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I've been offered an Amiga 500 from a famiy friend who had it hidden in his basement.
Now I do like to track, but my only experience is Milkytracker and all that newfangled business.
So help me here, what do i need to make awesome music on an amiga 500?
Something to always remember with old computers is to always make sure it's clean and to get some brand new floppies. Hop on google and learn how to bootsrap it, so you know how to load software from the web onto it. Fresh brand new floppies will serve you better than the very old ones that you probably have laying around. If you have the tools to do it then you should consider checking out the PSU for bad capacitors, since PSU caps are almost always the first to go boom on those older rigs.
Other than that, patience and ginger ale with lots of ice cubes does it for me. Or when I haven't had much sleep, Coca-Cola or Inca Cola.
Keep in mind, these are general old computer rules. As for Amiga specifics, all I can say is hit up Google or Pouet .
I used this version of Protracker back in the day on my Amiga 500. I use this one now as it seems more emulator and HD friendly. Might even work on a500. If you want to go further back in time NoiseTracker and any of the old Soundtrackers will work too, though they have far less functionality than PT.
If you want to try something other than chipmodules there are a lot of specific editors from the old days. afaik AHX doesn't run on a500 machines but, for example, Future Composer does, though I don't think it comes with docs.
There's a whole bunch of other 'chip' ones in this amigascne folder. like BugMon, JamCracker, Sidmon. Probably some others, I forget the names. 
Some of those are a1200 only, like Art Of Noise.
Oktalyzer and StarTrekker are 8-channel trackers (software mixing), but they were both quite early so are missing a lot of functions that Protracker has.
Another 'chipmusic' editor for old Amigas: SoundMon from the author's site. Also the Expressions musicdemo on the same page is a classic.
Thanks 4mat. I'll look into this stuff.
what do i need to make awesome music on an amiga 500?
definitely a sampler! or at least a way to get your own samples from your pc into the amiga...
good trackers are protracker (2.3 on a500 works like a charme) and octamed v4 (MIDI capable, but the gui is not as pretty as pt).
Last edited by motone (May 10, 2010 9:33 am)
when i had an a500 i used protracker and it was nice.. if you're familiar with milky you should pick it up no problem
Probably Hombre on floppy is the simplest way to get stuff between PC and A500, and then just Protracker 2.something and you are good to go.
While we're at it, some of my floppies got wiped 
so I need a Hombre too. Anyone?
That seems like the easiest way to go about it.
I'll get in on the "hombre me" as well.
I just connected my PC and my Amiga via nullmodem cable, and used the terminal programs "ncomm" on amiga and HyperTerminal on PC.
On my A600/A1200 I use a compactflash PCMCIA card for data transfer. Search ebay for "ADF transferer kit".
Last edited by motone (May 10, 2010 1:07 pm)
I am using Protracker 1.3 too, 4mat. it's fine for starting.
The problem with the A500 is its lack of modern day accessories that are compatible with PC. With an A600/1200 you can get PCMCIA card readers or IDE hard drives. the A500 is a bitch.
your problem will be transferring files to/from the PC. I would use the serial transfer method as well.
But to me an A500 is pretty useless for said accessory lack reasons. So getting HOMBRE on an Amiga disk will be a problem for you. This is an egg/chicken situation. Somehow you need to sort out your first disk. Maybe someone can help you.
iirc back in the day I used single sided disks and a (commercial) amiga program called DOS2DOS to get stuff to and from PC. Used to use that for transferring college work and as a bonus getting things onto the ST. Typical Commodore non-standard disc formats.
Huh, one would think there would be a good bootstrapping routine/program for the Amiga. In fact, I think I saw one here:
http://wiki.abime.net/file_transfer/adf_sender
It's not exactly chicken-and-egg, since all you need is a Workbench disk.
Alternatively, you can use these directions:
http://adfsender.stoeggl.com/adfsendert … thods.html
See, this is why I love my Apple IIgs- the firmware is very robust to begin with, allowing no-disk bootstrapping via serial cable.
Amusing chicken and egg situation getting the transfer software to Amiga. Shame the converters are quite large or you could type the thing out in a hexeditor, I've done that on c64 before.
On the Apple II you can actually put it into a mode where it echoes serial input into the assembler, allowing rapid boodstraping. Which is awesome! Still, if you only have a working Workbench disk you're all set.