21.Feb.2003
Kaliko
|
Kaliko online again
The website of the Swedish software development company Kaliko is now online again.
If you have sent an email to an @kaliko.net address during the last three weeks
you are asked to send it again. Kaliko continues placing confidence in AMIGA, Inc.
Most of the users in the world use a version of Windows and therefore it is right to
integrate these users to the Amiga world.
(nba) (Translation: dr)
[News message: 21. Feb. 2003, 01:36] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
21.Feb.2003
Lars Fuhrken-Batista (E-Mail)
|
Release of Wings for Game Boy Advance
Cinemaware announces the release of Wings GBA, which should be
hitting retail in the next few days! Wings GBA is a completely
new adaptation of the action-based flight-simulator Wings on Amiga,
with a new storyline, new missions and even the ability to fly on
the German side! There's nothing like it on GBA. (nba)
[News message: 21. Feb. 2003, 01:28] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
heise Newsticker (ANF)
|
heise: EBay Warns Buyers Who Warn Other Bidders of Deception
It's known there are recurring instances of deception with eBay auctions. A bidder from Niedersachsen
wanted to warn fellow bidders about an alleged con artist and so he used the contact function on the
eBay website. EBay reacted to this negatively and warned the warner against "spamming."
Click on the title link for the complete article.
(ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 23:57] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
(ANF)
|
New open source archive format: 7-Zip
7z Format - 7z is the new archive format, providing high compression
ratio. The main features of 7z format:
- Open architecture.
- High compression ratio.
- Strong AES-256 encryption.
- Ability of using any compression, conversion or encryption method.
- Supporting files with sizes up to 16000000000 GB.
- Unicode file names.
- Solid compressing.
- Archive headers compressing.
7z has open architecture, so it can support any new compression methods.
For more information please visit the title link.
(ps)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 19:34] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
Michael Mann (ANF)
|
Napster's Inheritance: Rights Lawsuit Against Bertelsmann
Two composers and two music publishers accused the Bertelsmann business group
of knowingly assisting in the illegal copyright violations of Internet users, in that
Bertelsmann kept Napster going through financial infusion. Read the complete article
under the title link. (nba) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 17:47] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
Michael Böhmer (ANF)
|
USB: ROMulus Module for HIGHWAY
After our poll about the new ROMulus module (FlashROM expansion for the HIGHWAY Zorro II USB controller)
the necessary prework and test on the prototype have finally been completed.
Next, the ROMulus module goes into production.
Expansive information about this particular expansion, among many long-awaited expansions, may be found under the
title link, respectively the English language information may be found
on the E3B pages.
E3B thanks all those who participated in our active poll, and hopes through this module to be able to offer another useful innovation for the
Amiga classic market. (ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 13:43] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
|
Poll about AmigaOS 4.0 Started
There are as many opinions as there are people. Others don't ask, but amiga-news.de wants your opinion!
In response to the query from ´eliotmc´ in our
AN Discussion Forum we started a poll about Amiga OS 4.0. We are interested in finding out which hardware you would like to buy OS4 for. For possible answers (multiple answers are unfortunately not available with this script) you have the following selection possibilities:
- Classic Amiga with PPC
- Classic Amiga with Shark
- AmigaOne
- Pegasos (assuming OS4 runs on Pegasos)
- I will not buy OS4
You can read the current results here.
(ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 13:38] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
Darius Brewka im AN-Forum
|
AmiStart Start Menu: Is There Still Interest in Further Development?
Darius Brewka released version 0.63 of AmiStart in September 2002, as we (reported).
AmiStart is a start menu similar to that found in Microsoft Windows, with a quick launchbar, drag&drop support and a reconfigurable
graphic overlay which allows transparency, rounded corners, background textures, a shape layer (with reconfigurable and programmable
skins controllable by external applications via ARexx). One example is the shape layer of Songplayer.
Because the author has some time, he is interested in knowing if there is interest in further development of AmiStart and, if so, how strong
this interest is. Would anyone like to make some suggestions or report some bugs? Give Darius some feedback, write him to say what could
be improved. (ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 12:43] [Comments: 1 - 23. Feb. 2003, 17:01]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
Golem IT-News
|
Golem: Execution of Many Programs Burns Out the iPAQ 5450
In a document from the Hewlett-Packard (HP) support databank the manufacturer of the iPAQ 5450 warns against running too many
programs at the same time. When many programs run in parallel, the speed of the gadget can be massively degraded. Also, Amiga
Anywhere runs on the iPAQ 5450. Read the complete report at Golem IT-News (click on the title link). (nba) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 12:05] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
Grasshopper LLC
|
DTP: PageStream V4.1.5.6 for AmigaOS and Windows
On the 3rd of February 2003, Grasshopper LLC released version 4.1.5.6 of the DTP Program "PageStream" for Amiga and Windows
computers. This update is available to registered users at the Grasshopper LLC Website (title link), and includes new help data. (nba) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 11:12] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
Christoph Gutjahr (ANF)
|
Interview with Ben Hermans in German and English
In light of a few currently circulating rumors about the status of AmigaOS 4, and the announcement of the partnership with
SciTech, we contacted Ben Hermans (AmigaOS 4 project leader and managing partner of Hyperion Entertainment) and conducted a
short interview with him.
The English language version may be read here and the
German language version may be read here.
We thank Ben Hermans for taking the time to answer our questions. (nba) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 10:59] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
Lars Ghandy Sobiraj (ANF)
|
Scene: First Edition of Saxonia Disk-Mag Appears
Yesterday the demo scene group Void released the first edition of their completely new disk-mag "Saxonia #1."
Because neither the group nor the mag has a homepage, the online portal Diskmag.de is offering the download (click on title link). Saxonia functions on all classic Amigas, according to the chief editor; it can even run on an A500 with expanded RAM. (nba) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 10:57] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
C64 News (ANF)
|
Music: SIDBoost your Amiga!
There is a new SID player for Amiga made by Glover/Samar called
SidBooster.
Forget about older players like PlaySid or Sid4Amiga.
This is the best SID emulation on Amiga and it can be compared
only with original C64! Recommended is at least 68040/40 and
full installed MUI (most plugins). Works perfectly on my
A4000/060/56Mhz, all BoingBags installed and Kick 3.9 (3.1
with ROM Patch from OS 3.9). "imagepool.library" was needed
for my miggy (can be found on AmiNet).
(ps)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 02:17] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
|
Aminet Uploads until 20th February 2003
Since our last message there were the following new uploads to the Aminet:
JabberwockySRC.lha comm/tcp 182K+Jabber client
MiamiSDK211.lha comm/tcp 134K+Miami SDK 2.11
libpng-bin.lha dev/gg 124K+AmigaOS GeekGadgets port of libpng-1.2.5
BetaScan_GER.lha hard/drivr 2K+German catalog for BetaScan (free!)
UFStory.lha pix/anim 269K+UltimateForce Story
trodas_icons2.lha pix/gicon 244K+Glow icons made by trodas
(ps)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 01:41] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
20.Feb.2003
Atroxis.de
|
Music: Markus Holler's MP3 Download Site
Markus Holler, known to many Amiga users for his musical pieces for Tales of Tamar, Operation: Counterstrike and The Holy Trinity, is now working on his own music download site. Currently there are already a few previously unheard songs to be found there, which in part come from the latest VD* Convention Video! Have fun!
*Virtual Dimension [ ;) -DM]
(ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2003, 00:08] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Feb.2003
Terry Fry (E-Mail)
|
Techconnect: SciTech Software to Add Graphic Power to AmigaOS 4 and Beyond
The press release by Hyperion regarding the partnership with SciTech
(as reported) is recognized as well outside the Amiga world. You may read the English article by Techconnect following the title link.
(ps) (Translation: ub)
[News message: 19. Feb. 2003, 23:48] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Feb.2003
AMIGAplus
|
REBOL: Picture viewer ReViewer v1.3
On the 12th of February 2003 version 1.3 of ReViewer, a picture viewer for the open platform
REBOL, has been releasded. The software with its graphical interface is to call stable even with this early version and by the platform independence of REBOL useable with the Amiga too.
The free download is possible at the website linked by the title.
(nba) (Translation: ub)
[News message: 19. Feb. 2003, 23:35] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Feb.2003
Christoph Gutjahr (ANF)
|
Interview with Ben Hermans
In the light of some rumours currently circulating (regarding the
status of AmigaOS 4) and the recent announcement of the partnership
with SciTech, we contacted Ben Hermans (Managing partner of
Hyperion Entertainment,
AmigaOS 4 project manager) and did a short interview.
Amiga-News: There's a rumor that OS4 is further delayed because Amiga Inc. are unable to contribute money to the project. Does your business plan rely on financial contributions from Amiga Inc.?
Ben Hermans: No, it doesn't. It has to be recognized however that software development costs money and that more money means more development resources and hence a shorter development cycle.
Amiga-News: You have to pay three senior developers, and the only known source of income for Hyperion during the last 15 months was the work on the Teron/AmigaOne BIOS (and Quake 2 of course, but that probably made just enough money to buy Steffen a Pizza). What/who pays the wages of your developers?
Ben Hermans: Contract work as you pointed out. Our work for Mai is ongoing and has been quite extensive.
There always will be new chipsets to support, new CPU's to support, Linux related work to be done etc.
We just delivered a substantially upgraded firmware for the AmigaOne/Teron hardware. More news on this will follow.
During the OS4 development cycle we also ported two Mac games (Nobody Lives Forever and Gorky 17), which brought in revenue.
Amiga-News: Still, the idea that you'll have to acquire additional funds if OS4 gets delayed some more makes sense. Your only option to acquire more funds would be to assign senior developers to other projects. In other words, if you don't match your current dead-line, OS4 will get even further delayed because the Friedens and/or Steffen Häuser would have to work on some Mac-Ports or contract work not related to OS4. right?
Ben Hermans: Absolutely. In fact, I dare say that if we had been in a position to concentrate solely on OS 4 during the past 15 months, OS 4 might already have been finished.
Amiga-News: Could you explain the legal status of AmigaOS4 to us? You said you "own" it,and Amiga Inc. are entitled to buy it back at a (quote) "very reasonable price". Is Amiga Inc.'s right to buy the OS back transferable, i.e. could they sell it to a third party? What happens if Amiga go bankrupt, would you still be able to sell the OS as *Amiga*OS? Would the party that acquires Amiga Inc.'s assets also acquire the right to buy AmigaOS4?
Ben Hermans: Our contract with Amiga does indeed contain an IP buy-back clause, which means that Amiga can acquire the work done by us on OS 4.
Once Amiga has acquired the rights to OS 4, theoretically a third party might buy it from them but certainly not with a view to burry it and halt development. If no new version of OS 4 is released within 6 months after release of OS 4, our right to develop the OS further and indefinitely relives.
If Amiga goes bankrupt, our license is commuted to an exclusive license to develop AmigaOS further, for any platform, not just PPC. This legally excludes a potential new owner from exploiting the source-code himself.
There is therefore nothing to be gained from buying Amiga's assets in the event of bankruptcy unless the new owner is willing to work with the OS 4 development team in good faith.
Amiga-News: Could you try to describe the current status of OS4 without using phrases like "everything's right on track" and "99% finished"? Is the integration of the 68k emulator finished? Are there external beta testers running ExecSG on their system?
Ben Hermans: We are now down to 8 outstanding items of the feature-list we released some time ago.
Only one of these issues is a show-stopper in the sense that it could introduce further delays (the emulation integration), the remaining issues are minor, several of which will be taken care of still this month.
By way of example: InstallerNG, one of those 8 items I mentioned. It is not finished yet. This won't hold up release of OS 4 as we can always switch back to the old Commodore installer. Another example: one Reaction class still needs to be taken care of. We are confident this will happen still this month. There are more of these minor issues, 8 in all like I said.
We are still working on the emulation integration. Unfortunately the external developer working on it had several pressing personal and professional issues to take care of which resulted in some delay. This is one of those instances where a bigger budget would certainly have helped. We nonetheless hope to wrap this up very soon as the work is now in such a state that full-time Hyperion developers can step in and take over.
Exec SG unsurprisingly sports all the functionality listed in the feature-list as already implemented. Several developers have access to it and are running it on their Cyberstorm PPC and AmigaOne hardware in order to develop device drivers. Meanwhile a team of 77 beta-testers and translators have been testing and localizing OS 4 components since many months now.
Amiga-News: The Alt-WOA scheduled for the 26th of April has been cancelled recently, because of the fact that "OS4 may not be ready by then". Were you involved in that decision? What does "not ready" mean in this context: "not ready for sale" or "not ready for demonstration"?
Ben Hermans: The organizers demanded ironclad guarantees that OS 4-A1 combo would be on sale at that time.
As a matter of principle, I informed them that the only way we could guarantee that now, would be for OS 4 to be ready NOW. It is not and I therefore declined to give them this guarantee as a matter of principle.
Huge corporations like Microsoft (Windows 95 released in 96 and Windows XP ring a bell?) and Intel (Merced/Itanium anyone?) with budgets larger than the gross product of most third world countries have missed their deadlines as a matter of course. It is simply unrealistic to expect a 100% guarantee. Life doesn't work that way. Not for Microsoft, not for Intel or Sun and certainly not for a small company like Hyperion. Do I expect that OS 4 will be ready by that time? I most certainly do, based on the information available to me at this point. But it would be intellectually dishonest to claim that I can guarantee that 100%, I have been in the business too long now.
Amiga-News: What kind of development tools can we expect for OS 4?
Ben Hermans: Development for OS 4 will initially need to take place with a barebones GCC. We already have Linux based cross-compilers as well as an OS 3.x based cross-compiler.
Moreover, Olaf Barthel has been working hard on a completely AmigaOS native GCC implementation which does not require ixemul and instead uses his own C runtime library.
We also hope to convince the VBCC maintainers to produce an AmigaOS 4.x version.
Amiga-News: Your partnership with SciTech was a positive surprise to most users. But supporting 180 different graphics chipsets definitely sounds like overkill if you would be only targeting desktop users. Is this partnership a first step to make AmigaOS more interesting for "embedded" appliances, like kiosk systems or Infochannel services?
Ben Hermans: The partnership with SciTech has several very important advantages.
First of all, we are assured that we will always have access to 2D drivers for the latest graphics cards. SciTech's expertise in this area is unrivalled and the manpower they can bring to bear is unmatched. SciTech has built up close relations with many graphics card manufacturers over the years. They can get hold of the required chipset documentation much easier than anyone else. This partnership essentially frees us from the job of ever having to write 2D drivers again and instead allows us to redirect resources elsewhere.
Secondly, Hyperion and SciTech will work together on 3D drivers. SciTech recognizes our expertise in this area and combined with their know-how, chipset documentation and development resources we can be similarly cut down on development time for 3D drivers.
Thirdly, your point about embedded systems is very valid. You don't need well over 170 chipsets to be supported for a desktop OS although choice is always a good thing. In the embedded space however choice may well be crucial when it comes to deciding which embedded OS to choose. There are a number of chipset producers competing in this space which won't win any prices for performance but certainly for cost-effectiveness and low power-consumption. When you are dealing with embedded devices, you are dealing with high volume productions. It's not hard to understand that saving say 10 USD per unit on the graphics chipset translates into massive savings when you are dealing with a production run of several thousand devices. Likewise, some devices may well demand low power-consumption for various reasons (cramped housing, hot environment or simply energy conservation). For such devices too a wide choice of chipsets may well tilt the balance in favor of a specific embedded OS. Let me give
one final example: kiosk and information systems. We know of well upwards of a thousand Amiga based systems still in use for this type of technology all over the world. These people are looking for a way to upgrade their aging systems but they are not satisfied with the TV Out quality produced by most current graphics cards except Matrox. By adopting SNAP, we are giving them that option.
Amiga-News: Some people were concerned about the way SciTech's SNAP technology gets integrated into AmigaOS. Will programmers have to deal with a completely new API, or even two independent APIs?
Ben Hermans: No, the idea is that SNAP operates solely as a display driver, a monitor driver for Picasso 96.
Amiga-News: Will SNAP display drivers be any slower than "native" AmigaOS drivers? SciTech seem to be using an OS independent binary format.
Ben Hermans: As some benchmarks on SciTech's site show, SNAP is fully accelerated and quite frequently outperforms the "official" drivers. We have no concerns whatsoever in this area.
Amiga-News: Given your tight resources, SNAP will certainly not be included with OS4.0, will it? When can we expect SciTech's technology to be available for AmigaOS4? What kind of display drivers will be included with AmigaOS4.0?
Ben Hermans: SNAP relies on the SciTech x86 Bios emulator. This is embedded in the AmigaOne firmware but not present in the Cyberstorm PPC for instance. We are still examining whether it makes sense to have the x86 Bios emulator present also for the BlizzardPPC or Cyberstorm PPC. This may well not be the case as it is very CPU intensive. Moreover, due to the very limited bandwidth on the Amiga classic, operating state of the art graphics cards (to the extent that they even exist in PCI form) can be considered overkill. Having said that, Forefront Technologies is still working on "native" P96 drivers for the Radeon range and they are making good progress.
We don't see any overriding reason why SNAP cannot be included with the AmigaOne version of AmigaOS 4.0. SciTech will migrate the codebase to Linux PPC (thus ridding us of any potential endian conflicts) and we will take it from there. This should be a fairly trivial job for a company which specializes in porting software from one architecture to another and from one CPU family to another.
Amiga-News: Is there anything you want to say in closing?
Ben Hermans: Yes, I want to thank everyone for their patience. I realize that it has been a long wait and that the wait is still not entirely over yet. On the other hand, I want to emphasize again the massive amount of work that was accomplished over these past 15 months. For the first time since the demise of Commodore, the entire AmigaOS source-code has been consolidated in one central CVS repository. A maintainer has been assigned for nearly every OS module. The old Commodore "bug and improvement suggestion" database is available to the OS developers. We have replacements for all still relevant Kickstart 3.1 modules and have implemented nearly all of the functionality outlined in the features document. No-one but Commodore has ever undertaken development on the AmigaOS on this scale. The result will be well worth the wait.
Amiga-News: Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, Mr. Hermans.
(ps)
[News message: 19. Feb. 2003, 23:25] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Feb.2003
GFX-BASE
|
Lorraine Design: New Glow Icon set
Bojan Milovic by Lorrain Design has released a new icon set on February the 15th 2003. Included are 130 Windows pictograms which he converted to AmigaOS 3,5+ and extended with the glow effect. The original pictograms were made by Jim Tackett.
(ps) (Translation: ub)
[News message: 19. Feb. 2003, 23:19] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Feb.2003
Amiga.SourceForge
|
DCR8520 Amiga ports: Updates from 02-18-2003
Diego 'DCR8520' Casorran has on his website at SourceForge some of his ports made available for download. On the 18th February 2003 there were the following programs updated or added:
(ps) (Translation: ub)
[News message: 19. Feb. 2003, 20:29] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
19.Feb.2003
Andreas Magerl (E-Mail)
|
Amiga Future: Preview to issue #41
From today on there is the preview and an extract of the March/April issue of the
Amiga Future online. Beside a detailed Pegasos/MorphOS test
(part 2) there are tests of Hollywood, IBrowse 2.3
and the Amiga Arena Games-CD, an interview with Bill Buck and more within the magazine.
At the CD there is the not limited version of
Virtual Karting 2 included. The magazine will be published on March the 5th 2003.
(ps) (Translation: ub)
[News message: 19. Feb. 2003, 17:50] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
|
