08.Mar.2022
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Minesweeper clone: MegaSaperPL 1.28
Rafal Zabdyr has released version 1.28 of his Minesweeper clone 'MegaSaperPL' on Aminet as well as on itch.io.
The game requires at least AmigaOS 3.0, AGA/CGX/P96 (320x240 in 8 bit) and the reqtools.library (V38+). Both mouse buttons can be used: left for uncover field, right to mark. The implementation offers additional bombs to explode mines as well detectors to uncover the field without losing life. The changes in version 1.28:
- Localisation (English/Polish)
- Restructuring of the game's directory structure
- rewrite and restructuring of most of the game code and settings
- Many bug fixes and many improvements
(dr)
[News message: 08. Mar. 2022, 09:42] [Comments: 0]
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08.Mar.2022
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Shadow puppet conversion: 'Bad Apple'
The group 'ELECTRIC BLACK SHEEP', known for the in-development fantasy shooter Project Quest among others, has released an update to their 'Bad Apple' AMOS conversion. 'Bad Apple!!' is originally a nearly one and a half minute music track by Japanese game developer ZUN, which gained notoriety through the remix version (video) by Japanese musicians Masayoshi Minoshima and Nomico, as it was backed by a shadow puppet video. In the now released version of 'ELECTRIC BLACK SHEEP' music by J.M.D was added. On YouTube you can watch the result. (dr)
[News message: 08. Mar. 2022, 04:55] [Comments: 0]
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08.Mar.2022
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Music album: Zaman
YouTuber 'Madija' aka 'Ms Mad Lemon' is passionate about old computers and vintage audios and has been writing music on the Amiga since the 1990s. Now she has released her third album Zaman on bandcamp, which contains tracks from the 1990s to 2022. All but one (Polyend Tracker) of the tracks were created using an Amiga. The album is available for 8.50 Euros (or more), an English review can be read on RetroRGB. (dr)
[News message: 08. Mar. 2022, 04:06] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
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Aminet uploads until 05.03.2022
The following files have been added until 05.03.2022 to Aminet:
AmigaTText-m68k-amiga... comm/misc 1.9M 68k Shows GER Teletext Sites from...
AmigaTText-ppc-amigao... comm/misc 2.6M OS4 Shows GER Teletext Sites from...
AmigaTText-ppc-morpho... comm/misc 2.2M MOS Shows GER Teletext Sites from...
AmigaTText-ppc-warpup... comm/misc 2.3M WOS Shows GER Teletext Sites from...
OS4WeltWeihnachtsdemo... demo/misc 3.6M OS4 little demo for Christmas (We...
HWP_hURL.lha dev/hwood 3.4M The multi-protocol data trans...
MCE.lha game/edit 3.3M 68k Multi-game Character Editor
MCE-MOS.lha game/edit 3.6M MOS Multi-game Character Editor
MCE-OS4.lha game/edit 3.8M OS4 Multi-game Character Editor
d3GNOPOS4.lha game/misc 193K OS4 D3GNOP - THE Pong clone in Mi...
ScummVM_RTG.lha game/misc 6.4M 68k Amiga port of ScummVM 1.7.0
LOG_upd.lha game/patch 259K 68k update patch for 'Land of Gen...
EXULT_RTG.lha game/role 49M 68k Amiga port of Ultima 7 (Exult)
AmiDuke_RTG.lha game/shoot 542K 68k Amiga port of Duke Nukem 3D
AmiSpear_ECS.lha game/shoot 1.4M 68k Amiga port of Spear of Destiny
AmiWolf_ECS.lha game/shoot 1.4M 68k Amiga port of Wolfenstein 3D
Chocolate_DOOM.lha game/shoot 2.4M 68k Amiga port of Chocolate DOOM
D1X_Rebirth_RTG.lha game/shoot 2.5M 68k Amiga port of Descent (D1X-Re...
ODAMEX_RTG.lha game/shoot 19M 68k Amiga port of Odamex
PrBoom.lha game/shoot 848K 68k Amiga port of PrBoom
spear4amiga.lha game/shoot 144K 68k Spear of Destiny for Amiga
wolf4amiga.lha game/shoot 845K 68k Wolfenstein 3D for Amiga
FreeSynd_RTG.lha game/strat 2.9M 68k Amiga port of Syndicate (Free...
OpenDUNE_RTG.lha game/strat 394K 68k Amiga port of Dune 2 (OpenDUNE)
rebel_gw24_solar_syst... game/strat 3.9M 68k realtime strategy written in ...
MegaSaperPL.lha game/think 651K 68k Minesweeper game clone
SopoBlockOS4.lha game/think 83K OS4 SopoBlock - Cute tiny MiniGL ...
FlashMandelNG_OS4.lha gfx/fract 32M OS4 Mandelbrot & Julia fractals AOS4
WhatIFF1.03.lha mags/misc 259K What IFF? #1.02-February-2022
DOSBox_RTG.lha misc/emu 931K 68k Amiga port of DOSBox
YearEndChills2021.lha mods/techn 411K MED.YearEndChills2021
vorbistools142_68k.lha mus/edit 682K 68k Tools to manipulate Vorbis fi...
Flac134_a68k.lha mus/misc 445K 68k Free Lossless Audio Codec
TECO-64.lha text/edit 607K MOS TECO (Text Editor and Corrector)
ViNCEd.lha util/shell 844K 68k ViNCEd, the CON: with ^Z & TA...
Anno.lha util/time 316K 68k Reminder and calendar utility
(snx)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 12:40] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
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OS4Depot uploads until 05.03.2022
The following files have been added until 05.03.2022 to OS4Depot:
hwp_hurl.lha lib/hol 3Mb 4.0 The multi-protocol data transfer...
amigattext.lha uti/mis 3Mb 4.1 Shows German ARD/ZDF Teletext fr...
checkas.lha uti/scr 10kb 4.0 Checks for assigns.
(snx)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 12:40] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
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AROS Archives uploads until 05.03.2022
The following files have been added until 05.03.2022 to AROS Archives:
run_dosbox_taskpriority_s... emu/com 223b script for run dosbox correctly
(snx)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 12:40] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 05.03.2022
The following files have been added until 05.03.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:
AmiArcadia_28.34.lha Emulation A Signetics-based machi...
TECO-64_200.23.2.lha Text/Edit TECO (Text Editor and C...
(snx)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 12:40] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
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WHDLoad: New installers until 05.03.2022
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 05.03.2022:
(snx)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 12:40] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
Amiga Future (Webseite)
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AmigaRemix: Further files added
AmigaRemix collects remixes of well-known soundtracks of Amiga games. Since our last news-item, the following mp3 files have been added:
- Troddlers Main theme - Live performance
- Obliterator - Live Performance
- Wrath of the Demon Title
(snx)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 12:40] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
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Print magazine: Amiga Future, issue 155
The English and German issue 155 (March/April 2022) of the print magazine Amiga Future has been distributed. It can be ordered directly from its editorial office and from Amiga dealers that stock the magazine.
Content of the current issue includes a Putter review, an article about special custom chips replacement and a workshop about UTF-8 on the Amiga. (snx)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 12:40] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
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Event: Retrocomputer-Treff Niedersachsen (Germany)
The next Retro-Computer-Treff Niedersachsen (RCT#26) will take place on Saturday, 02.04.2022, from 10 to 7 o'clock at Haus Kassel (next to the Wandelhalle), Hauptstraße 4, in 31542 Bad Nenndorf.
The Retro-Treff is a workshop for all friends of old computers. Welcome are Amiga, Atari, C64, Apple, NeoGeo, Schneider CPC, Sinclair, Acorn and other old systems. The meeting is organised by Hannöverscher Classic-Computing-Stammtisch. For the time being, tables (120×70 cm) for 16 participants are available for the computers, with this number a sufficient distance between the participants can be realised.
Which Covid-19 conditions will apply to the meeting is not yet finally known. The next opening step is planned for 20.03.2022, then there will probably be no more restrictions. (dr) (Translation: snx)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 07:22] [Comments: 0]
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06.Mar.2022
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Demo party: Revision 2022
Revision " is the world’s biggest pure Demoscene event", according to the organizers. This year's edition will take place from April 15 to 18, 2022. A dedicated website has now been launched online. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the event will be streamed live, but the organizers are in the process of organizing smaller 'satellite events' that will allow people to experience the event live on a smaller scale in community. Currently, events are planned in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal and the UK. As always, there will be lectures and competitions, the related organization is underway. Those who want to participate in the Amiga demo contest must meet the following conditions:
- Amiga AGA: Amiga 1200, 68060/66Mhz with 64MB RAM and OS 3.1 (original C= version), latest AHI and phase5/DCE 68060.library, SetPatch v43.6. PPC Amigas and Vampire/Apollo or other FPGA accelerators may take part in 'Wild Compo'.
- Amiga ECS/OCS: Standard Amiga 500, 512K chip and 512K slow RAM, Kickstart 1.3.
For the productions the following rules apply:
- Demo: Maximum size is 20MB (20971520 Bytes), as zip, lha, or lzh file. Maximum running time: 8 minutes including loading/precalc.
- Intro: Maximum size is 65536 Bytes für die ausführbare Datei. Maximum running time: 8 minutes including loading/precalc.
The detailed description can be found on the Amiga Competitions page.
(dr)
[News message: 06. Mar. 2022, 06:29] [Comments: 0]
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05.Mar.2022
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AmigaOS 4: Status update on audio editor 'Rave', part 3
In mid-April 2021, developer Daniel 'trixie' Jedlicka first reported on the current development status of his audio editor "Rave" in his blog Rear Window. In the second part of his developer diary he told about further progress in the sample editing features and the improvement of the clipboard support.
The third part now reports about the integration of MP3 support, other new audio formats and what remains to be done until a first release. (dr)
[News message: 05. Mar. 2022, 17:07] [Comments: 0]
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05.Mar.2022
Apollo-Forum
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Apollo-Team: Icedrake accelerator board for A1200 available
As Gunnar von Boehn announced in the Apollo forum earlier this week, the Icedrake turbo card for A1200 can be ordered now for 570 Euros (incl. VAT). The specifications:
- Apollo 68080 CPU
- Performance is application dependent up to ~ 1000MHz 68030 / 500MHz 68040 / 250MHz 68060
- 512 MB DDR3 Memory
- FastKick
- Super-AGA GFX Core : Truecolor DIGITAL VIDEO OUT
- 3D Acceleration Unit
- 2 FastIDE/DVD/CompactFlash Controllers
- SDcard for data exchange
- 2 USB-Ports (mouse/joypad with CD32 emulation)
- RJ45 100BaseTX Ethernet 100MBit with DMA
- plug for RTC modul
Current Limitations and state of the card:
- PCMCIA devices are supported.
- the A1200 mainboard IDEcontroller is currently not support, please connect your boot drive to the faster ICEDRAKE connector.
- Amiga display promotion to DIGITAL-VIDEO. This is a new feature which works automatically - in some cases there can still be some glitches. The video promotion defaults to PAL, if you have an NTSC A1200 this can cause some artifacts. A software update to fix this is in the works.
(dr)
[News message: 05. Mar. 2022, 15:04] [Comments: 0]
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05.Mar.2022
Reddit
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THEA500 Mini: Mini Joypad and Mini Mouse separately available
Besides the possibility to get a new Commodore Maus 1352 by participating in the 'Tank Mouse' Kickstarter campaign (wireless), which was announced a few days ago, you can now also pre-order the 2-button USB mouse and 8-button USB gamepad (each with cable) included in the THEA500 Mini bundle separately: Both the Australian store JB Hi-Fi for about 26 Euros each, as well as Amazon (Mini Mouse, Mini Joypad for 25 Euro each) have them on sale (plus shipping). The articles will be available on April 8.
As this short scene from the YouTube video Unboxing THEA500 Mini® Prototype Serial #01 shows, the Mini Mouse seems to turn out a bit smaller than the original. (dr)
[News message: 05. Mar. 2022, 10:12] [Comments: 0]
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05.Mar.2022
Reddit
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Book pre-order: The Little Book of Sound Chips - Volume 2
Fusionretrobooks is currently accepting pre-orders for a printed edition of The Little Book of Sound Chips - Volume 2: The book costs about 18 Euros and will only be printed if about 7250 Euros in pre-orders have been collected. Currently about 4750 Euros have been received. Alternatively, the book is already available as a PDF or ePub edition for around 12 Euros.
The book presents not only facts and screenshots of games (all with QR codes and hyperlinks to YouTube), but reports among other things about the SID chip of the C64/C128, the Paula custom chip, in the Amiga responsible for the sound output, or APU of the NES and Famicom extensions like the VRC and Sunsoft chipset. (dr)
[News message: 05. Mar. 2022, 07:55] [Comments: 0]
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05.Mar.2022
Prince (Mail)
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Video tutorial: Episode 26 of assembler coding course
'Prince', founder of the demo group 'Phaze101', is currently streaming the assembler programming course "Corso completo di programmazione assembler in due dischi" in English on Twitch and uploads the respective episodes time-delayed to YouTube. Now the episode 26 was published. (dr)
[News message: 05. Mar. 2022, 06:52] [Comments: 0]
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05.Mar.2022
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PDF Book: Mark R. Jones on his time at Ocean Software Ltd.
Mark R. Jones worked at Ocean Software Ltd in the 80's as a graphic designer for ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga computer games, including the Amiga game Rambo III. After 5 years, he has completed his book "LOAD DIJ DIJ" about growing up in the 70's and 80's, witnessing the home computer explosion first hand, and talking about his time at Ocean Software Ltd.
(dr)
[News message: 05. Mar. 2022, 06:20] [Comments: 0]
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04.Mar.2022
Seiya (ANF)
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PDF magazine: REV'n'GE 131 (English/Italian)
The PDF magazine REV'n'GE ("Retro Emulator Vision and Game") is available in English and Italian editions. The game reviews of REV'n'GE compare the releases of classic games on different computer systems with each other. In the latest edition, the magazine is celebrating its 8th birthday, it also features its first two reviews of contemporary games: 'Knightmare' (Amiga) and the 3D shooter 'Final Assault' released for Atari 8 bit computers. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 04. Mar. 2022, 17:30] [Comments: 0]
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04.Mar.2022
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Video: 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast #119 - Upgrading an Amiga 500 to ECS
In the 119th issue of his videocast 10MARC, Douglas Compton is upgrading his Amiga 500 to a full ECS machine with 1 MB of CHIP RAM. (dr)
[News message: 04. Mar. 2022, 06:56] [Comments: 0]
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04.Mar.2022
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Motorola68k emulation: First beta version of Emu68 released (update)
Developer Michal Schulz regularly provides background information and status updates on his Motorola68K emulation Emu68 for the ARM architecture on his Patreon page. Last week he has announced a first beta version of Emu68.
Update: (04.03.2022, 17:05, dr)
After this beta version was already available within the nightly builds, but hardly obviously identifiable, the developer has just released a separate archive with a corresponding tag for the beta version at our suggestion. (dr)
[News message: 04. Mar. 2022, 06:30] [Comments: 1 - 04. Mar. 2022, 17:18]
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04.Mar.2022
Twitter (ANF)
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FPGA accelerator board: "Multiport Modul" for Icedrake
Matthias 'DJBase' Münch has designed a Multiport Modul for the FPGA-based A1200 turbo card Icedrake - successor of the well-known Vampire series - which relocates HDMI and network ports as well as the microSD slot to the rear expansion slot of the A1200 and thus makes them more easily accessible. The module has a modular design, and a USB port can be added via a small add-on board, for example. The ports required by the user are connected to the original ports on the accelerator board via short cables.
If you want to rebuild the hardware, you can order the boards from Münch's customer accounts at OSHPark or PCBWay. The boards were published under a Creative Commons license. (cg)
[News message: 04. Mar. 2022, 01:06] [Comments: 0]
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04.Mar.2022
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Cologne exhibition videos: Computer 95, 96 and 97
An Amiga fan has digitized his private videos from the Cologne computer exhibitions ('Computer') 95, 96 and 97 and published the result on Youtube. The 35 minute clip contains uncommented impressions from all three shows. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 04. Mar. 2022, 00:50] [Comments: 0]
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03.Mar.2022
Hollywood forum
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AmigaOS 4: Bugfixed Hollywood plugin hURL 1.2
In mid-November last year hURL 1.2 was released, the multiprotocol data transfer plugin for Hollywood with SSL support. As Andreas Falkenhahn reports in the Hollywood forum, the version for AmigaOS 4 had some debug outout, so he asks to download the plugin again. (dr)
[News message: 03. Mar. 2022, 09:18] [Comments: 0]
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03.Mar.2022
aros exec
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AROS: Shell command for AxRuntime
Krzysztof 'deadwood' Śmiechowicz' "AxRuntime" is a runtime environment for Linux which emulates the AmigaOS-API and therefore enables porting Amiga applications on Linux and developing applications which can be compiled for AmigaOS/MorphOS/AROS as well as Linux. Examples videos show the AROS desktop Wanderer (MP4) and gmPlayer (MP4) under Linux (amiga-news.de reported).
In a post on aros exec, the developer now reports on the latest progress:
"I'm sharing with you results of my latest developments! So far it was possible to build an Amiga application as a Linux executable with AxRuntime. I already recompiled MPLayer and WookieChat so time ago and I'm actively using AROS MPlayer under Linux Mint as my media application. What was so far not possible however is to run an executable from within AxRuntime program itself. Think Shell - it is a command line program that allows you to run other programs, write scripts that run other programs, pipe output of one program to another and so on. Now, with the latest developments I've made a step towards enabling this where a program that is compiled to work with AxRuntime can be started from Linux but at the same time can be started from AROS Shell.
We are not yet fully there, more work is needed but it is functional enough to provide first preview builds. Since this is work in progress build, there is no new AxRuntime release yet. The AROS-Shell archive (direct download) packages together AROS-Shell with runtime so that it is fully independent and can be started without installing additional dependencies.
I'm open to feedback and I'm always available to help out if you want to try to compile your Amiga application to run natively on Linux using AxRuntime." (dr)
[News message: 03. Mar. 2022, 07:27] [Comments: 0]
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02.Mar.2022
t3n.de
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Apple patents 'Computer in an Input Device'
Apple had already applied for a patent for a "computer in an input device" in mid-2020, which was now published a few days ago. The basic idea is reminiscent of the concepts of e.g. the Atari ST, C64 and Amiga.
The patent application describes the computer in bullet-point summary as follows:
- computing device includes an input component positioned at the external surface
- a processing unit and a memory can be disposed within the internal volume
- computing device has a singular input/output port which can be configured to receive both data and power. The singular input/
output port can be configured to output data from the processing unit.
- the singular input/output port can include a USB-C port, a Thunderbolt 3 port, or a Lightning port
- the computing device can include a track pad coupled to the enclosure
- the computing device can be foldable about an axis
As justification, the company states that unlike in the past, where large and/or bulky computer components traditionally required correspondingly large housings, the demand for portable computing devices has driven the miniaturization of once bulky components. Consequently, further adaptation of case designs, shapes and configurations is desirable. (dr)
[News message: 02. Mar. 2022, 07:13] [Comments: 0]
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02.Mar.2022
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Floppy disk images on PC and Mac: Greaseweazle Tools 0.39 / Firmware 1.1
Keir Fraser's "Greaseweazle" does - similar to Kryoflux - read the magnetic information on a floppy disk independently from the format used and saves as much information as possible to generate a so-called "Flux Level Image" in Supercard format (SCP), which enables reading and back-writing of copy-protected disks (amiga-news.de reported).
The adapter gets connected between a floppy disk drive - e.g. a standard 3.5" PC one - and a USB port of the PC or Mac. Since our last message, numerous changes have been made to the Greaseweazle tools. Starting with version 0.34, the firmware is also provided separately. A new version 1.1 was released a few days ago. The Greaseweazle is available from various retailers. (dr)
[News message: 02. Mar. 2022, 06:25] [Comments: 0]
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02.Mar.2022
iComp
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RTG driver: P96 V3.2.4 released
Jens Schönfeld (individual Computers) schreibt:
"The new version addresses all issues that have been reported in our support forum - and a few more. As usual, the update is free for everyone who purchased a copy of P96 in the past 12 months. Just log in and re-download the file from your order history. Changes in release 3.2.4:
- Displaying native modes like DblPAL or productivity was broken in V3.2.3 - fixed.
- The S3Virge blitter has trouble with blits of a certain size that are avoided by this new version.
- Removed the manual MMU hack. Any MMU table modifications require now the availability of the mmu.library.
- The previous release broke the VBlank interrupt of graphics and might have loaded the VerticalTotal hardware register with nonsensical values.
- The S3Virge blitter has a bug and "freaks out" if one attempts to perform blits of particular widths. The Virge driver now adds a workaround by avoiding problematic bitmap widths.
- The S3Virge blitter can process at most 4064 bytes per row. Before, the limit was set to 4095 bytes, causing wrong blits on some large screens.
- BltMaskBitMapRastPort() did not work correctly if the target screen did not have the full depth, i.e. if a chunky mode was opened with a depth smaller than 8. This was another old bug left over from the 2.x release series.
- BltMaskBitMapRastPort() did not use the right modulo for the mask if the source bitmap was interleaved and planar and the destination bitmap was chunky or direct color. The mask was used correctly for interleaved or non-interleaved planar to planar blits.
- Users of the oMNiBus card beware! The card driver may use the TsengET4000W32 chip driver, even with earlier releases of the Tseng chip that do not include a blitter. In such cases, attempting to blit will fail or hang the system. To prevent usage of the (then non-present) blitter, set the tooltype NOBLITTER=Yes in the monitor icon of the oMNiBus monitor. Note that this is not a new restriction.
- Quite a number of improvements have been performed on the Merlin and TsengET4000w32 drivers as listed below, however please note that the Merlin card has a couple of serious hardware issues that cannot be worked around completely in software and that this card may hang or crash the system, despite our best attempts to avoid such problems. Even the Merlin board/GAL updates will not completely eliminate all of these issues. You should replace the Merlin card with a more robust design. We therefore recommend to NOT make Merlin support your buying decision for the P96 software package:
- Fixed a MuForce hit in the Merlin card driver.
- Due to bad routing, the clock generator of the Merlin card cannot feed clock rates higher than 80Mhz into the chip, even if this clock is later on divided down in the Tseng chip. Thus, the default setting of the card now disables all settings of the clock generator that generates pixel clocks beyond this limit. If you really want to try higher clock frequencies (on your own risk), set the tool type OVERCLOCK=YES in the monitor icon.
- Due to hardware design issues, the TsengET4000w32 chip may see false data on write requests to its registers, causing hangs or blitting defects on its screen. The new Tseng driver is now extra careful to verify that the correct data has been written for some particularly critical registers, though not for all registers. A particularly critical phase are mode changes, which should be avoided if possible.
- Due to hardware issues, previous Tseng chip drivers may have hung the system while waiting for the completion of a blitter operation. The new driver attempts to work around this problem as much as possible.
- The Merlin and Tseng drivers now disable the display while modifying some of the chip registers. This helps to minimize hardware hangs of the chip, but does not eliminate them completely. Again, this is a hardware design issue, not a driver issue.
- The Merlin card driver no longer indicates to use a more aggressive MMU table mapping; instead, the most conservative setting is now default. Do not attempt to "fix" this mapping as the Tseng chip can map its blitter registers into the VGA memory area, and those hardware registers may not tolerate write reordering as imposed by more aggressive MMU table settings.
- The Merlin card driver did not indicate the maximum mode width for all modes correctly. Due to limited size of its hardware registers, Hi-color modes cannot be wider than 1024 pixels, true-color modes cannot be wider than 684 pixels and true-alpha modes cannot be wider than 512 pixels.
- To limit stability issues, the hardware interrupt of the Merlin card can now be turned off by adding the "INTERRUPT=No" tool type into the Merlin monitor icon.
- The Merlin card no longer provides its own functions to copy planar data from chip memory to VGA card memory as the default version of the rtg.library provides this function already by exactly the same algorithm.
- Due to hardware limitations, the Sprite generated by the Merlin card (actually, the RAM DAC on the card) is limited to 32x32 pixels for high-res sprites, and 16x16 pixels for "big" sprites (i.e. BIGSPRITE=Yes in the monitor driver). Thus, tall pointer images may be clipped at the bottom. There is nothing the driver can do against this limitation.
- The TsengET4000w32 chip offers a memory overlay feature which is now accessible through the P96 "Pip" (Picture-in-Picture) interface. However, as the Tseng chip does not have an intergrated RAM DAC, this memory window is rather limited. The RBGMode (pixel mode, pixel organization) within the memory window MUST be identical to the RGB Mode of the screen, and it cannot be planar. That is, you can only have "chunky" memory windows on "chunky" screens, "hi-color" overlays on "hi-color" screens and "true-color" overlays on "true-color" screens. The memory window neither supports opacity, thus the memory window only appears if it is topmost on the screen and not overlapped or clipped. Otherwise, the driver turns the memory window off. There is a PIP demo program on Aminet including sources. Note that this demo program attempts to create a "hi-color" overlay, which - according to the above restrictions - only operates on a hi-color screen.
- If you see strange defects when rendering text or icons with the Merlin card, try adding SYSTEM2SCREENBLITS=No to the tool types of the Merlin monitor icon. This prevents blitter usage in those cases where the host CPU delivers data manually without a source buffer on the card. Since data transfers to the Merlin card are particularly flakey, this may prevent already some issues.
- If you still see screen corruptions on rendering, you may have to disable the Merlin blitter altogether. For that, add the tooltype NOBLITTER=Yes to the Merlin monitor icon."
(dr)
[News message: 02. Mar. 2022, 05:44] [Comments: 0]
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02.Mar.2022
David Brunet (ANF)
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New article on Obligement website
The articles below have been added to the website of the french Amiga/MorphOS magazine Obligement during the last two months. All translations are welcome. Please contact David 'Daff' Brunet for more information.
- January/February 2022 news.
- Old articles from Joystick 37 to 40:
- News: Journey to Mr MicroProse,
- Interview with Martin Kenwright
- Syndicate review
- B-17 Flying Fortress review
- News: Core Design already two years old and already big
- Interview with Brett Sperry
- A-Train review
- Goal! review
- News: The future successes of 1993 (part four)
- Networking games
- Trolls (AGA) review
- News: Virgin Games still supports the Amiga
- Interview with Brett Sperry
- Interview with Tim Chaney
- Body Blows review
- Chuck Rock 2: Son Of Chuck review
- etc.
- Interview with Alain Fontanin (author of Amiga Source Editor).
- Interview with Fabio Capone (founder of NAPS Team).
- Classic Reflections - What happened to Scala, Inc. ?
- Memory operation on Amiga OCS/ECS.
- Official Amiga and commercialized clones (update)
- Amiga Games List (update).
- Hardware: Vampire 1200 V2.
- DIY: Development of the Arduino Amiga floppy drive, aka DrawBridge (update).
- Tutorial: How to build an AmigaOS4 cross compiler (Binutils 2.23.2 & GCC 8.3.0) on Cygwin.
- Tutorial: Installation and use of MorphOS 3.x on QEMU 6.00.
- Special quiz on the year 2021 on Amiga.
(cg)
[News message: 02. Mar. 2022, 00:15] [Comments: 0]
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01.Mar.2022
Robert Smith
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Amiga disks on PC: DrawBridge 2.8.7 / FloppyBridge 1.1
Robert Smith's project "DrawBridge" (Disk Reader and Writer Bridge) uses like the similar ADF Drive a microcontroller - in this case an Arduino board - to read and write Amiga floppies with a connected standard PC floppy drive. By means of the plugin FloppyBridge, WinUAE is also officially supported since version 4.9.0.
DrawBridge has been updated to version 2.8.7 and uses a new algorithm for reading the hard disk, which ensures better compatibility with games under WinUAE. FloppyBridge version 1.1 also improves compatibility due to changes in PLL and "Rotation Extractor" handling. Robert Smith encourages retesting games that have not previously booted. Prior installation of DrawBridge firmware 1.9.24 is required. (dr)
[News message: 01. Mar. 2022, 10:00] [Comments: 0]
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01.Mar.2022
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Developer tools: vasm 1.9 and vlink 0.17
Frank Wille hat released updates for portable and retargetable assembler vasm and the corresponding portable linker vlink. AmigaOS 3, 4 and MorphOS are supported. A list of the changes can be found on the respective websites. (dr)
[News message: 01. Mar. 2022, 07:09] [Comments: 0]
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01.Mar.2022
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Compiler: vbcc 0.9h
vbcc is a highly optimizing portable and retargetable ISO C compiler written by Volker Barthelmann (compiler core) and Frank Wille (Amiga specific code). It supports ISO C according to ISO/IEC 9899:1989 and a subset of the new standard ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (C99).
Yesterday, version 0.9h was released, which contains numerous changes. Detailed documentation is available in the form of a pdf file on the homepage, as are the binaries for the individual target platforms.
- New features
- Compiler defaults to C99, use -c89 to forbid C99 extensions.
- Several improved warnings/error messages.
- New option -sec-per-obj puts all code functions and data objects in their own section, which may be removed by linker section garbage collection.
- Simple implementation of -merge-strings.
- Added -warnings-as-errors option.
- Define macros __OPTSPEED__/__OPTSIZE__ depending on options.
- Recognize builtin functions with __asm_ prefix.
- Added -depobj option.
- Added -force-statics and -prefer-statics.
- New backends for 6502 and 6809.
- Support for charset conversions (8-bit targets).
- Code compressor (currently only for 6502).
- Better out-of-the-box support for non-8-bit-based types.
- Several improvements regarding the backend interface.
- m68k: defines macro __SMALL_DATA__ with -sd option
- m68k: added -vbcccall/__vbccargs
- vc: new option -rmcfg-* to disable options from a config file
- vc: frontend does Unix-path conversion also for -o
- vclib: New 6502 targets: Atari, BBC, C64, Mega65, NES, Simulator, X16
- vclib: New 6809 targets: OS-9, Simulator
- vclib: __gmtoffset and __dstflag may be overwritten separately
- vclib: strftime() supports ISO-8601 date format through %F
- vclib: added strtof()
- vclib: m68k-amigaos based on NDK 3.2
- vclib: m68k-amigaos supports Roadshow additions and
- vclib: m68k-amigaos adds reaction.lib for ReAction GUI support
- vclib: m68k-amigaos UTC offset is automatically initialized when possible
- vclib: m68k-amigaos configs use -amiga-softfloat (inlines) by default
- vclib: m68k-atari small-data support and libraries
- vclib: ppc-morphos support for (sysv,base)-ABI libraries
- vclib: ppc-amigaos adapted to new SDK
- Performance improvements
- Improved function inlining / cross-module inlining.
- Several improvements in register allocation.
- Improved constant propagation.
- New peephole optimizations.
- New optimization and tuning options for constant initializations.
- Improved recalculation of stack slots.
- Slightly improved common subexpression elimination.
- Range-optimizations and induction variable shortening.
- Allow strength reduction for constant left-shifts.
- Handling of volatile is improved.
- Compile-time calculations of constant pointer values.
- m68k: improved register allocation
- m68k: improved Fastcall-ABI support
- m68k: improved builtin libcalls
- m68k: improved copying of (long) doubles in memory with the FPU
- m68k: better use of scaled addressing modes
- m68k: some FPU code improvements
- m68k: fixed performance regression of internal memcpy
- vclib: reworked assembler inlines
- Bug fixes:
- Lots of fixes in the compiler core and backends. Thanks for your reports!
- vclib: bad assert.h in 0.9g: it must be possible to include the assert-macro multiple times (with and without NDEBUG defined)
- vclib: m68k-amigaos protos declare device library bases with struct Device*.
- vclib: m68k-amigaos ReAction classes must not be automatically opened with auto.lib but with reaction.lib.
- vclib: m68k-amigaos adds missing InvertString() for amiga.lib
- vclib: PPC 64-bit signed modulo fixed
- vclib: fixed mktime(), tm_mday is 1-based, and recognize gmtoffset
- vclib: fgetpos() has to return 0 on success
(dr)
[News message: 01. Mar. 2022, 06:55] [Comments: 0]
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01.Mar.2022
Amigans
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AmigaOS 4: Blog summary of February
The blog Gaming on AmigaOS 4 has published a richly illustrated summary of the developments and releases from the areas of hardware and software for AmigaOS 4 in the month of February. (dr)
[News message: 01. Mar. 2022, 05:41] [Comments: 0]
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28.Feb.2022
Amigans
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Video: Amiga game classics under AmigaOS 4
Roman 'kas1e' Kargin shows in his latest YouTube video how some old great Amiga classic games (released around the 2000s) work natively (without UAE, but with Petunia) under today's AmigaOS4 and on today's AmigaOS4 hardware. This test was done with his beta version of AmigaOS4 with all beta drivers from AEON and beta components of the operating system from Hyperion. The hardware used is an AmigaONEX5000/020 with Radeon RX 560. (dr)
[News message: 28. Feb. 2022, 08:23] [Comments: 0]
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28.Feb.2022
Discord
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Video: How easy is it to make your own joystick using a 3D printer?
In his latest video, Robert Smith attempts to 3D print and build his own retro-style joystick for his Amiga. He takes you through all the steps from design to build in his tutorial. Below the video is all the information needed so anyone can build their own joystick. (dr)
[News message: 28. Feb. 2022, 06:51] [Comments: 0]
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27.Feb.2022
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Aminet uploads until 26.02.2022
The following files have been added until 26.02.2022 to Aminet:
wla_dx_v10.1.lha dev/cross 7.0M 68k WLA DX - 8-bit CPU Cross Macr...
printer.hwp_1.0.lha dev/hwood 5K MOS Printer plugin for hollywood
anaiis.lha driver/oth 182K 68k ANAIIS USB Stack Release 1.22
Mattonite.lha game/actio 976K 68k Arkanoid like PAL game almost...
scummvm-1.7.0-rtg.lha game/misc 5.7M 68k Amiga RTG port of ScummVM 1.7.0
PPaintRUS.lha gfx/ppaint 65K Cloanto Personal Paint 7 RUSS...
AmiArcadia.lha misc/emu 4.4M 68k Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha misc/emu 4.7M MOS Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadia-OS4.lha misc/emu 4.9M OS4 Signetics-based machines emul...
DOSBox_RTG.lha misc/emu 931K 68k Amiga port of DOSBox
EndlessRoad.lha mods/8voic 6.0M Endless Road 5ch 16bit Soft Rock
MrR_head.lha mods/anaki 258K It's My Head - OctaMED module
SamplesCreatorDemos.lha mus/misc 200K Some samples created by Sampl...
AmiModRadio.lha mus/play 2.8M 68k Play modules from Internet so...
SpeedPDF_1.1.lha text/dtp 5.6M MOS Fast PDF viewer
Vim_8.2-i386-aros.lha text/edit 12M x86 The ubiquitous text editor
Vim_8.2-ppc-amigaos.lha text/edit 14M OS4 The ubiquitous text editor
Vim_8.2-ppc-morphos.lha text/edit 13M MOS The ubiquitous text editor
cbmconvert.i386-aros.lha util/conv 235K x86 C64 archive converters
d64.i386-aros.lha util/conv 368K x86 Converts C64 data-set files t...
IdentifyLib_FR.lha util/libs 11K French catalogs for identify....
TestProgram.zip util/misc 655K 68k Versatile Amiga Test Program
Classaction4_src.zip util/wb 1.2M Sourcecode of Classaction 4
(snx)
[News message: 27. Feb. 2022, 16:47] [Comments: 0]
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27.Feb.2022
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OS4Depot uploads until 26.02.2022
The following files have been added until 26.02.2022 to OS4Depot:
sdl_vice.lha emu/com 27Mb 4.0 Versatile Commodore Emulator
amiarcadia.lha emu/gam 5Mb 4.0 Signetics-based machines emulator
mce.lha gam/uti 4Mb 4.0 Multi-game Character Editor
iff-converter.lha gra/con 498kb 4.0 Convert images into raw format.
sdl2.lha lib/mis 7Mb 4.1 Simple DirectMedia Layer 2
zitaftpserver.lha net/ser 19Mb 4.1 A fast and secure FTP(S) server.
deepl.lha uti/tex 2Mb 4.0 DeepL tool / incl. sourcecode
vim_mui.lha uti/tex 14Mb 4.1 The ubiquitous text editor
(snx)
[News message: 27. Feb. 2022, 16:47] [Comments: 0]
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27.Feb.2022
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AROS Archives uploads until 26.02.2022
The following files have been added until 26.02.2022 to AROS Archives:
vim_8.2-i386-aros.lha dev/edi 12Mb The ubiquitous text editor
cbmconvert.i386-aros.lha emu/uti 235kb C64 archive converters
d64.i386-aros.lha emu/uti 368kb Converts C64 data-set files to A...
(snx)
[News message: 27. Feb. 2022, 16:47] [Comments: 0]
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27.Feb.2022
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 26.02.2022
The following files have been added until 26.02.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:
ECWolf_1.3.9999.lha Games/Shoot3D ECWolf is an advanced s...
HLE-Pokercard_2.0.lha Games/Think Hi-Low-Equal Poker Card
SpeedPDF_1.1.lha Office/Show A fast PDF viewer
(snx)
[News message: 27. Feb. 2022, 16:47] [Comments: 0]
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27.Feb.2022
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WHDLoad: New installers until 26.02.2022
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 26.02.2022:
(snx)
[News message: 27. Feb. 2022, 16:47] [Comments: 0]
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27.Feb.2022
Apollo-Forum
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Apollo V4: Ultimate Expansion Board
The developers 'Quetzal' and 'Owl' have developed a board in mini-ITX format that can accommodate an Apollo V4 standalone and offers a variety of additional features and inputs and outputs. A detailed description of the specifications can be found on the project page. Now a new video has been released showing the final prototype. The first boards are expected in mid-2022. (dr)
[News message: 27. Feb. 2022, 10:51] [Comments: 0]
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27.Feb.2022
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Music: Amiga-DJ-Video
In this YouTube video, musician and DJ 'Fast Ram' presents the broader spectrum of old and new rave sound, which he mixes and plays using Amiga computers and software he developed himself. His equipment:
- 2x Amiga 600 running PT-1210 v1.1 (DJ-Decks)
- 1x Amiga 1200 running XSD v0.5b (Sample-Start)
- 1x mixer, two hands, 100% Amiga tunes
Those who want to support the musician have the opportunity to do so on his Bandcamp page. (dr)
[News message: 27. Feb. 2022, 06:39] [Comments: 0]
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26.Feb.2022
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Arcade port: 'Scramble 500' released
A few days ago we already reported about Jean-François Fabre's new project: the port of the shoot'em-up classic Scramble (video). Now the developer has released his game (adf file) on itch.io. Since, as he explained to us, he was able to fix the last bugs, it is basically ready. If users still find bugs, he asks to report them.
According to his GitHub page, the game was written entirely in 68k assembler and already runs on Amigas with Kickstart 1.3 and 1MB of memory. Features:
- original visual & sounds
- faithful enemy behaviour & speed & increasing difficulty
- 50 frames per second (PAL) even on a 68000 A500
- all levels
- joystick controlled (port 1) or keyboard controls (arrows + ctrl + alt)
- can run directly from shell or from whdload (fast machines/complex configurations)
(dr)
[News message: 26. Feb. 2022, 21:04] [Comments: 0]
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26.Feb.2022
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Italian print magazine: Passione Amiga, issue 5
The Italian print magazine 'Passione Amiga' is only available as an annual subscription: you have to pay 16 euros for four issues per year. The fifth issue offers the following topics, among others:
- Coverdisk: Extreme 2.0
- Reviews: Tales of Gorluth III – Dungeon of Reminiscence, The Shadow of Sergoth, Turbo Santa, Super Delivery Boy – The Holiday Shift, Ad Cosmos Ex Terra
- Tutorial for installating AmigaOS 3.2 under WinUAE, part 2
- Video editing with Blender under AmigaOS 4
- Tutorial: Programming in Hollywood, part 3
(cg)
[News message: 26. Feb. 2022, 01:37] [Comments: 0]
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26.Feb.2022
commodore.news
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French print magazine: "Boing" Nr. 3
'Boing' is a French print magazine published by Boing Attitude (e.g. Dir Me Up and Word Me Up XXL). The third issue has 52 pages in A4 format and includes a report from AmiWest, a review of the use of the Amiga in video production and tests of 'The Shadows of Sergoth', 'Turbo Tomato' and the 'Lotus' trilogy. (cg)
[News message: 26. Feb. 2022, 01:32] [Comments: 0]
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26.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Puzzle game: Adam is me
'Adam is me' (video) is a conversion of Baba Is You for the Amiga: by moving and joining tiles on the playing field, on which nouns and verbs are noted, the rules of the respective level are changed in such a way that the game character can finish the section. According to a discussion at ppa.pl (machine translation) , this is an early version of the title written in C, which is still being worked on. (cg)
[News message: 26. Feb. 2022, 01:12] [Comments: 0]
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26.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Tetris clone with CD32/CDTV support: Choctris
Choctris (video) is a Tetris clone with background music and sound effects. If the game is running on a CDTV or CD32, an inserted CD can also provide the background music; on a CDTV, the high scores are also stored in the bookmark memory. Choctris requires Kickstart 2.0 or higher.
Direct download:
Choctris.adf (880 KB)
Choctris.lha (320 KB) (cg)
[News message: 26. Feb. 2022, 00:47] [Comments: 0]
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25.Feb.2022
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Kickstarter campaign: Bluetooth remake of Amiga mouse
The Polish designer Lukas Remis has started a Kickstarter campaign for a wireless remaking of the Commodore Maus 1352. His 'Tank Mouse' is outwardly based on the original, but incorporates modern technology: the Tank Mouse is a wireless optical mouse that has been given a touch panel between the two buttons for scrolling. It works with Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz and can also be used with the Amiga computer. A small USB receiver is to be included in the package for this purpose. A prototype has already been built in cooperation with a renowned electronics manufacturer, extensively tested and is now ready for mass production. The specifications:
- Colour: Black or white
- Sensor type: Optical
- Connectivity: Wireless, 2.4 GHz & Bluetooth 5.0
- Resolution: 1600 DPI
- Buttons: 2
- Scrolling: Touch scrolling area
- Power: 2 x AAA batteries
- Size: 108 x 67 x 31 mm
- Compatibility: Amiga OS, Windows, MacOS, Linux
One of the main goals of the project was to be able to run the Tank Mouse together with an Amiga. This requires a USB to DB9 adapter such as the RYS MKII (supports scrolling) or Lotharek's mouse adapter to connect the wireless receiver (included with the mouse) to the Amiga.
The project goal has been set at 78,000 Euros, of which around 21,000 Euros have already been funded. Should 150% of the sum be reached, a native wireless DB9 receiver will be developed, manufactured and added to each Tank Mouse.
The minimum donation amount is 31 euros. If the funding is successful, the mouse would be produced and delivered by November 2022 (plus 8 Euro shipping). (dr)
[News message: 25. Feb. 2022, 06:49] [Comments: 0]
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25.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Preview videos: Jump'n Run 'Maria Renard's Revenge', Beat'em Up 'Double Dragon'
'Maria Renard's Revenge' (Video) is a Jump'n Run inspired by Castlevania, is developed using the Scorpion Engine. It comes from the same team that has announced a remake of 'Rick Dangerous' recently.
The Beat'em Up 'Double Dragon' (Video) is also done with the Scorpion Engine. It's a port of Taito's Arcade classic from 1987, which is aiming to be a better Amiga conversion than the official Amiga port from 1989. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 25. Feb. 2022, 00:37] [Comments: 0]
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24.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Playable prototype: Castlevania clone 'Akumajou Dracula' (AGA)
'Akumajou Dracula' (Video) is going to be a port of Konami's NES action adventure Castlevania. The game is developed using the Scorpion Engine, a newly released prototype contains the entire first world right up to the end of level boss. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 24. Feb. 2022, 00:05] [Comments: 0]
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23.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Music disk: Cheesy Listening
'Cheesy Listening' (Video) released by Alcatraz, Rebels & Offence is a traditional 'music disk' featuring 12 tracks and a total run-time of about 40 minutes. (cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 23:44] [Comments: 0]
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23.Feb.2022
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Game previews: New teaser videos for 'Boss Machine' (AGA) and 'Target Renegade'
Two previously announced games for the Amiga had new teaser videos released recently: The horizontally scrolling AGA Shoot'em Up 'Boss Machine' (Video) has been under development for two years now, it's inspired by the Genesis/MegaDrive title Thunder Force IV. 'Target Renegade' (Video) is written in BlitzBasic and is also a port of a classic game.
(cg) (Translation: cg)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 23:38] [Comments: 0]
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23.Feb.2022
Twitter
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CDXL video player: AGABlaster 0.9.90
AGABlaster plays Commodore's CDXL video format. According to the author, it uses a customized version of the CDXL format supporting the AGA chipset with 24 bit colors and variable length frames. Customized CDXL files can be generated with AGAConv. AGABlaster is written in 68K Assembly and runs on native Amiga hardware (no gfx card or sound card required). Changes of version 0.9.90:
- Added support for video playlists
- CDXL videos can be selected with ASL file requester (multi-select with 'shift')
- Jump between playlist videos with 'N'ext and 'P'revious
- Can be started from workbench icon now (AGABlaster.info)
- New playlist/video loop mode ('L' key to toggle loop mode, or command line option LOOP)
- Audio filter is off by default now and can be turned on/off with 'F'
- Optimized versions for 68000/20/30/40/60/80
(dr)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 20:23] [Comments: 0]
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23.Feb.2022
Twitter
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Aracade game: 'Green Beret' update
Green Beret is a conversion of Konami's arcade classic of the same name to the Amiga, written using the Scorpion Engine (amiga-news.de reported).
The recent update provides the following changes:
- Added the missing songs (Stage clear cut scene, and Game Over).
- consistent sound design as even player losing a life uses the music module (and its instruments)
- all music are now multi-song modules, meaning there will be no more in-game loading pauses to load the boss music, it's only changing music position which is instantaneous.
- there is some time for player to prepare before a new boss appears, it is not so sudden anymore.
- fixed enemies spawning out of thin air, specially on start of level 2. Score didn't reset if you beat the game and loop it. Some other fixes and improvements.
(dr)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 05:41] [Comments: 0]
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23.Feb.2022
Daniel Müßener (Mail)
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Preview video 26: Souverän Soccer
Daniel 'Daytona675x' Müßener (Wings Remastered, MiniGL4GL4ES, Tower 57) is working on a soccer game with 3D view called "Souverän Soccer" (amiga-news.de reported). According to the developer, "the game still runs on a standard A1200 without turbo card and without Fast RAM in PAL lowres with 50 frames per second."
In his 26. preview video he shows the following changes:
- The city skyline has been removed to make room for more crowd. The tons of previous optimizations made that possible. This has the additional benefit that I don't have to come up with 20+ different skylines for the release.
- The crowd now consists out of multiple layers, each of them zoomed, scrolled and animated seperately. For now there are three such crowd layers. Maybe I'll add even more (they are rather cheap in terms of performance and it's coded to be easily adjustable), but I think three is a pretty good amount.
- The crowd's zooming is now muuuuch (maybe I need more even more "u"s here) smoother than before. Was a bit tricky but eventually I managed to come up with a solution that doesn't eat up all Chip-RAM ;)
- The crowd is more colorful. Well, could be even more colorful but because it's a placeholder gfx I didn't put too much effort into it. Just a proof of concept.
- The formerly blank grey crowd stand is now an adboard. The ad is generated procedurally, the text can be changed at match start.
- The top goal is now lapping over into the grass and isn't cut-off anymore at the raster-line where the grass begins. This might look like not being a big deal but was really tough. The main reason is that once the copper is inside the grass area it's ultra-busy, all available instructions per line are already used up. But with the top-goal being inside the grass now I had to somehow get some extra sprite-color and -priority changes being done there, things that were done outside the grass before, because the top-goal sprites are being reused for the bottom-goal... Eventually I found a hacky way to get away almost for free without extra copper instructions by doing the color changes before for a different color bank and switch to the right bank at the right point en passant, phew.
- All lines and circles are more white now and distance fading is smoother here too. Also, the grass texels shine through those lines now, making it all appear much more natural.
- The crowd / skyline change also implied trashing and redoing the whole stats / message area at the top. All that stuff is now done using hardware-sprites. Was a bit messy because I have to reset and modify those sprites in mid of the crowd-copper-handling now (any other approach would have been even messier). Sprite usage is somewhat tricky here because, well, I don't have too many (5) and I need one for the high-flying ball, so there are 4 sprites remaining. Combined sprites to get 16 colors aren't an option, because I need at least 3 sprites inside the same vertical area (# of goals, time and messages); no, there's not enough room to move the messages down, because the goal is too close if zoomed in. So I ended up using two sprites for the team names + # of goals: one pretty slim one for the team-colors, the other for all the text and numbers. Then one sprite for the match time info. And then two for the messages, one of which is the reused slim team color sprite. The color gradient has been removed (would complicate the copper handling here a lot because we're inside the crowd handling, and the visual gain is questionable anyway), drop shadows have been added.
- Some more love has been put into the replay function. When switching between replay and normal play a quick curtain effect now better indicates this mode change. The crowd's animation is now slowed down too if in slow-motion replay mode.
(dr)
[News message: 23. Feb. 2022, 04:37] [Comments: 0]
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22.Feb.2022
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MorphOS: PDF-Anzeiger 'SpeedPDF'
Recently Carsten Siegner had released the first public version of his Hollywood-written PDF viewer 'SpeedPDF', which handles meta information (title, subject, author etc.), hyperlinks and bookmarks among other things. Now version 1.1 is available adding other important features:
- Support encrypted pdf's
- Save and load settings
- Print pdf
- Export pages from pdf
- use cairo to display pdf
(dr)
[News message: 22. Feb. 2022, 06:26] [Comments: 0]
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22.Feb.2022
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AmigaOS 4: FTP server 'ZitaFTP' 1.31
Hans de Ruiter has released version 1.31 of his commercial FTP server 'ZitaFTP'. He wrote:
"I'm pleased to announce that the first ZitaFTP Server update for 2022 is finally here! As usual, there are bug fixes and improvements. The big new feature is that you can now use proper signed SSL/TLS certificates, which is very useful when making ZitaFTP Server accessible over the internet.
If you're looking for free SSL certificates, I recommend ZeroSSL (affiliate link). Unlike LetsEncrypt, ZeroSSL allows you to create free certificates manually, so you don't need an ACME client in order to create certificates (which ZitaFTP doesn't have built in yet). So, you can generate a free certificate, and enable auto-renewal later, when ZitaFTP gains that ability. I plan to support both LetsEncrypt and ZeroSSL.
I was going to release a video showing how to set up ZitaFTP to be accessible over the internet instead of just your local network. However, I ran out of time, so that'll have to wait until later. I didn't want to delay this release any further.
The process of getting ZitaFTP online is pretty easy, at least on the ZitaFTP side. Configuring port-forwarding on your router may take a bit more work. Either way, you can download this update now."
A single license of 'ZitaFTP Server' costs around 47 euros. The program can be tested free of charge for 30 days. (dr)
[News message: 22. Feb. 2022, 05:40] [Comments: 0]
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21.Feb.2022
Indie Retro News (Webseite)
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Arcade conversions: Amidar500 and MsPacman 500, Preview video of Scramble 500
After his Pacman port released in September, Jean-François Fabre seems to have taken a liking to the conversion of old Aracde games: In the meantime, with Amidar500 (video) and MsPacman 500 (video) further Amiga versions of Pacman clones from the early eighties have been released.
Fabre's games are all available for free at itch.io, but it is possible to make a small donation to the developer before downloading. The Frenchman's current project is a port of the shoot'em-up classic Scramble, a preview video shows the current state of work.
Update: (24.02.22, 15:00, cg)
In the meantime, a new preview video of Scramble has been released. (cg) (Translation: dr)
[News message: 21. Feb. 2022, 17:17] [Comments: 1 - 24. Feb. 2022, 15:05]
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21.Feb.2022
Andreas Magerl (ANF)
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Print magazine: Amiga Future, issue 155 - preview and excerpts
Previews and excerpts of Amiga Future 155 (March/April 2022) have been published today. This issue includes reviews of 'Attack of the PETSCII Robots' and 'Checkmate A1500' as well as a "Special" about AmigaOS 3.2.1. Amiga Future magazine is available as an English and a German printed magazine and can be bought directly from the magazine's editorial office as well as several Amiga dealers.
(cg)
[News message: 21. Feb. 2022, 15:55] [Comments: 0]
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21.Feb.2022
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Commercial Jump'n Run: The Dream of Rowan 1.2
The Jump'n Run 'Dream of Rowan' (Video), originally released in 2017, was now updated to version 1.2 which improves the jump routine and "removes any CPU restrictions".
The game requires a harddisk, the ECS chipset, at least 1,9 MB free Chip RAM and Kickstart 3.x. It can be purchased for 10 Euros via itch.io. Owners of the original release of Dream of Rowan should have already received this update.
(cg)
[News message: 21. Feb. 2022, 00:38] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
Martina Hřebcová (Mail)
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Detailed review (Czech): The Pegasos I from bPlan
In June last year Martina Hřebcová had published a detailed review and test on the Czech Amiga portal about the use of graphics cards under the Sam440ep-flex. Now she got her hands on a Pegasos I computer, which she not only reviews in detail (Czech), but also tries to exploit its performance as much as possible by overclocking and installing suitable graphics cards, memory and USB 2.0 card. (dr)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 15:48] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
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Aminet uploads until 19.02.2022
The following files have been added until 19.02.2022 to Aminet:
AmiGemini.lha comm/net 127K 68k Gemini protocol browser
SteMarRegBlitzSources... dev/blitz 38K 21 Stefano Maria Regattin Bli...
HWP_Plananarama.lha dev/hwood 459K 68k Run Hollywood scripts on plan...
Rescue.lha game/actio 306K 68k Game. Rescue the Captive.
MCE.lha game/edit 3.3M 68k Multi-game Character Editor
MCE-MOS.lha game/edit 3.6M MOS Multi-game Character Editor
MCE-OS4.lha game/edit 3.8M OS4 Multi-game Character Editor
scummvm-1.7.0-rtg.lha game/misc 5.2M 68k Amiga RTG port of ScummVM 1.7.0
EXULT_RTG.lha game/role 49M 68k Amiga port of Ultima 7 (EXULT)
AmiDuke_RTG.lha game/shoot 543K 68k Amiga port of Duke Nukem 3D
AmiSpear_AGA.lha game/shoot 1.4M 68k Amiga port of Spear of Destiny
AmiWolf_AGA.lha game/shoot 1.4M 68k Amiga port of Wolfenstein 3D
BOOM_AGA.lha game/shoot 2.8M 68k Amiga port of BOOM (DOOM)
BOOM_RTG.lha game/shoot 2.8M 68k Amiga port of BOOM (DOOM)
FreeSynd_RTG.lha game/strat 2.9M 68k Amiga port of Syndicate (Free...
OpenDUNE_RTG.lha game/strat 275K 68k Amiga port of Dune 2 (OpenDUNE)
AmiVms.lha misc/emu 3.3M 68k Simulates OpenVMS commands
DOSBox_RTG.lha misc/emu 967K 68k Amiga port of DOSBox
Compute.lha misc/math 11K 68k Command line calculator
Vim_8.2-i386-aros.lha text/edit 12M x86 The ubiquitous text editor
Vim_8.2-ppc-amigaos.lha text/edit 14M OS4 The ubiquitous text editor
Vim_8.2-ppc-morphos.lha text/edit 13M MOS The ubiquitous text editor
aiostreams.lha util/batch 263K Stream video from major onlin...
bde64.i386-aros.lha util/conv 57K x86 Encode/decode file as base64
zmakebas.i386-aros.lha util/conv 150K x86 BASIC Text to ZX Spectrum/ZX8...
CDPlayer372p.lha util/libs 10K 68k Patch for 37.0 cdplayer.library
IconLib_46.4.lha util/libs 1.1M 68k free icon.library in optimize...
IdentifyDev.lha util/libs 67K 68k Identify hardware and more
IdentifyUsr.lha util/libs 92K 68k Identify hardware and more
ajoy2mouse.lha util/mouse 10K 68k Control mouse with analog joy...
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:01] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
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OS4Depot uploads until 19.02.2022
The following files have been added until 19.02.2022 to OS4Depot:
arabic_console_device... dri/inp 3Mb 4.1 An arabic console device, line &...
hle-pokercard.lha gam/car 5Mb 4.0 Guess the next card to appear in...
mce.lha gam/uti 4Mb 4.0 Multi-game Character Editor
hwp_plananarama.lha lib/hol 459kb 4.0 Hollywood plugin for planar screen
amissl.lha lib/mis 6Mb 4.0 OpenSSL as an Amiga shared library
vim_mui.lha uti/tex 14Mb 4.1 The ubiquitous text editor
aiostreams.lha vid/mis 263kb 4.1 Stream video from major online p...
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
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AROS Archives uploads until 19.02.2022
The following files have been added until 19.02.2022 to AROS Archives:
vim_8.2-i386-aros.lha dev/edi 12Mb The ubiquitous text editor
zmakebas.i386-aros.lha emu/uti 150kb BASIC Text to ZX Spectrum/ZX81 ....
hle-pokercard.lha gam/car 4Mb Guess the next card to appear in...
base64.i386-aros.lha uti/she 249kb Encode/decode file as base64
bde64.i386-aros.lha uti/tex 57kb Decode/encode base64
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 19.02.2022
The following files have been added until 19.02.2022 to MorphOS-Storage:
MCE_13.6.lha Games/Editor Multi-game Character Ed...
AIOstreams_1.7.3.lha Network/Streaming Stream online video fro...
Protracker_icons.lha System/Ambient/Icons Protracker Icons (Dual ...
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
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WHDLoad: New installers until 19.02.2022
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 19.02.2022:
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
Amiga Future (website)
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AmigaRemix: Further files added
AmigaRemix collects remixes of well-known soundtracks of Amiga games. Since our last news-item, the following mp3 files have been added:
- Campaign II - Intro
- Knulla-kuk (Moving On)
- John Madden Football
(snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
Amiga Future (website)
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Do it yourself: Amiga 3000 daughterboard
At the title link, Ian Bremner has released the files for his recreation of the revision 9 daughterboard for the Amiga 3000. (snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
Amiga Future (website)
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Do it yourself: Using PC floppy disk drives on Amiga with EZ-FD
Graham Thomson's EZ-FD is based on the same idea as Eyetech's EZ-DF0, which they used in their EZ-Tower cases for the Amiga 1200 to use standard PC floppy disk drives. At the title link he released the KiCAD files for the circuit board. (snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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20.Feb.2022
Amiga Future (Webseite)
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8/16-bit emulator for Mac OS and Linux: Clock Signal
Thomas Harte's Clock Signal is an emulator for various 8- and 16-bit platforms aiming to be invisible to the user. The idea is to simply start the source medium without configuring the emulator oneself. Clock Signal is available for Mac OS and Unix-compatible systems. While there is also an Amiga emulation included, it "remains wilfully inaccurate" for now. (snx)
[News message: 20. Feb. 2022, 08:00] [Comments: 0]
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19.Feb.2022
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Video: The history of the Amiga 1000
In his eighth eposide on Commodore's history, the well-known Texan YouTuber The 8-Bit Guy has recorded a video explaining the Amiga 1000. (dr)
[News message: 19. Feb. 2022, 12:59] [Comments: 0]
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18.Feb.2022
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Text adventure: Updates for Hibernated 1 (Director's Cut)
In mid-June 2021 we reported about the remake of the text adventure Hibernated 1 (Director's Cut), which was released for numerous platforms. In the meantime, several updates have been released, which also affect the Amiga version: Release 8 mainly corrected spelling errors, while Release 9 helped to improve the overall performance of the Amiga version, since it uses a new "Z-Machine Version 5"-enabled interpreter. The presumably last update 12, released three weeks ago, "fixes an issue with the PunyInform library that caused a few of the interpreters to throw warnings when playing, particuarly the Amiga and Atari ST version of the game." (dr)
[News message: 18. Feb. 2022, 09:23] [Comments: 0]
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18.Feb.2022
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Fundraiser: Preserving Commodore documents
Two days ago Dave McMurtrie of the Commodore International Historical Society and Brian Bagnall, known for his books about Commodore's company history, started a fundraising campaign to finance the retrieval of Commodore documents from a basement archive in Toronto. Brian Bagnall writes about this:
"These documents were gathered in 1965 and contain information about Commodore’s co-founders, including three days of interviews with Manfred Kapp and five days with Jack Tramiel. There are corporate logs (called minute books) and financial documents that can uncover some strange paths the company took, such as a foray into the hotel business in the Bahamas, and the unique story behind Commodore Jamaica. And much more.
In 2020, both Dave McMurtrie of the Commodore International Historical Society and Brian Bagnall, author of Commodore: A Company on the Edge, independently requested documents from the archives. However, the archives were shut down due to the crisis and only reopened in late 2021. Now we have been able to jointly request scans of the documents, but it comes with a steep price. The examination interviews with Tramiel and Kapp amount to 570 pages. At over a dollar per page that the archivist charges, this adds up fast. We want to unearth more than just the examination interviews, we want the thousands of other pages of business records, financial documents, sworn testimony, and evidence.
What it comes down to is we need your help! The best way to preserve these documents before they are lost to time is to back them up digitally and disperse them across the Internet. We will upload the documents to the Internet Archive so they have a permanent and reliable repository for future generations to explore."
Accordingly, one page costs around one US dollar. The initiators had issued the goal of 2000 Canadian dollars, which was already exceeded yesterday with over 3000 donated dollars. Accordingly, Brian Bagnall wrote:
"Thanks to everyone for helping us reach our goal in a matter of hours! It was much more than Dave or myself expected. Today we submitted an order for the first batch of 570 pages of interviews and should see the scans within two weeks if all goes well. The next request is a list of documents drawn up by Dave that includes notes from Commodore Jamaica director's meetings, corporate minute books, and some other evidence from Commodore Drycopy in New York. What we find will help guide us to other documents we might want to request after that. With 314 boxes, I don't think the well of documents will run dry anytime soon." (dr)
[News message: 18. Feb. 2022, 06:20] [Comments: 0]
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17.Feb.2022
Gotek-Retro
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RaSCSI: SCSI adapter for Raspberry Pi
In 2015, we reported about SCSI2SD, a SCSI adapter that allows SD cards to be used as SCSI hard drives. The firmware is still being maintained and the adapter is also still available, but it costs just under 90 Euros converted. As Gotek-Retro reports, there is also a solution for Raspberry Pi users: RaSCSI is a virtual SCSI device emulator that can emulate multiple SCSI devices at once. Likewise, there is a control interface to attach/detach drives on the fly, as well as insert and eject removable media. It works with a variety of Amiga models. The adapter is available for about 50 Euro for example at SamplerSpa or AmigaKit. (dr)
[News message: 17. Feb. 2022, 06:41] [Comments: 0]
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16.Feb.2022
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Amiga disks on PC: DrawBridge 2.8.6
Robert Smith's project "DrawBridge" (Disk Reader and Writer Bridge) uses like the similar ADF Drive a microcontroller - in this case an Arduino board - to read and write Amiga floppies with a connected standard PC floppy drive. By means of the plugin FloppyBridge, WinUAE is also officially supported since version 4.9.0. The changes of the current version:
- Better extraction of disk revolutions and a few bugs fixed
- Accurate flux extraction available but experimental so you can choose to use it or not (can't handle some long-track disks)
- Modification of older flux reading method for more better compatability
- New firmware *1.9.23* includes basic PLL support for UAE to provide better support for games using Weak/Flaky bits
- Improved IPF & SCP writing by changing some of the parameters
- Console application now has an icon and version information
- Tidied up some of the assembly language in the Arduino Sketch
(dr)
[News message: 16. Feb. 2022, 08:30] [Comments: 0]
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15.Feb.2022
ACube Systems (Mail)
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ACube Systems: Sam460LE boards announced / Pre-order campaign
Press release: After many months, we are so happy to announce we are very close to a production start for a new batch of Sam460 boards.
Well, these will not be Sam460 but Sam460LE, i.e. Limited Edition.
Due to the pandemic time and huge delays in delivering hardware components, we had to spend a lot more time than planned to find all components for a production run. Finally, we reached a point where we need your help to start this production.
We are now taking pre-orders for these Sam460LE boards. You can find a pre-order product right now in our online shop.
All Sam460LE bundles are made of:
- Sam460LE board running up to 1.1 Ghz
- Micro-ATX form factor with enough space for double slot graphic cards ;-)
- MicroSD Slot at the rear of the board, so it can operated from the back.
- 1 backplate
- AmigaOS 4.1 FE
- final price is 735 Euros VAT excluded (european countries should add 22% VAT).
Pre-orders will be processed as follows:
- you can pay now 240 Euros (VAT excluded, see above), for a Sam460 package
- we'll announce on all social media when the production starts
- we'll also announce when the production has been completed
- you will be asked one by one, to complete your payment (basically, the total cost minus what you paid as the pre-order)
- first payment, first served. We'll ship in the same order we receive the remaining payments.
- in case you decide to ask for a refund, we'll send your money back without condition.
Note: people that will purchase outside the scope of this pre-order offer will have to pay a final price of 785 Euros for the same product.
We are happy to work with you on this effort to bring more Sam460 boards on the market and we hope you will join us in this project! (dr)
[News message: 15. Feb. 2022, 05:43] [Comments: 0]
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15.Feb.2022
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Commercial RPG: Glamorous Zombie Flakes (OCS/AGA/RTG)
The developers of 'Glamorous Zombie Flakes' describe it as an "oldschool, console-style RPG", where the player must guide a group of models to cure zombies of their bizarre affliction and chase UFOs. The title features more than 30 different zombie types, more than 100 items and a turn-based strategy "intervention" system.
On AGA or RTG machines, the game supports 256 colors. There's a special build for OCS based Amigas that uses the EHB mode featuring 64 colors. 'Glamorous Zombie Flakes' requires a 68040 CPU, 3.5 MB RAM as well as AHI and can be bought from itch.io for 14 USD (or any higher amount).
A few days ago, additional "experimental" Amiga builds that run faster on AGA machines and support CD32 joypads have been released. (cg)
[News message: 15. Feb. 2022, 00:24] [Comments: 0]
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