CaffeineOS

I am finally authoring a blog post on an Amiga, albeit a emulator it seems to be working well.  Using Final Writer 97 on CaffienOS.

I am always amazed how many releases of Amiga OS there are and how many modern products continue to be developed.  I believe the Amiga just refuses to die and lives perpetually at this point.  Only time will tell whether a younger audience will come in to play and infuse more interest and this additional life.  Many of us are getting older and that is the risk of the interest dwindling verses continuing to live forever.

All this said now, its time to get caffeinated!  Like any good rabbit hole I found my way to it via Apollo Vampire and the ApolloBoot setup.  Once I started to see its clean interface and Discord discussions thriving, I was sure it was going to be worth exploring.  Similar to Amikit it exists on a few different Amiga Platforms and Emulators.  The AROS version will live on via Vampire, and other compatible platforms.  There is a PiStorm version for native Amiga Hardware.  This version also works with UAE.  Then there is an Amithlon version for PPC.

To date I have played with the Pistorm version on UAE and the AROS version on Vampire V4 Stand Alone.  This post is being written on PiStorm under UAE.

One thing I really am liking about using Caffeine from a USB stick is it ends up being highly portable.  Win-UAE is on it on the thumb drive, I can save configs from different machines and move from machine to machine with ease!  Because I have used a 64GB Thumbdrive, I was able to partition the remaining space with Windows ala Fat32 and then have it mount in Caffeine.  This has allowed me to save all my favorite games and then be able to save Amiga files out in RTF, PDF ect and use them on the PC.  So sweet!

I have had some fun creating a custom desktop background (see leading image)that resonates with me and the newly found enthusiasm I have for Caffeine.  The Discord channel is very active with development conversation going on around piStorm and AROS.  The piStom conversation is very interesting, however, having a TF1260 on one Amiga and a Vampire V4 Icedrake on my other, it is not likely I will adopt a piStorm card.  I am however getting a piZer0 Clockport card to hopefully get networking on my TF1260 Amiga.  I have gone through 3 Plip boxes without networking success and several installs of Roadshow.  It may be time to try another TCPIP stack.

Turning back to Caffeine, I have been busy getting that portable Amiga USB stick all setup to perfection as well as playing with Caffeine on Apolloboot on the Vampire V4 SA.  I have to say that CaffeineOS just feels so so clean compared to other distros I have been playing with.  I feel the only thing it lacks is a little more polish on the desktop and Icon sets.  Part of why I am putting in some effort myself to create those. although I am sure far more talented Caffeine users could help dontate these to the cause.  I confess that I feel like a newbie again sometimes on the Amiga Os’s.  It was just so so long since I seriously played with them.  One reason was the Amiga Forever was just not very enticing.  With Amikit and now Caffeine, the Win-UAE world is so much more fun!  These new releases are very stable overall and very clean.  If I had envisioned Amiga moving forward, these OS distributions really go a long ways towards modernizing the look and feel.  Software of course is still far behind.

Let’s talk about this word processor I am using, Finalwriter 97.  While its highly functional, I do find all the old Amiga processors squirrely on all the emulators and stacks.  Even on the original Amiga hardware (A1200’s) they leave a lot to be desired.  Export and saving to RTF is a bit squirrely and has taken me quite some time to find one that will allow me to write these entries in an Amiga WP and then format them on the PC.  Caffeine gets credit for being my first success with that regard.

Pagedstream 4 seems to work very well too.  Pagestream and I go wayyyy back!  I actually made a significant amount of money doing DTP work on Pagestream in the 90’s.  I had a few marketing specialist that preferred what Pagestream could accomplish better than the Mac’s at the time.  That says a lot about both the Amiga and Pagestream.  Macs at the time were considered the Desktop Publishing Platform of choice!  I actually own a PS 5.x license and look forward to getting it installed soon on Caffeine. 

Of course I have been playing with the AROS version using ApolloBoot as well on the V4 Stand Alone. It is working great and I have customized there as well.

While it was a little wobbly at first, I finally got it all working. The desktop background had to be swapped in place of the Caffeine Theme CaffeineOS 1.TGA. Once I did that it picked up the background just fine.

What about games and WHLoad you ask?  Well, that’s my next project and teaser for my next Caffeine post.  So if you cant tell how excited I am about Caffeine, well, trust me, I am.. Almost jittery like a few stiff espresso shots!  🙂

Cheers my Amigos!

EverStaR