16.Dec.2022
|
Kickstarter camaign: Checkmate 19" IPS Retro Monitor successfully financed
Just three days ago, it did not look as if the Kickstarter campaign to finance the Checkmate 19" IPS Retro Monitor could be successfully completed with 138.938 of the required 239.785 Euro paid at that time. Now, about two days before the end of the campaign, 248.781 euros have been received, and the goal has thus been exceeded. (dr)
[News message: 16. Dec. 2022, 09:30] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
16.Dec.2022
|
Boing Attitude: Interview with John Girvin (NIVRIG GAMES)
Boing Attitude, publisher of the quiz game Ask Me Up XXL and the file manager Dir Me Up, among others, published the fourth issue of the French print magazine "BOING" at the beginning of July. Among other things, it contained an interview with John Girvin, the developer of games like Turbo Santa (Deluxe) or Turbo Tomato, which is now available under the title link.
(dr)
[News message: 16. Dec. 2022, 09:01] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
16.Dec.2022
|
Advent Calendar: Door 16 - Günter Bartsch
The 16th Advent calendar door is opened and we look forward to an anecdote Günter Bartsch.
At the end of August 2021, the developer had not only published the source code of his Amiga QuickBasic (AQB) compiler on GitHub, but also a first early version 0.7.0 and aroused great interest in the comments to our corresponding news item. With AQB, the author wants to provide a "modern, clean, OS-compliant and future-proof BASIC. An important feature of AQB are the modules: AQB has only relatively few built-in commands, but a - also syntactically - quite powerful module concept. The modules can be implemented fully transparently in BASIC (AQB) or also in C (GCC) or even mixed; AQB is fully link-compatible with GCC.
As the developer further explains, it should be possible to give AQB different "personalities" - currently only _aqb is implemented, which is intended as a default dialect and is oriented towards AmigaBASIC, QuickBASIC and FreeBASIC. But it should also be possible to give AQB a GFA, Blitz or Amos personality, for example. In general, the focus of AQB (at the moment) would be on system-compliant application development.
With version 0.8.0 he then introduced a source level debugger and since the last, current version 0.8.2 there are now instructions and functions for sound output, new tutorials and also a simple music demo programs.
Even though almost a year has passed since the last version, Günter continues to work on his project. As he tells us, there have already been quite a lot of further developments, which he "only" needs to finally bring into a release-ready state. We keep our fingers crossed for this and for the further development of his project and look forward to many more exciting discussions about it here. His anecdote or, in this case, short story :)
"The year is 1988. At the beginning of the year an event occurred that would
change my life forever: I had gotten an Amiga 500 for my birthday. Ever since
I had watched an episode of "ARD Computerzeit" on public TV in which the Amiga
was introduced I knew: I want that computer and no other. At that time (I was
12) my funds were very limited - but at some point my parents had had enough of
my whining so they fulfilled my wish.
Driven by a lot of euphoria and even more childish naivety and curiosity I had
spent every free minute of the year (and also many minutes in which I was
supposed to do other things) with this dream computer (I still couldn't really
wrap my head around the fact that now one of these actually was sitting in my
bedroom).
A lot of people would probably imagine that I mainly wanted to play games on
the Amiga - but that wasn't the case. In fact I didn't have any games for it
and being a true geek with no friends the temptation to drift into the gaming
world through private backup copies was rather small.
Instead, I did with the new computer what I had done - again in the absence of
other software - with my Commodore Plus/4 which I owned before the Amiga: I
wrote programs in BASIC. On the Amiga that meant coding in AmigaBASIC which was
supplied on the Extras disk.
Despite all the euphoria, I soon had doubts as to whether this really was the
greatest tool for the job. The execution speed of the Programs might have been
OK compared to my Plus/4, but the editor was extremely sluggish. Of course
those were thoughts that I first had never dared to say - after all, the Amiga
was the best and fastest computer in the entire universe and AmigaBASIC was the
official BASIC, which came directly from Commodore, the company where (in my
mind) those gods worked who had created this dream computer - how could there
be anything better?
Luckily I got my hands on a copy of the german magazine "Amiga Magazin". Even
though I certainly didn't understand all the articles in it, from studying it I
did learn that there were other programming environments for the Amiga that
could possibly represent an improvement over the AmigaBASIC.
And so it came about that, together with my mother, I trudged through the
Christmas-decorated downtown Stuttgart heading for department stores and
computer shops looking for a Christmas present. So I described to various
salespersons my troubles with AmigaBASIC and boldly asked them about compilers
and assemblers. Usually the last two terms confused the staff, but at least two
of them knew about the problems with AmigaBASIC so each offered their
respective in-house recommended solution for that. Luckily I had enough doubts
right there on the spot about the "True Basic" which was offered to me in the
local "Karstadt" department store that I encouraged my mother to let us try
again somewhere else. At smaller computer shop called "Schreiber Computer" I
was then offered a product called "GFA BASIC" and the saleswoman actually
succeeded in convincing both my mother as the sponsor and me as the user.
Compared to AmigaBASIC, GFA BASIC turned out to be a downright revelation -
speed, instruction set, documentation - all a difference like night and day, I
was amazed! If there were any last doubts in my mind whether this investment
was the right one (the label "Interpreter" on the box bothered me a bit, as I
much rather wanted to have a true compiler), these were finally scattered on
the day when I got my hands on a copy of the "Sonderheft 3: Basic und Spiele"
issue of "Amiga Magazin". It contained an article comparing various BASIC
implementations for the Amiga in which GFA BASIC did very well.
The first weeks with GFA BASIC were very productive indeed - all those small
sample programs from the manual worked fine, a small vocabulary training
program was implemented just as quickly as various small graphics and sound
experiments.
Accordingly, I felt well prepared and even more motivated, to tackle bigger
projects now. Among other things, I had a painting program in mind, a kind of
DeluxePaint clone in BASIC (now that I have this great programming environment,
I don't need to buy any more software, I can write everything myself - so I
thought). The beginnings of these projects were always done easily, first
successes came - opening screens and windows, drawing pixels using the mouse,
no problem.
However, as the programs grew in size, so did the number of bugs - not
surprising, I knew that even back then. However, those errors turned out to be
increasingly difficult to find: Program functions that just worked perfectly
suddenly refused to work at all, although the code in question was the same.
Yes, even the interpreter's built-in commands occasionally stopped working they
way I expected them to. I debugged deeper and deeper, wrote small test programs
- most of which worked fine - but as soon as I put the code back into my big
program, it suddenly behaved completely differently
or crashed completely.
Of course, that didn't deter me one bit - obviously there was just a lot to
learn for myself, obviously I just kept doing something wrong and that's why my
programs didn't work. I quickly realized that the commands apparently
interacted with each other in complex ways - with this insight I was then able
to solve many of my problems. "Ah, I have to first set the foreground and then
the background color, then it works" - that was the kind of discovery, which I
diligently noted in the manual.
Over time, my hypotheses, with which I tried to explain to myself the
behavior of the interpreter in particular and of the Amiga in general, grew
more and more complex. Apparently there was an enormous wealth of
secret knowledge there to discover about how these miracle machines actually worked.
Of course, such secret knowledge wasn't to be found in the manual, but could
only be acquired laboriously through many experiments and collected from many
sources. I wasn't discouraged - quite the opposite, I was fascinated by the
thought that there was apparently a mystical world to explore there and
motivated by the idea of me maybe someday too would belong to that secret
circle of people who possess this knowledge.
So, undeterred, I kept experimenting and consulted more and more literature.
"GFA BASIC 3.0 - Training for advanced users" was one of the books from which I
hoped for enlightenment. The book - published by GFA Systemtechnik GmbH
themselves, at least - actually opened up new horizons for me. Some of the
techniques in there I had never seen before, some of the commands never heard
of - that most of the example programs on the floppy that came with the book
didn't work for me unless I modified them astonished not me in the slightest.
For one, the programs I had previously typed in from books and magazines hadn't
usually worked right away either and on the other hand I was able to put all
that secret knowledge I had accumulated up to that point to good use to get the
programs running - which actually was successful for most of them.
Despite all these partial successes and insights - a real breakthrough never
seemed to happen for me. My larger programs tended to stay quite brittle and
so very slowly a feeling of frustration set in.
During my literature research I came across the book "AMIGA Programming with
MODULA-2" from Markt und Technik publishing company. There was even a matching
compiler available - though only a very limited demo version - on a fish disk.
That then was once again another revelation: a true compiler, I can write real
programs like the professionals - and they even worked! Everything so clear and
structured everything does what it should, just as it says? Should something
like this be possible should there exist a world without any mystical secret
knowledge?
At that point, GFA BASIC was quickly forgotten in my life - I was fascinated by
Wirth's languages, so I spent the following years happily coding in Modula-2,
Pascal and Oberon, but that's another story.
It was then more by chance that at some point during this period I found out
what was behind my experiences with GFA BASIC: in some magazine article GFA
BASIC 3.5 was reviewed and the author casually mentioned that while the first
versions of GFA BASIC for the Amiga were quite buggy, the situation seemed to
improve with each update. GFA BASIC had errors?! This product I purchased for
money that was packaged so neatly and made by absolute professionals
could have been not perfect? Those many surprising properties that I had so
painstakingly explored could it possibly be that they were not intended at all?
I can hardly put into words what I felt when the full dimension of these
insights slowly dawned on me: I simply had never considered that a bug could
not be my mistake! What's more, probably the only mistake I had made was that I
had never sent back this software registration card that came with the box - so
I was never informed about available updates.
Well, today I like to think back to those days with a smile - those were very
important lessons I learned back then, many of them still guide me to this day.
Without the Amiga, without these programming environments - I would have never
gotten to where I am today, I am very grateful for that." (dr)
[News message: 16. Dec. 2022, 06:51] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
16.Dec.2022
|
Emulator: QEMU 7.2.0 released
QEMU is an open source computer emulator and virtualizer. QEMU is able to emulate a complete computer in software without the need of hardware virtualization. So it is possible to emulate Amiga operating systems like AROS, AmigaOS or MorphOS on QEMU. This support is provided by QEMU developer Zoltan Balaton, who gives lots of tips and info on a dedicated webseite (see also our Excursion of Amiga operating systems on non-native hardware).
According to Zoltan Balaton, the now released version 7.2.0 (PowerPC related commits) contains some changes that mainly affect newer Power CPUs, but also those that affect the entire PPC emulation: for example, the command decoding has been changed to decodetree. This is a generic method of describing commands, using general code for decoding instead of the custom code used before. As the developer kindly explained to us, this can lead to better performance, but it does not have to, as Decodetree is not optimised.
Similarly, there were also some changes to the implementation of AltiVec commands that could improve their speed, but it would depend on how it was used and what the host CPU supported. He had done some tests and found that in some cases it could be a few percent faster, but it did not really make a big change. Since sam460ex does not have AltiVec, it only benefits from the PPC instruction decoding changes, he said. Emulation via pegasos2 and mac99 could be slightly better with code that uses AltiVec. However, he says it is difficult to test this with AmigaOS 4, which has no graphics driver for the graphics cards emulated by QEMU in the pegasos2 version. For tinkerers, however, he has an idea that could be tried out:
One would have to copy some drivers to get the output on pegasos2. This means that one has to edit the boot CD or an installed version (which is not so easy, but feasible). You would have to copy the kernel from the AmigaOS-pegasos2 version and update the PCIGraphics.card and siliconmotion502.chip from the sam460ex version, as he erwähnt before. You would then have to create a CD from this. (dr)
[News message: 16. Dec. 2022, 06:08] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
15.Dec.2022
|
Encryption protocol: AmiSSL 5.6 (AmigaOS 3/4)
The open source encryption protocol AmiSSL has been updated to version 5.6 and contains a fix for server applications and some other minor changes. The changes in detail:
- Fixed TLS 1.3 cipher lookup failure regression on OS4.
- The improvement from v5.4 that released file locks on the OS4 libraries is now only activated with elf.library 53.35 or higher.
- Minor build changes.
Download AmigaOS 3: AmiSSL-5.6-OS3.lha (3,3 MB)
Download AmigaOS 4: AmiSSL-5.6-OS4.lha (3,1 MB)
Download SDK: AmiSSL-5.6-SDK.lha (2,3 MB) (dr)
[News message: 15. Dec. 2022, 20:51] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
15.Dec.2022
|
Video: 'DarkG' from Batman Group guest at AmigaBill
In his "Replay" series on Twitch.tv, 'AmigaBill' had 'DarkG', a member of the Batman Group, as a guest three days ago and talked to him about the recently released demo Batman Rises. (dr)
[News message: 15. Dec. 2022, 12:56] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
15.Dec.2022
CS-Lab website (ANF)
|
Warp 560/Warp 1260: Firmware Pack 1.300
CS-Lab has released an update of the firmware for its 68060-based Warp accelerator boards. Changes of Warp Firmware Pack 1.300:
- WiFi support through SANA-2 warpNET.device (you need TCP/IP stack like Roadshow or Miami)
- Separate driver for onboard IDE (warpATA.device)
- Added direct-scsi mode support for warpSD.device and warpUSBDisk.device
- P96 RTG driver fix of WHDLoad "freeze" issues
- Updated WarpDiag and WarpTool tools
- Included firmware for Warp1240 model
- Lots of other minor fixes
(dr)
[News message: 15. Dec. 2022, 06:55] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
15.Dec.2022
|
Advent Calendar: Door 15 - Dennis Pauler
We open the 15th advent calendar door and welcome Dennis 'Hurrican' Pauler from Virtual Dimension.
Virtual Dimension can look back on a long history and has incredibly changed and gained versatility over the years: In 1991 the group around Dennis Pauler was founded and focused on programming demos - for example the Red Sky BBS Intro - and games until 1999: so they released "Walls - The 97-Edition" in 1998 and "Othello - Das virtuelle Brettspiel" in 1999 , both to be found on their home page.
At the beginning of 1999 parts of the Virtual Dimension team participate as editors in the German magazine "Amiga Fever", which was discontinued after only four issues and integrated into amigaOS. Likewise the content support of the website was discontinued from the year 2002. Dennis' call to the readers which can be read there "better get involved...send a news message to a news site..." we can only support and is possible via Amiga News Feed at any time.
From 1999 onwards, the "On site" (German) series initially concentrated on trade fair videos - for example on the World of Amiga 2000 - before audio books and dubbing work were added. Over time, many more video series were added.
But also the programming of (Amiga)games has been rediscovered: Dennis works himself (again) into C-programming and develops the game "Danger Dennis" in the series "Coding with Dennis" (German). Not only for this, but also for all further projects we wish Virtual Dimension good luck and are now looking forward to Dennis' story:
Backed the wrong horse?
My friends and I already got thrilled at the age of 11. We no longer wanted to just PLAY computer games, we wanted to DEVELOP them ourselves. But all beginnings are difficult. After moderately successful experiments with Basic on the C64 and AmigaBasic on the Amiga, we were looking for ways to get more out of our computers. A short excursion into Amiga programming with C based on a course from the magazine AmigaPlus didn't lead to the goal either, because the course ended after a few relaxation exercises where it could have become interesting. We lacked the contacts, the books and probably the imagination how we could have developed our skills. That the way was much more complicated than we thought at that time, I should realize more than 20 years later, when I finally opened the chapter "Programming C for the Amiga" again.
Ambitious but slightly frustrated, after experimenting with shell scripts and the RedSector Demomaker, we finally stumbled upon a programming environment that promised what we had hoped for. We're talking about "AMOS - The Creator", and our goal of finally developing decent games ourselves was within reach.
The year was 1994 and the conditions could not have been better. Under the name "Virtual Dimension" a cool troop had come together to make their dream of game development come true. AMOS - first in the basic version, then in the Pro version - enabled fast development progress with background graphics, bobs and music. And our platform was THE game machine: the Amiga, which had just received a contemporary upgrade with the AGA computers and could at least keep up with the PCs in terms of price/performance. We worked on several games at the same time, shared the work and met several times a week for joint development sessions with pair programming.
At the same time, we tentatively began to network with the net community, downloading the latest tools and demos from mailboxes, writing our first emails, and discussing important questions on Usenet such as "Does Warp 9.9 period = Warp 10?"
When the news of the bankruptcy of Commodore, the parent company of the Amiga, reached us, we were initially unmoved. After all, optimism was spread in the computer magazines that a financially strong buyer would soon be found (Samsung, for example, was being discussed) and that the race to catch up with the PC would then be all the faster. But the more months went by without any positive news, the greater our worries became.
First of all, however, we did everything we could to get our first game ready. In autumn 1994, the time had finally come and "Walls", a game fiercely inspired by "Breakout" and "Arkanoid", was ready for release. Unlike our previous programming attempts, which had rarely seen disks other than our own, "Walls" was included by no less than three public domain series (Spielekiste, German Games and Nordlicht-PD) in their programme. The Amiga magazine reported on our game in a small section and one day there were even unannounced fans at the door and the slightly overwhelmed Dennis.
Meanwhile, the rumour mill on Usenet was bubbling over the future of the Amiga. Commodore UK had taken over the Amiga rights in a "management buyout" and would soon bring a new computer onto the market with the Amiga 1300 CD, it was said. This soon turned out to be a hoax, but through David Pleasance's stories we now know that it almost came true.
A group of fans did not want to wait any longer and decided to replace the AmigaOS with a new open source implementation and port it to the PC. The Amiga Replacement OS - AROS for short - as it was called at the beginning, was born.
There was movement in the scene, but time passed and more and more users and developers left the Amiga. If a buyer wasn't found soon who could save the sinking ship, our beloved computer would lose its connection to the PC world for good. The song "Final Countdown" by Europe took on a whole new meaning for me during this time.
One year after the Commodore bankruptcy, a buyer was finally found in the form of Escom, but the hoped-for new start turned out to be much weaker than hoped for. The Amiga 1200, now three years old, was produced again, but without a turbo card, memory expansion and hard disk, no one could be impressed with it in 1995. New computers were announced, but before a new Amiga had made it to the shop counter, Escom had also gone bankrupt and the dithering began again.
So had we backed the wrong horse in choosing the Amiga as a platform for a game development ambition? Yes and no. The three more games that we finally published for the Amiga in 1998 - all written with AMOS - achieved many thousands of downloads from our website, which had been set up in the meantime. But we had finally lost touch with modern game development.
In retrospect, this was certainly not the worst thing that could have happened to us, considering the poor working conditions that still prevail in the games industry today. We then took our professional careers in other directions, even though the thought of developing our own games would never completely fade from our minds.
At the beginning of the 2000s, the Amiga seemed to be history, despite all attempts to breathe new life into the platform with the help of the PowerPC processor. But like us, many others were to remember the time with the Amiga fondly and so, from 2013 onwards, new - also commercial - games for our old friend slowly appeared again. Thanks to the internet, we were able to make contact with many other Amiga fans and finally got back to the old idea of developing our own games for the Amiga. Of course, we don't have as much time as we did when we were students, so the journey is slow. But the conspiratorial community that just won't let the old computer die has given us a home and, despite everything, doesn't let us lose sight of the goal - and this time, even really with the programming language C!
But that's another story... (dr)
[News message: 15. Dec. 2022, 06:49] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
14.Dec.2022
|
Advent Calendar: Door 14 - Erik Hogan
Today's Advent calendar door belongs to the game developer Erik 'earok' Hogan.
Of course, the game construction kit "Scorpion Engine", which we first reported on in April 2020 and which he developed and continues to develop, immediately comes to mind. It would probably fill a separate article to list all the games that use his engine, many of which are still in development (for example, "Creeping Me Out Hex Night"). But here are a few examples:
A developer has just started his conversion of the action game "Trojan", published in 1986, on the basis of the Scorpion Engine and has published a first preview video for it.
But Hogan himself also logically uses his engine to develop (demo) games: for example, the adaptation of the C64 classic "Raid Over Moscow", the jump'n run "Monkey Ladd" or the platform game "Super-Go-Down-The-Hole".
On his Patreon page he provides information about new releases and games. Thank you Erik. We look forward to many more exciting game projects! His anecdote:
"In English, we've borrowed the word "strafe" (as in, a plane "strafing" or attacking ground targets, itself derived from the old expression "gott strafe England" or "god punish England") to denote sideways movement in first person shooters.
I was working on a game that, while not a first person shooter, was an educational title played from the first person.
When testing, I went to use the standard A or D keys for sideways movement in the game, and realised they did nothing. Since most young gamers would expect those keys to activate sideways movement (games such as Minecraft do), I added a simple item to the project todo list that simply said "strafe".
A little while later, the project manager - who is from Germany and is passionate about educational games but isn't a hardcore gamer themselves - told me at a meeting that they were very confused that, according to my todo list, I apparently wanted to punish someone." (dr)
[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 11:28] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
14.Dec.2022
|
Linux: Kernel 6.1 for AmigaOne X1000/X5000
Right after the release of the Linux kernel 6.1, Christian 'xeno74' Zigotzky has compiled it for AmigaOne X1000 and X5000 and offered the kernel for download in the associated discussion topic of the Hyperion forum. There you can also find a screenshot showing the Debian distribution using the current kernel. (dr)
[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 09:38] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
14.Dec.2022
|
Preview video: Super Metal Hero
At the beginning of 2020, Raster Wizards announced the game "Super Metal Hero". After development was frozen in favour of the game Hyper Runner, work is now resumed. A new preview video shows the first final boss: first draft, revised version. (dr)
[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 06:56] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
14.Dec.2022
|
AmigaGuide magazine: Issue 8 of "WhatIFF?" published
"WhatIFF?" is an English Amiga magazine in AmigaGuide format. Unlike other magazines or journals, WhatIFF? does not deal with games, but is primarily intended for users who want to work creatively with their Amigas (amiga-news.de reported).
Now issue 8 was published containing the following articles:
Reviews
- Dell LED 15Khz Monitor
- A1200.net Translucent Case
- RNOEffects
- Aminet Short Reviews
Guides
- Watch YouTube Videos on your AGA Amiga Part 1
- LightWave 101 - Starfield
- Brilliance 101 - Reflections
- Storage Solutions
Articles
- A Look Back At 2022
- American Magazines
- First LD Computer?
Interviews
- PixelVixen
- Anthony (The Amiga Show)
(dr)
[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 06:07] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
14.Dec.2022
|
Blog: Review of English Amiga print magazines
In his latest blog entry of his "Epsilon's World" Epsilon gives a review of English-language Amiga magazines of the last 40 years, as usually detailed and and with numerous pictures. He himself had decided to get one copy of each English-language Amiga magazine, with at least one issue per year, covering the entire period from 1985 to 2022. He came across 44 different English-language Amiga magazines in the process. (dr)
[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 06:02] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
14.Dec.2022
|
Minimig: Revision 1.91
In mid-March we reported on revision 1.8 of Minimig: the reimplementation of an Amiga 500 in an FPGA, a field-programmable gate array. After six months of development, Minimig REV 9 is now available.
Accelerator cards like the TerribleFire 534 and 536 can now run at 50MHz, caching of kick.rom of the PiStorm is now possible as BOOTROM has been replaced by a new ESC/OCS chip - MIA. REV 9 offers not only hardware changes but also software updates. In addition, this board is 6-layer and has a revised voltage regulation. And the MC68SEC000 can be operated at up to 60MHz.
The card (without housing) is currently sold out, otherwise it is listed in the shop for around 330 Euros. (dr)
[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 06:02] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
14.Dec.2022
|
Debugging tool: PatchWork 1.1
In keeping with yesterday's Advent calendar door, Richard Körber has released version 1.1 of his debugging tool "PatchWork" (amiga-news.de reported). Changes:
- New TASKNAME option, which only reports hits caused by tasks with the given name. Note that this is just an output filter. Options like DEADLY still apply to all tasks.
- Use short relocation tables, prohibits loading on Kick 1.x
(dr)
[News message: 14. Dec. 2022, 05:43] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
13.Dec.2022
|
Kickstarter campaign: Update on the Checkmate 19" IPS Retro Monitor
About three weeks ago, Stephen Jones launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund monitors for retro computers (amiga-news.de reported). Five days remain and so far 138.938 of the required 239.785 Euro have been funded.
Jones has taken this interim status as an opportunity to publish a condensed version of the video presentation of the project. On the other hand, he is now offering a so-called "Festive Placeholder Deposit": here, all those who cannot afford the full contribution can still reserve a monitor for a minimum amount of around 117 euros. However, supporters who pay the full amount will be delivered first. (dr)
[News message: 13. Dec. 2022, 15:39] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
13.Dec.2022
Dimitris Panokostas
|
Mastodon-Client: Update on Amidon development status
The author of the Amiga emulator Amiberry, Dimitris 'MiDWaN' Panokostas, is in the process of developing a Mastodon client for AmigaOS 3 (amiga-news.de reported). In a blog entry published on his Ko-fi page he now reports about the current state. Among other things, an "anonymous" avatar is now included by default and is shown until the user logs into the server. (dr)
[News message: 13. Dec. 2022, 14:41] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
13.Dec.2022
|
Advent Calendar: Door 13 - Richard Körber
ust in time for lunch break, the 13th door of our Advent calendar opens. We may introduce: Richard 'Shred' Körber.
This could be a record so far: Already on 04 May 1999 we reported (in German) about Richard Körber's newly established website "Palmiga", which was aimed at Amiga users who wanted to connect their computer to a PalmOS PDA. In mid-2001 he was kindly asked by Palm Inc. to rename his site because "Palmiga" and "PalmLink" would infringe trademark rights. So Amiga-PDA was born, which was originally part of his homepage which already existed since 1998. For all those who are still interested today, please refer to his PdaLink library and the corresponding GitHub project.
The developer is probably best known for his identify library, which recognises Zorro cards by their manufacturer and product ID, provides information about the system (CPU, FPU, memory, clock frequency, etc.) and decodes Guru codes and function offsets. Originally, in early 2003, he announced (in German) on our site that he had to stop development due to lack of time and published the source codes of the project on Sourceforge. More than a year ago, however, he not only published the source codes on GitHub, but also resumed development and made the current version 40.2 available for download in mid-October.
He also wrote his own driver for the internal sound card Maestro Professional, developed YAMI, a mouse interface that makes it possible to use serial PC mice on Amiga or ATARI ST computers, and resumed work on his debugging tool PatchWork.
His articles in the Retro Blog of his site are definitely worth reading, for example about the restoration of an Amiga 1000 or the problem of the right mouse button on the Amiga 1200. Many thanks for your development work, Richard! He remembered the following anecdote for us:
"It was in 1998, at a time when the Internet was massively growing. As a young professional, I was working in the web department of a startup in Cologne and felt like a pioneer in a new country.
After weeks of work, our team had completed a new website. The design template had been created by an external advertising agency via Photoshop. We manually converted the designs into individual web pages, which was common practice at that time. In the late afternoon, everything was finally finished, the launch was imminent and the press had already been informed. The other colleagues had already called it a day, and I was just about to pack my bag, too, when an email from my boss popped up in my inbox.
'The agency has asked us to make one last small change to the layout', was his comment. Below that I found a forwarded email with the details. I looked at the request and groaned. I would have to change all one hundred pages by hand for that. Those are the tasks you love. I could forget my plans to leave in time. It would probably even take until late at night.
With an Amiga, yeah, this would have been a piece of cake. I would have opened the web pages in GoldEd, and would have let it do the changes automatically, remote controlled by a quickly crafted ARexx script. With my Windows computer at work this was unthinkable. There was no possibility to control programs with a script language.
Oh, if only I had my Amiga here now, I thought to myself and sighed.
Then I remembered that I had installed an Amiga emulator on my work PC a few weeks earlier because I wanted to try it out. But that was just for fun. Now I have a job to do. Is that professional? Is it even possible to do that?
Why not! I transferred the web pages to the virtual Amiga hard disk, programmed an ARexx script and let GoldEd apply the changes. The plan worked. After less than an hour the change was completed.
So the Amiga saved the launch date. And I made it home in time." (dr)
[News message: 13. Dec. 2022, 13:46] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
13.Dec.2022
Cloanto (ANF)
|
Cloanto: Amiga Forever and C64 Forever 10
Press release: December 12, 2022 - Cloanto released today version 10 of Amiga Forever and C64 Forever, the official Commodore/Amiga preservation, emulation and support suites for Windows.
The new editions are the result of almost two years of development since the previous major version 9. Cloanto's RetroPlatform framework is the result of a lot of effort to make Amiga and CBM 8-bit features and interfaces appear effortlessly unified. The two packages now encompass more than 700K lines of code written by Cloanto, integrating with a collaborative endeavour of emulation plugins and content preservation.
Before adding visible features, a priority of this version consisted in the removal of speed and space constraints. Some of the old barriers may have been out of sight before, but the result after upgrading is a satisfying sensation of increased freedom and power: the title editor opens and closes in an instant, large media files are handled with more ease, while windows and other elements that used to be fixed can now be resized. Content folders can be added anywhere under Amiga Files and CBM Files, while new personal playlists and improved content shortcuts offer more ways to rapidly access titles and folders stored on any disk.
Amiga Forever 10 includes direct support for FloppyBridge-compatible floppy drive and controller devices (e.g. DrawBridge, Greaseweazle, SuperCard Pro, Waffle). Whereas previous versions only supported floppy disk images, now physical floppy drives and disks can be accessed by the emulation. No additional software is required.
New and improved features:
- Revamped Amiga Files: custom folders, subfolders and folder shortcuts can be added anywhere to better organize titles and to handle massive content collections
- Improved player, including personal playlists, pervasive Rename, Cut, Copy and Paste commands, and intuitive resize of preview area and emulation window
- Faster title editing and application responsiveness: quick opening and closing of the title editor (asynchronous content extraction, differential compression) and runtime optimizations when working with large media images
- Direct support for FloppyBridge-compatible floppy drive and controller devices like the DrawBridge, Greaseweazle, SuperCard Pro and Waffle (drives work in Amiga emulation, no additional software required)
- Hayes-compatible "internet modem" to access your favorite BBS systems
- Improved Windows File Explorer and Search integration: enhanced thumbnail provider to preview screenshots and box shots, and new details in property handler to view and index RP9 title properties
- Support for new features introduced in Windows 11 and Windows 10 versions up to 22H2
- Hundreds of other new features and refinements
Amiga Explorer 10 has already been released a few days ago.
As always, we are grateful to the many friends who supported this project and our Amiga passion, vision and hope. Special thanks to Toni Wilen. Current and soon-to-be Amiga serial and print integration features would not have been possible without his help. (dr)
[News message: 13. Dec. 2022, 07:09] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
12.Dec.2022
|
Advent Calendar: Door 12 - 'Prince'
The Amiga-News.de Advent Calendar starts with 'Prince' and the twelfth door into the new week.
'Prince' is the founder of the demo group 'Phaze101' and an incredibly busy Amiga developer: he might be best known to our readers for his assembler coding course. Between 1994 and 1996, Fabio 'Randy' Ciucci, a member of the demo group RamJam, wrote the assembly programming course "Corso completo di programmazione assembler in due dischi". With Ciucci's permission, RamJam published this programming course as a book in 2016. 'Prince' is currently streaming this course in English on Twitch and then uploading the respective episodes to YouTube.
Almost in parallel, he recorded his 16-part Let's Make an Amiga Game Tutorial and also published it on YouTube. The resulting game "Mr Poo's Journey" is available on itch.io for a price that you can choose yourself.
Among other projects, he also regularly organises "Game Jams" with the aim of expanding knowledge and awareness about retro computers. Recently, for example, there was the Retro Trex Game Jam, which resulted in his version Dino Run or also DRex by another developer. The Racing Cars Game Jam will run until 31 January 2023. His anecdote:
"When I look at the source codes I wrote 30 years ago and more, I am totally fascinated. I love them! As a teenager, I didn't think twice about what I was writing! Mainly I had written demos and tools at that time, and I must confess that these source codes are often a mystery to me as well.
On the one hand, I realise how little I knew back then. On the other hand, I still somehow managed to get programmes to work. Some of these source codes were also written for experimental purposes. They contain all kinds of errors! Mistakes that I wouldn't make now. I have improved my programming skills over the years. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for my memory. On the contrary: sometimes I have the feeling that it is going steeply downhill!
There is one thing that is all over my sources back then that I can't remember. Most of the sources begin with comments that has something like this: "Dedicated to the one ______ I love".
Who was her, "the one I love" back then? Memory is playing tricks on me and this is something that didn't improve :)" (dr)
[News message: 12. Dec. 2022, 13:58] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
12.Dec.2022
|
Demo tip: "Batman Rises"
It does not often happen that amiga-news.de publishes a recommendation for a demo, but this production of the Batman Group is more than worth it: "Batman Rises" ranked first on the Posadas 2022 Autumn Edition which took place last weekend and only requires an Amiga 500 with 1 MB RAM. Very impressive demo! (dr)
[News message: 12. Dec. 2022, 06:12] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
| |
| Recent Discussions |
 |
|
|
|
| Latest Top-News |
|
|
|
|
| amiga-news.de |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
