Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Amiga Update (2003-11-30)
======================================================================
________
_________ ____ _|__ __ __|_______ _________
__\ _____ \\\\ \_ _/ //___// _____//______\ _____ \\
// \\\\ /. \\\\__ \/ __// \\ \\____. /// \\\\ /. \\
\\___\¯ /___///___\ /___\ \\_________//\\___\¯ /___//
¯ \/ ¯ ¯ \/. |¯ ¯|z!o ¯ ¯ \/ ¯
A M I G A | 031130 | U P D A T E
|________|
"SO THE WORLD MAY KNOW"
======================================================================
AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Amiga, Inc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A M I G A T A K E S B A T H I N U K
M I C R O - P A L O O Z A P A R T Y I N D E C E M B E R
F R E E C I V T O U R N Y - A M I G A O N E P R I Z E !
C L A S S I C A M I G A B B S G R O U P F O R M E D
T H E L A T E S T F R O M E Y E T E C H
O S 4 . 0 D E M O I N N E W Y O R K C I T Y
U P D A T E T O P O W E R I C O N S A V A I L A B L E
N E W R E L E A S E - S F S F I L E S Y S T E M
B A R S A N D P I P E S V 1 . 2 1 A V A I L A B L E
Editor's Thoughts and Introduction:
November has brought nothing very exciting to the Amiga community,
but life goes on and the seemingly endless effort to get a production
version of OS 4.0 to the world continues. In fact, it seems to be
ongoing with a continuing sense of confidence on the part of those
involved. That sense of confidence is what keeps me upbeat that we
will get there, and it will be worth the trip. Read the excerpts we
have from the interview with Alan Redhouse from Eyetech for a sample
of what I mean.
Still, don't you sometimes wonder what Amiga Inc. is doing to
actually earn money? I would feel a lot more comfortable if I saw some
Amiga product on the market and obviously selling. I suppose the
important thing for now is they are still there, they are the only
Amiga we have, and they are making progress on OS 4.0 at least. In
fact, there's a lot of talk in the Community about getting OS 4.0 beta
to users before Christmas. Beta, please note, not production, but
that's still "beta" than nothing. We'd like to see that.
Brad Webb,
Editor
----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail to the E-ditor:
22 November, 2003
Hi Brad,
I just downloaded the whole bunch of newsletters from your website,
brilliant read (especially the old issues of course)!
Thanks for your efforts.
Btw., 980515 is missing, the link is broken.
Regards
Christoph
~~~~~~
Hello Christoph,
We're pleased you thought enough of them to download them.
Yes, that one has been missing for some time and I'm not entirely
sure why. There have been a few ISP "snafus" over the years that have
caused deletions from the archives, and that could be the case but
it's missing from my personal archives as well.
I've kept the link to indicate there was an issue on that date.
If any reader has a copy, we'd love to have it for the archives. We
put out a request a couple of years ago and got most of those that had
gone missing replaced, but either we didn't spot this one at that time
(don't have the list any longer) or no one could replace it for us.
Perhaps it was all a dream?
Regards,
Brad
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A M I G A T A K E S B A T H I N U K
The South West Amiga Group are organising an OS4 on tour event in the
picturesque city of Bath, in the South West of England. This is your
chance to come along and see the new version of AmigaOS, running on
the first new Amiga computer, the AmigaOne, for nearly a decade.
The show will be held on Saturday the 13th of December, between 1pm
and 5.30pm. The entrance fee will be £2.50. There will be tea and
coffee available, as well as a licensed bar.
As well as offering beautiful architecture and views, the heritage
city of Bath has good rail and bus links.
News
25th November
Total Amiga and SEAL have confirmed that they will be exhibiting at
the event. Also, the alternative directions from the M4 have been
updated, so if you printed these directions off before, please take
this version instead
21st November
We have added two sets of directions, complete with pictures to our
venue page.
16th November
The entrance fee for the show will be £2.50. Aside from the bar, tea
and coffee will be available. Finally, we've got a funky 'Amiga in
Bath' logo from Bobson, so thanks for that!
10th November
The show will definitely be at the Rockery, from 1pm to 5.30pm.
Forematt Home Computing have confirmed their attendance.
6th November
Fleecy has put us in touch with someone who can demonstrate OS4 on an
Amiga 4000 with a Cyberstorm PowerPC card, so you will be able to see
it running on this classic Amiga as well as the new AmigaONE machines.
4th November
We've just received confirmation that Fleecy Moss from Amiga will be
in attendance.
3rd November
We have a venue booked, details of which are on the venue page. We
are still waiting to hear back from the Bath University about holding
the show there, but this venue has been booked and a deposit paid, so
even if the university doesn't come through, we do have an absolutely
definite venue. This venue is big enough for our original plan of a
one day show. Detailed travel information will be provided shortly.
http://www.petergordon.org.uk/os4
----------------------------------------------------------------------
M I C R O - P A L O O Z A P A R T Y I N D E C E M B E R
23 Nov 2003
Ever since September 13, we've been in talks with Anthony Ramos,
co-owner of Ground Kontrol in Portland, about having the first ever
Commodore party in the Pacific Northwest. And now, the party is a
"go"!
The Micro-Palooza Party, is Tuesday, December 30 from 1 p.m. to 10
p.m. at Ground Kontrol, 610 SW 12th Avenue, in downtown Portland,
Oregon, USA. Ground Kontrol is a retro-arcade establishment with all
the good games from the past, like PacMan, Tempest, Star Trek pinball,
etc.. http://www.groundkontrol.com
Anthony Ramos has agreed for us to set up some Commodore/Amiga
computers there and to invite computer bands to play music on the
mini-stage. Anthony is also is quite a concert organizer. Four
micro-computer bands will play live music at Micro-Palooza. Now
confirmed, Seth Sternberger of 8Bit Weapon will fly all the way up
from Los Angeles, and gotoXY is coming in from Eugene, Oregon. The
other bands coming for the event are MOS-8 and Waxin' Wary, both from
Eugene (the city must be a hot-bed of micro-computer music activity!).
Seth is trying to get the band, BitShifters, to come all the way from
New York!
Some details on the bands. 8Bit Weapon uses Commodores and Amigas
when playing their music. gotoXy uses a variety of 8-bit platforms
including Commodore and Gameboy in playing their music. BitShifters is
another Gameboy-inspired band. Seth of 8Bit Weapon will be selling his
band's CD's in limited-edition "floppy disk holders" -- two CD's for
$10.
To find out more about 8Bit Weapon, go to
http://www.brainscream.com/seth
To find out more about gotoXY, go to
http://zebox.com/gotoxy
The bands are now scheduled to play music from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.. (If
BitShifters come in, then that beginning time will change.) When the
music starts, Commodore/Amiga users (or other computer devotees) will
be asked to pay a $3 cover charge. The general public will be asked to
pay a $4 cover charge.
In attendance will be myself, Dave Moorman of Loadstar disk magazine,
Jeri Ellsworth of CommodoreOne fame, and possibly, Dale Luck, Amiga
programmer most famous for the Boing Demo. The following C=/Ami groups
which have been invited and which have responded positively to the
party are: the Amiga/Commodore User Group of Astoria, Oregon; the
University Place Commodore Home User Group of Tacoma, Washington; and
the Commodore User Association of Medford, Oregon. Of course, the
public -- those who walk in through the door -- will be welcome to use
our Commodores/Amigas as they go in to play with the arcade machines.
The party will be a relaxed affair -- just playing C=/Ami games,
eating pizza,drinking soda, listening to music, and lots of talk.
On a side note, we're trying to get newspaper, radio, and television
coverage of Micro-Palooza.
Come and celebrate the holidays with us on December 30! Come to
Micro-Palooza!
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
----------------------------------------------------------------------
F R E E C I V T O U R N Y - A M I G A O N E P R I Z E !
24 November, 2003
To celebrate the launch of our FreeCiv tournament series the owners
of the AmigaWorld.net FreeCiv server are offering a unique chance to
win a New AmigaONE XE motherboard with 512Mb RAM!
updated
The prize will go to one lucky victor of the FreeCiv challenge league
matches starting in January 2004 and concluding in March 2004! There
are a limited number of places so register with your AmigaWorld.net
identity on the AW FreeCiv Support Site !
To help you prepare for victory, AW will be running a series of 12
training matches throughout December 2003 at the weekend for different
timezones across the globe to participate and learn the game. More
details can be found on the AW FreeCiv Support Site or join us on IRC
on server irc.amigaworld.net channel #awfreeciv.
If you already have an A1XE and you don't need another, we offer an
A1XE upgrades package to the same monetary value!
Full terms an conditions that apply to the game will be posted on
December 31st on freeciv.amigaworld.net.
Update Last night (25th) we successfully tried out a brand of the
settings we call "speedciv" which takes about 2 hours to play and is
far more frenetic than the standard freeciv We expect games to take
2-3 hours maximum now!
DaveP and IanS - AW FreeCiv Admins.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C L A S S I C A M I G A B B S G R O U P F O R M E D
22 November, 2003
The Port Zero BBS Net, a group made up of Amiga BBS SysOps has joined
together to get the word out that the old school BBSs that were highly
popular before the internet are still alive and in use. For those that
used to use these BBSs, it's a walk through nostalgia. For the unlucky
that never heard of or used a BBS, it's a lesson in computer history.
There are currently 5 member BBSs that are now all linked via a multi
user chat system allowing users from all 5 systems to get together and
just ragchew. Also, each BBS offers a different variety of files, and
discussions, as well as classic online games and text files. For a
list of member BBSs, info on the group, and links to connect to the
BBSs, visit The Port0 BBS Net page at bbs.amigaz.org/port0
----------------------------------------------------------------------
T H E L A T E S T F R O M E Y E T E C H
{The following item is extracted from an interview available at
http://amigaworld.net. If you're looking for the best website for
Amiga, that is certainly the one we'd recommend at AU. Stop by and pay
them a visit, and read the entire inteview. Brad}
21-Nov-2003
AW Staff: Hello Alan, thanks for sponsoring AmigaWorld and for taking
the time to answer these questions!
1) Here at AmigaWorld we are now providing Eyetech's Official
AmigaOne Forums, News and Updates. Can you share some of your future
plans with regard to AmigaWorld? For instance, will Eyetech partcipate
regularly within AmigaWorld's forums?
Alan: Our main objective - and therefore the main focus of my time -
is to promote the AmigaOne hardware and OS4 into broader markets. This
means that, despite my best intentions and wishes, the time available
for my direct participation in the forums (or is it fora? it's a long
time since I did latin at school) will necessarily be limited. I'll
continue to read the debates and put in selective comments where I
think it is helpful, relevant and important to do so.
Not having more time to actively participate in the forums is
something I really regret, but the bigger picture is the most
important thing to concentrate on right now. In the interests of the
existing Amiga community we absolutely have to broaden the market for
the A1 technology and for OS4, even if that involves using Linux as a
trojan horse. And when I say 'we' - meaning the broad alliance of
Amiga Inc., Hyperion and Eyetech - in practice the other commitments
of Amiga Inc and Hyperion means that that responsibility is, for the
moment at least, mainly falling on Eyetech's shoulders. This is fine
by me as Eyetech's historical expertise is selling big-picture
technology-based solutions at corporate and governmental level. This
need to focus on these bigger markets is the main reason that we've
handed over reins of the UK retail market to Sven Harvey's company,
Stellar Dreams.
2) How many AmigaOne boards have been sold so far and what is your
opinion on the demand for the current boards and upcoming Micro1A
boards?
Alan: From the publicly available figures it seems that we have
delivered more AmigaOne boards than any other 'open' (ie not IBM or
Apple) PPC-based standard PC form factor board supplier. And in terms
of real sales for real money (which in my view is the ultimate measure
of success - anyone can give boards away) we really seem to have no
significant competition to date.
The MicroA1 is aimed at a different marketplace entirely. It is - at
the same time :
- a potential (ie first it needs a stable OS4 + applications) entry
level home computer and (initially retro-ish) games console
- a modular embedded system/industrial controller board (with a
variety of I/O and cpu options) running embedded OS4 or Linux from
flash ROM
- a very low power consumption, low cost of ownership thin client
(running under OS4 or Linux as appropriate) for Windows or Linux
application servers. The client software for Linux has already been
written and will be ported to OS4 (allowing the same delivered
performance for lower CPU specification/cost) in due course.
Ultimately I believe that this market will develop to see the MicroA1
technology licenced to the big far-eastern LCD screen manufacturers to
allow them to incorporate thin client (and OS4 capability) directly
into their own products.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
O S 4 . 0 D E M O I N N E W Y O R K C I T Y
26 November. 2003
Mr. Hardware Computers is happy to announce the first showing of
Amiga OS4.0 to run on the new AmigaOne computer in the USA.
In conjuction with A.M.U.S.E (New York Amiga Users group)the showing
will be next Tuesday December 2nd 8:00pm -10:00pm Room 706, Meyers
Hall New York University Washington Place (Between Broadway and
Washington Square East. The system will be running on a AmigaOne. This
is Beta version. All are invited. Amiga, Back for the future. Other
items for sale AmigaOne and Classic. Further info call Russ Norrby
631-821-2364
----------------------------------------------------------------------
U P D A T E T O P O W E R I C O N S A V A I L A B L E
ALWAYS DOWNLOAD AN UP TO DATE VERSION OF POWERICONS AND OTHER
SOFTWARE OF MINE AT:
http://www.elena-fractals.it/software.php
PROGRAM HISTORY
----------------------------
1.05 (21 Nov 03)
-Added BETTEROUTLINE option to improve text outline effect.
-Added SCROLLSPEEDUP option to optimize Workbench icon scrolling
(thanks to a Georg Steger's idea).
-In the case no default base type icon is found in ENV:Sys (drawer,
tool, project, etc.) no icon was returned. Fixed.
-Removed a subtle bug in the 68K version causing weird system
slowdowns and crashes (register A4 in GetIconRectangleNew() was
erroneously trashed by the code generator). Thanks to Tony Aksnes for
the patient beta testing.
-Some new example icons added
----------------------------------------------------------------------
N E W R E L E A S E - S F S F I L E S Y S T E M
11 NovEMBER, 2003
A new release for the replacement FileSystem SFS has been made.
Changes since v1.195 include:
WARNING:
New default of entries in ".recycled" dir is 350! (was 35)
1.212
Fixed another old "findbnode() can't find key ..." bug in the
defragmenter.
Formatting a partition didn't reset all variables, fixed.
Fixed some more removable disk bugs.
Optimized 'safe writing'.
Fixed some bugs in the removeable disk code.
Now uses pools for small allocations.
Better fragmentation prevention.
Improved defragmenter.
Found and fixed a major bug in the removable code.
Fixed an enforcer hit.
SFS now sets the time if there is no working battery clock.
Recompiled PPC version with my ppc-amigaos-gcc.
1.206
Changes for OS4 PPC.
Increased supported path size from 520 to 8192 chars, no longer
trashes own structures if a path is longer as the supported size.
Enforcer-hits for bad notification paths removed.
Workaround for a bug in IDEFix added.
Fixed a bug in the mask handling.
Max. number of entries in ".recycled" dir is now configurable:
#define ASS_MAX_RECYCLED_ENTRIES (ASSBASE+6001) #define
ASQ_MAX_RECYCLED_ENTRIES (ASQBASE+6001) Min. 35, max. 3500, new
default 350 (was 35).
ROVING_SMALL_WRITE and ROVING_RESERVED_SPACE increased from 8 to 64
KB.
Formating and serialize_disk is now refused if the partition is not
inhibited.
Support for write protected media added.
ACTION_WRITE_PROTECT added.
Support for removable media improved.
Fixed a bug in ACTION_INFO.
Improved multithreading.
1.198
Fixed a multithreading startup bug (volumenode dn_Task was wrong).
Improved multithreading for partitions with "recycled" dir.
1.196
Changed reserved admin blocks to 1%.
Workaround for the "partition too full to delete something" bug
added.
Support for removable media improved.
Minimal multithreading added.
You can find the latest version on Aminet.
http://uk.aminet.net/pub/aminet/disk/misc/SFS_1.212.lha
----------------------------------------------------------------------
B A R S A N D P I P E S V 1 . 2 1 A V A I L A B L E
30 November, 2003
Midi Sequencer for Amiga based on older beta of Bars and Pipes
Professional.
Ver. 1.21 (30.11.2003)
o bugs removed:
1. songlength-calculation now correct
2. In Transportwindow: 1/2 and 3/4 button - switching corrected
(this doesn't work if "Synchronize to TempoMap" in
Timing->Menu is on)
3. In Songconstructionwindow:
o scrolling works better now
o problems with the gadgets removed
4. MIDI Time Code in slave-mode works somewhat more reliable
5. Synchronization with MIDI-clock OR MIDI-Timecode in the
Timing- Menu (not both at the same time, this makes no sense)
6. Arrows of the Knobs in the Mixwindow now proper drawn
o new: Message, if BarsnPipes is just running, and started a second
time.
o new: Progressbar in the splash-window at startup
(not in classic-version)
o camd-handling somewhat simplified
o new: CAMD-Tools ver.1.4
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Amiga Update on the net:
All back issues available at:
http://www.globaldialog.com/~amigaupdate/index.html
Stop by and check out our archive!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2003 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified.
======================================================================
_ __ _ <>_ __ _
A M I G A /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ A M I G A
U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ U P D A T E
/ \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_
amigaupdate@globaldialog.com
======================================================================
