07.Jan.2025
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Documentary: Louis Castle talks about the history of Westwood Studios
The latest episode of the YouTube documentary series "Titans of the Industry" focuses on Louis Castle, co-founder of legendary developer studio Westwood Studios. The episode provides exciting insights into the creation of iconic games such as Dune 2, The Lion King, California Games and Command and Conquer.
Louis Castle talks about the beginnings of Westwood Studios, which was founded in 1985 as a porting studio for Amiga and Macintosh games, and how the studio developed into a real-time strategy giant of the 90s. With millions of copies of its titles sold, Westwood has had a lasting impact on the video game industry. This episode is a must for fans of classic games and those interested in retro gaming. (nba)
[News message: 07. Jan. 2025, 12:08] [Comments: 0]
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07.Jan.2025
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SCSI for Raspberry Pi: SCSI2Pi 5 released as a pre-release
A new version of the SCSI2Pi emulation software is available as a pre-release. SCSI2Pi is an alternative to the well-known PiSCSI software for the PiSCSI/RaSCSI board, which brings SCSI technology to the Raspberry Pi. According to developer Uwe Seimet, the software offers optimised device emulation, higher transfer rates and numerous new functions, including tools for the SCSI initiator mode.
The software emulates several SCSI and SASI devices such as hard disks, CD-ROM drives, printers and network interfaces.It supports classic systems such as Amiga, Atari ST/TT/Falcon030, 68k Macs or Unix workstations and also offers a SCSI-to-USB bridge. Thanks to compatibility with the PiSCSI Web UI and the SCSI Control Android app, users can access advanced functionality.
With SCSI2Pi, users can seamlessly switch between PiSCSI and the new software by simply installing an optimised binary package – without complicated compilation steps.
The current version 4.1 of SCSI2Pi has been available since the beginning of December, and now version 5.0 has been released as a pre-release. It offers the following changes:
- New device type SCSG, with support for a SCSI-to-USB bridge. The bridge supports any SCSI command, not only those emulated by s2p. With some devices you can even burn DVDs.
- Extended streamer support, e.g. of SIMH-compatible tape image files, filemarks, spacing, variable block sizes, ...
- Tape dump/restore support. With s2pdump you can convert any tape into a SIMH-compatible image file and vice versa.
- s2p can create command scripts for s2pexec.
- The maximum number of data bytes to log can be configured with s2p and s2pexec.
- s2pexec and s2pdump now also support devices which are managed by the Linux SG driver. For these devices no Pi is required, i.e. you can use s2pexec and s2pdump on any Linux platform.
- s2psimh tool for the analysis and creation of SIMH-compatible image files. This tool runs on any Linux/BSD platform and on macOS.
- s2pformat tool for formatting floppy disks or other media, e.g. in USB drives. This tool runs on any Linux platform.
The software can be downloaded from the SCSI2Pi-website. All the latest source codes can also be found on the GitHub project page. (nba)
[News message: 07. Jan. 2025, 11:38] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jan.2025
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GUI for Greaseweazle Tools: FluxMyFluffyFloppy V5.1.1 for Windows
'FrankieTheFluff' has released version 5.1.1 of his graphical user interface FluxMyFluffyFloppy for Greaseweazle Tools V1.21 (see also the video Setting up a Greaseweazle V4). Changes since our last news item:
- Fixes missing prefix in the diskdefs form spec selection
- Requires Greaseweazle 1.21
- Options: former location of "diskdefs.cfg" is now a folder select !
- Supports now the different "Diskdefs_.cfg" files (change options: "Diskdefs (folder)")
- Diskdefs (2024-10-23) added (change options: "Diskdefs (folder)")
- Read/Write: New disc formats: micropolis.*
- Sourcecode: Removed unused variables
(dr)
[News message: 06. Jan. 2025, 19:09] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jan.2025
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Audio player: UADE-Plugin 0.12.4 for Audacious (Windows, Linux, macOS)
"audacious-uade" is a plugin for the audio player Audacious (Windows, Linux, macOS), which allows the use of the Unix Amiga Delitracker Emulator as an input filter. In the new Version 0.12.4, support for Scream Tracker 2 has been added, among other things. (dr)
[News message: 06. Jan. 2025, 15:50] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jan.2025
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Racing game: Carmageddon 1.02
A reverse engineering project brings the PC classic Carmageddon to the Classic Amiga: the conversion of Arcziii (video) is based on the original engine, was adapted for the 68k architecture and requires the original game data of Carmageddon (amiga-news.de reported).
Version 1.02 offers a 20% improved performance, fixed graphic errors of the workbench after closing and OS3.2 compatible icons. (dr)
[News message: 06. Jan. 2025, 14:53] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jan.2025
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Dungeon Crawler: Custom maps for "The Shadows of Sergoth"
The dungeon crawler "The Shadows of Sergoth" was released in 2021 (amiga-news.de reported). Now the developer 'quantumcodemonk' has, as he writes, created a few custom maps for the game "just for fun". The aim was to create something "a bit harder... a lot harder" and is asking for feedback in this regard. The original game is required. (dr)
[News message: 06. Jan. 2025, 11:16] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jan.2025
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Browser extension: AGuide Viewer 0.6
AGuide Viewer is an open source reader for AmigaGuide documents implemented as a browser extension. It works with Firefox and Chromium on all platforms (amiga-news.de berichtete).
As the author explains, version 0.6 adds the feature to render web links in the AmigaGuide magazine WhatIFF and a configurable theme: the page can now be rendered in OS3 style (gray background, beveled 3D-effect buttons) or using the browser's native web page settings. (dr)
[News message: 06. Jan. 2025, 11:16] [Comments: 0]
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06.Jan.2025
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Christmas game: The Young Icefighter, Level 4
"The Young Icefighter" is a Christmas game for children created with the "Shoot'em Construction Kit", for which the developer's eight-year-old son drew most of the graphics (amiga-news.de reported). Now a bonus level and level 4 have been added. (dr)
[News message: 06. Jan. 2025, 09:06] [Comments: 0]
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05.Jan.2025
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Aminet uploads until 04.01.2025
The following files have been added until 04.01.2025 to Aminet:
TuneFinderMUI.lha comm/misc 66K OS3 Search+play online radi...
screennotify-E.lha dev/e 1K OS3 Amiga E modules for scr...
REDPILLGameCreator.lha dev/misc 6.0M OS3 Game Creator with AGA s...
CDVDFS-1.10-AmigaOS.lha disk/cdrom 182K OS3 CD/DVD filesystem:ISO-9...
SFS.lha disk/misc 439K VAR Smart Filesystem
mhimasplayer.lha driver/aud 32K OS3 MHI driver for MAS-Play...
anaiis.lha driver/oth 255K OS3 ANAIIS USB Stack Releas...
anaiis_boot.lha driver/oth 259K OS3 ANAIIS USB Boot disk Re...
anaiis_massive.lha driver/oth 82K OS3 Massive release 1.25
WormWars-OS4.lha game/actio 1.1M OS4 Advanced snake/Tron gam...
WormWars.lha game/actio 857K OS3 Advanced snake/Tron gam...
WormWarsMOS.lha game/actio 904K MOS Advanced snake/Tron gam...
Africa-OS4.lha game/board 346K OS4 Conversion of 3W board ...
Africa.lha game/board 297K OS3 Conversion of 3W board ...
AfricaMOS.lha game/board 398K MOS Conversion of 3W board ...
Saga-OS4.lha game/board 455K OS4 Conversion of TSR board...
Saga.lha game/board 388K OS3 Conversion of TSR board...
SagaMOS.lha game/board 433K MOS Conversion of TSR board...
F1GP2024Carset.lha game/data 11K GEN 2024 Carset for F1GP
babeanoid_backs.lha game/misc 785K GEN BabeAnoid 2.0 babes bac...
PuzzleTiles_AROS.lha game/think 3.4M ARO Puzzle game working on ...
PuzzleTiles_MorphOS.lha game/think 3.3M MOS Puzzle game working on ...
PuzzleTiles_OS4.lha game/think 3.8M OS4 Puzzle game working on ...
ATcad-Turbo.zip gfx/edit 324K OS3 2D-CAD-Program
FlashMandelNG_OS4.lha gfx/fract 37M OS4 Mandelbrot & Julia ...
AmiArcadia-OS4.lha misc/emu 9.8M OS4 Signetics-based machine...
AmiArcadia.lha misc/emu 9.2M OS3 Signetics-based machine...
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha misc/emu 9.5M MOS Signetics-based machine...
illusion.lzh pix/anim 486K GEN motion illusion
ATcad_Turbo.png pix/misc 23K GEN ATcad-Turbo
NAFCYI1991S4-B02.zip text/bfont 1.6M GEN NAFCYI Winter 1991-92 (...
IconLib_46.4.lha util/libs 1.9M OS3 free icon.library in op...
MMULib.lha util/libs 788K OS3 Library to ctrl the MC6...
GoVD.lha util/wb 28K OS3 Virtual Desktops for Wo...
StartWin.lha util/wb 105K OS3 Two bugged Workbench la...
(snx)
[News message: 05. Jan. 2025, 09:35] [Comments: 0]
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05.Jan.2025
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OS4Depot uploads until 04.01.2025
The following files have been added until 04.01.2025 to OS4Depot:
vasmm68k_mot.lha dev/cro 261kb 4.0 Portable and retargetable assembler
vasmm68k_std.lha dev/cro 255kb 4.0 Portable and retargetable assembler
vasmppc_std.lha dev/cro 216kb 4.0 Portable and retargetable assembler
vlink.lha dev/cro 199kb 4.0 A portable linker, written in AN...
sfs.lha dri/fil 370kb 4.0 Smart Filesystem
arabic_console_device... dri/inp 3Mb 4.1 An arabic console device, line &...
xircomce2.lha dri/net 90kb 4.0 Driver for Xircom PCMCIA network...
amiarcadia.lha emu/gam 10Mb 4.0 Signetics-based machines emulator
wormwars.lha gam/act 1Mb 4.0 Advanced snake/Tron game
africa.lha gam/boa 346kb 4.0 Conversion of 3W board game
saga.lha gam/boa 455kb 4.0 Conversion of TSR board game
flashmandelng.lha gra/mis 37Mb 4.1 Mandelbrot & Julia fractals ...
amigagpt.lha net/cha 2Mb 4.1 App for chatting to ChatGPT
amigen.lha off/dat 6Mb 4.0 Genealogist program
(snx)
[News message: 05. Jan. 2025, 09:34] [Comments: 0]
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05.Jan.2025
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AROS Archives uploads until 04.01.2025
The following files have been added until 04.01.2025 to AROS Archives:
image2pdf.i386-aros.lha off/dtp 3Mb Convert images file to PDF
(snx)
[News message: 05. Jan. 2025, 09:34] [Comments: 0]
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05.Jan.2025
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 04.01.2025
The following files have been added until 04.01.2025 to MorphOS-Storage:
Frodo_4.5.lha Emulation Frodo - The free, porta...
fheroes2_1.1.5.lha Games/Strategy fheroes2 is a recreatio...
PuzzleTiles_1.0.lha Games/Think Puzzle game working on ...
AmigaGPT_2.2.0.lha Misc App for chatting to Cha...
(snx)
[News message: 05. Jan. 2025, 09:34] [Comments: 0]
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05.Jan.2025
Amigaworld.net (forum)
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Hyperion Entertainment: Timothy De Groote new director
After Hyperion Entertainment initially continued to be managed by a court-appointed administrator, the current register entry at the title link now lists Timothy De Groote again as director of the company. Anyway insolvency lawyer Bart De Moor remains responsible for Hyperion as the court-appointed liquidator. (snx)
[News message: 05. Jan. 2025, 09:34] [Comments: 1 - 07. Jan. 2025, 23:17]
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05.Jan.2025
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A600GS: Video update from Proteque on the development status
After his video from summer on image and music editing with the Orange Pi-based Amiga clone A600GS from AmigaKit, in which he still had to report on various problems, 'Proteque' has now followed up and taken a look at the current status of the system.
His conclusion: A lot has happened, updates are coming regularly and the A600GS now fulfills what he had previously expected. It would therefore be an inexpensive way to try out AmigaOS or to play a game with a real joystick and a real Amiga keyboard. (snx)
[News message: 05. Jan. 2025, 09:34] [Comments: 0]
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05.Jan.2025
Amiga Future (Webseite)
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Virus Help Team: 30th anniversary
Founded on January 1, 1995 and strengthened within six months by branches in Norway, the Netherlands and Canada, the Virus Help Team has shrunk to just two people today, Jan Andersen and Jan Nielsen, but thirty years later it is still active in helping Amiga users with virus problems and supporting the authors of anti-virus programs. (snx)
[News message: 05. Jan. 2025, 09:34] [Comments: 0]
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04.Jan.2025
Cameron Armstrong
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Chat software: AmigaGPT 2.2.0 with ApolloOS-support
Cameron Armstrong has developed a chat program called AmigaGPT, which is based on ChatGPT. The software supports the latest OpenAI models including the o1 family and runs on AmigaOS 3.1 and above (including 4.1) and on MorphOS. The source code of the tool can be downloaded separately.
The new version now also supports ApolloOS (amiga-news.de reported). In addition, the following changes and bug fixes have been made:
- Image preview now works in MorphOS and in MUI 3 (AmigaGPT now has MCC_Guigfx as a prerequisite)
- Replace the chat output sections from MCC_TextEditor class to MCC_NFloattext for improved memory usage and compatibility with ApolloOS
- Improved encoding to and from UTF-8 with enhanced character lookalike remapping (AmigaGPT now has codesets.library as a prerequisite)
- Fix crash when the first data chunk received from OpenAI is smaller than the HTTP header
- Fix crash when OpenAI sends a blank content string
Download: AmigaGPT.lha (2,1 MB) (nba)
[News message: 04. Jan. 2025, 13:54] [Comments: 0]
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03.Jan.2025
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Video-Tutorial: AMOS program for extracting Hex colour codes
In another video of his tutorial series about AMOS Pro, retro and Amiga fan 'Yawning Angel' explains his self-written program for extracting the hexadecimal colour values of bobs in .abk files and hexadecimal colour codes from .iff files. The source code of the program is available free of charge on his Website. (dr)
[News message: 03. Jan. 2025, 21:22] [Comments: 0]
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03.Jan.2025
Thomas Wenzel (ANF)
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Bugfix for the MHI driver for MAS-player
Thomas Wenzel wrote: "There was a bug in the MHI driver for the MAS player that caused some of the RS232 handshake lines to become misaligned at startup. This has now been fixed: The driver now leaves the serial interface completely alone.
The error was noticed because there is a project that uses one of the RS232 lines to control an HDMI switch. Unfortunately, the switching status was always overwritten when the driver was started.
Happy New Year! :)" (cg)
[News message: 03. Jan. 2025, 19:31] [Comments: 0]
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03.Jan.2025
Dante Mende (discord)
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Action-Adventure: CD32 update for Castlevania AGA
Dante Mende has released another update of his conversion of Konami's NES action adventure "Castlevania" and now also provides a CD32 version with CD music and some optimisations. (dr)
[News message: 03. Jan. 2025, 14:56] [Comments: 0]
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02.Jan.2025
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Emulated Amiga: Amigakit announces A1200NG, special price for pre-orders
In a press release (PDF), Amigakit announces the "A1200NG", which, like the A600GS available since August, is apparently based on an ARM-based Orange Pi motherboard running a Linux-based Amiga emulator - hardware performance and software setup are therefore exactly the same as its little brother. The highlight of the A1200NG: The "breakout board", into which the Orange Pi is plugged and which extends it with various connections, has the exact dimensions of an Amiga 1200 board and is therefore installed in an original or reproduced A1200 keyboard housing.
Instead of a PCMCIA slot, the A1200NG features a CompactFlash slot, the connection for an external floppy disk drive is replaced by two USB ports. While there is still a composite video connector, there is currently "no driver support" for it. The A1200NG provides an HDMI signal by default, which is routed to the expansion slot below the A1200 floppy disk drive - a corresponding slot bracket is included with the purchase.
The A1200NG comes with an Amiga-compatible joystick port as standard, but the adjacent mouse/joystick port is located on an extra board which must be purchased separately. The parallel port and TV modulator have been omitted.
In addition to Bluetooth and WLAN, the A1200NG board also has connections for an original A1200 keyboard and a real Amiga floppy disk drive, but the use of USB keyboards and floppy disk drives (including Greaseweazle) is also possible.
Delivery is planned for the first quarter of 2025, but pre-orders are already being accepted. The motherboard is available for a special introductory price of around 163 euros until January 20, after which it will cost 192 euros. A plastic foil for insulation against a metal shielding plate (4.60 euros), a LED adapter (10.70 euros), a 2nd joystick connector (8.05 euros) or a larger micro SD card (128 instead of 64 GB, 8.30 euros) are available for an additional charge. Amigakit does not currently offer matching A1200 cases or keyboards. (cg)
[News message: 02. Jan. 2025, 20:00] [Comments: 0]
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02.Jan.2025
Marcin Spoczynski (E-Mail)
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Internet radio: TuneFinderMUI 0.4
TuneFinderMUI searches for Internet radio stations and offers various filter options. Individual stations can be exported to a file
or played directly with AmigaAMP, even entire station lists can be can be saved as a playlist in PLS format - which is also supported by AmigaAMP.
The newly added MUI-based version is intended to complement the original, Intuition-based program released in November with one featuring a more modern user interface. In version 0.4 the user interface's layout was reorganized again. Tunefinder is written in C, the source code is available on Github. (cg)
[News message: 02. Jan. 2025, 14:49] [Comments: 0]
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02.Jan.2025
Indie Retro News (website)
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Preview video: Danmaku #8 (bullet hell shooter)
"Danmaku" is the Japanese name for the game genre ‘Bullet Hell’, the term is also used as the working title for the shooter originally known as ‘Hyperborea’, which is being developed by Daniel ‘Daytona675x’ Müßener (code), Holger Crome (graphics) and Roland ‘Triace’ Voss (music).
The eighth preview video is intended to illustrate the current status; according to Müßener, the following changes have been made since the last version:
- muzzle flash is now integrated into the player ships, so no hard gaps here anymore. Made it procedurally during loading so that the respective assets can still be easily edited.
- blinking hitbox on player ships (maybe I'll put that a few pixels down)
- new pseudo-ground enemy mode. The spiders at the beginning of the test-level use that mode. Physically such enemies are drawn on playfield 2 (so they can have their own palette without touching PF1), but they don't cast a shadow and the player-sprites appear on top of them, even though stuff on PF2 has the highest priority. Useful for hords of small ground enemies like tanks or so.
- blockable enemy lasers. Those are big growing laser-streaks which can be blocked by using the fat laser weapon mode. Similarities to Dodonpachi Resurrection are purely coincidential ;)
- player-shots vs enemies collision system now supports some flags to adjust the vulnerability to the player's weapons. So e.g. an enemy can be made very vulnerable to the spread-shot and less vulnerable to the fat laser.
- flicker shadows (stable shadows still available in the video options). For two reasons: 1. it gives the gfx artist more freedom regarding the ground palettes because unavoidable brightness "errors" become less noticable. 2. Performance, of course. Most of the time stable shadows aren't a problem, but sometimes they may be. And in such cases I prefer flicker-shadows like in Dodonpachi over cutting down the action.
- The test-boss has 30 colors now, not just 15.
- volumes for all types of sounds adjustable (before it was just the bonus sound volume)
- prepared for 2-channel music by only using channels 2/3 for sfx (unless music is disabled, then all 4 channels are used for sfx). Concrete sfx channel and priority also depend on whether 2 players are active.
- lots of fixes :-)
(cg)
[News message: 02. Jan. 2025, 00:02] [Comments: 0]
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02.Jan.2025
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Universal PCI driver system: OpenPCI 12.7 (update)
Thomas 'Thor' Richter's universal PCI driver system "OpenPCI" supports all known PCI solutions for the Amiga without recourse to the software of the respective manufacturer. The current version contains the following changes:
- 12.7: The ReserveMemSpace function in PCI-Configuration could
hang forever if a bridge does not support access to the
low memory PCI area and reservation failed.
- 12.7: In case address space allocation for a BAR fails, the
corresponding device is disabled, excluded from further
reservations and removed from the listed device list now.
- 12.7: Translation between 68K addresses and PCI addresses is now
aware of the memory region reserved by ReserveMemSpace
and maps addresses below the reservation limit through,
regardless whether any BAR actually uses the region.
- 12.3: lspci sources included the wrong header,
is BSD-only, should be which is POSIX.
- 12.3: Fixed a defect in the mediator emulation setup.
- 12.2: The "lspci" program accepts now an additional argument,
namely "NUMERIC". If set, then it does not attempt to
resolve the PCI vendor and device ID to human-readable
numbers but rather prints their hex values.
- 12.2: Dynamic PCI initialization through external segments
was augmented. Init functions receive now one additional
argument in a1, and may return a (non-NULL) pointer.
Initially, Init functions are called with this argument
set to NULL, and receive in register a0 a pointer to a
RDArgs structure for command line parsing. If they return
a non-NULL pointer and not a small number as error code,
they are called *once again* the PCI environment is
completely setup. They then receive NULL as RDArgs in a0,
but its own (previous) return code in a1 to complete
a potential initialization of a device.
Update: (02.01.2025, 21:00, cg)
Version 12.7 has been released in the meantime. (cg)
[News message: 02. Jan. 2025, 00:02] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jan.2025
EAB (Webseite)
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PDF magazine: 5th issue of "Amiga Point of View" as a free download
The fifth issue of the PDF magazine "Amiga Point of View" published last summer is now available free of charge. The 72 pages include a Magnetic Fields interview, various game reviews and the start of a series that briefly introduces 50 games that have been released exclusively for the Amiga. (cg)
[News message: 01. Jan. 2025, 21:00] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jan.2025
Krzysztof Donat (ANF)
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Virtual Desktops for Workbench: GoVD 2.0
Krzysztof Donat's program GoVD makes it possible to use the Workbench on up to eight virtual screens on AmigaOS 3.1.4 and 3.2. It is possible to specify which Workbench windows and programs should use which one of the screens.
With version 2.0 released today, the program functions as a commodity. Other new features include keyboard shortcuts for switching desktops and pixel-precise positioning of the window with the virtual desktop buttons.
The most important features and improvements are:
- Added the ability to define keyboard shortcuts for switching between
virtual desktops, switching to the next and previous desktop,
and hiding the window with virtual desktop buttons
- Added the ability to precisely (pixel-perfect) position the window
with virtual desktop buttons on the Workbench screen.
- Added an option to start GoVD in hidden mode.
- Added support for the screennotify library, allowing changes
to the Workbench screen resolution without shutting down GoVD
(optionally, works if the screennotify.library is present in the system)
- From this version, GoVD functions as a commodity,
enabling management through the system's Exchange tool.
- Changed the demo version functionality - now the program operates
without any limitations but only for 20 minutes.
- Restart GoVD from the configuration tool.
Download: GoVD.lha (28 KB) (snx)
[News message: 01. Jan. 2025, 15:12] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jan.2025
Frank Wille (ANF)
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Development tools: vasm 2.0a and vlink 0.18
Frank Wille has updated vasm, a portable Assembler for several CPUs with various Syntax and Output modules, as well as vlink, a portable Linker for lots of Object, Executable and Binary formats.
Changes in vasm V2.0a:
- Fixed bad path in source level debugging information, when the initial source file and an include file were based on the same "compile directory".
- Get rid of C99-round() dependency.
- Fixed empty strings, which were broken in V2.0. They should not generate any data.
- When position-independant code is requested (-pic option) the assembler defaults to relocatable mode (to be able to detect violations).
- Allow 64-bit (or more) expressions with absolute label addresses.
- 6502: Additionally allow BRK with an immediate 8-bit operand.
- 6502: Operand prefix character '?' can be used to select the Memory/Bank-ID where the referenced symbol resides. Requires the use of VOBJ and vlink.
- mot-syntax: A double colon after the label also exports RS symbols now.
- madmac-syntax: New directives: ifdef and ifndef (just for convenience, they are no official MadMac directives!).
- madmac-syntax: Fix problem with print-directive when string is empty.
- oldstyle-syntax: Fixed usage of '$' as current-PC symbol for Z80, which was broken since V2.0.
- oldstyle-syntax: Fixed definition of structure offset labels, which should be referenceable by structname.offsetname. Broken since V2.0.
- hunk-output: Fixed output generated by Databss directives (like DX in mot-syntax). Broken in V2.0.
- hunk-output: -linedebug: do not generate multiple entries per line.
Changes in vlink 0.18:
- Define for each relocation type whether it is signed, unsigned or unknown, to provide better range checks.
- Make the range-checking work with sign-extended addresses (Example: m68k 16-bit absolute addressing).
- When an output section's memory region has not enough space the linker will look for the next matching output section.
- Linker script function KEEP() now really prevents garbage collection of sections.
- Sorting and exclusion functions for linker script section patterns: SORT_BY_ALIGNMENT(), SORT_BY_NAME(), SORT_BY_SIZE(), REVERSE(), EXCLUDE_FILE(), EXCLUDE_SECTION(). Supporting up to two sorting levels.
- The output section's bank size can be defined by (BANKSIZE=n) in the script, so input sections may not cross bank borders. In that case they will be aligned to the beginning of the next bank.
- Linker script MEMORY definitions now support an optional ID=n argument, where n defines an identification value which can be referenced by a VOBJ-specific relocation type (MEMID).
- Can find first executable code-section now, when no start symbol is present.
- Portable pattern matching routine, used for Windows and TOS, did case-insensitive string comparisons in the past.
- Absolute symbols are printed as a separate section into the map file.
- Support LINKONCE section flag.
- New options -symfile, -symfmt and -symctrl to output symbol/value pairs into a file using the given printf-format string.
- New options -obe and -ole to specify the endianess of octets within a target-byte (when it has more than 8 bits) when writing the contents of a section to a file system.
- New option -lineoffsets to output a separate file with source line offsets per section.
- New option -mattr to merge all sections with same attributes, when linking without a linker script.
- The target file formats rawbin1 and rawbin2 were replaced by a common rawbin format. rawbin2 is now -brawbin with -multifile option. The old target names are still supported for backwards compatibility.
- New target file formats "foenixpgx-c02", "foenixpgx-816", "foenixpgz-24" and "foenixpgz-32" for Foenix retro computers.
- New target file format "appleomf" can generate relocatable load-files for Apple IIgs computers.
- Merge options -mrel, -mtype and -mall also work with -r now, when creating a new relocatable object file.
- Linker script commands BYTE, SHORT, LONG, QUAD, SQUAD do now create 1, 2, 4 or 8 target-bytes and no longer 8, 16, 32, 64-bit values.
- Relocatable/Abs symbols with the same name have precedence before Common symbols and do not cause a multiple-definition error.
- Starting vlink without arguments only shows a short list of options now. For a detailed description use -h, which also includes target-specific options selected by -b.
- Fixed output section trimming in the linker script.
- Fix error message for unknown target file formats (-b).
- (ados/ehf) New option -kick1 makes sure the generated executable is comaptible with the Kickstart 1.x loader.
- (ados/ehf) Allow symbol redefinitions from pulled library units, as long as their target CPU differs (M68k/PPC WarpOS mixed binaries). This only worked for symbols from code sections, since V0.17.
- (elf) Fixed uninitialized .plt at end of text segment.
- (tos) Can use DRI object files and libraries as input now. HiSoft and SozobonX symbol name extensions are supported.
- (tos) TOS executable files do work as input and DRI objects as output (-r).
- (tos) Enable SozobonX symbol names with -tos-sozobonx.
- (tos) Disable the HiSoft symbol name extension in executables with -tos-stddri.
- (rawbin) Fixed missing byte in the ORIC tape header and automatically remove a ".tap" extension from the name stored there.
- (rawbin) IHEX supports architectures with more than 8 bits per byte. But note that the address is still incremented in 8-bit steps.
- (rawbin) Make sure the file size is even, when using a QDOS header.
- (rawbin) Fixed raw reloc table output (-q) for a relocation at offset 0.
- (rawbin) New options -fill, -coalesced and -multifile (previously rawbin2).
- (vobj) Supports -r option to output a relocatable VOBJ file. Option -vobj2 may be used to write that file in VOBJ v2 format.
- (vobj) -vobjcpu option selects the name of the target CPU.
- (vobj) Supports VOBJ v2 format (vasm -Fvobj -vobj2) and PPC non-standard relocations (EABI, MorphOS, AmigaOS).
- (xfile) Entry address is written to the header.
- (xfile) New option -x-high sets the high-address flag in the header.
(snx)
[News message: 01. Jan. 2025, 15:12] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jan.2025
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AROS: Summary of 2024
At the title link Andrzej 'retrofaza' Subocz has summarized the developments of AROS/x86 in 2024. (snx)
[News message: 01. Jan. 2025, 15:12] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jan.2025
David Brunet (ANF)
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New articles on Obligement website
The articles below have been added to the website of the French Amiga/MorphOS magazine Obligement in the last two months.
- News from November/December 2024
- Old articles from Génération 4 26 to 31: News: Agony and other Art Magic projects, File: Never Ending Story 2, the film, the game, Review of Disc, Review of Great Courts 2, News: FNAC Logiciels, Report: Intertainment 1990, Review of Advanced Destroyer Simulator, Review of Loopz, Review of Speedball 2, News: Delphine Software, vive 1991! File: Total Recall, the film, the game, Review of Oriental Games, Review of Geisha, Review of Time Race, etc.
- Interview with Gilles Dridi (author of Arabic Console)
- Interview with Denis Lechevalier (Amiga games specialist)
- Interview with Matthew Leaman (head of AmigaKit)
- Review of GoADF! 3.1.2
- Comparison: Sam460LE versus A1222 Plus
- Hardware: RV300C
- The best of Byte from September 1990 to June 1991
- File: The history of Faery Tale Adventure
- File: Applications included in MorphOS
- Tutorial: Installing Odyssey 64 bits on AxRT Windows 11 (WSL2)
- DIY: Modifying a PC floppy drive to integrate it into an Amiga 500
- Programming: Assembler - Programming a sine scroll on the Amiga
- Special quiz on AmigaOS 3.2
(nba)
[News message: 01. Jan. 2025, 14:47] [Comments: 0]
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01.Jan.2025
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amiga-news.de wishes you a happy new year
The amiga-news.de team hopes that our readers survived New Year's Eve well and wishes everyone a Happy New Year. For the Amiga, the past 12 months were - again - quite pleasing and we are confident that there will be a lot to report, discuss and try out again in 2025.
2024 was also a good year for amiga-news.de: we published 1400 news items, the editorial team also received an experienced addition with Nico Barbat and the technology department was significantly strengthened with Markus Bonet. Our news service, which is starting its 27th "financial year" today, should therefore also have a few good years ahead of it. The first goal is, of course, to produce a similar number of articles again, but we will also be working more intensively on the underlying technology.
If you would like to support our work, you are welcome to make a small donation via the PayPal button on our start page. The (small) proceeds will be used to cover our costs for a server and our three domains. (cg)
[News message: 01. Jan. 2025, 13:03] [Comments: 2 - 02. Jan. 2025, 14:27]
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01.Jan.2025
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AmiGameJam: Update of Rintivoorh
One of the candidates for the AmiGameJam 2024 was Rintivoorh, an inofficial successor of the game Hawkeye. Now an update has been released, changes include speed increases. (snx)
[News message: 01. Jan. 2025, 08:42] [Comments: 0]
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