Classic AmigaOS Programming

Book excerpt: The Commodore Amiga is known for the great capabilities it introduced at the time of its launch. These capabilities were down to the hardware as well as it's graphical pre-emptive multitasking operating system, now usually referred to as the classic AmigaOS. This book provides an introduction into the programming of the classic AmigaOS using C as well as assembly language. It is aimed at programmers who have not programmed for the Amiga before as well as programmers who did this years ago and would like a refresher before diving back in. A general knowledge of computer programming is therefore assumed. The beauty of the classic AmigaOS is that it provides most of the things one would expect of a modern graphical pre-emptive multitasking operating system, but at the same time the OS is lean enough for the programmer to understand what is going on under the hood. The first chapters provide information on setting up programming software on a classic Amiga. The chapter about the 68000 processor will provide an overview of the processor's inner workings and instructions. The chapters about Exec, Intuition, GadTools, ASL, Graphics and Diskfont will explain the usage of these libraries and the functionality they provide. The use of files, directories as well as low-level disk access is detailed in the DOS and Trackdisk chapters.