Getting Started with AMOS

What You Need

AMOS Professional runs on the Amiga and includes its own editor. We will boot an emulated Amiga to Workbench, the Amiga’s desktop, then open AMOS and run a greeting.

The first greeting was checked with AMOS Professional 2.00 from the official repository at revision 533b4b1, using FS-UAE 3.2.35 on macOS. Use this configuration to follow the same route:

• Amiga 1200, PAL, with a 68020 processor.
• 2 MB chip RAM and 8 MB fast RAM, set explicitly in the emulator.
• Kickstart 3.1 for the A1200 and Workbench 3.1. Obtain these from your own Amiga or a licensed package such as Amiga Forever.
• A host folder mounted as an Amiga hard drive, labelled Tools, to hold AMOS and your programs.

This names one checked setup; it is not a minimum-requirements claim for AMOS.

Prepare the emulator and AMOS

Download FS-UAE for your computer. The check above used its macOS app; other emulator versions and Windows alternatives need their own check.

Download the pinned AMOS repository using GitHub’s Code → Download ZIP, then unpack it. Copy its AMOS folder into your shared Tools folder. Keep AMOSPro and the APSystem folder together. This download contains a folder of files, rather than a set of bootable .adf disk images.

The repository declares an MIT licence for its source. Follow the supplied notices for the files you use; that source licence does not establish the licence of every AMOS disk image found elsewhere.

In FS-UAE, select the machine, memory and ROM above. Put your Workbench disk image in DF0: and mount the Tools folder as a directory hard drive. If the emulator maps cursor keys to a joystick, set joystick port 1 to No host device so the editor receives them.

Start the machine and wait for the Workbench desktop. You should see a Tools drive icon as well as Workbench.

Open AMOS

In your shared Tools folder, save this plain text file as start-amos, with no .txt extension:

CD Tools:AMOS
AMOSPro

From Workbench, choose Workbench → Execute Command (right-Amiga + E) and enter:

Execute Tools:start-amos

The script starts AMOS with its own folder as the current directory so it can find APSystem/AMOS.library.

After the AMOS Professional Version 2.00 title screen, press Space to reach the editor. If Space leaves a blank character on the empty line, remove it with Backspace.

Run the greeting

Open Type and Run and type its three-line program. Press F1. You should see Hello from AMOS! on an orange screen.

Press a key when you have finished looking. At End of program at line 3., press Return to choose Editor. Change the words inside the quotes and press F1 again to see your new greeting.

If AMOS does not open

• “Cannot find AMOS.library.” Launch from the AMOS folder using the two-line script above. Check that APSystem is beside AMOSPro.
• The cursor keys do not move through your program. Check the emulator’s joystick keyboard mapping.
• The host computer handles a key instead of the Amiga. FS-UAE’s keyboard guide explains input grab and full keyboard emulation. On macOS, Command+G grabs input and Command+K enables full keyboard emulation.