• Ghouls n Ghosts (redubbed)
• The Amiga Never Dies (Entity Remix)

• supports run ahead, which is an effective technique to reduce input lag. run ahead is an emulation technique that essentially pre-computes the emulation a few frames ahead. When the user makes an input, the emulation can immediately respond by adjusting the pre-computed frames accordingly, thus reducing the perceived input delay.
• For a smoother video output, consider enabling the new vSync option. vSync synchronizes the emulation with your display’s refresh rate, resulting in smoother visuals by adjusting the Amiga's emulation speed to match the monitor’s refresh rate. When selected a new speed icon appears next to the fast forward symbol, functioning as both a speed indicator and a button to go back to the original refresh rate of an Amiga.
• Slow motion gaming. The new speed setting also offers speeds below 100%. They are ideal to kick in a slow motion effect on fast paced games. From now on no AI enemy can beat your hero when playing at 50% the speed ;-). matrix effect.
• for wider screens the activity monitor switch has been added to the top icon bar
• vAmigaWeb is now based on the latest vAmigaCore v3.0
• a new css grid based navbar has been implemented. It offers a much better responsive behaviour compared to the old one.

My Experiences with the Amiga A1222+

Introduction

In this article, I share some of my general experiences of building and using the Amiga A1222+ computer. With the official pre-built systems lacking an optical drive, I opted to purchase just the motherboard and assemble the system myself. For me, the process of selecting components and putting everything together is half the fun!

AmigaOS 4.1 Installation

I started by building the system to a point where I could begin installing AmigaOS 4.1. It was here that I encountered my first issue, and I confess that I must take full responsibility for this one. The AmigaOS 4.1 installer comes on a recovery USB drive. I must have missed a step as the installer started overwriting files on the USB drive leading to corruption and preventing me from fully installing the OS. Fortunately, I had created an image of the recovery USB drive beforehand allowing me to restore it to its original state.

The next issue I faced was that the system would not boot from the USB drive. The A1222+ must be a bit fussy about which USB port is used for boot devices as switching to a different port resolved the issue and I was able to install the OS without any further hitches.

Screen Modes

My main monitor has a resolution of 3440 x 1440. I have had issues with some other systems not being able to handle this resolution, and I am happy to report that the A1222+ booted to Workbench using the monitor’s native resolution automatically with no problems. However, I did notice that the Workbench’s screen preferences tool did not automatically recognise all available screen modes (e.g. 1920 x 1080). I suspect this may be an issue with my monitor not communicating these options with the A1222+. I can manually configure the other screen modes, but I have not been able to successfully configure the monitor’s native resolution manually.

Optical Drive SATA Issue

While building my A1222+ system, I connected a DVD drive to one of the onboard SATA ports. Initially, this seemed to work fine, but I soon experienced frequent disconnections of the DVD drive during copy operations, leading to a dreaded Grim Reaper error from the “Mounter Task.”

After discussing the issue on one of the Amiga forums, I learned that early versions of the SATA driver did not support removable media, and this limitation still appears to exist. To remedy the situation, I purchased a USB to SATA adapter which allowed me to connect the DVD drive via USB. Since doing this, I have not encountered any further issues with the DVD drive.

Lack of HDMI Audio Output

Currently, the A1222+ does not support audio output via HDMI. While this may not be a problem for most users, it posed a challenge for me since my soundbar lacks a 3.5mm audio jack and only supports optical, HDMI or Bluetooth connections. I experimented with several HDMI audio inserter devices (example in the photo below) to find one compatible with my setup. Some devices did not support my monitor’s resolution, and in one case, did not output a compatible audio stream for my soundbar; however, I eventually found a working solution.

USB Ports Underpowered

The USB ports on the A1222+ are somewhat underpowered. They work fine for low-power devices like USB drives, but even the most energy-efficient USB optical drive I found failed to operate reliably, with AmigaOS indicating that too much power was being drawn. The system also struggled with my keyboard, which admittedly falls into the higher-powered category as it has a lot of smart features and lighting. I resolved these power issues by installing a powered internal USB hub connected to a SATA power connector, as shown in the image below. An added benefit of using this type of hub is that it provides additional USB ports.

A1222+ Freezes During Copy Operations

I occasionally experienced freezes when copying files using Workbench, although copying files using the Shell worked fine. Copying more than the RAM: drive could handle would also cause the system to freeze. After discussing this on an Amiga forum, I learned that there is a bug with ASyncWB. Disabling the ExtMem feature with the command "SYS:Kickstart/ram-handler.kmod ExtMem=NO" provided a workaround and I have not had this issue since.

Enhancer Software Issues

I encountered problems with the Enhancer version of the sound preferences tool. For some reason, the gain setting goes astronomically high, as shown in the image below. Before I had the system hooked up to my soundbar, I was using headphones – and that was a painful moment for my ears when the sound came through!

I also experienced another issue with the sound where I think, as part of the adaptive volume settings, it would set the DAC mixer level to minimum, resulting in the sound no longer being audible. Restoring the original version of the sound preferences tool supplied with AmigaOS 4.1 resolved these issues.

Similarly, I found that the Enhancer version of the time preferences tool causes issues, particularly with daylight saving adjustments. Again, reverting to version supplied with AmigaOS 4.1 fixed these problems.

Updater and AMIStore Issues

Not to be confused with the AmiUpdate tool, I found that A-EON’s Updater has some issues. When I originally built my A1222+ system, I was unable to download some of the updates, but this issue appears to have partly sorted itself recently. There also appears to be some confusion with version numbers, as shown in the image below, which indicates the latest version as being 2.2, while the downloaded version is incorrectly reported as 7.3c.

I also discovered that some updates I was able to download, such as AmiPDF, are incompatible with the A1222+, so I had to revert to the originally installed versions. Similarly to the Updater tool, AMIStore also has issues with some of the reported version numbers being incorrect, as shown in the image below.

Software

Odyssey is a very good web browser that has a high compatibility with many modern websites, even to the point of being able to watch YouTube videos. My main gripes with it, however, are the time it takes to start the application as it spends a long time loading the fonts. Additionally, if I click on something that wants to open a webpage, it opens another instance of the browser, again taking a long time to load up.

CubicIDE was my main C programming IDE and text editor when I had my first AmigaOS 4 system. Sadly, I have been unsuccessful getting this to work with the A1222+. For my C programming needs, CodeBench has been a top-notch replacement.

Other Things

I believe this is already a known problem which also affects some of the other AmigaOS 4 systems – pressing CTRL-AMIGA-AMIGA to reset the system does not work very well as the computer will just boot with a blank screen. CTRL-ALT-ALT will work though.

I find that there is a bit of a lag when keypresses are registered by the system. This results in some characters being missed when I’m typing at my normal speed, which has led to some frustration.

The mouse I use has a left/right scroll-wheel in addition to the up/down one. It’s a minor inconvenience, but the system does not appear to recognise this.

I quite like the default A1222+ wallpaper and it would have been nice if it came in other resolutions or aspect ratios.

Final Words

In my usage of the A1222+, I have tended to stick with what I mainly bought it for, so I have perhaps not been as adventurous as some others in trying out everything that it has to offer.

The more minor issues that I have come across I have left in the hope that things will improve with future software updates. Other issues I have found that the Amiga forums are invaluable for advice on how to resolve them.

Despite its shortfalls, I am very pleased with the A1222+. There are niggles with software compatibility and software bugs, but I am hopeful that these will eventually be addressed over time.

• Redefined GUI to single screen layout
• Added configurable result limit in settings
• Improved save settings functionality
• Enhanced GUI highlighting and visibility
• Improved REXX communications
• Added German translation (Thomas Blatt)
• Added Polish translation
• Added Amigaguide doc

• the PCI config area parser skipped over Type 1 PCI headers and hence could have never supported bridges
• the library now only enables the IO and Memory BARs after the final BAR configuration has been written, hopefully avoiding trouble for devices that react strange if BARs contain invalid values.

• Preferences are now parsed before BAR registers are sized. This has the effect that the IGNORE command for BARs will also prevent that the ignored BARs are even written to.
• Matching a PCI by class code in PCI-configuration could have trashed memory.
• The SetInterrupt command in PCI-Configuration failed to reroute interrupts and thus was mostly useless.
• SetInterrupt and SetPri may have failed to configure PCI devices correctly on the A1200 mediator.
• In PCI-Configuration, the device function is now separated by a dot from the device ID to mirror the syntax of lspci.
• Added a new SLOT keyword to most commands for PCI-Configuration to identify a device by its bus number, slot number and (optionally) function number.

• Allow loading bigger AROS 64-bit binaries (deadwood)
• Expose bsdsocket.library to AROS 64-bit binaries (deadwood)
• Synchronize current time with host (deadwood)
• Introduced support for running under WSL2 (deadwood)
• Implement clipboard synchronization between AxRuntime ad Linux/Windows hosts (deadwood)
• Have SYS: assign under user home and editable (deadwood)
• Support allocating MEMF_EXECUTABLE memory (deadwood)

• bsdsocket.library (bugs: missing timeout support in WaitSelect) (deadwood)
• exec.library (bugs: 32-bit memory allocations not supported) (deadwood)
• exec.library (bugs: NewStackSwap not implemented) (deadwood)

• exec.library (initialize spinlocks in MsgPorts created on client side) (deadwood)
• bsdsocket.library (report EPIPE error in send instead of crashing via SIGPIPE signal) (deadwood)

• BoingIconBar closes with CTRL-C (Mazze)
• Simplify adding tethering in Prefs/Network (#115) (deadwood)
• Speed up boot using ahci.device (deadwood)
• Delete files with DEL key in Wanderer (#116) (deadwood)
• Offline wolumes showing correct icons in Wanderer (Kalamatee)
• Improvements to identification of filesystems in icon.library (Kalamatee)
• Added name pattern matching to Break command (Mazze)
• Initial work on supporting RISC-V architecture (Kalamatee)
• Further work in InstallAROS to support EFI booting (Kalamatee)
• Implemented processing ARexx commands in Zune (deadwood)
• Updated to new pthread library from BSzili (deadwood)

• AROS build system (deadwood, Kalamatee, Johan G)
• Kernel (Kalamatee)
• Documentation (Mazze)
• Prefs/Boot v1.4 (deadwood)
• Italian and Polish translations (AMIGASYSTEM, retrofaza)
• Use standard C library function names in SDK (deadwood)
• Decoration v1.10 (deadwood)
• grub 2.06 (Kalamatee)
• nvme.device v0.77 (Kalamatee)
• Assign v50.13 (Kalamatee)
• icon.library v44.8 (Kalamatee)
• acpica v20230331 / acpica.library v1.9 (Kalamatee)
• cunit 3.2.7 (Kalamatee)
• boost preprocessor 1.82.0 (Kalamatee)
• Swedish, USA keymaps (Johan G)

• Title.mui (bugs: wrong size of storage variable) (deadwood)
• 64-bit compliant implementation of random() function (deadwood)
• Listtree.mcc (bugs: wrong literals in 64-bit mode) (deadwood)
• 64-bit fixes in AHI (Kalamatee)
• sfs-handler (fix ExAll() for 64-bit) (Kalamatee)
• crt.library (bugs: wrong stack alignment in vfork()) (Johan G)
• pipe-handler (bugs: wrong size of storage variable) (deadwood)

• cdrom-handler (make it work under AmigaOS) (Stefan Reinauer)

• AboutWindow.mcc (bugs: closing window does not work) (deadwood)
• InstallAROS (bugs: Windows entry not added to grub) (deadwood)
• Prefs/Pointer (regression fix) (deadwood)
• Italian keymap (deadwood)
• fat-handler (bugs: #107) (deadwood)
• sfs-handler (bugs: #100) (deadwood)
• workbench.library (bugs: #64) (deadwood)
• pciusb.device (bugs: #111) (deadwood)
• String.mui (bugs: #104) (deadwood)
• Wanderer (bugs: #107, #105, #125, #140, #25, #26) (deadwood)
• emul-handler (bugs: wrong errno translation, #107, #134) (deadwood)
• diskimage.device (update to use new C library) (deadwood)
• FTManager (bugs: assign value localized) (retrofaza)
• stdlib.library (bugs: wrong support for '*' in sscanf) (deadwood)
• camd.library, camdusbmidi.class (hitchhikr)
• drom-handler (Stefan Reinauer)
• dos.library (#128) (deadwood)
• ram-handler (bugs: #134) (deadwood)
• ahci.device (bugs: #135, #108) (deadwood)
• exec.library (bugs: pools grow not using pool requirements) (deadwood)
• rtl8139.device (bugs: no support for wrapped buffer) (stegerg)
• e1000.device (optimize performance) (Kalamatee)
• crt.library (bugs: wrong setbuf(), setvbuf() behavior) (Kalamatee)
• i8042.hidd (use ACPI to detect ps/2 devices) (Kalamatee)
• exec.library (correction to Cause()) (Kalamatee)
• serial.hidd (bugs: interrupt handlers not removed when unit disposed) (Kalamatee)
• crt.library (implement asprintf() and vasprintf()) (Kalamatee)
• crt.library (bugs: calling atexit in CTOR set crashes program, fields not zeroed in stat()) (deadwood)
• Status (bugs: COMMAND parameter is case sensitive) (Mazze)
• locale.library (bugs: wrong behavior in OpenCatalog()) (Kalamatee)
• muimaster.library (bugs: wrong rendering of disabled object with children) (Kalamatee)
• afs-handler (bugs: OpenFromLock() returns NULL on success) (Jason S. McMullan)
• List.mui (bugs: memory leak) (deadwood)
• crt.library (bugs: multithreaded opening fds not safe) (deadwood)
• IconList.mui (bugs: #144) (deadwood)
• Prefs/Wanderer (retrofaza)
• mathieeedoubbas.library (bugs: wrong calculations in IEEEDPMul()) (Johan G)
• stdlib.library (bugs: some fields left uninitialized in gmtime_r) (deadwood)
• timer.device (bugs: #157) (deadwood)

• Imageadjust.mui (arkade, Kalamatee)
• AboutWindow.mcc (bugs: memory trashing) (deadwood)
• KeyShow (bugs: memory trashing) (deadwood, Mazze)
• Aream.mui (bugs: reading random memory for frames) (deadwood)
• crt.library (bugs: crash in free()) (deadwood)
• debug.library (bugs: buffer overrun) (deadwood)
• pcnet32.device (bugs: #138) (deadwood)
• alsa.audio (bugs: crash on Ubuntu 24.04) (deadwood)

• Extended uaelib to provide info about available midi devices and allow setting currently active midi input and output devices.
• Merge with latest amiberry-lite github 5.7.5

• BrlTTY was installed by default on earlier image versions, this caused a conflict with Drawbridge USB as it "stole" the USB serial device from the DrawBridge drivers! This update will do a one time purge of brltty where installed. This had the strange effect of the first floppy drawbridge connected not working but the next one attached would work as if it were the only one attached. Later images are not affected.
• Added support in the GUI for Competition Pro joysticks. Also add support for 8BitDo Zero 2 Bluetooth controllers. Widen the pattern used for testing input devices for joystickness so that more (hopefully all) gamepads should now be recognised as such.
• If the bluetooth system was disabled then dbus messages sent to it to scan for attached or paired devices etc would trigger an Abort() in the libdus library rather than return the usual error message, unfortunately then causing the main GUI to Abort() to black screen. Added additional tests at all levels to prevent DBUS message being sent to BlueZ when not extant. This solves the main and up till now mysterious causes of the black screen after boot issue!

• Added a menu item to allow selecting the desired input and output A600GS MIDI devices

• $TotalChipRam - Total amount of Chip RAM installed in KB
• $TotalFastRam - Total amount of real Fast RAM installed in KB
• $TotalSlowRam - Total amount of Slow RAM installed in KB
• $SlowRamFirst - indicates that slow ram is first in memory list

• Fixed critical bug for Kickstart 1.3 and 1.2
• added probevar utility to test for the existence of environment variables
• Added compile support for PhxAsm and asmotor

• Fixed the issue with proper detection of Workbench windows (desktop and directory windows) that occurred on certain configurations.
• Improved compatibility with OS 3.1.4.