23.Jun.2021
|
Amiga disks on PC: Arduino Amiga Floppy Disk Reader/Writer V2.6
Similar to ADF Drive, Robert Smith's project "Arduino Amiga Floppy Disk Reader/Writer" uses a a micro controller - an Arduino board - for enabling a common PC disk drive reading and writing Amiga disks.
In version 2.5 recently the direct access to a disk, inserted into a disk drive of a PC, from the emulator WinUAE was introduced. Version 2.6 now improves disgnostics and reading disks. Additionally SCP (Supercard Pro) files for backing up non-AmigaDOS disks can be created. A WinUAE preversion which demonstrates the direct access to disks can be downloaded.
All documents of Smith's project are available on GitHub under a free license. (dr)
[News message: 23. Jun. 2021, 06:47] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
21.Jun.2021
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
|
C64 conversion: Plattformer 'Henry's House'
'Henry's House' (video) is a classic single-screen platformer released for the C64 in 1984. The Amiga conversion comes from the developer team 'MC STUDIOS', which apparently wants to port a whole series of 8-bit titles to the Amiga. The title requires Kickstart 1.2 and 1 megabyte RAM. (cg) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 21. Jun. 2021, 23:46] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
21.Jun.2021
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
|
Plattformer: new alpha version of Mario clone 'Amigo the Fox'
Erik 'earok' Hogan's 'Amigo The Fox' (video) is a sample project for the Scorpion Engine from the same developer. A first alpha version of the Mario clone was already released a year ago, meanwhile the game has its own web presence and is fully playable.
(cg) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 21. Jun. 2021, 23:37] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
21.Jun.2021
|
Hyperion: Updates for AmigaOS 4
Hyperion provides registered users with updated versions of the CLI command 'date' as well as the prefs program 'Time', which bring adaptations to the recently released update of timesync.library. The update can be obtained via the AmiUpdate server update.amigaos.net. (cg) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 21. Jun. 2021, 23:20] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Jun.2021
MorphZone (Webseite)
|
MorphOS: Web browser Wayfarer 2.0
Jacek 'jacadcaps' Piszczek's web browser Wayfarer is now available in version 2.0. Reason for the version leap is change of the browser's core: Now Wayfarer is based on the latest stable implementation of WebKitGTK (2.32.1), which is about one year newer than the one Wayfarer 1.x used, proving this project's sustainability.
Most visible feature introduced by this is support of the so-called "dark mode" offered by some websites (example video). Furthermore some bugs have been fixed - in the past, checkmarks were not rendered at some websites for example. Please note that the ICU files included in the archive must be moved to MOSSYS: in order to run latest Wayfarer.
Changes in detail:
- Rebased to latest stable WebKitGTK (2.32.1)
- Implemented Dark Mode
- Fixed a crash in HLS video playback
- Worked around an issue preventing sites from loading, etc after quit confirmation requester got cancelled
- Fixed webkit message log functionality that crashed if the resulting message contained formatting sequences
- Changed rendering of elements like checkmarks that were missing on some websites
- Out-of-RAM crashes no longer bring up the Send Bugreport messagebox
Required are MorphOS 3.15 and 1 GB of RAM. A CPU with at least 1.5 GHz is recommended. For feedback to the author, besides the integrated crash report tool also e-mails to wayfarer at wayfarer.icu or the corresponding thread at MorphZone can be used. (snx)
[News message: 20. Jun. 2021, 07:36] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Jun.2021
|
Aminet uploads until 19.06.2021
The following files have been added until 19.06.2021 to Aminet:
Birthtro36.lha demo/intro 70K 68k Birthtro 36 intro (Outline 2021)
D1X_Rebirth_RTG.lha game/shoot 2.5M 68k Amiga port of Descent (DXX-Re...
AmiArcadia.lha misc/emu 4.3M 68k Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha misc/emu 4.7M MOS Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadia-OS4.lha misc/emu 4.8M OS4 Signetics-based machines emul...
DOSBox_RTG.lha misc/emu 1.5M 68k Amiga port of DOSBox
xiffview.tgz misc/unix 23K IFF ILBM picture viewer for L...
Wecandothis.lha mods/8voic 459K We Can Do This 5ch Road Rock
hippoplayerSource.lha mus/play 768K HippoPlayer source code
RNOArchive_68k.lha util/arc 3.0M 68k Graphical archive manager
IconLib_46.4.lha util/libs 1.1M 68k free icon.library in optimize...
snapit.lha util/misc 507K MOS A screen grabber with MUI-Int...
ViNCEd.lha util/shell 852K 68k ViNCEd, the CON: with ^Z & TA...
(snx)
[News message: 20. Jun. 2021, 07:36] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Jun.2021
|
OS4Depot uploads until 19.06.2021
The following files have been added until 19.06.2021 to OS4Depot:
gtk-mui.lha dev/lib 5Mb 4.0 A wrapper lib to wrap GTK+ calls...
oo.lha dev/lib 1Mb 4.1 Bring easier programming to C an...
amiarcadia.lha emu/gam 5Mb 4.0 Signetics-based machines emulator
ppm2bbc.lha gra/edi 37kb 4.0 24-bit PPM6 into BBC Micro scree...
snapit.lha uti/mis 507kb 4.1 Powerful MUI-based Screen Grabber
jumble.lha uti/tex 124kb 4.1 Jumble solver
(snx)
[News message: 20. Jun. 2021, 07:36] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Jun.2021
|
MorphOS-Storage uploads until 19.06.2021
The following files have been added until 19.06.2021 to MorphOS-Storage:
AmiArcadia_27.4.lha Emulation A Signetics-based machi...
SnapIt_1.5.lha System/Ambient/Utilities A screen grabber with M...
(snx)
[News message: 20. Jun. 2021, 07:35] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Jun.2021
ALBs Blog
|
Sample source code: Hardware-oriented programming with Free Pascal
Marcus 'ALB42' Sackrow has published on GitHub some examples for hardware-near programming - i.e. writing directly to chip registers - with Freepascal. The goal was to create the shortest possible compilations that recreate typical demoscene effects: the 700-byte tool 'copper' creates a copper list, while the 3-kilobyte 'sinus' uses the copper to manipulate bitplanes to create a sine effect. (cg) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 19. Jun. 2021, 23:21] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Jun.2021
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
|
Print magazine: Amiga Future, issue 151 - preview and reading samples
From issue 151 (July/August 2021) of Amiga Future the readings as well as the preview are online since today. The topics include an interview with Michael Borrmann (Inviyya), a preview of AmigaOS 3.2 and a review of "Hibernated 1: Director's Cut".
(cg) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 19. Jun. 2021, 21:24] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Jun.2021
|
Trevor's Amiga Blog: First volume finished, beta version of DvPlayer in test
After more than 10 months Trevor Dickinson from A-EON Technology has written an entry in his Trevor's Amiga Blog again.
A large part of it is his report about the work on the two volume book 'From Vultures to Vampires' about the Amiga history, which is to be written by him and David Pleasance, starting with the takeover of the Commodore rights by ESCOM. He says the first volume has been completed and is now being proofread.
In a second section he gives a brief history of the movie player 'DvPlayer', starting with the first version developed by Stephen Fellner in 2005, through the acquisition of the rights from A-EON Technology (2015) and their work on hardware accelerated video playback support for the A-EON RadeonHD v2 driver using the graphics card's own GPU, to the creation of a new beta version that Hans der Ruiter has developed and is currently testing.
The new version allows high-resolution video files to be played either in full-screen mode or in scalable windows that can be resized during playback. To that end, he uploaded a screenshot to his blog page showing DvPlayer playing an HD and a 1080p video in parallel on an AmigaOne X5000/40. Matthew Leaman would have informed him that, if all went well, the new version would be released in the AmiStore next month. (dr) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 19. Jun. 2021, 15:31] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Jun.2021
Aminet
|
Icon-Library 46.4.545
Recently we introduced Peter Keunecke's icon.library which provides all functions for processing pictograms. Due to the release of AmigaOS 3.2, but obviously also inspired by our contribution and especially the numerous comments, he has now released version 46.4.545.
For the first time he has not only added a documentation in the form of an 'IconLib.guide' as requested by many, but has also made it available in English as well as in German.
Furthermore, the TrueColor (TC) version now displays OS4 and PNG icons 30-70% faster in conjunction with workbench.library v44+ or Wanderer on native screens, but not with WB 3.1 and DOpus5. As Peter Keunecke writes further, AmigaOS 3.2 now requires at least an icon.library v47. In order to be able to use his icon.library under this OS anyway, he has apparently upgraded the 'icon.library_TC020' to version 51.4.545. The other two standard versions 'icon.library_68000' and 'icon.library_68020' do not work under AmigaOS 3.2 anymore.
According to him, the new icon.library provided by AmigaOS 3.2 should be "more efficient and faster, avoiding many useless refreshes". But since he does not own the new OS, he cannot test this. At least 'FastWB' seems to have no advantage anymore. And further he writes: "The new OS 3.2 file type detection of DefIcons is only supported by my v51 libraries like TC020. I have no intention to set the 680x0 versions higher." (dr) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 19. Jun. 2021, 06:37] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
17.Jun.2021
Artur Gadawski per Mail
|
7-bit: Software update for Wicher cards
A software update for the cards developed by 7-bit has been released. Changes:
- added support for AmigaOS3.2
- WicherCfg - added support for Wicher1220EC
- WicherCfgGui - added support for Wicher1220EC
- spi.librarby - added support for Wicher1220EC
- enc28j60_w32.device - added support for Wicher1220EC
- Tools_Menu - added support for Wicher1220EC
(dr)
[News message: 17. Jun. 2021, 22:35] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
17.Jun.2021
Alfred Faust (ANF)
|
Multimedia MIDI sequencer: BarsnPipes 1.0 for Amiga OS4.1 FE
At the end of October in 2009, Alfred Faust decided to stop developing his multimedia MIDI sequencer BarsnPipes due to increasing health problems (we reported). In July 2013 he released the source code of his programm. Mainly due to Corona, Alfred Faust has a lot of spare time which among others he invested in updating his AmigaOS 4 computer and its operating system to OS 4.1 FE and eventually reworking and compiling BarsnPipes for Amiga OS 4.1 FE.
The first official full version 1.0 now is available in the download section of his website also including all previous updates. He also has updated all development documents:
- New Rules for Tools OS 4.1 FE
- Michael Rees SDK OS4.1 FE
- New Rules for Skins
- tools for creating catalogs
By releasing this full version, Alfred Faust wants to consciously distinguish from other development lines "whose programmers", as he wrote, "use my source code, but don't mention me as the main developer of BarsnPipes (not Bars&Pipes Professional 2.5). This is not a good style and also violates the copyrights." (dr)
[News message: 17. Jun. 2021, 06:14] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
16.Jun.2021
AmigaLove (ANF)
|
Mod-Player: HippoPlayer 2.46beta
After 21 years today Kari-Pekka Koljonen has released an update of his MOD player HippoPlayer on Github. He wrote:
"There was an actual user request (by daxb) in the English Amiga Board a few years back to remove the module list size restriction. This turned out to be a fun challenge. The code assumed the module list index to be a positive 16-bit number, and also used the same index with some magic values to mean a few things. There were a lot of places to change to make this work. The restriction is now at 0x1ffff (131071), which is a crazy amount.
Such a large list eats a lot of memory and is quite slow to process, as it is a doubly linked list. List iteration operations needed some optimization to be usable on an A500. (Next challenge: get rid of the linked list approach.) Random play bookkeeping previously worked only for lists of up to 8192 (0x1fff) modules, this limit is now removed as well.
I decided to challenge myself with some UI changes. The main window buttons are quite cryptic with both left and right mouse button actions, which I have conveniently forgot about. I implemented a modern feeling tooltip which will pop up a helpful text for each button. Maybe this is a first tooltip on kick1.3?
Right clicks on the buttons don't really work like left clicks. I don't know why the past-me left them like that, they're ugly and non-user friendly that way. I changed the buttons to have a proper visualization for right clicks as well.
I also added a few wait pointers to places with long running operations.
Another thing that motivated me to do some hippo coding was the realization that the multitasking approaches used in HiP are bad. At the time I had no idea about thread safe programming. This could lead to some random crashes at times due to bad luck with timing.
Exec provides semaphores to protect shared data, so these were added to a lot of places. Some safety regarging interrupts relying on some data was also added. External applications using the HippoPort still use all data freely.
Fixes:
- Extraneous requester pop up removed when loading TFMX modules.
- Fixed a case where unpacked modules were not identified as modules, or a non-module file was identified as a valid module (due to badly initialized memory).
- A memory leak removed from the file requester.
- Memory usage is lowered in several situations:
- Random play bookkeeping now uses a dynamically allocated table.
- Each modulelist entry is now about 30 bytes smaller, for 1000 modules that means memory savings of about 30 kB! :-)
- Unnecessary library loading removed from startup. This also speeds up starting on slow machines.
- Improved stability
- Starting and stopping playback and loading modules like a crazy person is now not so prone to crashing. This is achieved by adding exclusive access checks to module data and module list in several places (see above).
- Other general bad behaviour removed from many places, not directly visible to user.
- May survive low memory situations better when loading module programs or adding files.
- A bunch of smaller fixes, such as enforcer hit removals at a few places.
- Code refactoring! It's still quite a mess in many places."
The latest beta version can be downloaded from releases. After unpacking the archive, in the folder "dist" the new version is available and can be copied over the existing installation. 'HippoPlayer.group' has to be copied to 'S'. (dr)
[News message: 16. Jun. 2021, 07:16] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
15.Jun.2021
Aminet
|
Screen capture: SnapIT for MorphOS 2.x, AROS and AmigaOS 4.1
After more than four years, Stefan Blixth (OnyxSoft) has updated his tool for taking screenshots to version 1.5 (message about version 1.4).
Changes in version 1.5:
- Removed a bug that could be triggered when closing the program.
- Removed a bug that could be triggered lockups when user had multiple screens open.
- Added variable templates for the use of name on Screen / Window in the parser.
- Added variable templates for date (year and month) and time (hour, minutes and seconds) in parser.
- Added "USEALPHA" TOOLTYPE for MorphOS systems.
- Removed the "bubble help" temporary on OS4 binaries since it could cause a lockup on the system.
- Added support to be able to fetch ancient GIMMEZEROZERO windows =) (ex.ZoneXplorer)
(dr) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 15. Jun. 2021, 14:46] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
15.Jun.2021
|
CS-Lab: Test of new firmware 1.10 for Warp1260
According to Greg Donner on his unofficial Warp 3060/4060 page, the YouTube channel Amiga Tests has tested the latest firmware 1.10 of the Warp 1260 for the Amiga 1200 and a video published.
Compared to the previous version 1.08, these are the changes:
- MicroSD can be formatted as FFS, PFS3 and others.
- Amiga can boot from microSD.
- Transfer speeds up to 20 MB/s!
- Very low CPU usage [~3-9%] while accessing the microSD.
- 224 MB Fast RAM!
- MicroSD is PCMCIA-friendly.
- Combination of microSD and Warp IDE CF, or microSD and Amiga internal IDE can be used simultaneously.
According to 'JakubH' in the Polish forum ppa.pl the firmware will be made available during the next weeks. (dr)
[News message: 15. Jun. 2021, 06:07] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
