amiga-news.de - Archive

Archive 11/2019

16.Nov.2019
amigaworld (Webseite)

AmigaOS 4: Update for retro arcade game "Huenison"
The commcercial game 'Huenison' (trailer) combines diverse features of former arcade games. This update for the game, orginally released in 2013, provides diverse improvements for the graphical representation:

Simplified and optimized CRT pixel modes
Made 4x LCD pixel mode slightly brighter
Added 6x pixel modes
Added hardware-accelerated zooming for solid pixel modes to AmigaOS version

The author points out that purchasers of the CD version theoretically can update their (burned) media since they deliberately have been burned as multi session CDs. You can get further information from his announcement on amigaworld.net. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 16. Nov. 2019, 17:58] [Comments: 0]
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16.Nov.2019 Individual Computers: Pictures of cooling system of ACA1260
Individual Computers has published some first pictures of the announced 68040/68060-based accelerator board which show the cooling system of the board: Obviously the developers chose an active cooling, the fan would have been custom-made for Individual Computers. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 16. Nov. 2019, 15:32] [Comments: 0]
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16.Nov.2019
English Amiga Board (Webseite) ComicOn 1.0 (all Amiga systems)
ComicOn written with Hollywood downloads comic strips from websites and shows them. Several English strips like Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts are supported. ComicOn is available for AmigaOS 3/4, MorphOS and AROS and requires some additional Hollywood plugins which have to be installed before. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 16. Nov. 2019, 00:39] [Comments: 0]
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16.Nov.2019 Free USB adapter for input device: HID2AMI
Using HID2AMI different USB input devices ("HID", "Human Interface Devices") can be connected to the Amiga. The documentation for the board and the firmware of the adapter which is based on an ARM-micro-controller are available on Github. Occasionally the developer offers a small number of the product for sale. Documenations for printing a case with a 3D printer as well as a hardware compatibility list are also available. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 16. Nov. 2019, 00:39] [Comments: 0]
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16.Nov.2019 USB interface for reading and writing floppy disks on PC: Greaseweazle
After his Gotek firmware FlashFloppy, Keir Fraser has started another project for reading and writing floppy disks on PC: Similar to Kryoflux, 'Greaseweazle' reads the magnetic layers of the disks independently of the used disk format and saves as much information as possible in a so called "Flux Level Image" in the Supercard-Format (SCP) which enables reading and writing copy-protected disks.

Among others SCP disk images are supported by WinUAE and FS-UAE. Using external tools it is possible to convert them to IPF which is a more known format of the Software Preservation Society. You can also create ADF images - if the disk is not copy-protected.

Greaseweazle consists of a mikro controller board that costs only a few euros which is connected to a disks drive and then via USB to the PC. All required software is available on Github under a free license. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 16. Nov. 2019, 00:38] [Comments: 0]
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15.Nov.2019

Hardware extension: "A314" adds internal Raspberry Pi to A500
Niklas Ekström has developed a FPGA-based adapter board which allows you to connect a Raspberry Pi to the internal extension port of the Amiga 500. The Verilog source code, the source codes of the Amiga and Linux software as well as the design for the "A314" board are available at Github under a free license.

The Raspberry Pi makes 0,5 or 1 MB of its main memory available to the A500 depending on the used Agnus revision as chip or slow RAM. Both computers access this memory for exchanging data. Additionally there is a communication channel which both systems can use for poiting out to incoming data. A battery backed real time clock the A314 emulates as well. What tasks the software is to handle :

a314fs: is a file system that is mounted in AmigaDOS as a device, PI0:.
pi: is a command that lets you invoke executables on the RPi from the AmigaDOS CLI. For example, if your current working directory is on PiDisk: and you run "pi vc hello.c -o hello", then the vc program (the VBCC cross-compiler) is executed on the RPi with the given arguments. It will cross-compile "hello.c" into the Amiga executable file "hello". The resulting binary is immediately accessible through the a314fs.
PiAudio: lets the RPi stream audio samples directly to the shared chip memory, from where Paula plays those samples. PiAudio is integrated with ALSA on the RPi so that any program that plays audio through ALSA can be used, i.e. "pi mpg123 -a amiga song.mp3" plays song.mp3 using the program mpg123 to the Amiga.
VideoPlayer: is a simple program that displays a sequence of images on the A500 by letting the RPi write bitplanes directly to the shared memory (this again requires that the A314 memory is chip memory, and not "ranger" memory).
RemoteWB: works by moving the Workbench bitplanes over to the chip memory on the A314. This requires that the A500 has at least a 8372 Agnus. During drawing of each frame on the Amiga, the RPi reads those bitplanes, encodes them into a GIF image, and transmits that image to a web browser through a web socket. The web browser in turn, returns key presses and mouse movements back to the Amiga through the same web socket. In effect, this becomes a web browser based remote control application, comparable to VNC but with near zero performance impact on the Amiga CPU!

In future Networking is planned either through a bsdsocket.library implementation that forwards socket operations to the RPi and executes those operations there (high degree of offloading), or a Sana II driver used with a full network stack (lesser, but still offloading). (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 15. Nov. 2019, 00:19] [Comments: 0]
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15.Nov.2019
Amiga Future (Webseite)

AmigaOS 4: Arcade game KOG updated
Simone Bevilacqua has released an update for his arcade game KOG (video) which was released 11 years ago. Since the initial release the game has been completely reworked at least twice. Now the following changes have been implemented:

Simplified and optimized CRT filters
Added 6x zoom
Added hardware-accelerated zooming for solid pixel modes to AmigaOS version
Fixed rate of tune of shoot mode WILD
Removed click from menu tune
Fixed other sounds
Touched up manual

The game requires AmigaOS 4.1, a processor with at least 500 Mhz and 20 MB RAM. A version for Windows is available as well. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 15. Nov. 2019, 00:19] [Comments: 0]
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14.Nov.2019 CDXL player: AGABlaster 0.9.65 alpha
AGABlaster is a player for an adapted version of Commodore's video file format CDXL: Among others now a colour depth of up to 24 Bit is supported, frameskipping or frames with variable colour depth. Additionally the video file includes all necessary (timing) informationen for playing a stream.

AGABlaster was written in assembler and on (fast) AGA computers it can play video streams with a solution of 320x256 with 24 frames per second and 8-Bit stereo sound. Currently graphic or sound cards are not supported but the player also can be used on OCS machines although it was primarily written for the AGA chipset. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 14. Nov. 2019, 01:29] [Comments: 0]
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14.Nov.2019 C64 remake: RiverRaid Reloaded
RiverRaid Reloaded (video) is a remake of the 8-Bit classic River Raid. The executable of the full game only is 128 KB and should run on all Amigas.

Download: RiverRaidReloaded_1.1.adf (880 KB) (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 14. Nov. 2019, 01:12] [Comments: 0]
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14.Nov.2019 Shoot'em Up in 8-Bit style: Sardonic
'Sardonic' (video) is a shooter in 8-Bit style which is supposed to be a hommage to classics like 'Space Invaders' or 'Galaga'. Versions for AGA and OCS (requiring 1 MB Chip-RAM) Amigas are available. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 14. Nov. 2019, 01:02] [Comments: 0]
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14.Nov.2019 Open source implementation of "Amiga Explorer" protocol
"FTS4" ("File Transfer Serial 4") is an implementation of the Amiga Explorer protocol which currently only supports serial connections. FTS requires at least AmigaOS 1.3, AmigaOS 2.0 is recommended. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 14. Nov. 2019, 00:51] [Comments: 0]
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14.Nov.2019 Linux connection for Amiga Explorer: fuse-aexplorer and lxamiga.pl
fuse-aexplorer is a file system driver for Linux which can mount drives shared by Cloanto's Amiga network software Amiga Explorer under Linux. The author warns that his "software is highly experimental" and you use it "fully AT YOUR OWN RISK". He also explained that "the Amiga Explorer protocol really isn't meant to be used as a network file system". Therefore diverse hacks had to be used.

A something more simple approach lxamiga.pl uses: From a console window simple commands can be sent to an Amiga on which Amiga Explorer runs: Making a directory, transfering a file or writing an ADF image to a disk. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 14. Nov. 2019, 00:45] [Comments: 0]
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