02.Feb.2023
Alfred Faust (ANF)
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MIDI sequencer: BarsnPipes 1.3 for MorphOS
In January, Alfred Faust made available a MorphOS port of the MIDI sequencer BarsnPipes, which he maintains. A now released update was created with the support of Frank Mariak and Antoine Dubourg from the MorphOS team, it eliminates some critical bugs and optimises the MIDI transmission. In addition, the user interface has been better adapted to MorphOS, for example, all screen modes of MorphOS can now be used.
Furthermore, new MIDI tools have been created to manage up to 16 USB MIDI interfaces of BarsnPipes - i.e. each MIDI interface transmits 16 MIDI channels (instruments). Thus, theoretically, up to 256 independent MIDI channels (instruments) could be used in BarsnPipes.
According to the author, the programme now runs much more stable on the various MorphOS systems and has become more user-friendly. In addition, the latest version now starts even if no MIDI interfaces are connected. (cg)
[News message: 02. Feb. 2023, 23:09] [Comments: 0]
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31.Jan.2023
GitHub
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WHDLoad: Graphical user-interface iGame 2.2.1
iGame is a MUI-based frontend for starting WHDLoad games (amiga-news.de reported). Recently George 'walkero' Sokianos (editor 'Lite XL' or MediaVault) has released version 2.2.1 for AmigaOS 2.04 and higher, AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS, providing the following changes:
- Added
- Turkish catalog contributed by Serkan Dursun
- Fixed
- Now the 68K cpu specific versions are included in the archive. In v2.2.0 all versions where the same 68000 binary because of a missing flag in compilation
- Willem Drijver contributed with a fix on Execute tooltype, which was not working well.
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30.Jan.2023
Seiya (ANF)
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PDF magazine: REV'n'GE 142 (Italian/English) / Interview with the publisher
Besides the Italian original issue, the PDF magazine REV'n'GE ("Retro Emulator Vision and Game") is also available in English. The magazine's reviews compare, if available, the different ports of classic games to the various platforms of their time.
The latest issue includes articles about the Amiga games "Encounter" and "NEONnoir". 'Seiya', the editor of REV'n'GE, was available for a short interview. Many thanks!
Amiga-News (AN): Hello 'Seiya'. Thank you for taking the time and of course for your magazine. How did you come to publish this fanzine/magazine?
Seiya: I always liked writing game reviews, but I didn't know how to write them, I didn't even know what software to use. I originally wrote the reviews for a forum (text and pictures) with some videos I had made specifically for the Amiga. In 2012 or 2013 I was contacted by a group that did online reviews only in Italian with a professional layout system and I was enchanted. There was a team with a chief editor and other people writing reviews. Not quite what I was looking for, but better than nothing.
AN: What happened after that?
Seiya: After not being very happy with a second, similar attempt either, I decided to start my own fanzine: the first issue will be published in February 2014, and I will bring out three more issues in the same month. The goal was to publish at least four issues every month, 48 issues per year.
After the first month I realised that it was not feasible because there was no time to correct, check for errors and then review something interesting. The first issues were written in a hurry, without checking for mistakes, with a lot of hardware articles. And it was all about Amiga and PC because those were the systems I knew best, so I knew which games I wanted to try.
AN: How many issues per month were there then?
Seiya: There was a problem with the name, because it was REVenGE! and, as written, had a meaning that hardly suited a retro games publication.
The name casually suggested to me "Retro Emulation Video and Game", but the "and" was not in the name because it was spelled "en". Then I had the idea to say that "en" is the Italian pronunciation of "and". A group of users on an Italian hardware and retro gaming forum suggested I call it REV'n'GE! because "Retro Emulation Video & Game" was more credible, and so REV'n'GE! was born, as it is today.
From this issue 17 onwards, the magazine/fanzine changed its mentality and finally became what it should have been since its first issue, and issue after issue I try to improve it both in text and in spelling and grammar mistakes.
AN: Why also in English?
Seiya: The fanzine/magazine is read more abroad than in Italy and although it was translated into English by Google and manually corrected by me, it was and is very understandable and therefore very popular in the countries where the language is not English.
AN: And what is the situation today?
Seiya: Today, one issue is published per month, on the 25th of each month, including summer and Christmas. Each issue is written in the previous month in order to be able to write both the Italian and English editions.
AN: How do you choose the games you present?
Seiya: The games I review are actually chosen quite randomly. Sometimes I look at screenshots, other times when reading the forums I see that some users have problems with a game or are talking about it for various reasons and I decide to review it.
As the name of the fanzine has de facto become "Retro Emulator Vision and Game", the various systems are all emulated and I try to review games whose emulation is closest to the original hardware.
For the Amiga, for example, I choose games for the Amiga 500, which the emulator emulates perfectly, or in any case the basic A1200, which can be emulated well. For Atari ST games, those that run well on the basic model. For DOS games, I usually use PCeM, which emulates their chosen hardware well, and I also choose titles that run on an 8086 between 4 and 10 Mhz. 8-bit computers are emulated just as well as the current systems and so the reviews are comparable even on real hardware.
AN: How exactly is an issue created?
Seiya: I do one test a day and in total it takes about 15 days. Then I create the videos, put them online and copy the links to the videos into the fanzine. Then I read through everything again to prepare the translation into English. I read the Italian version and the English translation again to make the last corrections. Then about 18 days have passed. I usually start on the 5th of each month and try to finish around the 23rd or 24th of each month.
AN: When do you take time for the tests and reviews?
Seiya: I write the fanzine in the morning, and spend about an hour or two on the reviews. Sometimes the emulator doesn't work or the game doesn't start. Then I have to look for another game. I look for information if I don't have the manuals or discover something on the net that gives me the idea to write something. Then I play on one computer in real time and write reviews on another computer at the same time.
The reviews are not as detailed as in commercial magazines because I decided to talk about it a bit and then leave the reader with the desire to play it for themselves and see if what I wrote is correct and shares my opinion. (dr)
[News message: 30. Jan. 2023, 06:16] [Comments: 1 - 30. Jan. 2023, 13:37]
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29.Jan.2023
Kofi
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Editor: Lite XL 2.1.1r1 for AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS
George 'walkero' Sokianos has just released version 2.1.0r1 of the editor Lite XL for AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS (amiga-news.de reported) and explained:
"Today I released a new version of LiteXL for both AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS 3. This includes the latest code from the upstream repository, with all the changes up to the 8th of January 2023. This brings our port in sync with the latest available versions in other systems.
In this release, a bug reported by one user is fixed, which had to do with the OS4 version and the system locale. This was pretty much the same reason as with the MorphOS version which was fixed a couple of releases back.
Other than that, a few more plugins were added in the add-ons folder adding extra features to the editor. My beloved is the one that makes LiteXL utilise the .editorconfig files. This way the editor keeps on having a consistent coding style per project. Especially useful if you work on projects with different programming languages. You can find more information about the .editorconfig files at editorconfig.org.
Also, the binary now is named lite-xl, to be aligned with the naming of other system releases. Not a big difference, but you might need to update your system to use this new name in docks etc.
I'd like to thank all of my supporters for the donations and for keeping me motivated, to continue working on my Amiga projects. That's a great community to be part of."
(dr)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 15:08] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jan.2023
Amigans-Forum
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AmigaOS 4: Version 6.11 of audio driver for Intel HD Audio
The AHI driver for AmigaOS 4 written by Harald Kanning supports PCIe cards with sound chips that meet the HD Audio specification (amiga-news.de reported). The archive also contains a simple "mixer" which can be used to control the volume. With the update to version 6.11, the driver also supports the AmigaOne X1000 for the first time. The other changes:
- Added autoswitch between 16bit and 24bit recording buffer
- Removed Mixer option to limit Recording resolution to 16bit.
- Created User Manual
- Small optimizations
For use on the X1000, the developer explained: "The IDT 92HD700 codec on X1000 works completely different compared to other CODECs. Most noticeable is the missing monitor hardware.
Instead there's a karaoke mode which will mix the input of the ADC to out Line output. Therefore the Monitor volume slider has been replaced with a mute checkbox. The monitor/karaoke volume is equal to the ADC volume and therefore controlled with the input volume slider.
If you want to use this driver on your X1000 than make sure that the original ahi driver (HDAUDIO) is removed and the X1000 mixer program and docky is not running/started (be aware that the Enhancer updater utility likes to reinstall this driver)."
AmigaOS 4.1 FE Update 2 (the author has not tested it under previous versions) and AHI 6.6 are required. (dr)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 14:28] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jan.2023
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Blog: Benchmarks for "Lightwave 3D 5" for several hardware configurations
The developer George 'walkereo' Sokianos reports in his latest blog entry on Ko-fi about benchmarks and findings to be drawn from them for the 3D graphics software LightWave 3D, which is also available for AmigaOS 3 until the release. The following hardware and operating systems were tested:
- A4000 with 68060
- Vampire V4 standalone (AmigaOS 3.2)
- Pi400 with Amiberry 5.5.1
- Powermac with PowerPC 7451 (G4) CPU at 1.6 GHz (MorphOS)
- X5000/40 at 2.2 GHz with AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS
- Powerbook A1052 with PowerPC 7447 (G4) at 1.33 GHz (MorphOS)
- microA1 with PowerPC G3 at 800 MHz (AmigaOS 4)
(dr)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 08:09] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jan.2023
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The Amiga as a musical instrument: Paulimba
Linus 'lft' Åkesson has been an active part of the demoscene for a good 25 years, composing music for numerous demos and music discs for Amiga and C64 as 'Lairfight' or 'lft'. Last year he built "The Commodordion": an 8-bit accordion consisting mainly of two C64 keyboards, floppy disks and gaffer tape. As he says himself, he has started programming for the Amiga again after more than 20 years and has now written "Paulimba", a program to play live music on the keyboard of an Amiga (600).
"Paulimba" is a portmanteau of "Paula", the sound chip of the Amiga, and "Kalimba", a musical instrument from Africa that belongs to the lamellophones: the music produced on the keyboard sounds like a kalimba. In his blog entry under the title link as well as in the accompanying YouTube video, he explains in detail how he achieved this. (dr)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 06:57] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jan.2023
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Aminet uploads until 28.01.2023
The following files have been added until 28.01.2023 to Aminet:
apccomm.lha comm/misc 205K 68k transfers files between Amiga...
Forest.lha demo/ecs 120K 68k Forest demo for GERP2023/Sweden
bin2iso_mos.lha disk/misc 29K MOS bin2iso - Convert BIN files t...
Cadius.lha disk/misc 148K MOS BD's ProDOS disk imaging utility
smb2fs.i386-aros.lha disk/misc 79K x86 SMB2 file system client
smb2fs.m68k-amigaos.lha disk/misc 148K 68k SMB2 file system client
PcmciaCD.lha driver/med 10K 68k ATAPI PCMCIA CD driver Sony Vaio
anaiis_lowlevel.lha driver/oth 25K 68k Anaiis lowlevel release 0.02
jfduke3d.lha game/shoot 1.3M 68k JFDuke3D Amiga Port
Inform6.lha game/text 845K 68k Compiler of Infocom-format st...
webptools130_a68k.lha gfx/conv 2.4M 68k encode/decode images in WebP ...
webptools130_aros.lha gfx/conv 3.7M x86 encode/decode images in WebP ...
FrodoItaCat.lha misc/emu 12K Italian catalog for Frodo v2.4
Tipografia_AROS.lha text/dtp 2.3M x86 Create printable signs using ...
avalanche_de.lha util/arc 7K German catalog for Avalanche ...
Avalanche_FR.lha util/arc 7K French catalog for Avalanche ...
avalanche_guide_de.lha util/arc 7K German translation of Avalanc...
LHArchiver.lha util/arc 4.8M 68k create lha archives intuitively
filesysbox.i386-aros.lha util/libs 52K x86 A FUSE compatible file system...
filesysbox.m68k-amiga... util/libs 72K 68k A FUSE compatible file system...
SoftIEEE.lha util/libs 59K 68k math lib&881/882 FPU emulator...
CurrencyConverter.lha util/misc 12K 68k convert one currency type to ...
VATestprogram.zip util/misc 3.9M 68k Versatile Amiga Testprogram
AnalogClock.lha util/time 39K 68k Resizeable analog transparent...
(snx)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 06:26] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jan.2023
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OS4Depot uploads until 28.01.2023
The following files have been added until 28.01.2023 to OS4Depot:
hdaudio_ahi.lha dri/aud 972kb 4.1 Generic HD audio driver for Amig...
loschinos.lha gam/chi 5Mb 4.0 This is the classic spanish game...
sdl2.lha lib/mis 7Mb 4.1 Simple DirectMedia Layer 2
lharchiver.lha uti/arc 5Mb 4.0 Create LhA archives intuitively
(snx)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 06:26] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jan.2023
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AROS Archives uploads until 28.01.2023
The following files have been added until 28.01.2023 to AROS Archives:
loschinos.lha gam/chi 5Mb This is the classic spanish game...
webptools130_aros.lha gra/mis 4Mb encode/decode images in WebP format
tipografia.i386-aros.lha off/dtp 2Mb Generator of printable signs usi...
(snx)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 06:26] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jan.2023
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 28.01.2023
The following files have been added until 28.01.2023 to MorphOS-Storage:
LHArchiver_1.8.lha Files/Archive Create lha archives int...
bin2iso_1.1.lha Files/Convert bin2iso - Convert BIN f...
Bugdom_1.3.3.lha Games/Action 3D Pangea Software's Bugdo...
Inform_6.41.lha Games/Text Compiler of Infocom-for...
LosChinos_Finalversion... Games/Think This is the classic Spa...
Cadius_1.4.5.lha Misc BD's ProDOS disk imagin...
PageStream5-Tips_FR_1.... Translations French translation of P...
PageStream5_FR_1.4.lha Translations French translation of P...
(snx)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 06:26] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jan.2023
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WHDLoad: New installers until 28.01.2023
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 28.01.2023:
(snx)
[News message: 29. Jan. 2023, 06:26] [Comments: 0]
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28.Jan.2023
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3D action adventure: Bugdom for Linux and MorphOS
After, among others, "Cro-Mag Rally" and "Otto Matic" and "Billy Frontier", another game originally published by Pangea Software has made it to Amiga platforms: Bugdom is described as "an incredibly diverse 3D action/adventure for the entire family".
Three days ago, the developer 'jorio' published version 1.3.3 on GitHub for Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as the corresponding source code. BeWorld' has now compiled this for MorphOS. The current SDL archive as well as the latest TinyGL beta version are required.
Christian 'xeno74' Zigotzky has compiled the source code for LinuxPPC-32Bit (screenshot), the game runs on the Linux PowerPC distributions Void PPC, MintPPC, Fienix.
Download: Bugdom_1.3.3-linux-powerpc.tar.gz (47 MB) (dr)
[News message: 28. Jan. 2023, 16:51] [Comments: 0]
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28.Jan.2023
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Programming language: Amiga C/C++ Visual Studio Code Extension 1.6.9
Bartman', member of the demo group 'Abyss', provides with 'amiga-debug' a 'Visual Studio Code' extension for "compiling, debugging and profiling Amiga C/C++ programs compiled by the bundled gcc 11.2 with the bundled WinUAE" (YouTube video). Today version 1.6.9 has been released. Changes:
- FIX: debugger: fixed crash on launch when using encrypted Kickstart #199
- FIX: screen: don't overwrite OCS colors with AGA colors from different banks
- NEW: screen: support AGA colors, show BPLCON3 (TODO: get AGA colors from .profile file)
- FIX: Builds using MacOS 11 for better compatibility; Includes updated binaries for GCC, binutils and FS-UAE
(dr)
[News message: 28. Jan. 2023, 16:12] [Comments: 0]
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28.Jan.2023
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Floppy disk images on PC and Mac: Greaseweazle Tools 1.7 (update)
Keir Fraser's "Greaseweazle" does - similar to Kryoflux - read the magnetic information on a floppy disk independently from the format used and saves as much information as possible to generate a so-called "Flux Level Image" in Supercard format (SCP), which enables reading and back-writing of copy-protected disks (amiga-news.de reported)
The adapter gets connected between a floppy disk drive - e.g. a standard 3.5" PC one - and a USB port of the PC or Mac. A few moments ago version 1.6 of the Greaseweazle Tools was released providing the following changes:
- diskdefs: Fix atari.90 and zx.trdos.640
- DCP image read support (obscure PC98 image format)
- Fix discontinuity at index mark when writing perfect flux images
- Emit a write-splice (WRSP) block when writing SCP images
- read, convert: Fix off-by-one error when printing summary
Update: (30.01.2023, 16:05, dr)
Version 1.7 fixes reading IPF images with weak tracks. (dr)
[News message: 28. Jan. 2023, 13:15] [Comments: 0]
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28.Jan.2023
Mixel (Twitter)
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Platform game: "Boxx" remake V0.4
The developer 'Lemming880' is currently working on the fourth part of his "Boxx" series developed with the Scorpion Engine (amiga-news.de reported). At the same time he is also porting the first part of the series, originally written with Backbone, to the Scorpion Engine (amiga-news.de reported). The latest update to version 0.4 includes the following changes:
- Upgraded to Scorpion Engine v2022.8.
- Player now moves more like Mario. Down is faster than up.
- Some coin and actor positions adjusted to new player movement.
- Boss phase 3: less damage when overlapping player in easy mode.
- Boss phase 3: boss has more health.
- Boss arena: added invisible block to prevent player from entering arena too soon.
- UI top panel: replaced 5 separate coin bars by 1 universal bar for slightly better performance.
- Falling coins disappear faster for better performance.
- Added performance mode for A500 to the 'Controls' screen. This disables the falling coins. So there's no slow down when multiple coins are picked at once. Also event collision check is set lower.
- Added "loading" text in UI top panel when loading next level.
- UI top panel keeps visible while loading next level.
- Levels and music load at the same time for faster loading times.
- Main menu panel moved up for NTSC stretched.
- Level 1: a turret now only spawns in hard mode and AGA only for better performance.
- Level 4: fixed wide teleport pipe graphics at the bottom of the water pit.
Minimum requirement is an Amiga 500 with 1MB RAM. (dr)
[News message: 28. Jan. 2023, 12:25] [Comments: 0]
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28.Jan.2023
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PiStorm32-lite: Availability
Since one month the building instructions and documentation for the PiStorm32-lite are available (amiga-news.de reported). Amiga-News.de has looked around where you can currently and potentially purchase the Raspberry Pi-based accelerator card for the Amiga A1200 fully assembled.
- RetroPassion (UK):
- Retro Ready (UK): 133 Euro plus shipping - currently sold out
- Archi-TECH (Poland): 130 Euro inclusive Raspberry-Pi 3A+ and 32GB SD card, plus shipping - Pre-order, will be shipped within the next 14 days
- MicroMiga (France):
- exclusive Raspberry-Pi: 130 Euro plus shipping - next batch third week of February
- inclusive Raspberry-Pi 3A+ and 32GB SD card: 174 Euro plus shipping - next batch third week of February
- Ultimate MiSTer (Portugal): currently not yet in stock, but planned
Furthermore, it's always worth keeping an eye on the tindie marketplace, especially RetroFletch's store, which has announced the PiStorm32-lite to us in the near future. (dr)
[News message: 28. Jan. 2023, 08:11] [Comments: 1 - 28. Jan. 2023, 16:23]
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27.Jan.2023
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Blog: Review of "Desert Dream" demo
Microzeit is an independent publisher focusing on digital culture and computer history publishes books about the pioneering days of the game industry in the 80s from 8 to 16 bit. In their latest blog entry they take a look back at a classic of the demoscene: Desert Dream by the Danish group Kefrens. On pouët.net, the production is currently ranked 49th on the alltime top list. (dr)
[News message: 27. Jan. 2023, 08:17] [Comments: 0]
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27.Jan.2023
AmigaSource
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Overview: Comparison of Operating Systems
Eylenburg's Tech Website is a truly amazing project in which a lot of hard work has gone into it: in several overviews and histories 'Eylenburg' offers, for example, Operating Systems: Timeline and Family Tree, Default Desktop Environments for Linux and Unix or Comparison of Instant Messengers - always presented with large-format tables and graphics. Of particular interest to Amiga users is the Comparison of Operating Systems, where AmigaOS and MorphOS have been listed for some time and now AROS has been added. But it is also worth taking a look at the above-mentioned Family Tree or History of Web Browser Engines from 1990 until today, in which IBrowse is also listed.
As 'Eylenburg' tells us when asked, this pure hobby project started a few years ago: first on Blogspot and later on Github. The first topic was comparing browsers. As he reports, he gets his data from Wikipedia, Github, the websites of developers and forums, etc., but as with the browser comparison, he also determines data himself. He has always had an interest in technology and especially in alternative operating systems and even though he himself did not experience the heyday of the Amiga, for example, he is fascinated that after all these years all three Amiga operating systems (AmigaOS, MorphOS, AROS) are still being developed.
Suggestions or corrections are always welcome! (dr)
[News message: 27. Jan. 2023, 06:08] [Comments: 0]
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27.Jan.2023
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Website: Search Engine for AmigaOS-NDK3.2 documentation
The Amiga developer Aris has set up a website for searching the autodocs of Hyperion Entertainment's AmigaOS 3.2 Native Developer Kit (NDK). He describes his motives for doing so in a recent blog entry. (dr)
[News message: 27. Jan. 2023, 03:31] [Comments: 0]
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26.Jan.2023
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Programming: Web based m68k assembler editor
Under the title link you can find a webapp to write, run and learn M68K assembly code based on the framework SvelteKit and the programming language Rust (amiga-news.de reported). As the developer told us when asked, he continues to work on the project, focusing mainly on bug fixes and updates to the interpreter at the moment.
Since our last message, he has also added the stack tracer and the visual history, which shows the last N changes to the interpreter's state. (dr)
[News message: 26. Jan. 2023, 21:06] [Comments: 0]
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26.Jan.2023
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Event: "Kickstart" in Nottingham (England)
On July 1st and 2nd, 2023, the digital culture festival "Kickstart" will be held in Nottingham, England. Currently planned are meetings of British Amiga user groups, presentations of various dealers, live music and talks with developers like Core Designs, DMA, Team 17 and Psygnosis. (dr)
[News message: 26. Jan. 2023, 20:59] [Comments: 0]
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26.Jan.2023
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MorphOS: Using GitHub (Polish)
Rafal Zabdyr - Minesweeper clone MegaSaperPL, among others - wrote an article in Polish on ppa.pl at the end of last year describing how to use GitHub as a service for managing repositories under MorphOS and with Wayfarer. (dr)
[News message: 26. Jan. 2023, 20:54] [Comments: 0]
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25.Jan.2023
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AROS: GUI for configuring SMB2/3-Shares
As Paolo Besser, author of the AROS distribution Icaros Desktop writes in his latest blog entry, he has programmed a simple graphical tool for configuring shares in LUA for the new SMB2 handler in order to add new shares to the AROS environment. It is not intended to be a full-fledged manager, but it already performs the rather simple task of adding new device definition files to Devs:DOSDrivers. Unless a more comprehensive configuration tool is written by someone else, he will include it in the next Icaros versions. (dr)
[News message: 25. Jan. 2023, 14:06] [Comments: 0]
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25.Jan.2023
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Emulator: WinUAE 4.10.1
Version 4.10.1 of the Amiga emulator WinUAE has been released. Changes:
WinUAE 4.10.0 bugs fixed
- Chipset emulation updates and bug fixes.
- Interlace filter mode saved invalid config in certain situations, causing crash when loaded. Also added validation to config loader that detects similar config errors.
- GDI mode RTG hardware cursor leaved garbage when it was in top/left corner of screen and it was not fully disabled when Amiga was reset.
- Serial port Ring Indicator signal fixed. If both printer and serial port was enabled, printer status was invalid.
Older bugs fixed
- Input device’s Input panel custom configuration was lost if config was loaded and saved when custom configured input device was not connected.
- Game Ports panel custom input configuration was not automatically remapped to original input device if order or number of input devices changed.
- Game Ports panel “Default” game controller type didn’t fully switch to CD32 pad mode when CD32 hardware was configured.
- FM801 PCI sound card didn’t work in Voodoo 3 + Mediator configuration.
- PCI bridgeboard crash when accessing non-existing board’s IO/RAM space.
- Exclusive fullscreen Direct 3D 11 mode + Fullscreen GUI Misc panel option ticked and entering GUI: GUI window was not positioned correctly.
- Video recording after loading statefile recorded one empty and one corrupted frame when recording was started.
New features/updates
- Added continuous screenshot mode to GUI. When ticked, screenshot is taken automatically every frame.
- Disabled move left/right joystick autoswitching mode. It was too easy to do it accidentally. Only buttons are supported.
- Clear Harddrives panel list when loading hardware-only config.
- Taking screenshot when DF0: is enabled but empty and CD drive is enabled but not empty: select CD image name. (Previously CD was ignored)
(dr)
[News message: 25. Jan. 2023, 10:53] [Comments: 0]
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24.Jan.2023
Alinea Computer
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Alinea Computer: Power adapter for Subway USB cards available
Press release: Alinea Computer is pleased to present the final version of the new power adapter for the Subway USB and Subway 2021 USB card. First prototypes were already presented at the Amiga 37. In the meantime, the design was refined together with the Amiga community so that all customer wishes could be taken into account.
The Subway Power Adapter is an extension for the Subway USB card series to provide USB devices with up to 800 mA of power. Power-hungry devices such as external 2.5 inch hard drives can now be operated with it. In addition, the power adapter can provide a remedy for power problems, for example when operating many clockport devices.
The adapter can be ordered in the Alinea Computer shop under the title link for 19.95 Euros plus shipping. (dr)
[News message: 24. Jan. 2023, 21:02] [Comments: 0]
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24.Jan.2023
itch.io
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Programming assistance: "AB_Template" 0.63 offers templates for AmiBlitz 3
Sami Vehmaa wants to get more people to develop games for the Amiga platform and for this purpose offers templates for the RTG variant of AmiBlitz 3 on itch.io with "AB_Template" (YouTube video of version 0.23, amiga-news.de reported). In version 0.63 he has added rotation and mirror function in the Deathstar template. (dr)
[News message: 24. Jan. 2023, 06:00] [Comments: 0]
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24.Jan.2023
CUGI
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Event: Review of the Amiga Ireland 2023
Amiga Ireland was held in Athlone on 13 and 14 January 2023. We asked the organisers for a summary, which has now kindly been made available to us. Many thanks!
"Amiga Ireland 2023 has come to a close and the feedback seems to be very positive. The organizers sent their annual anonymous survey where the overall satisfaction rate is very high but with plenty of requests for future events.
The positive feedback could well be in part due to the amount of time that Amiga users have been waiting to meet in Ireland. The 2021 event had to be made 100% online due to the pandemic and the 2022 event was deferred to 2023 due to uncertainty about what pandemic restrictions might be in place.
The 2023 event took place in Athlone on January 13th & 14th in the Centre of Ireland and the schedule included speakers and guests including Ron Nicholson (recording of the speech on YouTube) and Nick Veitch, who took questions on their unique experiences in the industry.
A new alpha version dual-stick DB9 game controller was unveiled by Abstraction who also talked about their experience porting Chaos Engine to other platforms.
Amiga cosplayer Ravenlordess talked about her process for making life-size wearable versions of Turrican and other impressive creations based on Amiga games. Her Shadow of the Beast cosplay was admired at Amiga 37 in Germany by fans and former Psygnosis developers alike.
Paulo D’Urso was interviewed about the Passione Amiga Day 2022 in Italy as well as their magazine Passione Amiga. The magazine theme continued with members of Amiga Addict magazine also participating in the event, including deputy editor Ian Griffiths, who donated some magazines to the raffle and introduced some gaming competitions at the Nivrig Games display. These included Dodgy Rocks and Turbo Tomato. In the latter, a new high score was achieved.
The Creative Competition (amiga-news.de reported) returned this year with categories in pixel art and MOD. Some exceptional entries were enjoyed including 1st place winners in each category, which will receive ¤50 each. These were Black Magic by Punnik (MOD) and Winter Patrol by Critikill. The results will be posted on the "new" website for Amiga Ireland.
Workshop hosts at the event included Lightwave 3D guru Muadib, Rob Smith Dev, Karl Jeacle who developed AmiGemini and talked about Amiga & The Small Web as well as Dimitris Panokostas. Dimitris maintains AmiBerry and have a workshop on animation using Deluxe Paint. His son, Erik, also managed to join the event program by coming 2nd place in the pixel art competition and winning ¤25 for his artwork, Sunset.
The event organizers stressed that the event is primarily a social event and user group, so while the schedule may be more or less busy on a given year, the priority is meeting other users and enjoying the machines for what they are today.
Also while the venue itself had technical issues of their own that delayed the organizers setup, it didn’t feature much in the survey responses so far, thankfully.
The main sponsor this year is AmigaKit, who stepped in when price increases with 3rd parties put the location in question. The organizers are very grateful to AmigaKit for being the gold sponsor this year as well as A-Eon for being their silver sponsor.
Game competitions included SWOS, Stunt Car Racer, Speedball 2, Turbo Tomato and others. Winners received trophies and will be listed on the Amiga Ireland website’s Hall of Fame at CUGI.ie) Also among awards was an ACA1221 tested at 28Mhz and with 64MB which was provided by Retro Ready. Rob Smith also donated an Arduino Floppy drive to the raffle.
The organizers are still completing the update to CUGI.ie and will send prize money to competition winners in a couple of days. They extend their thanks to everyone who attended and made the atmosphere so enjoyable." (dr)
[News message: 24. Jan. 2023, 05:15] [Comments: 0]
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23.Jan.2023
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DIY: N2630 expansion board for Amiga 2000
Parallel to his project of a replica of the A2000 motherboard in ATX form factor, "Amiga-2000-ATX" (amiga-news.de reported), the developer Jason 'jasonsbeer' Neus has started another one : The N2630 is a further development of the original Commodore A2630 expansion card, offering an Amiga 2000 a 50MHz Motorola 68030 CPU card with additional RAM and IDE device connector, and is installed in the CPU slot.
The project documents now released are revision 3.0 and include the Gerber files, JLCPCB ordering information and JED files for each of the CPLDs. The developer gives the following features for the N2630:
- Motorola 68030 microprocessor running at 50MHz
- Motorola 68882 math coprocessor running up to 50MHz
- 4 or 8 megabytes of Zorro 2 Fast RAM
- 16 to 256 megabytes of Zorro 3 Fast RAM
- IDE port with 40-pin cable and CF card options
(dr)
[News message: 23. Jan. 2023, 06:22] [Comments: 0]
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23.Jan.2023
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DIY project: Building an Amiga 2000 (part 6)
'Drygol' is a member of the demoscene group Lamers and basically deals with retro computers in the form of restorations, upgrades etc. On his site Retrohax.net he not only offers various retro articles, but also runs a blog. Among other things he describes there his project 'Tesseract', the building of an Amiga 2000 from scratch with all maximum modifications. His project is based on the GitHub project of 'Floppie209', a replica of the Amiga2000 motherboard with Sprint layout. After the first five reports (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), today he has published part 6 which is about the repair of a defective Indivision ECS v2 and the installation of an FPU in the ACA1233n. (dr)
[News message: 23. Jan. 2023, 05:48] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
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Minesweeper clone: AmiMineSweeper
After Rafal Zabdyr's "MegaSaperPL" (amiga-news.de reported), another Polish developer is now trying his hand at a Minesweeper clone: 'Tukinem' - known among other things for his platform game Ami-Tower or the farming simulation Farmiga - has named his version "AmiMineSweeper" and is using an Intuition Screen for the first time in one of his games. The game is currently still in beta status, with a time limit and high score table to follow. (dr)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 21:13] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
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Demo party: Revision 2023
According to the organisers, Revision is the largest pure demoscene event in the world. This year's edition will take place from 07 to 10 April in Saarbrücken (Germany). The demo group Spaceballs has published a 40k-AGA-Intro (YouTube video), which also functions as a special Amiga invitation. More details are to follow shortly. (dr)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 13:53] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
hackster.io
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DIY: 2,5-inch IDE-SSD
As reported by hackster.io, Collin "dosdude1" Mistr has released the second in a series of open-source solid-state drive (SSD) upgrades for vintage computer hardware. A 1.8-inch ZIF design is now followed by a 2.5-inch IDE SSD compatible with any device that normally uses a 2.5-inch IDE hard drive or a 3.5-inch IDE hard drive with a simple adapter (YouTube video). So it should also be possible to use it in the Amiga 1200 or Amiga 4000. (dr)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 13:46] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
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Aminet uploads until 21.01.2023
The following files have been added until 21.01.2023 to Aminet:
Beautiful_Machine_Vol... demo/sound 813K 68k Musicdisk
PcmciaCD.lha driver/med 10K 68k ATAPI PCMCIA CD driver Sony Vaio
anaiis_lowlevel.lha driver/oth 25K 68k Anaiis lowlevel release 0.02
jfsw.lha game/shoot 1.7M 68k Shadow Warrior Amiga Port
pcexhumed.lha game/shoot 671K 68k Exhumed / Powerslave Port
Fenachistoscopio_AROS... gfx/show 2.2M x86 Phenakistiscopes player
Fenachistoscopio_MOS.lha gfx/show 2.3M MOS Phenakistiscopes player
Fenachistoscopio_OS4.lha gfx/show 2.6M OS4 Phenakistiscopes player
AmiVms.lha misc/emu 3.4M 68k Simulates OpenVMS commands
LN4TheEnd.lha mods/misc 2.7M 4ch 16bit LN4TheEnd MED track
luett-font.lha text/bfont 4K Small HiRes font (8x8, all co...
NAFCYI1991S1-B01.zip text/bfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B02.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B03.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B04.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B05.zip text/bfont 2.5M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B06.zip text/bfont 2.5M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B07.zip text/bfont 2.6M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B08.zip text/bfont 2.5M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B09.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B10.zip text/bfont 2.2M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B11.zip text/bfont 2.3M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B12.zip text/bfont 2.6M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B13.zip text/bfont 2.6M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B14.zip text/bfont 2.2M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B15.zip text/bfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B16.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B17.zip text/bfont 2.7M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B18.zip text/bfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B19.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B20.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B21.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B22.zip text/bfont 2.2M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B23.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B24.zip text/bfont 2.2M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B25.zip text/bfont 2.5M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B26.zip text/bfont 2.2M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B27.zip text/bfont 2.6M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B28.zip text/bfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
SteMarRegFonts.lha text/bfont 68K 8 fonts made by Stefano Maria...
avalanche_de.lha util/arc 1K German catalog for Avalanche ...
filesysbox.m68k-amiga... util/libs 73K 68k A FUSE compatible file system...
(snx)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 08:02] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
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OS4Depot uploads until 21.01.2023
The following files have been added until 21.01.2023 to OS4Depot:
rave.lha aud/edi 3Mb 4.1 An editor for mono/stereo audio ...
wildmidi.lha aud/pla 41Mb 4.1 A simple software midi player
fenachistoscopio.lha gra/vie 3Mb 4.0 Phenakistiscopes player
shaderjoy.lha gra/vie 4Mb 4.1 Display fragment shaders
smb2fs.lha net/sam 127kb 4.1 Filesystem for accessing files u...
(snx)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 08:02] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
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AROS Archives uploads until 21.01.2023
The following files have been added until 21.01.2023 to AROS Archives:
smb2fs.i386-aros.lha dri/fil 79kb SMB2/3 file system client
opentyrian.i386-aros.zip gam/act 7Mb Open-source port of the DOS game...
fenachistoscopio.i386-aro... gra/vie 2Mb Phenakistiscopes player
filesysbox.i386-aros.lha lib/mis 52kb A FUSE compatible file system layer
(snx)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 08:02] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 21.01.2023
The following files have been added until 21.01.2023 to MorphOS-Storage:
Iris_1.7.lha Email New email client suppor...
MirrorMagic_3.1.0.lha Games/Think Arcade style game in th...
RocksNDiamonds_4.3.4.0... Games/Think Arcade style game in th...
Fenachistoscopio_1.0.lha Graphics/Show Phenakistiscopes player
WitchCleaner_2.35.lha Network/Web A little and easy progr...
ADiffView_2.2.lha Text/Compare A graphical file compar...
AMUIDiff_1.0b.lha Text/Compare Displays differences of...
PageStream5_FR_1.1.lha Translations French translation of P...
PageStream5-Tips_FR_1.... Translations French translation of P...
(snx)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 08:02] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
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WHDLoad: New installers until 21.01.2023
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 21.01.2023:
(snx)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 08:02] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
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Print magazine: 25 years Amiga Future - outlook and raffle
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the print magazine Amiga Future, at the title link its editor-in-chief Andreas Magerl looks back briefly and comments on current plans. In addition, two subscriptions for one year are raffled.
In case this makes you interested in the history of the magazine, you can find a review, which was last updated two years ago, on the website of Amiga Future as well. (snx)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 08:02] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2023
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Text adventure: The Dragnet Case
"The Dragnet Case" is a text adventure published by Taskmaster Software, originally written back in the 1980s and now available for various retro systems (C64, Amstrad, Amiga etc.).
You take on the role of Sam Boon, a private detective from L.A. who has had little to do lately and is now suddenly surprised by gunfire. The movement of the character is done by entering the cardinal directions ("GO NORTH", or "NORTH" or just "N" for short) or with "U" (up) or "D" (down). Further instructions are explained in the game description. (dr)
[News message: 22. Jan. 2023, 07:30] [Comments: 0]
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21.Jan.2023
Twitter
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AmigaRemix: Website launch of version 2.0
AmigaRemix provides new mixes of well-known soundtracks of Amiga games and demos as MP3 files for download. Now version 2.0 of the website has been introduced, which should improve the submission of tracks in particular. In the near future there should also be the possibility to download the whole archive via torrents. Since our last report, the following tracks have been added:
- a Piece of Magic (The Armandox Treatment)
- Lost Patrol (NAM Edit)
- Stardust Memories
(dr)
[News message: 21. Jan. 2023, 21:28] [Comments: 0]
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21.Jan.2023
Facebook
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Amiga Ireland 2023: Winners of Creative Competition
Last weekend the Amiga Ireland took place in Athlone (amiga-news.de reported). Now the winners of the "Creative Competition 2023" have been published. In the category "Pixel Art" the winners can be seen directly under the title link, for the music entries we have researched links to the top 3 to listen to:
(dr)
[News message: 21. Jan. 2023, 07:38] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2023
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PiStorm32-lite: JLCPCB soldering issues
Since about three weeks the building instructions and documentation for the PiStorm32-lite are available (amiga-news.de reported). After that, many interested people ordered the necessary parts from JLCPCB. Some problems occurred during assembly, which Andrew 'LinuxJedi' Hutchings now summarises in his latest blog entry:
Apparently, the holes in the bottom of the boards were filled with metal balls. This was especially the case with orders placed via JLCPCB's economy service. Basically, the problem could be fixed by poking the balls out from above with a pin.
It was quickly found out that the problem was excess solder paste that got into the holes during the Reflow process. In a few cases, however, even the solder penetrated the metal of the plug. The developer goes into detail about the exact reasons for this in the further course of his explanations. (dr)
[News message: 20. Jan. 2023, 21:10] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2023
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Video: 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast #144 - The fully networked Amiga 4000
Issue 144 of Douglas Compton's videocast 10MARC is about networking his Amiga 4000. Among others he demonstrated how to use the Twitter client twittAmiga or the SMB network protocol (amiga-news.de reported). (dr)
[News message: 20. Jan. 2023, 06:32] [Comments: 0]
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19.Jan.2023
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ACube Systems: First batch of Sam460LE boards shipped - second delayed
Press release - January 29, 2023
Dear customers,
We have sent out as many boards as we could prepare.
Unfortunately, we received from our suppliers some faulty Ethernet controllers and therefore some boards failed the stress tests.
This will create a delay in the delivery of the remaining Sam460LE. :-(
The replacement Ethernet controllers will arrive in mid-February, after Chinese New Year.
Again, we will perform our extensive testing because we would rather not release a poor product.
We apologize for yet another delay caused by companies that do not play fair.
We will keep you informed.
Thank you.
The ACube Systems Team (dr)
[News message: 19. Jan. 2023, 20:33] [Comments: 0]
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18.Jan.2023
MorphZone
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MorphOS: Email client Iris 1.7 (update)
Jacek 'jacadcaps' Piszczek has released version 1.6 of his email client Iris for MorphOS. Changes:
- Settings UI improvements, missing help bubbles, etc
- External image viewer option for image attachments in mail reader
- Autoconfiguration disabled for POP3 entirely. While POP3 accounts may still be manually added, they are eventually going to be deprecated in Iris entirely
- Updated all localizable strings to use safe formatting tokens since some of the translations would cause Iris to crash
- Fixed a crash if a new folder was added as an INBOX subfolder on the server
- Updated WebKit, cURL and other libraries
Download: iris.lha (21 MB)
Update: (20.01.2023, 05:11, dr)
Meanwhile version 1.7 is available which fixes a Polish catalog issue and two causes of crash. (dr)
[News message: 18. Jan. 2023, 20:52] [Comments: 0]
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18.Jan.2023
Floppy (Kommentar)
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AROS: Distribution Icaros Desktop Live 1.31 beta 20230118
Paolo Besser released a beta version of his AROS distribution Icaros Desktop live which contains the recent ABIv0 backports by Krzysztof 'deadwood' Śmiechowicz, but also other additions, and asks users willing to support it to test it. (dr)
[News message: 18. Jan. 2023, 19:09] [Comments: 0]
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18.Jan.2023
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SMB2 handler smb2fs V53.4 for AmigaOS 3/4 and AROS
The Server Message Block (SMB) is a network protocol for file, print and other server services in computer networks and allows access to files and directories located on another computer (Wikipedia entry). Fredrik Wikstrom's SMB2 handler is based on libsmb2 and allows remote access to files via the SMB2/3 protocols (amiga-news.de reported). Version 53.4 is now not only available for AmigaOS 4, but also for AROS and thanks to Szilard Biro for AmigaOS 3. Changes:
- Rewrote the readv() and writev() implementations according to: sahlberg/libsmb2#242
- Merged latest changes from libsmb2:
- Read share flags and use encryption if needed.
- Fix ntlm_convert_password_hash on big endian.
- Added AmigaOS 3 and AROS ports (the AmigaOS 3 port is thanks to the work of Szilard Biro).
Requirements: newlib.library V53.40 or later (or V53.30 as included in AmigaOS 4.1 FE) and the filesysbox.library V54.4 or later for AmigaOS 4, filesysbox.library 54.3 or later for AROS and AmigaOS 3 and optional the requester.class (ClassAct/ReAction, for password requester) for AmigaOS 3.
Downloads:
smb2fs.i386-aros.lha (79 KB)
smb2fs.m68k-amigaos.lha (148 KB)
smb2fs.ppc-amigaos.lha (127 KB)
(dr)
[News message: 18. Jan. 2023, 18:57] [Comments: 0]
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18.Jan.2023
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Game Construction Kit: Scorpion Engine V2022.8
The "Scorpion Engine" developed by Erik 'earok' Hogan allows you to develop games. The engine itself is closed source, all demos and example games are open source. The editor runs under Windows. Graphics are imported as PNG files, levels created by using the editor Tiled eingesetzt. For importing and creating sounds, music and animations the Amiga formats (mod, 8svx, anim5) are used.
A few moments ago he has released version 2022.8. Changes:
- New game sample: "Elf Spirit Hunters"
- Sprite sheet importer includes scaling function inspired by the RotSprite algorithm
- Integration with Tiled's "template" system in order to allow actors to be placed at exact pixel-perfect coordinates (as well as to allow VARs to be set per actor on the map itself)
- New "asset bundles" system allows you to be very granular about which sound effects and animations are in memory at any one time
- Removed all limitations on screen width, allowing 320x wide games to be possible
- New "cartridge" file structure merges the many previously output files into a single file
- New "debug mode" feature allows for stepping through codeblocks at real time line by line during gameplay
- New "Maryo", "Sonyc" and "Jetpack" movement types allowing for improved platformer game control
- Support for the "Endrun" utility for freeing additional memory on the A500 Amiga
- Anim5 support has been substantially improved, and a new demo has been included for that
- Map format has been improved so there's no longer a hard limit of 256 foreground tiles or animated tiles, and memory requirements have been dropped from six bytes per tile to five
- A set of new math functions focusing on trigonometry purposes
- Sundry bug fixes and performance enhancements
You can support the developer on his Patreon website. (dr)
[News message: 18. Jan. 2023, 06:00] [Comments: 0]
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17.Jan.2023
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Website launch: retro.directory
Robert Smith, previously known for his DrawBridge or FloppyBridge project and various video releases, has put online "retro.directory", a first version of his website for searching and finding museums, magazines, clubs and groups, events, podcasts, Youtubers, arcades, shops or cafés, all of which have a connection to Retro (YouTube video).
Reporting your own entry is free of charge. There is also the option of advertising or sponsoring the initiative. As the developer reports, he wants to offer an easy way to find retro-related places and websites with the directory. The website should also work with older (retro) browsers, but then you won't have access to the map.
(dr)
[News message: 17. Jan. 2023, 21:21] [Comments: 0]
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17.Jan.2023
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Adventure interpreter: ScummVM 2.2.0
The developer 'NovaCoder' has been porting the adventure interpreter ScummVM to AmigaOS 3 for a long time: while there are current implementations of version 1.9 for RTG Amigas and AGA Amigas with 68060 processor, the version for AGA Amigas with 68030 processor (and up) is based on version 1.5 and dates from 2015.
Now there is another approach: the English developer Robin 'betajaen' Southern has created a fork based on the build of 'mheyer32' and released versions of ScummVM 2.2.0 for AmigaOS 3 (030, 040 and 060 processor). As he writes, he does not want to hinder 'NovaCoders' work. He added support for arrow keys, GAME tooltypes and EGA palette changes to the 'mheyer32' build and reduced the start-up time. Furthermore, he said, he is focusing on Sierra's game engine SCI, as he plays Police Quest 2 on Twitch, which requires arrow keys for gameplay. Joysticks are also supported.
In separate executables he has also included support for AGI and SCUMM. The developer has more or less tested the following games with an Amiga 1200 (Vampire) under AmigaOS 3.2.1:
- SCI - Police Quest 2
- SCI - Colonel's Bequest
- SCI - Codename: Iceman
- SCI - Kings' Quest IV
- AGI - Police Quest 1
- AGI - King's Quest III
- SCUMM - Maniac Mansion
- SCUMM - Zak McKracken
- SCUMM - Monkey Island 1
- SCUMM - Monkey Island 2
- SCUMM - Fate of Atlantis
(dr)
[News message: 17. Jan. 2023, 06:21] [Comments: 1 - 17. Jan. 2023, 18:37]
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16.Jan.2023
CS-Lab (ANF)
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CS-Lab: Warp firmware pack 1.400
CS-Lab released a firmware update for their 68060-based Warp accelerator boards. Changes in version 1.400 include:
- Hardware sprite in RTG modes
- Additional RTG hardware acceleration:
- BliltTemplate
- BlitPattern
- BlitRectNoMaskComplete
- P96 monitor file tooltypes support:
- NOBLITTER=Yes (disable hw acceleration)
- SOFTSPRITE=Yes (disable hw sprite)
(note that these options are mainly for debug/troubleshooting, so should be inactive by default)
- Fixed displaying screens larger than surrent resolution. Correct panning and autoscroll
- P96 driver partially rewritten in machine code
- P96 driver compiled and tested using recent SDK from icomp.de
- WiFi password hidden by default in WarpDiag and WarpTool
- MC68060 internal temperature sensor auto offset calibration
- Other minor improvements and bug fixes
(snx)
[News message: 16. Jan. 2023, 19:40] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jan.2023
Sven Scheele (ANF)
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Event: Interface XXXIII in Kiel (Germany) on 28.01.2023
Sven Scheele writes: "On Saturday, January 28, 2023, the retro computer event "Interface" will take place again in Schwentinental near Kiel, Germany. As usual, organizers are the Vintage Computer Club (VCC), the Amiga Club Schleswig-Holstein (ACSH) and the Computer Club Klausdorf (CCK).
Registration by e-mail at the address interface@jugendhaus-klausdorf.de is recommended. Without registration there is no guarantee for a free place.
Even if there are no more Corona restrictions this time, we ask to participate only if you have no corresponding symptoms! But this should be self-evident.
Once again, two large rooms (over two floors) are available. The multi-purpose room on the 1st floor is not available this time, but as an alternative we can share the café on the first floor (as a "workshop" for hardware projects, repairs and the like). The top floor offers enough space for talking shop and playing games on the computers and consoles we have brought along. Power strips and network cables must be brought by the participants.
Official start is at 14 o'clock, from approx. 12 o'clock the organization team begins with setting up the tables etc. The venue is the Jugendhaus Klausdorf, Dorfstraße 101 in 24222 Schwentinental (Klausdorf district)." (snx)
[News message: 16. Jan. 2023, 19:27] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jan.2023
ANF
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Event: Retro meeting at indoor swimming pool Wolfsburg (Germany) on 04.03.2023
Not an Amiga event, but theoretically the favorite computer of our younger days could also be represented: The city of Wolfsburg, Germany, wants to further expand the topic of gaming and is therefore organizing a gaming event in a disused indoor swimming pool on March 4, 2023.
For a retro-meeting as a part of that event, 30 seats of 1.2 by 0.7 meters each will be provided free of charge, the setup will start at 9 am, the event at 10 am. If you want to participate with retro hardware, please register exclusively via the e-mail address bloekchen@gmx.de. (snx)
[News message: 16. Jan. 2023, 19:23] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jan.2023
David Plesance (Twitter)
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Book: Message to subscribers of German version of "Commodore - The Inside Story"
David Pleasance, author of the book "Commodore - The Inside Story" addresses via Twitter the subscribers of the German edition of his work, especially those of the printed edition.
Due to e-mail losses, he asks for the current delivery address for sending the printed version to amiga@lookbehindyou.de with the subject: "INSIDE STORY GERMAN VERSION". Subscribers of the e-book version, on the other hand, should send their current e-mail address to info@cbmamiga.com with the subject: "COMMODORE INSIDE STORY GERMAN VERSION EBOOK".
Translated back into English, his message reads as follows:
A REQUEST TO ALL GERMAN SPEAKING COMMODORE/AMIGA FANS WHO ORDERED THE GERMAN VERSION OF MY BOOK "COMMODORE THE INSIDE STORY" AS PRINTED VERSION:
As some of you know, I had a health impairment in July and August last year, which even led to a hospital stay and a (minor) surgery.
As a result, I was not productive for almost three months and therefore unfortunately missed the Christmas printing deadline. As you might guess, this is the time of year when all authors and publishers want to get their books out there - the season of giving.
In the next few days, I will receive three estimates for printing the German edition of Commodore - The Inside Story, giving not only the current printing costs, but also an approximate date for receiving the finished product.
At this point, I expect the books to be available by the end of March.
In addition to this "challenge", I unfortunately also experienced an administrative nightmare when my email provider, Godaddy, in its inexhaustible wisdom (and a certain greed), decided to stop providing its customers with the "free" email that was included with the registration of our domain name.
Instead, they insisted on forcing everyone to use Microsoft Outlook - which, of course, entails a monthly fee.
Unfortunately, in my case, when Godaddy made the transfer from their system to Microsoft, much of my data disappeared - hundreds of emails dissolved into the ether, never to be seen again, and what's worse, neither company wants to take responsibility for this disaster.
Why am I telling you all this? The reason is that I want to make sure I know your current shipping address so that I can properly deliver your copy of Commodore - The Inside Story in German translation.
I am aware that due to the delay in printing this edition, some of you may have changed your address in the meantime anyway.
Since all German copies of this book will be shipped from Germany to avoid customs problems, I ask each of you to send an email with your complete mailing address for delivery to amiga@lookbehindyou.de. Please mark your email with the subject INSIDE STORY GERMAN VERSION.
However, for those of you who ordered the E-BOOK version, we will send it to you from the UK - so please send an email with the subject COMMODORE INSIDE STORY GERMAN VERSION EBOOK to info@cbmamiga.com. (snx)
[News message: 16. Jan. 2023, 19:11] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jan.2023
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AmigaOS 4: Audio editor Rave 1.5
Daniel 'trixie' Jedlicka has released version 1.5 of the audio editor "Rave" (amiga-news.de reported). Changes:
- New function in the Process menu: "Reverse".
- New function in the Edit menu: "Paste at".
- New function in the Edit menu: "Insert Silence".
- A user-defined amount of silence can also be inserted when creating a new project.
- Updated documentation.
Rave requires AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 2 as well as A-EON's Enhancer Core classes. You can support the developer on his Ko-fi page. (dr)
[News message: 16. Jan. 2023, 06:44] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jan.2023
Mixel
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Jump'n Run: new demo version V1.4 of "Creeping Me Out Hex Night"
Michael 'Mixel' Dawes provides another demo version of his jump'n run 'Creeping Me Out: Hex Night', created with the game construction kit Scorpion Engine. According to the developer, this new playable demo version provides "a few little changes here and there". The biggest change: Game performance is much better now, and it also works on A1200s with no fast RAM (which he doesn't recommend, it is just a preparation for future CD32 version). Basically the game requires 2 MB Chip and 1 MB Fast RAM as well as a 68020-processor.
As the developer explained to us, the game is about 70% finished, and he will continue to expand and improve the game after its release. You can support the developer via his Patreon website. (dr)
[News message: 16. Jan. 2023, 06:28] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jan.2023
Glames (Boing Attitude)
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Quiz for AmigaOS 4/MorphOS: "2022 FIFA World Cup" add-on for AskMeUp XXL
Press release: The "2022 FIFA World Cup" add-on, which includes 96 new questions about the lastest World Cup of soccer, is now freely downloadable from our website. Intended for Ask Me Up XXL buyers, the game offers you more than 2300 questions of general knowledge for your AmigaOS 4, MorphOS and Windows computers!
"What was the FIFA® ranking of the Qatar team before the start of the competition ?", "Who was the youngest player in the competition ?", ... are some of the questions to which you will now have the answers!
Features:
- Theme / 2022 FIFA® World Cup
- Game modes / Quiz - Survival - Cup
- Forms / Text: 88%, text/image: 11%, image: 1%
- Languages / English and French
An installer is included. AskMeUp XXL 3.5.0 or newer required. Here is a list of the available add-ons. (dr)
[News message: 15. Jan. 2023, 21:05] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jan.2023
Amigans
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AmigaOS 4: Shader player Shaderjoy 1.24
Shaderjoy allows displaying and creating Shadertoy compatible fragment shaders. Fragment shaders, also called pixel shaders, are programs that are executed per fragment (pixel) on the GPU.The ogles2.library 3.2 and Warp3D Nova 54.16 are required. Now Juha "Capehill" Niemimaki has released version 1.24. Changes:
- Add GLSL Help button: a URL (khronos.org) will be opened.
- Add PUBSCREEN tooltype.
- Add editor toggle menu option in window mode.
- Disable blanker using application.library.
- Fix some CppCheck findings.
- Fix "GetAttr fail" issue which happened when user dropped a file without editor view.
- Compile with GCC 11 - thanks to all people working on the SDK!
(dr)
[News message: 15. Jan. 2023, 08:43] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jan.2023
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Aminet uploads until 14.01.2023
The following files have been added until 14.01.2023 to Aminet:
ASMPro1.19.lha dev/asm 109K 68k ASM-Pro v1.19c (minor update)
filex-2.6-morphos.lha disk/moni 598K MOS binary file editor (8 catalogs)
RescueLander.lha game/actio 45K 68k Land on Earth or Moon or Mars...
StefACS.lha game/demo 64K 68k Adventures creator, working i...
ScummVM_AGA_060.lha game/misc 7.9M 68k Amiga AGA port of ScummVM 1.9...
ScummVM_RTG.lha game/misc 7.9M 68k Amiga port of ScummVM
GQ2Demo.lha game/role 990K 68k Demo of a Point & Click Adven...
FlashMandelNG_OS4.lha gfx/fract 34M OS4 Mandelbrot & Julia fractals AOS4
luett-font.lha text/bfont 4K 68k Small HiRes font (8x8, all co...
Vim_9.0-ppc-amigaos.lha text/edit 15M OS4 The ubiquitous text editor
Vim_9.0-ppc-morphos.lha text/edit 14M MOS The ubiquitous text editor
NAFCYI1991S1-01.zip text/pfont 1.8M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-02.zip text/pfont 1.8M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-03.zip text/pfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-04.zip text/pfont 1.9M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-05.zip text/pfont 1.9M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-06.zip text/pfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-07.zip text/pfont 2.0M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-08.zip text/pfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-09.zip text/pfont 2.0M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-10.zip text/pfont 1.9M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-11.zip text/pfont 2.0M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-12.zip text/pfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-13.zip text/pfont 1.7M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-14.zip text/pfont 1.7M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-15.zip text/pfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-16.zip text/pfont 1.8M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-17.zip text/pfont 1.8M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-18.zip text/pfont 1.7M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-19.zip text/pfont 1.7M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-20.zip text/pfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-21.zip text/pfont 2.0M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-22.zip text/pfont 2.2M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-23.zip text/pfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-24.zip text/pfont 1.9M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-25.zip text/pfont 2.0M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-26.zip text/pfont 1.9M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-27.zip text/pfont 1.7M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-28.zip text/pfont 1.8M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
avalanche.lha util/arc 81K AOS ReAction unarchive GUI for xf...
Albatros.lha util/boot 34K 68k Lock your AMIGA by a keyword
MuRedox.lha util/boot 140K 68k MuLib based math speedup patc...
MMULib.lha util/libs 773K 68k Library to ctrl the MC68K MMUs
SoftIEEE.lha util/libs 77K 68k math lib&881/882 FPU emulator...
AmiKick.lha util/misc 49K Check Kickstart images under ...
VATestprogram.zip util/misc 2.8M 68k Versatile Amiga Testprogram
AnalogClock.lha util/time 39K 68k Resizeable analog transparent...
(snx)
[News message: 15. Jan. 2023, 07:05] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jan.2023
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OS4Depot uploads until 14.01.2023
The following files have been added until 14.01.2023 to OS4Depot:
hdaudio_ahi.lha dri/aud 245kb 4.1 Generic HD audio driver for Amig...
flashmandelng.lha gra/mis 34Mb 4.1 Mandelbrot & Julia fractals ...
zip_lib.lha lib/mis 185kb 4.1 Library for reading/writing zip ...
smb2fs.lha net/sam 126kb 4.1 Filesystem for accessing files u...
beebase.lha off/dat 8Mb 4.0 Programmable relational database...
avalanche.lha uti/arc 81kb 4.1 Simple ReAction GUI for xadmaster
vim_mui.lha uti/tex 15Mb 4.1 The ubiquitous text editor
(snx)
[News message: 15. Jan. 2023, 07:05] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jan.2023
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 14.01.2023
The following files have been added until 14.01.2023 to MorphOS-Storage:
Chrysalis_3.17r4.iso Chrysalis This pack allows you to...
DescentII_1.2.lha Games/Shoot3D MorphOS port of Descent...
BeeBase_1.0.7.lha Office/Database Programmable relational...
Lucy_2.33.lha System/Ambient/Commodi... A small commodity that ...
tdcc_0.3.lha System/Ambient/Utilities tdcc_0.3.lha
Vim_9.0.1158.lha Text/Edit A highly configurable t...
PageStream5-Tips_FR.lha Translations French translation of P...
(snx)
[News message: 15. Jan. 2023, 07:05] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jan.2023
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WHDLoad: New installers until 14.01.2023
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 14.01.2023:
- 2023-01-14 improved: Atomix (Thalion) trainer options added, WHDLoad v17+ features used, typo in end-sequence text fixed (Info)
- 2023-01-14 fixed: Elvira 2 - The Jaws of Cerberus (Horrorsoft/Accolade) soundtracker replay music fixed (dma wait value, audio volume), game can run with ntsc option now (Info)
- 2023-01-09 improved: Universe (Core Design) supports another version, ecs slave uses 512kb chip/512kb fast now, solution included (Info)
- 2023-01-08 new: Chariots Of Wrath (Impressions) done by DJ Mike (Info)
(snx)
[News message: 15. Jan. 2023, 07:05] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jan.2023
David Brunet (ANF)
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Obligement: Update of Amiga Games List
The Amiga Games List, a document created and maintained by David Brunet since April 1991, has been updated on January 13th 2023 with the publication of its 53rd edition. Among other new features and corrections, games published or updated in 2022 have been added, and games created with CONK, AmiGen Engine and in Objective-C are now counted. In addition, the "The 2-Clause BSD License" (BSD2) licence have been added. The total now reaches 13,869 entries, be it games, level editors, data disks, extensions and interpreters, which are distributed as follows:
- 13.206 games
- 370 extensions and data disks
- 152 game or level editors
- 141 interpreters
(snx)
[News message: 15. Jan. 2023, 07:05] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jan.2023
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
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Amiga Future: Old Amiga Joker issues online as PDF files
At the title link Amiga Future provides all issues of the German games magazine "Amiga Joker" as PDF files - with the exception of the two own revivals from 2017 and 2019 which are still available for purchase. The scanning of the issues was started in 2009 in the A1k forum, its members Amipeguser, echo, evil, Lomaxx and Tracer participated.
Currently Amiga Future are looking for someone who can create an index of all articles of the Amiga Joker issues. In addition, all articles are to be added to the Amiga Future article database in the course of the year. The latter currently contains about 5,000 entries. (snx)
[News message: 15. Jan. 2023, 07:05] [Comments: 1 - 18. Jan. 2023, 07:48]
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14.Jan.2023
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Puzzle game: Kulki
The developer 'Mirq' has released a conversion of the Windows game Kulki for Amiga (YouTube video). The game runs on any Amiga with Kickstart 1.3 and 512 KB Chip-RAM. (dr)
[News message: 14. Jan. 2023, 06:54] [Comments: 0]
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14.Jan.2023
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Video tutorial: Episode 34 of assembler coding course
'Prince', founder of the demo group 'Phaze101', is currently streaming the assembler programming course "Corso completo di programmazione assembler in due dischi" in English on Twitch and uploads the respective episodes time-delayed to YouTube (amiga-news.de reported). Now episode 34 was published. (dr)
[News message: 14. Jan. 2023, 06:43] [Comments: 0]
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14.Jan.2023
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Video tutorial: Programming functional buttons with AMOS Pro
In another part of his series of short tutorials on AMOS Pro (amiga-news.de reported), retro and Amiga fan 'Yawning Angel' this time shows how to program functional buttons using the function "ZONE$", which creates a screen section around a text. (dr)
[News message: 14. Jan. 2023, 06:38] [Comments: 0]
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13.Jan.2023
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Kickstarter campaign: Delivery of "Tank Mouse" delayed
The Polish designer Lukas Remis had successfully finished a Kickstarter campaign for the re-release of the Commodore mouse 1352 (amiga-news.de reported).
In a recent status update, the developer writes that due to the current COVID situation in China, over 60% of the factory's employees are on sick leave. His suppliers are also affected. He hopes that the Tank Mouse can be delivered in the second half of February. For those who want to bridge the time until they receive the mouse: AmigaBill tested the new Tank Mouse a fortnight ago in a Twitch show (YouTube video).
(dr)
[News message: 13. Jan. 2023, 16:57] [Comments: 0]
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13.Jan.2023
VintageIsTheNewOld
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Competition: Results of Logiker's Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge 2022
For the second time after 2021, the Logiker website organised a Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge, in which a specific Christmas symbol is to be created using multiplication signs in a freely chosen programming language. In this year's edition, a Christmas star had to be formed. Almost 200 participants took on the task using a wide variety of retro systems. There were also two Amiga entries (1, 2), both of which used ARexx. (dr)
[News message: 13. Jan. 2023, 16:32] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jan.2023
GitHub
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ReAction GUI for XAD: Avalanche 1.10 for AmigaOS 3 and 4
Chris Young has released version 1.10 of his ReAction-based graphical user interface Avalanche for the unarchiving system XAD, which also supports the xfdmaster.library and can search for viruses using the xvs.library. The developer has written his tool explicitly for AmigaOS 3.2, but has also been tested under AmigaOS 4. Since it uses a new window.class, it might not work with older OS3 versions. Changes:
- Dragging a drawer into the window now sets the source directory, if an archive hasn't already been opened.
- Fixed some problems opening archives in certain circumstances.
- OS4 build now uses newlib.
Download: avalanche.lha (81Kb) (dr)
[News message: 12. Jan. 2023, 20:46] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jan.2023
itch.io
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Dock: QDock V1.63
At the end of October, Sami Vehmaa published the first version of his start bar "QDock" (amiga-news.de reported), which he continues to develop (YouTube video). Since our last news item the developer has fixed several minor bugs and did some fine tuning. Furthermore now it is now possible to drop an icon on the dock. Vehmaa recommends to completely re-install this version and to delete all old files. His dock works well with a 68030 processor when the reflections are deactivated or a 68060 when activated. In addition, AmigaOS 3.1 or higher, graphics card and 22 MB RAM are required. (dr)
[News message: 12. Jan. 2023, 06:04] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jan.2023
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Tutorial: Using two graphics cards in the AmigaOne X5000
Dutch AmigaOS 4 user Dave 'Skateman' Koelman has been connected to the Amiga since the 1990s, when he bought an Amiga 500 to replace the Commodore VIC20 and later C64. When the AmigaOne X1000 was introduced many years later, he considered taking another leap onto new hardware, which he finally did in 2017 after the release of the AmigaOne X5000 by ordering it.
Since the interest and curiosity in the new PowerPC Amigas was aroused, Dave has been intensively involved with their hardware and software and has also been running his blog SkateMansWorld since that time. With so much expertise it was obvious that Amiga-News.de asked him to discuss the problem of how to run two graphics cards in the AmigaOne X5000 so that you get optimal solutions for using AmigaOS 4 as well as MorphOS and Linux. At the same time he gives one or two more tips on how to work with the X5000 in the best possible way. Many thanks, Dave!
"My X5000 came shipped with the AMD Radeon R7 250 graphics card (Radeon HD series). This card is great for AmigaOS and can also be used with the PowerPC Linux distros, but does NOT support proper hardware acceleration within Linux. This means that OpenGL based software cannot be used. As many games rely on OpenGL the lack of support was not very satisfying. As PowerPC Linux has hardware support for the older line of Radeon graphics cards, it does not for the newer Radeon HD and RX line of cards. Since I have been testing most Linux kernels over the past years which are being compiled by Christian Zygotzky (Xeno74), I wanted to have a graphics card that has Linux hardware acceleration support and was fully supported by AmigaOS. So there we are… AmigaOS fully supports the HD and RX Radeon cards but these cards don't have the proper LInux support. Alternative could be using an older Radeon card that is supported by Linux but then you will be missing out on all the new OS4 Radeon driver developments that Hans de Ruiter for A-EON is doing. And what about MorphOS that does not support the Radeon RX cards at all. It has some support for the Radeon HD cards but without hardware 3D acceleration...
Two graphics cards
As I do not want to change graphics cards each time I boot an alternative OS, I decided to see if I could fit a second graphics card in my X5000. By doing so I could upgrade my primary Radeon R7 250 to a newer Radeon RX 570 card and use a second graphics card for Linux and MorphOS.
Remember that the Radeon RX series are not supported at all by PowerPC Linux and MorphOS
When researching the possibilities for a secondary graphics card, I found that the bandwidth of a PCIe-X1 slot should be more than enough for my Linux needs. See this YouTube-Video to give you an idea of the bandwidth capabilities of the PCIe-X1 slot.
As the X5000 also has a PCIe-X4 slot, this would be preferable. The bad thing is that this PCIe-X4 slot is blocked by most graphic cards due to the big coolers on top of these cards. So my project started with a simple graphics card in a PCIe-X16 to X1 adapter. These adapters are mostly used by Crypto miners and cheap. The model I used is shown in the picture below.
To fit the above adapter in the X5000 we have several slots to choose from. Below a diagram of the X5000 mainboard. As you take a close look at the PCIe slots you see that the first slot is the PCIe-X16 slot where your graphics card is seated. The second slot is the PCIe-X4 slot, but most of the time it's unreachable due to the graphics card cooling solution. The third slot is a combined slot. PCIe-X1 / Xorro. The fourth and fifth slot are regular PCIe-X1 slots.
I decided to give it a shot with a Radeon 7450 Low profile graphics card and used the third PCIe slot (the combined PCIe-X1 / XORRO). Be creative when fitting the card in your machine. I used a simple piece of cardboard. The end result, a working 3D accelerated Linux running on my X5000 using the secondary graphics card. Yeah!
As mentioned earlier, the X5000 also has a PCIe-X4 slot with more bandwidth available but sits directly underneath the PCIe-X16 slot. This makes it very hard to be usable, until I found a PCIe-X16 to X4 cable with a 90 degree connector. See the pictures below.
By using this cable we can use the PCIe-X4 slot for use with a second graphics card.
I have been testing many graphic cards successfully using this cable and VoidLinux ever since. Some of this progress can be found on the Hyperion forum.
Some of these models are:
- Radeon HD 3870
- Radeon HD 4770
- Radeon HD 6770
- Radeon HD 5450
- Radeon HD 7450
- Radeon X1950
- Radeon X1900
- ATI FirePro V3700
Fitting another secondary graphics card in your machine might require some tinkering. I solved it by using materials like motherboard spacers and a tie-wrap.
The spacers are used to position the card above the normal screwhole in the case and still be able to tighten it with a screw. The tie-wrap is used to keep the rest of the card in place. It's not the most elegant solution, but for now it will do.
AmigaOS, Linux and .... MorphOS
It's great to have an X5000 capable of running AmigaOS and Linux each using its own graphics card. But being able to run AmigaOS, Linux and MorphOS with 3D acceleration would be best.
The MorphOS website has a hardware compatibility list and found that one of the most powerful cards with 3D hardware acceleration should be an X19xx series. As my X1950 had some hardware issues I was able to find myself a secondhand X1900 and decided to use this card. Its supported with Linux and should work with MorphOS. Let's go!
I have installed MorphOS on a secondary SSD drive attached to the second SATA port on the X5000. The first SATA port on the X5000 has an SSD drive connected with AmigaOS installed.
The second SATA port is also connected to a FlexiDOCK which makes it easy to swap drives without having to open the X5000. So now I have the ability to insert my MorphOS ssd drive when I want to run MorphOS and Linux for the moments I want to run Linux. The AmigaOS SSD is fitted inside the X5000 and always available. Installing morphos was a bit tricky but seems to be running fine. What i had to do was start the installation from USB like a normal installation but when you get to the partitioning part I used the following:
For MorphOS DH0: I used DH0.1: and for DH1: I used DH1.1:
I gave DH0.1: the name MOSSYS: and DH1.1: MOSWORK:
By using these values it did not conflict with the AmigaOS drive that is also present in the X5000.
Here is the FlexiDOCK that makes it very easy to swap drives without opening your case.
X5000 and Micro SDcard
As some might have noticed, there is some small black box hanging out of the front of my X5000. What you see here is a Micro SD card extender:
By using this I don't have to open my case and fiddle with the Micro SD card and the delicate connector on the X5000 mainboard. I can access my SD card at any moment now.
Final words
So that's the current status of my X5000. Two graphics cards - although I have currently opted for the RX550 instead of the RX570: almost half as small and less resource-hungry -, micro sd extender, FlexiDOCK, 16GB Ram for Linux and several operating systems. Time will tell what else can be done to adapt the X5000. If anyone would like more information, feel free to contact me. I am looking forward to suggestions, comments or further ideas first in the comments here (but you can also find me in the forums of Amigans, AmigaWorld and Hyperion-Support)." (dr)
[News message: 12. Jan. 2023, 05:29] [Comments: 3 - 10. Feb. 2023, 17:31]
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