amiga-news.de - Advent Calendar: Door 10

10.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 10 - Edgar Schwan
We start the weekend with the tenth door and Edgar Schwan.

Edgar has been developing his Unix environment for AmigaOS 4, called AmiCygnix (current version 1.6), tirelessly and with great dedication for many years: it is not an emulation, but all programs are compiled natively for AmigaOS 4. He started with this in 2006 with a pre-release version of X-Window, before the environment still called Cygnix followed a little later. With version 1.0 he renamed it AmiCygnix, as it was no longer compatible with its predecessors.

For his environment, he has not only ported numerous games, but also applications such as the mail client Sylpheed with very good IMAP4 support, the spreadsheet Gnumeric but above all the word processor AbiWord.

Besides, he has released native versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP.

In today's Advent calendar door, the developer describes his chequered history of hardware conquests and why and how he started programming:

"Actually, it was simply the fascination of being able to do something on the computer with a few commands or to create a usable programme. My programming career began with the C64. I still have my first book on it: "Programmieren in Maschinensprache mit dem Commodore-64" (publisher "Hofacker"). It was in the shop where I bought my C64. And yes - it had to be directly assembler! The whole thing was like cracking a puzzle. ;).

Even then, I was more concerned with user software. Among other things, I wrote a font editor and a programme for translating machine code into an executable programme. The highlight was a game called "Pailgame", which was voted programme of the month in the magazine "64er". I got 3000 DM for it - those were the days :) But Pailgame is the only programme I published. The idea for the game probably came to me at a meeting with like-minded people.

I don't remember exactly what I did with the money. I think I saved it and then invested it in my first Amiga, an Amiga 1000. It must have been around 1989. I bought it second-hand from a priest and it replaced my C64. I wasn't happy with it for long. There was simply too little you could do with it. After the A1000, there was an A2000 (bought second-hand again), which I could then really upgrade: A2630 Turbo, A2320 Flickerfixer, A2286 BridgeBoard, Multiface IO and whatnot. The A1000 then went to a friend. After Commodore went bankrupt, I got one of the last A4000Ds. Directly with a WarpEngine 040/33 with full memory expansion. For that, the Amiga 2000 was given away. Later I bought a CyberstormPPC 604e/233. At some point, I bought an A4000T (Escom) screwed together from leftover stock and bought it. That was real high-end :).

Unfortunately, I was still not happy with the performance. When the first AmigaOne-XE boards became available, I bought them straight away. That was a really fine thing. With this computer, I really started programming. The SDK for OS4 with gcc compiler was a bit different from the StormC I had used last time. Unfortunately the board did not last 2 years (not repairable) and thanks to Vesalia I got a SAM-440-Flex. With this computer I started using AmiCygnix. You can always use performance when compiling, so at some point it had to be a SAM-460ex and for a few years now an AmigaOne X5000.

The A4000T and the CyberStormPPC were sold at some point. Everything has to be paid for... I still have the A4000D today and it was also recapped. I hardly use it any more, but I still have my heart set on it. I also still have the SAM-440-Flex and the SAM-460ex as reserve systems.

As you can see: I'm very attached to the Amiga :)"

If you would like to try out Edgar's C64 game "Pailgame", the developer has kindly made the game available to us. If you do not have the original hardware, you can use a C64 emulator such as "Vice" or "Frodo".

Download: PAILGAME.D64.zip (7 KB). (dr)

[News message: 10. Dec. 2022, 06:17] [Comments: 0]
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