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The loss of my friend Mark

September 29, 2015, 5:35 pm
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Last night (September 29) a close friend of mine, Mark Thompson passed away. He is known in the Amiga scene by his demo scene handle Axon of The Experience, a Classic Amiga demo group I formed in the late 1990's in Adelaide during our university days. We wrote 2 AGA demos and Mark wrote another separate intro in Assembler for Amiga 1200/030 systems.



Every week we would have coding sessions in his dorm room on our Amiga 1200's, with some of our Amiga owning friends at Uni also involved in the demo group at that time. We would always have too much drinks and fish & chips from the Blue & White cafe in North Adelaide after a heavy night coding...we attended the Coven demo parties at Adelaide Uni for a few years in 1995/1996/1997.

Together we wrote a hurried demo for Coven 1997 (Adelaide demo party) called "TLA" (which couldn't be included in the compo because it was PC only!) and also another demo called "Terminal" for Remedy 1998 where it finished 4th. It was a lot of fun.  Mark not only did the coding but also some graphics work on the Amiga too, like making 3D objects and even the TLA logo below.

 
We all had (and still have) huge respect for the Amiga demo groups who produced and continue to produce amazing demos for Amiga even today.

We knew we had no hope of emulating that but we tried anyway, and thanks to Mark's amazing coding skills in Assembler we produced the demo called "Terminal" in 1998 which I am still very proud of working on. I still have all the source code to the two demos, not that I can do anything with them nowadays.

The demos, some music and source code for TLA are still available on Aminet today from when we uploaded them all those years ago if you are interested to try them out.


Demos:

http://aminet.net/package/demo/aga/exp_term
http://aminet.net/package/demo/aga/exp_tla


Music:

http://aminet.net/package/mods/demo/term_int
http://aminet.net/package/mods/demo/tla_main

TLA Source:

http://aminet.net/package/dev/src/tla_source

Mark originally had the handle Raven, but then found out someone else had it already, so he changed it to Axiom (until he found out that was taken too!) and then finally settled on Axon.

A YouTube link I put up with the Terminal demo is here:



Traksion produced the main title song for Terminal and some pixel art. I did the design, some incidental graphics and the intro music. Mesh did most of the other great graphics in the demo and produced the 3D spacecraft flight animation.

Traksion came with me and ran the demo at the latest Adelaide Amiga user group meeting on the Amiga 4000T in early September 2015.

I was very proud we could show Mark's coding skills to an Amiga audience once again!


He was a very talented programmer, first on Amiga and then in the PC world. He was a great guy and a great friend to me over the years. Last night he passed away from terminal brain cancer, leaving behind his wife and his young son. I offer my sincere condolences to them and their families at this time. I will miss him.

Rest in Peace mate.

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Amiga30 stuff and Cannonball on X1000!

October 6, 2015, 3:10 am
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Short blog post today, but I am glad to say that my Amiga30 Kickstarter supporter stuff arrived in the post today from the USA. :-)


I realise that the Amiga30 show was some time ago - July in fact!

But the organisers have been really very busy since the show, and so have recently started posting out the Kickstarter supporter gifts, which were a gift for my financial contribution to support the Amiga30 show.

I was unable to attend as I was in Japan at the same time, but I was very happy to support the show and it was clearly an amazing event from the many show reports and photos!

Tonight I quickly changed the poster on my wall from the CANDI poster I got from AmiWest 2014 last year to the new Amiga30 poster I got today - it looks great! :-)


Very pleased to say the t-shirt fits perfectly!

Still deciding what to do with the Amiga30 stickers. The Amiga30 booklet was quite interesting to read - my name was listed in the supporters list too! :-)


My thanks to tekmage (Bill Bosari) for sending this stuff out to me - very much appreciated!

On the past weekend I also had a go at playing the recently released Cannonball game (available on os4depot.net here) on my X1000, which is a reimplementation of Outrun without the need for an emulator like MAME. It runs native on AmigaOS 4.1 :-)


Speed is perfect and lots of fun. It needs the Outrun Revision B rom files (Google is your friend) and place the files into the rom folder of the extracted Cannonball archive.

The roms.txt file in the roms folder explains what you need to have in there for the game to work.


You can control the game with keyboard controls - this information is from a guide I found on the web that really should be explained in the archive!

  • Cursors: Steering
  • Z: Accelerate
  • X: Brake
  • Space: Gear Change
  • 5: Insert Coin
  • 1: Start
  • Shift: Change Camera View
  • F1: Pause
  • F2: Advance a frame when paused (useful for observing visual problems)
  • F3: Toggle/Freeze timers. (i.e. infinite time)
  • F5: Menu

It is great to be able to run Outrun natively on the AmigaOne X1000 under AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition!

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AmigaOne X1000 sold out!

October 31, 2015, 7:55 pm
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Introduced for sale in 2012, three years on the AmigaOne X1000 has now officially run out of stock and it seems that no more will be made.


This means you can no longer purchase a new X1000 system. Fortunately the X1000 replacement, called the AmigaOne X5000 should be on sale in the not too distant future, which is a even faster system! It supports running AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition, MorphOS (3.10 once released) and many variants of Linux too.


In addition we now also know publicly about the new Tabor system, a new entry level system for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition planned for release in the future to complement the X5000.

There was even mention and demonstration at AmiWest 2015 of A.L.I.C.E, an off the shelf laptop running Amikit X, Amiga Forever and AmigaOS3.x.

So there is plenty of new hardware on the way to keep both Classic and Next Generation Amiga community busy for a few more years to come yet, which is great news!

I have really enjoyed using the X1000 for the past 3 years, it was a worthy replacement of the Sam 440ep I had before that. I was glad to order the X1000 as part of the First Contact initial batch and it was worth every cent.


In case you are wondering, with these screenshots on the X1000 I took this week I am using the latest updated CANDI software (available on AMIStore) to rotate the background images every 60 seconds and still use some CANDI effects over the top of them. I think it looks great.


The X1000 was the result of Trevor Dickinson's vision to have a stable higher performance NG Amiga that could run AmigaOS 4.1 as it deserved to be run, rather than on entry-level hardware platforms. I believe the X1000 achieved that goal and I will always be grateful that he took the financial risk to make the machine a reality.


I have huge respect for what Trevor has done to help the NG Amiga community, jetting around the world sponsoring and supporting Amiga shows, and getting down to work with moving the Amiga forward as a ongoing hardware platform, working with all the major players.

I was very glad to finally meet Trevor at AmiWest 2014 to chat and thank him in person. Cheers to you mate.


This is of course in no way diminishing the considerable efforts by others in the NG Amiga community as well, but I wanted to make a special mention of Trevor's efforts in relation to the X1000.


I have tried my best via this blog to show the AmigaOne X1000 to the community - the good things, the great things, and the not so good things since no system is perfect after all. Plenty of hints and tips, configuration step-by-step guides, new software, and multiple hardware projects I undertook with the X1000 during the last 3 years.


The X1000 inspired me to try new things, to see what AmigaOS 4.1.5, 4.1.6 and AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition could really do on a fast system!


The NG Amiga community extends to many other systems too of course. I also looked at the Sam460CR system, MorphOS PowerBook G4 systems, AROS PC Laptop/Desktop systems and Classic Amiga systems too - including FPGA reimplementations and AmigaOS 4.1 Classic emulation on Mac and PC systems.





The X5000 and other NG Amiga systems to follow in the future continue Trevor's vision with the X1000, and hopefully the availability of ongoing new hardware to run NG Amiga systems on will encourage more people to be part of the NG Amiga community - running AmigaOS 4, MorphOS or AROS!

I will of course continue to use my X1000, and will no doubt be tempted to upgrade it with the X5000 once it goes on sale!

The world of computers is always evolving, changing and improving - the X1000 is a significant milestone in NG Amiga system history and I believe it helped to push the AmigaOS 4.1 platform forward. I wanted to make a post dedicated to it now that it is sold out!


Embrace and enjoy the NG Amiga systems for what they are, today. Many people like me are doing so already!

With the NG Amiga systems like the AmigaOne X1000 I don't need to "remember when computing was fun?", it is fun right now in 2015 :-)


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SimpleMail 0.41 Gmail IMAP on X1000

November 1, 2015, 6:50 pm
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Recently I took a look at SimpleMail 0.41, released in December 2014 for AmigaOS 4.1, on my AmigaOne X1000.


AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition includes SimpleMail 0.35 with it, but since then SimpleMail has been updated to support the latest SSL protocols to fix the issues with Gmail not working since their security upgrades removed support for the older AmiSSL connections.

You can download the latest SimpleMail 0.41 with the fixed openssl library from here. Once downloaded and extracted you get the following drawer.

As your email can use a lot of space over time, I recommend putting this drawer on a separate large WORK partition rather than the System: partition. In my case I created an Applications drawer on WORK: and then extracted the SimpleMail 0.41 archive to there.

There is a good Amigaguide document included with the SimpleMail program to explain it's requirements and how to use it.


As they mention, it is BETA software and not completely finished, but the IMAP functionality to use Gmail is what I want to use it for, which works fine.

Note that SimpleMail requires a MUI class called PopPlaceHolder which is not included with AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition or with the included 0.35 program or the 0.41 update! The other requirements (MUI classes) have links shown in the Requirements guide below.


I already had all the MUI classes listed as requirements except PopPlaceHolder.

Update 4/11/2015: If you have the latest MUI 4 (30/9/2015) installed, you will have PopPlaceHolder.mcc installed (newer version), but it causes problems with SimpleMail 0.41 as it needs the older version below - otherwise it will crash when you click on the Configuration option in SimpleMail.

To fix this problem for newer MUI 4 versions, use the Shell to copy the popplaceholder.mcc file located in MUI:Libs/MUI/popplaceholder.mcc to another name like popplaceholder.mcc.newer, and then delete popplaceholder.mcc and install the older version shown below. Then it will work.

You can download PopPlaceHolder from AmiNet here. This is the PopPlaceHolder drawer once extracted, ready for installation. Just double click on MCC-Install to walk through the standard Workbench installer.


Even though the program is for 68k Amigas, it will work fine under AmigaOS 4.1. This requirement is needed to be able to use the Configuration window within the SimpleMail program.

Speaking of which, here is the SimpleMail 0.41 program window on initial open:


The structure and layout of the email program is very familiar to people who have used YAM (Yet Another Mailer) before on Classic Amigas or AmigaOS 4.1.

Under the Right click Menu, select Settings > Configuration.. to get the window below. You will need to configure your email accounts in here to be able to download/send out your emails.


As you can see there are plenty of settings covering most email settings you would expect. But lets look at adding a Gmail account into SimpleMail, by selecting the Accounts area of the Configuration window (in the left pane):


Click on Add Account to start putting in the configuration. I have included the settings I used to get IMAP Gmail account working in SimpleMail - minus the pixelated email address - please substitute your own Gmail email address.



In the Receive mail section you can specify how often mail is checked - I changed this to every 3 minutes.


In the Signatures section I could create my signature for my emails sent from Simple Mail:


There is a comprehensive Spam section to check incoming emails for Spam, and to add senders to black list (block) or white list (allow).


Mail sync then gets underway:



Mail synced and I now have Gmail IMAP working using Simple Mail - names and emails blurred to protect the innocent!



It is great to be able to use Gmail IMAP support on my AmigaOne X1000 using Simple Mail. It works with POP3 also of course (config not included here sorry!), so you can choose from either method.

I hope this guide is useful!


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Freedroid RPG for AmigaOS4.1 on X1000

November 3, 2015, 4:00 pm
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Today I am taking a look at the recently released game FreeDroid RPG for AmigaOS 4.1 on the AmigaOne X1000.


You can download the game from os4depot.net here. It is a port by Michael Trebilcock (local Adelaide AmigaOS 4 system owner) of the in progress open source game from Windows, MacOS X and Linux versions. The website for the Freedroid RPG game is here.

Once downloaded and extracted you get the following drawer:


There is a good Readme that explains the controls of the game - I am using MultiviewerNG available from AMIStore to replace the usual Multiview program to show the README:


Once the game is launched you quickly reach the main title screen - note Open GL is not active as it doesn't work properly yet:


There is a tutorial option to get to grips with the game:


Chatting with characters in the game reveals important information to allow you to progress:



Moving on from the tutorial to the main game now, I was taken aback how great the game looks. The Isometric 3D and the gameplay style like classic RPG games like Diablo / Starcraft:


Not all characters are friendly, and destroying them is important before they do the same to you!


Running the game full screen in 1920x1080 on the X1000 is slow, around 8fps. Better to run in a smaller screen resolution at the moment, until OpenGL is supported properly in the game port to speed things up:


I ran the game at this resolution purely for the nicer screen shots. It looks wonderful!

In this view below I show the inventory view showing what items I have collected and what armor I am wearing, and the weapons I am using.


As I moved around I am attacked my more and more robots - which is the link to the Paradroid Classic game that the characters are loosely based on:


The background music is great and complements the game very well as you move around exploring the game maps.


I then walked straight into a fight with too many robots and it was game over!


Like Diablo, there is a lot to this game, and way more than I can cover in this short blog entry - but I wanted to show what the game is like, and it is great to see this new game on AmigaOS 4.1 in 2015.

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AmigaAmp 3 on X1000

November 7, 2015, 5:52 am
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Today I wanted to take a look at AmigaAmp 3 under AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my X1000, and also look at some recent Front end add-on software under active development in 2015 that utilises it and adds extra functionality - Song Wrangler and aTunes.


AmigaAmp 3 is a music player that supports multiple formats, MP3, modules, and more! It is freeware, the latest version was released in 2015 (3.16) and available to download from here. There is also an older Classic Amiga version that runs on AmigaOS 3.x.

There are also many AmigaAmp format support files such as skins and plugins to download from the same site to put into the AmigaAmp drawer to enable support for other file formats, skins and visualisations.

In it's standard GUI below AmigaAmp looks good, but when you customise it and use Visualisations and add ons you can make it look great!


You can customise things in the AmigaAmp 3 preferences - in the Program tab you can change how files are handled, autoplay of files and playlists, repeating playlists or songs too, amongst other things:


Under GUI tab is where we can change the default skin, and Visualisations (FX) to run - this can also be changed from the right click menu at any time without coming into this screen:


Under the Audio tab we can modify volume, the use of the equaliser and specify the AHI unit to use.


Setting the path of your music files under System tab makes things quicker too of course - the buffers section is mainly relevant if you have a slower AmigaOne machine - no issues on the X1000 of course:


You can certainly choose from a very large selection of AmigaAmp skins, available on their website here, and also on os4depot.net and aminet.net. A sample selection appears below that I have installed on my X1000:














Simply copy the skin downloaded into the AmigaAmp Skins drawer to have it available to select from, once the program is restarted next.

Everyone's taste varies of course, so what I may like for a skin doesn't do it for everyone. But certainly there is enough variety of skins (this is only a small sample) to be able to find one that appeals to everyone I think!

When you combine the FX with the skins and add-ons, your Workbench screen can look really great!


There is also full screen real time Visualisation FX for AmigaAmp 3 like the one below:


You can get more visualisation plugins from the AmigaAmp website here.

Let's take a look now at some of the recent add-ons, namely Song Wrangler and aTunes.


Song Wrangler 0.92 by Caras Ghant is the most recent entrant into the front end add-ons for AmigaAmp 3. You can download it from os4depot.net here.

Once extracted to a drawer and run, it finds the AmigaAmp 3 folder and program itself, and you then can add in your music drawers - it aims to be an iTunes style interface. Note that at the moment it is limited to MP3 files only:


Here is the initial view once the music drawer contents has been loaded in, and playing a song using AmigaAmp 3 iconified in the background:


You can use the Search/filter section to find songs and albums easier:



There are some settings available in Song Wrangler from the right click menu as below:


Important one to turn on is Use AISS toolbar images to enable the nicer toolbar icons from AISS, which I already have installed - you can get it from os4depot.net here.


After restarting Song Wrangler with AISS toolbar images it looks much nicer:


Listening to some music made by yours truly - if interested in my music you can listen to some of it on soundcloud here:


You can still de-iconify AmigaAmp with SongWrangler and use it's functionality too - including turning on some of the FX:



In case you are wondering, in these screenshots I am running CANDI (available on AMIStore), using rotating background images I got off the internet, which compliment using AmigaAmp 3 and Song Wrangler well in my opinion:


Ok, time now to take a look at aTunes by zzd10h, available as part of zTools package on AMIStore.

The aTunes add-on can work with AmigaAmp 3 and TuneNet players, supports all the music formats AmigaAmp 3 and TuneNet do (mods, m4a, etc) and has a lot of other functionality too!


After building up the database from my music folders on the X1000, I could then click on Play to play the selected song. You can see the options at the bottom of the aTunes screen to select the Player, and the Mp3 information.

Unlike Song Wrangler, aTunes does not minimise AmigaAmp 3 when run, but this just encouraged me to run all the FX to show it running nicely on my X1000:


aTunes includes an advanced filter (available by clicking on the Filter option in the aTunes window), which allows you to filter the list of songs in your library by a number of different criteria. Below I filtered by Artist:


Another nifty feature in aTunes is the ability to create and save/load playlists compatible with AmigaAmp 3 and TuneNet. Simply right click on the song you want in the playlist and select Playlist > Add to Playlist:


The song is now added to the playlist.


I can modify the list, or close this and go back to the aTunes window to select more songs..


Here is my playlist, ready to go:


I can also play the playlist directly from this window without saving it! I can also erase all, remove specific songs, etc. Very handy.

I can then save the playlist in M3U (AmigaAmp 3) or PLS (TuneNet) formats by clicking Save.


Having saved it I then play my new playlist in AmigaAmp 3 from aTunes.


As a final note you can also edit the MP3 tags of one or more songs in your collection from aTunes as well:


aTunes is more advanced in features at the moment than Song Wrangler, so it is still currently my preferred choice of front end for AmigaAmp 3. I have been using it for a number of years now on my X1000.

I do continue to follow the updates to Song Wrangler with interest too though - it is good to have options!

Of course AmigaAmp's competitor TuneNet (not developed for a number of years) has been picked up by A-EON recently, so no doubt we will see updated version of it on AMIStore in the future too!

It is great to have these program developments on AmigaOS 4.1 in 2015.

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Amiga Racer WIP v1.6B on X1000

November 10, 2015, 4:55 pm
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Today I am taking a look at the Work in Progress game called Amiga Racer by AmigaTec, running on AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my X1000.


This game is a remake in the style of Lotus Turbo Challenge by Gremlin in the early 1990's on the Classic Amiga.

This game is very much a work in progress, and as I write this game is running as v1.6B. 

It is free to download for AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS (I think there is a linux version too), but if you donate some money for the games' ongoing development, you get a keyfile that activates extras not included in the normal versions, no donate screen, and even a mention in the game itself on the title screen and program window too:


You can download the AmigaOS 4.1 version of the game from os4depot.net and also the latest version from the AmigaTec website.

The main menu of the game is also in development - some parts are functional and some are in progress. At the time of writing this entry, you can Start Game, choose from 3 tracks and choose a number of cars. 


There is also a live update feature which works and will update the game from the internet to reflect the latest changes.

Here is the Live Update process after it has just completed.


Like Lotus, when you start the game you choose the music you want to play on that track. Each track has it's default music track, but it can be changed here before the game starts:


As the game starts it is a curious blend of Outrun and Lotus! The music is great.


A lot of work has gone into the graphics used on the tracks to take advantage of the greater capabilities of the X1000. At the same time it retains the look and feel of the original Lotus game - still feels a bit like Outrun to me!


 You can also press "F" to make the game run in full screen, or press it again to return it to run in a window.


 On the car front you can choose from a Mercedes CLS, Delorean, Porsche 911 or Koenigsegg.


Florida USA is the default track, but you can also choose Bavaria, which has a snow landscape and Xmas theme tune even!



It is certainly nice to be able to select from some interesting music - no doubt more to come!


Here is some screenshots from the Bavaria track with the snow falling:



I think this looks great!



Amiga Racer as a game is incomplete at this stage, with plenty of work still to go. Please be aware of this when trying it out.

But if you are interested to download and follow along as the game is developing, then Amiga Racer is interesting to muck around with! I have donated and have been enjoying the ride so far!

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Lariad on X1000

November 10, 2015, 9:23 pm
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Today I wanted to take a look at the recently released game called Lariade (Lariad), ported by HunoPPC to run under AmigaOS 4.1 Final edition, demonstrated on my AmigaOne X1000.


Lariad is a platform/adventure game with multiple environments to explore using a spaceship to go between them, with tasks and clues dotted throughout the game to move forward and unlock more environments and challenges.

I should mentioned that I am not sure if this game works on non-Warp3D hardware, as I have Warp3D Southern Islands drivers and compatible card on my X1000. A lot of HunoPPC games need it. You can also try Wazp3D from os4depot.net if you don't have Warp3D on your X1000.

If you don't have Warp3D Southern Islands and suitable graphics card yet, I strongly recommend it! You can get Warp3D Southern Islands from AMIStore, and the compatible Radeon HD graphics cards are listed on the product page. The card that came with your X1000 is not compatible with Warp3D Southern Islands. You can also buy a compatible card direct from AmigaKit here (once they are back in stock again) or source one locally from Ebay...

It is free to download Lariad and it is available on os4depot.net here. Once extracted to a drawer you get the following:


The OS4 ready doesn't contain much information other than version changes, but it included here anyway:


Below is the Lariad title screen - still not sure if this game is called Lariade or Lariad. I'll go with Lariad as that is what the game icon says!


Controls are listed under the Config option:


When you select Start, you are prompted to select the difficulty level:


As the game opens you are in a hut in a swamp area:


As you move around the hut you can interact with some objects and go through doors of course.


Control is via joystick or keyboard. I am using the keyboard:


Heading outside the hut we see the rather pretty swamp environment, ready to explore:


Instructions are given out to explain what things do, what can kill you and so on:


You start with 3 health bars on the top left, and once they are exhausted it is game over.


Exploring the level I quickly found the ladder leading to the medial power up that gives your player once more additional health bar. There is one of these on each level:




Heading back down again...


I have to say, this game is very pretty and very engaging. The story and music are good and sucked me into the game:


Look out for the spiders you can jump up and down platforms to avoid walking in front of them.


I then find the witches hut that allows me to save my progress - I can continue from this point if I am killed - without saving I have to start from the beginning, so make sure you do save when you reach one of these points!



Soon after I reached my spaceship, which means I have reached the end of the swamp environment.


Once inside the spaceship I can save the game and also recharge my health fully:


Moving into the heart of the ship I can see the following screen, which allows me to launch the spaceship to the next environment. I can only go to environments that are unlocked. You can use the computer keyboard to switch which environment you want to travel to next.


The screen on the left confirms the current environment the ship is at right now.  Pushing the red launch button takes us to the next environment select with the keyboard on the right side of the screen.

On arrival we wake up from bed on the spaceship, ready to explore:


We can see the view of the Waterfall environment outside:


Once exiting the Spaceship we are into the Waterfall environment:


There are plenty of warnings about falling objects and bamboo to avoid walking on:



There is a side cave after the bridge which I explore:



In the side cave is a guy called Gisaku who explains the birds are all gone, and another guy went looking for them and lost his gun in here somewhere...



So somewhere in the environment is a gun we need to find! Working through the level I avoid the various traps and falling objects:


I reached the next save point:


I then found the gun in an adjacent room, and the next environment is also unlocked:


Definitely we need the gun to fight our way through many enemies to get back to the spaceship!


Eventually I made it back to the spaceship, to then launch for the next environment - cliffs:


The Cliff environment is harder than the previous one, and I guess it only gets harder still as you progress through the game!



Ready to catch a lift to the higher platforms:


We apparently need to find some tools:


Unfortunately shortly after this I was killed by some aggressive enemies!


Lariad is a great game and a lot of fun to play on the X1000. The sound, music and graphics are great and the adventure is quite interesting! Recommended.


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Another X1000 and 1541 Ultimate II

November 29, 2015, 12:13 am
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Recently I was given the opportunity to purchase another X1000 in Australia second hand for a good price. With what happened to me earlier this year, I decided it was a good idea to have a backup X1000 system, especially now they are sold out. I bought it and it arrived here last week!


What surprised me when it arrived is the much larger (wider) size of the R4 case, compared to the R3 case of my original X1000.


Closeup view of the back of the "new" X1000:


The next shot shows inside my "new" X1000 - unlike my original X1000, this system has 2GB of memory instead of 4GB, and the standard Radeon HD card (non-Warp3D capable).


I needed to check all the cables and cards where pushed in correctly - some had moved a bit in transport like the network card, and needed a push in to be firmly seated before powering on for the first time.

This system has a 1TB SATA hard disk in it, installed with AmigaOS 4.1.6 and almost stock condition - very clean inside and out. Here it is below, once powered on to check it is working ok after transport - All good!


I quickly set to work to upgrade this system to AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition. The previous owner had purchased Final Edition for the X1000, but never installed it. I quickly set about that task:


I have covered in a lot of detail previously how to prepare and install AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on the X1000 - to save covering old ground again, if you are interested in how I did this then please check the two part blog posts where I cover it step by step - Part 1 and Part 2.

Once the installation of Final Edition was completed, I then set about getting it configured to my liking and transferring my X1000 data across so I have a full backup X1000 system:


Have to admit that fitting the X1000 into the location where the Sam460 was before is quite a squeeze and doesn't really work well with the C64 blocking the front door. Not sure if it will stay here permanently, but for now this is where it lives! I put the Sam 460 away in storage for now.


I might have a go at putting Linux onto this X1000 in the future, but for now I am glad to have the backup X1000 system running AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition!

On the subject of the C64 in the photo above (a bit off topic but still Commodore related!), this week I received my 1541 Ultimate II, which is a C64 cartridge that allows me to run tape and disk games as image files from MicroSD card, in a similar way that the sd2iec and Chameleon64 add-on's I covered in my earlier blog post here do. You can order it from this website, but I believe the next batch of units might be a while.

The 1541 Ultimate II seems to provide better compatibility to C64 software in the testing I have done so far than the Chameleon64. I include some photos here of the 1541 Ultimate II for those curious...


The guide was very useful to get up and running with the 1541 Ultimate II and is a definite read first!

For the unit I bought, I opted to have the optional tape connector fitted, which allows the 1541 Ultimate II to feed tape image files through the tape interface, just like a real tape drive would do:


The tape connector had a pass through connector as well, in case you still want to connect a real tape drive unit to it:


The USB to network connection option I also purchased, although at the time of writing this functionality is not enabled yet.

Once the 1541 Ultimate II is plugged into to the C64 cartridge port, the 1541 disk cable (included) connected to the disk drive port, and tape adapter into the tape port we are ready to power on.

On power on I got the Retro Replay boot screen, which allows you to preload a cartridge image containing the Fastload cartridge functionality before loading any disk or tape images:


By pressing the middle button on the 1541 Ultimate II, I get to see the SD Card, which I have already put all my disk images on, ready to try out:


Apparently you can connect usb sticks to the usb port on the 1541 Ultimate II to load image files from too, although I didn't try this yet.

It is simple to select the disk image (or tape image) on the SD card using the menus via keyboard on the C64, and then mount the disk image, ready to load a program from it:


A slight complication for my C64 setup though is the need to set up the 1541 Ultimate II to use device #9 rather than the usual #8. This is because the sd2iec is installed internally and already has that drive designation. Fortunately changing this configuration is easy enough in the settings:


Once mounted, from the standard C64 prompt I type in LOAD "*",9,1 and then RUN to run the disk I have mounted.


Here is Wizball, running as a d64 image file on the 1541 Ultimate II:


Impossible Mission II as well:


I know this is a bit off topic (sorry!), but I wanted to show the 1541 Ultimate II device on the Commodore 64 as it is a neat device! I purposely do not have a disk drive or tape drive with my C64, and I rely on the image loading functionality of these modern add-ons to provide the ability to load games and demos on the real C64! The retro fun without the large disk & tape collection and associated long disk/tape loading times from real drive hardware! :-)


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Amiga Forever 2016

December 2, 2015, 3:44 am
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Today I wanted to take a look at the recently released Amiga Forever 2016 for Windows, using Windows 10 Pro x64 on my Core i7 PC (3.2GHz).


Amiga Forever 2016 is a long running Amiga emulation software package by Cloanto. It is available for purchase from their website in a couple of different versions here. It starts from USD$29.95, with an even cheaper price for users upgrading from an older version of Amiga Forever.

I have been purchasing most versions of Amiga Forever released since 2006!

Today I am looking at the Amiga Forever 2016 Plus Edition, which is the downloadable version. You can also buy the sister C64 Forever to run Commodore 64 games and demos, but I am not looking at that in this post. Strictly Amiga related today :-)

Amiga Forever 2016 uses WinUAE for the core Classic Amiga emulation, wrapped up in a simplified GUI for configuring and running any of Classic Amiga system quickly. It includes the ROMS needed for the Kickstarts (as Cloanto own them), so nothing else is needed to get up and running.

It also includes preconfigured setups for Amiga 1000, 500, 600, 1200, 2000, 3000, 4000, CDTV, CD32, 4000PPC, AmiKit, AROS, and AmigaSys. The Classic Amiga systems are ready to run in Amiga Forever 2016 with no configuration needed.


AmiKit and AmigaSYS 4 are special customised versions of AmigaOS 3.x with all the latest and greatest utilities, patches and tools installed for you and configured for best use with Amiga Forever. These builds save a lot of setup work on a base AmigaOS3.x installation.

These are not ready to run initially - they need to be downloaded and installed/configured before you can use them, and I will cover that process in this post.

AROS is also not ready to run initially. AROS is a standalone AmigaOS 3.x derived NG AmigaOS that can run on Classic Amiga hardware, as well as a version that runs directly on modern PC hardware.

New for this version of Amiga Forever 2016 is a new GUI and the support for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic utilising the Cyberstorm PPC emulation (with legal ROM included), bridge board support, PCI support, and Picasso IV support (with legal ROM included).


Note that you do still need a legal copy of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic, which is available from a number of stores like AmigaKit, Vesalia, AmigaStore.eu, and more. I will cover AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic installation a little later in this blog post.

The exciting thing with these emulations of Classic Amiga systems of late is the support within the emulation of bridgeboards and expansions cards like Picasso IV, A2065 (ethernet card), Cyberstorm PPC cards, and more. It opens up much better quality Classic Amiga emulation that allows us to run pretty much the same setup as a fully expanded Classic Amiga system for a fraction of the cost, and without the worry of old and failing hardware!

It is a relief to know I can continue to use my expanded Classic Amiga systems even after the hardware inevitably stops working. Hopefully that day is a long way off!

Once downloaded, Amiga Forever is a single .MSI executable file to run to start the installation of Amiga Forever 2016.


The usual license agreement that I am sure everyone reads in full every time before agreeing, right? ;-)


Fill in your registered license key and User name you would have received via email when you purchased it:


I just run the Complete option for setup, which is the default:


Associations for common Amiga emulation file formats like adf, adz, dms, hdf and hdz are setup next so they launch in Amiga Forever:


Install then proceeds and completes quickly:



Once finished the Amiga Forever player is run automatically and the GUI is indeed very different:


Initially I am looking at the Amiga Systems view available through Amiga Forever. There is also a Games section, Demoscene, Gallery and Videos (which requires the physical Premium DVD version of Amiga Forever)


If you want to, it is easy to customise these systems to your taste - below shows all the various tabs, which makes it clear it is very customisable indeed - I don't plan to cover these in much detail here as people buy Amiga Forever to get into Amiga emulation easily, but may look closer at it in a future blog entry:








Moving on now, I looked at the Games section next in Amiga Forever. In there I can select a number of pre-installed games included with Amiga Forever 2016. Just click on Play icon (or Right click > Play) to run them:


Blasteroids - an old Amiga classic game converted from the Arcade original in the late 1980's - I love the soundtrack:





The emulation window allows a number of changes to be made to the running game, as well as some helpful tips too, like the mappings of the Amiga keys to the Windows keyboard when clicking on the Keyboard icon at the bottom of the window:


I can easily change joystick and mouse mappings on the fly too:


Clicking on the Disk icon at the bottom of the screen enables me to insert a blank disk or a ADF Amiga disk to be mounted in the emulation. From here I can also eject the disk, or mark it read only, or increase the speed of reading/writing using the Turbo mode.


Keyboard mapping changes for joystick (if you don't have a USB joystick connected) are also available while the game is running:


In the top row of icons I can pause the emulation, reboot, stop it, increase the screen size (zoom 2x or 3x), go full screen, change the output volume of the emulation, take screenshots and share them on Facebook and Twitter directly!


Having finished playing games for a bit, I switched to my personal favourite area of Amiga - demos. A lot of classic Amiga demos are included, preconfigured for optimal and correct running:


So I picked Fake Elektronik Lightshow by Ephidrena, a fantastic AGA/060 demo from 2003. Brilliant effects and music.


As you would expect, it runs perfectly:




Going back in time, I then viewed one of my early favourite demos from the Amiga 500 days using Amiga Forever, namely Scoopex's Mental Hangover demo.



For fun I then ran three Amiga demos at the same time using Amiga Forever, and all ran in separate windows flawlessly:


Lastly I played the very enjoyable demo by Scoopex called My Kingdom, an AGA/060 demo from 1998.



Next I decided to go back to the Systems view in Amiga Forever, to start working on building some of the downloadable AmigaOS customised builds, starting with AmigaSYS 4.

I actually run AmigaSYS 4 on my real Amiga 4000T, so it is quite familiar to me, but it seems the Amiga Forever version has been tweaked even more! You will see below that it is listed as "Download" and not "Ready".


You can right click on AmigaSYS and select Download to get this underway - it will download it from the internet and prepare things afterwards too:



Download completed, the status of AmigaSYS now updates to "Setup", which means we need to setup the system further when we run it:


On the initial run of AmigaSYS you are greeted with some nice demo music and the installation process:


Select your language, in my case 1-EN.


It is then ready to start installing:



The setup then prompts for a screen resolution to use - I pick the largest one of course :-)


The installation then wraps up with some greets and credits:



Installation completed! Once you press Enter it will shutdown and close the window.


When you start AmigaSYS again from Amiga Forever, you then get this beautiful AmigaOS 3.9 customised Amiga system, ready to run whatever you want!


As you can see the default installation of AmigaOS 3.x is heavily modified, with all the usual patches, tools and other startup-sequence trickery done by most of us over many years of trial and error to make our AmigaOS 3.x Workbench look great. With AmigaSYS 4, it is all done for you.


Ethernet support works out of the box too, so i quickly fired up IBrowse to prove it works well!


There is also a customised Dock at the bottom of the Workbench screen with a Windows Start menu style re-implementation, containing most of the programs and utilities included with AmigaSYS 4, ready to run.


All that is left is to copy your favourite games and demos to it and enjoy! :-)

I then added my existing Amiga 2000HD folder (A copy of the DH0 from my real Amiga 2000HD) to the Amiga 2000 configuration so I could use my A2000 hard disk setup under Amiga Forever 2016. Make sure to set the 1.3 FFS boot flag since it is needed when using Kickstart 1.3 and wanting to boot from hard disk.


Here is my Amiga 2000 running nicely under Amiga Forever 2016:



Next I want to take a look at a new feature in Amiga Forever (actually it is a new feature in WinUAE) that includes a A4000PPC configuration with bridgeboard, Picasso IV and PowerPC support.

The preconfigured setup by Amiga Forever is designed to enable the easy installation of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic under Amiga Forever. Without this pre-configuration, it is quite a technical and complex process to setup by hand in WinUAE (or FS-UAE), which is a process I have covered in this blog several times in the past.

For the most part the Amiga 4000PPC is configured, ready to have the installation of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic. The settings for Amiga4000PPC show this - including the extra powerpc support, picasso iv, etc.


Let's take a closer look at how Amiga Forever makes it easier:


Initially the emulation tries to boot from the empty Hard disk and fails as below.


In my case I have the original AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition CD (an ISO can also be used), so I insert it into the DVD drive which then allows me to see it in the emulation (the physical CD drive is mounted automatically).



Before running the emulation again I need to copy the BootFloppy.adf from the root of the CD to the correct ADF folder location for Amiga Forever, which in Windows 10 is C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Amiga Files\Shared\ADF:


I could just run the BootFloppy.adf from the CD directly too I suppose...

Next, I run the emulation of Amiga4000PPC again. When it stops at the DH0 error message, I then insert the BootFloppy.ADF using the disk icon at the bottom of the window:


I then reset the Amiga by clicking the Reboot icon and the BootFloppy.adf boots up, kicking off the CD installation process for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic:



As the hard disk is already setup we don't need to do any hard disk preparation so we can start the AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition installer utility directly.

I stepped through the first few screens accepting defaults until I reached the hard disk preparation screen:


The hard disk needs to be formatted before we proceed, so I select the Format disks(s) option above, which then prompts me to select the hard disk DH0 in the Format window below:


After selecting DH0 and selecting Continue, I then get prompted for the Hard disk Volume name, which I call "System", and then click on Quick Format:


When this is complete I can then proceed with the installation:


On inspection the pre-configured hard disk size is small - I was surprised it was not bigger. 300MB is pretty small these days - I would have thought a 2GB partition was more appropriate. You can create larger ones if needed of course but it is not as simple as using the included one.

When prompted for the Graphics card, ensure Picasso IV is selected as below instead of AGA:


Select your screen resolution of 1024x768@60. Keep in mind the screen resolution and colour depth is limited by the capabilities of the real Picasso IV card.


The files are then copied, which takes a little while, but it's not too long.


The installation is now completed:



When you click Finish above, the machine reboots automatically, so make sure you eject the BootFloppy.adf and the CD before clicking Finish.

The system then boots off the hard disk for the first time:


Installation was successful!


I now have AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic installed on Amiga Forever 2016!


I have to admit this is the easiest installation of Final Edition under Emulation that I have ever done, thanks to the Amiga Forever pre-configured setups! :-)

You can get more information on how to do the Final Edition build, creating bigger hard disks and other helpful tips from Amiga Forever's Knowledge Base article here. I won't bother to repeat what they have already covered!

As an aside if you hold down the left shift key when launching the Amiga 4000PPC in Amiga Forever 2016, you can see the early boot setup for Picasso IV.


Pressing Escape key on initial power on of the emulation (not on reboots) will show the Cyberstorm PPC boot menu too, all emulated using the ROM files legally! :-)

I didn't spend too much on this AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition build as I intend to use my existing already built AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition hdf files I built on FS-UAE earlier this year to avoid repeating the build work all over again!

I did want to show how the build works though when done from scratch in Amiga Forever 2016, and how easy it is.

Note that I should have copied the base configuration of Amiga4000PPC in Amiga Forever (via Right click > Create Copy) and edited the copy rather than editing the original, but I already did it before I read the information that said not to!

Can't imagine it matters much unless you screw it up though, and I have certainly mucked around with WinUAE and FS-UAE enough to know my way around. However, for new users then you should copy it to be sure to have the original to fall back on.

Amiga Forever 2016 makes Classic Amiga emulation easy to setup and run for Windows users, and takes away a lot of the technical work in configuring environments in WinUAE yourself for optimal performance.

In a future blog post I will take a look at AmiKit and AROS under Amiga Forever 2016.

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Wings Remastered Demo on X1000

December 3, 2015, 3:45 am
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Today I wanted to show the small demo put together to show the upcoming Wings Remastered Edition game for AmigaOS 4.1, MorphOS and AROS x86. Here I have shown the Warp3D version of the game running on AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my AmigaOne X1000.


The Wings game was originally released by Cinemaware on the Classic Amiga back in the early 1990's, and this remastered version will be released by Cinemaware in early 2016, depending on a successful number of pre orders of the game to pay for the developers to complete the game. So it's future is up to you and me!

I have already pre-ordered the game (the website to purchase the game and download the demo is here) and I hope after seeing the screenshots below, it will tempt you to pre-order what should be a great game.


You can even choose between the original Wings soundtrack or the much nicer modern version.


Some Gameplay settings can be altered too:


As you can see in the Roster, I suck at this game, but to be fair the demo doesn't allow you to do much yet.


These scenes should be familiar to those who played the original Wings, but of course now updated and displayed in full screen 1920x1080 and enhanced graphics:


The flight journal makes a reappearance and looks great:



The nice old movie style text scenes are great too:


Getting into the game itself, you are able to experience a short time playing in each type of sub game present in the original Wings, to give you an idea of how the final game will look and feel:


I have to say this looks great. You can fly around a short while and it is very smooth. The guys working on this also did Wings Battlefield game earlier in 2015.


You are then reminded that this is a demo, and to pre-order if you want the game. The game will come properly boxed in the old Amiga game box style with a CD. The game is only available in this boxed version and not in a downloadable version.


The next two shots show the short demos of two other sub games from the original Wings updated to the Next Generation Amiga systems. The control is great and very natural and logical.


In the last sub game in the demo you can shoot some of the supplies on the ground too.


By the looks of this demo, Wings Remastered should be something pretty special when it is released for AmigaOS4.1 early next year! Looking forward to it!

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Gorky 17 on X1000

December 4, 2015, 10:19 pm
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Today I wanted to take a look at the recently released game called Gorky 17 by Hyperion Entertainment.  I am running Gorky 17 on AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my AmigaOne X1000.


Hyperion Entertainment are of course also the developers of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition.

This game has been a long time coming, with the original game released in 1999, but in 2015 it has been released for AmigaOS 4.1.

Gorky 17 is available for purchase from most Amiga vendors, like AmigaKit, Vesalia and AmigaStore.eu, amongst others! It costs around AUD$50.

When I received the package this week I also ordered with it the "Powered by AmigaOS" t-shirt, notepad and AmigaOS - 30 Years of Emotion sticker! Here they are:


Here is a close up of the inside of the Gorky 17 package:


Gorky 17 has a simple enough install procedure via the provided Install program on the CD.







With the installation completed the game drawer appears as below:


The manual for the game is included as a PDF:


The configuration program included allows me to change the screen resolution, full screen or not, and to use hardware gfx rendering or not. By default software rendering is on.


I using the 1920x1080 resolution on my X1000, and deselect the software renderer.


When the game runs a movie intro plays:










The main menu for the game is below:


I selected a new game and the game starts off in Poland, with a small team of 3 as the adventure unfolds.


Dialogue between the team members and people you meet explain the story as it goes along and the tasks you need to do to progress in the game. 


The game world is isometric 3d map which your team explores:


The game has quite a array of elements to team member development, with various personal abilities able to be upgraded as their skill level improves with enemy encounters in the game. This is Cole Sullivan's Inventory view:


There is a lot of strategy to this game as it is a turn based game, a bit reminding me of Laser Squad on the Classic Amiga. It is important to plan out what you want to do in each turn with each team member to be able to progress through the game.

You can place objects like rifles and pistols into the team member's hands, but also put objects there to restore health points (HP) and provide ammunition to the team members as they run out. This is Jarek Ovitz's view - I have put the rifle in his hand during this turn so he is ready to attack an enemy.


The team members do not all have the same resources, and the abilities of each team member also differ. It is important to remember this when planning attack strategies to inflect maximum points of damage on enemies in each turn.


Here are some screenshots from the game world as we set off. When fighting enemies you can select each character to move them a certain number of steps from their current position within your turn.


It is easy to select a new weapon to place in a team members hand without needing to go to the inventory view.


It doesn't take long to find trouble:


When you click on the enemy you can see their remaining Health Points, and the range that they can move when it is their turn.


Note that action constitutes the action part of the players turn and has a limited range. Each team member also has one movement action within each turn, with the possible remaining move locations highlighted in green. As you move around the remaining possible step locations decrease until all your steps are exhausted for this turn.


You then click on End Turn icon on the bottom right to allow the enemy to take their turn, and then you can have another go. If any of your team are killed during the fights then the game is over.

In this case though I was successful!


You can see Cole now has more experience and show the kills made so far:


As the game proceeds the team comes across other previous teams who have had many team members killed and mutated. Objects like boards (below) can also be picked up for use later in the game:


The enemies keep on coming!


The team then stumbles across a guy that provides more information about what is happening, and joins the team as it continues on.


As the game progresses the enemies get censurably more difficult to beat, and many of them attacking at once makes strategy amongst your limited resources and team members very important to win the battles.


As our additional team member is unarmed we need to move him around strategically to avoid him getting killed.


Not doing so well with that though - Getting a bit close for comfort.


One of my team members has killed enough enemies to increase a level. I got 5 points to distribute across his various abilities to improve them:


I find myself having to rejuvenate my player's health more and more often and quickly running out of things to do that with! Jared's down to just 18/150:


Here I apply a bandage to improve his health a little, and then move him away from the enemies:


As you can see, things are moving along nicely and I have managed to kill quite a few enemies successfully!


However in the battle below I made a tactical mistake and left one of my team too close to multiple enemies, leaving him vulnerable to multiple attacks on the enemy turn.




So unfortunately I lost one of my team and it was Game over!


I noticed you then have the option to repeat the battle which avoids having to start again - this is nice.

The music is nice without getting annoying, the spot effects are good and the level of strategy in the game does pull you into the adventure.

The turn based nature of the gameplay may appeal to some more than others, but I think it is fun to play games like this as there is more strategy involved than just the normal hack and slash style gameplay.

Gorky 17 is an interesting game and worth giving a go! More new games for Amiga in 2015 - fantastic! :-)


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AmiCloud 1.0 Beta on X1000 and Sam460CR

December 8, 2015, 3:02 am
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Today I wanted to take a early preview look at AmiCloud Beta for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition. I tested it on the AmigaOne X1000 and Sam 460CR.


AmiCloud is an internet based file storage, file syncing, and file sharing facility. It is the work of Pascal Papara and developer Fabio Falcucci. AmiCloud is similar in concept to Cloud solutions for Windows and Mac OS X like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and so on.

We can of course use dropbox, etc, via Odyssey web browser, but this does not allow local file syncing to/from the cloud as it doesn't have a local client for AmigaOS.

Now in 2015 with AmiCloud we now have a Cloud storage solution with a file sync client available on AmigaOS 4.1! There is also an AmiCloud client for AROS, MorphOS, Windows, Linux and Mac OS X too, so it is possible to sync across all these devices!

Today though, I am focused on AmigaOS 4.1 only, as that is the only client I have to try out at this time.

The AmiCloud client for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition must be downloaded using the IndieGo! App Store client for AmigaOS 4.1. It is not available on AMIStore App Store or elsewhere.

You can download the IndieGo! App Store client from here. I covered this AppStore previously on this blog here if you are interested in more information about it. The AmigaOS 4.1 IndieGo! App Store client is in Alpha stage build at this time.

You will need to register with an account on IndieGo! App Store in order to proceed. I strongly recommend if you register an account, that any username and password you use there is not used on any other service you have (standard best practice anyway!). The password and username are sent unencrypted by the App Store client and AmiCloud client at this time, with a patch to resolve it and use SSL I am advised should come later in the Beta phase.

Once you agree to the IndieGo! App store terms and conditions you can login:


Browsing the App Store using the Search function, I found the AmiCloud client for AmigaOS 4:



IndieGo! App Store uses it's own currency called IndieCoins, which you can purchase from the IndieGo website here. In my case I am testing the client out and have a IndieCoin voucher gifted to me that I redeemed to download it.

At the time of writing the AmiCloud AmigaOS 4 client costs EUR5 (500 Indiecoins) during the Beta test phase.

Once the AmiCloud client is downloaded, I closed the IndieGo! App Store (and closed DownLoad Manager - DLM when prompted) and go to the Downloads drawer inside the IndieGo! drawer to extract the AmiCloud archive to my X1000.

One important note is that an additional program is needed to be installed under AmigaOS 4.1 in order to see the AmiCloud icons properly, as they use a non-AmigaOS 4 friendly icon format. Fortunately this is a known issue and a program fix is available on os4depot.net called png_im.lha , which you can download from here.

You need to create a drawer in SYS:Libs called IconModules and then extract the png.iconmodule file from the archive to that location as below:


After a reboot the icons will then display correctly, as below:


This AmiCloud drawer also features possibly the biggest drawer icon I have ever seen for the appdata drawer!


First we need to create a drawer for syncing AmiCloud files to/from. You could use an existing drawer on your hard disk, but I suggest a new drawer on it's own so you know exactly what is being shared and synced using AmiCloud.

I created a drawer in Work: called AmiCloudSync to make it clear. I then copied the AmiCloud nice drawer icon to it, and then right clicked on the drawer and selected Leave Out so it appears on the Workbench screen for easy access.


If you prefer a volume name for copying files to it using DOpus or Shell, you could also add an assign for the drawer in your s:user-startup if you prefer:

Assign >NIL: CLOUD0: Work:AmiCloudSync

(Of course CLOUD0: can be whatever you want to call it!)

Initially when run, the AmiCloud client looks like this:


The first step is to click on the Key icon on the left side to login using your IndieGo! App Store credentials, which are also used for AmiCloud.



 You will then be prompted to select the drawer you want AmiCloud to sync data to/from. In my case I selected the drawer I created earlier Work:AmiCloudSync

The AmiCloud client then synchronises the contents of the drawer (which is currently empty). It constantly checks for changes to the drawer and uploads the files automatically if it notices newer or different files have been put in the drawer.


Once the initial sync is setup, you can then click on the Settings icon on the right side to turn on Auto login if you want this to happen automatically when AmiCloud starts.


Don't set Autologin here unless you have actually logged in to AmiCloud first, as this will cause issues otherwise.

You can also put AmiCloud in your WBStartup in Sys:Prefs if you want AmiCloud to start up with AmigaOS 4.1.

Initially I am given 1GB of AmiCloud server storage space to use for file sync and sharing. The percentage meter on the AmiCloud client shows how much % space you are currently using of your total 1GB server space.

As a first test I created a document in the AmiCloudSync drawer - a simple text file:


After a few seconds the AmiCloud client picked it up and uploaded it to the AmiCloud server:


You can pause/start the Synchronisation in AmiCloud using the Play button on the right side of the program window.

As a test I checked the sharing functionality of the text file that is now on the AmiCloud server. This allows me to share the file with anyone on the internet who wants to download it. It does not need a login to download the file.

To share a file, select the share icon on the bottom right corner of the AmiCloud window. The AmiCloud Sharing Service window comes up, showing all documents I currently have stored in AmiCloud:


When I click on the file, it prompts me if I want to share the file:


If you say Yes, it then shares the file and copies the web link URL to the clipboard so you can paste it into an email, web browser or wherever else you want to paste it!


I pasted it into Odyssey web browser on my X1000 and it goes to a webpage that allows me to download the file:


Once downloaded, I checked the file and it was the same.

If you go back into the Sharing Service window in the AmiCloud client you can then turn off the sharing or get the link copied into your clipboard again:


I tested with some other file types like JPG and seems to work well for sharing. (click image to expand)



In testing this, I found I needed to go into the Shell and type "touch <filename>" for some older date files I copied into the AmiCloudSync drawer, in order for the AmiCloud client to work correctly with it. Otherwise the client produces an error for me and quit. This is not an issue for files created initially inside the drawer like my test document.

The developers couldn't reproduce the issue I found so far but they are still looking - so it may just be me or my timezone, but thought it worth mentioning in case you come across it. If you see this issue, simply delete the older date files you put in the AmiCloudSync drawer, touch the original files outside the drawer in Shell, and then copy them into the drawer as usual.

As an aside, the download link for the files shared in AmiCloud takes you to the www.indiego.rocks web site.


If you login to this website using your AmiCloud credentials you can see the apps you have bought on the IndieGo! App Store.


You can also see the files you have uploaded to AmiCloud, with the option to remove them:


Next I wanted to check the syncing capability of AmiCloud, using my Sam 460CR which also runs AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition. I have since placed a number of files on my X1000 AmiCloudSync drawer, so I am keen to see if it syncs them to the Sam 460CR.

As per the X1000 setup above, on the Sam 460CR I needed to install the PNG_im.lha from os4depot.net (reboot needed), create the Work:AmiCloudSync drawer and install the AmiCloud client. A purchase of AmiCloud Client for one platform entitles you to install it on as many computers running that platform that you own.

Below is the view after this is done on my Sam 460CR. Note that the AmiCloudSync drawer is empty and the AmiCloud client is not logged in yet. (click any image to expand)


After I log into to AmiCloud on the Sam460CR, it starts downloading my synced files:


Shortly after, the download completes and now my Sam 460CR and X1000 have the same files, kept in sync by AmiCloud!


I then opened the files on the Sam 460CR to make sure they worked correctly and they do!



Very cool indeed!

I should stress that AmiCloud is in BETA stage at the moment, and so there are naturally some bugs being fixed up at the moment, but the functionality above works well as shown here.

AmiCloud certainly looks very promising and interesting as a Cloud based file sync and file sharing solution option for AmigaOS 4.1 owners and other NG Amiga systems like AROS and MorphOS too.

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Look back at 2015 on Amiga

December 12, 2015, 2:36 am
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2015 has been quite a year, with a lot happening in the Amiga World and this being the 30th Anniversary of the Amiga. With Xmas now upon us let us take a look back at 2015!


Operating Systems

2015 saw the release of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition. It was released with separate CD editions for AmigaOne X1000, Sam440ep, Sam 460, Pegasos 2, and Classic Amiga with PowerPC. The Classic Amiga version can also be run on Amiga Forever 2016, FS-UAE and WinUAE with PPC emulation.


AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my Sam 460CR:



AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Workbench running on my AmigaOne X1000 (click any image to expand):




AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic running under emulation (Amiga Forever 2016) on a Core i7 PC under Windows 10 Pro x64:



MorphOS 3.8 and MorphOS 3.9 versions were released in 2015, which included support for the first time for the Sam 460 system, in addition to the existing support for PowerPC Apple hardware like iBook G4 laptop, Powerbook G4 laptop, eMac G4, PowerMac G4 and PowerMac G5 systems:



MorphOS 3.8 on my Sam 460CR:




MorphOS 3.8 on my Powerbook G4 laptop:


Also exciting was the news that the next version of MorphOS (3.10) is being written to support the upcoming AmigaOne X5000 system being released by A-EON!

Icaros 2.0.3 (AROS) was also released in 2015 for PC systems. This AROS version integrates the updated version of Directory Opus 5.91 as the default Workbench replacement instead of the previously used Zune and further improves the AmiBridge integration for running Classic Amiga software integrated with AROS.

Here is Icaros 2.0.3 running natively on my Core i7 PC:



Running Doom 3 natively under Icaros 2.0.3:



AROS VisionRTG 2.9.8 was also released in 2015 for Classic Amiga systems expanded with a RTG compliant Graphics card and using Wanderer GUI. I still want to try this out on my Classic Amigas but haven't got to it yet with so much else happening!

(This AROS Vision Screenshot taken from AROS Vision Facebook page)

AEROS Broadway X v3.9 (AROS on Linux) has been updated in 2015 also, with public versions of v3.9 available for x86 PC and also newly ported to Raspberry Pi 1 hardware. Both can be downloaded for free from the IndieGo! App Store. (free account required)

(This AEROS Screenshot taken from AEROS Website)

On the emulation front, 2015 saw the release of Amiga Forever 2016 for Windows, allowing the running Classic Amiga systems and PowerPC based Classic Amiga systems.





AmiKit 8 was also released in 2015, optimised for use with emulators on PC, Linux and Mac. It was released with a new AmiPUP bootable USB stick version that allows any x86 PC to boot directly into a high customised and optimised AmigaOS 3.1 installation from the USB stick, using either AmigaOS3.9 or Amiga Forever CD (amongst others) as a source for the kickstart roms on initial boot.

  (screenshot taken from AmiKit website)

AmiKit 8 is also downloadable and configured from Amiga Forever 2016 directly, and the AmiKit Real version can also be installed onto a real Classic Amiga. I bought the USB stick version of AmiKit 8 this year and definitely want to try this when I get some free time.

   (screenshot taken from AmiKit website)

It has been great to see all the Next Generation Amiga operating systems release a new version in 2015!

Hardware

Moving on now to hardware in 2015, the Sam 460CR (Cost Reduced version of the Sam 460ex board) system was released by ACube Systems:


This board can run AmigaOS4.1 Final Edition and MorphOS 3.9.


The firmware for the Sam 460CR was also updated in 2015 (old and then new shown):




In other hardware news, the AmigaOne X1000 after 3 years on sale has sold out officially in late 2015 and is sadly no longer available as a new system.


With the move from CFE firmware on the X1000 back to U-Boot firmware for the X5000 and A1222 (as used on the Sam440/460 systems too), the X1000 will most likely be the only AmigaOne system using CFE firmware! For me it remains a special machine, and one that inspired me to start this very blog back in 2012.



The AmigaOne X5000 was announced by A-EON in 2015 as a faster replacement system for the X1000, and pre-orders expected by the end of 2015. It features a 64bit 2Ghz Dual Core PowerPC processor and plenty of other goodies!

The new system case for the X5000 was also revealed this year:

 (Picture taken from A-EON's Facebook page)

At this point in mid December I am not sure if it will be available as planned in 2015 due to some delays with finalising the AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition operating system, but if it doesn't make it, then it should be early in 2016.

The X5000 system has been showcased at a number of Amiga meetings and shows this year. AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition is now running on the system in 2015, and the upcoming MorphOS 3.10 in beta form has been shown running on it too. Exciting system indeed!


A new entry level AmigaOne system called AmigaOne A1222 was also announced at AmiWest 2015, with a Beta-testing program starting in 2015 to get AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition ported to it before it goes on sale in the future.

 
This system uses a cheaper PowerPC 1.2Ghz processor model and stripped down motherboard to keep the price down significantly compared to the higher spec systems like the X5000 and X1000.

The A1222 performance is expected to be a little bit faster than the Sam460 system available from ACube Systems. In comparison to Classic Amiga systems it reminds me of an A1200 versus A4000T models in terms of capabilities, updated to the present day expectations of course!

Betatesters are now receiving their A1222 system in late 2015 to begin the work of porting AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition to it. Already work is underway on the AmigaOne A1222 with Linux ported and AmigaOS 3.9 emulation via E-UAE shown running on it:

 (Screenshot taken from A-EON's Facebook page)

Also announced by A-EON in 2015 is an upcoming laptop to be called A.L.I.C.E (ALaptop Incorporating a Classic Experience). This is using an off the shelf laptop model running Linux (hidden from view) with Amiga Forever and boots straight into AmiKit running a Classic Amiga environment.


On the Classic Amiga hardware front in 2015 we also saw the release of a number of new Accelerator cards for the Amiga 1200 by Individual Computers - Specifically 68020 and 68030 accelerators catering for the budget conscious who just want to run Whdload games, up to those that want to be able to run AGA demos and games up until the end of the 1990's.

The 020 accelerator (ACA1221) includes an 020 clocked at 16Mhz (overclocking upgrades available up to 28Mhz), 9MB memory (unlockable upgrades to 63MB), support for optional Real Time clock module, and clock port connector for the Rapid Road USB addon.

 (Image from Individual Computers website)

The new Individual Computers 68030 accelerators (ACA1232/ACA1233) have a Full 030 with MMU, running at either 50Mhz or 55.5Mhz, with 128MB memory onboard, real time clock module port and 1MB kickstart remapping memory onboard.


 (Image from Individual Computers website)

A-EON in 2015 has been working on Prisma Megamix, a new sound mixer card for Classic Amiga computers (Zorro and Clockport) that will enable mp3's and other music files to be played back without needing the 680x0 CPU, meaning lower CPU speed Amigas can multitask playback of mp3 music when using the Workbench.


 (Screenshot taken from A-EON's Facebook page)

Even though the hardware is ready in 2015, the PrismaControl software is still in development (although plenty of in development shots have been shared) like below just last month:

 (Screenshot taken from A-EON's Facebook page)

Hopefully we will see this released in 2016.

Retro 7-Bit also released Rys Mark II USB to joystick/mouse port converters with built in USB stack in 2015. These devices allow normal USB mice and joysticks to be connected and used on the Classic Amiga systems with no other drivers needed.



Applications

On the application front we saw a number of Applications released and updated in 2015.

Warp3D Southern Island drivers (AmigaOS 4.1 - A-EON)

These drivers were released via AMIStore in 2015, allowing Warp3D hardware support for high end ATI Radeon HD graphics cards that use the Southern Islands chipset, enabling applications and games to use Warp3D on X1000 and Sam 460 systems using select mid to high end Radeon HD cards.


This now allows AmigaOne X1000 and Sam460 owners to finally run their favourite Warp3D games without the need for an older Radeon 9250 PCI graphics card.


Alongside this driver is the updated Radeon HD 2.10 drivers that support playback of 720p HD video using MPlayer under AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition.


Multiviewer NG (AmigaOS 4.1 - A-EON) - Multiview replacement




MUI 4 (AmigaOS 4.1 / MorphOS / AmigaOS 3.X - muidev.de) - GUI framework
 



Simple Mail 0.41 (AmigaOS 3.1 / AmigaOS 4.1 / AROS / MorphOS - Sebastian Bauer / Hynek Schlawack) - Email client





LoView (AmigaOS 3.1 / AmigaOS 4.1 - Simone"Tuxedo"Monsignori) - Image viewer




DOPUS 5.91 (AmigaOS 4.1 / AmigaOS 3.1 / AROS - Kas1e) - Directory & File Management




Personal Paint 68k/NG (AmigaOS 4.1 /AmigaOS 3.1 - A-EON) - Image Creator/Editor




Ignition OS4 (AmigaOS 4.1- Pic software) - Spreadsheet program




Hollywood 6Epiphany (AmigaOS 4.1 / AmigaOS 3.1 / MorphOS / AROS / Windows / MacOS X / Linux / Android - Andreas Falkenhahn) - Programming/Development environment


Hollywood is significant development software for Next Gen Amiga systems (AROS / AmigaOS / MorphOS) and many recent Amiga programs have been written in Hollywood - such as AMIStore, IndieGo! App Store, LoView, AmiCloud and plenty more besides!




Cubic IDE has an updated Hollywood 6 plugin for it, also released in 2015:



Odyssey 1.25 (AROS x86 - Deadwood) - Web Browser (supporting YouTube playback again)



Netsurf 3.3 (AmigaOS 4.1 / AmigaOS 3.1 - Chris Young OS4 port) - Web Browser



AmiCloud (AmigaOS 4.1 / AROS / MorphOS/ Windows / Mac OS X - Pascal Papara / Fabio Falcucci) - Cloud Storage / Cloud File sync & sharing client




Z-Tools Suite (AmigaOS 4.1 - zzd10h) - Suite of tools and utilities for AmigaOS 4.1



AmigaAmp 3 (AmigaOS 4.1 - Thomas Wenzel) - Multiformat Music player



Song Wrangler (AmigaOS 4.1 - Caras Ghant) - iTunes style Front end for AmigaAmp 3



SMTube 15.11 (AmigaOS 4.1 - Ricardo Villalba) - YouTube Browser/Viewer/Downloader application, updated in 2015 to support the updated YouTube website API engine changes.



We also had announcements in 2015 of acquisitions of older Classic Amiga software being bought or exclusively licensed by A-EON for future development of these applications to native AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS applications and updating the Classic Amiga versions too!



(Image taken from A-EON's Facebook page)

These Classic Amiga applications when updated are planned to be sold through AMIStore App Store and website for the Classic Amiga versions. This includes Aladdin 4D, ImageFX (interestingly for MorphOS versions too), and Octamed.

The Classic Amiga application Final Writer was also acquired in 2015 by Terminills (Don't know his real life name sorry!), to be initially upgraded to run on AROS, with Classic Amiga, MorphOS, and AmigaOS 4.1 versions to follow.

Here is an in progress shot of the AROS Final Writer version in 2015 (taken from an amiga.org thread):



Games

We were spoiled for new games on Amiga this year! Like the applications above, I looked at most of these games in detail on my blog during this year.

Freedroid RPG (AmigaOS 4.1 - ported by Michael Trebilcock):




Amicraft (AmigaOS 4.1 - Caras Ghant):




Wings Battlefield (AmigaOS 4.1 / MorphOS / AROS - Cherry Darling)


Wings Battlefield introduced multi player LAN gaming functionality between MorphOS / AmigaOS 4.1 / AROS versions of the games - to my knowledge the first game to do so:



Quake II High Definition Edition (AmigaOS 4.1 Warp3D SI version - HunoPPC):




The Secret of Middle City (AmigaOS 4.1/MorphOS - GDG Entertainment):




Bubble Shooter DX (AmigaOS 4.1 - Entwickler-X):





Quartet (AmigaOS 4.1 - Photon Storm):




Fruit'Y (AmigaOS 4.1 / MorphOS - RetroGuru)




Boxx 2 (AmigaOS 3.1 - Lemming880)




Lariad (AmigaOS 4.1 - HunoPPC)




Ask Me Up XXL (AmigaOS 4.1 / MorphOS - Boing Attitude!)




Cannonball - An Enhanced Outrun Engine (AmigaOS 4.1 - Chris White / Arun Home)




Swamp Defense 2 (AmigaOS 4.1 - Entwickler-X):




Gorky 17 (AmigaOS 4.1 - Hyperion Entertainment)




We also saw some work in progress games which are looking very promising and planned for release in 2016:

Amiga Racer Work In Progress (AmigaOS4.1 / MorphOS 3.9 - AmigaTec)




Wings Remastered Work In Progress (AmigaOS4.1/MorphOS/AROS - Cinemaware)




Tower 57 (Work In Progress) is a planned new game by Pixwerk initially planned for Windows, Linux and Mac. It is similar in style to the Classic Amiga game The Chaos Engine by the Bitmap Brothers. It had a stretch goal of a port to AmigaOS 4.1, AROS, and MorphOS. It was successfully funded (including the stretch goal) via Kickstarter in 2015.


Tower 57 is planned to be released in 2016 for Next Gen Amiga platforms and looks very promising indeed, and only made possible thanks to the kickstarter pledges of many Next Gen Amiga owners this year, including me! Well done to all who did! 




Demos

In 2015 we had some great demos released on the Classic Amiga, both ECS demos for the Amiga 500 and also high end AGA demos for the 68060 equipped Amigas too.

I am a huge follower of the demoscene and have been since 1988 - I still love it today. Below are some of the 2015 Amiga Demo highlights for me (Played from YouTube):


Sushi Boyz by Ghostown 
(ECS - Winner, Revision 2015 Demo party)



Carbon Based by Dekadence 
(AGA - Winner, Assembly 2015 Demo party)



mOmentum by Nah-Kolor 
(AGA - 2nd, Revision 2015 Demo Party)



Be Kool Fool by Focus Design
(AGA - Winner, Gerp 2015 Demo Party)



Last Train To Danzig by Ghostown and Haujobb
(AGA - Winner, RetroKomp / Load Error 2015 Demo Party)



Master Control Program by Desire
(AGA - Assembly 2015 Demo Party)



Amiga30

This year being the 30th anniversary of the Amiga, the various shows around the world to celebrate the milestone were fantastic events.

Many of these events were attended by many of the original developers of the Amiga all those years ago, who told everyone present many stories about the Amiga.

Here is some of the promotional posters for the bigger Amiga30 shows held worldwide in 2015:





The photos below in this Amiga30 section are of the Amiga30 show held in California, USA in July 2015, and are reproduced with kind permission from Mike Brantley. Cheers mate.

The show was streamed live to the internet, using an Amiga 2000 helping out with video toaster and other hardware for the outbound internet video feed! :-)


Original Amiga developers Dave Needle and RJ Mical on stage:




The Exhibition Hall show floor:


The NG Amiga systems and vendors like A-EON were also present at these shows and could demonstrate to all present that the Amiga is still alive and kicking in 2015, with plenty of fun to be had still on our favourite platform!


Thanks Trevor Dickinson - you really do keep this Amiga party going in 2015.

There was a Q&A forum at the show as part of the evening Banquet allowing people to ask questions of the original developers of the Amiga:


And of course what is a 30th celebration without cake:


The original very fragile development Amiga hardware was also present at the show:


The celebration at the Amiga30 show in California ended with a display set up by attendees of every Amiga system ever made - from genesis, all the Classic Amiga systems, and all the way through to the latest Next Gen Amiga systems in 2015 like the Sam 460, AmigaOne X1000, X5000 and even the upcoming AmigaOne A1222!


Unfortunately I was not able to attend the overseas Amiga30 celebrations this year due to work and other commitments, but I did attend a local Amiga 30 celebration event here in Adelaide in 2015 to mark the occasion and show many of the original Classic Amiga and Next Gen Amiga systems too!





The special Amiga30 shows in California, Amsterdam, Germany, UK and elsewhere in the world were truly amazing events! I hope most of you made your way to at least one of them during 2015.


Whew! It has certainly been a busy and another great year on the Amiga in 2015 - I am looking forward to even more developments in 2016!

With so much happening I probably missed a few things that happened - I apologise in advance if I missed something!

On this blog in 2015, the most popular blog posts written this year (for those curious) were the AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Part 1& Part 2 install guide on the X1000, and also the AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic install guide on FS-UAE on MacOS X.

To you the reader, thank you very much for following my blog in 2015. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed it.

As usual I will be spending time with family and on holiday over the Xmas/New Year period and the blog will take a break during that time. I plan to be back again in mid January 2016.

In the meantime I wish you and your family a very Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. See you again in 2016!

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My A1222 has arrived!

January 8, 2016, 4:02 pm
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Happy New Year to everyone - I hope you all had a great Xmas and New Year!

For my first blog post in 2016 I bring you a special treat - a look at the new AmigaOne A1222 system announced at AmiWest 2015 by A-EON Technology, and recently delivered to me as a newly appointed Betatester in early January 2016.


Let's take a closer look at the A1222 board. The specifications of the AmigaOne A1222 (Tabor) are:

PowerPC CPU: Freescale QorIQ P1022, 1.2GHz, 32-bit, e500V2, dual-core
• 1x CPU fan + heatsink
• 2x fan ports

DDR3 SODIMM
• 64 bit interface
• 400Mhz
• Support up to 8GB RAM

RS232 Serial
• 1x RS232 including flow control
• Level shifting from TTL UART serial levels to RS232 levels
• Maximum baud rate of 230,400

SATA
• 2x SATA 2.6 compliant controllers

USB
• 2x External & 2x Internal USB port

Ethernet
• 2x RGMII ethernet PHYs each providing Gbit ethernet

PCIe
• x4 PCIe gen 1 link allows data rates of 2.5Gb/s per lane
• x16 PCIe connector to support RadeonHD graphics cards

Audio
• Audio CODEC generating stereo audio out from I2S digital audio

HDMI LCD Interface
• 24 bit colour depth
• Support for resolution up to 1280x1024
• HDMI 1.3 support

GPIO
• Support for user GPIOs
• GPIO JTAG

Micro SD
• Micro SD card for ROM - later possibility of running the whole system from the microSD card

WCU Prog

LED ports for Power, CPU, HDD

Enough specs, let's take a closer look at the board with some close up photos:


Here you can see the onboard Serial port, DVI connector, sound input/output ports, two network port and 2 USB ports.



Close up of the CPU with included cooling fan:


Unlike the X1000, the A1222 uses a U-Boot firmware, which is loaded onto a micro-sd card on the board. This makes upgrades considerably easier:


Flipping the board over you can see the signatures on the back:


I love the Space invaders thing on the back - very cool:


The A1222 board is small - very small. MiniITX in fact. To give you an idea of size, here is a comparison of the Sam460CR board and A1222 side by side:



Another look at the ports on the A1222:


In these next shots you can see the 2 onboard SATA ports, two GPIO ports an additional header for connecting two additional USB ports on the front of your case:



This is Revision 1.1 of the board, labelled as Topaz to fit the B-52 song name tradition for Amiga system boards:


I then got to work installing the A1222 into my Sam460CR case:




View of the ports from the back of the case:



I also connected the Radeon HD card from my Sam460CR to use higher screen resolutions.

After powering on I get the animated boot screen for the A1222:



The early boot menu uses the traditional Classic Amiga fonts and colour scheme, which feels very familiar indeed:


Under System Info... option I can see the details about my A1222 system:


The command line option brings a A1222> prompt:


The help command explains the functions within the U-Boot firmware:



It is exciting to see another new NG Amiga system being made and released, and one which will hopefully be at a price point that will appeal to people who want to run AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition but are unable to afford purchasing an AmigaOne X5000 or second hand AmigaOne X1000.

AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition is to be the operating system for this A1222 system, which I will be helping with beta testing in due course. Due to an NDA, I won't be able to discuss/show anything about the AmigaOS 4.1 betatesting work I will be doing on this blog or elsewhere.

At the moment it is possible to run a couple of different Linux distributions on the A1222, with Classic Amiga running under E-UAE emulation, which is fine to talk about.

I will start work on setting up Linux on the system when I have some more free time and share some more details of it on this blog.  I saw some teaser shots of it running previously and I am keen to get it up and running on my A1222. More to come!

For now I wanted to show the AmigaOne A1222 system as it is very exciting!

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Debian Linux on AmigaOne A1222

January 15, 2016, 1:19 am
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I am pleased to say that after a week with the new AmigaOne A1222, I have now got Debian 8 Linux installed and booting from the hard disk, along with an AmigaOS theme and other goodies!


As you would imagine as a betatester, things are very much in active development right now, and so I have been busy relaying my experiences to the development team and other beta testers on things I have found while working on the A1222 to get Linux up and running.

I have the installation guide A-EON provided to get me started.


I have also received plenty of helpful tips and tricks in response to my initial questions. It is very interesting!

Along the way I have become a bit more familiar with the u-Boot firmware in the A1222 this week.

Initially I loaded the Debian 8 image onto a bootable 16GB USB stick using Windows 10 to boot the A1222 system from it:


 Thanks to the hard work of the developers, this usb image booted and worked out of the box as expected.

One of the more interesting things I found out this week is how to load the image files needed to boot A1222 into Linux into the u-Boot firmware MicroSD card.

The command line can be run from the A1222 directly or via the serial port to another computer - in this case my Windows 10 computer running Putty:


Previously these boot files needed to be located on a separate FAT partition, for example on a CF card on the X1000, SD Card on the Sam460 (firmware not located there), or a dedicated small FAT partition on the hard disk to be used by the system.

With the A1222 though, it is possible to now load these files directly into the firmware MicroSD card to boot the system into Linux. (As shown in part in the screenshot above)

Being able to "reflash" the firmware on the A1222 by extracting the firmware image onto a second MicroSD card makes upgrades a breeze and changing back very straight forward indeed. I believe this is a great feature!

Once booted via USB stick, I then used the Linux command "dd" to copy the original Linux image file to the 1TB hard disk. I then ran GParted to resize the resulting small hard disk partition to a larger size (250GB).

I want to leave space on the disk for loading other systems later on so this will do for now. After this I could then boot up the A1222 using the hard disk:

Here are some screenshots of the booted Debian 8 environment on the A1222, running Iceweasel web browser and Audicious media player (you can click to expand any pictures):


The interesting thing here is that the sound support works through the HDMI connector on the Radeon HD PCI-e card I have installed! I tested this hdmi output (video and sound) and it works well!

This function would make the A1222 easy to hook up directly to a big screen TV for example.

The A1222 also still has on board sound support too, so both options are available.


Video card, sound, USB and Network support worked straight away, and there are already many applications running under Linux to play with!

Some screenshots of Super Tux Kart running on the A1222:



I certainly enjoyed using Audacious media player again (used previously on AmiCygnix under AmigaOS 4 on the X1000). It can play back C64 SID tunes too:


While on the subject of the C64, I have also been working on my C64 with Ultimate 1541 II recently for the upcoming Adelaide Amiga meeting on Jan 25, which this time round has a retro theme with other old systems (not only Amiga) being featured.

I plan to show the C64 running videos (!), cool REU expansion demos and games, among other things! I have also been working on my presentation for AmigaOS 4.1 at the show.

Should be a great meeting, so if you can make it to the meeting I hope you can. More information is on the official website here.

Getting back to the A1222, I was keen to experiment with the AmigaOS GTK themes that are available for Debian, which make Linux look a bit more Amiga-like.


Mine is a mix of a couple of different themes. If you are curious, I got them from here and here.

I think it looks much nicer now:


I will be the first to admit that I am not a Linux expert, although I have had previous experience installing and supporting Linux and Unix for various companies in the past. I am learning all the time!

In the System Monitor you can see the Dual Core processors are active, and the 4GB memory I have on my A1222:


Firing up LibreOffice Writer next and having not used it before I was surprised how nice it is, especially when chilling out to some nice tunes (MP3 and M4A work perfectly out of the box:


I did hit a small issue with the Amiga emulation, which runs fine but has decided it wants to run completely upside down - I had to laugh!


I'll cover more on the Amiga emulation side once I work out how to turn it the right way up...and yes, I have already heard the jokes about it being upside down because it was written for the northern hemisphere and not for us down under! :-)

I reconfigured the timezone to Adelaide time as the Linux image had it set to UK time:



I also stumbled across a rather nice AmigaOne A1222 presentation created in LibreOffice Impress (a Microsoft PowerPoint software equivalent):



 It has been very enjoyable, and I am impressed with the professionalism and helpfulness of the other developers and betatesters. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their ongoing help.

The work continues on the betatesting for the AmigaOne A1222 so there will of course be much more to come. However, I wanted to share some of my experiences so far.

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Amiga Racer Game Update for X1000

January 15, 2016, 4:49 pm
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Back in November 2015 I took a look at the work in progress Amiga Racer 1.6b running on AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my AmigaOne X1000.

Since then a lot more features have been added and work is still very much in progress with multiple weekly updates! Let's take a look at the changes now we are up to version 2.6c!


For those not familiar, Amiga Racer is a racing game recreating the style of the original Lotus trilogy of games for the Classic Amiga. You can download the game from os4depot.net here. For all version downloads you can get them from here.

Updates are frequently released, and downloadable and applied automatically from the Live Update function within the game.

There is now a game manual included in the Amiga Racer drawer:


The manual is very helpful and explains the controls and the now functional ARCS = Amiga Racer Construction Set.


The updated keyboard controls (Joystick also supported) are shown in the manual:


System Requirements are also listed for the game:


It is worth mentioning that in addition to AmigaOS 4.1 here is also a version of Amiga Racer for MorphOS too. There are also now versions for Windows and Linux. My focus here though is on the AmigaOS 4.1 version!

The game intro has been updated and looks great!


The main menu has also been updated, including the new features such as the ARCS, AmigaTec Cloud for loading/saving tracks created with ARCS, and of course more cars and tracks to choose from!


There are also more cars available in the new version - now 10 cars to choose from!


Taking a closer look at the new ARCS, which works in a similar way to how it worked in Lotus on the Classic Amiga, with some additions.


You can adjust the scenario the track will be run on, which there are now 6 scenarios to choose from. You can then adjust the length of the track, the frequency of curves and their sharpness, how many hills are on the track, the frequency of scenery trackside and obstacles:


Once you select Build track, the resulting track is shown in summary on the screen, with the option to save the track to play again later, or just play the track without saving.



As it says in the screen shot above, if you go back to the main menu and select Amigatec cloud, you can select the tracks you have saved, and it shows the location the scenario is based in:


Launching into the game you can see one of the new scenario's, the city scenario, which looks amazing:


 


Approaching a checkpoint, another new addition - this shot also shows the hills parameter of ARCS at work:


Trying another scenario now, this is the recently added Russia Scenario:



A Spain scenario has also been added too:


I went back to the ARCS and worked on another track, based on the snow scenario:



There have been improvements in the wheel movement, shadows and car control too which make the car control much nicer and realistic - it also makes the game harder!


There have also been optimisations to improve the performance of the game on slower AmigaOS 4.1 systems like the Sam 460 and Sam 440 - previously it was intended for running on the AmigaOne X1000.

I haven't tried it on the sam460 as my sam 460 has been swapped out for the AmigaOne A1222 for betatesting duties, and will be like that for a while.


This game is shaping up as a great Amiga game for 2016!

If you donate towards the game then you will receive a key that unlocks ARCS and additional functionality like AmigaTec Cloud and all the latest updates and build works information is shared too.


By donating you also get the opportunity to request new features directly to the programmer - the Holden HSV commodore in the game was the result of my personal request so we had an Australian built performance car in the game!

As a result of requests we also now have the option to change the music while playing the game itself.

I am definitely enjoying seeing the evolution of Amiga Racer, with plenty more new features to come - including multiplayer over the internet and more! Can't wait!

It is truly fantastic to have new games for the NG Amiga systems in 2016!


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MorphOS 3.9 - OS4 Theme and Classic Amiga emulation

January 21, 2016, 3:08 am
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After mucking around with AmigaOS4 themes in Linux on my new AmigaOne A1222 last week, it inspired me to see if I could do something similar in MorphOS 3.9 on my Powerbook G4 this week. As it turns out, I could!


Now, before people get too defensive, I just wanted to see if it was possible. I know MorphOS fans generally prefer the Ambient GUI look, but since I predominantly use AmigaOS 4.1 nowadays and use MorphOS less often, I find I personally prefer the AmigaOS 4.1 look better - it feels more Amiga to me. You may feel differently - no worries, the nice thing is we can all have it set up how we want it!

I found an interesting guide on how to achieve this transformation here. I won't explain it any further as this guide does such a good job to be honest!

Now, you can go crazy with it (as per the guide), removing MorphOS features and changing the icons for AmigaOS icons and so on for an exact(ish) match, but I don't want to change MorphOS functionality - it is a different NG Amiga operating system after all. I just prefer the drawer frames, Title bar, etc to look like AmigaOS 4.1.

Job Done!

Last time I looked at MorphOS on the blog was on the Sam460CR and Powerbook G4 in May 2015 when MorphOS 3.8 was released. Wow, has it been that long - time does fly! Unfortunately the subsequent MorphOS 3.9 update in June 2015 has not fixed the issues I experienced on the Sam460CR back then, which is a shame.

That said, MorphOS works great on the Powerbook G4!

While I had MorphOS 3.9 fired up on the Powerbook G4, I took care of some other housekeeping -  namely, updates!

Fortunately the Grunch tool exists to make this less painful by letting you know what versions of games, tools and utilities you have installed on your system are out of date, and a simple install process to update them automatically.


After upgrading it's own database to reflect changes, Grunch gets busy checking my system for updates needed:


For those curious, MorphOS has a very different way of file management to AmigaOS 4.1, and yet still similar in some ways to AmigaOS.


As you can see above, drawer in MorphOS have a navigation bar across the top. This functionality is absent in AmigaOS 4.1 unless you run Directory Opus 5.91 in Workbench replacement mode.

In addition, in MorphOS you have the option to quickly navigate to previous folders by clicking on the directories in the navigation bar. This functionality is similar to Windows and Linux.

You can also choose the icon view, rather than the list view. As you can see it renders AmigaOS 3.1 icons (Newicons and MagicWB icons) very well indeed:


Grunch has now finished it's sweep and reported back with the updates needed - I get into it as there are quite a few I have to do:


Here is MPlayer being updated:

 
MorphOS 3.9 also has available a slightly newer version of Odyssey 1.24 web browser for it. The AmigaOS 4.1 version of Odyssey is 1.23, and for AROS it has a newer version of Odyssey than both of them - 1.25. Odyssey source code has recently been made available for anyone to develop so hopefully we will see more enhancements soon.


The MorphOS focused Morph.zone and WarmUp websites render well, as expected:



My MorphOS 3.9 system has the Chrysalis Pack installed from an earlier version of MorphOS 3.7 (I did an upgrade to 3.9 - not a fresh install). It installs most tools and utilities people need for a well functioning MorphOS installation, as shown below:


Currently the Chrysalis Pack for MorphOS 3.9 is temporarily unavailable while they fix some issues with it. Hopefully people will be able to get it again soon.

Preferences in MorphOS 3.9 are very different to AmigaOS 4.1. Instead of individual preference icons in the Prefs drawer, MorphOS combines all the preferences into the one Preferences application, in a similar way as MacOS X does:


When you select a setting, it opens within the same Preferences application:


Screen blanker settings - note that GLMatrix works flawlessly on the Powerbook G4:


Laptop specific settings:


USB settings - this is Poseidon, also used on AmigaOS 4.1 and AmigaOS 3.1/3.5/3.9 too.


Last, but not least, is MUI. MUI for MorphOS is different to the MUI developed for AmigaOS4.1 and AmigaOS 3.1. That is a shame, as it no doubt creates little incompatibilities here and there. Unlike the AmigaOS4.1 and 3.1 versions, registration keyfile for MUI is not needed.


Moving away from Preferences, I was keen to try out some of the new games for MorphOS, the main one being the MorphOS port of Amiga Racer, which I have been trying out on AmigaOS 4.1 on the AmigaOne X1000 recently as well.


As you would expect, it runs perfectly under MorphOS 3.9 with the Powerbook G4.


Live update worked well also, as the game was updated from 2.7 to 2.7a while I was testing it on MorphOS! Indeed it has been updated again while I have been writing this blog entry! :-)


Next, I got busy with setting up E-UAE 1.0.0 JIT under MorphOS 3.9. Previously I just used the right click run in E-UAE 0.8.49 WIP functionality added automatically by the Chrysalis Pack.

However, this is a bit limited for me as it is intended for booting ADF floppy disks. I really wanted to boot the backups of my Classic Amiga systems under MorphOS, and also use the new JIT for running AGA demos, as I already do under AmigaOS 4.1 on the AmigaOne X1000.

The setup can be a bit daunting, but fortunately there is a nice PDF document prepared  that explains how to get everything up and running on MorphOS. You can download it from here.

You can download the E-UAE_1.0.0 JIT for MorphOS from here.

The extracted E-UAE_1.0.0-JIT drawer looks like this:

 
So, time to grab a coffee while I copy the files across to the extracted E-UAE_1.0.0-JIT/HardDisks drawer:


While that was underway I went into the E-UAE_1.0.0-JIT/Conf drawer to start editing the configurations:



I copied the A500-hires.conf to a new A2000-hires.conf so I could setup the Amiga 2000 hard disk I copied across:


Here is the config file, showing the changes made - I highlighted the hard disk line I put in (note that the Amiga 2000 hard disk was labelled Apps: originally (long story), hence I kept the name so that the startup-sequence works without issues. For most people this would normally be called Workbench:


I then run E-UAE and call the A2000-hires.conf file from the MorphOS shell. BTW I am aware that the JIT has no benefit on an A2000 configuration, but bear with me - that is coming:


It works perfectly - my Amiga 2000 system now running under MorphOS 3.9 - excellent:


Here is the Shell showing the successful run of the emulation:


I made a mistake with the fastmem size as you can see, so I adjusted it back to 1 (instead of 3) and then it worked fine.

You can also run the emulation in a window (rather than full screen) by modifying the A2000-hires.conf line that reads:

amiga.screen_type=custom

to be:

amiga.screen_type=public



It then runs nicely in a window on the MorphOS desktop:


I put it back to full screen to enjoy my favourite thing on Classic Amigas - demos. I ran a number of demos - this one is of course Interference by Sanity:



So having got the Amiga 2000 system working on MorphOS 3.9, next up was the Amiga 4000D system. I still have both of these actual systems  - these are just backups of the hard disks from both so I can use my normal setups under emulation. It is also future proofing for that terrible day when they eventually stop working...

The Amiga 4000 hard disk runs AmigaOS 3.9, and I setup the config file as follows:


I then ran the emulation from the Shell as before:


Here is the resulting Amiga 4000 running with E-UAE JIT on MorphOS:


I had to run a few AGA demos to test out the JIT - Mad Wizards - yes I think so...looking good!



Ephidrena - Fake Elektronik Lightshow also runs well on MorphOS under E-UAE JIT:


As a final test I tried out some WHDLoad ECS games under the Amiga 4000 emulated system - it works well too:



The next MorphOS upgrade is expected to be 3.10, with support for the new AmigaOne X5000 system. This should be very exciting indeed as it should be faster than my current Powerbook G4 is!

For now MorphOS 3.9 is fun to play with...as long as the demos, mod players and trackers are working I am happy!


The MorphOS dev team are also working on MorphOS NG, to run on x86 PC's in the future. So there is certainly plenty of active development going on for MorphOS in 2016!

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Adelaide Amiga Meeting Jan 2016

January 25, 2016, 7:43 am
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Last night was the first meeting of the Adelaide Amiga user group for 2016 and it was a very full meeting place!

For this meeting the theme was Amiga and other Retro computers, and we certainly got an interesting variety of computers on display!

Here is a Amstrad CPC6128 Plus, Dick Smith 80 and a Commodore 64 which has a Raspberry Pi inside running C64 emulation!


As you can see, there were plenty of people and lots of lively conversation about all things retro computing!


Here you can see an Amiga 500 and A600 too:


Here is a closer look at the Amstrad:


I used to own an Amstrad CPC6128, but never seen or used this later model before! Looks great!



The Dick Smith System 80 was a static display, but great to see it!



Here is a closer look at the Raspberry Pi housed in a C64 running a Commodore 64 emulator under Emulation Station - you can see the Amiga Action replay and Amiga 1000 Digiview expansion on display too:



I also saw this interesting Amiga 500 on display:


It has a Commodore A590 expansion hard disk, using a SCSI2SD converter to run the hard disk from MicroSD card:


Firing up some WHDLoad games from the hard disk:


I then had to get to work setting up my AmigaOne X1000 for my presentation at the meeting - an Introduction to AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition:


I hooked up the X1000 Radeon HD card via HDMI out to the big screen and DVI out to a smaller screen simultaneously, so I could demonstrate to the audience, and still face the audience while doing so!



Unfortunately I couldn't film my presentation and present it, but I am sure some photos will turn up.

George took a photo of me doing the presentation and shared via Facebook - I hope he also doesn't mind me including it here:


The presentation I did ran for 30 minutes and covered some of the history of AmigaOS through the years, web resources to find more information, current vendors and developers, the features of the new AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition, what hardware it runs on and where to buy it from.

I will show one more taken by Paul of Retrospekt, who attended the meeting tonight and shared it via Facebook - hope he doesn't mind me including it:


I also demonstrated the AmigaOS 4.1 GUI itself, the AmigaOne systems it runs on (including emulation via Amiga Forever), showing Classic amiga apps running natively, MP3 playback, internet browsing, games, demos, classic amiga emulation and more.

I fielded a lot of Q&A after the presentation about AmigaOS 4.1 features, and I was glad to see plenty of interest in it.

I was given much thanks for the presentation and I am glad people enjoyed it!

After it finished I then set up the X1000 next to my C64 with a 1541 Ultimate II installed which I also brought along to show this meeting - here they are running together:


The C64 was running some great REU based demos (Ram Expansion Unit) from the 1541 Ultimate II via SD card.

I had some very interesting discussions with some C64 local Adelaide demo scene members and fans - it was great fun and I learnt a lot!


It was really great to see people getting into and trying out all the Retro hardware on show:



An Amiga 1200 was also on display, showing some nice effects on a normal TV:


A Phoenix Amiga 1000 system was also on display - for those unfamiliar, the Phoenix motherboard was a drop in replacement for the A1000 which added Workbench 2.0 and a lot of other functionality, and was designed right here in Adelaide.


The second presentation of the evening was a extremely rare opportunity to see a real MITS Altair 8800 running - courtesy of Theo who brought it in to demonstrate at the meeting:


This unit was sourced from Canada and is fully functional. It can boot CP/M and the original Microsoft Basic from floppy disk:


The presentation was fascinating, with a lot of history about the system and the work involved to make it run well again:


Standing room only by this stage!


Theo used a VT100 terminal to connect to the system:


Seriously, flick switches and flashing red lights on computers are just cool!


Here is CP/M up and running on the Altair 8800:


Here is the first original Microsoft Basic now loaded:


You can even play some games on it - I even had a brief play on it. Wow, I have now used an Altair 8800:


I took two videos of the Altair 8800 running during the presentation, which I have uploaded to YouTube. They are linked below:

https://youtu.be/BUKr6ep2Bxk

https://youtu.be/cnEJKOR1_L8 

The case was also taken off the Altair 8800 so we could take a closer look at the internals of this amazing working piece of history - the first real personal computer!




After the presentations were finished the conversations continued until late and it was really interesting to see lots of new faces for this meeting:




This meeting was a great success, with all the tables full. We also had a Commodore 128D on display and another Amiga 1200 used for video production on static display!

On the way out I couldn't help but notice one of the meeting attendees just had the best car rego plate so I had to grab a photo to include - Respect mate:


Thanks to everyone for coming and bringing their very interesting Retro computer systems to see and use on the night! I got back home after midnight and then stayed up until 2am to finish this blog post!

I really enjoyed the Adelaide Amiga meeting this month and can't wait for the next one!

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Classic Amiga emulation on AmigaOne A1222

February 1, 2016, 2:57 pm
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Since my last post on the AmigaOne A1222, I have been busy with the recent Adelaide Amiga meeting, but with that behind me, I am now working to get my Classic Amiga emulation environment on the A1222 sorted out.


Last time I tried it my Classic Amiga environment was running upside down on the A1222! (click to expand any images)

 
In addition to this I have been troubleshooting what I thought was an unrelated issue with some games not running right and found out the issue was the graphics card I was using on the A1222. It turned out they were related!

The card I am using on the A1222 is a Sapphire Radeon 7750 1Gb PCI-e card, which I originally used on the Sam460CR with the Radeon HD Southern Island drivers under AmigaOS 4.1 FE.

However, the Linux builds don't support that card for 3D acceleration. This is the same on the AmigaOne X1000 under Linux too, but I just didn't think about it being the cause of my upside down screen! Apparently this support is an issue for all PowerPC Linux builds. Thanks to Christian for helping me out with this.

It came to a obvious conclusion for me when I ran the non-SDL version of E-UAE JIT on the 7750 card and it worked fine, screen right way up.


With the example Slam Tilt on offer (as part of the image supplied), it was difficult to resist the urge to have a go before proceeding further!


Ok, well, I couldn't resist:


After a few games of Slam Tilt, I then turned my attention to setup my Amiga 4000D hard disk emulation environment on the A1222 (using non-SDL for now), and was very glad to see it ran well on the 7750 card:


The uaegfx drivers worked out of the box (I already had Picasso96 installed on my Amiga4000D), so I could quickly select my initial preferred 1024x768 screenmode in 24bit colour in Workbench Screenmode Prefs.

This is Amiga Writer running under AmigaOS 3.9 emulation on the A1222:


I was also pleased to see that internet access worked perfectly in the emulation as well. Here I am at Amigaworld.net while listening to some demo tunes from Delitracker II:


Next up you can see AGA demos and games ran well - Worms Directors Cut:


  I also ran TBL's Silkcut demo which ran at normal speed thanks to the JIT support in E-UAE. It is a great thing that it is possible to run even the demanding Classic Amiga demos at proper speed on the A1222:

 

Anyway, as you see it is easy to become distracted with Amiga stuff, even when betatesting! :-)

With the likely SDL problem now identified, I grabbed a Radeon HD 5450 1GB PCI-e card from my  X1000 (no longer used since upgrading to a higher card) to swap into the A1222. Here is the 5450 card I planned to use:



After installing it into the A1222 (in place of the 7750 card) and powering on, the upside down problem is now all fixed - the SDL version of E-UAE now also runs as expected, the right way up! YES!


With that sorted out, I went to check that my other issue around some games not working well under Debian was fixed, and I am glad to say they run properly now that 3D acceleration support is active:





Next, I set about setting a nicer resolution for my Amiga 4000 emulation on the A1222. This is easy enough to change in the E-UAE .uaerc file, modifying the gfx_width_windowed, gfx_height_windowed, gfx_width and gfx_height parameters.


Initially I tried the native 1920x1080 resolution Workbench in the Screen Prefs, which I have to admit looks spectacular in full screen, since it is the native resolution of the LG display:



With plenty of real estate on the Workbench, it is easy to stretch out:


However, in the end I settled on the 1280x720 resolution as it displays well in a window and full screen too. Here it is in a window, multitasking nicely with Audacious playing an MP3 in the background:



Having got that working well, I turned my attention to my Amiga 2000 system emulation, which is of course a 68000 system with ECS chipset. Accordingly I needed to create a new configuration file for it for E-UAE:


This needs to be a standard non-RTG setup, 68000, no JIT, ECS, Kickstart 1.3 ROM, no Zorro3 memory as it is not supported on Amiga 2000, etc. On initial power on I get the familiar boot screen:


After I added the hard disk to the configuration, it then booted into my Amiga 2000 Workbench 1.3 system:


I then immediately went to run some demos:


Red Sector Cebit 90 demo - yes indeedy:



I then played some modules using Hippoplayer under Workbench 1.3:


I still have a long way to go with my Classic Amiga setups on the AmigaOne A1222, but as you can see I have already made a good start!


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