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Amiga Update (2000-04-09)
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_ __ _ <>_ __ _ ||
/\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || A M I G A U P D A T E
/__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || -News and Rumors-
/ \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_|| (An Occasional e-mail
"SO THE WORLD MAY KNOW" || News Source)
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AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Amiga, Inc.
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000409
A M I G A 2 K S H O W - M I X O F O L D A N D N E W
B O X E R , A N T I - G R A V I T Y , A M I G A
P R O B L E M S W I T H A M I G A W E B S I T E
A M I G A A N D P H O E N I X
P O S S I B L E N E W G E R M A N M A G A Z I N E
A F D - C O P Y R I G H T U P D A T E
V O Y A G E R 3 . 1 R E L E A S E D
I B R O W S E 2 . 2 U P G R A D E A V A I L A B L E
F U S I O N V 3 . 2 F O R 6 8 K R E L E A S E D
Editor's Thoughts and Introduction:
We're back from the Amiga 2K show in Saint Louis, and very pleased we
went. This was the first major show for Amiga under the new regime,
and we feel they did very well. It's a different Amiga world now, and
some are going to be unhappy about that fact. We've already seen many
postings both from those upset and with and those accepting of the new
Amiga directions. We'd hoped to have more information for you about
those plans than we do, but there has been little put out by Amiga
since the show. In part, that's due to problems with their web site
(see below). We expect more details to be released to the public as
soon as things settle down for Amiga, and we'll bring them to you. The
overall direction is clear, and we discuss it some in our show report,
below.
Other than the show, there's not a great deal of news at the moment.
We do have some items we think you'll find interesting, so wish you
happy reading.
Brad Webb,
Editor
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E-mail to the E-ditor:
27 Mar 2000
{The following was received in a note responding to last issue's
request for information about otbaining BVision cards. Thanks Tony for
esnding the URL along. Brad}
http://www.softhut.com/bvision.html
======
23 Mar 2000
<some lines removed>
I'm not sure whether I'd read the updates at all if you didn't bring
them to me. OTOH, if they're taking space that could go to other
useful information, then they're getting in the way, and I could find
them online. I read them so I obviously care.
Instead of reprinting the whole, long thing, could you give us a
precis of each update and remind us where on the web it is?
'Til next time,
Allan
~~~~~~
There were too many responses to my request for reader thoughts on
how we should handle Executive Updates for me to include them all, so
I selected one at random and it was Allans. Thanks to everyone who
took the time to write!
Allan's comments are pretty much indicitive of the concensus. What
we'll probably do in the future is make a judgement based on the size
of the Executive Update. Smaller ones we'll most likely include in AU,
larger ones we'll probably summarize, then include the URL to the full
text.
If we find this doesn't work out well for our readers, we'll take
another look at the issue.
Brad
======
9 April, 2000
I'm looking for software for a Tiny Tiger II hard drive
connected to the parallel port of the A1000. Do you have or do you
know where I can get such. It was made by M.A.S.T. Memory and Storage
Technology.
Wendell
~~~~~~
Wendell,
Hoo Boy, does this question take me back! We remember M.A.S.T. from
the very early days, but we're not familiar with the Tiny Tiger II.
Another one I have to toss to the readers for help, and this one is a
bit of a challenge. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
Brad
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A M I G A 2 K S H O W - M I X O F O L D A N D N E W
By Brad Webb
The Amiga 2K show in Saint Louis, March 31 through April 2, was a
"must attend". This was the first major show to be presented since the
newest Amiga Inc. was formed, and took over the management of the
Amiga computer. The real interest was in what Amiga Inc. would be
announcing, both to the developer community in private and the world
at large.
The show itself was what most Amiga computer shows have been in
recent years - a sort of a combination family reunion and rummage
sale, with a bit of an amature feel in its organization. That doesn't
mean it's not fun, well done or worthwhile - only that there's a
certain "Amiga" quality that is hard to describe.
There were new products available. To our mind, the most significant
was from Best Power, a well-known maker of uninteruptible power
supplies for the mainstream computer industry. Best Power now has
software to link Amigas to their products, thanks to the dedication of
their employee Jamie Krueger. Jamie is responsible for maintaining the
software on 14 different UNIX varieties for Best Power. He does this
on an Amiga 4000 tower, using AREXX to update the various UNIX machines
as he goes. This has to be one of the best stories to come out of this
show.
We counted about 40 booths on a good-sized exhibition floor. We don't
have actual attendance numbers, but while there were many people
there, we didn't feel the crowds were actually large.
Friday was reserved for the Amiga Developers' Association meeting,
and the Developer Conference. There had been an Exhibitor meeting
scheduled, but it was cancelled. The Developer's Association is an
informal grouping of Developers, with Kermit Woodall of Nova Design
leading the way. The Developer Conference, which was well attended,
was a closed forum for Amiga Incorporated to present their plans for
the future. The forum was only available to those who signed
Non-Disclosure Agreements.
What can be said about the new Amigas is that while Amiga will
produce hardware references, they will not be a hardware company.
Others will build the boxes. The new Amiga software environment will be
hardware independent, and will feature several products from Amiga's
partner TAO. This will include both the Elate RTOS and TAO's superb
Java Engine. The TAO products will be wrapped in an Amiga environment
which will lie between them and the user. All this will sit on top of
Linux, though TAO products can operate with any underlying OS, or even
none at all - who knows what the future may bring in this area? The
hardware independence is a function of TAO's use of a Virtual
Processor in it's software.
Here are some of our observations from the show, in the form of "word
pictures":
More Amiga t-shirt designs than I've seen in a long time wandering
about the Henry VIII motel. We had our own to show off, of course.
The Henry VIII itself - a rambling, doomed, interconnected set of
buildings displaying faded elegance, wonderful woodwork, a ridiculous
idea of what architecture was like in the time of Henry VIII, the most
confusing room numbering system I've ever seen, and a staff whose
Southern approach to life seemed a bit out of place in such a place,
but delightful nontheless. The hotel will soon be destroyed to make
way for airport expansion. We understand the home of show organizer
Bob Scharp may suffer the same fate. The staff provided good service
and showed surprisingly high morale during the show despite knowing
the fate of the work-place. Some call this progress.
Crowds of Amigans filling the aisles in search of goodies and finding
many, though few new products.
Gil and his 500 (!!) raffle tickets. He did not win the Developer
System despite purchasing what must be a record number. He won a lot
of other items, though.
The developer system itself. At this stage just a plain, beige, small
tower PC with a paper Amiga logo pasted to the front. But oh, what it
promises. Current minimum specs: AMD K6-II 500 Mhz, GeForce Prophet 3D
video card, SoundBlaster PCI card, 64 megs of ram.
Bill McEwen's marvelous and genuinely inspirational speech at the
Saturday night banquet. Most want to believe, but most are too many
times stung by false promises in the past to be entirely comfortable
yet. Still, there's something very different and reassuring about the
new Amiga crew. During his talk, McEwen showed some almost wildly
modernistic concept models for both desktop machines and games
consoles. These models were the work of Disney employees, provided
free of charge to Amiga. There has been mis-information about the
models and their use by Amiga. First, the Disney employees created the
models on their own and NOT as a Disney product. Second, the concepts
were clearly presented by McEwen as possibilities for hardware
reference standards, not as something Amiga was going to make itself.
Too bad the misunderstandings have arisen, as the concept models and
the way they were given to Amiga is the real story here.
Scala used for Bill's presentation rather than Powerpoint! So much
better. So sad it was running on a PC laptop.
Positive reaction from the banquet crowd to Amiga's list of partners,
including TAO of course, Sun, Motorola, ESI, Corel, JVC, ARM and Red
Hat. It should be noted the extent of the partnerships was not
revealed. Positive reaction also to the list of companies pledging
software, which included ACT, Epic, DCE, Met@Box, Scala, something
called Amiga Development, Haage & Partner, Digital Images, Hyperion,
Crystal Software, others. The official number of current Amiga
packages scheduled for porting is 117.
The demonstration of what TAO by itself can do, after the banquet.
Running several copies of Quake at once, and Doom, and utilities -
with no slowdown. Combined with the plans announced, there's much to
look forward to.
The t-shirt rush at the banquet. A unique item only for attendees -
or their spouses. Then there were the leather Amiga bomber jackets for
the Amiga Inc. crew. As Bill McEwen pointed out, "remember what these
were".
Breakfast with Amigans I hadn't met before. Many marvelous
conversations with readers and old acquaintences.
Did Joe Torre really sleep in the lobby Saturday night? Boing shoes
and all?
A late Saturday night's visit to Robert Hamilton's room to see his
"Amiga Altar". A wonderful work of art by a first rate Amiga artist.
Illuminated manuscripts made of computer paper? Stained glass windows
of Jay Minor and Mitchie? Of course!
Overheard quotes - "the difference between this show and a Microsoft
one is there are no hookers here."
The announcement by G & G enterprises that their nascent US Amiga
Magazine would be called "The New Amigans", by vote of the first
subscribers.
Well attended classes and demonstrations. Despite a very rough start
Saturday morning with equipment problems, these contributed much to
the show. The problems were worked out, and things went forward well.
The new t-shirt design which showed a boing ball breaking out of a
box with black and white cow spots on it. Slogan: "Get out of the box.
You'll have a ball!".
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B O X E R , A N T I - G R A V I T Y , A M I G A
2 April, 2000
Not only has Anti-Gravity purchased the BoXeR from Blittersoft, but
it was announced at Amiga 2K that Amiga has established a strategic
relationship with them, backing the BoXeR as a platform for the
classic Amiga operating system. It will be a platform for both new and
transitional products. The sale of BoXeR was completed on March 31,
just in time for the show.
Mick Tinker will remain with BoXeR as Director of BoXeR Development.
Representatives of Anit-Gravity were present in Saint Louis for the
announcement, which was made during the presentation by Amiga CEO Bill
McEwen after the show's banquet.
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P R O B L E M S W I T H A M I G A W E B S I T E
7th April 2000
As many people are aware we are having problems with the web site.
This is in no way a reflection of how we do business.
This is a reflection of the inherent problems of business
relationships.
When Amino purchased all of the domains from Gateway for Amiga there
was more than one party involved in hosting Amiga web sites.
We have been working for months in getting everything transferred to
our servers and our ownership.
Now many of the people who were at Gateway/Amiga are no longer there,
and we still are having problems with their releasing the domains to
us. This has become very clear with our new web site, and the fact
that thousands of mail messages are not arriving.
We are working as quickly as possible on these issues, and hope to
have all of this resolved today. However there are some people
(companies) who are making this very difficult as they do not want to
let go of our accounts. I am purposely not mentioning their companies
here in this message, but will make it known if it becomes necessary.
I thank everyone for their patience as we are more than frustrated at
the lack of professionalism in working with these companies, as we
take control of our web sites, and mail.
Best regards,
Bill McEwen
President/CEO
Amiga, Inc.
{Note: as this issues goes out, the problems of accessing the new site
- which is really the old, early Gateway/Amiga site - seem to be
coming to an end. Brad}
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A M I G A A N D P H O E N I X
2 Apr 2000
Amiga Inc is pleased to announce its membership in the Phoenix
Developer Consortium. Amiga Inc president and CEO Bill McEwen
formalized the partnership at the St Louis Amiga 2K Computer Show in
conjunction with Phoenix chairman-facilitator greenboy.
greenboy and Phoenix core members Mario Saitti, Clash Bowley and Arto
Malian will be working directly with Amiga's recently-appointed
director of developer support Gary Peake to make participation in
Phoenix an integral part of the Amiga Developer Support Network.
Details of the developer support structure will be forthcoming through
official Phoenix channels and were shared at Amiga 2K.
Amiga Inc (http://www.amiga.com) is a Washington corporation founded
in 1999 with plans to produce a modern Amiga OS as well as a hardware
reference platform which will take the Amiga into the modern age of
computing. Amiga Inc is presenting for the first time in almost ten
years an Amiga developer reference platform as well as holding the
first official developer conference in almost the same time span.
The Phoenix Consortium (http://owlnet.net/phoenix/) was formed in
1999. Phoenix is an international Amiga-inspired organization
comprised of OS and software developers, hardware engineers, dealers,
marketing specialists, financiers, and media publishers for the
specific purpose of designing, implementing and fostering modern
solutions for digital desktop and convergence.
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P O S S I B L E N E W G E R M A N M A G A Z I N E
The german Internet news website amiga.topcool.de has announced plans
to publish a new German paper Amiga magazine. If amiga.topcool.de can
obtain 200 preorders for the first issue, the magazine will be
available this coming summer. The URL is
http://homepages.go.com/~amigaistcool/ausgabe.htm
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A F D - C O P Y R I G H T U P D A T E
28 March, 2000
By Dietmar Knoll
Hello Amigans!
Here are some news about the project "AFD-COPYRIGHT"(TM) or "Standard
Amiga FD-Software Copyright Note"(TM).
This Copyright Note is an offer for all Amiga developers who want to
release FD-Software, be it as Freeware, Giftware, Shareware or
whatever.
AFD-COPYRIGHT is now available in fifteen (15!!!) languages - all in
two formats, as plain text and as HTML-file.
*The latest addition is the Russian translation by Andrew Boyarintsev
(translator) and Oleg Sergeev (proof-reader).*
The files can now be downloaded from the Official Support Site for
AFD-COPYRIGHT - as single files or full archive. The Address is:
http://AFD.home.pages.de/
The webmasters of you are kindly requested to add it to your hotlist.
In case home.pages.de should go offline again, you can also reach the
page directly at:
http://www.dknoll.myokay.net/AFD/
And of course, news sites are allowed to spread this message. Thanks
for your attention, interest and support!
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V O Y A G E R 3 . 1 R E L E A S E D
8 April, 2000
Welcome to the latest incarnation of the V3 Portal for all users of
Voyager. Today, we bring you not just one update, but three - and then
some!
Voyager 3.1 Browser is out, with a zillion more bugs fixed and
suggestions implemented. Read a full list of changes here and download
the archive from Vapor UK FTP or from the list of mirrors on the left.
VFlash 1.2 available, for all your Flash needs! The PPC module is
complete, but please install ppc.library 46.31 first
Vpdf plugin released - view Adobe Acrobat (pdf) files as embedded
objects!
http://www.vapor.com
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I B R O W S E 2 . 2 U P G R A D E A V A I L A B L E
With virtually no fanfare and no press releases we know about,
version 2.2 of the IBrowse web browser for Amiga has been released.
Since we don't have a press release, and there's little information
about the upgrade on the hisoft website, we can't tell you much about
it. However, we don know that lots of Amigans use IBrowse, so for
those of you interested, head over to http://www.hisoft.co.uk/ for
what details there are and a downloadable upgrade.
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F U S I O N V 3 . 2 F O R 6 8 K R E L E A S E D
March, 23rd 2000
Fusion V3.2 is released.
All Fusion users (and those anxiously awaiting the pending PPC
release) will be pleased to here that there is a new upgrade to the
68K version. This release confirms the continued commitment to the 68K
Macintosh emulation, but also provides a number of improvements and
enhancements.
Fusion 68K V3.2 is the final upgrade before the release of the
PowerPC upgrade, which is nearing completion.
Changes to V3.2
* Added ICP Transfer Priority. You can now specify the priority the
Mac runs at while the drives are accessed from the Amiga side though
ICP.
* Fixed OpenDevice problem with ethernet.
* Fixed ethernet query bug.
* Added TD64 support. A partition that is partially or completely
above the 4G point will cause FUSION to fail to start if TD64 support
is not available.
Partitions are still limited to 4G in size.
* Added support for block sizes other than 512. Up to 64K valid.
* Fixed ICP MacBinary file copy hang.
* Auto-start doesn't auto-quit if you change the ICP or cpu settings.
* Added tooltype and cli switch for specifying parameter ram file.
* Changed ethernet from software loaded to a hardware card for Open
Transport support. Cleaned up ethernet for better Amiga ethenet card
support;
Ariadne card now works.
* Fixed cursor problem with old Lucas Arts games.
* Fixed problem with QD based video drivers.
* Fixed slight problem with autosense SCSI data.
* New ADB drivers with (nearly) all Mac keys mapped.
* Added tooltype support; switches from cli now have Workbench
tooltype equivalents.
* Auto-start now also implies auto-quit
* Changed 060 initial settings; now starts with only SuperScalar off.
* Fixed miscellaneous problems with the interface related to the
auto-iconify feature (Tall thin windows on WB fixed).
* Fixed Timer interrupt bug that prevented QueBase from playing.
* Added support for a couple more ROMs.
* Updates to video drivers.
* Updates to RsrvCold, and RsrvWarm which is now called RsrvKick.
To obtain your copy, head for:
http://www.blittersoft.com/cgi-bin/2/webc.cgi/~bsoft/Fusion32.html
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Amiga Update on the net:
All back issues available at:
http://www.globaldialog.com/~amigaupdate/index.html
Stop by and check out our archive!
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Copyright 2000 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified.
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U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ U P D A T E
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