13.Jun.2000
Frank Leyendecker by e-mail
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Turboland - Tracker's Paradise
The Turboland is a support site for tracker composers of the Techno, Trance, House etc.
families (primarily Amiga :-). Originally, it was meant to introduce the mailbox going
under the same name, but meanwhile grew to a parallel project with several support acts,
like Techno Overdose, DJ Alle, Thunder, Ravebusters, Blaster One, ...
Moreover with a nice collection of Techno-, Trance- and House modules in various
tracker formats. Besides, we are always looking for new composers. :-)
[News message: 13. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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13.Jun.2000
Richard H. Poser by e-mail
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AmigAIM BETA version 0.9365 available
Author's note: This version might be buggy yet.
Download:
AmigAIM_BETA.lha
[News message: 13. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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13.Jun.2000
CD32-Allianz by e-mail
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AmigaSDK - Program Overview
If there should ever be a successor to the CD32 is depending
solely on if the new Amigas appear or not. At the Amiga show in Neuss, the AmigaSDK
(Software Devlopment Kit) has been presented to the public for the first time, and was
available for purchase. Now, we want to do our part to make the AmigaSDK and the new
Amiga a success, and so we decided to offer an AmigaSDK Program Overview. We took the PPC
Program Overview maintained by Carsten Schröder as a model.
We now call upon developers owning the AmigaSDK (and developing with it) to tell us
which project they work upon, which game they are porting or what kind of new software
they work upon.
[News message: 13. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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13.Jun.2000
Thomas Steiding by e-mail
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Epic News
"Foundation: The undiscovered Land", the Foundation mission CD, is now available. It can be
ordered from your Amiga dealer or the Weltbild Verlag.
The CD requires the "Directors Cut" or the original "Foundation". More information can be
gathered from the Products section of our homepage.
Important note: As we heard, there are some black sheep among the Amiga retailers, which also
sell our products as pirate copies. If you should have purchased a CD that was not properly
manufactured (printed cover, silver CD and cellophane covering), please report to
support@epic-marketing.de.
[News message: 13. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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13.Jun.2000
Stefan Sommerfeld by e-mail
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FGN: SoF Heads to Amiga
As already mentioned in our news and show report, Hyperion
Software will port the successful PC game "Soldier of Fortune" by Raven to Amiga and Mac.
Interesting is that this is even noted on FGN. The opinions
of several FGN readers are also interesting.
[News message: 13. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jun.2000
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SDK presentation report - part two
Read under the title link the second part of Martin Baute's report about
the introduction of the Amiga Software Developer's Kit by Bill McEwen.
This report is written in German (an English translation will follow) but
contains parts of the original English spoken sound recording. Martin
has taken some
photos of this presentation.
part 1 of the report (English)
Update: (15.06.2000, mj)
Now you can read Martin Baute's entire report about the presentation of Amiga SDK in English.
[News message: 12. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jun.2000
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World of Alternatives Gleanings (Update)
Under the titlelink you will find a detailed report from the fair in
Neuss, Germany and every relevant link to further reports and pictures.
(German only, translations will follow).
Update: (24.06.2000, mj)
I appologize for the much too long delay, but here it is. The English translation of Petra Struck's "World of Alternatives Gleanings":
Further amiga-news.de links
Pictures by Petra Struck from the first day
Pictures by Petra Struck from the second day
Report part one by Martin Baute (SDK presentation)
Report part two by Martin Baute
Pictures by Martin Baute from the presentation
Pictures by Martin Baute from the show
Extern links for reports and pictures
Marcus Neervoort Pictures
Fun Time World Report and Pictures - 1. day
Fun Time World SDK presentation
Fun Time World Report and Pictures - 2. day
playamiga.de Messebericht mit Bildern
Amiga-Online Pictures
Haujobb/Cyclone Zip file - 3,4 MB
kultpower.de Pictures
Amiga Times Show report
SalvaShow pictures - 1. day
Virtual Dimension Show pictures
Fun Time World Report by Sebastian Brylka
Fun Time World Report by Sascha Atrops
AMIGALAND Reporting pictures
Amiga Future Show report
World of Alternatives Gleanings
Autor: Petra Struck
Bill McEwen's presentation of the new AMIGA Software Developer's Kit (in short SDK) has made the Amiga/Atari show "World of
Alternatives" from 10 Jun to 11Jun 2000 a milestone in the never ending history of AMIGA. You can find details of the
presentation inside Martin Baute's report about this event.
Before I'll go on describing the highlights of the show I would like to tell everybody, that I personally liked the show well.
It was stamped by private, not to say familiar vibes, and the nice time they had at the show was written on the attendants'
faces. All in all about 3.200 user came to this fair, whereas I was astonished that many attendants from the neighboring
countries partly had taken very long times of travelling to come to the show. On saturday there was a remarkable bigger
number of visitors than on sunday due to the presence ob Bill, and his presentation of the AmigaSDK. The fair was held inside
the emotive premises of the townhall of Neuss providing a pleasing private ambience. The neighboring Droint hotel
surpassing provided the show attendants with drinks and food, but admitedly I was missing Petro's tasty sausages. ;-)
For the first time amiga-news.de had a booth on its own. From our editorial were Marin Baute, Dirk Bayens, Christoph Dietz,
Ruediger Engel, Martina Jacobs, Rolf Tingler an me present at the fair. Nico Barbat and Felix Schwarz were at the show too, but
of course were very busy at their own booths (Falke-Verlag and fxPaint). It was a wonderfull experience for me to get in contact
with the audience so close. We had a lot of dialouges and found good suggestions whereof we sure will set into action one or the
other. I would like to say thank you for all the compliments we recieved for our sites. Our lottery, whereupon Petro has done
the drawing of lots, was a real highlight, and fully a success. Petro gave away an Amiga Software Developer's Kit as additional
prize. :-)
You can have a look at the winners list here.
The prizes will be send directly from the
sponsors to the respective winner within the following days. At instance
I would like to thank Petro and all the sponsors very much
again!
I would like to tell you about my dialouge with Gerald Carda from Phase 5
befor I start to report about the fair. I was surprised to
meet him at the show, and took this in advantage to ask him some
questions. Mr. Carda assured to me, that every user will get back
his hardware sent in for repair at Phase 5. If he has pieces available
or could raise some, he will send in repaired boards, otherwise
he will send in the hardware unrepaired. Queries at that time are only
possible via Fax # +49 6171/58 37 89. We also asked, if and how
DCE, who took over large part of the production, will provide the entire
drivers via FTP again. According to Mr. Carda those files,
and all the technical documents are at disposal to DCE.
Mr. Carda will continue this job as possible under the given circumstances and I wish him good success for that.
Phase 5 already unpupated as "skipjack" in the past, and I hope this will happen again, for so users who did prepayment
might get satisfyed eventually.
Let's now pass the exhibitors in alphabetical order to make it more easy.
Amiga International was represented by Bill McEwen and Petro Tyschtschenko.
As metioned befor Bill introduced the new Amiga Software Developer's Kit, and Petro cared for his "community" in his
allover favoured manner.
Amiga Club *AC# and amiga-news.de
shared their common booth with Airbrush Paradise Tingler.
This way we had three attractions at one central point. The user could leave their mouse or other parts of thier
computer at the airbrushing artist Rolf Tingler, and in the meanwhile talk about questions all about Amiga next-door.
As usual there were many experts from Amiga-Club on site. Many smaller and bigger problems could bet worked out, and
many questions were answered. The clubmember Dr. Zarkov presented his in the meantime famous self-made Amiga laptop, which
earned a lot of admiration.
APC & TCP, the computer club and software distributor
had smashing CDs to offer, as every time. New on the list were the following CDs:
Amiga Arena CD, the Amiga Game Guide, Digital Makeup and Face of Mars 2000. Further the users could by ahead many
interesstig games.
Cool bits, distributor from Cologne who also repairs Amiga computers had his own
booth at the show where useres could by ahead hardware and software (e.g. Irseesoft). The same at
DreiEinHalb-Computer.
At Epic Marketing Paul Burkey was guest who presented his new
mission CDs Foundation: The Undiscovered Land and Foundation Gold Edition and authographed the CDs if wanted.
At Eternity users were able to watch the impressing intro of
Tales of Tamar. I got to know the entire team of T.o.T.. Martin Wolf, idea, concept, programming; Daniel Bindel,
at this time intensively paying attention to the programming of animations; Markus Holler from Virtual Dimension,
responsible for the felicitous soundtrack, and Patrick Beerhorst, responsible for the game's internet presence.
Martin explained to me in detail what it is about that "internet game". It is a strategy game similar to
Siedler, Foundation or Caesar. As a disposer one takes a piece of land to build on. In the role of the disposer
one has to care for nation to be provided with everyting necessary, and to be capable of defence. So far, so usual.
The actual gag on the game is that one plays it together with thousands of real players at the same time. How that?
Well now, this took me too some time, to internalize it. Martin gave me the striking illustration that one should
suggest playing chess with an opposer via email. The opposer recieves a move via email, then he will send the next
move in return, etc.. In T.o.T. a server controled by a game manager takes over this mailing job. In game every
player sends a move to the server (settings are configured during installation) and some hours later will get in
reply the game processed by all moves of all players. Then one can decide his next move. This is not a complete
explanation of the game, cause there are many more additional features like the possibility of trading and
collecting/paying taxes. A number of characters provide suspense inside the game. There are clerics, magicians,
researchers, spies, intelligence service, diplomats, and saboteurs to name a few. Several rooms where one e.g. can
play simple board games are designed as pastimes between the single moves. By the way, Marc Albrecht wrote the
fist book for the game.
At Falke Verlag the users were able to purchase the latest issues of AmigaPlus and
AmigaFuture, and elder issues too. Andreas Kuessner introduced his graphics software Wildfire 7.0.
Haage & Partner presented AmigaWriter2.0, which know features
an interessting possibility for printing booklets, and now can even deal with Word[TM] documents.
During the discusion about AmigaWriter Juergen Haage gave me an important hint: If someone has thin stripes
printed, when printing several pages via Turboprint the formfeed function of Turboprint should get disabled.
A mega font CD suitable for AmigaWriter was released with 5000 fonts on it, and even containing
a poster on which one can see all those fonts on the CD. ArtEffect4.0 was available too, and comes up with
many new features whereupon the most important for sure is the possiblity to use several alpha channels and
alpha compositions on every picture.
I positively noticed that all the programs of H&P are comming with a printed manual, which I address very much,
cause one can quick find a needed information wihtout being forced to start a viewer first. Gunnar Gertzen is acute
working on the printed manual of ImageFX. I was allready able to have a look at a preprint. 85% of that manual are
done an it then must get proofread and printed. It would be available after about 6-8 weeks. I think the new Service-CD
from H&P is mentionable too, containing actual demos, free patches, German manuals, and full versions of
ArtEffect SE (special edition) and StormWizard2.2.
Individual Computer
New stuff Jens Schönfeld had with him this time he exceptionally presented without a computer:
the samba intall CD for the X-Surf ethernetcard were given away for free to more than 100 owners of a
X-Surf card. Second novelty was a preproduction model of the ISDN-Surfer. After the conception of this card was changed
again due to the continuesly high exchange rate of the US dollar, on Friday the first prototype of this card arrived.
For this reason only the empty printed circuit board was was there to look at. On late Saturday Jens took the time to
build and test the digital area of the card - positively so far. During the following week testing of the S0 bus will
follow to complete.
ISDN-Surfer is a ZorroII card and functions in any Amiga 2000/3000/4000, as well as Amiga 1200 with Zorro expansion board.
ISDN cards allow direct connection to the NTBA of the Telekom, hence indirection with ISDN modem and seriell port is not
necessary anymore. Less wastage of data flow; transfer rates of more than 7.5 kbytes/s are standard with direct ISDN
connections. Internet surfing with Miami, Genesis or AmiTCP becomes possible by elaborated drivers from VMC.
To mention as a great advantage to existing cards is the easy installation. Konfiguration using mystery terminal commands
is foretime, cause a little tool querys all necessary data during installation and automatically deals with the settings.
The technical data of the card in short: up to two independend
simultaneous connections (like two modems), one 26pol expansionport
for the Hypercom3 module, one clockport for a Silversurfer or Catweasle
MK2, and one port for a phone module making a convenient
ISDN phone out of the computer. An optional voltage surge protection
limits damage after a stroke of lightning.
According to Jens this show was a complete success for individual Computers. Both, attendance and volume of sales surprised him
positively. He will gladly actively help designing the next "World of Alternatives", as the organizer asked im to do so.
All of the following retailers of hardware and software had an own booth at the fair:
KDH Datentechnik
Schatztruhe
Titan Computer
Verkosoft
Vertrieb A. Knoetig
Vesalia
At Titan users of course jumped at the long awaited Heretic II, which was recently finisched.
The team of Hyperion Softwar was at the show and handed me over the
press release about the porting of
"Soldier of Fortune". Simply fantastic that Hyperion is porting so many good games to the Amiga!
Elbox was guest at Vesalia presenting the new MEDIATOR PCI 1200 busborad. Addionally the following products of Elbox
were there to by: Winner Tower for A1200 and A4000, FastATA controller 16.6MB/s with AllegroCDFS for A1200 and A4000,
the Mroocheck PC mouse interface, and the 4xEIDE'99 interface with AllegroCDFS.
Presentation of programms were given at many boths. At Eternity e.g. I was able to persuade myself of the features of EASys!.
The author Tom Neidhardt
showed and explained to me the merits of this AMIGA System Enhancer in detail. With this software, which is a mixture of
toolmanager, filer and a partial Workbench replacement, if I understood everything well, many features of the Workbench
can be made more easy and cyclic procedures can be done more quickly. Here are some of the features of EASys!:
- Complete toolbar for drag & drop
- Workbench menues - like they allays should have been
- Multithreading during use of the Workbench
- Arch/dearch with three mouseclicks
- Icon features on call
- File show assitent, continuous usability inside the system
- Easy softlinks with icon for files and drawers
- Perfect internet integration for the Workbench
- GlobalHelp assistent for documents of applications
- DDconv: the complete convertion tool with GUI for all kinds of files
- Many more assitents
- Modular and open system full Amiga style
- Complete plugin for OS3.5
At COOLbits Felix Schwarz presented his
marvellous image editing software fxPaint. I don not need to tell the advantages and features here anymore,
as those are well known. fxPaint now has new features for HTML-Album, which I as a webworker like very much.
Now you realy can configure the design of the catalog. Addional to the usual settings now you can
configure:
- Thumbnails per row
- Table border size
- Picture border size
- Picture size
- Full picuter scalling (100%, 75%, 50%, 33% and 25%)
- Thumbnails quality
- Smooth border (Thumbnail)
- Smooth border(full picture)
- Brush inserting allowed (eligible position)
- Instering of your own headlines
- Inserting of your own bottomlines
Just have a look at our show pictures, which all were generated with fxPaint, of course inclusive the
needed HTML pages. Simply resourceful! But also for picture generating there are many new and helpful
features, e.g. the new colour manager. One click on a point of the picture and the colour manager
shows the relevant colour as RGB palette. And even with this Felix Schwarz thought of the webworkers.
If needed one can copy the HTML code of this colour to the clipboard. I noticed the improved
plugin choice, too.
Jens Langner and
Jens Troelger were to find in the grand entrance hall.
Jens Troegler is working on installer modules which generate executable binaries from the scripts. Jens
Langer, the programmer of P96Speed and AmIDE, is now coding a new Paloma module for VHI-Studio, and new AmIDE
modules for other compilers, such as StormC or GCC shall be created. Additionally the two Jenses are about to
programm a driver with GUI for a seriell radio adapter, and are thinking about to rewrite the
performance test programm Tiniymeter from Tinic Urou and of course to enhance it with some of thier own
features.
Near the end of the fair I visited the booth of Stefan Kost
and his SoundFX. SoundFX is curently as version 4.0 avalable. This realy extensive sound editing
software attends with the following features:
- New GUI
- Fast, enhanced, new FX
- Enhanced Loaders and Savers
- New Presets
- New Arexx-Makros
- Many small detail enhancements
- Help gets converted to HTML
Stefan permanently developes the software, so that users can look forward for many new features.
Not to forget the nice meeting with Michael Schaefer and Dennis Pauler from
Virtual Dimension. Those two have done a video of the fair
and have done interviews untiring . Unfortunatliy they had bad luck. Today I recieved the following
eMail from Dennis:
"Michael did allreay mail via mobile, that the are some SMALL technical problems with the video:
we have wonderful pictures, but due to a defective microphone unfortunatly no sound at all - which means the
intervies are - as super as they was - unfortunatly not usable at all.... :-(((
But we will try to make the best out of the remaining stuff and will make up the intervies at the
next show."
Even though this is realy bad, it is not to change and as it is generally known pictures are telling more than thausand
words. I am looking forward for the video, anyhow. :-)
(ps) (Translation: mj)
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12.Jun.2000
Mario Nitschke via email
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Amiga Times: Fair report
On the website of the AmigaTimes you will find a full report about the fair
"World Of Alternatives" and in the next days some photos. (German only)
[News message: 12. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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12.Jun.2000
Fun Time World
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Earth2140 and Soldier of Fortune
Epic Marketing announces the realtime strategy game "Earth2140" that it will be available in short
for the Amiga.
Hyperion Software has gained a licence for Soldier of Fortune
from Activision/Raven. The game bases on a modified Quake2 engine and will be ported for Amiga and Macintosh by Hyperion.
[News message: 12. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
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Convention Photos II
Todays Convention Photos have subtitles. We will follow up on yesterdays convention photos.
A detailed convention report is soon to follow.
Petro Tyschtschenko
distributin paraphernalia |
Jens Langner
AmIDE and P96 Speed |
Jens Langer and Jens Tröger
J.T. (Installer) |
Haage & Partner support team
Gunnar Gertzen
Martin Steigerwald
Sebastian Becker |
Stefan Robl
AmiCamedia digicam software |
Christoph Dietz (AC + amiga-news.de)
Thomas Steiding (Epic)
Bill McEwen (Amiga Inc.) |
T.o.T. team von Eternity
Martin Wolf (idea/concept/code)
Daniel Bindel (animation coding)
Markus Holler (musik)
Patrick Beerhorst (website) |
Screenshots
Tales of Tamar |
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Virtual Dimension
Michael Schäfer
Dennis Pauler |
Amiga-Club
Werner Diesch |
Amiga-Club
Uwe Horn |
APC & TCP
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APC & TCP
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Screenshot T.o.T.
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Milan Computer
Axro GmbH |
Petro Tyschtschenko
signing the SDK donated to the
amiga-news.de lottery |
Petro drawing prices
during amiga-news.de lottery |
Petra Struck's arm gets
airbrushed by Rolf Tingler |
Rolf Tingler
(Airbrush Paradise Tingler)
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Rolf in Action |
Epic Marketing
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Stefan Ossowski
(Schatztruhe) |
Falke-Verlag:
Nico Barbat
Ali Goukassian |
Tom Neidhardt
(Workbench-Enhance-System) |
Felix Schwarz
(fxPaint) |
KDH-Datentechnik:
Frau Horbach und Tochter |
|
Haage & Partner |
Stefan Kost
(SoundFX) |
Stefan Kost
(SoundFX) |
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[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
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Convention Links
At AmigaNation you will find a convention report and 2 MPEG`s from Bill
McEwens speech. More pages to be added soon.
Haujobb
AmigaAfair: 3.4MB of convention pics
Marcus Neeroort: Many picturees from the convention.
Also Amiga History from 1982-2000 and software to download.
Fun Time World: report and photos
amiga-news.de: report from Bill McEwen`s speech and pictures
www.playamiga.de: convention report with emphasis on games
Amiga-Online: four pics from the convention
www.kultpower.de: Pictures from the convention in different resolutions.
[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
CS&E via Email
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Amiga Survivor Relaunch
Crystal Software and Electronics will relaunch the print Magaine "Amiga
Survivor" at the World of Amiga Convention. It will be in A4 format and
will contain reports from well known and new writers.
As a warm-up there will be an A5 format release that will de distributed to
distributors and others that are waiting since May 17th for the proposed
first publication date.
Those that subscribe at the convention also get the chance to win a 2.5"
Harddrive and copies of Max Rally.
The Magaize can be ordered via the Titlelink in the CS&E store.
[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
Andreas Falkenhahn per E-Mail
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SNES9xGUI V2.3 and TUP 1.8 released
Today a new versions of SNES9xGUI and TUP were released. The new SNES9xGUI
verison now supports AGA HAM mode. TUP now has a Tooltype that prevents it
from entering itself into the Tools menu. Bother new versions are available
for immediate download.
[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
Fun Time World
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Vapor now has T-Shirts (100% Bug free), with the Vapor Logo.
Order via the Vapor T-Shirts site.
[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
Fun Time World
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Amiga-SDK for Stundents for Free
According to Fun Time World in accordance woith Bill McEwen there will be a
free student version of the Amiga-SDK.
[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
HiSoft via Email
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HiSoft build Network
HiSoft writes:
It doesn`t happen very often that one gets the chance to earn money with
such a small amount of effort. All that you have to do is to put one or
more of our products for sale on your website with the "HiSoft Affiliates
Network" button next to it.
The button will link to the product page of our website and send us your
"Highsoft Systems Affiliates ID" through which we will credit you a
commision.
How high can it be? Depending upon the product anyywhere from 5-15%
The "How-to-Page"
explains all the details and all the codes you need to guarantee your
commision.
If you would like to become a "HiSoft Systems Affiliate" just check out
this link and fill
out the form, and soon you will be ready to go!
[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
Falk Lueke via Email
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Prelude 1200 Soundcard at the Convention
Eternity is offering the last production run (according to A.C.T.) of the
Prelude 1200 Soundcard.
- Internal design for the clock port
- up to 16bit/ 64khz sampling frquency
- Chrystal soundchip, full duplex
- inputs for Line, Aux, Mic (with pre-amp)
- throughput of the Paula signal
- AHI support
- includes drivers, libraries and software
Price 298,- DM
[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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11.Jun.2000
Henk Jonas via E-Mail
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Metaview Update
On my website I have
released the new version of Metaview. The most important new features are
the functionel picture index, the ability to send pictures to other
programs from the picture index and a better GM import - that now supports
mathematical coordinates.
[News message: 11. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jun.2000
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Pictures from the Neuss show
Petra Struck has put together some pictures from the Word of Alternatives in Neuss and commented them.
More to come. If you don't need English comments for the pictures or cannot wait to see the pics, have a lock at the
Pictures from the first day of the show
and Pictures from Bill McEwen's presentation at the show
Translated comments are comming soon (mj)
Petro Tyschtschenko
spreads items for followers, unhandsomely |
Jens Langner
AmIDE und P96 Speed |
Jens Langer and Jens Troeger
J.T. (Installer) |
Haage & Partner Support-Team
Gunnar Gertzen
Martin Steigerwald
Sebastian Becker |
Stefan Robl
AmiCamedia Digicam software |
Christoph Dietz (AC + amiga-news.de)
Thomas Steiding (Epic)
Bill McEwen (Amiga Inc.) |
T.o.T.-Team from Eternity
Martin Wolf (Idee/Konzept/Progr.)
Daniel Bindel (Animations-Progr.)
Markus Holler
(music)
Patrick Beerhorst (internet presence) |
Screenshots
Tales of Tamar |
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Virtual Dimension
Michael Schaefer
Dennis Pauler |
Amiga-Club
Werner Diesch |
Amiga-Club
Uwe Horn |
APC & TCP
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APC & TCP
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Screenshot T.o.T.
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Milan Computer
Axro GmbH |
Petro Tyschtschenko
autographs the SDK
spent for the lottery. |
Petro as fairy of luck
at the lottery of amiga-news.de |
Petra Struck gets an airbrushed tatoo
planted on her arm by Rolf Tingler (APT) |
Rolf Tinger
(Airbrush Paradise Tingler)
|
Rolf acting |
Epic Marketing
|
Stefan Ossowski
Schatztruhe |
Falke-Verlag
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[News message: 10. Jun. 2000, 23:00] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jun.2000
Martin Baute
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Report about presentation at the Neuss show
More pictures of the presentation.
In a "conference room" (built out of some plastic walls which were put up, one desk, and an
insufficient amount of chairs) Bill McEwen was talking about Amiga's future for nearly 45 minutes. There
was a couple to listen to. So, let's rewind the dictaphones, and put together what was most imortant....
After the beamer could be woken up by the fifth trying, with plenty of drive and humor McEwen payed up (&qout;
Wellcome to the Amiga sauna...."). From the start he cleared the roumor that Amiga would be in delay of payment
for Gateway. Amiga owes Gateway no money. More than that, Amiga isn't in dept at all.
Further he introduced Dean Brown (DKB) as Director of Hardware once more. Mr. Brown would be responsible for
creating referenz hardware for interessted third-party developers to look about. A game handheld device would
allready be finished, which was in use by Amiga internally to impress interessted parties with the features
of the new operating environment. Based on a StrongARM with 250 Mips, a port for a Sony Memory Stick, and
a coloured display this device might figure well - and it was finished after one week of development!
About the new Vice President of Engineering McEwen showed himself mysteryous. This man might not get introduced
bevore the 10th of Juli, cause he still is employed by another company - "one that is large, and is in
trouble, you know...", and with this words a gesture of tearing something apart....
Further on information about the performance characteristics of the Java[TM] Virtual Machine - which is, acording
to Mr. McEwen 22 times faster in handling multimedia content than any other JVM does (!)
McEwen set clear too, that he wouldn't ask the Amiga Community for patience. The fact, that this show is
happening, that the audience is pressing into this (admittedly too small) room would argument enough that
Amiga users are patient - over 5 years, allready. But he continues to set clear, that he and his associates are
working for the same number of month to fulfill those high expectations.
As a first evidence of success Mr. McEwen took Amiga's SDK to the show, which - as he stated emphatic - still
would be very incomplete, and would target experienced developers in main. The end-users will still have to
wait for a seizable product for some time. E.g. there still is no sound support, streaming support or 3D graphics support
included with the SDK, which will follow later (e.g. 3D support after about 3 month).
In the case of the critical theme of marketing McEwen admited, he still didn't employe a VP of Marketing -
he thinks first to develope a product that would worth a respective marketing would be more important,
than making generous announcements which can't get fulfilled with the best Amiga tradition.
Next he talked about the original plans to provide a deverloper's box by combining hard and software together.
Because of the Amiga user's negative replies to this, they made up their minds - which required a lot of
changes an additional programs (e.g. installer scripts). Now the software of the SDK was released; the HW/SW
developer's box would follow after about 2 weeks.
Amiga would target "Ubiquity in Computing": mobile phones, PDAs, multimedia processor servers,
a new desktop, a new game console, all of that with the same operating environment - something like that
would never have been there.
Applications with this would be fully scalable. After a developer has decided were to put his applications,
this one application could climb up the ",Food Chain" as high as it was wanted to. So, a game coded for
a handheld would even run on a multiprocessor server. But on the other hand an application writen for a server wouldn't
run on a mobile phone - or better to say - only very, very slow....
Processors allready supported by the operating environment would be PPC, M.core, X68, StrongARM, ARM, Sh/3,4,5, MIPS
and a number of other CPUs, which they can't name (at this time), cause they are under NDAs with the
manufacturers.
At the end Bill was talking about the JavaOne, a show that happend in San Francisco last week, and at which the
Tao Group had a booth. The same demonstration shown here at the Amiga show there was running on a Sega DreamCast,
on set-top-boxes, a StrongARM notebook, and a X86 computer. Only this was enough to magnetise the audience, and then
they would have taken out a mobile phone on which a Pole Position clone could run, in spite of the low performance
of 3,5 Mips. This would have been the same mobile phone which Scott McNeilly (Sun) had with him when he entered the stage
at the CES in January, &qout;I've tolled you that once we will have Java[TM] running on such a device, once a day" - just,
that it wasn't Sun's Java[TM] Virtual Machine running on that mobile phone....
And Linux wouldn't be the only operating system that would come into question as a host for the new Amiga. Other hosts
would be Windows, WindowsNT, Linux, WindowsCE, QNX, and OS/9 (a market leading OS from Microware for set-top boxes).
Host support for iTron, Epoc, VxWorks, and PalmOS would be in development, and close to be finished.
The cooperation between the Tao Group and Amiga Mr. McEwen illuminated in quite another way. It wasn't necessary that
they would use only Tao's products. In fact they would have access to 50 developers at the Tao Group to create things
needed by Amga.
Furthermore the BOOPSI libraries were portetd. This porting would be allready finished. They would now do testings and
optimizations. The new scripting language (SHEEP) would also be finished during the next month - the rights for ARexx
belong to a third-party manufacturer, and because of that they would develope another language.
The catchword renderware was spoken, too. The new operating environment would be prepared even for this.
.
And then Bill McEwen had a very special goody to offer: Once the single parts of the operating environment will be put together
there will be the AmigaOne - a new multimedia desktop, developed and designed by Amiga, even if manufactured by
thir-party manufacturers. McEwen didn't want to say more about that at that early stage, the way to go would still be
very long.
Since it is a few minutes after midnight, and tomorrow there will be another day of the show waiting I'll finish
for now. This was only the first half of the presentation. I'll report about the other half tomorrow....
...part two
McEwen continued on OEMs and ISVs - the latter being companies willing
to support Amiga, but unable to "take their eyes off" what they are
doing for a living right now. Eleven such ISVs had given their source
code to Amiga - free of charge, free to port.
Of course, the well-known partners of the Tao-Group were mentioned:
Sun, Sony, Motorola, JVC and others. McEwen recommended reading the
press release from the Tao site
(about the certification of their Java machine) - Amiga is in dealings
with all those companies mentioned.
Then, McEwen showed pictures of his former office, and of the new "Amiga
World Headquarter". Five other companies were located there, building
high-end electronics for other companies for demonstratiuon purposes -
with Amiga being able to use their equipment for free.
Then, Bill McEwen started demonstrating the new OS, hosted under Red Hat
Linux on a notebook. He stressed that there was no hardware acceleration
involved (which, as said before, will follow in August). It is difficult
to put into words, but we saw lightning-fast Java demos, some 2D games,
the well-known Boing demo, some free moving Boing balls you could grab
and shoot inot the air with the mouse, a unicode browser, 2D filters,
the transparent "Clock" window (where you could grab a ball through
the clock - everything running on top of Linux, without any flicker or
slow-down. Well, not true, I saw it flickering: when McEwen was
starting the OS a second time, in a different window, the first one froze
for a split-second, to continue as fast and fluently as before, while
McEwen started the same number of demos again in the second window.
The demo was very impressive given the early stage of development, the
pictures only grab a small portion of it.
McEwen was unable to elaborate on further plans, but recommended an article
in Byte magazine from 1994, linked from the Amiga homepage; some of these
things would redefine Distributed Computing completely.
Towards the end, McEwen answered some questions. I recorded the whole
presentation on tape, but some questions couldn't be heard over the
background noise, and some answers made no sense without the questions.
I transscribed what I could make sense of, and left out one or two
sentences I could not make sense of. As soon as I get my hands on the
right adapter cable, I will make a MP3 recording of the tape (which was
recorded with permission from Mr. McEwen).
F: What about the classic OS?
McEwen: We are using the pieces whereever it makes sense.
F: Will there be an emulation for it?
McEwen: We already have an emulator working. Testing is already done, we
are now optimizing it so it runs very very fast. You guys know Brian King? You
know where he works? He is a good man, Brian. He's helping us. So we're working to speed
it up right now, it's a little slow. So we are in the process of optimizing it.
McEwen: Before somebody asks, you're asking if I'm gonna porting it to PPC. No.
I'll tell you why. No matter who I've spoken with, R.J. Mical, Carl Sassenrath, Alan
Havemose, everyone of them has looked at this in the past. It's an 18-month to 24-month
process, and all of them agree it will only be 80% complete. Because I'd had to
re-engineer the AGA chipset, I'd have to re-engineer Agnus, Denise, all those things
are tied directly to the OS. In fact the hardest thing for Havemose in building the 3.1 were
all those bugs that were in those chips they have to account for. So right now it would be
too costly for us to make the moves necessary to capitalize on the market, we need to move forward.
It doesn't help me to be everywhere. It doesn't help me to build a scaleable operating system,
which is what we need to be to win.
Making just another system on a chip is not enough. We need to be able to go to Sony, go
to Panasonic, go to all those guys and say "pick your chip".
F: (Schlecht zu verstehen, Frage über die Hardware-Anforderungen des SDK, ob
es ein spezieller Prozessor sein muß.)
McEwen: The SDK, if you are able to run Red Hat Linux you should be fine.
We tested it on Red Hat and Corel. So you should be absolutely fine on that.
F: Will it also run on the Amiga?
McEwen: Not right now, no. We don't have anything on the 68000. We are hoping
to work with our other friends so when you got PPC, which we know Linux can run on
there, we can run on top of that. And we will be able to run native, on those, on the PPC
cards. That's one of our biggest problems right now, you've got commitments from
people delivering, and nothing is happening.
F: Do you plan to change the design of the interface?
McEwen: It is designed with the flexibility similar to today so you can make
it the way you want. There will be defaults, so an Amiga users might want to have
Workbench as their default, but for other consumers, they might to want it different.
You will have defaults with the flexibility to change it the way you want.
F: (nicht zu verstehen)
McEwen: If you are running Linux on a PPC card within an Amiga, alright? We
have not tested it yet, however the two manufacturers have tested it and said it can
run.
F: (nicht zu verstehen)
McEwen: Not with the first build, no. Part of it is a tools issue, the tools
needed to utilize it. We have two companies right now in the process of making an
IDE specifically for us, so that won't be required in the future. Everything is not
in here (SDK), we know that, and there are certaily things to change; however, we felt
it important enough to get people to understand writing for VP and some changes.
Chris Hinsley, who created this, as you know, is an Amiga gaming guy; and I think
you will find, as most have found as they began to play with this, it's extremly
similar, in many ways as we write today. So it will be a very wuick curve, but
there will be a curve. So we want it to get into peoples hands first, so they
can begin working with it, utilize it, begin writing some applications, you know.
Get familiar, so when we add the other components to it, you will be able to get
moving much quicker.
F: (schlecht zu verstehen, eine weitere Frage zur Kompatibilität mit
alten Anwendungen)
McEwen: In fact we already have an emulator that is working. It's not
in this build, since we are in optimization, yes. In fact we're also looking
into a hardware solution to do it.
F: Everything on the SDK is usable on an Amiga PPC?
McEwen: Nonono. What's on here is designed right now to work with
Red Hat on an x86 platform or on Corel, ok? When it's completed, and you have an
executive OS running, everything is fine, it can run. Again, we haven't
tested it yet, according to third parties it can run on a PowerPC accelerator
within an Amiga, as long as Linux is there. We haven't tested it yet, so I'm
not telling you yes it can. We want to test it first. We've got two machines
in the house we are doing it on.
F: (schlecht zu verstehen, eine Frage über die zu erwartende Verfügbarkeit
von Software für das neue System)
McEwen: We have 131 applications already dedicated.
F: Also games?
McEwen: Most of them are games. There is a very large Indian company who does a
lot of interactive games [...] they already commited to us and will be moving all
their games over to Amiga. They have 63 games themselves, all of them for multiuser
interactive gaming over the net.
F: (nicht zu verstehen)
McEwen: Oh, oh, the multiple screens? Yeah, that's fine. What you see
today from a visual perspective you still can get, ok? All the multiple layers,
etcetera, that's still here, that's ok. That's what you were asking, right?
Thank you!
There were presentations before this one. The first, at eleven, was missed
because I was still on my way to Neuss. The second one was so crowded I couldn't
get inside, but I managed to record some parts of his speech, enough to catch
up the fact that SUN will probably advertise the Amiga JDK to their
user base.
Report by: Martin Baute
All mentioned trademarkes are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective onwner.
[News message: 10. Jun. 2000, 23:00] [Comments: 0]
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10.Jun.2000
Czech Amiga News
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1000 pounds for a game
Crystal Software and Electronics Ltd. is looking
for talented games devlopers for the Amiga sector and has initiated a contest to motivate
people that didn't think about game development before.
Whoever does send a finished game, or at least a demo, to CS&E by August 31st, 2000,
can win a contract as well as 1000 pounds advance payment. All other submissions accepted
by CS&E will recieve at least 100 pounds and a contract offer by the company.
[News message: 10. Jun. 2000, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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