17.Jun.2023
Lorence Lombardo (ANF)
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Compression of executable files: Body Guard Packer 5.6
Lorence Lombardo's "bgpk" is a 68k executable file packer which, according to the developer, makes it possible to protect programs, improve compatibility with programs intended for a Unix-like operating system, and use some of the latest compression technologies.
The program requires AmigaOS 2.x. On systems with a version 1.3 Kickstart ROM, execution of programs packed in this way is prevented, so crashes are avoided. As a further difference to other packers for executable files, programs compiled with vbcc, for example, could also be compressed. In addition, bgpk does not perform hunk sorting or stripping, so that files packed with it are restored to their original state after unpacking. (snx)
[News message: 17. Jun. 2023, 06:46] [Comments: 0]
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17.Jun.2023
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AmigaOS 4: Current hardware availability
After ACube Systems recently delivered the last boards to pre-orderers, including shops (amiga-news.de reported), we asked the relevant Amiga shops if they had them on sale:
Alinea Computer offers a Sam460LE complete system for 1299 euros (plus shipping) with the following specifications:
- Sam460LE board
- Uboot
- Cover
- AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition included (OEM licence)
- Kingston KVR667D2S5/2G DDR2 memory 2GB quality memory
- Fractal Design Core 1000 Tower
- High quality 550 Watt power supply with cable management
- 4port SATA PCI controller
- 240GB SanDisk SSD hard drive
- DVD burner
- Radeon HD 77xx 2 GB Gfx board
- Soundblaster Live Audigy FX
As the item can only be ordered against prepayment, there is no direct purchase link in the shop, but must be ordered by enquiry. AmigaOne X5000 are currently not in stock.
For 1269 euro, but in the meantime sold out, Amedia Computer France had the Sam460LE on offer as a complete system. As the maintainers informed us, however, these will be available again during the next week and can thus be ordered:
- a little Micro ATX slim case,
- the Sam460LE 1,10GHz motherboard,
- 1GB memory module,
- 1x 240GB SSD 2.5 harddisk,
- 1x Radeon HD5450 2GB graphic's card,
- 1x Audio PCI Express card,
- 1x PCI Sata card,
- the AmigaOS 4.1 software.
As a specialist in assembling computers, other special configurations with many tower, Ram, hard disk, graphics card, sound card and Sata card variants can also be ordered on request.
Amedia Computer France also continues to offer the AmigaOne X5000/40, which can be ordered on request. When ordering a complete system, an AmigaOS 4 game and a recovery USB stick are included free of charge.
Amedia Computer France is not only maintaining an online but two physical shops as well which are located in France, in Courcelles-Chaussy, and in Luxembourg, in Differdange, where they also sell AmigaOne X5040 towers.
ACube Systems itself does not offer a complete system, but the pure Sam460LE board for around 963 euros.
As the maintainer of the RELEC shop told us, he is in the process of restructuring his shop. He is currently working on offering new items for the Amiga, among others a new design for the X5000, called "the red D", a desktop case. Sam460 boards are also to be offered. We will report when this will be the case.
The American shop Amiga On The Lake does not currently offer any PPC systems.
(dr)
[News message: 17. Jun. 2023, 06:29] [Comments: 0]
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17.Jun.2023
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Preview video: Action puzzle game "Old Towers"
Already in 2020, "Amiga Retro Development" had begun to port the action puzzle game Old Towers from the Sega Mega Drive to the Amiga. The aim of the game is to dash across walls and ceilings, collecting all the coins and finding the way to the exit, past treacherous dangers and traps. The port is written in assembler and uses 32 colours. The code is almost written, the music is in progress. However, a graphic artist is still needed to take care of the level design and graphics. Anyone who wants to help, will find an e-mail address in the accompanying text of the video. If the work is completed successfully, an AGA version is planned for the future. (dr)
[News message: 17. Jun. 2023, 05:50] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jun.2023
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ReAction GUI for XAD: Avalanche 2.3 for AmigaOS 3 and 4
Chris Young's Avalanche is a ReAction-based graphical user interface for the unarchiving system XAD, which also supports the xfdmaster.library and can search for viruses using the xvs.library. Since version 2.1, simple editing of LhA/Zip archives also is possible (Zip requires zip.library - only under AmigaOS 4). The developer has written his tool explicitly for AmigaOS 3.2.1, but has also tested it under AmigaOS 4. In the current version, changes have been made to the user interface (screenshot):
- Fix setting of list mode
- Remove tree in list mode view
Download: avalanche.lha (110 KB)
(dr)
[News message: 16. Jun. 2023, 18:37] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jun.2023
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Amiga E Compiler: E-VO 3.6.1
E-VO Amiga E Compiler is a derivative of the original Amiga E compiler written by Wouter van Oortmerssen. It adds many new features, bug fixes and optimisations including object UNIONs, string merging, non word-aligned objects and many more (amiga-news.de reported).
A few moments ago, version 3.6.1 has been released. Changes:
- add checks for object going over 64k
- fix 020 optimised address calculation for array of object (or ptr to object) indexing
- added EXENAME and DESTDIR command line arguments to override the output file name
- EDBG: Setting breakpoint caused crashes on certain versions of graphics.library
- fix casing for IeeeDPFloor and IeeeDPCeil
- Extend lists to handle 64k items instead of 32k
- Fix #else preprocessor parsing issues
Direct download: evo361.lha (652 KB) (dr)
[News message: 16. Jun. 2023, 18:00] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jun.2023
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Video player: Amos Anim Player V2023.06.14
The "Amos Anim Player" of the group "ELECTRIC BLACK SHEEP" is a very simple IFF-ANIM player that runs on any Amiga. It can play compressed IFF-Anim formats synchronised with a separate IFF Audio Sample (or MOD) (amiga-news.de reported).
In the current version there are now two different player variants: AnimPlayerMovie aims at 25 FPS and neglects information within the chunk, while AnimPlayerProper tries to consider as much information as possible (colour changes, sound names within the file etc). The Reducer is a stand-alone programme to reduce the data size between consecutive frames. (dr)
[News message: 16. Jun. 2023, 06:03] [Comments: 0]
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16.Jun.2023
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Preview video: Temptations port for CD32
The developer 'S0Y' is working on his CD32 port of Temptations, the platform game originally released for MSX-1 in 1988 (amiga-news.de reported) and now has published another preview video showing the fifth level. (dr)
[News message: 16. Jun. 2023, 05:53] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jun.2023
HanSOLO (e-mail)
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Amiga-Look.org: VisualPrefs themes by HanSOLO
Amiga-Look is inspired by offerings like KDE-Look and Gnome-Look and is supposed to offer the user a one-stop source for everything he needs to beautify his Workbench: Pictograms, themes and background images, but also MUI settings or mouse pointers.
Already at the end of May Roger Andre Lassen published four VisualPrefs themes there. These were created on an Amiga with PerfectPaint and require FullPalette and in one case, the Concept theme, also Birdie. (snx)
[News message: 15. Jun. 2023, 15:20] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jun.2023
Docki (ANF)
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Event: Retrobörse Oberhausen (Germany) on June 17, 2023
For friends of classic video games and home computers, the next Retro-Börse will take place at the Altenberg Center in Oberhausen on June 17, 2023. (snx)
[News message: 15. Jun. 2023, 15:03] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jun.2023
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Blog: The best hardware to play Amiga games?
John Novak programs in his spare time and runs a blog that reports on his various activities. Already at the beginning of the year he published the first part of a very detailed article in which he investigates the question of which hardware is best suited for playing Amiga games. He contradicts the opinion that an upgraded Amiga 1200 using WHDLoad is the best solution. (dr)
[News message: 15. Jun. 2023, 09:40] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jun.2023
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Video: Accelerator board TF1260 in Amiga 1200
Musician and retro lover 'Ms Mad Lemon' shows off the Terrible Fire 1260 turbo card in her Amiga 1200 in her latest video. (dr)
[News message: 15. Jun. 2023, 07:26] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jun.2023
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Background: Influence of the cache on PowerPC CPU (Czech)
Martina Hřebcová is known for her extensive and detailed reports on PowerPC hardware. This time she looks at how big the influence of cache is on the speed of PowerPC CPUs, here in particular the G3 to G5 processors. The starting point for the article was her research on how she could best upgrade her Powermac G4 1.42. She came across a post in the Macrumors forum by user 'Ervus' who had found out that the G4 7457 / 1.6 GHz with a 2 MB L3 cache is faster than the G4 7447 / 2.0 GHz without the L3 cache. Inspired by this, she looked at the other processors and their cache and wrote this article. (dr)
[News message: 15. Jun. 2023, 06:34] [Comments: 0]
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15.Jun.2023
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Demoparty: Flashparty 2023 in Argentinia
On 28 October, Flashparty 2023 will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The demo party consists of two events: from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. the demo competition will take place at the San Martin Cultural Center with free admission, while tickets must be purchased for the evening party at Tacheles. Demos for the Amiga can also be submitted to the demo competition in the category "Oldschool / Alternative Platform Demo". (dr)
[News message: 15. Jun. 2023, 05:37] [Comments: 0]
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14.Jun.2023
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SCSI-SD adapter: ZuluSCSI firmware V2023.06.13
ZuluSCSI is a new generation of file-based SCSI hard disk and CD-ROM drive emulators (review of an user). ZuluSCSI emulates a SCSI-I or SCSI-2 hard disk using an SD memory card (amiga-news.de reported). Changes of version 2023.06.13:
- Fix CD-ROM leadout LBA with BIN/CUE images
- CDROM: Mode page 0x2A, READ TRACK INFORMATION, and GET CONFIGURATION
- Akai MPC3000 compatibility fix: Add the ability to delay boot. Set System=MPC3000 in your zuluscsi.ini file. This is only necessary on ZuluSCSI RP2040 hardware, and not with ZuluSCSI V1.
(dr)
[News message: 14. Jun. 2023, 06:18] [Comments: 0]
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14.Jun.2023
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Amiga emulator: Amiberry 5.6.1
Amiberry is an Amiga emulator for ARM-based single-chip systems like the Raspberry Pi, the Odroid XU4 or the Tinkerboard from ASUS, which brings some newly developed features like a "WHDLoad-Booter" or support for controller configuration using RetroArch. For example it is used in the Workbench distribution AmiKit for the Raspberry Pi 4/400.
Yesterday, version 5.6.1 has been released. Changes:
Bugfixes
- Hardfile properties were always set to default
- cycle exact was incorrect enabled sometimes
- Fix foreign disk image support when drive is standard Amiga 3.5" DD
- hsync events should be before misc events
- fixed uaegfx board parameters
- uaegfx board name is UAE, not uaegfx.card
- Fix helptext formatting in CPU panel
- use double-quotes to denote inches in GUI
- when using --autoload with a filename in the current path, Amiberry would crash
- fix build errors with GCC 13.1
- savestate cmd line option would not use filename
- second controller buttons would not be registered in retroarch
- Fullscreen toggle would no longer work since v5.3
- reverted copying of prefs on hard reset
Improvements
- P96 minor fixes
- Removed unnecessary casting in scsi.cpp
- VGA mode resolution autoswitch update
- VGA autoswitch update to support new OS 3.2 monitors
- Upgraded FloppyDriveBridge to v1.4
- refresh GUI when hidden behind other windows
- improve message when Main ROM is not found
- improve Floppy GUI panel
- use BGR888 for 32-bit modes
(dr)
[News message: 14. Jun. 2023, 05:59] [Comments: 0]
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14.Jun.2023
GitHub
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AmigaOS 4: CPU profiler "Tequila" 1.1
Juha 'capehill' Niemimaki's "Tequila" is a simple CPU profiler that samples currently running tasks (screenshot). Changes of version 1.1:
- Add custom rendering.
- Add locale support.
- Add Finnish and Italian catalogs.
- Display task switches / second.
- Display Forbid percentage.
- Display "(task)" instead of PID 0 for pure tasks.
- Fix occasional issue with unfreed signals at exit.
- Fix occasional freeze during listbrowser.gadget update.
- Reduce heap memory usage.
- Optimize string handling.
- Use Forbid() instead of Disable() when reading task lists.
Direct download: Tequila-1.1.lha (33 KB) (dr)
[News message: 14. Jun. 2023, 05:54] [Comments: 0]
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13.Jun.2023
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CDXL tools: AGABlaster 0.9.92 and AGAConv 1.0.2
Markus Schordan's AGAConv is a CDXL video converter. It combines some existing tools to convert videos (MP4, etc.) into the CDXL format that can be played on an AGA Amiga with its AGABlaster or other CDXL players (amiga-news.de reported). Both tools have been updated and now support overscan. (dr)
[News message: 13. Jun. 2023, 21:06] [Comments: 0]
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13.Jun.2023
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Image editor: PyDPainter 1.1.1 for Windows, Linux and macOS
The image editor PyDPainter (YouTube video) is inspired by DPaint and according to its author Mark Riale an attempt to create a usable pixel art program in Python using PyGame that can handle low resolutions and limited colour palettes and which can be as easy to use as possible (amiga-news.de reported). Changes of version 1.1.1:
- Fix stencil undo bugs
- Don't disable stencil on palette requestor
- Added coords and Center buttons to Symmetry Requestor
- Added filepath to config file
- Added --config option to load a different config file
- Added fill mode indicator to title bar
(dr)
[News message: 13. Jun. 2023, 08:51] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jun.2023
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Crowdfunding for retro community "Amiga Global Alliance" canceled
David Pleasance - ex-Commodore UK management, author of several Commodore books and regular guest at various Amiga events since 2015 - had launched a new project with his "Amiga Global Alliance" ("AGA") at the beginning of June, which was to be financed via a Kickstarter campaign (amiga-news.de reported). As he now informs in an update under the title link, he has decided to cancel the Kickstarter campaign after various critical feedback. He hopes that with this decision he can "mend any fractures" that have arisen in the Amiga community as a result of the campaign. (dr)
[News message: 12. Jun. 2023, 22:33] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jun.2023
Amiga Future (website)
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Puzzle game: Tenebra 2
The sequel to Tenebra has basically the same setting, but its 35 levels do also offer new game play elements. (snx)
[News message: 12. Jun. 2023, 21:38] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jun.2023
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Tool: identify-library 43.0
A few moments ago, Richard Körber has released version 43.0 of his identify.library (amiga-news.de reported). Changes:
- Added more expansions (and fixed a few typos).
- InstallIfy has new options ENV and GLOBAL, to store the result in an env variable. Thanks to mfilos for the idea.
- Identify now detects the AAA chipset in their single (low end) and dual (high end) configuration. We should never stop dreaming.
Downloads:
IdentifyDev.lha (67 kB)
IdentifyUsr.lha (100 kB) (dr)
[News message: 12. Jun. 2023, 21:02] [Comments: 0]
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