12.Jul.2003
Martin Heine (ANF)
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AmiWest: Bill Buck banquet-speaker / MorphOS 1.4 / Super bundle from the weekend
On the AmiWest which will take place on
26th and 27th July 2003 in Sacramento (USA) there will be several speakers at the
banquet. One of them will be Bill Buck of Genesi.
Furthermore Kermit Woodall of Nova Design,
Kurt Grach of Mr. Hardware and
Jens Schönfeld of individual Computers will be
present.
In a comment
on MorphOS-News.de Raquel Velasco and Bill Buck confirm that there will be a
new version 1.4 of MorphOS.
Together with it the "superbundle" of several software titles will be available for all
Pegasos owners (inclusive "Phreeboard" owners) on the Genesi FTP server.
On the AmiWest Genesi will be presented by Raquel Velasco, Bill Buck and the whole
Genesi USA-team. The Pegasos I with 1 GHz-G4-processor will be performed as well
as the plans for the Pegasos II and for the superbundle are supposed to be
explained.
(ps) (Translation: dr)
[News message: 12. Jul. 2003, 16:54] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jul.2003
Rombald (ANF)
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Relaunch of Commodore by Tulip Computers N.V. and Ironstone Partners LIM
On 11th July 2003 Tulip Computers NV (Tulip) and Ironstone Partners Ltd. (Ironstone)
have signed an agreement which is supposed to be seen as an important step for the
worldwide relaunch of the name Commodore.
(nba) (Translation: dr)
[News message: 12. Jul. 2003, 10:30] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jul.2003
Oliver Roberts (E-Mail)
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Warp Datatypes V45.3 published
Oliver Roberts has published version 45.3 of his WarpDT which contains updates of all
five Warp-datatype. Here the detailed changes:
- Fixed a problem reading the prefs file from disks using FFS.
- Fixed another bug which caused bogus evaluation period warnings.
- Tweaked installer so that it checks for picture.datatype in MOSSYS:
as well as SYS: when run under MorphOS.
(nba) (Translation: dr)
[News message: 11. Jul. 2003, 18:13] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jul.2003
Mariusz Wloczysiak (E-Mail)
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Elbox: Lightweight Busboard: Mediator PCI 1200 LT
Elbox Computer, the leading manufacturer of hardware for Amiga
computers, the company that introduced the PCI standard to Amiga
computers, is proud to announce expansion of the MEDIATOR busboard
product line with the new Mediator model for Amiga 1200 computers:
the Mediator PCI 1200 LT.
This product is dedicated to all Amiga 1200 users, who have not
expanded their computers with a multi-slot PCI busboard as yet.
We know that many of you need only a fast, modern graphic card and
a good sound card. This new, 2-slot model of Mediator is
specifically dedicated to meet these needs.
Mediator PCI 1200 LT opens the possibility of using the best
available graphic cards for Amiga: the Voodoo series;
and the highest-quality Terratec 512i Digital sound card.
The second slot may obviously be used for other purposes. You
can install a Spider USB 2.0 controller, a 10Mbps Ethernet card,
a 100Mbps FastEthernet card or a TV tuner card in it. The choice
is yours.
Moreover:
If at any time you decide that you need additional PCI slots,
you can easily expand the number of active slots in this busboard
up to four. All you will need is acquiring a DIY set:
the LT4 Upgrade Pack.
Mediator is not only a well-designed, reliable hardware. Mediator
also means excellent drivers and professional support. Start
enjoying these benefits yourself.
Mediator PCI 1200 LT features:
- 2 PCI slots (PCI 2.1 compatible)
- 66/33MHz PCI clock (transfer rate up to 264MB/s)
- 32-bit PCI datapatch
- 4GB PCI memory space
- Busmastering/DMA in all slots
- Compatible with 68030/040/060 and PPC turbo cards
- Ready for SharkPPC(+) G3/G4 cards
- Fits in any A1200 in E/BOX (Power, Winner), EZ-Z4 and Infinitiv tower
Included with the Mediator PCI 1200 LT is the Mediator Multimedia
CD with drivers for Sound, TV tuner, Ethernet 10Mbps, Fast Ethernet
100Mbps and Graphic PCI cards. For the list of currently supported
PCI cards see Mediator Driver Guide.
For more info, see the
Mediator PCI 1200 LT website.
Pricing and availability
The Mediator PCI 1200 LT will be on sale beginning with 11 July 2003
at the suggested retail price of EUR139.95 (VAT excl.) only.
To locate an authorized distributor in your area or to purchase the
product online visit the Elbox Computer website.
Why Mediator?
Do you need your Amiga to display crystal-clear image up
to 2048x1536x32@75? Do you want your favourite games to run in
accelerated graphics?
Get hold of a Voodoo-family PCI graphic card and enjoy its 2D and
3D performance!
Care for superb high-quality music?
Just install the highest quality Terratec 512i Digital sound card
and enjoy crystal clear sound all around.
Do you want to use a variety of devices connected via the USB port?
Simply install the Spider USB 2.0 High-Speed PCI card into the
Mediator slot and explore the world of the newest USB devices such
as mice, keyboards, tablets, joysticks, printers, scanners, webcams,
digicams, flash card readers, zip drives, floppy disk drives,
harddisks, memory sticks, ethernet adapters and audio adapters,
GPS location devices or finger print readers!
Want fast network connections to surf the net?
Put a low-cost RTL8139 Fast Ethernet 100Mbps PCI card into the
Mediator slot and connect your computer to the network!
Do you want to watch and capture your favourite TV programmes?
With a TV tuner PCI card you can watch TV; you can also connect
a TV-SAT tuner, a camcorder or a digital camera. Although the
full TV image resolution runs at 30 fps in the PIP window on
your Workbench screen, it does not use the Amiga processor's
time at all!
MEDIATOR - The Best Way to Power-up Your Amiga.
Mariusz Wloczysiak
ELBOX COMPUTER, Press Department
contact: press@elbox.com
(ps)
[News message: 11. Jul. 2003, 14:04] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jul.2003
Christoph Gutjahr (ANF)
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Amiga Inc.: Rumours about the return of Jim Collas denied
The latest issue of UK's print magazine Total Amiga claims that there
are rumours about a new CEO at Amiga Inc. The "Buzz Word" rumour column, where an anonymous insider
reveils that latest "industry" rumours, the following statement can be found (quoted with permission):
"Buzz Word has heard that Amiga are about to get a new CEO but it won't be Garry Hare; apparently the whole
Genesi/ Garry Hare story was a setup designed to produce confusion. The new CEO is a man who will bring many
millions of investment dollars back into the company. The Man's name? Jim Collas."
Asked if this is a joke, Robert Willaims, editor of Total Amiga, assured us that he "honestly
doesn't know whether the rumour about Jim Collas is true or not".
Thus we contacted Bill McEwen, CEO of Amiga Inc. and asked for a short statement. Bill writes:
"It is just a joke, and I agree a good one. I found it to be pretty funny.
I also thought that it was funny that they stated that Garry Hare was
replaced by Jim, when I have not even been replaced yet ;-)
I am still CEO, and still enjoying the ride."
(ps)
[News message: 11. Jul. 2003, 10:58] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jul.2003
Carsten Siegner (ANF)
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DiaCD - Transfer of ARexx to Hollywood 1.5
Carsten Siegner writes:
Today I have created the first alpha version of DiaCD with Hollywood 1.5. With this, I wanted to show just how powerful Hollywood has become.
During the entry of a picture listing in the upper requester
all pictures are at once graphically shown in a picture list. One may then use the slider beneath the
picture list to scroll through all the pictures in realtime. At the same time a larger version of the currently
selected picture is shown separately in a subwindow. When you press the left mouse button and move the
cursor on the picture list, you select the first picture that you're going to work on later. Similarly, you select the final
picture with the right mouse button. These pictures are expressly scrolled through in realtime, when you move the
mouse back and forth. The picture under the cursor then appears in the selection window.
This is just a demo of the further capabilities of the program. I will then compile it for 68k and MorphOS. (ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 10. Jul. 2003, 21:39] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jul.2003
Bill Buck und Raquel Velasco (E-Mail)
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Event: Pegasos on Linux Tag 2003
All concerned: There will be a Pegasos at the Linuxtag in Karlsruhe this weekend.
Linuxtag is Europe's largest GNU/Linux exhibition. The Linuxtag is at the
Karlsruhe Convention Center from 10-13 July.
Genesi will be represented by Nicholas Blachford, whose "Analysis: x86 Vs
PPC" was featured yesterday on OSNews and Slashdot here:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3997
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/07/09/1730206.shtml?tid=137
Nicolas will be joined by Genesi's newest team member Sven Luther. Sven is
a developer known to both the MorphOS and Linux development communities.
Sven Luther's LinuxPPC kernel was recently announced on MorphOS-News here:
http://www.morphos-news.de/index.php?lg=en&nid=371&si=1
At Linuxtag, the Genesi Team and the Pegasos will be found in the Debian Booth.
The following weekend (18-20 July 2003) Sven will also be attending the
Debian Developers Conference, Oslo, Norway with the Pegasos. Details about
that conference can be found here:
http://debconf.org/debconf3/
Sven has joined Genesi to manage the LinuxPPC development effort for the
Pegasos. Sven is a PhD candidate at the University of Strausbourg and an
Associate Professor in the Computer Sciences Department. The University of
Strasburg was founded in 1621, with a long tradition of academic excellence.
Louis Pasteur, John Calvin, Marc Bloch and four Nobel Prize winners have
studied or taught there. We can now add Sven to the list...;-) Welcome
Sven! Of course, Nicholas and Sven will be able to demo MorphOS too! (ps)
[News message: 10. Jul. 2003, 21:27] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jul.2003
carls (ANF)
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Web server: gW3S v2.1 released
The easy-to-use web server gW3S has been updated to version 2.1. The new version includes bug fixes, more in-depth XGI documentation and a new version of the administration tool.
Download it for free at the gW3S web site!
The gW3S team members are proud to announce that the Technic Up site has been running gW3S since a few months back, in conjunction with MUIBase (www.muibase.de) which proves that it is indeed capable of hosting professional sites! (ps)
[News message: 10. Jul. 2003, 20:40] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jul.2003
Martin Rebentisch (DaFreak) (ANF)
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Music: Liquid Skies Records #045
The scene group Liquid Skies has released their 45th music pack today. This time a piece, "Moonlight," in the electro-pop style. The cover was provided by DaFreak.
More information about the track:
- Title: MoonLight
- Artist: Maxus
- Style: Pop
- Song-length: 4:09
- Format: mp3 (160 kbps)
The zipped data has a size of about 4.8 megabytes and is available on the homepage under the title link as a free download. Additionally, the group and their webpage have been chosen as a link tip of the month at
www.leipzig-info.net.
(ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 10. Jul. 2003, 19:47] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jul.2003
Gary7 bei Golem gefunden (ANF)
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Golem: Rambus, Toshiba and Elpida introduce XDR DRAM
»XDR DRAM runs next with 3.2 GHz, later with 6.4 GHz and higher.
Together with Toshiba and Elpida, Rambus has introduced a new generation of memory. XDR DRAM
uses the XDR memory interface (previously Yellowstone) from Rambus and runs at up to 3.2 GHz. Sony has just
licensed the new technology for use with "Cell", the basis for Sony's PlayStation 3, among others.«
Read the complete article under the title link. (ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 10. Jul. 2003, 15:40] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jul.2003
Davy Wentzler (ANF)
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Audio Evolution 4 demo released
After two years of hard work, today we present you the release of the 68k demo
of the audio harddisk recording and editing system, Audio Evolution 4! AE4 is
a major update to AE3 and will be released for OS4/PPC.
Some of the new features:
- Non-linear and non-destructive editing on the time line, including cut, copy,
paste, move, split, trim and crossfade actions
- Unlimited undo
- Many grid options to align regions
- Improved automation editing on the time line
- Record automation events during playback by mouse or MIDI remote
- Track height adjustment and higher quality waveform display
- Metronome with freely adjustable time signature
- Control the mixer and transport controls remotely with external MIDI hardware
- Native OS4 effect plug-ins with realtime parameter control, automation and metering
- New plug-ins, including a new compressor, chorus, ducking delay and sound replacer
- WAV import
- 'Repeat region' functionality with intervals
- Automatic regionize with export of timecode list to BurnIt
- ARexx interface
- Communicate and synchronize with other applications (like B&P) easily through the
Master Control Bus (OS4 only)
- Enhanced look and feel. All imagery can be changed by the user.
- Experimental Dolby Pro Logic encoder
- Brand new manual in HTML and PDF formats
- Many more smaller improvements and bug fixes
Please download and try out the demo from the title link.
Any suggestions, questions and bug reports are welcome.
Davy Wentzler
Audio Evolution (ps)
[News message: 10. Jul. 2003, 13:35] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jul.2003
Martin Heine (ANF)
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OSNews: Analysis: x86 vs. PPC (English)
On OSNews.com,
Nicholas Blachford of Genesi has written an in-depth examination of the comparative advantages and
disadvantages of the X86 and PPC processor lines. (ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 10. Jul. 2003, 10:56] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jul.2003
computerhilfen.de (ANF)
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New Help Forum for Amiga Users at Computerhilfen.de
Today the Amiga section has added a help forum as a complement to the Windows, Apple, and Linux help forums at Computerhilfen.de. As occurs in the already existing Computerhilfen.de forums, the new Amiga forum should prove to be a place for friendliness and competence.
amiga.computerhilfen.de (ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 10. Jul. 2003, 10:55] [Comments: 0]
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09.Jul.2003
Mikey_C (ANF)
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Total Amiga Issue 15 starts arriving at doors worldwide
Total Amiga Magazine now has
subscribers in 20 countries around the globe!
We are also proud to welcome Fun Time World
(Germany), to the list
of Amiga retailers stocking Total Amiga Magazine worldwide.
To accompany this issue, we have added a number of supporting downloads
for you to try on the Current Issue page of our website, from Hollywood
tutorial scripts to classic Mac links.
All this plus of course our excellent, News, Guest Columnists, Features,
Reviews and Tutorials, packed into 52 bursting pages of Amiga devotion.
Total Amiga Magazine. Does what it says on the cover!
(ps)
[News message: 09. Jul. 2003, 17:17] [Comments: 0]
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09.Jul.2003
Golem - IT News
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Golem: Napster founder changes side towards music industries
»Shawn Fanning with a new technology to discover protected music
There are at least only a few people who are made as responsible for the sales breakdown of
the music industry as Shawn Fanning is - the young American practically had initiated the era
of file sharing in a mass market meaning by developing the Napster software.
Now he is back with a new development but this time he covers the interest of the music industry.
«
Read the full article by the title link. (ps) (Translation: ub)
[News message: 09. Jul. 2003, 12:27] [Comments: 0]
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09.Jul.2003
Benelux Amiga Show (Website)
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Date for Benelux Amiga/Pegasos Show in Rotterdam is fix
This years Benelux Amiga and Pegasos Show will take place on 4th/5th October in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Exhibitors and interested can register and get more information here.
(ps) (Translation: gf)
[News message: 09. Jul. 2003, 11:50] [Comments: 0]
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08.Jul.2003
carls (ANF)
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Web Server: New gW3S Site
The Open Source, ARexx-coded web server gW3S has gotten a new home and a redesigned homepage. The new URL is http://gonzo.1av10.nu/w3s/.
Check it out, and be sure to check back for the forthcoming release of gW3S v2.1! (ps)
[News message: 08. Jul. 2003, 23:25] [Comments: 0]
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08.Jul.2003
Amiga Future (Website)
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Amiga Future: Interview with Alfred Faust (BarsnPipes)
"BarsnPipes" is not only the most famous Amiga-Midi-programm of glory days,
it is also still used from many users today because of the intuitive simple handling and professional features.
And the best: after the release of the source codes it is developed and improved constantly by Alfred Faust.
In the following interview he answered the questions from Anton Preinsack, especially about the MorphOS-version
of BarsnPipes. Please read the complete interview under the title link.
(ps) (Translation: gf)
[News message: 08. Jul. 2003, 14:35] [Comments: 0]
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08.Jul.2003
PerfectPaint (Website)
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Paint program: PerfectPaint Fix for version 2.93
A bug fix for version 2.93 of PerfectPaint from Halvadjian Georges is available. In this version a bug in the main archive has been fixed and the tool
"Border & Edge" has been updated. You had to install following version
2.93 for this fix.
Download: PfPaint_V293fix.lzx
(ps) (Translation: gf)
[News message: 08. Jul. 2003, 13:35] [Comments: 0]
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07.Jul.2003
Jens Schönfeld (ANF)
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individual Computers: Show report: AAA 2003, Commodore Billboard back online
This weekend, the Amiga Alpe Adria 2003
took place in Udine, Italy - another station of
Amiga OS4 on tour.
The show was organized by Cloanto,
well-known for a lot of Amiga programs and the emulator "Amiga Forever".
Jürgen Schober of Point Design
had to make two OS4 presentations, because the room was totally
overcrowded with more than 100 Amiga fans and journalists of daily
press and computer magazines. We also had the chance to show our
products in a 30-minute presentation. Best-seller of the present
retailers Soft 3 and
Virtual Works was the
Catweasel MK3,
that became the first choice accessory for many Amiga One owners
because of it's high degree of integration into the hard- and
software of the new Amiga.
A small Retro-computing museum right at the entrance of the showroom
brought back joyful memories in the visitors. Rare items like an SX-64
in best shape, a VIC-20 rev.1, and even a C65 prototype were shown.
One of the first multi-computer games (today's networking games) was
shown on two PET computers that were connected through the serial ports.
The home computer pioneer Altair 8800 from 1975 was the only none-Commodore
computer.
The "Video Microwave", a Pegasos-board that was built in the case
of a Sharp Microwave oven, was - at best - good for a laugh. The keyboard did
not work at all, and it only took a few mouseclicks to make the computer with
the MorphOS operating system crash. The reason for this could not be found in
the short time of the show.
Commodore Billboard back online
Our good news for the fans of Commodore nostalgia almost got lost in the
excitement surrounding Amiga OS4: The Commodore Billboard is back online!
The initiator of the project, Søren Ladegaard (Denmark) had to drop
the project due to lack of time in January 2003, and transferred the website
to individual Computers. We're now sponsoring the website that can cause a
lot of traffic with it's several hundred megabytes in size. During the past
half year, the new webmaster Stefan Zelazny has converted the audio and video
files to mpeg and mp3, so the website can be viewed on most platforms. For
example, the Realplayer is not necessary any more.
Currently, the website is available under the address
www.commodorebillboard.de.
The .com domain will be made available in the coming weeks.
If you're interested in a local copy of the website, you can support us in
paying for the high cost of the website by ordering the CD. It will be
available in August this year from all our retail partners for about 15,-
EUR. The double-CD package also contains some surprises for Commodore-fans! (ps)
[News message: 07. Jul. 2003, 22:17] [Comments: 0]
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07.Jul.2003
z5 (ANF)
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A.D.A.: First update after two-month break
After a two-month break the demo on-line collection "Amiga Demoscene
of Archives" was extended by four new productions: "Heaven is 2d" of
Whelpz, "Dark Rain" of The Loonies, "Outgrowing" of Potion and
"Xenophobia" of Subspace.
(nba) (Translation: sk)
[News message: 07. Jul. 2003, 19:03] [Comments: 0]
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07.Jul.2003
Amiga Impact (Website)
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Pictures of the Amiga OS presentation in Toulouse (Update)
Meanwhile the presentation documents are also available in Englisch.
(ps) (Translation: sk)
[News message: 07. Jul. 2003, 15:03] [Comments: 0]
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07.Jul.2003
Christian Rosentreter (ANF)
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Demonstration videos of MorphOS/Pegasos published
The videos let you see the PowerPC computer Pegasos in action, in
order to be able to get an impression of the possibilities of the
platform.
The following videos are available for the download:
(ps) (Translation: sk)
[News message: 07. Jul. 2003, 11:34] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jul.2003
Kicko (ANF)
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Music: Access Virus MIDI commands for tracks&fields 0.7
I updated my virus OS to OS6.0. So there was time to fix this package
to support new commands or new values for the old ones. This don't mean
that the package is full now as I don't know every piece they changed.
It lacks also off controlling the new function called Pure tuning.
This one is only controllable from the virus menu.
The changes:
PageA: Bankselect updated. Support for more banks overwritten the demo.
PageB: Arpegiattor. More patterns to choose from.
PageC: Partbankselect and Partbankchange for the new banks.
That's all. Why do I update this package? Because of still using T&F
until HDRec is finished. Then I will make all commands for HDRec. (nba) (Translation: cb)
[News message: 06. Jul. 2003, 18:53] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jul.2003
AmigaWorld (ANF)
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Fortnightly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss - episode 14
The English online magazine AmigaWorld has published episode 14 of the regular questions and answers session with Fleecy Moss, CTO at AMIGA, Inc. (Update 2012-03-17, cg: as the original document is no longer available, the following content was moved into our database):
1) ssolie: With the services based approach you are proposing, will an application be expected to query capabilities or will AmigaOS automatically adapt to the hardware itself or some hybrid of the two? Depending on the application, some may not appreciate having to query the OS every time they want to do something versus letting the OS adapt itself to the application and hardware environment.
Fleecy: In all multi component systems there will always be a per component capability and requirement set. Traditional static systems work on assumption which tends to give them superior performance as long as those assumptions are always true. In the world of today, we have a huge level of dynamism - smartphones, PDAs, consoles, tablets, desktops, servers, fat pipes, thin pipes, hardware acceleration, processor speed, screen size, input controls etc and you are faced with the problem of how to map these from the physical domain into the digital domain.
A service based architecture doesn't really affect this in implimentation since it is just a model. For example I could query the graphics service to find out if it supplies a vector service and if it does then I can chose to use it or not. This can be done dynamically by the application or can be done at install time, which is no different from the situation now where, if you assume that MUI is installed, and it isn't then your application won't work.
Thus you will still have different options as a developer - you can make use of services which themselves adapt on your behalf or you can do that yourselves. In either case, there is always going to be the same question, where does the responsibility lie? We want to offer choice so that the developer can make those decisions. A good example is the Ami2D scaling services of the AmigaDE. Some people use them and some people prefer to create resolution dependent graphic sets.
What is needed is a further level of abstraction, so that capabilities and requirements are managed transparently and that is coming on board now with such things as vectorisation and other descriptive formats that allow for interpretation based upon semantic information. That is something we are looking at but the more abstraction you have, the more resources are required to translate between the physical and digital domains.
Swings and roundabouts I'm afraid.
2) CodeSmith: Apple have made a big splash with their announcement of PPC970 "G5" systems. Is there going to be a "zico-2" spec for Amiga PPC970 systems, or are you giving vendors full control? any idea when we can expect PPC 970 Amigas (other than "after OS4.0")?
Fleecy: We do plan on having a 64 bit version of the AmigaOS but that is someway down the line. If a vendor approaches us with the necessary hardware then we will consider revising our timetable but we still have a lot of work to do for the 32 bit PPC AmigaOS4, such as actually releasing AmigaOS4.0. There are also a few interesting other 32 bit opportunities coming up that will have to weighed against a 64 bit desktop machine.
3) Quixote: Since AmigaOS4.0 will be on the CyberStormPPC first, I wonder whether it will include an update to the CyberStorm's FlashROM, that would permit booting from the CD? I understand that it was a feature intended for the CyberStorm, but it doesn't seem to work.
Fleecy: We do not intend to touch the CSPPC flashrom. Its internals are proprietary and besides, we are relying on it to bring the HW up first before AmigaOS4.0 takes over. Any changes we made might also damage the users ability to boot into AmigaOS3 as well.
If you have problems with the CSPPC Flashrom, perhaps an email to those who worked on it might reveal why it doesn't work or get them to add that functionality.
4) Miffy: I run AmigaDE on my desktop ( the one I am typing on now ) which has software on it that I have ported, that others have ported and the like. It runs the partypack update. What I want to know is how long before the next publically available ( non NDA ) update comes along from Amiga given I cannot get permission to enter into a new NDA with Amiga Inc right now ( because of company regulations and Im sure others are in this position too )?
Fleecy: We are reworking our NDA policy to make it consistent with industry practices for software licensing. In the meanwhile if special circumstances prevent you from agreeing to the licensing terms, you can contact us directly to determine how best we can meet your needs. Send an email to support@amiga.com.
5) Asemoon: I very much like the idea of being able to use animated GIFs as icons on the desktop with the introduction of Amiga OS3.9 and so will this feature stay available or maybe be enhanced/altered in any way for AmigaOS4? And will there be support for 24bit PNG format icons in the future?
Fleecy: The source code for that particular feature is in the hands of H&P and we do not have access to it.
The Amiga graphics architecture has reached the end of its useful life. Actually, it reached it about five years ago but has been brought back, jiggled, enhanced and hacked to stop the platform from dying. The screenshots you are seeing as part of the AmigaOS4.0 on Tour roadshow represent hopefully the last AmigaOS release that uses this architecture and their quality is a reflection of both the strength of the original architecture and the ingenuity and persistence of the developers since then who have worked on it.
As part of the Amiga Generation 2 project (AG2), we are currently working on a brand new visual domain replacement which we hope to deploy either in AmigaOS4.1 or AmigaOS4.2. This will build from the hardware upwards and be able to support high quality existing interface models as well as allow for brand new features, functionality and models. We are particularly eager to introduce the Reactive Presentation Agents (RPAs) that we developed for the AmigaDE which would provide the same functionality, and a lot more besides.
6) Asemoon: What languages will AmigaOS4 support out of the box?
Fleecy: We are supporting many languages, which are listed below, using a combination of the excellent ATO and private individuals, working in teams of two or more to produce each catalog. We do have a few offers where we just have one person (Icelandic and Malay) but we would like to have at least two people, since it is a lot of work. Anyone interested in helping out should send a mail to os4-betatest@hyperion-entertainment.com with the subject line of 'Localisation offer of help'.
Bosnian
Catalan
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
French
Galician
German
Greek
Hungarian
Italian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Serbian
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
That's 20 languages for now.
The Russian ATO team disbanded but new people will soon be joining. I think we can count them as well.
This is a list of language drivers for which there are no catalogs currently in progress.
Albanian
Belarusian
Bulgarian
Croatian
Esperanto
Estonian
Faroese
Icelandic
Irish
Latvian
Lithuanian
Maltese
Portuguese-brazil
Romanian
Slovak
Ukrainian
If you are missing a language that can be written from left to right in an ISO-8859-X charset just ask Detlef at TetiSoft@apg.lahn.de if he can create a language driver for it.
7) Asemoon: The support for non-Latin fonts like for instance Arabic/Persian and Chinese/Japanese characters were not well documented for previous AmigaOS releases. How will such characters and languages be handled by future AmigaOS and AmigaDE releases?
Fleecy: Not well documented is too optimistic :) It was documented that the Amiga character set is ECMA-94 Latin1 (thats ISO-8859-1), that the bullet.library API uses Unicode (16bit only), and it was defined a font attribute FPF_REVPATH for writing from right to left. There was no official statement from H&P how their special localizations for e.g. czech or russian would fit into this framework (in fact they did not). There was a statement that the Euro update is only an intermediate solution.
OS4 bullet API was improved and allows 32bit Unicode now, 16bit are not enough since Unicode 3.2 (current is 4.0).
OS4 diskfont.library now contains a character set database, it does know the MIME charset name of each font in the system, and the Unicode code point of each glyph. However the bitmap fonts handled by diskfont.library are still limited to 8bit charsets, so for Chinese/Japanese/Persian/Georgian etc you'll have to use bullet API. With the new diskfont API you can however ask for e.g. Times in ISO-8859-5 (cyrillic), -6 (arabic), -7 (greek), -8 (hebrew), -11 (thai) or -16 (eastern european latin with Euro) and it will create it on-the-fly from e.g. a truetype font.
With OS4 locale.library the user is able to change the current system default charset on-the-fly by selecting a different language driver. The charset of each catalog file in the system is known, there exist charset conversion functions that ensure that e.g. for polish with ISO-8859-2 system default charset any polish catalog file will be displayed correct, it does not matter if its in ISO-8859-2, -16 or in the special ATO charset used in OS3.9 polish localization. Its also possible to use catalog files in UTF-8.
Most text handling and output functions in OS4 are not able to write from right to left, so there still exist large problems with arabic/persian and hebrew, an application that reverses arabic and hebrew strings before output can at least display its GUI but for text input (cursor on the right after return) special applications would be needed.
Summary: OS3.x language support was limited to western european latin languages, OS4.0 language support is limited to latin, cyrillic and greek (thai would eventually work if someone could fit thai glyphs into topaz/8 and topaz/9 default ROM fonts). OS4.0 font support is limited to any 8bit MIME charset in diskfont API (besides the right-to-left problem) and not limited in bullet API.
8) _Steve_: Will there be support for the pre-existing PPC programs from both PUP/WOS in OS4?
Fleecy: We'll provide an application launcher that can launch WarpUp programs, maybe even PowerUp. However, we'll not include any hacks to make this work. Since there was only a small number of applications created that used these two systems, we are hopefully that their authors will upgrade their programs and release AmigaOS4.0 native versions.
9) Billsey: From past personal experience I know that there are dedicated Christians at Amiga, Inc. I have friends there, and I am not turning against them, but they are Christian, so I believe that the following question(s) must be asked. I would like to know what role that faith has played (a) in keeping the company alive; (b) in walking the path that has been walked; and (c) when specific confession and, more importantly, repentance of “mistakes made” will be observable.
Fleecy: Religion, like any other philosophy seller is an individual concern, not something that should ever be part of heterogenous system, whether a group, a company, a nation or a species. I always find it ironic that nature, the mother of us all preaches diversity and yet humans are obsessed with monotony, to the point of coercion, persecution, discrimination and destruction.
With that in mind, I cannot and will not answer your question, because such things should be on individual level interaction. In other words, if you want an answer, send the question to the individuals themselves.
10) drstrange: what form of support will OS4 take for a 250MB ZIP? Will it use harddrive-like formatting or a mountfile and if a mountfile could you show us it ahead of time to give a few of us time to prep our disks.
Fleecy: Same as OS3.9 (or 3.1): it's a removable media, 'Removable' and 'Rigid Disk Block' are mutually exclusive, you should use a mountfile.
To be able to use RDBs on removable media as well all file systems would have to support unmounting. The new FFS2 does support it, but there are file systems which don't, for example SFS.
Some 3rd party devices do allow RDBs to be used on removable media, but that's a hack, it's not possible to implement it in clean way and therefore it will not be added to AmigaOS4.0 devices.
(Copyright © 2003 Amigaworld.net. All rights reserved.
Originally available at http://amigaworld.net/modules/fleecymoss/index.php?cat_id=15
You may freely redistribute this article, providing that a URL is provided to the original source,
and the copyright notices remain intact) (nba) (Translation: cb)
[News message: 06. Jul. 2003, 18:51] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jul.2003
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Aminet Uploads up to 6th July 2003
Here are the Aminet uploads that have been added since our last announcement:
PPaintRUS.lha biz/cloan 21K+Cloanto Personal Paint 7.1c RUSSIAN KIT
PAC.lha biz/dbase 1.9M+HTML Photoalbum Creator v1.0.
CManager25.lha comm/misc 403K+Contact Manager, a centralised system-wi
sa03.lha demo/aga 350K+Invitation intro for Syndeecate Apocalyp
MBPrefs.lha dev/basic 24K+External Preferences Editor for MaxonBas
nqc.lha dev/lang 181K+Lego Mindstorms compiler and comm tool
amuidiff.lha dev/misc 117K+Displays differences of two text files i
MCC_TheBar.lha dev/mui 274K+Next generation buttons bar class
vdisk37.lha disk/misc 46K+Dynamic recoverable RAM disk (V3.7)
RealAmigaWorld.txt docs/anno 4K+New Real Amiga-Mania World IRC Channel i
NotizieAmiga.lha docs/lists 1.6M+Mailing-list NotizieAmiga 06/2003 (Itali
AmigaFuture43.lha docs/mags 804K+Great german paper mag preview
nocover112.lha docs/mags 2.6M+Great german diskmagazine
Saga.lha game/board 298K+Saga 1.27: Conversion of TSR boardgame
DC2Lvl-EMine2.lha game/data 454K+99 levels for Diamond Caves II
boulderdaesh.lha game/jump 927K+V5.21, BoulderDaesh RTX Main Archive
boulderfull.lha game/jump 4.5M+V5.21, BoulderDaesh RTX Full Archive
Arkanos.lha game/misc 416K+Break out game like ARKANOID ** V2.03 **
MALevelEditor.lha game/misc 13K+Level Editor for Mini Arcanoid v2.9
WormWars.lha game/misc 566K+Worm Wars 7.51: Advanced snake game
Hexa_Q.lha game/wb 43K+Surprise!! A peg game... updated!
S_Tiles.lha game/wb 43K+Try to solve this sliding-tile puzzle!
Tri_Q.lha game/wb 43K+A triangular shaped peg game... updated!
p-intFix.lha misc/emu 37K+Patch for P-Code interpreter
Foundation1.mpg mods/mpg 19M+First part of a three part suite
Foundation2.mpg mods/mpg 10M+Second part of a three part suite
Foundation3.mpg mods/mpg 287K+Third part of a three part suite
Prelude3.mpg mods/mpg 3.1M+Prelude3. MPEG of old tape of me on keys
SundaySuite.mpg mods/mpg 3.5M+Sunday Suite. 4 part piano suite
TheSpell.mpg mods/mpg 6.5M+The Spell MPEG of old tape of me on keys
BorderNames.lha text/dtp 2K+List Border Names Arexx Script PageStrea
nA_ConFile07.lha text/misc 100K+Compare from 2 to 5 files
Next3.6.lha text/show 150K+Viewer for text/guides/html/datatypes
SRename.lha util/cli 93K+Advanced rename utility. Version 3.7.1
DirSSCompare.lha util/dir 14K+Compares two dirs (for differences)
FolderSync.lha util/dir 73K+Synchronise two folders automagically!
ExtraLib.lha util/libs 244K+Dynamic buffers, filesystem CRCs, colorf
CHARisma.lha util/misc 115K+Get easy access to all printable chars.
FakeCD32Joypad.lha util/misc 20K+Use the keyboard instead of CD32 Joypad
ReportPlus.lha util/misc 314K+Report+ 5.67: Multipurpose utility
VisualGuide.lha util/misc 39K+Make filelist in AmigaGuide format.
winlaunch.lha util/misc 46K+WinLaunch - Launch Windows Applications
RandomWBPatt.lha util/wb 30K+Timer controled Slideshow-like random WB
(ps) (Translation: cb)
[News message: 06. Jul. 2003, 13:47] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jul.2003
Martin Rebentisch (DaFreak) (ANF)
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Music: Liquid Skies records #044
Yesterday the scene group Liquid Skies published its 44th music pack.
This time it contains a music piece called "Walking The Corridors" by the English
musician Darkus who, though not being a member of the group, still offers his
track as a guest under the label Liquid Skies.
It is a rather experimental piece of music and would probably fit best under the
category of Trance. This time the cover was created by DaFreak.
Next some more information about the track:
- Title: Walking The Corridors
- Artist: Darkus
- Style: Experimental Trance
- Playing time: 5:05
- Format: mp3 (128 kbps)
The zipped file with a size of about 4.8 MB is freely available for download on
the homepage under the title link.
(ps) (Translation: cb)
[News message: 06. Jul. 2003, 13:43] [Comments: 0]
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