amiga+14-bit+sound](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=amiga+14-bit+sound)

------
digi_owl
Gotta love Retro Man Cave, delightfully British.

Edit: On a different note, i would love to see a ssd based "floppy" that was
loaded with the solid clunk of the 3.5" floppy.

~~~
abbeyj
[https://www.pcworld.com/article/3038787/computers/sd-card-
ha...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/3038787/computers/sd-card-hack-
breathes-new-life-into-this-old-floppy-drive.html)

~~~
digi_owl
Clever.

But i was thinking more of using the whole surface area of a floppy as a PCB
and cover it with flash chips.

------
aidos
Back in the 90s on weekends my dad would bring home one of the PCs from the
high school where he taught. Other students at the school had access to it so
it became a weird sort of communication portal. My mates would cycle over with
a backpack full of discs and we would install, say Dune II on the machine and
send it back to school. One day it arrived with a tracker, a load of mods, and
some demoscene files and it totally blew our minds. From then on I wanted to
write software.

I do recall slightly later in the 90s seeing guys using a PC with a tracker at
a forest rave. Probably didn't have the pitch control etc so they were
probably using it alongside decks. Nice to see that there's still work going
on to make "modern" tracker software for djing.

------
ir0nic
This brings me back. Anyone remember Future Crew demos?

~~~
Annatar
I do. They ushered a new era on the PC, where PC finally had something that
could compare with the demo quality of Amiga demos.

To be more concrete, it was "Second Reality" that they did it with:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA)

and here's Future Crew making it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU)

Europe and Summer school holidays. Perfect time to code.

------
orionblastar
I am amazed by the support of the Amiga long after it died. They are still
making stuff for it.

A500, A600, A1200 motherboards can be placed into a Checkmate 1500 Plus case
to be used like a desktop PC:

[http://www.amigasystems.com/](http://www.amigasystems.com/)

Maybe I should say desktop Amiga like the Amiga 2000 was.

------
tschellenbach
Monkey Island on the Amiga, happy memories. Insert floppy disk number 11 :D

~~~
roghummal
They removed the stump joke from later (CD onward?) editions because it
generated too many calls to support about missing disks. Damn shame! :)

~~~
sgt
Yes that's a hilarious one. I seem to only remember that it was disk 22
though. See:
[http://asset-5.soupcdn.com/asset/1692/9226_5a7c_640.png](http://asset-5.soupcdn.com/asset/1692/9226_5a7c_640.png)

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zengid
I wonder why audio software seems to be a bigger deal in Europe.

~~~
philjohn
A lot of the early demo scene was based over here, especially in Northern
Europe. Lots of those had music, and I guess that kind of low level
programming lured people into doing low level programming for things like
DAWs.

------
yeahdef
this is fantastic - love the sound of these tunes.

------
TheJoYo
chiptunes, man.

~~~
Annatar
Not necessarily; Amiga can play four channels of 8-bit sample output of
arbitrary length, limited only by the available CHIP RAM, at 22 KHz (or
thereabouts).

A chip tune is generated by a specialized sound chip, like the MOS 6581 which
can normally not play sampled output, although that barrier has been broken in
the last few years by tweaking the sound volume at high rates.

Ironically enough, the "chip tune" nomenclature comes from the Amiga where
very short sampled sounds which played would generate chirps and blirps akin
to the Yamaha and SID chips, but for reasons other than one might think: chip
tunes were at first made out of necessity, because the overall intro in front
of the crack had to be small since there usually wasn't much space on the
cracked game's disk.

But all Amigas can play stereo digitised samples in a 2 + 2 channel
configuration.

------
drsopp
‘Amiga PCs’ is an oxymoron.

~~~
unicornporn
Are you saying the Amigas weren't personal computers?

~~~
ekianjo
You are missing the context completely. At the time (late 80s, early 90s)
Amigas were one of the main alternative against "PCs", so nobody would have
said "Amiga PC". Just like you dont say "Mac PC".

~~~
orionblastar
Amiga had the IBM PC Bridgecard to run DOS and Windows on it. (I think it even
ran OS/2 and others).

The only PC that Commodore made was the Colt series. It was a PC compatible
that Commodore botched in marketing by saying "It is not a PC Clone, it is a
Commodore!" of course it was a PC Clone that is what people wanted.

~~~
mattl
After the ESCOM buyout they produced a bunch of PCs for the UK market (maybe
others) branded as Commodore.

Edit: Mine came with dual boot OS/2 Warp and Windows 95.

~~~
orionblastar
I don't live in the UK so I didn't know about the PC clones by Commodore in
the UK.

I was talking about Commodore before they got bought out by Escom ect.

I almost bought a PC Colt but got a generic 386DX PC a friend of mine sold me
used that was cheaper.

