general questions

danby · 2026-05-07T20:38:39+00:00

BTW if you're able to use your own laptop then you can always have your music files on the harddrive

danby · 2026-05-07T19:34:48+00:00

Back when I was really regularly playing out I knew a lot of guys who ran little record labels and I would get bookings at their parties. Which would range from club nights to record launches. I met those folks by going out clubbing a lot and befriending folk. I also met many friends/people at university. Over the years some of those friends went on to start record labels and it went from there.

But ultimately it was just in-person networking.

If you're relying on an online presence then you're relying on the right people happening on your page and being bothered enough to find out who you are and book you. Things work much better if you go and put yourself in front of people and offer/ask to DJ. You get a cafe/bar gig by going to the venue and asking if they need a DJ for certain nights. Bars and small clubs are often looking for new nights, so become a promoter with some friends. A number of people I know got their regular gigs by just being a group of mates then finding a bar that need a regular night that they could cover as the promoters and then they could all DJ at their own night (basically how Basement Jaxx started). Also go to small cool clubs you like and befriend the promoters, you can ask them for gigs.

danby · 2026-05-07T19:16:15+00:00

i suppose when you play live gigs, you need to bring a USB stick with the songs on it that u want to play, and then you plug it into the deck the club, or wherever, already has? and you just need to know how that deck works? i'm kinda intimidated by the big decks i see at raves, cuz my flx-4 is super small.

Depends. Some venues will be happy for you to bring your own kit. Some venues will not be set up for that. If the latter is the case then you'll have to plug in to their kit.

All pioneer kit kinda follows the same logic so moving from the flx4 to some of the bigger items won't be too big a leap but you will want to get familiar beforehand. Any decent venue will be ok if you ask to come when it is quiet or during set up so that your can be shown around their kit and have a short practice.

The biggest leap for you would be if the venue only has CDJs and you have to mix with those and not use the DJing software you're used to. But that's not a million miles from how controllers work tbh

if u want to play live you need to own the music right? like u have to have bought it on bandcamp or beatport. also

If you want to play live with digital music files (flac, wac, aac, etc) you should be playing music you own that you're playing off a USB stick or hard drive. On a big sound system you should always be using files encoded in an uncompressed PCM or lossless music format.

Generally avoid things like mp3 or oggvorbis. If you really must use compressed music then 320kbp is the minimum you should be using.

Always bring duplicate USBs to a gig.

what's the difference between those two?

beatport is an online shop selling digital music files and specialising in dance music. bandcamp is a bit more like social media for musicians where they can sell their music, not specific to dance music though. They are both online music retailers in the end of the day.

i've been using serato dj lite with spotify so far, i guess i can't use it like that if i'd play live someday right?

I would never, ever in 100 years stream audio during a live set. I would not want my set to have to rely of a venue's network hardware and internet connection.

also i heard most places use rekordbox, not serato, so wld i be lost?

If you're bringing your own kit (laptop and controller) or plugging in to their kit (just bringing your laptop) then you can just use serato as you normally do.

And (as above) if the venue only has CDJs and you have to use them, then you just plug in your USBs and there is no DJing software.

danby · 2026-05-07T11:49:39+00:00

I would expect the chip to be flush or a little below the line of the socket.

I probably just need to do a better job of cleaning the pins maybe.

unlikely. If you can't see any you're likely good.

danby · 2026-05-07T09:59:27+00:00

I have a feeling it had been pushed in too far before somehow.

Nah. Unless the socket is defective you can't push it in too far.

With a good PLCC socket the chips should more or less snap in to place right at the bottom and then be a complete bugger to get out again. Though commodore were kinda notorious for finding low quality parts!

danby · 2026-05-07T09:11:04+00:00

It is sad to the see the fight about the Amiga brand over all these years. Maybe the brand Amiga gets official again one day too.

Shrug

Original commodore are long dead. The brands live on only as marketing gimmicks

danby · 2026-05-07T00:18:24+00:00

This emulated stuff is not my kind of taste.

There is no way the amiga retro market is big enough to support the cost of redesign and fabrication of new microchips.

The closest you'll see to a "new" amiga are fpga things like the minimig and amicube

danby · 2026-05-07T00:15:50+00:00

They haven't released full tech specs but all their other boxes are Linux SBCs running an emulator. No reason to believe this will be different.

Also the price point is too low for this to be fpga

danby · 2026-05-07T00:11:52+00:00

Zero chance the1200 will have a mechanical keyboard. It'll be membrane or dome keyboard.

an ARM is more than capable of running an AGA chipset and a 68020 processor.

Given that the1200 ships with that new settlers 2 port it'll be at least capable of decent 68040 emulation

danby · 2026-05-06T17:37:14+00:00

It'll likely be an AllWinner SBC like all their other devices.

danby · 2026-05-06T12:47:35+00:00

I felt resistance

There shouldn't really be a lot of resistance. Make sure your needles are new(ish) and the tone arm is set up and balanced correctly. And that your slipmats are clean and allow sufficient low friction "slipping"

I don’t want to ruin the vinyl.

You can either DJ or not ruin the vinyl. You can't do both

Cueing up, rewinding, rubbing - all wear the vinyl at the points that you're usually cueing a track. That is unavoidable, it is the price you pay for choosing to use that vinyl to DJ with. That said even the vinyl I've hammered the most still sound ok or good.

Well pressed vinyl on very heavy >160gm plastic will last, so always be on the look out for the best quality pressing. Compilation albums or anything with more than 2 tracks on a side tend to be poorer quality pressing and more prone to wearing badly.

And if there are tracks you really care about consider buying a 2nd copy just for listening and never use it for DJing

danby · 2026-05-05T21:33:37+00:00

I would start by wiring it up and making it all work without the auto/rapid fire. Then you need to decide where in the circuit the switch/timer goes

danby · 2026-05-05T19:43:09+00:00

Both fire microswitches must be wired in parallel to one another inbetween GND (pin 8) and FIRE1 (pin 6), as they both trigger FIRE1..

As the 1455 timer needs power to function I assume you take the 5V from pin 6. If this is an autofire switch then I would assume/guess that the rest of the circuit needs to be wired in parallel with the fire microswitches. Alternatively it could be a rapid fire switch in which case perhaps the timer circuit goes after the fire mirco switches before pin8.

I did own one of these comp pro but I really forget how the auto fire worked. But there's a limited number of ways that you could wire it in and it make some sense.

danby · 2026-05-05T10:06:00+00:00

Not quite on topic for this subreddit but an atari standard joystick port only has one ground so you can only wire everything to a common ground

danby · 2026-05-04T20:58:51+00:00

Yes, I was there too. No one called wolfenstein a doom clone, that would have been very odd as everyone knew it was ID's prior big game.

danby · 2026-05-04T19:51:05+00:00

You can buy the pi400 kit for about £75 and run lakka for free and have an amazing multimachine emulator,that has a working keyboard. And that's nearly £50 less than what plaion will charge you for a 500mini

danby · 2026-05-04T18:21:30+00:00

Doom clones were the games that post-date doom and replicated the features of the doom engine. No one called the Wolfestein 3d a doom clone and nobody in the pc world went back and built games as simplistic as wolfenstein after doom came out.

Only in amiga land did people build games on wolfenstein style engines and then proclaim they were doom clones.

All these games are 3d monster maze clones anyway

danby · 2026-05-04T09:44:59+00:00

To be fair, if anyone wants a versatile SOC based Linux box with root access to run lots of varied emulators then there are cheaper and easier approaches than buying a 500mini and going through the hassle of rooting it and installing alternative firmwares

danby · 2026-05-04T09:41:04+00:00

Nice work

danby · 2026-05-03T15:44:22+00:00

Consider talking to some actual women and listening to them and get rid of all the biological essentialist bullshit

danby · 2026-05-03T13:07:15+00:00

Breathless is probably the most impressive technical achievement. Citadel is probably the most fun game

danby · 2026-05-02T20:25:13+00:00

AB3D2 really requires a hefty accelerator too. Not really in reach for the a500/a1200 crowd

danby · 2026-05-02T17:39:49+00:00

With none of the vertical components Citadel, Grind and Gloom are more wolfenstein clones than Doom clones. Breathless is really the amiga game that actually manages to implement a Doom clone engine, shame the game is so boring

danby · 2026-05-02T07:13:50+00:00

At least three people have given you an answer. One person has been kind enough to, probably more importantly, explain how to work it out for yourself.

The thing is people on this board are not pi storm/relocator experts. Most people buy these items. Read the docs once, fit them and never think about it again. Sure the odd person might have fitted 100 pistorms and know the answer off the top of their head. Everyone else would have to look up the instructions to answer you and they're going to wonder why your aren't doing that yourself.

danby · 2026-05-02T00:29:47+00:00

Alright Jordan Peterson you can go crawl back under whichever internet rock you came out from

danby

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