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Amiga Update (2002-12-31)
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A M I G A | 021231 | U P D A T E
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"SO THE WORLD MAY KNOW"
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AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Amiga, Inc.
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A M I G A M A L L P A R T N E R S H I P A N N O U N C E D
A M I G A C H R I S T M A S W I S H
A M I G A A W A R D 2 0 0 2 W I N N E R S
T H E E N D O F A M I T H L O N
A M I G A G A M E S P O C K E T P A K
G E N E S I F O R M A L L Y L A U N C H E S P E G A S O S
D I R E C T O R Y O P U S W I L L B E O N O S 4
A M I G A F O R E V E R 5 . 1 R E L E A S E D
M R E S O F T W A R E C H R I S T M A S N E W S
P A G E S T R E A M 4 . 1 . 5 C H R I S T M A S R E L E A S E
D I G I T A L A L M A N A C I I I V E R S I O N 5 . 0
B I B L E V I E W V 1 . 3 R E L E A S E D
P E R F E C T P A I N T V 2 . 0 I S A V A I L A B L E
V O Y A G E R 3 . 3 . 1 2 6 I S R E L E A S E D
N E W E S T W I N U A E I S A V A I L A B L E
N E W S F R O M I O S P I R I T
F L A S H M A N D E L V 2 . 2 F O R F R A C T A L F A N S
A M I A T L A S N E W V E R S I O N R E L E A S E D
Editor's Thoughts and Introduction:
Large newsletter this time, so I'll keep this short even though it's
tempting to muse upon the past year.
Not much noise from Amiga Inc. this month, but I think they're sort
of continuing on and following up from last month. We do have an item
or two involving Amiga Inc. below that may interest you.
Beyond that, it's largely a products issue this time around. We may
have the last word ever on Amithlon as that fascinating and somewhat
sad chapter in Amiga computing seems to have come to an end. We'd be
interested in hearing from any other of the participants in that story
but somehow I suspect most are just wanting to let the situation go.
The good news - people are still writing, porting and updating
products for Amiga. We owe them all a great deal of thanks! There are
things happening that portend fun and good Amiga computing ahead. We
hope you enjoy reading about some of them in this issue.
Finally, our thanks to all the readers who have been with us for this
wild and somewhat strange year now ending. We hope you remain with us
as we start on a brand new year which, as Amiga Inc. says below,
should see us enjoying new hardware and a new version of Amiga OS.
There's no way of knowing where we'll end up at the end of that year,
but it should be interesting and, we hope, fun getting there!
Brad Webb,
Editor
----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail to the E-ditor:
30 Nov 2002
On 30-Nov-02, Brad Webb wrote:
>There is also an understandable fear that talk of an X86 version at
>the very time the new AmigaOne is finally here could affect sales.
>while I've long been a proponent of a native X86 version of the OS, I
>can understand those fears as well. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait
>to see how this all turns out.
Yes, the Amiga is in the midst of a comeback. No, the Amiga will not
be returning as a general purpose computer system available in my
local Canadian Tire store.
The AmigaOne is our first real bridge system to help us move forward,
not backward to the way things used to be. I think that anyone who is
afraid of x86 hardware is harbouring the belief that the AmigaOne is
to become some kind of competitor in the personal computer business.
Anyone who keeps waiting to buy the next AmigaOne that comes along is
not the kind of customer Amiga Inc. is interested in because that kind
of customer is still actively living in the PC era.
Like you said, we'll have to wait and see but let's also keep things
real and actually read all those executive updates that have been
posted over the past couple of years. Remember, the AmigaOne only
exists because Amiga Inc. needed some kind of scalable, centralized
component for their AmigaDE vision. The fact that it also acts like a
bridge for existing Amiga users to run old software on more modern
hardware is just a feature.
Whether AmigaOS runs on x86 or PPC or an abacus should become
irrelevent because any sane application builders will be writing for
AmigaDE which will run on various host OSs including Windoze, Linux
and AmigaOS. The transition may take a while (i.e. years) but don't
fool yourself into believing AmigaOS has a chance against Windoze in
the personal computer marketplace.
Like I said at our last Amiga users group meeting, it's now time to
put up or shut up. Just for the record, I already ordered my AmigaOne.
> Is it almost time for us to fold our tents and move on?
Let's not get too hasty. Us PC era users (myself included) are still
stuck in the past so we'll need more gentle prodding before we move on
and accept that the personal computer is dead. Until then, I think
your newsletter will still have a lot of meaning.
So stick around a while longer and see where this so-called bridge
system takes us. Who knows? If they sell 5+ million units in the first
6 months then maybe the Amiga PC isn't dead just yet.
Cheers,
--
Steven
~~~~~~
Steven,
Thanks very much for your thoughts. I think you've got a good handle
on the future as Amiga sees it. As someone once said in a movie, the
future is hard to see because it's always changing. I suspect Amiga
will be responding to changes and trying to drive a few as well, as
they work to implement their version of computing. The good news is
they're viable so far, and Amiga OS is still available. Though I'm
very disappointed OS 4.0 isn't yet.
Many people wrote to respond to "folding our tents" thought. The
consensus is - not yet! I wish I could respond to all of the notes in
the newsletter or personally, but that was just not possible. However,
all were read and the thoughts in all were considered. I have included
a couple others below as examples of what we heard.
I think the best thing to do is let readership drive "Amiga Update"
for now. As long as we have a sufficient number of readers to make it
worthwhile, and no clear-cut alternative, we'll keep on going.
Brad
======
2 Dec 2002
Having gotten increasingly involved with Linux as I read the Amiga
Updates over the years, it just seems that the idea that the Amiga is
going to be resurrected and be successful is too far-fetched. For all
the press that Linux gets about its meteoric rise, it still has a long
way to go to dominate the basic PC world.
Those behind Linux have had the smarts to understand that restricting
Linux to a single hardware architecture would have been a grave
mistake. Amiga enthusiasts get in a huff about the possibility that
Amigas might appear based on x86 machines -- how archaic!
As it is coming out, the AmigaOne will have Apple as its most logical
comparison -- same processor, same OS underneath (Linux). Chances are
Amigas can't even win that comparison, and Apple is certainly not the
picture of financial health these days. I don't think consumers want
any more confusion than there already is.
At this point, I think there are too many BIG guys out there who
won't let Amiga succeed. If it looks like it might, it will either be
crushed or swallowed whole. Just what does the Amiga want to be?
A game machine? Competing with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft?
A desktop for everyone? Competing with Apple, Microsoft, Linux, and
the host of software companies and freelancers writing apps for these
OS's?
Don't even think about Amigas competing in the server market or
business apps.
I am not rooting for Amiga to fail, I just don't see how it can
succeed other than as a limited novelty item.
Greg
~~~~~~
Greg,
Interesting thoughts, and thanks for sharing them. I do have some
comments.
First, AmigaOS does not run on top of Linux. It is a complete
operating system in its own right. Linux is being shipped with the
AmigaONE now while Amiga OS 4.0 is still incomplete. Wouldn't be
surprised if both continue to be shipped with the units later, but it
isn't necessary.
For the record, Apple's current MAC OS doesn't use Linux either, but
is based on a different version of UNIX. I believe it's a form of BSD.
What runs on top of Linux, and on top of Amiga OS, and Windows and on
and on, is Amiga DE or whatever they're calling it now. That's the
real product/marketing philosophy of the future for Amiga, at least as
their strategy is currenly defined. Of course, all this is changeable
based on market conditions.
Amiga originally billed the AmigaONE and any follow-on machines as
servers for its Amiga total home computing environment. Not sure
that's still the vision, or if it's now a bridge machine as the
previous letter writer noted. Regardless, I don't think Amiga Inc.
ever seriously considered Amiga OS as a business server operating
system. I agree with you fully that would be a "pipe dream" ...
... although, as someone who runs lots of large servers for a living,
I personally wouldn't mind seeing that if it were possible. Windows
certainly can't handle the top end and neither can Linux at this
point. Ah well, that will probably remain a dream. Amiga OS on a
domainable Sun Enterprise F15K - now there's a thought ... [trails off
wistfully ... ]
For my part, I like the features and design philosophy of Amiga OS
very much and hope it continues to exist for a long time to come. As
you rightly point out, and as we've said here before, if Amiga is a
software company, then it shouldn't matter what hardware they run on.
Hmmm. That _is_ the philosophy behind Amiga DE, isn't it?
Brad
======
1 Dec 2002
Brad
I look forward to your emag with great pleasure! other than the
rather infrequent magazine,you are the major source of info for the
amiga community. I hope you will reconsider leaving until you have a
worthy successor. the keyword here is worthy successor. we have been
thru so many mags that tried to do what you manage to do so well, only
to see them exit the amiga stage. we still need you! Don't leave yet!!
Dan
~~~~~~
Dan,
While I should probably blush at your kind words, more important is
your real concern about coverage and a successor. As mentioned above,
I think we'll stick with it for a while.
Brad
======
Fri, 20 Dec 2002
I have all but forgotten the Amiga (what monitor can I get that will
take the output from an Amiga 1200? the 1084's you get out of Ebay
work fine when you get 'em but die in a short period of time...they
are 20 years old or so!)
Your mag has kept me posted. I have all but decided that my next
machine will NOT be Windoz...I hate the system still, and was going to
be a Mac. But now that an real live, functioning Amiga is at long last
going to be available.
Heck, you're needed now more than ever!
That's my thoughts. Thanks for all your service, whether you keep it
going or not. I really appreciate all you've done.
Regards,
Mike
~~~~~~
Mike,
Thank you for the thoughts and putting them into words. Your note and
the other examples demonstrate much of the feedback we got. There may
be a new Amiga age dawning, but we don't have new sources for
information yet.
Point taken.
Brad
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A M I G A M A L L P A R T N E R S H I P A N N O U N C E D
(Snoqualmie, WA) December 2, 2002 - Amiga has announced the creation
of a partnership with Extreme Computing to provide customers with a
source to purchase Amiga licensed clothing and merchandise. The
"AmigaMall" e-commerce site will provide both Amiga branded clothing
and merchandise as well as Extreme computer systems. The AmigaMall can
be accessed from the Amiga Website or via mall.amiga.com.
"We are very happy to be able to enter into this partnership with
Extreme Computing to provide these types of products" said Vince
Pfeifer, Vice President of Operations. "Having Extreme handle all of
our physical product fulfillment allows us to focus our resources on
delivering software solutions for our customers. The timing of this
agreement allows customers to purchase products in time for the
holiday season."
"We are very pleased to be able to work with Amiga Inc. on this
project" said Todd Gustafson, CEO of Extreme Computing. "We feel it is
important to keep the Amiga spirit alive, and the AmigaMall is just
one way to keep things going in the right direction. We plan to
continue offering unique and fun Amiga products, and we will update
our website with new products throughout the new year".
About Extreme
Extreme Computing is a division of Extreme Corporation. Based in
Portland, Oregon, Extreme Corporation was founded as a local Amiga
Dealership in 1996, and soon enhanced the company to include unique
and useful computer hardware coined as "Space Saving Technology."
Extreme Computing now sells their own brand of computers and
notebooks, as well as all major brands of computer hardware, software,
and peripherals worldwide. Extreme Computing is strongly dedicated to
the development of future Amiga hardware and software solutions. For
additional company information, please call 1-888-265-0165, or visit
our websites: www.extreme-computing.com and www.extremeamiga.com.
http://www.amiga.com/
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A M I G A C H R I S T M A S W I S H
{Taken from www.amiga.com. Brad}
(24-Dec-2002) Amiga Inc would like to wish its partners, friends and
all those in the growing Amiga community a very merry Christmas and a
happy and prosperous New Year. 2002 has been about taking the best of
the Amiga community, its passion, skill and commitment to excellence,
and building for the future. 2003 will be about enjoying the fruits of
those labors, and more, about sharing that enjoyment with the rest of
the world.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A M I G A A W A R D 2 0 0 2 W I N N E R S
Amiga Award 2002 for bplan GmbH and Chris Hodges
Cologne, December 10th, 2002 -- Twelve important and touching months
passed by the Amiga community. Numerous products smoothing the future
way of the Amiga caught our eyes. With the Amiga Award 2002 the Amiga
community and the AMIGAplus would now like to say "Thanks!" to all
developers for their efforts.
Amiga Award 2002
During the AMIGA + Retro Computing 2002 on December 8th, 2002, the
bplan GmbH was assigned the Amiga Award 2002 for the most innovative
product in 2002. During the last two years the Frankfurt/Main-based
company developed the new, microATX-sized PowerPC-mainboard "Pegasos"
for the Amiga-market. The Amiga Award 2002 was presented to Thomas
Knäbel and Gerald Carda of bplan GmbH by Nico Barbat, editor-in-chief
of AMIGAplus, in Aachen. "We would like to thank all participants. We
are extremely proud of this accolade." said Thomas Knäbel, CEO of
bplan GmbH.
Amiga Award 2002 Extra
Additionally to the main category the participants took part in the
election for the Amiga Award 2002 Extra.
Representing all shareware-developers Chris Hodges was honored for
his USB-stack "Poseidon". This prize is endowed by 250,- Euro and
sponsored by Genesi.
Amiga Award 2002 - Free elections
The free elections were won this year by Pegasos in its category
"Best Amiga Hardware 2002", by Amithlon in its category "Best Amiga
Software 2002" and by Tales of Tamar in its category "Best Amiga Game
2002".
The Amiga-Award-team of falkemedia and AMIGAplus is looking forward
to the next years Amiga Award. We would like to thank all Amigans for
their active participation this year, and we woule like to
congratulate all winners and nominees of this years Amiga Award for
their commitment to the Amiga!
Nico Barbat (editor-in-chief AMIGAplus)
AMIGAplus
----------------------------------------------------------------------
T H E E N D O F A M I T H L O N
{Taken from the Amithlon site, www.amithlon.net. We have edited
slightly this very personal message from Bernd Meyer to make it work
better within the newsletter. You can of course see everything at the
website noted. Please note that on 29 December, an update kernel for
AMIthlon was uploaded by Bernie Meyer to Aminet, also appearing on
www.amigabest.com. That should provide support for legitimate users.
We include the brief message accompanying that upload at the end of
this story. Brad}
December 1st, 2002: It saddens me greatly to announce that, effective
today, any of my Amiga-related software development has been
mothballed indefinitely. This means that, pending any unexpected
developments, there won't be any "Amithlon v2" (aka "Berniethlon"),
nor any further support or add ons for "Amithlon v1" by me.
--
I have almost two years of my time invested in Amithlon/Berniethlon,
and a lot of it was fun. However, the last nine months have been a
complete nightmare. I have been lied to, lied about, threatened,
libelled and abused, and have had my IP rights violated. Worse yet,
the self-styled "Founder and Developer of Amithlon" as well as the
former distributor have apparently also taken it upon themselves to
threaten and intimidate anyone who so much as considers cooperating
with me --- be that Amiga dealers, the P96 team, Chris Hodges, or the
provider for www.amithlon.net.
I am a stubborn old fool, which is the only reason I have put up with
that sort of harrassment for so long. But no matter how stubborn I am,
it gets to me. Oh, does it ever get to me! The last few months, I have
only been able to go to sleep if I was completely and utterly
exhausted --- and then would wake up too early, and be fatigued the
whole day. And most mornings I would wake up wanting to scream, and to
put my head through the plaster wall, just to forget about this whole
crap for a few seconds. After a few months of that, I simply can't go
on.
It's not just me who suffers, either --- due to the constant
interference by H&P and HF, I have been unable to earn any money from
my work on "Berniethlon"... That money was meant to take me and my
girlfriend to Germany for Christmas, so my family could finally get to
meet the woman in my life. Alas, no sales, no money, no trip.
Disappointment and distress all round. And, trust me on this one,
wanting to put your head through the wall is not one of the most
sought-after qualities in a boyfriend, either.
So, this crap has to stop. And as the other parties have made it
absolutely clear that they have no intention of relenting, I have to
call it quits. I will make one last set of off-site backups of all the
important code, and then simply remove it from my disks. I will take
apart and reuse my test machine, and start working on something
completely different. To quote Ludwig von Beethoven: "Applaud,
friends, the comedy is over".
--
A few more things --- as far as I am concerned, AmigaOS XL as (still)
distributed by H&P contains my IP without a license. According to the
last communication I had from Amiga Inc, it also contains their IP
without a license (please note that I cannot verify the veracity of
that claim; I am simply passing on what I have been told). Further
unresolved IP issues exist with regards to the AmigaOS XL package.
Thus, if you consider respect for intellectual property important (and
let's face it, a market as small as the Amiga one is certainly doomed
if you don't), I must strongly advise against purchasing AmigaOS XL.
If you are looking for a commercial and fully licensed package to run
Amiga software on the PC, I can only recommend Cloanto's excellent
package Amiga Forever 5.
Also, have a look {below} if you are wondering why I closed down the
site. No, it's not (just) because the bandwidth costs money.
--
If you are interested in seeing my comments and thoughts on the
aftermath of this (and in seeing how things are going in general),
have an occasional look at http://www.umilator.net (guess what
"Berniethlon" was going to be called :), which I intend to turn into a
personal weblog site during December.
--
This is indeed a very sad day for me. I consider this outcome a
horrible waste that does not benefit anyone, least of all you, the
users. Let me close by expressing my sincerest gratitude and
appreciation for each and every supportive email I have received, each
encouraging word that has been sent my way, and most of all, for the
joy you have given me through your appreciation of my work. And while
at this point, I can't help but mourn for what could have been, I hope
that some day, I will instead think of Amithlon and rejoice at what
was....
Bernd Meyer
-----------------
So why close down the Amithlon site, and remove everything?
--
Well, it has been over 7 months since it became public knowledge that
distribution of Amithlon should have stopped. It has been over 8
months since the last copy was shipped that I can accept royalties
for. And it has been almost 4 months since I made the last contrib
archive available.
And yet, looking at my server logs, I found that I was still pumping
out over 110MB per day. I found that the latest contrib archive still
got downloaded more than 13 times per day, the updated kernel more
than 9 times, and the very first contrib archive still got more than 6
downloads. Roughly every 45 minutes, someone downloaded the boot
tester, accounting for about 50MB per day of traffic. Almost exactly
1/5th of that resulted from deep links on H&P's web servers.
In other words --- it looked like each day, somewhere between 6 and
13 people started using Amithlon seriously enough to download the
contrib archives. That's between 180 and 400 people each month. And
whether these people got it from H&P, Kazaa or eDonkey, they certainly
are not legitimate users. They don't have a license for the stuff they
are using.
It is highly likely that any legitimate user who is interested in
Updates did already download anything that was available here. Keeping
the site up any longer would simply be supporting the pirates. It
would also be supporting, in some way, H&P's continuing sales of
AmigaOS XL; Something I am really not interested in.
If you are a legitimate user and for some reason need access to the
files previously hosted on amithlon.net, please feel free to contact
me. Chances are, something can be worked out. {See below. Brad}
-----------------
{Message from www.amigabest.com. Brad}
AmigaBest
Amithlon Amiga x86
GNU/GPL updated kernel for AMIthlon by Bernie Meyer - added on
december 29, 2002
Since www.amithlon.net is down I thought it would be a good idea to
upload this kernel to the aminet. I have also included my lilo
configuration which you may find useful.
There are a number of reasons why you might want to replace your
existing kernel image with this one:
* Support for GeForce3 cards
* Support for Matrox G550 cards, and improved support for other
Matrox cards.
* Support for Dell and IBM machines with (almost) broken PCI BIOS
* Workaround for a stupid bug in Amithlon that would make it crash
upon boot on CD-ROM-less machines.
* Improved hardware support for IDE/SCSI controller
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A M I G A G A M E S P O C K E T P A K
{The following item comprises a few quotes from a Microsoft Presspass
article. It is copyrighted by Microsoft, so we can't run the entire
article. We do provide a URL for you if interested in reading more.
Brad}
REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 18, 2002 -- Holiday shoppers are finding some of
the lowest prices ever for Windows Powered Pocket PCs this holiday
season. The recent introduction of Pocket PCs from Dell and HP, some
with a suggested retail price of less than US$200 (with rebate) opens
the door for a broad range of customers to Windows Powered devices.
Independent software and hardware makers have recognized this expanded
opportunity and are creating myriad products that enable consumers to
add specialized software and hardware to their devices.
PressPass spoke to executives from three such companies about their
newest products. Each also discussed their membership in Microsoft's
Mobility Partner Advisory Council. Microsoft created the group in
January to serve as a focused feedback mechanism for Microsoft
mobility platform development and to provide new technical, marketing
and business development support to companies making significant
inroads in the mobility space.
...
PressPass: Tell us about some of the products each of your companies
has developed for Windows Powered devices that you expect to do well
this holiday season?
McEwen (Amiga): We launched the new Amiga Games Pocket Pak this week.
It offers four games on an SD (secure digital) card. You simply pop
the card into the SD slot on your Pocket PC or Pocket PC Phone Edition
and you're up and running. Pocket Pak 1 includes a flying simulation
game, Planet Zed, an amazing crossword, and a unique mind-bending
puzzle game called Blobula. You have your classic word search, and 10
different versions of solitaire.
In each Pak, we try to give a variety of content including an action
arcade, a puzzle game, a classic game and something a little bit
different. The Pak is actually very addicting. I recently took my son
to a children's concert and was quietly playing some of the games from
the pack on my Pocket PC Phone Edition. The next thing I knew I had a
whole bunch of parents around me trying out the different games.
The Pocket Paks will also work on the Windows Powered Smartphones
when they begin shipping in the United States. The same SD cards will
pop into a Smartphone, all scaled properly.
...
www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/dec02/12-18pocketpc.asp
----------------------------------------------------------------------
G E N E S I F O R M A L L Y L A U N C H E S P E G A S O S
{While we don't consider Morph OS or Pegasos as being Amiga news in
the ordinary manner, the potential impact of these products is such
that from time to time we feel we should run articles about them to
help the Amiga community be aware of them, and what progress they are
making. The following is an excellent summary of current matters from
the Genesi point of view. Brad.}
08-Dec-2002: 'Elegance through simplicity' - Genesi launches the
Pegasos PowerPC-computer at the Amiga&Retro-show
The following text has been written by Martin Heine:
More than eight years after computer pioneer Commodore's bankruptcy,
Genesi S.a.r.l., Luxembourg, markets again an own computer with
tailor-made operating-system, which continues the still loved "look &
feel" of the Commodore-Amiga on modern hardware and extends it
corresponding to today's requirements. Sales of the "Pegasos"-called
mainboard together with an early version of their own operating system
"MorphOS" as well as a PowerPC-Linux-distribution started this
weekend, mindful of their roots, at the "Amiga & Retro Computing" show
in Aachen, Germany, this year's biggest Amiga-fair world-wide.
Although being newly founded, Genesi consists of several well-known
personalities of the Amiga-market - that legendary computer which
already brought "Multimedia" to the homes and video studios in the
80's and early 90's even before this term had been coined at all. Thus
the Frankfurt, Germany, based bplan GmbH, which merges with
Thendic-France, Paris, (distributor of the Pegasos) to become Genesi
as of January 1st, 2003, was founded by developers of the former
company "phase 5" which had been the leading third party developer for
Amiga hardware. Apart from graphics boards and other extensions for
the Amiga and processor boards for Apple Macintosh computers, phase 5
especially has been the first and only company which enabled the Amiga
to migrate from its original Motorola 680x0 CPU to the more powerful
RISC-CPU "PowerPC" (Motorola, IBM). Also further personalities of the
further, international developer team of bplan's own operating system
MorphOS made a name for themselves in the Amiga-market - for example
for the first Retargetable-Graphics-system for the Amiga.
The computer: Pegasos
The Pegasos is currently the cheapest computer mainboard with a
PowerPC CPU on the market. The CPU is here on a separate module so
that it can be replaced by faster CPU's without the need to exchange
the whole mainboard. Furthermore there are dual-CPU-modules. As by
Apple's computers, G3 and G4 processors are supported. Also regarding
add-on cards Genesi took in account the changed situation on the
market compared to the 80's: instead of a proprietary, dependent on
the number of pieces more expensive own bus-system and instead of the
hopeless attempt to compete with all those big companies specialized
in graphics or audio chips, the Pegasos is able to make use of
standard PCI and AGP hardware for PC's. And also many other interfaces
known from standard PCs does the Pegasos already have on-board -
despite being a small micro-ATX-board: IEEE 1394 ("Firewire") with a
100/200/400 MBit transfer rate and three connectors, 10/100 MBit
network connector, USB I/O-system with four connectors, AC97
sound-subsystem with microphone input, line-in/out and
headset-connector, optical S/PDIF-output, infrared-interface,
ATA100-interface with two channels for upto four ATA-devices,
connectors for PS/2-compatible mice and keyboards, a serial (RS232)
and a parallel port (Centronics, for standard printers),
floppy-connector and a gameport for PC-typical joysticks as well as an
(optional) 56k-onboard-modem. Opposite to Genesi's competitiors, who
do not just also use the northbridge-chip "Articia" by Mai Logic, but
distribute their whole mainboards, the self-designed Pegasos-board
therefore offers the following advantages: sound, firewire, gameport,
infrared-interface and optical audio-output are on-board (optionally a
modem as well), processor modules with two CPU's are supported and the
mainboard is saving space due to it's micro-ATX dimensions. To be
honest, on the other hand the other PPC mainboards, which are based on
Mai's ATX reference design "Teron", offer instead of three PCI-slots
an additional fourth slot which however is shared with the AGP-slot.
But the probably most important trump of the Pegasos however is that
it does not only have a reliable southbridge (VT8231 instead of the
VIA686B which has a DMA-related bug) but also an additional chip
developed by Genesi which is called "April" and fixes all known bugs
of Mai Logic's Articia northbridge (especially its DMA-problems). By
April the transfer of higher amounts of data, for example via USB or
Firewire, or basic things like the audio-output with soundcards is
possible without errors. Therefore the Pegasos is currently the only
bug-free Articia-based PowerPC-mainboard. Among other features, April
enables the Pegasos to make complete use of fast G4-CPU's as well.
The operating system: MorphOS
MorphOS is a new operating system started from scratch and
tailor-made for Motorola's and IBM's PowerPC-CPU's, which however does
not only take up the user-friendly and efficient slim, modular
architecture of the original AmigaOS, but furthermore is even able to
execute most of the latest Amiga software due to an integrated and
fast JIT-emulator (just-in-time compiler, avoids the usual overhead of
standard emulations by caching already translated instructions) for
the original Amiga-computer's 680x0-CPU. Thus, opposite to other
newcomers, MorphOS starts with an existing software-foundation, which
includes for example the big internet-collection of free- and
shareware "Aminet". But while the well-tried and by the Amiga-users on
other platforms badly missed "look & feel" of the familiar
user-interface "Workbench" has been kept and extended at MorphOS
(truecolor icons, skins, transparency, etc.), the operating system
itself is a modern approach under the hood. Speed and responsiveness
due to preemptive multitasking and ressources-saving efficiency and
pleasant operation, as used from the Amiga, combines with a modern,
self-designed microkernal called "Quark". This kernel is quite small,
naturally, and contains the hardware abstraction layer (HAL), drivers,
memory management and message passing. The most real work however is
done by server processes on top of it (for example networking,
graphical user-interface, filesystem, media, security, 2D/3D graphics,
etc.), while the actual applications are running in the so-called
"Q-Box" put on Quark. The message passing, by which the applications
call the API, is extremely fast on MorphOS, because, instead of
transferring the data itself in the message, just the location of the
message in the memory is remapped to the application. (Short messages,
however, are copied directly, since this is faster in this case.) But
especially the messaging system enables a high scalability. The single
components which are sending and receiving those messages may be
distributed over different processors or even computers. Apart from
therefore originally enabling clustering, for example also higher
speeds as with the known X-window-system are possible - for which, by
the way, a so-called wrapper is planned to make it easier to port
applications based on it. Quark and the Q-Box are originally planned
as a 64-bit operating system, so it is not just a bolt-on to an
existing 32-bit OS. And last but not least MorphOS does also profit
from being tailor-made to the PowerPC-processor instead to Intel's and
AMD's x86-CPU's: Context-switches between the micro-kernal and
user-processes are about ten times faster on the PowerPC, so that the
advantages of a slim microkernal can be used without the cost of the
slow context-switches on x86-CPU's. Therefore, opposite to
macro-kernal operating systems, this approach for example results in a
higher stability and security, since here a kernel-task can't
overwrite another's memory. The Q-Box part of MorphOS, however, is
still in development, since until now the main effort has been spent
on the - as well on top of Quark running - A-Box, the independently
from the original AmigaOS re-implemented and extended AmigaOS-API.
Limitations necessary for the compatibility with Amiga software (e.g.
lack of memory protection) do therefore also - but only - apply to the
A-Box, though, not to Quark and the Q-Box, to which this operating
system will, step by step, well, just "morph".
Alternative operating systems for the Pegasos
Of course the user of a Pegasos isn't restricted to Genesi's own
operating system MorphOS. Several versions of PPC-Linux, like SUSE or
YDL, do also run on the Pegasos. At Aachen for example a CD-bootable
Debian Linux-distribution was presented by Genesi. And for the CeBIT
fair in March 2003 an OpenNetBSD port is expected to be completed.
With regard to the PowerPC's low power consumption and emission of
heat as well as the small dimensions of the mainboard, running Linux
on the Pegasos predestines this machine for example for the clustered
usage as a server. Furthermore it is even possible to run software of
the Apple Macintosh. Although for legal reasons it isn't possible for
Genesi to sell the Pegasos with MacOS running natively (while
technically it wouldn't be difficult, since MacOS is running on top of
Darwin, which source code is publicly available), the
Linux-distribution delivered together with the computer contains
"Mac-on-Linux" (MOL), which, running on top of Linux, allows the legal
usage of Mac-software - without the need to buy more expensive
Apple-computers. - Conversely Genesi is working on a MorphOS version
for the Mac as well.
Plans for the future
At the CeBIT 2003 a prototype of the Eclipsis will be shown - an even
further miniaturized variant of the Pegasos, which, being a
handheld-device, closes the gap between PDA's and mobile phones on the
one side and desktop computers and notebooks on the other side. I.e.
it is a full computer for the pocket. Again made possible by the,
compared to x86-processors, lower heat emission and power consumption.
Furthermore planned is a Eclipsis base station, so that the
Eclipsis-board and the basis station together for example could be
used for a conventional notebook. Concretely the "Mini-Pegasos" is
planned to offer the following features: mobile phone (including
advanced SMS, video and camera features, transfer of multimedia
content simultaneously to speech and videophone. A powerful graphics
chip turns the Eclipsis into a portable game console. Also, just as
such a game console or an Amiga, it can be connected to TV. By
connecting a monitor and a keyboard, the handheld turns into a full
desktop computer. And together with its basis station the Eclipsis can
make use of the additional memory and processing power as well as its
peripheral devices, making it as powerful as any other "big" computer.
Since the Eclipsis is a full, "just" miniaturized computer, also
internet access is just as one is used to from the desktop PC - so the
user is just limited by the respective service provider's bandwith,
but not by the device. If that provider also offers
Smartcard/SIM-based security and payment services, these as well can
be used with Genesi's handheld computer. Built-in GPS-features also
allow navigation and location-specific services. Genesi wants their
customers to just do what they're already doing today - just in a more
compelling, easier and pleasant way. To do so, Genesi combines already
existing products - apart from the Pegasos for example also the
ComCam, distributed by Genesi, including their self-developed software
for it, and the Cashboy, by which Genesi do already possess a product
with a smartcard module, a barcode reader and own software for these
purposes.
Availability & support
Except for the specialized dealers and distributors mentioned on the
Pegasos website, the Pegasos can be ordered on the web at
pegasos-uk.com. (National pegasos-xxx.com websites will follow.) The
Pegasos is delivered with two years warranty and customer support by
Genesi and their authorized distributors. The latter do exist already
for several countries, including Germany, Poland, Great Britain,
Canada, the USA and Russia, for which a very prominent russian
IT-distributor founded a separate company which distributes the
Pegasos to all countries of the former Soviet Union. (A Pegasos show
in Moscow will be announced shortly.) An online support center on the
web for developers will be established by Genesi before January 1st,
2003. Here accredited developers may order mainboards, peripheral
devices and supporting tools at significantly reduced prices. Even for
other committed users discounts are possible, for example if they
demonstrate the Pegasos at user-group meetings or translate
documentations in other languages. The standard price for a Pegasos
board together with - as the low-end for starters - a 600 MHz G3
CPU-module is less than 500 Euro (excl. VAT). Special bundle offers
are possible on inquiry.
Exhibitions
As already this year, Genesi will also in 2003 attend several IT- and
computer-fairs, including COMDEX and CeBIT. At the latter also Mai
Logic Inc. (Fremont, California) will be at Genesi's stand, the
currently only company selling northbridge-chips for PowerPC CPU's.
Mai agreed to co-develop together with Genesi the chipset for the
Eclipsis.
Genesi at the Consumer Electronics Show from 9. to 12. January 2003
in Las Vegas
Please visit Genesi at Booth #29101 in the Home Networking, IT &
Wireless Pavillion.
Background
After Commodore's bankruptcy, the Amiga was acquired by german Escom
AG, which established the subsidiary "Amiga Technologies". This
company was lead by a former manager of Commodore Germany, Petro
Tyschtschenko. When also Escom had to declare bankruptcy due to their
core business and took Amiga Technologies with them to decline,
another company tried to acquire Amiga: Viscorp - back then lead by
Raquel Velasco and Bill Buck (who today own Thendic-France, which
merges with bplan to Genesi). June till november 1996 Raquel Velasco
and Bill Buck paid the salaries, taxes and social contributions of
Amiga's employees out of their own pocket. Also the last Escom-CEO,
appointed by the banks, Helmut Jost, was involved (before he had been
the main manager of Commodore Germany for some time, since 1997
shareholder of the US-company Pretory, of which Raquel Velasco is the
chairman of the board and biggest single shareholder, and today he's a
manager at Thendic Germany and takes part in Genesi as senior sales
account executive; previously he had been also working for Fujitsu and
IBM). But finally Viscorp's board changed their mind, and the deal to
acquire Amiga didn't happen; Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco then left
the company. The rights to Amiga's trademarks and IP then were
acquired by the US-company Gateway (which sold them again later), and
the among the Amiga-users for his commitment quite popular Petro
Tyschtschenko went to Gateway until he was dismissed by today's owners
of Amiga and founded a new company called Power-Trading which is a
partner of Genesi. Bill Buck's and Raquel Velasco's current company
Thendic-France distributes further products besides the Pegasos, for
example the professional photogrammetry software "JMiner" or the
PowerPC-based i-Cam and Tri-Cam along with the corresponding software,
which are based on the ComCam which is produced at their partner Cobra
Electronic GmbH, Germany. Thendic-France for example is the world-wide
distributor for the ComCam towards the aircraft industry. CEO of
ComCam is Don Gilbreath, former CTO of Viscorp and previously projects
manager for the CD32 at Commodore, the Amiga-based first 32-bit game
console with CD-drive. Also Carolyn Scheppner of ComCam has her roots,
besides some time as programmer at Viscorp, at Commodore. As well in
the Genesi-team is Dr. Allan Havemose, who had been the director of
the software development department at Commodore. He is working on the
Java-VM environment for the Pegasos and Eclipsis.
http://www.morphos-news.de/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
D I R E C T O R Y O P U S W I L L B E O N O S 4
17 December, 2002
Dr Greg Perry said today that after negotiations with Ben Hermans,
GPSoftware and Hyperion have resolved all outstanding issues related
to contract for Directory Opus and wish to announce that the contract
has been fully reinstated. Greg said "We are very pleased to see these
issued cleared up so that the future for Directory Opus on the Amiga
can be assured by Hyperion and that development can continue for OS4
and beyond. We wish Hyperion the best in their endeavours with
Directory Opus for Amiga and the development of OS4."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A M I G A F O R E V E R 5 . 1 R E L E A S E D
23 December, 2002
Cloanto today released version 5.1 of Amiga Forever, the official
Amiga emulation and connectivity package for PCs. New features include
improved emulation components, new Amiga and Windows software (e.g.
new Software Manager, Amiga Explorer, ReqTools, support libraries,
etc.) and updated documentation and help files. For the first time
since 1991, when the Amiga Narrator and Translator speech synthesis
components were discontinued by Commodore (who reportedly was not
willing to continue to pay a $1 per unit royalty), this software,
which was part of the multimedia features which inspired several
enthusiasts to buy an Amiga computer, is again available with the
Amiga OS. Amiga Forever 5.1 includes both the original and fully
licensed speech software in the preinstalled 1.3 configuration and a
newer custom setup in the 3.1 ROM environment. As for all Amiga sound
output, the emulation makes it possible to save the digital data, so
as to preserve forever (maybe for use on an answering machine?) the
original accent made famous by various "This is Amiga Speaking" demos.
Amiga Forever 5.1 runs on all Windows systems with DirectX 8 or
higher (DirectX 9 has just been released by Microsoft). A
cross-platform edition is available for Linux users. The downloadable
versions costs $29.95, while a CD-ROM version, which includes
additional Amiga ROM and OS files of historical interest (e.g. Amiga
OS 1.0) and more than three hours of video footage in MPEG format, is
available for $59.95. Upgrades are also available now. A free update
from version 5.0 to version 5.1 will be available for Christmas. In
the meantime, the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section at
amigaforever.com has been reorganized and updated, and includes
up-to-date information and tips concerning Amiga emulation, data
preservation and cross-platform connectivity.
http://cloanto.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
M R E S O F T W A R E C H R I S T M A S N E W S
23 December, 2002
MRE Christmas Edition: The world is not enough!
Nearly half a year has gone since the last big release, now it's time
to give you something to enjoy! ClassAction 4.50, StartMenu 1.30 and
ProcessManager 1.10 have some often asked useful and nice new
features - I don't want to add the whole list, here some details
concerning ClassAction:
classes can be displayed as image, own screen possible, improved
archive handling, mousewheel support, optimization ... Look onto
http://www.martin-elsner.de/ for a complete list of changes and all
archives.
And with this little present for the community that still waits for
real "Amiga christmas" (ChristmasOne and Christmas 4.0 ;) I add my
best wishes: Merry Christmas and a happy New Year full of new
hardware and software! And many thanks to the testers, translators
and users who have done their best to make this release possible!
http://www.martin-elsner.de/text/aminh.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
P A G E S T R E A M 4 . 1 . 5 C H R I S T M A S R E L E A S E
21-Dec-02
Christmas is still a few more days away, but we have been hard at
work preparing your Christmas gift from us! The initial Windows
release is available now, and the Amiga release will be available
Saturday. Macintosh should follow before Christmas. Why are we telling
you this now? Because as Christmas draws near, you might easily miss
the announcement. While others are laying flat on the floor from one
more helping of turkey, you can be exploring 4.1.5. Ok, maybe it is
just us that lives and breaths PageStream. Humor us! Besides, it might
just be worth your while to visit the web site on Christmas day ;-)
Registered owners of 4.1 can download the latest update by going to
www.grasshopperllc.com, and clicking on downloads in the left hand
menu. From the main downloads page, click on your product/platform and
enter your registration number and password to gain access. We will
also be posting updates to 4.0 Windows just after Christmas!
Grasshopper LLC
PO Box 220
Antigo WI 54409-0220
715 627 0789
http://www.grasshopperllc.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
D I G I T A L A L M A N A C I I I V E R S I O N 5 . 0
17-Dec-2002 DA III V5.0 (German version) finished!
I am proud to announce DA III V5.0 is available! At the moment, only
the German version is finished. The English version will follow in the
next time.
11-Oct-2002 Newly discovered asteroid in the Kuiper belt In the
Kuiper belt beyond Neptune, a new asteroid has been discovered a short
time ago. The object has put itself to number one as the largest
asteroid right before Ceres. The object called 2002 LM60 has been
named after an Indian god "Quaoar". It has a diameter of 1250 km
(which is one forth larger than Ceres) and orbits around the Sun in an
almost perfect circle at a distance of 6,5 billion km. After 72 years
(1930 - Pluto), Quaoar is the largest discovered object in our solar
system.
All DA III user can obtain a file from the website download page,
that contains orbital elements of the four largest objects of the
Kuiper belt!
http://mitglied.lycos.de/achimste/home_e.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
B I B L E V I E W V 1 . 3 R E L E A S E D
1 December, 2002
Marko Raina uploaded BibleView v1.3 to Aminet
(text/show/BibleView.lha). BibleView is a Bible text viewer that
can be used to read, copy-and-paste and search many Bible
translations. Currently supported are: King James Version; Vulgate;
Finnish 1938 and 1992 translations; Swedish 1917 translation (new) In
addition to the new translation, Marko's done several bug fixes and
polished the GUI a bit. See the .readme file for more information.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
P E R F E C T P A I N T V 2 . 0 I S A V A I L A B L E
Paint, Anim and manipulate pictures
from 1bit to 24bits
15 Dec 2002
PerfectPaint V2.9 is available
o New drawing effect: TV Lace and the arexx command.
o Improve text
* PfPaint can now read TrueType fonts with the help of
ttengine.library (you have to install it)
* Add 2 new buttons:
o Select Character (very useful for Dingbats fonts)
o Font path history
* Add 2 new item in the requester menu: Upper text and Lower text
o litle update for the script 'Lensflare'
o New asynchron window: Undo/Redo You can easily jump from one step
of the picture to another step.
o Some Bug corrected
o Size Presets added to the 'New' requester and 'Scale page'
requester
o AutoCrop (include in the 'crop' requester).
o PfPaint will Detect automatically
* PGM picture and load it.
* PS or PDF file, and try to load it with the help of ghostscript
o Improve text effect "Azzaro"
o 2 New text effect: Water and River
o Improve window history
o Fix a bug with picbrush tool and very big picture
o 5 new tooltypes
* SCREEN_ID
* SCREEN_WIDTH
* SCREEN_HEIGHT
* SCREEN_DEPTH
Some people can't open the startup requester or can't open the
screenmode requester ( I really don't know why ?) so theses tooltypes
are for them.
* CYBERGRAPHX: Force PfPaint to detect Cybergraphx
o Limit Border&Edge to 24bits picture
o Improve 'Compose' requester
o New Item in the 'Picture' menu "Crop & Paste"
o Improve "Adjust levels" with an editable tolerance
-
Requirements
o Minimum 68030 + FPU
o Minimum OS 3.0
o Graphics card (Cybergraphx min cgxv41 r71 or Picasso96)
o Render.library
o Jpeg.library
o XPKmaster.library
o AsyncIO.library
o ttengine.library
Some features of PerfectPaint
o Drawing in 1-24 bits
o Antialiasing
o Spare page
o Stencil
o Symmetry
o Multiple-level undo
o Text with antialiasing, bevel, outline and effects
o Different types of pen
o Animation
o Arexx
o Brush: Mapping density, Opacity, Smooth border
o Several effects
http://gothic.fr.free.fr/amiga/intro.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
V O Y A G E R 3 . 3 . 1 2 6 I S R E L E A S E D
{The following is actually the notes for 3.3.125, released shortly
before 3.3.126. The difference is that 125 had some compilation
problmes, now corrected in 126. Be sure you get the 3.3.126 version.
Brad}
Improvements over the last public beta (3.3.122):
- see history below
Notable known deficiencies (not worth reporting):
- list item blocks don't get proper indentation
(same for BLOCKQUOTE)
- no printing at all
- Navigation within frames is, erm, suboptimal
- JS: function calls across frames don't pass arguments
- VFlash plugin doesn't detect resizes
- Download window will close when you close the last
browser window, even if it's downloading
- frames always have scrollbars no matter what
- this list doesn't seem to be shrinking with new versions
----
Support & Bug reporting
=======================
Bug reports are appreciated, just stuff as much information
as possible into them. A quick glance at the V mailing list
will reveal whether 50000 people have already reported
before. The JSERROR.LOG functionality will come in handy
for dealing with JS quirks.
There's now an automated bug tracking system located at
http://bugs.vapor.com/
To submit a bug report, simply mail it to
<voyager-bugs@vapor.com>
You will receive a receipt and a tracking ID, which allows
you to track your bug report stats in the bug database.
Please join the Voyager mailing list to discuss this beta
release. Please do not contact any of the authors directly -
their time is severly limited, and chances are good that
you want them to do some work on the code instead of
answering mail all day long :)
To subscribe, mail to
<voyager-request@vapor.com>
and put "SUBSCRIBE" in the subject or body of the mail.
The mailing list is archived at
http://www.mail-archive.com/voyager@vapor.com/
Credits
=======
Voyager is (C) 1995-2002 by Oliver Wagner <owagner@vapor.com>,
All Rights Reserved.
V³ is actually a joint effort conducted by several people
using the powers of CVS:
The flash player and many many core changes have been done
by David "Zapek" Gerber <zapek@vapor.com>
Several layout engine improvements have been contributed
by Jon "Sircus" Bright <jon@siliconcircus.com>
Matt "Neko" Sealey has done a tremendous amount of work in
processing bug reports, and provided several code improvements.
The new bookmark and toolbar system has been devised by the wits
of Simone "Wiz" Tellini <wiz@vapor.com>
Jerome "KingGuppy" Fisher <kingguppy@vapor.com> contributed
the new Textinput functionality including HTML tag highliting.
He also squashed some bugs.
The GUI cleanup and the new about:, plus the Voyager
Portal site (http://v3.vapor.com) design are done by
Ben "Beej" Preece <beej@vapor.com>
The nifty new V3 logo is done by Jason "Morden" Murray
<morden@sub.net.au>, who also did the www.vapor.com web
site design.
The Vpdf plugin was done by Emmanuel Lesueur
<lesueur@club-internet.fr>. He also wrote the small
MorphOS/AmigaOS loader program.
Nicholai Benalal ported the TearOff classes to MorphOS.
Version History
===============
3.3.125 -------
- Imgdec: transparent images could have their background not
refreshed properly (Zapek)
- General: V wouldn't execute any external command when being started
from CLI (Zapek)
- General: disabled single window mode since it is the cause of 99%
of peoples' experienced crashes. It'll be back when it works (Neko)
- JS: fixed crash happening with some "popup" windows, thanks to
Henes (Zapek)
- Layouter: pen allocation precision was slightly wrong (Zapek)
- GUI: more efficient prefspage switching (Zapek)
- Net: fixed some possible buffer overflows in POST requests (Zapek)
- General: fixed small internal memoryleak which could happen with
some custom context menus (Zapek)
- JS: fixed V.MorphOS crashing on most string from real datatype
conversions, libc bug (Zapek)
- General: no longer barfs when Busy.mcc isn't installed (Zapek)
- General: no longer barfs when Listtree.mcc isn't installed (Zapek)
- Network: added SSL support to the MorphOS version (Zapek)
http://v3.vapor.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
N E W E S T W I N U A E I S A V A I L A B L E
22 December, 2002
WinUAE 0.8.22 Release 4
=======================
Bugs fixed:
- changing joystick options in ports-tab caused joystick to not
respond in some cases
- bad performance on laptops with power saving enabled
- mouse handling updates
- RDB SmartFileSystem 1.58 (and older?) crash fixed
- more filesystem bug fixes
- uaescsi.device reset crash on Win9x
- some games had problems detecting slow ram (for example Lotus 3),
fixed
- MIDI SYSEX buffer overflows fixed
- sound timing always defaulted back to PAL when WinUAE lost or
gained focus, fixed
- more ALT-TAB switching problems fixedja
New features:
- improved FPS counter
- filesystem notification (ACTION_ADD_NOTIFY, ACTION_REMOVE_NOTIFY)
support added and more..
- CD-led is lit when CD32 audio track is playing
- new keyboard shortcuts: PAUSE-pause emulation, PAUSE+END-turbo
speed
- CAPS-image support (http://www.caps-project.org/)
- Catweasel MK3 support (joystick ports, keyboard and Zorro2-board
emulation for multidisk.device) Card base address must be manually
added to configuration file (catweasel_io=0x????). This will be fixed
when real driver supporting all Catweasel features is available.
- 1.5MB slow RAM support
Check download-page for Catweasel configuration instructions
http://www.winuae.net/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
N E W S F R O M I O S P I R I T
23 December, 2002
Merry christmas and a happy new year!
We wish all our customers, partners and friends a happy christmas
time and a good start into 2003.
As a small christmas gift, purchasers of fxPAINT 2.0 can now download
additional HTML-album skins by Nick Clover in our download center.
Addendum: Due to a small bug in the downloadscript, not everbody
could access the archive. The bug has been fixed.
16 December, 2002
VHI Studio 6.0 available
While VHI Studio 6.0 already was available at the Amiga+Retro
Computing 2002, it is now also regularly available as download- and
package-version. Furthermore, you can now order an update from version
4.x/5.x and VLRec (NG).
New features since the last version include support for AmithlonTV by
Guido Mersmann and a filesystem-driver specialised in USB-cardreaders
(under Poseidon).
Customers buying version 6.0 will get free access to all future 6.x
versions via Internet.
12 December, 2002
fxPAINT 2.0 available
We are happy to announce the availability of fxPAINT 2.0. All
preorders have been dispatched already (with the exception of non-paid
prepayments). fxPAINT 2.0 is available on CD-ROM and as download
version and runs native on 68K, PowerUP, WarpUP, MorphOS and Amithlon.
http://www.iospirit.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------
F L A S H M A N D E L V 2 . 2 F O R F R A C T A L F A N S
22 December, 2002
What is FlashMandel?
With FlashMandel you can create fractal graphics. The most famous
kind of this graphics is probably the "Mandelbrot's-set" or
respectively the "Mandelbrot's puppet". The picture on the left shows
the basic form of this type. But FlashMandel can also calculate and
render the "Julia's set", shown on the bottom of this text. It looks
like an ornament. Theprinciples of fractal graphics have been
discoverd some years ago, so you have probably seen a lot of them -
but the infinite variety of forms is still fascinating.
So come on, test it and enter the world of fractals.
What are fractals?
The terms "fractal" and "fractal geometry" were created by the
mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. The special thing of fractal geometry
in contrast to the "normal" geometry is, that it handles with
irregular and complex forms instead of simple forms like spheres or
straight lines.
A typical attribute of a fractal is auto-similarity, this means,
every magnification of a fractal is always similar to it's origin.
With the zoom-functionality of FlashMandel you can make a journey into
the deep of fractal-graphics.
What features has FlashMandel?
o It supports calculating the Mandelbrot-set and the Julia-set.
o It runs on all Amiga-computers with kickstart 3.0 (or higher), 1MB
RAM and a 68020-CPU with a floatingpoint-unit.
o Full support of a PowerPC-CPU using WarpOS. Because of the complex
calculations it is rcommended to have this kind of CPU.
o Supports gfx-cards using Cybergraphics or Picasso 96.
o Coloranimation.
o Free choice of colors using different palettes.
o and much more...
Features since V 1.5:
o FlashMandel has a new Reaction-GUI. You need OS3.5 (or higher) for
this feature. Now it's possible to use all features only by mouse.
o Added support for Localization for Italian and German languages,
others are welcome ;-).
o A new installer-script makes it easy to install, update or delete
FlashMandel.
o Extended the Z = Z² + C formula to Z = Z^(2^n) + C with 1 <= n <=
11.
o A new arexx-port - usefull to build animations, gfx-effects ,
benchmarking...
o A special no-68k-FPU-version for owners of a Blizzard
MC040LC/PPC603e is now included. It runs on other systems without FPU
too.
NEW! FlashMandelWOS 2.2
This has changed in the new version:
o Added three new arexx-scripts:
* Benchmark_II.rexx:
A new benchmark-script with new functions and a localized
reaction-GUI (Needs AWN-Pipe).
* Create_FMandel_Anim.rexx:
A script for creating an IFF-animation. With a localized reaction-GUI
(Needs AWN-Pipe).
* Toolbar.rexx:
Adds a toolbar to the FlashMandel-screen. Includes the most important
functions (Needs AWN-Pipe).
o Some modifications are made to the reaction-windows. Now you can
confirm a window by pressing "Return" and cancel a window by pressing
"ESC".
o A polish catalog file is now included. Thank you Spider &
TranceLetters. The file is still v1.5, sorry.
o Fixed some bugs in the arexx-code.
What is planned for the future?
o Recompile FlashMandel for MorphOS and AROS operating systems if
it's not too much difficult.
o Add 3D-renderings and 24-bit-palettes support.
o Double the precision for both 68k and PPC to zoom even more into
the fractals, suggestions are welcome ;-).
Who creates FlashMandel?
First of all I have to make clear, that Dino Papararo from
Napoli/Italy starts creating FlashMandel. I (Edgar Schwan) liked to
work with this program, so I contacted him per e-mail. Since then we
develop FlashMandel in a team. I gave him some tips for the
ppc-support and for converting his project to deal with the C/C++ -
compiler 'StormC'. For version 1.5 I've written a new GUI (reaction,
OS 3.5+) and added multi-language-support (localisation).
In the actual public version 2.2 some arexx-scripts were added and
some bugfixes were done. Unfortunalety Dino's Amiga is dead, so all
changes are done by myself.
You want to know more about Dino? Then take a look at his page
http://spazioweb.inwind.it/dinop/ !
Where can I get FlashMandel?
First of all I have to mention the AmiNet. Under
" http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dirs/gfx_fract.html" you can download
the most recent version.
Or you can download the main-archive, a collection of
640x480-pictures or the readme-files from our site (V2.2):
FlashMandelWOS.lha (1,2 MB)
FMSmallPictures.lzx (1,5 MB)
FlashMandelWOS.readme
Besides it was published on differet german CD's:
o AMIGA-Plus-CD volume 1/2001 (february/march).
o AMIGA-OS-CD volume 10 (july 2001).
http://schwan-clan.de/amiga/FlashMandel_GB.shtml
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A M I A T L A S N E W V E R S I O N R E L E A S E D
3 December, 2002
At the Amiga+Retro Computing Show in Aachen/Germany a new version of
AmiATLAS 6 was to be released !
Although most of the remaining Amiga users are holding back their
spending power over the last months, not only with the hope of new
hardware to be released, we have worked all the time on AmiATLAS 6 ...
At the show you could buy a new version with a complete actualised
(4th quarter 2002) and enlarged data base! Now also with actual
tourism informations and some other useful stuff like informations
about CarIDs, for all supported european countries. This is a rise of
about 200 % to the last official release!
And not to forget the enhanced maps, e.g. for germany now with the
complete motorway net with all clearance to the end of 2002. Surely,
some more towns are included too.
In AmiATLAS itself we have removed lots of reported bugs and
optimised it in some cases, and of course some wishes/ideas of the
users were integrated. Supported languages now are german, english,
french and italian.
The new version of AmiATLAS 6 with new enhanced multi language DVD/CD
cover design has already been delivered to KDH Datentechnik and
IOSPIRIT in a high number of pieces for the show. APC & TCP got some
units too.
Due to organizational cases all updates can be delivered at least
right after the show in Aachen and as always known are only available
for registered users. So please register your (even old) copy of
AmiATLAS too!
Please send your inquiries and wishes by eMail to: AmiATLAS@gmx.net
AmiATLAS Development Team, Gerd Frank
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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 2002 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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