Amiga Mail Reference Articles¶
Amiga Mail was a bi-monthly technical publication covering AmigaOS programming in depth. The CD includes Volume 1 (1987–1989, OS 1.2–1.3 era) and Volume 2 (1990–1993, OS 2.0–3.0 era), totaling 69+ articles with full source code in AmigaGuide format.
Obsolescence warning¶
Volume 1 WARNING: "Some of the material found in this drawer no longer represents 'current' programming techniques and is made obsolete by information found in AmigaMail Volume 2 articles or the ROM Kernel Reference Manuals, 3rd edition."
Treat Vol1 as historical — useful for understanding legacy code and the evolution of the OS, but not for new development. Vol2 is more current but still predates the V40/3.1 DevInfo rules.
How to use this reference¶
When an agent needs deeper information on a topic already covered in the wiki, the Amiga Mail articles provide the canonical deep-dive treatment. Below is an annotated index organized by topic area, with notes on current relevance.
Most valuable articles for modern Amiga development¶
AmigaDOS¶
| Article | Topic | Location |
|---|---|---|
| II-5 | AmigaDOS Packet Interface Specification | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/II-5/packets.txt |
| II-77 | Fast AmigaDOS I/O (async packets) | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/II-77/ASync.txt |
| II-107 | Even Faster AmigaDOS I/O | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/II-107/FastIO_II.txt |
| II-27 | Standard Command Line Parsing (ReadArgs) | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/II-27/readargs.txt |
| II-37 | Pattern Matching Functions | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/II-37/pattern.txt |
BOOPSI and Intuition¶
| Article | Topic | Location |
|---|---|---|
| IV-23 | Introduction to BOOPSI | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/IV-23/BoopsiIntro.txt |
| IV-41 | Writing a BOOPSI Image Class | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/IV-41/imageclass.txt |
| IV-57 | BOOPSI's Transparent Base Classes | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/IV-57/tbc.txt |
| IV-111 | BOOPSI in Release 3 (V39) | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/IV-111/BoopsiV39.txt |
| IV-77 | Optimized Window Refreshing | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/IV-77/Optim.txt |
| IV-69 | Making Windows More Manageable | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/IV-69/ManWindows.txt |
Exec and Memory¶
| Article | Topic | Location |
|---|---|---|
| I-43 | Callback Hooks | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/I-43/Hooks.txt |
| III-19 | Memory Pools | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/III-19/MemPools.txt |
| III-17 | Signalling with SIGF_SINGLE | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/III-17/SIGF_SINGLE.txt |
| III-29 | Creating Exec Libraries with SAS/C | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/III-29/WriteLib.txt |
IFF and DataTypes¶
| Article | Topic | Location |
|---|---|---|
| VII-21 | Developing New IFF FORMs | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/VII-21/SubmitIFF.txt |
| VII-25 | AmigaGuide 101 | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/VII-25/AmigaGuide.txt |
| IV-101 | Introduction to DataTypes | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/IV-101/DTypes.txt |
Networking¶
| Article | Topic | Location |
|---|---|---|
| VIII-51 | SANA-II Specification | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/VIII-51/standard.txt |
| VIII-17 | Network Applications | Reference/Amiga_Mail_Vol2/VIII-17/NetApps.txt |
Articles with caveats (check DevInfo rules)¶
- III-1: Using SetFunction() —
SetFunction()is on the forbidden list for future-OS compatibility. Read for understanding only; don't use in new code. - III-11: 68040 Compatibility Warning — valuable for understanding low-level constraints, but the FutureOS rules go further.
- XIII: Hardware articles — subject to the most change. "The HW that you know will disappear." Read for understanding legacy hardware; don't bang registers in new code.
Full article index¶
The complete annotated index of all 69 Vol2 articles across 13 sections is in the raw file. Each entry includes the article number, title, and on-CD file path.
See Also¶
Sources: Commodore-Amiga / ESCOM AG, Amiga Mail Vol1 (1987-1989) and Vol2 (1990-1993).
Raw: raw/tutorials/amiga-mail-index.md
Updated: 2026-08-04