09.Nov.2022
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Jump'n Run: Minky V1.3
Minky (Video) is a Jump'n Run similar to Super Mario or Giana Sisters, which requires an Amiga 500 with one Megabyte RAM (amiga-news.de reported). In version 1.3 "strange crashes were removed when throwing a ball and jumping at same time". (dr)
[News message: 09. Nov. 2022, 05:29] [Comments: 0]
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09.Nov.2022
Twitter
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RastPort: KA02 - Improved version of external PCMCIA adapter
Grzegorz Kraszewski's RastPort designs and manufactures accesories and expansions for Amiga computers. At the end of 2018, he had presented his project "KA02": a PCMCIA adapter for the Amiga 1200 in a standard desktop case. With the adapter, the PCMCIA card is placed vertically on the side of the Amiga and thus takes up much less space on the desk. Now he has published on Twitter a first photo of a variant that has an improved plug-in part. Inserting it into the slot is much easier that way, he says. (dr)
[News message: 09. Nov. 2022, 04:49] [Comments: 0]
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09.Nov.2022
Amigans
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Metacompiler: Portabl E r6
Christopher Handley's metacompiler "Portabl E" - now written with spaces - works by translating your code written with the programming language Amiga E into C++, and then using GCC to compile it into an executable. This needs an installation of GCC. Please read his official press release:
Portabl E is my recreation of the AmigaE programming language, along with most of the improvements I have wanted. Portabl E works on AmigaOS4, AROS, MorphOS, as well as even Linux & Windows! (It should also work on AmigaOS3, but compiling needs a powerful machine like WinUAE.)
This is the finished r6 release, with the "beta" tag removed (amiga-news.de reported), although it hasn't really been beta since the last couple of release.
See the main manual for what has changed since r5. The biggest changes since the last r6 beta release include:
- Added basic Linux support (64bit x86 only), to the same level as Windows, i.e. Shell-only, with no graphics or internet access. This was a major effort, partly due to all the differences (64-bit pointers, case-sensitive filing system, mount-points anywhere, etc), and partly due to all the C headers that needed to be converted.
- Linux: PEGCC now supports cross-compilation (for Amiga & Windows) using the TargetOS parameter, as long as an appropriate GCC cross-compiler is installed.
- Programs will now compile using the latest SDK of AmigaOS4, AROS and MorphOS.
- All OS procedures that can support unlimited parameters now do so, including the Amiga's SystemTags().
- AmigaOS3: No-longer needs a modified "intuition/classusr.h" file.
- Added the 'std/pUnsigned' module, to provide basic support for unsigned number types, and the example program "Examples/std/Shell/crc32.e". Useful for porting certain C algorithms.
- Added the procedures InStrNoCase(), BigMax(), BigMin(), BigFastMod(), IsBigEndian() & IsLittleEndian().
- In 'std/pTime', improved CurrentTime() to take a timezone parameter.
- Fixed FastNew() (and so NEW) which would trash memory, instead of raising the "MEM" exception, if it failed to allocate memory. Thanks to Dimitris Panokostas for reporting symptoms of this long-standing bug, especially as I don't see out-of-memory errors on the OSes I normally use.
- Amiga: The installer would fail at "Copying executables..." if the user-specified path for executables did not contain any (sub) folders, such as "C:" (which sadly was the default). Many thanks to "Zendarion" for the bug report.
- Windows: In 'std/pTime', CurrentTime() now returns the correct time when DST is in effect.
- I've renamed the language from "PortablE" to "Portabl E" with a space, in the hope of making it more easily searchable on the internet (as well as clarifying how to pronounce it). But the "PortablE" command name itself is unchanged.
The new version can be downloaded under the title link or via OS4Depot. (dr)
[News message: 09. Nov. 2022, 04:40] [Comments: 2 - 15. Nov. 2022, 08:45]
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08.Nov.2022
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Preview video: Amiga port of "Cecconoid"
Earlier this year, musician, DJ and developer 'Hoffman' had released the vertical-scrolling shooter Knightmare, originally written for the MSX and published by Konami, as an Amiga port (amiga-news.de reported). His new project is the port of the game "Cecconoid", originally released by "Triple Eh?": "an 8-bit inspired, flick-screen, twin-stick-shooter, set in an alternate dimension where the pixels are still chunky, and the bad guys are black and white." A Twitch recording now gives an impression of the game. As the author tells us when asked, about 85% of the game is finished. First and foremost, an integrated sub game "Eugatron" and the game's soundtrack are still missing. (dr)
[News message: 08. Nov. 2022, 03:47] [Comments: 0]
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08.Nov.2022
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Video interview: Jens Schönfeld talked about acceletator board projects
At this year's AmiWest among other things an interview between Bill Borsari and Jens Schönfeld was planned, which couldn't take place due to technical difficulties. This has now been made up for via Jitsi and published on YouTube. The two mainly talked about the ACA1240/1260 turbo cards first announced by Individual Computers at the end of December 2018, of which the first pictures of the cooling system were shown a year later.
As Schoenfeld reports, 18 boards of the fifth prototype "release candidate" status of the ACA1240 have currently been built and are now undergoing various tests again. This version has 256MB SD-RAM and does not need a separate power supply, but is designed to work with the standard power supply of the A1200. Schoenfeld explained that despite the higher clock speed, DDR memory would bring more disadvantages than advantages for this processor, and the apparently slower SD-RAM would have noticeable advantages that would make a 68040-40 faster in some (albeit few) disciplines than a 68060-50 on a 1990s board.
The fan would be barely audible due to the generously sized heatsink and temperature control. One thing would still have to be checked before serial production could start: the correct functionality of the MicroSD card slot.
His announcement at Amiga37 that the delivery could be done by Christmas seems unlikely at the moment, because the responsible employee was sick first and now has to take care of family matters. However, he hopes to be able to start production this year. The price for the smallest version with a 68040/25MHz CPU should be around 500 Euros. Versions with other CPUs may greatly increase the price. The capacity of the FPGA has been chosen so that there is room for future extensions. The circuit has already been checked so far that access to all signals is possible, which are necessary for planned (but not yet publicly known) extensions. The technology is similar to the Flickerfixer products from iComp: New features can be easily added via software update. Among other things, this was the reason why there were so many different prototypes: The interface for communication with the Amiga 1200 was completely new developed and contains a "quite sophisticated logic". So even theoretical maximum values (seven megabytes per second) can be reached when accessing the Chip RAM, independent of the processor's speed.
There would likewise be considerations to develop a dedicated graphics card that fits equally for different processors on the ACA1240/1260. Only a "proof of concept" circuit exists here so far, which has confirmed the stability of the memory while using the "fast GFX" port. When asked by Bill Borsari, Schönfeld confirmed that the specifications for this port can also be opened to other companies. Schönfeld spontaneously mentioned the name Lukas Hartmann, owner of the company mntmn, known for the graphics card ZZ9000.
Schönfeld described the ACA1240/1260 as "hackable" when asked because it is always equipped with a socket for the processor. However, a sale without a processor is not planned for warranty reasons. He advises customers who want to use their own 68060 processor to buy the cheapest version with 68040/25MHz.
Finally, he showed a very early prototype of the ACA600: This should fit into the case of the Amiga 600 including connected Amiga1200 turbo card and floppy drive. It should be developed as inexpensive as possible (50-60 Euro) and bring 8 MB RAM. Two use cases are planned:
- the usage with ACA12xx acceletator board to build a very powerful ECS Amiga
- the usage as ROM/RAM extension without an A1200 turbo card
The motivation for this new board is that the A600 is not fully A500 compatible and changes to the memory layout and Kickstart version are necessary to run certain (mostly older) A500 titles on the A600. Not only different Kickstart versions are included in the flash of the ACA600, but also other software. Schönfeld mentions the software equipment of the ACA1234, which brings the essential tools for the data transfer between other computers and the Amiga, as a comparison. According to Schönfeld, this has already had a lot of positive feedback from customers. The feature set of the ACA500plus should not be replicated with the ACA600, because many features of the ACA500plus are already included in the A600: The computer can boot from the internal IDE port, for which a CF card adapter is available. The PCMCIA slot can be equipped with another CF card adapter, for which the ACA600 only comes with the drivers, which can be used without further installation. According to Schönfeld, this also works if the floppy drive is defective and there is no other way to exchange data with other computers. (dr)
[News message: 08. Nov. 2022, 03:42] [Comments: 0]
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07.Nov.2022
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AmigaOS 4: Porting WebKit started
According to George 'walkero' Sokianos in his recent Ko-Fi blog entry, he has frozen most of his projects to devote himself entirely to porting WebKit to AmigaOS 4. The goal, he said, is to provide WebKit as a dynamic or static library that can be used in any kind of application such as a new web browser or email client.
Since this involves a mountain of tasks that is almost impossible to keep track of, he has gathered a small team around him and divided the tasks into small intermediate steps.
The starting point was the WebKitty port used by the Wayfarer browser under MorphOS, which was created by Jacek Piszczek, because in his opinion MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 are very similar as operating systems. He has created a fork of WebKitty and set up a project so that everyone can take a look at the progress and status of the port. They are also using the repository's wiki pages to document as much as possible.
He said he wants to work hard on this and see where it leads. If nothing tangible comes out of it, at least the efforts will be documented and someone else can continue the work at some point. (dr)
[News message: 07. Nov. 2022, 06:38] [Comments: 0]
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07.Nov.2022
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Dungeon Crawler: "Black Dawn Technomage" (AGA) released
"Black Dawn: Technomage" (video) is the sequel to Black Dawn Rebirth, developed by the same team, and now available. The game requires an AGA Amiga and can be purchased for at least about 11,40 Euro. (dr)
[News message: 07. Nov. 2022, 04:53] [Comments: 0]
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07.Nov.2022
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AmigaOS 4.1: HiRes set of mouse pointers
On Amiga-Look (amiga-news.de reported),'levellord' has released "a modern hires set of pointer presets for Amiga 4.1 operating system loosely based on a DMZ-White and Quintom pointers for Linux. Pointers are optimized for 1080p and there are three different sizes of 18px, 20px and 24px all in red, white and black base colors with white/black outlines." (dr)
[News message: 07. Nov. 2022, 04:37] [Comments: 0]
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07.Nov.2022
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Puzzle game: Connect 1.1
In the puzzle game "Connect" (screenshots), you have to connect a series of ICs in such a way that each chip receives exactly the number of connections printed on its package. Now version 1.1 is available providing the following changes:
- Works now with loaded P96-driver (except in combination with PiStorm)
- Removed some graphics issues on very fast machines
- Added in the "creator" the option to create CSV-files instead of Ascii-files. They can be loaded into a spreadsheet
- Speed up the board generation
- The installer was fully rewritten and now includes a "Close"-button
- Recognizes an existing installation and update the game files only (without the highscore!)
(cg)
[News message: 07. Nov. 2022, 03:18] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
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Dock: QDock V1.17
Sami Vehmaa had released the first version of his start bar "QDock" almost two weeks ago (amiga-news.de reported). The new version 1.17, as the developer writes to us, "has gone trough a big transformation and is now working more like it was intended." A new YouTube video explains the changes: among other things, there is now a second row with space for another 25 icons. Likewise, drives can be added to the dock.
The tool is available for three Euros or more and is primarily intended for emulators or Apollo cards due to the high CPU requirements. It requires AmigaOS 3.2 (3.1 might work as well, but not tested), graphics board and 22 MB RAM. (dr)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 18:21] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
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Programming language: Amiga C/C++ Visual Studio Code Extension 1.6.6
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). A few moments ago, version 1.6.6 has been released. Changes:
- Make cpptools a recommendation, not dependency
- Fix section regex to handle multiple digits
- Terminal PATH env case sensitive
- Parse frames-interp output by whitespace
- Update libSDL2 dylib version
- Source links in disassembly broken for non-windows
- Upgrade libSDL2_ttf dylib
(dr)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 18:11] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
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Aminet uploads until 05.11.2022
The following files have been added until 05.11.2022 to Aminet:
CloudDav_1.8.lha comm/net 751K MOS A WebDav client
enc_sulaco-ok.lha demo/misc 6.8M WOS Amiga demo released at abstra...
COP.lha dev/debug 165K 68k Low Level Debugger
HWP_XLSX.lha dev/hwood 1.5M Create and edit XLSX documents
pforth.zip dev/lang 420K MOS Portable ANS-like Forth writt...
libflac.lha dev/lib 2.0M OS4 Free Lossless Audio Codec
NoClick.lha disk/misc 8K Multiplatform NoClick enabler
anaiis.lha driver/oth 205K 68k ANAIIS USB Stack Release 1.22
anaiis_boot.lha driver/oth 255K 68k ANAIIS USB Boot disk Release ...
Epson_Colour_46.lha driver/pri 46K OS4 24 bit Epson Stylus Driver fo...
ScummVM_AGA_060.lha game/misc 8.0M 68k Amiga port of ScummVM
ScummVM_RTG.lha game/misc 8.0M 68k Amiga port of ScummVM
nblood.lha game/shoot 1.0M 68k Blood Amiga Port
Nova.ACEpansion.lha misc/emu 11K MOS ACEpansion plugin for ACE CPC...
SnesMUI.lha misc/emu 2.5M MOS MUI interface for Snes9x emul...
uae086-exe.lha misc/emu 551K 68k E-UAE_0.8.6 for Amiga 68k OS
uae088exe-beta1.lha misc/emu 560K 68k E-UAE_0.8.8 Beta1 for Amiga 6...
X-Mass.ACEpansion.lha misc/emu 69K MOS ACEpansion plugin for ACE CPC...
LN4Lv8.lha mods/misc 4.5M 4ch LN4 Lv8 track by HKvalhe
ptripper.lha mus/misc 18K 68k Protracker module ripper
AmigaAMP3.lha mus/play 1.9M OS4 Multi format audio player wit...
AmigaAMP3-68k.lha mus/play 407K 68k MPEG audio player with GUI
gwimport.lha util/conv 5K 68k GeoWriteImport
drawing_dt.lha util/dtype 380K OS4 Vector superclass + DR2D/SVG ...
WarpTIFFdt.lha util/dtype 562K TIFF and BigTIFF image dataty...
WarpWebPdt.lha util/dtype 298K WebP image datatype V45.4
AmiSSL-5.5-OS3.lha util/libs 3.3M 68k OpenSSL as an Amiga shared li...
AmiSSL-5.5-OS4.lha util/libs 3.1M OS4 OpenSSL as an Amiga shared li...
AmiSSL-5.5-SDK.lha util/libs 2.3M AOS OpenSSL as an Amiga shared li...
DisLib.lha util/libs 19K 68k A library based MC68K disasse...
IconLib_46.4.lha util/libs 1.1M 68k free icon.library in optimize...
VATestprogram.zip util/misc 2.4M 68k Versatile Amiga Test Program
newmeter.lha util/wb 27K 68k Shows free RAM and storage as...
Palette.lha util/wb 34K 68k Change WB-Color(s) in realtime
(snx)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 08:04] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
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OS4Depot uploads until 05.11.2022
The following files have been added until 05.11.2022 to OS4Depot:
warptiffdt.lha dat/ima 562kb 4.0 TIFF and BigTIFF image datatype ...
warpwebpdt.lha dat/ima 298kb 4.0 WebP image datatype V45.4
libflac.lha dev/lib 2Mb 4.1 Free Lossless Audio Codec
amissl-sdk.lha dev/mis 2Mb 4.0 SDK for AmiSSL
epson_colour_46.lha dri/pri 46kb 4.1 24 bit Epson Stylus Driver for W...
scummvm.lha gam/mis 105Mb 4.1 Run supported classic adventure/...
scummvm-src.zip gam/mis 169Mb 4.1 ScummVM Source
hwp_xlsx.lha lib/hol 1Mb 4.0 Hollywood plugin to create and e...
amissl.lha lib/mis 3Mb 4.0 OpenSSL as an Amiga shared library
sdl2.lha lib/mis 7Mb 4.1 Simple DirectMedia Layer 2
noclick.lha uti/mis 8kb 4.0 Multiplatform NoClick enabler
(snx)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 08:04] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 05.11.2022
The following files have been added until 05.11.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:
HWP_XLSX_1.0.lha Development/Hollywood/... Create and edit XLSX do...
Nova_1.2.lha Emulation/ACEpansion Plugin for ACE CPC Emul...
SnesMUI_0.2.lha Emulation SnesMUI is a MUI based ...
ScummVM_2.6.1.lha Games/Adventure 2D Point-and-Click adve...
VirtualVoodooJob_2.0.lha Games/Misc This black magic tool i...
AmiSSL_5.5-68k.lha Network/SSL OpenSSL as an Amiga sha...
CloudDav_1.8.lha Network/Streaming A WebDav client
PastePass_1.10_beta.lha System/Utilities A simple passwordmanage...
(snx)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 08:04] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
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WHDLoad: New installers until 05.11.2022
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 05.11.2022:
- 2022-11-05 improved: Hunter (Activision) using fast memory, demo fixed (Info)
- 2022-11-05 improved: Devil's Temple (Geezer Games) supports another version, hints and icons added (Info, Image)
- 2022-11-05 new: Bubble Ghost (ERE) done by CFou! (Info)
- 2022-11-05 fixed: Awesome (Psygnosis) QuitKey fixed (Info)
- 2022-11-03 improved: Spitting Image (Domark) imager fixed, 68000 quitkey, new install script (Info)
- 2022-11-03 improved: Running Man (Grandslam) 68000 quitkey, trainer and intro skip added, manual included (Info)
- 2022-11-03 improved: Passing Shot (Imageworks) supports another version, 68000 quitkey, new imager and install script, docs added (Info)
- 2022-11-03 improved: Colorbuster (Indian Software) made 68000 compatibÃle, new install script (Info)
- 2022-11-02 improved: Golden Axe (Virgin) joystick controls improved, more CD32 buttons added (Info)
- 2022-11-02 fixed: Shadow Warriors (Ocean) imager corrected (Info)
- 2022-11-02 improved: Lollypop (Rainbow Arts/Softgold) new imager, access fault fixed, stack relocated, less chip memory required, new install script (Info)
- 2022-10-31 improved: Epic (Ocean) caches enabled, uses fast memory, supports more versions, music fixed, added manual and solution (Info)
- 2022-10-31 improved: Quasar Wars (Light Designs) 68000 support, added 3-button joystick support (Info)
(snx)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 08:04] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
Amigaworld.net (forum)
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Video: Not even scammers want to support AmigaOS
Fraudsters who pretend to be Microsoft support on the phone, for example, in order to get computer users to download and run malware, are one of the unpleasant side effects of the internet age. As an Amiga user, however, you are excluded even from this nowadays, as the video at the title link documents. (snx)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 08:04] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
Andreas Falkenhahn (ANF)
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Hollywood: 20th anniversary - XLSX plugin 1.0 released
Press release:On November 4th 2002, Airsoft Softwair, the hardest working men in code business, released Hollywood 1.0 for 68k AmigaOS. Originally advertised as a multimedia authoring solution, nobody would have expected back then that this software would turn into a cross-platform programming language for lots of platforms with dozens of plugins for all kinds of tasks. Now, 20 years later, Hollywood is still going strong, receives regular updates and new plugins, and is used by many people around the globe. All of this would not have been possible without the continued support of many Hollywood enthusiasts in the past 20 years. Only the positive feedback we received right from the start made us continue developing Hollywood into what it is today.
As a little "thank you", we proudly present yet another plugin for Hollywood: XLSX. The XLSX plugin makes it possible to conveniently read and write XLSX documents from Hollywood scripts. It offers a wide variety of functions to set and get cell values, cell types, cell formulas, document/worksheet properties and several other attributes. It also offers an iterator function for a high performance iteration of a large number of cells.
On top of that, the XLSX plugin also supports the new serialization interface introduced in Hollywood 9 which means that scripts can conveniently serialize Hollywood tables to XLSX documents by just a single call to Hollywood's SerializeTable() function. In the same manner scripts can also deserialize whole XLSX documents into Hollywood tables by a single call to Hollywood's DeserializeTable() function. It just doesn't get any easier!
Of course, the XLSX plugin also comes with detailed documentation in various formats and integrates seamlessly in the Hollywood IDE, including live help. The XLSX plugin is now available for free download from the official Hollywood portal. Thanks to everybody for all the support in the past 20 years and here's to the next 20 years, cheers! (snx)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 08:04] [Comments: 0]
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06.Nov.2022
Dennis Lohr (ANF)
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Amiga37: Music title for download / Music video online
Dennis 'Psyria' Lohr writes: "Wow, how time has passed so quickly again! The Amiga37 event is now already three weeks ago... In this context I would like to point out that the official Amiga37 music title is available for free download for everyone who is interested.
Likewise, a video has now made it onto Youtube at the title link to introduce itself to the world, for the inclined listeners. :-)" (snx)
[News message: 06. Nov. 2022, 08:03] [Comments: 0]
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05.Nov.2022
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
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Print magazine: Amiga Future, issue 159
The English and German issue 159 (November/December 2022) of the print magazine Amiga Future has been distributed. It can be ordered directly from its editorial office and from Amiga dealers that stock the magazine.
Content of the current issue includes a report about the demo scene as well as reviews on Pagestream and the "Dynatech 30th Anniversary Edition". (cg)
[News message: 05. Nov. 2022, 23:29] [Comments: 0]
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05.Nov.2022
a1k.org (Webseite)
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AmigaOS 3/4: Web browser IBrowse 2.5.7
The team of Oliver Roberts has released version 2.5.7 of the web browser IBrowse. Most important changes (detailed changelog) of this update:
- Reworked Brotli huffman decoder to avoid triggering a bug on the 68060 processor, which prevented pages from loading
- Tweaks to the loading of external modules
- JavaScript improvements
- Switched to GCC 11, with all warnings enabled, which identified numerous previously unknown bugs which have now been fixed
- Hundreds of minor internal changes
The update is available in the download section of the official website, AmigaOS 4 users can alternatively install via AmiUpdate.
Update: (06.11.2022, 14:45, cg)
Due to a couple of bugs that were discovered after IBrowse 2.5.7 was released, a hotfix update is now available for download (OS4 users may use AmiUpdate instead). Anybody who downloaded IBrowse 2.5.7 before 10:00 CET on 6th November is strongly advised to update their installation using the new update.
(cg)
[News message: 05. Nov. 2022, 19:45] [Comments: 0]
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05.Nov.2022
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MorphOS: GUI for Snes9x emulator - SnesMUI released
Developer 'jPV^RNO' has released a GUI named SnesMUI for the Snes9x emulator providing the following features:
- The most important emulation options are configurable within the GUI
- A custom arguments option to configure any other Command-Line options
- Shows preview and cover images of games if available
- Supports Zip archived ROM files
- Automatic detection of the emulator version
- Supports custom graphics in the GUI
(dr)
[News message: 05. Nov. 2022, 13:32] [Comments: 0]
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05.Nov.2022
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Kung Fu action: "Devil's Temple" V3.4
About two weeks ago, Geezer Games had released "Devil's Temple (amiga-news.de reported). Now an update to version 3.4 is available which fixes some bugs. Changes:
- On ECS machines, enabling the cheat would break the menu display - fixed (Copper updated properly)
- Booting using Kickstart >= 2.0 on A500 would crash loading the executable - fixes (Probably Vasm Bug with odd addresses)
- Module audio timing issues - fixed
- Typos / Corrections in various places
- Sprite corruption issue in levels 5/9 - fixed
- Game could possibly not spawn some essential events if too many enemies were on screen (spawnImmediate routine created)
(dr)
[News message: 05. Nov. 2022, 10:53] [Comments: 0]
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04.Nov.2022
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Programming language: AmiBlitz 3.9.8
After two pre-releases, today version 3.9.8 of the programming language AmiBlitz has been released. Changes:
new:
- (compiler) can send his own log data to PED's log
- (compiler) added an error-requester in case the exepath is not set correctly (settings in Sourceproperties "ExePath")
- (compiler) current include is shown in compile status window
changed:
- (PED) rewritten Find and Replace-Routines in BASIC
- (PED) minor improvements to intellisense
- (project) moved some examples into other subfolders
fixed:
- (compiler) removed vbr-detection from code that starts compiled executable, as it is now inside the debugger
- (PED) fixed misspelled tooltype "USE_INTELLISENSE_COMMANDS"
- (PED) fixed bug in routine to set current dir that led to problems when AmiBlitz3 was located in a longer path
- (PED) fixed intellisense that did not work anymose
- (PED) fixed bug that localization was not turned of completely when tooltype was enabled
- (PED) fixed crash when loading old bb2 source file
- (PED) fixed bug in displaying a sourceline when scrolling out of the window
- (include) fixed bug in image_include that used a wrong Minterms in image_BlittPattern{} that led to wrong display with newer P96 versions
Download: AmiBlitz398.lha (11 MB) (dr)
[News message: 04. Nov. 2022, 20:58] [Comments: 0]
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04.Nov.2022
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AROS: Further development of the emulator Janus-UAE 2
Blitter Studio, which is also responsible for the Amiga emulator Amiberry, has started to continue the development of the emulator Janus-UAE 2.
In contrast to version 1.x, which was based on Richard Drummond's emulator E-UAE V0.8.29 WIP4, is part of the AROS distribution Icaros Desktop, for example, and thus is based on the ABI-v0 developer branch, the original author Oliver Brunner had already started porting WinUAE 2 to AROS in 2011 with Janus-UAE 2, which uses the ABI-v1 branch. By the end of 2015, he had brought Janus-UAE 2 up to the level of WinUAE 3.2.0 and subsequently finished work on it.
The Amiberry developer 'MiDWaN' has now cloned the sources from SourceForge to a Github repository, including all his changes so far, among other things so that he has write permissions. His goal is to bring Janus-UAE 2 to the latest WinUAE and SDL 2 (instead of SDL 1). He also wants to add some features from Amiberry. (dr)
[News message: 04. Nov. 2022, 09:50] [Comments: 0]
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04.Nov.2022
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Music tip: Protracker track "much"
'no9' has been working in the audio section for years and also occasionally composes music for games. On his YouTube channel, he also publishes his own compositions from time to time, like the piece "much" most recently. He uses the ProTracker 2 clone for Windows by Olav Sorensen for this. As 'no9' writes, he would have tried to use the original Amiga for it, but the constant data exchange between Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and Amiga would have been very time consuming, as there would sometimes be a lot of copying back and forth for sample data. The Amiga Protracker compatibility was mandatory for him, though. (dr)
[News message: 04. Nov. 2022, 06:37] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
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Video: Often unknown Amiga operating systems
Ravi Abbott, known for his documentary "Downfall Amiga, after Commodore" (amiga-news.de reported), introduces often unknown Amiga operating systems for 68k Amigas, such as p.OS or UNIX. (dr)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 09:24] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
Twitter
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Workbench distribution: AKReal 9.1
AKReal can already works with 16 colours and is the inofficial adaption of the Workbench distribution AmiKit to real Amigas (video). After five years, the distribution was updated and now version 9.1 is available. The changes are listed in the changelog. (dr)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 06:47] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
OSNews
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Developer tool: GNU Make will drop support for AmigaOS (Update)
GNU Make is the implementation of the in the Unix world often used program make for the operating system GNU. It automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called Makefiles which specify how to derive the target program. (Wikipedia).
As OSNews now reports, support for OS/2 (EMX), Xenix, Cray and also AmigaOS will be removed in GNU Make starting with the upcoming version.
Update: (03.11.2022, 19:30, dr)
Obviously triggered by our article, discussions have developed especially in various Discord servers which have led to some "protest mails". The maintainer of GNU Make, Paul Smith, responded to one of the mails and asked to stop writing mails:
"While it's good that AmigaOS as an operating system is still under
active development, what I care about is whether anyone is maintaining *GNU make* on AmigaOS. I have not received a single patch for an AmigaOS problem with GNU make since 1996. I haven't received a single response from anyone on AmigaOS to any request for anyone to test a release candidate, or a new release, in I don't know how many releases....But if AmigaOS is not updating to newer versions of GNU make, then I don't want to maintain the (not insignificant amount of) special-case code currently existing to (not really) support it, in future releases. Fundamentally, for non-traditional operating systems it's not enough to just ask for it to be maintained. Someone has to volunteer to actively participate in the maintenance effort." (dr)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 05:44] [Comments: 2 - 04. Nov. 2022, 19:52]
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03.Nov.2022
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Programming assistance: "AB_Template II" V0.58 offers templates for AmiBlitz 3
In contrast to "AB_Template" which is meant to support the development of games, "AB_Template II" is meant to help developing applications with AmiBlitz3. Here Sami Vehmaa published now the first version 0.58. (dr)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 05:20] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
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AmigaOS 4: Video about history and usage of AmigaOne X1000 (Update)
Roman 'kas1e' Kargin has published an extensive video about the AmigaOne X1000, which was officially announced by A-EON at the beginning of 2010. Kargin informs - with English subtitles and background music - about the history of the board, the installation in an unusual case, the installation of AmigaOS 4.1 and much more.
Update: (10.11.2022, 15:00, cg)
After the video had to be taken offline due to a copyright complaint, Kargin now provides an updated version with the disputed parts replaced with new footage. (dr)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 04:35] [Comments: 3 - 12. Nov. 2022, 15:01]
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03.Nov.2022
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AmigaOS 4.1: Tutorial on installation of 3D graphics driver
Roman 'kas1e' Kargin has published a detailed tutorial on Amigans.net in which he describes the correct installation of Warp3DNova, NovaBridge, MiniGL, Ogles2, and WarpOS-Emu so that everything that has to do with 3D runs best with RadeonHD or RadeonRX graphics cards. Eventually, you should be able to run games, applications and demos written for WarpOS or 68k. (dr)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 04:21] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
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DIY project: Building an Amiga 2000 (part 5)
'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 four reports (1, 2, 3, 4) he published the fifth blog post of the series yesterday which amongst others is about adding a DVD drive. (dr)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 03:56] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
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Programming contest: AmiGameJam 2022 launched
After the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam, which just ended with numerous entries, the next contest for game programmers is already starting: At this year's edition of the "AmiGameJam" the motto is "Sword and Sorcery". Those who want to participate must submit a newly developed game with this theme to the organizers by April 30 at the latest.
The participants will again be divided into the two categories "OCS/AGA" and "AmigaOS 4/MorphOS/AROS", voting will again be done by both the community and a group of official judges. The jurors and prizes will be announced as soon as last details are clarified. (cg)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 01:30] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
Twitter (ANF)
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Tutorial: Wake on LAN Client under AmigaOS 3
Matthias Münch describes in a short tutorial how an Amiga can "wake up" other devices in the network from wait mode with the help of the Wake on LAN client hpwake. (cg)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 00:51] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
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Playable previews: 'My Life Sucks' and 'My First Shooting Game'
Two more games developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam are not yet finished, but the developers already provide playable pre-release versions. To what extent the titles will be developed further is currently unclear.
My Life Sucks (video) was supposed to be a dungeon crawler in the style of Dungeon Master, with the difference that the player controls an autonomous vacuum cleaner whose AI has taken on a life of its own. The game is described by the developer as a "tech demo", as it was not finished in time for the contest deadline. They say it is solvable, but still has plenty of bugs. Main reason for the release them the disclosure of the source code for interested Blitz-Basic programmers.
My First Shooting Game is an "experimental project" according to the author - the vertical shooter is his first Amiga and Blitz Basic project. The game currently runs only on NTSC computers and must be controlled with the keyboard. It is distributed as source code, which has to be compiled by the user himself with Blitz Basic. (cg)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 00:46] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
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Flip-Screen-Shooter: Shuriken
Phil Grenways 'Shuriken' (video) is a Berzerk-inspired flip-screen shooter with a ninja theme. The title was developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam, the Blitz Basic source code can be found on bitbucket.org. (cg)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 00:33] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Simulated pub crawl: Weegie Nights
In 'Weegie Nights' (video) you have to wander through Glasgow by night and maintain the right alcohol level, in addition the consumption of food and alcoholic beverages as well as various "sources of income" want to be well organized. The title was developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam and requires an Amiga with 2 Megabyte Chip RAM and a 68020 processor. (cg)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 00:28] [Comments: 0]
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03.Nov.2022
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Arcade clone: Megafrog
'Megafrog' (video) is a variant of the arcade classic Frogger, in which the playing field is significantly larger than the current screen section. The frog here can mutate into the titular Megafrog by eating a certain amount of dragonflies, which can then also attack cars. The gAME was developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam and requires an Amiga whose processor is clocked with at least 14 Mhz. (cg)
[News message: 03. Nov. 2022, 00:27] [Comments: 0]
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02.Nov.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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SimCity for animals: Microtopia
'Microtopia' (video) is described by the developer as a "prototype of a city-building simulation", in which a city for crows, beavers and moths is to be built on randomly generated maps. Numerous features that are still missing are to be added in later versions. The title was developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam and requires an Amiga with one megabyte of RAM. The game also runs on a 68000 processor, but here it occasionally runs a bit halting. (cg)
[News message: 02. Nov. 2022, 23:40] [Comments: 0]
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02.Nov.2022
David Brunet (ANF)
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New articles on Obligement website
The articles below have been added to the website of the French Amiga/MorphOS magazine Obligement during the last two months. All translations are welcome. Please contact David 'Daff' Brunet for more information.
- September/October 2022 news.
- Old articles from Joystick 55 to 65:
- Interview with Jérôme Bonaldi and David Gonner
- Review of All New World Of Lemmings
- Review of Flink CD32
- Interview with Stéphane Picq
- File: And if piracy was essential
- Review of Pinball Illusions
- Review of Sim City 2000
- File: Music in video games
- Review of Alien Breed Tower Assault
- Review of Cannon Fodder 2
- News: Atried Concept my new name is Pearson
- Review of Fields Of Glory
- Review of Super Stardust, etc.
- Report: Amiga 37.
- Interview with Jérôme Senay (editor of Boing magazine).
- Interview with Matt Gray (musician).
- Review: Wrong Way Driver.
- Review: BePlayer 1.4.
- Hardware: Furia EC020.
- File: History of Trecision (part 2).
- Tutorial: Building an AmigaOS 4 cross compiler (Binutils 2.23.2 & GCC 8.3.0) on MSYS2.
- Tutorial: Installing MorphOS (update).
- DIY: Mounting an HxC SD and a floppy drive in an Amiga 600.
- Misc: Irving Gould's villa.
- Special quiz on MUI.
(cg)
[News message: 02. Nov. 2022, 22:59] [Comments: 0]
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02.Nov.2022
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Top-Down-Racer: Zebra 3
'Zebra 3' (video) is a top-down racer with four different courses. The title was developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam, Kickstart 2 and a "fast Amiga" are given as minimum requirements. (cg)
[News message: 02. Nov. 2022, 22:36] [Comments: 0]
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02.Nov.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Playable preview: Capacitor's Revenge
In the shooter 'Capacitor's Revenge' (video) you have to defend the Amiga's m68k processor against attacking capacitors (amiga-news.de reported). The title is being developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam, the author now provides a first playable preview version. (cg)
[News message: 02. Nov. 2022, 22:31] [Comments: 0]
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02.Nov.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Platformer: Daredevil Dennis Remix
'Daredevil Dennis Remix' (video) is a conversion of the 8-bit title Daredevil Dennis for the Amiga, developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam. The game features 25 with increasing difficulty. (cg)
[News message: 02. Nov. 2022, 22:24] [Comments: 0]
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02.Nov.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Vertical Scrolling Shoot'em Up: ACE Battle Over The Sea
The vertically scrolling shooter 'ACE Battle Over The Sea' (video) was developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam. The title, inspired by classics like 1942, offers four missions and runs on any Amiga with at least one megabyte of Chip RAM. The download is free, but if you wish you can give the author a small obolus during the download. (cg)
[News message: 02. Nov. 2022, 22:14] [Comments: 0]
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02.Nov.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Arena shooter: Blower
'Blower' (video) - developed for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam - is an arena shooter in which up to four human players use firearms and flamethrowers to get at each other. Computer-controlled "bots" are also available for training purposes, but the developer says they are "pretty dumb".
'Blower' runs on all Amigas with at least one megabyte of Chip RAM, it supports a parallel port adapter for connecting two additional joysticks and offers seven different levels, various bonus items. The download is free, but if you wish you can pay the author a small fee. (cg)
[News message: 02. Nov. 2022, 22:06] [Comments: 0]
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02.Nov.2022
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MorphOS 3.17: openssl3.library November Hotfix
The MorphOS developer team has announced: "New vulnerabilities have been identified and fixed for the version of OpenSSL that is included in MorphOS 3.17. Two discovered issues, namely CVE-2022-3786 and CVE-2022-3602, were found to potentially affect MorphOS users.
A fixed OpenSSL library will be bundled with a future MorphOS release. Meanwhile, you can download the following replacement openssl3.library that fixes the problem for MorphOS 3.17. To install it, copy the file to MOSSYS:Libs and reboot." (dr)
[News message: 02. Nov. 2022, 06:39] [Comments: 0]
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01.Nov.2022
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Encryption protocol: AmiSSL 5.5 (AmigaOS 3/4)
The open source encryption protocol AmiSSL has been updated to version 5.5 and is now based on the latest OpenSSL 3.0.7, which was also released today. This fixes a security problem that has existed since OpenSSL 3.0.0 and is now classified as high: a buffer overflow could be triggered when checking X.509 certificates. Thus, all users who have installed a version 5 of AmiSSL (based on OpenSSL 3) are recommended to update. The changes:
- Updated OpenSSL backend to full compatibility with the latest OpenSSL 3.0.7 (1.11.2022) version, which includes:
- Added RIPEMD160 to the default provider.
- Fixed regressions introduced in 3.0.6 version.
- Fixed two buffer overflows in punycode decoding functions. ([CVE-2022-3786]) and ([CVE-2022-3602])
- Improved and simplified random number seeding routines.
- The AMISSL_NO_STATIC_FUNCTIONS preprocessor symbol has been added to the SDK, mainly for use with VBCC
Download AmigaOS 3: AmiSSL-5.5-OS3.lha (3,3 MB)
Download AmigaOS 4: AmiSSL-5.5-OS4.lha (3,1 MB)
Download SDK: AmiSSL-5.5-SDK.lha (2,3 MB) (dr)
[News message: 01. Nov. 2022, 21:25] [Comments: 2 - 02. Nov. 2022, 08:16]
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01.Nov.2022
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Point'n Click adventure: NEONnoir
The Point'n Click adventure 'NEONnoir' (Video) was developed with AmiBlitz for the Amiga Blitz Basic Game Jam. As a down-and-out private eye, the player has to track down a drug addicted daughter from a wealthy family.
'NEONnoir' requires at least an Amiga 1200 with a harddisk. The game can be downloaded for free, but users can name their own price before downloading. A walkthrough is offered on the official website and the game's BASIC sourcecode is available as well: Either as a LhA download from the official website, or in the author's Github repository. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 01. Nov. 2022, 18:56] [Comments: 0]
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01.Nov.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Turn based strategy: playable preview for "Settle the World" (update)
Christian 'TheoTheoderich' Wiegel has released a first playable preview of his turn-based building and trading game 'Settle the World' - refer to our extensive preview for more information. The author points out that this is an early development version and many gameplay elements are not implemented yet: For example, the happiness of your citizen currently has no effect at all on game progress.
'Settle the World' is primarily intended to be played with multiple human opponents, but it does include a single player campaign. The game requires 1 Megabyte ChipRAM and 4 Megabyte FastRAM, a harddisk and at least a 68020 CPU. A version that should run on Kickstart 1.x is provided as well, but is untested as of now.
Update: (05.11.2022, 14:05, dr)
The developer has published a short tutorial on YouTube on how to start his game. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 01. Nov. 2022, 16:21] [Comments: 0]
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01.Nov.2022
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Games for RTG systems: Sky Tower, Last Space Raider, Dungeon Escape, Börd
Sami Vehmaa has written several Arcade games for Amiga systems that have a graphics card installed:
The games were written using AmiBlitz, they require a fast Amiga with a graphics card and AHI installed. Each game can be purchased for one Euro, the AmiBlitz sourcecode for each game is included in the download. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 01. Nov. 2022, 15:31] [Comments: 0]
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01.Nov.2022
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Blog: Restoration of an Amiga 1000, part 3
In the third part of his documentation about the restoration of an Amiga 1000 (amiga-news.de reported), Richard "Shred" Körber explains how he replaced the floppy drive with a Centuriontech "GOEX on pills" floppy simulator. (dr)
[News message: 01. Nov. 2022, 08:54] [Comments: 0]
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01.Nov.2022
MorphZone (Webseite)
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MorphOS: Password manager PastePass 1.9
Stefan 'Kronos' Kleinheinrich's PastePass is a password manager for MorphOS.
Version 1.9 is a complete reimplementation using the cryptostorage.library. The code has been reworked, many security checks added, and the entire GUI and program flow streamlined. The author's initial tests went well, but he requests further testing and explicitly marks this release as a pre-release. The changes in detail:
- changed databas to use cryptostorage.library
- entries will always be part of a group
- a group can be protected by a 2nd password
- PassTool functionality has been intregated into PastePass, allowing you to store your password in a seperate databae which will be opened by the name you used for registering MorphOS
- added the option to set a default user name
Download: PastePass.lha (77 KB) (dr)
[News message: 01. Nov. 2022, 06:30] [Comments: 0]
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01.Nov.2022
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Linux tutorial: Using the Fienix distribution on the X5000, part 2
In the first part of the instructions for using the Linux distribution "Fienix" on the X5000, Amiga-News.de editor Daniel Reimann reported how to prepare a USB stick under Windows for this purpose. Here now the continuation:
Starting Fienix
After the USB stick has been plugged into a free USB port, we can boot up the X5000. As soon as the Boing Ball starts spinning, it is best to press the "M" key twice. With the first press we get into the "AmigaOne Early Startup Control" menu...
...and with the second keystroke into the command line menu. Now, we the following line:
usb reset
Among other things, it is searched for storage media. I have the following (special?) case: my tower has several USB ports at the front, but only two can be used. In order to have one free for the USB stick, I have connected my Mac keyboard to the other one and my USB mouse to it. But I have to disconnect it before running "usb reset", otherwise it will be recognized as another storage medium. Now enter the following lines:
setenv bootargs root=LABEL=FIENIX-DISK
fatload usb 0:1 1000000 uImage-6.0
fatload usb 0:1 1c00000 cyrus-p5020.dtb
fatload usb 0:1 2000000 uInitrd-5.10
bootm 1000000 2000000 1c00000
The kernel is loaded and Fienix is started. After the input, several columns of numbers rattle across the screen, but finally the login window should appear:
Here's what we enter:
Username: fienix
Password: fienixPW
Looks good! Let's see if there is a tool for capturing screenshots. Yes, there it is, "Accessories"...:
Synaptic Package Manager
By default, no word processor is included. You have to install that, and of course many other software, via the package manager "Synaptic Package Manager". It can be found under "Administration":
Right-click on the first AbiWord entry and select "Mark for installation":
You will then be asked if you want to install any other package dependencies associated with it. We do, which also marks the two entries below:
Now go to "Apply" at the top and the packages will be installed. Before we reboot, we want to see if it worked and look under "Office" for the corresponding entry. Perfectly: "AbiWord" is listed:
After restarting, we test AbiWord briefly: works!
In the third part of the tutorial, we will look at how to make the printer ready for use and how to configure the Linux button in the "AmigaOne Early Startup Control" menu so that we can save ourselves typing the instructions in the future. (dr)
[News message: 01. Nov. 2022, 05:57] [Comments: 0]
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01.Nov.2022
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Platformer: Ami-Tower
The Polish developer 'Tukinem' (farm simulation "Farmiga") has ported Icy Tower in Blitz Basic 2 to the Amiga. The game principle is to let the main character climb a tower by jumping to different heights.
The levels are created randomly. You can jump over two platforms and then have more points and bonus jumps. After every 50 platforms, the time to the end of the game is restored, so you have to jump up as quickly as possible.
The game requires a standard Amiga 500 with Kick 1.3 and 500 KB. The game is still in development, the end of the game and the game menu (options and highscore) are missing. (dr)
[News message: 01. Nov. 2022, 05:47] [Comments: 0]
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31.Oct.2022
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Programming language: Amiga C/C++ Visual Studio Code Extension 1.6.5
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). Three days ago, version 1.6.4 was released and today version 1.6.5. Changes:
- FIX: libintl issue in ARM-based Macs #145
- FIX: 'Profile File Size' broken since last version
- FIX: Vasm fixes
- CHG: Better stack unwinding for assembly code
- FIX: GDB Mac exe without libintl dylib dependency
(dr)
[News message: 31. Oct. 2022, 06:20] [Comments: 0]
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31.Oct.2022
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Doom clone: "Dread" becomes "Grind"
The developer and demoscene member Krzysztof Kluczek had worked on the Doom clone "Dread" in his spare time and so far regularly published videos documenting the progress of his work (amiga-news.de reported). As he now reports in a Patreon post, he hands over the project to John 'Tsak' Tsakiris, who will continue it under the new name "Grind" (introduction on the new Patreon page). Kluczek will continue to work on "Dread" alone, as long as his new commitments allow him to do so: as non-commercial project.
(dr)
[News message: 31. Oct. 2022, 06:07] [Comments: 0]
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31.Oct.2022
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Workbench distribution: AmiKit XE 11.8.2 for Raspberry Pi 4/400
The update to version 11.8.2 (changelog) of the Workbench distribution AmiKit XE for the Raspberry Pi 4/400 includes the recently released version 5.4 of the Amiga emulator AmiBerry. In addition, the WHDLoad database and the Linux system has been updated. (dr)
[News message: 31. Oct. 2022, 05:49] [Comments: 0]
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31.Oct.2022
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CPU and RAM monitor: NewMeter 1.332
Thomas Rapp's "NewMeter" is a monitor showing on the Workbench screen the utilization of CPU, RAM and several partitions with a bar chart. The program is configured using tooltypes, (amiga-news.de reported).
In the latest version 1.332 configurable custom gauges have been added, whose values are read from env variables. This allows now to display the values of AmigaKit's Real Time Clock und Sensors Module. Also support for i2cs sensors has been added. (dr)
[News message: 31. Oct. 2022, 05:42] [Comments: 0]
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30.Oct.2022
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Aminet uploads until 29.10.2022
The following files have been added until 29.10.2022 to Aminet:
CloudDav_1.71.lha comm/net 559K MOS A WebDav client
nfs3.lha comm/net 10K 68k Mount NFS3 shares using bsdso...
ApolloExplorer.zip comm/tcp 32M 68k Apollo Explorer
COP.lha dev/debug 165K 68k Low Level Debugger
RawIO2Parallel.lha dev/debug 9K 68k Redirect debug output to para...
anaiis.lha driver/oth 205K 68k ANAIIS USB Stack Release 1.22
anaiis_boot.lha driver/oth 255K 68k ANAIIS USB Boot disk Release ...
OlivettiJP.lha driver/pri 14K 68k Olivetti JP WB Driver 40.5
OlivettiJP790.lha driver/pri 13K 68k Olivetti JP 790 (HPDJ560C) WB...
AmiQuake_AGA.lha game/shoot 6.0M 68k Amiga port of WinQuake
AmiQuake_RTG.lha game/shoot 6.0M 68k Amiga port of WinQuake
2nd-Albireo.ACEpansio... misc/emu 21K MOS ACEpansion plugin for ACE CPC...
Albireo.ACEpansion.lha misc/emu 43K MOS ACEpansion plugin for ACE CPC...
ptripper.lha mus/misc 18K 68k Protracker module ripper
AmigaAMP3.lha mus/play 1.9M OS4 Multi format audio player wit...
AmigaAMP3-68k.lha mus/play 406K 68k MPEG audio player with GUI
gwimport.lha util/conv 5K 68k GeoWriteImport
DisLib.lha util/libs 19K 68k A library based MC68K disasse...
IconLib_46.4.lha util/libs 1.1M 68k free icon.library in optimize...
ReportPlusMOS.lha util/misc 796K MOS Multipurpose utility
VATestprogram.zip util/misc 2.4M 68k Versatile Amiga Test Program
newmeter.lha util/wb 27K 68k Shows free RAM and storage as...
(snx)
[News message: 30. Oct. 2022, 08:06] [Comments: 0]
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30.Oct.2022
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OS4Depot uploads until 29.10.2022
The following files have been added until 29.10.2022 to OS4Depot:
ht.lha aud/edi 964kb 4.0 Multichannel chiptune tracker, b...
amigaamp3.lha aud/pla 2Mb 4.1 Multi format audio player with GUI
drawing_dt.lha dat/ima 380kb 4.0 Vector superclass + DR2D/SVG Dat...
spotless.lha dev/deb 9Mb 4.1 Your favorite debugging tool
mednafen.lha emu/gam 10Mb 4.1 Mednafen Emulator
deark.lha uti/arc 6Mb 4.0 Extracting data from various fil...
sacrificiopagano.lha uti/mis 6Mb 4.0 Magic Tool
(snx)
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30.Oct.2022
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AROS Archives uploads until 29.10.2022
The following files have been added until 29.10.2022 to AROS Archives:
libglew.i386-aros.zip dev/lib 195kb The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Li...
libglfw.i386-aros.zip dev/lib 615kb libGLFW
hollywoodsp.lha dev/mis 776kb Catalog in Spanish for Hollywood 9
supertux2.i386-aros.zip gam/pla 69Mb SDL Jump-n-run game inspired by ...
sacrificiopagano.lha uti/mis 6Mb Magic Tool
(snx)
[News message: 30. Oct. 2022, 08:06] [Comments: 0]
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30.Oct.2022
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 29.10.2022
The following files have been added until 29.10.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:
ENCORE_Morphever_1.0.0... Demoscene/ENCORE Demo for MorphOS PowerPC
Albireo_1.5.lha Emulation/ACEpansion Plugin for ACE CPC Emul...
2nd-Albireo_1.5.lha Emulation/ACEpansion Plugin for ACE CPC Emul...
AmiArcadia_29.12.lha Emulation A Signetics-based machi...
Woof!_10.4.0.lha Games/Shoot3D Woof! is a continuation...
SacrificioPagano_1.80.lha Misc A special app to people...
ReportPlus_8.41.lha Misc A Multipurpose utility ...
CloudDav_1.71.lha Network/Streaming A WebDav client
Wayfarer_4.3.lha Network/Web Wayfarer is the latest ...
(snx)
[News message: 30. Oct. 2022, 08:06] [Comments: 0]
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30.Oct.2022
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WHDLoad: New installers until 29.10.2022
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 29.10.2022:
(snx)
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30.Oct.2022
Amiga Future (website)
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AmigaRemix: Further files added
AmigaRemix collects remixes of well-known soundtracks of Amiga games. Since our last news-item, the following mp3 files have been added:
- Flashback End Theme (Live Performance)
- Silkworm / Turrican Mashup (BIT Live 2022)
- Turrican II - Freedom (Wish I was in Bergen Remix)
- Vixen
- Wings of Death (Introduction)
- Viz: The Computer Game
- Seven Gates of Jambala
- Turrican 3 (Credits)
- The Secret of Monkey Island Theme (Live Performance)
- Nearly There [Fullmoon Endpart]
- Citadel - Main Menu [OST Remix]
(snx)
[News message: 30. Oct. 2022, 08:06] [Comments: 0]
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30.Oct.2022
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MorphOS: U-Boot warning regarding AmigaOne X5000 still valid
Two years ago Mark Olsen, who maintains the official firmware for the distribution of the AmigaOne X5000 by A-EON Technology, had pointed out in great detail that the work of Steven Solie's team on their own U-Boot version could lead to unpredictable problems and thus also to data loss, which is why especially users of operating systems other than AmigaOS 4 are strongly advised not to install newer firmware versions on the X5000 unless they originate from him.
After it was stated again on the occasion of this year's AmiWest that Solie had created his own U-Boot versions for the AmigaOne X5000, among others, which would be distributed "soon", Andreas Wolf inquired at the title link with Mark 'bigfoot' Olsen whether that warning from 2020 would still be valid. This was confirmed. (snx)
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30.Oct.2022
Amiga Future (website)
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AmigaOS 4: HivelyTracker 1.9
HivelyTracker is a tracker based on the AHX format. AHX was developed in the nineties to be able to write music tracks that resemble the typical chip sound of the SID (sound chip of the C64).
In the update released after a good nine and a half years, several improvements were made to the original fidelity, details can be found in the changelog. (snx)
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30.Oct.2022
McFly (ANF)
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German Amiga Podcast: Issue 9
The ninth edition of the "German Amiga Podcast" (GAP) reports what moved visitors and exhibitors at the Amiga37 fair in Mönchengladbach.
The episodes of the podcast initiated in January by the former Boingsworld presenter 'McFly' can now be found not only at the title link but also at Apple podcasts. (snx)
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30.Oct.2022
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
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Shoot'em Up: Reshoot Proxima 3 to be released in March
The next version of the Reshoot series by ex-"Amiga Joker" editor Richard Löwenstein, Proxima 3 (amiga-news.de reported), is to be released on March 15, 2023, as APC&TCP informs at the title link. Users who don't want to miss the release date can also register for an e-mail notification. (snx)
[News message: 30. Oct. 2022, 08:06] [Comments: 0]
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30.Oct.2022
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Guest article: Trevor's personal review of the Amiga37
Trevor Dickinson traveled from New Zealand to present A-EON and AAA Technology at Amiga37, which took place two weeks ago. We asked him for his impressions of his stay in Germany and the event, which he has described to us below. Many thanks to Trevor.
Amiga 37 Germany - The show of the Century!
I have just arrived back in New Zealand following my attendance at Amiga 37 in Mönchengladbach. What can I say about Amiga 37? Wow, what a show! With over 1400 registrations it’s certainly the biggest Amiga event of the 21st Century so far.
It was my first international flight since Covid-19 locked down New Zealand in early 2020 and my first Amiga show since Amiga Ireland in January that year. Apart from sponsoring Amiga 37 on behalf of A-EON Technology, I gave a joint presentation with Enrico Vidale of ACube on the Amiga Next-Generation scene. I’m sure there will be numerous reports and updates from people who attended the show, so I am only going to highlight some of my own personal experiences of Amiga 37.
In the hope of overcoming some of the inevitable jetlag, I arrived in Dusseldorf on Thursday a couple of days before the main event. I met up with Matthew Leaman at the airport before taking the train to Mönchengladbach. We had booked into Hotel Leonardo which was recommended by Markus Tillmann. After a few drinks in the hotel bar, we retired to our room to sample some scotch whisky I had brought with me. Although we got to sleep reasonably early just after midnight, I woke up a few hours later and could not get back to sleep. The next day I did a little work on my presentation for the show and in the evening, we attended the Amiga 37 pre-party and enjoyed free pizza and an open bar. It was great meeting up with all my Amiga friends after almost 2 years of isolation due to international travel restrictions. I even made some new ones. Everyone was in a celebratory mood which was boosted by a generous open bar and servings of soup and pizzas. At the end of the night, Matthew and I went back to our hotel room with Dave Haynie and Costel Mincea to finish off the whisky. It was 4:00 am before Costel and Dave left. :) What was that comment about overcoming jet-lag?
After 3 hours sleep, we got up, had breakfast and made our way to the Kunstwerk centre which was a 25-minute taxi ride away. A-EON Technology, Amiga Kit and Amedia Computer were sharing a joint display stand under AAA Technology, a joint venture company they formed to sell Amiga hardware and software in Europe. Laurent and Frank from Amedia had brought along a large selection of Classic Amiga hardware and software as well as X5000 computer systems for sale. Two X5000 systems were set up running the latest versions of AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS. A-EON resident Linux expert and beta tester, Christian Zigotzky supplied his MorphOS hard drive, and he and his wife Nadine helped with the AAA Technology display. It was good to see both next-generation operating systems running on the X5000.
Amedia had a busy two days and ended up selling one X5000/40 system at the show and another online. At one point over the weekend Christian had an issue with his MorphOS hard drive and with assistance from Frank Mariak and the MorphOS team they helped to fix the problem and get the X5000 system back up and running. The MorphOS team also had an X5000 running MorphOS powering a wide screen display on their stand. They also showcased a beta version of MorphOS Power-Up v3.13 running on an A4000D equipped with a Phase5 Cyberstorm PPC accelerator running at 420MHz with G-Rex 4000D PCI bus, 4dfx Voodoo 3 graphics card and X-surf Ethernet card.
The Amiga Future stand, supervised by Andreas Magerl, was close to the AAA Technology display area and included Petro Tyschtschenko as a special VIP guest. I had a nice chat with Petro and he proudly showed me a large selection of photos from the time Commodore Germany sponsored Bayern Munich football club. He said Commodore sponsored the team for ~16 million DM during the period 1984-89. He presented me with a signed copy of the Bayern Munich team photo.
The Apollo team had an extensive and impressive stand with a variety of Vampire V4 and accelerator cards on display. Having recently become a new owner of a V4 system they gave me a replacement battery module to take back with me to New Zealand.
I had a long chat with Sean Donohue of My Retro Computer Ltd who was demonstrating his C64 & VIC20 ‘breadbin’ inspired PCs running the latest version of the Linux based Commodore Vision OS. Following the death of Barry Altman, Sean purchased many of Commodore USA’s assets, acquiring the case moulds, website and some stock. We discussed his recent successfully completed Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns which raised a massive £157,078 from 564 backers to create officially licensed Commodore branded C64 PCs supplied in the C64 breadbin case, smashing his initial funding goal of £25,000. If you followed his Kickstarter campaign, you would know that it was temporarily suspended due to Intellectual property dispute claim lodged by Commodore Industries (also known as Commodore Engineering). However, following an intervention by Eugene Van Os of Commodore Corporation BV, who confirmed that My Retro Computer was licensed and authorised to use the Commodore brand, Kickstarter allowed the campaign to proceed. Unfortunately, according to Sean, it is not the end of challenges from other third parties who object to his C64 case design.
In addition to Costel, Timothy De Groote, another former Hyperion Entertainment director turned up at the show on Saturday. We had a brief chat about the future of Hyperion and took the chance for a photo opportunity. Hey, who said 3 wise monkeys? ;) Ben Hermans, the main Hyperion Entertainment shareholder also attended the show. He and Matthew Leaman had a discussion covering several key issues. I encouraged Ben to meet with Michael Battilana of Amiga Corporation/Cloanto to see if they could find any common ground to resolve their legal impasse. They had a long face to face meeting on Saturday afternoon which I attended as an observer. Again, many issues were discussed. I'm not sure if it will produce any positive results but at least they agreed to keep on talking.
There was so much cool and interesting hardware and software projects on display including some excellent retro classic machines for sale. The Akiko 32, a mini-ITX hobby development motherboard was on display along with a portable version build into a laptop case. Marvin Droogsma, the mercurial MC of Amiga 30 Amsterdam had an amazing collection of boxed retro Amiga systems for sale, many of which I have never seen before. Unfortunately, I was travelling from New Zealand with hand baggage only so could not take any of them off his hands!
Of course, Amiga 37 was not just about the vendor display area. A continuous programme of presentations ran throughout the weekend with such luminaries as original Amiga developers Dave Haynie and Ron Nicholson along with Jon Hare, Tim Wright, Mike Clarke from the gaming industry and many others. David Pleasance, the former Joint MD of Commodore UK and my co-author of the ‘From Vultures to Vampire’ trilogy revealed plans for his Commodore Amiga Global Alliance (AGA) initiative, his ambitious plan to provide a centralised resource and information database bringing together the whole Amiga community of enthusiasts, developers, retailers and magazines. Please visit his provisional website for more information.
Apart from the displays and presentations, Amiga37 is also a chance for Amiga enthusiasts to socialise and enjoy some triple-A fun. The buffet dinner on Saturday evening was very well attended with plentiful food and good German beer. Before we tucked into our dinner, I had the privilege of making a short address to thank Markus and his team for organising Amiga37 and to thank the community for keeping the Amiga dream alive.
After dinner it was off to the Retro Party at Projekt42. I must admit, suffering from a combination of jetlag and lack of sleep, I sneaked away with Ron Nicholson just before midnight with Mike Clarke escorting us back to our hotel. I still woke up at 3 am.
My presentation with Enrico was the last event of the show on Sunday and I was surprised how many people were still around to hear our talk. We talked about our respective Amiga Next-generation journeys and outlined our joint plans for release of the A1222 Plus, Enrico alsotalked about the final Sam460 LE production run and revealed details of a PowerPC notebook ACube were developing for the GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC project. During our presentation I made a throwaway comment about not wanting to see AmigaOS 4 running on a PC. I truly believe that any computer that aspires to carry the Amiga name should be a whole system complete with branding. Personally, I don’t care whether it is running on 68k, PowerPC, ARM or even x86 but it must look and feel like an Amiga system. Simply running AmigaOS 4 on any PC hardware does not make it an Amiga IMHO. If you don’t agree with me that is your prerogative and we will have to agree not to agree. At the end of the show, I had the privilege of presenting Markus with a special commemorative Amiga37 framed poster signed by all the VIP attendees. It was a hectic few days but I still had time to be interviewed by Andy Caulfield of Bedrooms to Billions for his latest filming project.
After Amiga37 closed a group of us, including Dave Haynie and Ron Nicolson, met up for a farewell dinner and after the meal we ended up in the lobby of our hotel for a few drinks before saying our last goodbyes.
There are too many Amigans to mention in this short update but here are a few who I remember talking with: Stephen Leary – Terrible Fire accelerators, Stephen Jones – Checkmate Digital, the incomparable Dan Wood & Ravi Abbot, Marcel Franquinet – A1200.net, John Hertel of ReAmiga fame, Jan Zahurancik – Amikit, Dimitris Panokostas - AmiBerry, Adam Spring – Remotely Interested podcast, David ‘Skateman’ Koelman OS4 & Linux tester, and George Sokianos – OS4 developer, Steven Fletcher – The Commodore Story, Tomasz Marcinkowski – Warp/Pixel Magazine, Jens Schönfeld – Individual Computers, Daniel Müßener – Golden Code - plus everyone else who I talked to but can’t remember your name! You know who you are. ;-)
Finally, I want to thank the Amigan who presented me with a small bottle of Jagermeister to help with my throat. You will be pleased to know that Dave Haynie helped me finish it off. Also, many thanks to Tony Schiffbauer from Pittsburgh who gave me, Michael Battilana and Ravi Abbot a ride back to Dusseldorf airport on Monday morning.
Amiga37, what an event! (dr)
[News message: 30. Oct. 2022, 05:27] [Comments: 2 - 21. Nov. 2022, 05:05]
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29.Oct.2022
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AmigaOS 4.1: Introduction to Software Development Kit V54.16, part 2 (update)
Tree weeks ago we had published the first part of the introduction to Hyperion Entertainment's recently updated Software Development Kit (SDK) V54.16 written by Josef Wegner. Now the second part:
"AmigaOS 4.1 SDK 54.16 - How to install it?
In the second article I will show how to install the SDK. Since I unfortunately cannot go into every individual configuration, I assume that AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 2 is already installed. However, it is irrelevant whether further software or the Enhancer 2.2 is installed.
What is required for the installation?
As mentioned in the first paragraph, update 2 of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition should be installed. Besides that you need:
- enough time; on a PPC Amiga the installation takes 10 - 20 minutes
- 200 - 920 MB free space on a NGFS or SFS drive (preferably another drive besides the system drive) for the installed SDK
- 350 - 400 MB additional free space on a (different) drive for unpacking the archive
- the installation archive
Are there things I should do before installing?
Yes, there are one or two things you should do before you install the SDK
installed:
The first thing you should do is make a copy of your S:User startup. Apparently
there is a bug in the installer program or installer script, that the
last line is deleted from the user startup. After the installation compare both
files, and make sure that nothing is missing.
The second thing is, if you have an older SDK installed, you should remove or comment out the old one from your s:User startup file or comment it out. The lines in question are the following ones:
;BEGIN AmigaOS 4.1 SDK
assign SDK: Work:SDK
execute SDK:S/sdk-startup
;END AmigaOS 4.1 SDK
Delete these lines or comment out the assign/excute with a ;. As
next you should reboot the Amiga and finally delete or rename the old
SDK directory, move it or rename it.
Now it is best to download the installation archive from Hyperion's website and
transfer it to the Amiga if necessary. The second step is to unpack the archive to a destination where you have enough space: this can be done with the standard program Unarc of AmigaOS 4.1 or Archiver from the Enhancer 2.2 or the command line tool "LhA". Depending on what is installed. I personally prefer the command line, so I run the following:
13. > Temp: > lha -a x SHARE:SDK-54.16.lha
The option "-a" tells LhA to restore the attributes (date, permissions). "x" stands for extract the files with full path. The
last part tells LhA where the installation archive is stored.
Unpacking the installation archive alone takes 3-4 minutes.
Enough time to get a coffee for the next step.
The next step is to start the installer "Install SDK" in the freshly unpacked
directory "SDK_Install":
And then select the components of the SDK:
A full installation with all four GCC versions requires
a bit more than 900 MB. On a NG system (SAM, X1000, or X5000) there should be no space problems. On a Classic system you should limit yourself to
one of the four GCCs. This saves about 500MB and some time during the
the installation. A complete installation with all four GCCs takes about 10 minutes on my X5000. On Classic systems or WinUAE it takes
significantly more.
After succesfully installed it...
...you should check, if Startup file is fine and if these new lines have been added:
;BEGIN AmigaOS 4.1 SDK
assign SDK: Work:SDK
execute SDK:S/sdk-startup
;END AmigaOS 4.1 SDK
Then you can reboot and skip the following chapter. In the chapter after next we will test the SDK and compile the first program.
What do I do if it didn't work?
Not enough disk space? The safest thing to do is to delete the SDK that you did not finish installing. Then you can either install the SDK with fewer options, install it on a different drive, or clean up the drive and then try again.
Archive error?
I had this during an installation. Solution was as above, delete failed attempt and try again.
Error unpacking the installation archive or writing the files?
Please make sure that the SDK is installed on a local drive, preferably formatted with SFS or NGFS. Also, please do not use a shared drive in (Win)UAE. If this is already the case and there are still errors, you should check the drive for errors. With NGFS this can be done with the command:
NGFCheck Work:
"Work:" stands for the volume name or the drive.
SDK was installed. What comes next?
Now we can finally use the SDK. In article 1 it was said that the SDK comes with several GCCs and the VBCC. So let's see if all of them work. If at least one GCC is installed, we can see with the following command if the GCC is found and which version of the GCC is currently used:
gcc -v
....gcc version 8.4.0 (adtools build 8.4.0)
The SDK provides several GCCs. How can I change the GCC?
Use the tool "set_defGCC" in SDK:Tools for this. This directory is not in the search path, so you have to open it either with the Workbench or the full path.
sdk:Tools/set_defGCC
A small window appears where you can choose between the four GCC versions. But you can also specify the version directly in the Shell. To do this
appends the desired version after the command. To select GCC 11, enter the following in the Shell:
4. > Workbench: > sdk:Tools/set_defGCC 11
4. > Workbench: > gcc -v
...gcc version 11.2.0 (adtools build 11.2.0)
But be careful, you can also choose a GCC that is not installed. In this case the Shell will not find a GCC anymore. To solve this, call the tool again and select an installed GCC. If VBCC is also installed, you can test it with the following command:
vc -v
vc frontend for vbcc (c) in 1995-2020 by Volker Barthelmann
No objects to link
Now we can run the first test program. As usual, we write a HelloWorld program in standard C, which would also compile and run on another system without code changes.
Enter the following lines in the editor of choice and save them somewhere as "hello.c". Please leave out the line numbers!
RAM Disk:Shared/Sources/hello/hello.c
1 #include <stdio.h>
2 int main(void)
3 {
4 printf("Hello World!\n");
5 return (0);
6 }
To compile and start in a Shell, run the following:
For the GCC:
3. > RAM Disk:Shared/Sources/hello > gcc hello.c -o hello
3. > RAM Disk:Shared/Sources/hello > hello
Hello World!
With the VBCC:
3. > RAM Disk:Shared/Sources/hello > vc hello.c -o hello
3. > RAM Disk:Shared/Sources/hello > hello
Hello World!
What have I done?
I don't want to dive too deep into the structure and peculiarities of C here. But I'll try to explain briefly which line does what in the program.
- Line 1: This is not a C command but a command for the C preprocessor to include another file called stdio.h. The preprocessor prepares the program code for further compilation steps and improves the functionality, spelling and readability of the entered code. Besides including so-called header files, the preprocessor can define constants and replace them later in the code, remove comments, or show and hide code parts (conditional compilation). The file stdio stands for "STanDard Input Output" and contains the function definition for the "printf" method. This method outputs the passed string on the command line. The program would compile and run even without this preprocessor command. However, the compiler would issue warnings.
- Line 2: This is the declaration of the entry function. So that C knows where the program begins, one must define this differently than with script languages. In C it is done by defining the main function (=main). This must have either the form
int main(void)
or
int main(int argc, char **argv)
The first form ignores the parameters when calling the program, the second one passes the number of parameters (int argc) and an array of the parameters as C strings are passed to the method.
- Lines 3 and 6: The curly braces define a code block. With this we tell the compiler that everything in between (line 4 + 5) is part of the function.
- Line 4: Here we call a method of the C standard library that prints the string on the Shell.
- Line 5: The keyword "return" sets the return value of the function. A return statement terminates the execution of a function and returns control to the calling function. The value 0 means: okay! You should always set a return value, but it is not required like in Java.
Not everything is needed for an executable program. If you want to have (and ignore) many warnings from the compiler, you can write the program much shorter:
main(void) { printf("Hallo Welt!\n"); }
If C lacks the return or variable type, C simply takes int (integer type).
Known problems
- I get a GrimReaper when starting the compiled program!
Try to compile the program on a different drive. This happens for example when you compile the program on a shared host drive under WinUAE. Linking the generated object files fails without any message. What comes out is not a real program, and pretty quickly an invalid PPC assembler command is executed, which brings up the GrimReaper.
- I tried to debug the test program but get a weird SIGBUS error:
3. > RAM Disk:Shared/Sources/hello > gcc -gstabs hello.c -o hello
3. > RAM Disk:Shared/Sources/hello > hello
Hello World!
3. > RAM Disk:Shared/Sources/hello > gdb hello
....Starting program: /RAM Disk/Shared/Sources/hello/hello...
...Program received signal SIGBUS, Bus error.
0x00000000 in ?? ()
(gdb)
This is not an SDK or GDB problem, but a bug in the X5000 kernel. There is a beta kernel where this problem is fixed, but it is not publicly available.
What can I do until the third article is published?
First of all, I'm glad you made it this far. The following links might be interesting:
We are done! In the third part we will go a little deeper into the syntax of C."
Update: (29.10.2022, 19:50, dr)
The main developer of the SDK, George 'walkero' Sokianos, has read the tutorial with interest and expresses his thanks for Josef's commitment. He also has three additions that we would like to add here:
- A lot of information on how the SDK is set up and how the compilers can be used is mentioned in the introduction pdf file that can be found in the installation folder. It would be good for people to read that document if they are not familiar with the SDK.
- Different GCC versions can be used by using the binary based with the specific version added at its name, i.e. gcc-11 or gcc-6.
- If AmiCygnix is installed the user must make sure that the lines that are added in user-startup must are before the AmiCygnix lines, so to avoid problems with its software.
(dr)
[News message: 29. Oct. 2022, 06:59] [Comments: 1 - 29. Oct. 2022, 20:10]
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29.Oct.2022
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Motorola68k emulation: Emu68 tests and driver development for Compute Module 4
Developer Michal Schulz regularly provides background information and status updates on his Motorola68K emulation Emu68 for the ARM architecture on his Patreon page. In his latest entry he not only reports about the experiences on the Amiga37, but also announces that due to the still to be developed firmware for the PiStorm32-lite variant he will use the time to make all necessary improvements and corrections to Emu68 and the low-level drivers, which are necessary to make them work properly with Compute Module 4. These are specifically intended for use in proprietary electronic hardware (see heise.de article). If successful, this would give us another variant that could be used in the A500 or A600. (dr)
[News message: 29. Oct. 2022, 05:47] [Comments: 0]
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28.Oct.2022
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Workbench distribution: AmiKit XE for Raspberry Pi 4/400 as Amiga37 edition
As AmiKit had announced in advance (amiga-news.de reported), the Workbench distribution AmiKit XE for the Raspberry Pi 4/400 is now available as a physical product in the Amiga37 Limited Edition: it contains a bootable 64GB microSD card with preinstalled AmiKit (and DevPack) in a branded case (with slots for up to 24 microSD cards). (dr)
[News message: 28. Oct. 2022, 20:27] [Comments: 0]
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28.Oct.2022
MorphZone (Forum)
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MorphOS: Web browser Wayfarer 4.3
Jacek 'jacadcaps' Piszczek has released version 4.3 of his web browser Wayfarer for MorphOS, which now includes the full WebKit WebInspector. Detailed changes:
- Implemented the full WebKit WebInspector
- Deprecated Eruda
- Enabled anchor's download attribute
- Implemented download support for data blobs and data URLs
- Fixed BigInt64 types in TypedArrays
- Optimized some TypedArray operations
Download: wayfarer.lha (29 MB) (dr)
[News message: 28. Oct. 2022, 07:56] [Comments: 0]
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28.Oct.2022
Seiya (ANF)
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PDF magazine: REV'n'GE 139 (Italian/English)
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.
Amiga-related, the current issue is about "Street Fighter II: The World Warrior" and "Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun". (snx)
[News message: 28. Oct. 2022, 07:32] [Comments: 0]
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28.Oct.2022
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Programming language: Amiga C/C++ Visual Studio Code Extension 1.6.3 (update)
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 1.6.2 has been released. Changes:
- Linux, MacOS is now supported thanks to Peter Mackay and Graham Bates.
- Please do report any problems here
Update: (28.10.2022, 18:08, dr)
Today, version 1.6.3 was released, which restores the lost file permissions on Linux and macOS. (dr)
[News message: 28. Oct. 2022, 05:31] [Comments: 0]
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27.Oct.2022
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Feature test in AMOS: Update for mingame None Of Us
The group 'ELECTRIC BLACK SHEEP', known among other things for the fantasy shooter Project Quest, which is currently in development, had released a minigame called "None Of Us" three weeks ago, which is intended to test how to obscure the player's opponents with light and shadow in AMOS Pro (YouTube video).
In an update released two days ago, a slightly different design of the graphics and the map has now been implemented, so that the demo looks more like a cartoon. Likewise, there is now an editor version for testing, which can be used to create your own maps - which the authors explicitly encourage. (dr)
[News message: 27. Oct. 2022, 21:08] [Comments: 0]
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27.Oct.2022
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Tech-Demo: Last update for "Street Fighter 2" port
"Street Fighter 2" is the attempt to recreate the well-known beat'm up on the Amiga using the Scorpion Engine in a better way. The author is not going to develop a full game but hopes to inspire other developers. Now he has released a last update. The source code is supposed to be released soon on the Scorpion Engine Unofficial Demos repository. Changes:
- Added Shoryuken move and sound to Ryu
- Special moves are mapped to "Forward + C" (Shoryuken) and "Backward + C" (Hadouken)
- Added more energy to Ken to have more fun
- Added some grace time after Ken dies before playing the winning stance
- A bit more accurate parallax scrolling values
- Fixed bug where punch and kick animation could be performed mid air
- Fixed initial camera position jump after fade in
(dr)
[News message: 27. Oct. 2022, 20:36] [Comments: 0]
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27.Oct.2022
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Report: The AmigaOne XE, second part (Czech)
In the first part, Martina Hřebcová devoted herself to the AmigaOne XE in its entirety and subjected it to various tests. In the now published sequel she deals in detail with the use of various graphics cards and prepares test results and correlations in this very detailed article with elaborate graphics and screenshots. (dr)
[News message: 27. Oct. 2022, 14:42] [Comments: 1 - 27. Oct. 2022, 14:49]
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27.Oct.2022
Amigaworld.net (Webseite)
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Event: Amiga Apollo Meetup in Alkmaar (NL)
On November 19, the "Amiga Apollo Meetup" will take place in Alkmaar, the Netherlands. Hosted by the Dutch Apollo Vampire user group, all other Amiga and AmigaOne systems are also welcome. Social exchange is the main focus, but there is also enough space and tables to bring your own devices. Several Vampire cards will be on display and the current release 9 of ApolloOS will be shown.
The entrance fee of 15 Euros includes the cost of food and drinks, registration is by e-mail to party@amigascene.nl. More information in Dutch can be found at the title link. (snx)
[News message: 27. Oct. 2022, 11:27] [Comments: 0]
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27.Oct.2022
Thomas Wenzel (ANF) (ANF)
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Audio player: AmigaAMP 3.32 released
Thomas Wenzel wrote: After the code has been developed for a long time, I dared to release AmigaAMP 3.32 into the wild. With the 68k version, the use of decoder plugins (so-called "engines") specially adapted to AmigaAMP is possible again. So far, however, there is only one engine for WarpOS. Here is the complete list:
- Bug fixes:
- Loading whole directories now automatically expands playlists found in these directories.
- Fixed wrong behaviour when double clicking on a playlist stream entry while another stream is still in connecting status.
- Fixed handling older visualisation plugins which use an early version of the API.
- New Features:
- Each playlist entry now has its own error status.
- More detailed documentation about AmigaAMP's settings.
- 68k: Support for coprocessor plugins a.k.a. "engines". The .engine files go into the Plugins directory and can be enabled in the Decoder tab of AmigaAMP Preferences.
- 68k: Support for 10-band equalizer settings according to MHI spec v1.2
However, according to initial findings, this new version probably unfortunately triggers a still unknown bug in the ZZ9000AX MHI driver on some systems, so that playback simply never starts but stops at 0 seconds. Prisma Megamix and other MHI drivers do not seem to be affected. (dr)
[News message: 27. Oct. 2022, 10:59] [Comments: 0]
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27.Oct.2022
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Video review: "Apollo Icedrake - The fastest Amiga accelerator ever made?"
In a video, the YouTube channel 'Odd & Obsolete' presents the Apollo Icedrake accelerator card for the Amiga 1200 and describes his experiences and impressions. (dr)
[News message: 27. Oct. 2022, 07:56] [Comments: 0]
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27.Oct.2022
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Linux: Stable long-term kernel 5.10.149 for AmigaOne X1000/X5000
Parallel to new kernels (amiga-news.de reported), Christian 'xeno74' Zigotzky also provides the latest version of the stable long-term kernel for the AmigaOne X1000 and X5000. It is suitable for old Linux distributions that do not work with the latest kernels, such as Ubuntu 10.04, or if users have problems with the latest kernels.
Download: linux-image-5.10.149-X1000_X5000.tar.gz (71 MB) (dr)
[News message: 27. Oct. 2022, 06:44] [Comments: 0]
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27.Oct.2022
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AmigaOS 4.1: NovaBridge V54 available
As announced at last weekend's AmiWest 2022 (see our summary of the event), Nova Bridge is now available separately via the AMIStore for about 50 Euros (plus taxes and fees).
NovaBridge allows all 3D applications written under the old Warp3D and MiniGL to work on modern RadeonHD graphics cards (Southern Islands or Polaris). The current version of Warp3D Nova from Enhancer Software 2.2 is required. After purchase, NovaBridge is available for download in the form of the w3d_novabridge.library in the update tool and must be copied to SYS:Libs/Warp3D/HWdrivers (cf. Wiki entry on NovaBridge). (dr)
[News message: 27. Oct. 2022, 06:04] [Comments: 0]
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26.Oct.2022
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AmigaOS 4.1: SDL 2.24.0 Release Candidate 2
At the end of August, Juha 'capehill' Niemimaki had published the first release candidate for version 2.24.0 of the multimedia library SDL for AmigaOS 4.1 (amiga-news.de reported). The library is intended to make it easier for programmers to develop portable applications and is used by numerous open source games. SDL requires AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition and optionally OpenGL ES 2.0. Today he has published the second release candidate with the following changes:
- Add more game controller mappings
- Add SDL_GetPreferredLocales support, currently hard-coded to en_GB
- Fix a crash issue due to missing nullptr check
(dr)
[News message: 26. Oct. 2022, 20:47] [Comments: 0]
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26.Oct.2022
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Dock: QDock V0.98 released
Sami Vehmaa not only tries to simplify programming in AmiBlitz 3 for others using his programming aid AB_Template, he also develops various applications and games himself like his Tetris clone for RTG-Amiga's Atris or his MP3 player Reel Deck. His latest project: a dock similar to WBDock 2 or AmiDock, which he named QDock and released the first version 0.98 of it today (YouTube video).
As he writes, QDock comes closest to his idea of a dock - in terms of programming skills. QDock requires some CPU power because animated graphics are permanently active. When it's not in use, CPU requirements are reduced to the point where it still feels responsive. A maximum of 25 icons can be arranged in the GlowIcons format, with a minimum of ten icons to keep the menu and text visible. QDock has an integrated user manual for ease of use.
The tool is available for three Euros or more and is primarily intended for emulators or Apollo cards due to the high CPU requirements. It requires AmigaOS 3.2 (3.1 might work as well, but not tested), graphics board and 22 MB RAM. (dr)
[News message: 26. Oct. 2022, 18:29] [Comments: 0]
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25.Oct.2022
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Programming language: AmiBlitz Pre-Release 3.9.7
A few moments ago, Pre-Release 3.9.7 of the programming language AmiBlitz has been released. Changes:
new:
- environmentlib: added command to check, move and clear the vbr (works only with 68010+)
- added the possibility to the debugger to move the vbr (only on 68010+ systems)
- added documentation for AsmExit (Docs/Blitzlibs/SYSTEM1.guide)
changed:
- compiler directives "SYNTAX" and "OPTIMIZE" are now capitalized tokens
- operand sizes for assembler instructions (.b, .w, .l) can now be entered capitalized (.B, .W, .L)
- the compiler understands now shift-operators "<<" and ">>"
- the compiler now allows ROL/ROR instructions to be used in basic code, e.g. test.w = $F0 ROL 2
- rewrote loading of source files other than "ab3"
fixed:
- crash when moving lines to top via ALT+CURSOR up/down
- crash when trying to copy a single line selection, if it had been selected from right to left
- holding SHIFT-CURSOR up/down did not work continously, just once
- the vbr-chcking of the debugger did not work correctly
- fixed bug in function to display standard (not tokenized) text
- crash when loading text files other than ".ab3"
- crash when undeleteing a line
- autoindent of cursor did not work
(dr)
[News message: 25. Oct. 2022, 20:18] [Comments: 0]
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25.Oct.2022
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SCSI-SD adapter: ZuluSCSI firmware 1.1.1
ZuluSCSI is a new generation of file-based SCSI hard disk and CD-ROM drive emulators. ZuluSCSI emulates a SCSI-I or SCSI-2 hard disk using an SD memory card (amiga-news.de reported). Version 1.1.1 of the firmware was released today. Changes:
- Add support for FAT filesystem without partition table
- RP2040: Fix reading very last SD card sector
(dr)
[News message: 25. Oct. 2022, 20:12] [Comments: 0]
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25.Oct.2022
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Video: Lets Make a Halloween Game in AMOS
In his latest video, Robert Smith explains how to program a fun Halloween themed puzzle game in AMOS. (dr)
[News message: 25. Oct. 2022, 06:39] [Comments: 0]
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25.Oct.2022
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Linux: "Pale Moon" browser V31.2.0
After Christian 'xeno74' Zigotzky recently compiled version 40.0 of the Artic Fox browser for Linux PowerPC (32 bit), which is based on the Pale Moon browser (amiga-news.de reported), he could now compile version 31.2.0 of the "Pale Moon" browser for Linux PowerPC (32 bit), which was released in August 2022, and make it available for the AmigaOne Linux distributions MintPPC, Debian Sid, Fienix, and Void. He also recommends installing the Palefill add-on to improve compatibility with many websites such as GitHub.
Downloads:
palemoon-31.2.0.linux-powerpc-gtk2.void.tar.gz (Browser, 55 MB)
palefill-1.23.xpi (Add-On, 50 KB) (dr)
[News message: 25. Oct. 2022, 06:15] [Comments: 0]
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25.Oct.2022
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Module player: NostalgicPlayer 1.8.0 for Windows
NostalgicPlayer is a program for playing Amiga music modules under Windows, based on APlayer. The development of the player had been started by the author Thomas Neumann in 1993 on the Amiga, later continued on BeOS and now on Windows. Besides numerous improvements, version 1.8.0 now includes a ProWizard agent that can convert numerous formats. (dr)
[News message: 25. Oct. 2022, 05:56] [Comments: 0]
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25.Oct.2022
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Bitmap graphics program: GrafX2 V2.8
Artur Jarosik has updated his port of the DPaint and Brilliance-inspired, SDL-based pixel graphics program GrafX2. This version 2.8 includes the following changes:
Port improvements:
- Window mode by default
- Better path handling
Amigaspezifische Änderungen:
- Amiga icon (in .info files) loading
- Amiga Extra Half Bright palette support
A graphics card is required. (dr)
[News message: 25. Oct. 2022, 05:41] [Comments: 0]
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25.Oct.2022
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Action adventure: Demo version of "SNAKY - The Mysterious World" available
Yoz Montana is developing a new action adventure called "SNAKY - The Mysterious World" (YouTube video). As part of an "Early Access" promotion, you can support this and other game developments of the studio by buying the demo version for the equivalent of about five Euros or more. An Amiga with 030 processor and AGA are required. (dr)
[News message: 25. Oct. 2022, 05:26] [Comments: 0]
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24.Oct.2022
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Trading simulation with RPG elements: download version of 'Aquabyss' available
The trading simulation 'Aquabyss' (screenshots, video), which was released at Amiga 37 a week ago, is now also available in the developer's web shop for just under 30 euros . The one-week delay was caused by problems with payment provider Paypal, which have not yet been completely resolved.
Payments can be made by traditional bankwire or manual PayPal payments. In both cases, the e-mail address used for registration in the shop must be specified as the intended purpose. If PayPal is used as the payment method, the amount due must be entered manually when paying. After the purchase, you have to look up the information 'ID' and 'Key' required for playing in the provider's shop, the programmer tried to illustrate the process with a simple sketch.
When sales started a week ago, the developer warned against playing the game on Vampire cards because they were simply "not 100% Amiga compatible". He is now retracting that statement (German, registration required). Users of the Apollo Discord channel apparently figured out that the problem was caused by the illegal workbench distribution 'Coffin OS': After disabling some (unspecified) commodities, the game works fine on the FPGA hardware. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 24. Oct. 2022, 19:11] [Comments: 0]
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24.Oct.2022
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Print / PDF magazine: Amiga Addict, issue 16
The sixteenth issue of the British magazine "Amiga Addict" is available. The current issue contains the following topics:
- We feature the masters of adventure point-and-click games, Lucasfilm Games in our six-page cover special.
- A new Amiga laptop solution for taking miggy software out and about!
- Ben Vost was one of Amiga Format's most passionate and dedicated editors - he was also the last! We catch up with Ben in an exclusive interview.
- 3D Amiga rendering artist Paul Kitching captures our hearts with his amazing scenes and backstory.
- Classic Amiga gaming with reviews and articles on DreamWeb, Sink Or Swim, Stardust and Lemmings 2 The Tribes.
- Hollywood v9 programming language and suite of development tools is reviewed.
- Get your WHDLoad game emulation rig working properly with our setup tutorial.
- Blackpool Play Expo show report.
- AmigaRemix joins us to discuss his passion for mods and remixing chiptune music.
- One of the best image processing systems on the Amiga is put through its paces as we test ImageFX.
- Amiga Addict regulars including user groups, news, readers letters and Stoo Cambridge of Sensible Software fame.
Amiga Addict can be ordered as print edition or as a PDF download, each as a single issue or as a subscription. (dr)
[News message: 24. Oct. 2022, 06:12] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
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Amiwest: A-EON, Amigakit and ExecSG presentations
Traditionally, representatives of the AmigaOS 4/AmigaOne camp are attending AmiWest to give presentations about the current state of affairs and announce the next releases being worked on. This year, Trevor Dickinson and Matthew Leaman from A-EON/Amigakit were videoconferencing into the show while Steven Solie from the ExecSG team gave a presentation on site. We have briefly summarized the most important points from both presentations; the associated slides can be found at the end of this news item. A recording of the entire first day of AmiWest - including the presentations discussed here - is already available online.
A-EON's next PPC motherboard 'A1222 plus' (originally: 'Tabor') is scheduled to be shipped to end customers early next year. Dickinson considers Enrico Vidale's (ACube) statement from Amiga 37, that endusers might receive their boards in January "typical Italian optimism", he believes delivery in February or March to be more likely. The final price hasn't been decided yet - but they're trying to stay as close as possible to the original goal of offering the cheapest possible entry-level system. However, global bottlenecks in electronic components and the resulting higher prices have increased production costs significantly. Initially, 200 motherboards are to be produced, of which 100 are reserved for participants in the Early Adopter program.
Due to a shortage of P5020 CPUs, the X5000 motherboards currently being shipped by A-EON are already equipped with a P5040 quad-core processor. The price for these machine is therefore a bit higher, but the final pricing is set by the respective dealer. Said dealers would also take care of bundling the hardware with a properly licensed AmigaOS 4 (editor's note: A-EON no longer has OS4 licenses itself).
Version 2.3 of the in-house software bundle Enhancer Software will be a free an update for existing customers, it will contain "new components" in addition to an update of the 3D driver system Nova. A new version of 'Enhancer Core' will be released in October. The latter is a free compilation of the most important libraries and system modules from the enhancer package, which is intended to ensure better acceptance of the corresponding components by third-party developers and users.
A-EON's attempt to establish an operating system that has no ties to Hyperion is apparently called "Enhancer Software V54" currently and is described as a "self-booting distribution that requires an AmigaOS 4.1 license". The project now also has its own TCP stack: A PPC port of AmiTCP that also supports DHCP. However, according to Dickinson, publishing the distribution will require "6 to 9 months" of additional development time.
Novabridge, which supplements Nova with the old Warp 3D interfaces and thus makes old applications run on systems with modern graphics cards not supported by Warp 3D, was originally planned as an exclusive component of Enhancer Software V54. But due to significant interest from customers, it will also be sold separately via the in-house app store AMIStore. A price or a release date were not announced.
The second and third parts of the book series From Vultures to Vampires, originally planned as a single volume and now expanded into a trilogy, have now also been completed. Dickinson expects the second part to be released "early next year", the digital release will probably come first. The last volume will then be published shortly thereafter, that book's layout is still being worked.
Dickinson has now received a video showing the current state of the LibreOffice port from the responsible programmer Hans-Jörg Frieden, which he will publish as part of his next blog entry. The AmigaOS 4 implementation has been "completely revised" again, the betatesting will start "soon".
For ExecSG - which Dickinson expressly presents as his personal property, not that of A-EON - project manager Steven Solie explains that there are currently two variants of the kernel: Firstly, a single-core variant, which has received numerous optimizations and improvements, and which he intends to publish as soon as possible. Agreements or negotiations with Trevor Dickinson and Hyperion are still necessary here in order to clarify the exact procedure. He wants to offer ExecSG for free for "as long as possible".
Secondly, a version of the kernel with multi-core support already exists. The operating system always runs on the first core, while other tasks are currently randomly assigned to one of the available cores - in later versions, a scheduler will of course always select the currently least utilized core. However, the multi-core variant of the kernel is still very prone to crashing and is difficult to debug. A demonstration of the multi-core kernel can be seen at A-EON's AmiWest booth, but Solie describes it as "not very exciting because it keeps crashing".
In addition to minor improvements to the kernel (refer to the slides below), work is currently being done on porting the multi-core variant to A1222 plus, after which an adaptation to the AmigaOne X1000 is being planned. Solie hopes that porting the multi-core kernel to the other systems will provide new insights, since other processors are used there.
In addition to working on the kernel, Solie is also responsible for firmware updates. The U-Boot versions for X5000 and A1222 plus not only received various bug fixes, but will now also correctly initialize the additional cores of the multi-core CPUs used in these machines. Firmware updates will be distributed "soon" via A-EON. Once they're installed, the respective computers will then be "multi-core ready".
The X1000 also requires a firmware update for multi-core support. According to Solie, the problem here was that the sourcecode for the 'CFE' firmware used in that particular machine was lost - fortunately it was found again in the meantime. However, the system is so old that it can no longer be compiled with current compilers - which is why Solie is currently trying to set up an older system with the help of a virtual machine, which will then hopefully produce executable binaries.
All slides of the A-EON/Amigakit presentation (Trevor Dickinson, Matthew Leaman)
All slides from the ExecSG presentation (Steven Solie)
(cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 22:57] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
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Aminet uploads until 22.10.2022
The following files have been added until 22.10.2022 to Aminet:
HollywoodSP.lha dev/hwood 776K Hollywood 9.1 spanish catalog...
PyPlayer.zip dev/src 1.1M 68k Audio Player for Python 1.4.0...
device-streams.lha disk/misc 88K 68k blkcopy RDB part <> file/stre...
mhimasplayer.lha driver/aud 34K 68k MHI driver for MAS-Player (st...
FlashMandelNG_OS4.lha gfx/fract 32M OS4 Mandelbrot & Julia fractals AOS4
AmiArcadia.lha misc/emu 4.6M 68k Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha misc/emu 4.9M MOS Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadia-OS4.lha misc/emu 5.1M OS4 Signetics-based machines emul...
NAFCYI1991S1-B25.zip text/bfont 2.1M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B26.zip text/bfont 2.5M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B27.zip text/bfont 2.4M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-B28.zip text/bfont 2.3M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (BMP Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-25.zip text/pfont 1.6M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-26.zip text/pfont 2.0M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-27.zip text/pfont 1.8M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
NAFCYI1991S1-28.zip text/pfont 1.8M NAFCYI Spring 1991 (PS Fonts)
deark.lha util/arc 3.2M 68k Extract data from various fil...
IdentifyDev.lha util/libs 67K 68k Identify hardware and more
IdentifyUsr.lha util/libs 98K 68k Identify hardware and more
ReportPlus.lha util/misc 637K 68k Multipurpose utility
ReportPlus-OS4.lha util/misc 805K OS4 Multipurpose utility
Lupe.lha util/wb 388K 68k The magnifying glass program
SteMarRegDOSScripts.lha util/wb 11K 68k 7 AmigaDOS scripts by Stefano...
(snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
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OS4Depot uploads until 22.10.2022
The following files have been added until 22.10.2022 to OS4Depot:
spotless.lha dev/deb 3Mb 4.1 Your favorite debugging tool
amiarcadia.lha emu/gam 5Mb 4.0 Signetics-based machines emulator
flashmandelng.lha gra/mis 32Mb 4.1 Mandelbrot & Julia fractals ...
reportplus.lha uti/mis 805kb 4.0 Multipurpose utility
lupe.lha uti/wor 388kb 4.1 The magnifying glass program
(snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
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AROS Archives uploads until 22.10.2022
The following files have been added until 22.10.2022 to AROS Archives:
cls.i386-aros.lha uti/mis 4kb CLear Screen command. just like IBM
(snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 22.10.2022
The following files have been added until 22.10.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:
Deark_1.6.3.lha Files/Archive Extracting data from va...
CloudDav_1.7.lha Network/Streaming A WebDav client
TinyGL-Update-2022-10-... System/Update This is the fifth publi...
(snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
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WHDLoad: New installers until 22.10.2022
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 22.10.2022:
- 2022-10-22 improved: Thunder Blade (Sega) imager fixed (Info)
- 2022-10-22 improved: Ambermoon (Thalion) added support for improved Ambermoon version 1.17 (Info)
- 2022-10-22 improved: Thunderhawk (Core Design) supports another version (Info)
- 2022-10-22 improved: Batman the Caped Crusader (Ocean) supports another version, fixed freeze on fast CPU (Info)
- 2022-10-22 updated: Streetfighter 2 (Capcom/U.S.Gold) imager fixed (Info)
- 2022-10-22 improved: Projectyle (Eldrich the Cat) splash window support, new imager, manual added, new icons and install script (Info, Image)
- 2022-10-22 improved: Oriental Games (MicroStyle/MicroProse) 68000 quitkey, new install script (Info)
- 2022-10-22 fixed: Castle Master 2 - The Crypt (Incentive/Domark) install script (Info)
- 2022-10-22 fixed: Cardiaxx (Electronic Zoo/Team 17) 'highs' file creation if trainer is used (Info)
- 2022-10-22 improved: Awesome (Psygnosis) 68000 quizkey (Info)
- 2022-10-20 improved: Night Breed (Action) (Ocean) supports another version, less chip memory required, trainer enhanced, 68000 quitkey, new install script (Info)
- 2022-10-20 improved: Castle Master 2 - The Crypt (Incentive/Domark) using fast memory, adjustable speed regulation, 68000 quitkey (Info)
- 2022-10-20 improved: Cardiaxx (Electronic Zoo/Team 17) imager updated, trainer improved, high score saving, new install script (Info)
- 2022-10-20 improved: Awesome (Psygnosis) 2nd button remap, int fixed, trainer added (Info)
(snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
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Handheld console: Blaze Entertainment announces Amiga games
Evercade (Wikipedia entry) is an ARM-based handheld console from the British manufacturer Blaze Entertainment. According to Mike Battilana's announcement at Amiga37 (video), also Blaze now announces at the title link that they have entered into an agreement with Amiga Corporation to bring Amiga games from various publishers, which have not yet been named, to the Evercade starting next year. (snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
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Print magazine: Amiga Future, issue 159 - preview and excerpts
Preview and excerpts of Amiga Future issue 159 (November/December 2022) have been published online meanwhile at the title link. Contents include Playfield as well as reviews of "Riamel - Black Prophecy" and the Freeway clockport version.
Amiga Future magazine is available as an English and a German printed magazine and can be bought directly from the magazine's editorial office as well as several Amiga dealers. (snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
Passione Amiga (ANF)
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Italian print/PDF magazine: Passione Amiga, issue 10
The Italian magazine "Passione Amiga" is available in digital (3 Euro) or printed (7,50 Euro) form. Its current issue consists of 48 A4 color pages and includes the following topics:
- Videogames reviews: Athanor 2 AGA - The legend of the Birdmen, River Raid Reloaded, None of Us, Minky
- Books reviews: Darkage Software - the story, A Hobbyist's Guide to THEA500 Mini
- Reportage: Passione Amiga day 2022, Amiga 37
- Amiga CD³² special
- Blender course, part 2
- Uncompromising rendering
- AmigaOS 3.2.1 update guide
- Interviews with: Jon Hare (Sensible Software), Federico 'Wiz' Croci (Simulmondo)
- Plus: Games news, Tech news, THEA500 Mini news, Demo scene, New Talents, MailBox
(snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
Thomas Wenzel (ANF)
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Updated MHI drivers for MAS-Player (standard/pro)
Thomas Wenzel writes (translated): Some time ago, in the course of the MHI revision, I also fixed a bug in the MAS player driver. At that time, however, I had only published the new driver in the developer archive mhi_dev.lha, which meant that it could hardly be found on Aminet and the old archives mhi_MASPro.lha and mhi_MASStd.lha still appeared in the search. Therefore, I have now uploaded the new drivers - both versions together - in the archive mhimasplayer.lha. (snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
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APC&TCP: IncaMan & Emotiworld as boxed version available
APC&TCP offers the games IncaMan and Emotiworld (amiga-news.de reported) now also as boxed version, consisting of the floppy disk, a booklet and an A3 poster.
While IncaMan is about collecting diamonds, EmotiWorld is about collecting hearts. Both games require at least an Amiga 500 with 512 KB Chip- and as much Fast-RAM, the latter one also includes an AGA version. (snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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23.Oct.2022
Scene World Podcast (ANF)
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Scene World Podcast Episode #150 - Floppy Totaal
In the 150th edition of the Scene World Podcast, Jörg Dröge and Arthur Heller talk to Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaar from "Floppy Totaal", the authors of the recently mentioned book "Floppy Disk Fever". The interview starts at minute 19:08. (snx)
[News message: 23. Oct. 2022, 08:19] [Comments: 0]
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22.Oct.2022
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Linux tutorial: Using the Fienix distribution on the X5000, part 1
Amiga-News.de editor Daniel Reimann has taken on the topic of Linux on his AmigaOne X5000 and reports:
Preface and introduction
When I bought my AmigaOne X5000, I did not intend to test Linux on it. I wanted to take a closer look at AmigaOS 4, which I only knew by playing around with WinUAE (see manual in the forum), and at MorphOS, which I got to know for the first time under QEMU (experience report) .
The reason, why I approached the topic Linux at all, were quite practical nature: neither AmigaOS 4, nor MorphOS offer at present a current writing program. And: even if you switch to one of the existing editors, you still can't print for a long time. At least not me with my Canon Pixma MP640, which has already many years on the hump, but unfortunately is not supported. My intention when buying the X5000 was to be able to use a computer that is as complete and suitable for everyday use as possible, without having to use the Windows laptop again for this or that application. Otherwise, the invested high sum would not have been justifiable in my opinion. In this respect, I see it as an absolute advantage to be able to run three different operating systems on the AmigaOne X5000 and thus to exhaust and combine all application possibilities.
Linux itself was and is completely new territory for me. That's why I was looking for a simple and uncomplicated way to try out the OS. So-called live installation images are a good way to do this: an image is created from an existing Linux installation on the hard disk, which is written back to a USB stick or SSD card using a tool and is bootable. No installation is necessary.
Four distributions are basically possible on the X5000 (and X1000): besides Fienix (versions 3 and 5.1), the independent distribution Void (Mate 1.26.0), there is also MintPPC (version 3 "Cindy") and Ubuntu Mate (version 16.04). As Linux and Amiga expert Christian 'xeno74' Zigotzky - many thanks at this point for the great support - explains, the maintainer of Void PPC will discontinue this distribution at the end of the year. Mint PPC is currently not being developed further and some repositories of Ubuntu Mate have been removed, making it impossible to update. In his opinion, Fienix is therefore the only sensible and, above all, future-proof distribution for the AmigaOne. It is based on Debian Sid, but only includes packages from Debian that work. Additionally, some programs are added that Debian does not have, such as various web browsers, games etc.
Fienix
Therefore, I chose Fienix. I had been running version 3 successfully for a while, but for this article and of course for myself I wanted to use the latest available version 5.1. However, this turned out to be more difficult than I thought: to write the image back to a USB stick, a tool is needed. For Windows users like me the USB Image Tool is the first choice. In contrast to the image of version 3, the image of version 5.1 contained until a few days ago only the Fienix partition, but no boot sector and no boot partition. The mandatory boot partition had to be created by the user, but then the write back with the USB Image Tool in "Volume Mode" did not work. Alexander Beug, the developer of the tool, provided great support here, but in the end the problem could only be solved by asking the creator and maintainer of the Fienix distribution, Casey Cullen, to provide a complete image, which was done now. Many thanks, Casey!
So how exactly do we go about creating a USB stick with Fienix 5.1?
On the download page of the distribution select the appropriate computer system, in my case the AmigaOne X5000, which takes you to the U-Boot page. There download the archive ("fienix_5.1-spark-fulldisk.img.gz", 2.4 GB) and unpack it.
Only recently version 1.90 of the USB Image Tool was released, which we also download ("usbit.zip", 822 KB), unzip and start:
The "Device Mode" is already preset. By means of "Restore" we select the just unpacked image of the Fienix distribution:
If writing back the image has been successful, then two drives are available under Windows after completion:
- "FIENIX-BOOT" with the required files "cyrus-p5020.dtb", "uImage-5.10" and "uInitrd-5.10"
- and another drive which cannot be accessed
The "uImage" file contains the kernel. There is already version 6.0 available, which we download and copy the file "uImage-6.0" from the unpacked directory "X5000_and_QEMU_e5500" to the "FIENIX-BOOT" partition (and delete the old uImage file if necessary).
The "uInitrd" file contains the initial ramdisk. It is best to take it from the long-term kernel 5.10.149 archive. Done!
In the second part we will look at how to start Fienix.
(dr)
[News message: 22. Oct. 2022, 06:06] [Comments: 1 - 01. Nov. 2022, 09:21]
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21.Oct.2022
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Programming language: Amiga Blitz Basic 2 Visual Studio Code Ext. 0.8.0
At the end of August we reported on the merging of Youen Chéné's fork of the Visual Studio Code Extension created by 'MickGyver', which adds support for Amiga Blitz Basic 2 (and Amiblitz), and the first joint release of version 0.7.0. Today version 0.8.0 has been released, adding experimental support for CDTV and CD32 and fixing a bug that prevented the file from opening in the BB2 editor. (dr)
[News message: 21. Oct. 2022, 12:21] [Comments: 0]
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21.Oct.2022
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Kung Fu action: "Devil's Temple" released
After numerous preview videos (amiga-news.de reported), Geezer Games has just released "Devil's Temple.
Devil's Temple features 10 stages of intense arcade kung fu action based on the classic Irem games Kung Fu Master and Vigilante. Over 300 frames of animation were packed into the game, and every cycle of performance was used on the Amiga A500. The game will adapt to upgrades, so additional chip ram will result in better music, AGA will provide additional colors and a greater variety of enemies in the game.
"Devil's Temple" can be purchased as a digital version for at least 19 pounds sterling, the equivalent of around 22 euros, on itch.io and is available as an adf, CD32.iso, hard disk, WHD and A500 mini file. A demo version is also available.
Furthermore, the game can be purchased as a boxed edition for the equivalent of around 40 Euros plus shipping. You can get an impression of the boxes under the news tab. (dr)
[News message: 21. Oct. 2022, 12:07] [Comments: 0]
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21.Oct.2022
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Block-oriented copying: Device-Streams 2.2.0
At the beginning of October, Roc Vallès i Domènech had updated the Amiga tool "Device-Streams" for block-oriented copying, similar to UNIX command dd, which was originally developed and released by Christian E. Hopps in 1993 (amiga-news.de reported). In the meantime, versions 2.1.0 and 2.2.0 have been released adding support for Trackdisk 64 and NSD.
Download: device-streams.lha (88 kB) (dr)
[News message: 21. Oct. 2022, 05:59] [Comments: 0]
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20.Oct.2022
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Event: AmiWest 2022 starts / Question submission
AmiWest 2022 starts today at the Holiday Inn Express in Sacramento, California, as a combined online and on-place event. The highlights should certainly include the question and answer session with Trevor Dickenson, Matthew Leaman and Steven Solie (A-EON). Interviews with David Pleasance, Jens Schönfeld, Hans De Ruiter and Jacek Piszczek are also planned, all of which will take place on Saturday and Sunday respectively (see schedule).
As in previous years, there will be a live stream via Youtube, which will again be hosted by Bill Borsari. He will also conduct the interviews and has invited the readers of Amiga-News.de to submit questions for the interviews in the comments section. (dr)
[News message: 20. Oct. 2022, 06:47] [Comments: 2 - 22. Oct. 2022, 05:37]
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20.Oct.2022
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Video: Short tutorial for AMOS Pro
In another part of his series of short tutorials about AMOS Pro (amiga-news.de reported) the retro and Amiga fan 'Yawning Angel' explores if it is possible for an AMOS program to open and read from a Text file created in a text editor under Workbench, treating it as a Random Access file. (dr)
[News message: 20. Oct. 2022, 06:12] [Comments: 0]
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