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`05.Dec.2022`	Advent Calendar: Door 5 - David Brunet Our new Advent calendar week begins with the fifth door and David Brunet. David Brunet is inextricably linked to his French AmigaOS and MorphOS magazine Obligement. The long history of this magazine starts in the mid-1990s: inspired by Christian, a friend at high school who owned an Amiga 1200, David switched from his Amiga 500 to this Amiga with hard disk and 68030 card. Both were interested in word processing, graphics, etc. and exchanged documents created with Wordworth every week for fun. These documents were called "Obligement", a made-up word that came from one of their friends. This term, which basically means "obligatory", basically marked the birth of the magazine. This gave rise to the idea of producing a printed Amiga magazine: the first issue left the "editorial office" on 1 January 1997. It was written with Wordworth 6 and the graphics were done with Personal Paint. It had 15 A4 pages, stapled by hand and all in colour, coming straight from Christian's printer. As the circulation never exceeded 15 printed copies, David suggested that they discontinue the paper version (after six issues) and start a digital version produced with Scala. In the following years they then switched to Blitz Basic 2 or Blitz Basic 2 RTG and the AmigaGuide format. Obligement 37 (January/February 2003) was then the first issue in HTML. From issue 51 onwards, the magazine exists as a direct online version. Due to time constraints, the magazine's articles were henceforth published directly on the Obligement page. The bimonthly issues were no longer produced, the magazine was from then on a purely online magazine. Instead of the traditional issues there is - and this is how we have known and reported on amiga-news.de for a very long time - a newsletter every two months to summarise new articles and updates. Equipped with this rich history and wealth of experience, David shares a few tips on how to "successfully" run an Amiga project for such a long time. His contribution for the fifth door: "There have been many Amiga volunteer projects in the past and some of them are still present, stronger than ever, like Obligement and Amiga-News.de. In this cold weather and with Christmas approaching, it is always comforting to see websites like these that do not let their readership down. I have witnessed the end of almost all Amiga fanzines/magazines. Their demise has allowed me to increase my experience so that I don't do the same thing. There is no miracle formula to perpetuate a magazine in a voluntary activity. I can simply state these few points: You should neither do too much (overwork is harmful)... ...nor do not do enough (you get used to doing nothing and in the end, you don't move forward). You have to know how to surround yourself with a few reliable people. You should not always do the same thing and vary the subjects/activities. You have to be open to criticism while rejecting unconstructive negative judgments. Don't forget that this is only a hobby. Projects motivated only by money do not last in time, especially on the Amiga. Believe in yourself and have a wonderful Advent and Christmas season!" (dr) [News message: 05. Dec. 2022, 06:38] [Comments: 1 - 05. Dec. 2022, 09:37] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`04.Dec.2022` Puni (ANF)	AmigaOS 4: Blog summary of November For the month of November 'Puni' has again published a news summary in the areas of hard- and software for AmigaOS 4 at the title link. (snx) [News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 09:33] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`04.Dec.2022`	Advent Calendar: Door 4 - The Apollo team For the fourth door and thus for the second Advent, the Apollo team contributes an anecdote. Their approach of FPGA-based turbo cards for Amigas represented a new alternative in terms of upgrading aged hardware besides the accelerator boards carrying a real 680x0 processor. The history started with a presentation of a NatAmi developer board in 2008. Announced in 2011, there was a first stable running version of the Vampire 600 for the Amiga of the same name in 2013. In 2016, Vampire variants for the Amiga 500 and 2000 followed, all of which used the V2 Apollo core. In 2017, development work was already underway on the Apollo V4 FPGA accelerator board, including a standalone variant. The following versions are currently available: Apollo-V4 standalone Apollo Firebird V4 for Amiga 500/A1000/A2000 Apollo Icedrake V4 for the Amiga 1200 Apollo Manticore V4 for the Amiga 600 Yesterday, Gunnar von Boehm announced an update of the Apollo core that provides 16 DMA Amiga audio channels instead of the four available on the standard Amiga. Each of the 16 channels provides stereo sound. In addition, one can position the sound from each individual channel to the left or right. The anecdote for the fourth door written by the Apollo team: "Back in the days of Silver core for V2, we used to put an Amiga video game character in the boot image. At that time, the war between the team TuKo "Simon the sorcerer is better than Monkey Island" and the team guibrush "Monkey Island is of course superior to Simon the sorcerer" already existed. A discussion in the team took place to decide which character between Simon and guibrush should be used for, I believe the Silver 5 release (I'm not sure anymore if it was the 5 of the 6). In the end, as it was TuKo who was doing the releases, he decided to put Simon, against any democratic decision. He was well punished, since this core was replaced in a few days by the next one because of a bug that made it unusable on several machines, which made it the core with the shortest lifespan in the history of the Vampire." (dr) [News message: 04. Dec. 2022, 08:13] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`03.Dec.2022`	Advent Calendar: Door 3 - Joerg van de Loo For the third door of our advent calendar, developer Joerg van de Loo took a lot of time. His main Amiga-side project is the text editor BareED. Unlike other editors, BareED is a RAM-based and pixel-oriented (not character-oriented) text editor for the Amiga. This means it can display proportional fonts (characters can vary in width) and use real tabs. Also it supports syntax highlighting, which requires a fast CPU (68040 CPU or better). Furthermore he writes tools like RTF-Riddle for converting RTF files into the HTML5 format. Always worth reading and of great help for other developers are his comments to various software news on amiga-news.de. A big thank you for that at this point. His anecdote for the third door: Police - Friday, December 23, 1988 I arrived home late in the evening (at night!) after two weeks of work and immediately ask my girlfriend if she got the necessary cables to connect the monitor, because at the moment everything is only in black and white and also silently. At first, I had operated the Amiga on the TV, but now I am the proud owner of a 1084S monitor, but the accessory pack was not included... She denies it, and my mother agrees that they both tried everything to get these cables in a hurry, but it was impossible. Bummer. I call a friend, who I know is still sitting in front of his Amiga late at night. He has these cables, but he can't spare them. Again crap. He gives me a phone number of an Amiga hardware developer with a store in the area - I should try there. I can't sleep in today, it's the 24th of December - but not because I'm preparing for Christmas Eve, but because I can hardly sleep, as I'm racking my brains to find a way to connect the old 1084 S monitor to my A2000(B), because the right cables weren't included. I actually want to call the hardware developer at 7:00 am, but refrain from doing so until 9:00 am. A friendly woman's voice answers and I ask if they have these cables. She refers me to her son. He answers and points out that today is 24 December. Yes, yes, yes, I know. I ask if he has the cables he needs. "Of course," is his reply. My next question is when I could pick them up. He means on the 27th, his mother calls in and says they are closed until the beginning of January. Ouch. I'm about to hang up in frustration when he says he'll be in the shop for another hour. Hmmm, might well be a bit more than 40 kilometres - I could manage that. I agree to hurry and leave a little later. My Opel Manta with its tuned engine and balloon tyres (but without the foxtail and wiggly wiggly!) doesn't mind this rainy weather, and neither do I, because as a frequent driver who works in southern Germany, I have to cope with completely different weather conditions. Here on the Lower Rhine, however, the drivers are apparently already overwhelmed by this rain. I'm just overtaking and set the guide speed to something above that of motorways. At a junction with a stop sign, I make it a priority eight-way road. Three kilometres further on, a lorry turns left into my subordinate road, so I ignore the stop sign and turn right. The 70 zone is quickly behind me and then it's just straight ahead - so I have to overtake all the time. Then I am close to my destination and have to turn left. After fifty metres I stop on the right and take out the folding map (yep, there were no sat navs back then). I orientate myself - and it doesn't take long, because I've had a lot of practice at that. As I turn left, I suddenly see blue lights behind me - oh, police on duty - I'll just let them pass. So I put the indicator back and wait for the police car to pass me. 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds - nothing. I look in the rear-view mirror - they are now right behind me! Do they want something from me? I am not aware of any guilt! A policeman gets out and immediately gets wet because of the rain. He knocks on the window and says "General vehicle inspection". Man, does this have to be now - I'm in a hurry. I open the window and he asks for my papers. I hand them over. He asks me if I know why they stopped me. I answer in the negative. He lectures me: excessive speed, inappropriate driving, running a stop sign twice and if they hadn't switched on the flashing lights, they would have lost the connection. Ouch. He asks me if I hadn't seen the blue light. I again answer in the negative. I suddenly realise that I am threatened with a driving licence suspension and a fine without the policeman having to point it out to me. I get out - and get wet too. I explain to the policeman why I am in such a hurry - workplace southern Germany, primary residence Lower Rhine, computer, monitor, no matching cables, Christmas, shops closed, black and white, no sound - and all because of the missing accessory pack - and that the shop where I bought this monitor would not be able to supply the missing accessory pack until the middle of next January. He tells me that this is no reason to disregard the traffic regulations. I point out that I can prove that I drive more than 110.000 kilometres a year and that I don't have any points in Flensburg (at that time this institution still existed), so that my current driving style would be an exception and I would realise that I had screwed up. He just says: "Wait here". He goes to the police car with the papers and gets in. A short time later he comes back and opens the instruction with: "I have consulted with my colleague. Since today is Christmas Eve and you are reasonable, do you agree to a warning fine of 20 DM?". I can't believe my luck! Of course, I agree! I have already mentally parted with my "rag". I pay the 20 DM and listen to his instructions - although we both get soaking wet. He hands me my papers and wishes me a good trip and a Merry Christmas - I wish him the same, and I mean it! They turn around and I continue my journey. Soaking wet, I press the bell of the private entrance. The mother of the hardware developer opens the door - and takes good care of me, handing me a towel to dry off. Then she leads me into the actual shop, which is closed today but where her son assembles electronic things. We get acquainted and he has already picked out the cables I need and laid them on the counter. As I look around, I discover floppy disk drives, memory cards and much more. We start talking and after a while, during which his mother interrupts us and urges us to leave, I leave the shop with the necessary cables and a 2 MB loaded 8 MB memory card as well as a second drive. I drive back, deeply relaxed and looking forward to the coming Christmas. (dr) [News message: 03. Dec. 2022, 14:24] [Comments: 1 - 03. Dec. 2022, 16:38] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

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