amiga-news.de - Archive

Archive 02/2022

10.Feb.2022 Connector board for FPGA Amiga clone: MiSTress 1200
After a currently sold out version for the installation of the FPGA Amiga clone MiSTer into an Amiga 500 case, there is now with the MiSTress 1200 under the title link also a corresponding extension for the case of the Amiga 1200 (original or replica).

The MiSTress is used to install the FPGA computer into the Amiga case, whereby the original keyboard can still be used. The rear openings for the original connections are used to make the sockets for the network, USB, SD card, joystick, audio, HDMI and analog VGA/RGB connections, among others, accessible. (snx)

[News message: 10. Feb. 2022, 20:24] [Comments: 0]
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10.Feb.2022 AROS distribution: The 100% Useless AROS Distribution 0.3
Marcus 'ALB42' Sackrow has released version 0.3 of his "The 100% Useless AROS Distribution" at the title link. The reason for this is the version AROS ABIv11 for 64-bit Intel and AMD processors released by the developer 'deadwood' at the beginning of January (official GitHub page).

This new AROS version doesn't support symmetric multiprocessing anymore, which makes the compilation of his programs easier. Included are some of his programs like MUIMapparium, LEU, AYA, AmiTube or MCAmiga. The distribution serves the developer primarily as a test environment for his FreePascal AROS64 development, which is why it can neither be called finished nor stable. However, the applications work "reasonably well", only with the calculation of the font size there would be problems.

This new version can be downloaded from the corresponding website. (dr)

[News message: 10. Feb. 2022, 19:06] [Comments: 0]
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10.Feb.2022 Video: Installation of AmiKit XE under Windows 11
Appropriate to yesterday's release of AmiKit 11.5+ Jörg "Torque" Klopsch shows in a video how to install the new version under Windows 11 and using WinUAE. (dr)

[News message: 10. Feb. 2022, 09:43] [Comments: 0]
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09.Feb.2022
Twitter

Workbench distribution: AmiKit XE 11.5+ for Windows/Mac/Linux
For the workbench distribution AmiKit, which is intended for emulators, an update to version 11.5 (followed by a live update to version 11.6) has been released. In addition to an emulator, AmigaOS 3.x and the Kickstart ROMs are required. Users who purchased AmiKit XE last year or this year will get the update for free. Those who purchased AmiKit XE in 2019/2020 will need a subscription to the existing AmiKit 11.4.3 to upgrade to the new version 11.5 and above.

The most important changes:

New software, games, updates, features and design too
AmiKit is now in FullHD with enhanced dark look & feel
It's 64bit ready now, also faster and less CPU demanding
All AmiStart menus have been refreshed with nicer and bigger icons
New state-of-the-art installation of AmigaOS - just click 'n g
New MorpheuZ provides better design and functionality
Enhanced Startup-Sequence including Startup-Scripts for better stability
Newer emulation engine (WinUAE) now provides faster and even more precise job

(dr)

[News message: 09. Feb. 2022, 21:43] [Comments: 0]
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09.Feb.2022

RTG driver: P96 V3.2.3 released
At the beginning of January, Individual Computers had updated its graphics card driver P96 to version 3.2.2. Not on the official homepage, but in the support forum, Jens Schönfeld announced that he had uploaded version 3.2.3 with the following changes:

P96 no longer attempts to set the beamcon0 register and the vtotal register of the custom chips in case the active video mode is on an RTG board that is not in the display chain.
Even though bitmaps were locked, memory management could have migrated them off the board if memory was getting tight. This may have caused quite some issues on "close-to-zero" memory situations.
As BlitMaskBitMap was potentially allocating memory for the mask buffer, it could have migrated the bitmaps it was actually supposed to render, causing all kinds of havocs. To avoid this problem, source and target bitmap for a two-bitmap operation are now locked on the board. This is actually a very old bug that goes back to the 2.x release cycle.
A possible memory inconsistency in P96Mode was fixed where an incorrect memory pointer was released.
The Altais and RetinaBLT drivers did not record the state of the monitor switch correctly. As a result of this defect, the SetDPMS() function to enable power saving may have failed, keeping the monitor on all the time.
The rtg.library may have attempted to switch of the Altais display on a Draco system without ever turning it on again.
Fixed a very old bug on adjusting the line pattern shift upon drawing into multiple cliprects. This bug was apparently introduced while merging my own P96 version with the last official version by the authors. This bug could have introduced artefacts when drawing "marquee" effects for selecting multiple files in alternative file managers.
When switching buffers on a double-buffered screens, P96 forcibly reloaded the sprite image, which caused flicker on some RTG boards. This version now avoids reloading the sprite unless absolutely necessary.

(dr)

[News message: 09. Feb. 2022, 06:59] [Comments: 0]
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09.Feb.2022
Michael Rupp (Mail)

Controlling Sonos speakers: SonosController 1.2 (OS3/4, MorphOS)
Well-known for his workbench simulation TAWS, Michael Rupp had released his first Amiga program at the beginning of August, which is used to control Sonos speakers: SonosController (amiga-news.de reported). After a first update, he has released version 1.2 today for his program written in the Hollywood programming language, which is again available for MorphOS and AmigaOS 3 and 4 (screenshots in that order):

Highlights of the new version are room grouping functionality, better handling when Sonos devices are switched on or off and localization including German, Italian and Dutch translation. Michael Rupp was able to intensively test and use the updated RapaGUI plugin during the development of the new version. Regardless of the availability of a Sonos speaker, the author is happy if users basically test the program on the different platforms and give him feedback.

Detailed changelog:

NEW: support for grouping and ungrouping devices. When grouped, volume and muting can either be set for the whole group or for each device individually.
NEW: support for devices that suddenly appear or disappear from the Sonos system, for example when turned on or off.
NEW: timeout for devices to respond can be configured in the Preferences. On slower Amigas it might be necessary to increase the timeout (default is 5s).
NEW: implemented localization
NEW: german catalog: feel free to use it as a template to create catalog files for other languages. Check out the following link for info on how to do it: https://hollywood-mal.com/docs/html/hollywood/CatalogFormatNote.html
NEW: italian catalog by Samir Hawamdeh. Thanks for this!
NEW: dutch catalog by Dave "Skateman" Koelman. Thanks for this, too!
NEW: if no devices can be found by the network scan, it's now enough to add just one single device by its IP address. This one will then be queried to return all the others.
NEW: added a "Cancel" button to the requester that pops up if the network scan couldn't find anything (requested by Steve Harrison).
NEW: added a version check of reqtools.library where needed (on AmigaOS 3.x and MorphOS) when adding devices manually and letting the user know, if the version installed is not sufficient (v39 or higher is needed). After confirming with "OK", the URL of the download page on Aminet is automatically opened.
NEW: displaying the loading's progress when browsing the music library incl. the possibility to cancel it by pressing the [<] button.
NEW: button "Clear Queue" is disabled for an empty queue.
IMPROVED: quicker network scan because now it's enough to find one single device to connect to.
CHANGED: for the non-AmigaOS 3.x versions the shortcuts for "Next" / "Previous" are changed from Alt-LEFT/RIGHT back to Ctrl-LEFT/RIGHT (as it was in v1.0), because only on an Amiga keyboard the Alt key is the closest qualifier key to the cursor keys, but on keyboards used on NG-Amigas it's usually the Ctrl key.
FIXED: nasty networking bug that caused SonosController to freeze after a while, especially on AmigaOS 3.x.
FIXED: possible crash when searching something without results, searching some more and going back again.
FIXED: switching between "Pause" and "Play" sometimes made the button move a pixel.
FIXED: as long a no Sonos devices are found, all controls are now disabled by default, avoiding possible crashes.
FIXED: Control menu items are now disabled according to the corresponding buttons.
FIXED: suppressing shortcuts for "Next" and "Previous" while the search field is focused, because Ctrl/Alt-Left/Right is used to navigate inside the textentry.
FIXED: MUI 5 column widths in the Music Library browser listview.
FIXED: display of room's names with MUI 4.0
FIXED: replaced calls to "OpenURL" with "URLOpen" in the AmigaGuide for AmigaOS 4.x.

(dr)

[News message: 09. Feb. 2022, 06:44] [Comments: 0]
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08.Feb.2022 Shooter: Playable demo version of 'Cyberpunk Alien City'
Cyberpunk Alien City (video) is a mixture of Run'n Gun and Space Invaders: The player has to defend a city against attacking aliens. Various weapon systems, horizontal scrolling (dual playfield with four bitplanes each) and 50 frames per second are offered. The game runs on any Amiga with two megabytes of RAM, an A1200 with some Fast RAM is recommended. (cg)

[News message: 08. Feb. 2022, 16:47] [Comments: 0]
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