====================================================================== ________ _________ ____ _|__ __ __|_______ _________ __\ _____ \\\\ \_ _/ //___// _____//______\ _____ \\ // \\\\ /. \\\\__ \/ __// \\ \\____. /// \\\\ /. \\ \\___\¯ /___///___\ /___\ \\_________//\\___\¯ /___// ¯ \/ ¯ ¯ \/. |¯ ¯|z!o ¯ ¯ \/ ¯ A M I G A |#020131 | U P D A T E |________| "SO THE WORLD MAY KNOW" ====================================================================== AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Amiga, Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- B I L L ' S S H O R T U P D A T E F O R J A N A M I G A O S 4 . 0 D E V E L O P M E N T N E W S A N D A S H O R T U P D A T E O N 3 . 9 U P D A T E O N A L T - W O A A M I G A E X P O U P D A T E N E W S A M I G B G S H O W N E W S S I I A S H O W U P C O M I N G I N F R A N C E I S S U E O N E O F I T A L I A N " B I T P L A N E " E L B O X S T A T E M E N T O N M E D I A T O R O P E N L E T T E R F R O M M A T A Y Editor's Thoughts and Introduction: Welcome to another Amiga year! Each new year we see as a community gives me hope for the future. And that despite having only a few stories for you this month. We've received suggestions that we become a bi-monthly publication because of the shrinking amount of real news in the Amiga community. However, we will resist that for now as it would make what stories we do have older than we'd like when you receive them. We'd rather send smaller issues, at least once a month. One thing you'll notice about this issue - there are many update stories about upcoming Amiga shows. Looks like fun. Hey, a year where Amiga Inc. continues to survive in a "down" economy, and make progress against their business plan, plus we have several shows to enjoy throughout the world, could be very interesting and positive. At least, we'll start the year hoping so. Brad Webb, Editor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- E-mail to the E-ditor: 31 Dec 2001 Hello Brad I just read your latest Update. In it you corrected the information about AmiWest from 2001 to read 2002. Ah-ha! I think you still have the date wrong. You list AmiWest 2002 as being on 28 and 29 July 2002. July 28 is Sunday and July 29 is Monday. Normally AmiWest is held on the last weekend in July, Saturday and Sunday, not Sunday and Monday. According to my calendar the AmiWest Show should be on Saturday, 27 July and Sunday, 28 July 2002. At least the 27th and 28th are the dates I plan on attending. Regards, Harry ~~~~~~ Harry, Sigh. I just print 'em as I get 'em sometimes. I suspect your calendar reading skills got the right information. Maybe it's a clever trick on AmiWest's part to keep getting a bit of information in the E-mail to the E-ditor section. :-) Thnks for the correction, Brad ====== 5-Jan-02 Mr. Webb, Yes, I remember your "Dos Lab" Articles in "JUMPDISK". I would be extremely surprised if Microsoft did not engineer Amiga's demise. Walt You've certainly been a part of the community for some time. Thanks for staying with us! "Jumpdisk" was quite the publication. (And I appreciate being remembered.) When I look at recent Microsoft product announcements and plans, it does look to me as if they are after the market Amiga has staked out. Yes, it makes me nervous. Regards, Brad ====== Brad, How do I change my email address? I can't find a way to do that in the newsletter... someting you might want to add. Myron ~~~~~~ Myron, Sending us a note is the best way. amigaupdate@globaldialog.com is the address to use, if there's anyone else out there wondering. Brd ---------------------------------------------------------------------- B I L L ' S S H O R T U P D A T E F O R J A N Greetings one and all: I have received many e-mails reminding me of the need to announce the STB OEM partner. We at Amiga are well aware that it was scheduled for last week and, we were expecting the legal department of the partner to have approved the press release. Unfortunately when one is dealing with multi-billion dollar companies it can, more often than not, take longer than planned. We did receive the OK to announce to our developers and this was done last week. All NDA developers know the details of the signed OEM deal. However, we are going to have to wait a little while longer for the rest of the Amiga community to see the public release. I am sorry for the delay, but it will be worth the wait. In fact, we will probably have a couple more that we can announce at the same time. We should have the public announcement out by next week. Stay tuned ! Bill McEwen CEO Amiga Inc. bill@amiga.com {Note from Brad: STB=Set Top Box; NDA=Non Disclosure Agreement; OEM=Original Equipment Manufacturer.} ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I G A O S 4 . 0 D E V E L O P M E N T N E W S Leuven, Belgium, January 21, 2002. Let me start off by wishing everybody in the Amiga community all the best in 2002! As you know, on November 1, 2001 Hyperion Entertainment entered into a license agreement with Amiga Inc. to produce Amiga OS 4.0 for PPC based systems. Since my presentation in Cologne at the Amiga 2001 show on November 17-18, very substantial progress was made which I am now ready to share with you. Some of you have expressed some misgivings about the lack of progress reports on OS 4.0 development but I hope I can count on your understanding as all of us have been extremely busy, even through the holiday season, to bring you what is unquestionably the most ambitious OS upgrade since Amiga OS 3.0. Now I know that many of you are sceptical because of the scope of the project and because similar promises were made in the past. To those people I would like to point out that Hyperion Entertainment does not enter into contracts lightly and that we have a track-record carrying out commercial development and contract-work for Windows, Mac, Linux, Amiga and Amiga DE/Elate. We have brought together a truly impressive development team of some 25 people building on the OS 3.5 and 3.9 development team whilst adding several well-known and respected Amiga developers to the mix. Im very pleased to say that Dave Haynie has agreed to serve as a technical consultant. Youll be hard-pressed to find a more experienced team for the job! The feature-set of OS 4.0 has now been finalised to a large extent. We cant guarantee that every single feature listed here will make it in the initial release of OS 4.0 but this the feature-set that we have contractually committed to delivering. You will also note that for the first time in many, many years very substantial work is being done on Intuition, one of the core elements of the Amiga OS. Having a PPC native version of Intuition available will make a very noticeable difference speed-wise. We intend for OS 4.0 to be disk-based or at least partly disk-based and partly flashrom based even for current Amigas. More about that in a later update. We also intend for OS 4.0 to be installed effortlessly from CD and from scratch without the need for an existing OS install. As we have taken on more work (Intuition etc.) and folded some of the functionality originally planned for OS 4.2 into OS 4.0, this inevitably means the original February release-date might slip somewhat but all in all we believe that the end-result will be technologically more satisfying. Come end of January, I hope to have the biggest chunk of the legal work for OS 4.0 behind me which will allow me to provide you with more regular updates. I know full well that your patience has been sorely tested over the last years so I understand your impatience and even your scepticism but I can assure you that the Amiga OS is in good hands and that we will deliver. In closing, I would like to invite everybody out there who (out of an understandable frustration with the neglect of the Amiga OS by its respective past owners) decided to take matters in his own hands, to work with us, rather than against us. Ben Hermans, LL.M Managing partner Hyperion Entertainment VOF Amiga OS 4.0 provisional feature list Exec Second Generation (Exec SG) Exec is the kernel of the AmigaOS and is currently written in 68K assembly. Exec is being re-written in C and new functionality will be introduced to allow the deployment of OS 4.x on any suitable PPC hardware. The following features are planned: o Hardware abstraction layer o Virtual memory o New library interface o Resource tracking and management o Optional memory protection o WarpOS backwards compatibility 68K Just in Time emulation PPC native TCP/IP stack o - implemented as a single shared library o - compatible with the Amiga standard "bsdsocket" API, as defined by the AmiTCP product o - enhanced API for more control over the inner workings and configuration o - built-in DHCP client (e.g. for cable modems) o - Internet Superserver (inetd) o - IP filtering and networking address translation o - drivers for asynchronous PPP (dial-up networking) and PPP over Ethernet (for ADSL and cable modems) o - AmiSSL V2.0 PPC native filesystem (FFS2) FFS2 is a fully backwards compatible re-implementation in C of the Fast File System. It supports media > 4 GByte, and a new variant of the file/directory name storage format which allows for long file names (up to 108 characters). Recovery and Salvage tools Comprehensive suite of salvage and recovery tools including Salvage, Undelete, Unformat, Repair, RDBSalv, ReOrg/Defrag, Check Integrity etc. PPC native RTG system The PPC native RTG system (based on Picasso 96 V3) allows for the use of modern graphics cards on the Amiga. Drivers for all current Zorro II/III cards as well as drivers for the Permedia 2/3, Voodoo 3, Matrox G450/G550 and ATI Radeon are planned. An arithmetically optimised PPC native version of layers.library is also planned. Warp3D New version of Warp3D, the powerful yet low-level 3D API which is both available on the classic Amiga and intent/Amiga DE and which allows developers to rapidly migrate 3D content between both platforms. Drivers for Permedia 2/3, Voodoo 3, Matrox G450/G550 and ATI Radeon are planned. OpenGL 1.3 support (Mesa 4.0) OpenGL is a cross-platform (Mac, Linux, Windows, AmigaDE etc.) high-level 3D API originally developed by Silicon Graphics. Support for OpenGL 1.3 will be provided by porting the open source project Mesa (which now passes all SGI compliance tests) which will sit on top of Warp3D so that graphics-card functionality not currently offered by the OpenGL API may be supported nonetheless. PPC native RTA system (AHI) A Retargetable Audio System allows the use of plug-in soundcards (PCI or Zorro II). AHI by Martin Blom is currently the de facto standard on the Amiga and a PPC native version will be offered with support for a wide variety of soundcards including but not limited to all current Amiga soundcards and the Soundblaster 128 and Live (EMU10K1) cards. PPC native Intuition and Reaction Reaction is the BOOPSI based GUI system for the Amiga, introduced in OS 3.5 and extended in OS 3.9. Existing ROM classes will be enhanced or even rewritten for a betterand more consistent look. The requester handling will be improvedas well as the Intuition menus. Moreover a new preferences system will allow the user to change more aspects of the GUI. Other features: o Drag and Drop support o New ghosted look Intuition will sport the following new features (more planned): o New DrawInfo pens o Enhanced window borders o Resolution-adaptive system gadgets o User-selectable styles for system glyphs and 3D frames with support for external plug-ins o Configurable look for proportional gadgets o New-style (3D recessed) disabled look for gadgets where applicable o Gad-Tools enhancements (pop-up capability for cycle gadgets etc.) o Full-user control of Workbench palette SCSI drivers for SCRIPTS based SCSI controllers WarpInput API (working title) WarpInput is an API for multimedia controller devices (akin to DirectInput on Windows) which allows a programmer to provide support through one API for a wide variety of input-devices such as keyboard, mouse, joysticks (analog and digital), track-ball, Playstation controller etc. Minimal USB stack PPC native datatypes New HDToolbox replacement Support for TrueType/OpenType fonts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A N D A S H O R T U P D A T E O N 3 . 9 24 Jan 2002 Euro update for AmigaOS 3.9 from Haage&partner Finally we are able to release the Euro update for AmigaOS 3.9. It took a bit longer because there were some more things to consider. Many thanks to the all involved people. This update especially contains keymaps and Amiga bitmap fonts that make it possible to use the Euro symbol on the Amiga. It also contains a German Euro keymap for AmigaOS XL. Download {Taken from the Czech Amiga News website, http://amiga.realdreams.cz/ Brad} Haage&partner website http://www.haage-partner.com/e.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- U P D A T E O N A L T - W O A 9 Jan 2002 14:40:17 +0100 Huddersfield Amiga User Group The North of England's Second Great Amiga Show coming up on the 23rd February 2002 3 floors of attractions including a much larger games area and a series of Workshops throughout the day. More details available now at:- http://www.alt-woa.org HAUG officially announces the Amiga Arena, a new attraction for 2002, Amiga Inc and partners will be demonstrating their hardware and software at a special location at the show. Fleecy Moss of Amiga® reports that a few people have been asked to arrange a demo on the Amiga stand - Matthew Kille of Zeoneo, and Ron van Herk from Computer City are two that have agreed. Fleecy has also asked SSEYO who are unable to answer yet, and said "we should have a Zaurus or two there to represent Sharp". Zeoneo aims to build a reputation for high standards in Amiga software production. Their exclusive commitment to the AmigaOS and AmigaDE systems will result in a number of products being released over time, beginning with our first two PDA titles Convex and Planet Zed. Zeoneo will demonstrate their products at the show running on a desktop PC, and a couple of PDAs -- including the new Sharp SL5000D. Zeoneo might very well have something new to demonstrate, but details of that won`t be given out until the actual release date. The Zeoneo Web Site details the two products currently on sale for AmigaDE. Computer City also operate under the Sultan (systems & software) brand and have published the EuroCD series, and more recently Audio Evolution and MediaPoint, now developed by Sultan. Computer City plan to bring MediaPoint RTG, the first version of the next-generation MediaPoint, which will support graphics cards, soundcards and new filetypes. They also plan to demonstrate Audio Evolution 4, the successor to Audio Evolution targeted directly at the AmigaOne and other powerful PPC Amiga computers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I G A E X P O U P D A T E N E W S Amiga Expo Announces New Exhibitors and More It's an exciting new year for Amiga Expo as we've begun 2002 by signing up a brand new bunch of exhibitors and speakers for the show happening on March 29th-31st at the Marriott Hunt Valley Inn. Exhibitors MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) developer Arcade-in-a-Box will be exhibiting their all-in-one solution for creating a home arcade experience. Video Hardware will be exhibiting and demoing Newtek's Video Toaster[2] and the latest Lightwave. Extreme Corporation will be showing Amiga Extreme - their new AmigaOS XL Amiga solution. Ideas2Reality will be showing the Reality Station and their line of Amiga, PPC and x86 solutions. FWD Computing will have their line of CDROMS for Amiga, Linux and Windows or sale at the show. Speakers We'll have speakers showing MAME products, video editing solutions, Amiga advancements, classic computer and game celebrities and much more. Banquet We plan to host a celebrity panel at our banquet discussing the future of computing across many platforms. Be served wonderful food in a festive atmosphere amongst your fellow enthusiasts and hear about what's to come! Free Exhibit Space There is also a limited amount of space available, at no charge, to anyone interested in exhibiting their MAME or arcade game cabinets at the show. People interested in exhibiting classic computers and console game machines are also invited to take advantage of this free display space. You must contact us immediately if you'd like to participate. Visit our web site (www.amigaexpo.com) and order your tickets online or by phone or mail. You best hurry as advance purchase discounts will be ending soon, the discount rooms at the hotel are filling up and the banquet has LIMITED seating that is selling out fast! Kermit Woodall www.amigaexpo.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I G B G S H O W N E W S 30 Jan 2002 AmiGBG 2002 is the name of an Amiga fair that will be held in Gothenburg, the pearl of the westcoast, in 2002, more precisely on the 2nd of march which is a saturday. Last time an Amiga fair was organized in Sweden was back in 1998 when the now discontinued AmiTech was organized in Wasahallarna in Stockholm. Now we think that it´s about time for a new fresh start for the Amiga here in Sweden. To help the amigausers that are still active to get together and establish new connections this is an attempt to gather the forces. If you happen to be curious or even a beginner on the Amiga and want to know what will happen for the time ahead this is a golden opportunity to get an answer to all your questions. We are all facing an exciting future and the best way to take a joint step into the new era is to get together on AmiGBG 2002 in Gothenburg! Tickets to AmiGBG 2002 released 2002-01-17 The Ticket shop is now finished. New exhibitor: EB 2002-01-17 Explosives, Brother! will attend the fair. Pictures of the venue now online 2002-01-15 On the "Where" page you can now find pictures of the venue where AmiGBG 2002 will take place. New exhibitor: S.U.A - Swedish Usergroup of Amiga 2002-01-11 A new exhibitor is ready for AmiGBG 2002, S.U.A - Swedish Usergroup of Amiga. http://www.weemeet.net/wwwamigbgcom/omamigbg/omamigbg.asp ---------------------------------------------------------------------- S I I A S H O W U P C O M I N G I N F R A N C E Biggest Alternative Computer Show in the world for November in France 23 Jan 2002 Hello from France, The 2002 autumn will be the birth of the great SIIA (International Alternative Computer Exposition in French) in the little town of Sainte Marie de Redon (South of Britanny) near Nantes and Rennes. This expo would like to be THE best expo in the world of alternative computing ! All the formats will be represented : AmigaOS, TOS, RiscOS, Linux, BeOS, QNX, BSD, CPC and many, many more... This expo will be implemented on one week end in november 2002. Some hotels services will be available near Sainte Marie with good prices. You can go to the expo by car, train, boat (on the Vilaine river) and by plane (tourism plane). The cost to be represented at the expo with a stand will be very cheap (maybe free). This mail is done to invite you to join us to the party ! You can have some information with : Mail : webmaster@toutou-net.com frederic.boisdron@atosorigin.com Phone : +33 299 720 663 (after 5:00 PM) +33 677 358 726 (portable) Or by Paper mail : BOISDRON Frédéric La Belle Etoile 35600 SAINTE MARIE ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I S S U E O N E O F I T A L I A N " B I T P L A N E " 30 Jan 2002 Finally available is issue #1 of "Bitplane" - the only Amiga printed magazine in italy with a bi-monthly CD-Rom. This issue also has another free CD, Amiga.it issue 1. Bitplane is the only Amiga printed magazine in Italy. It's bi-monthly, subscription only, 64 pages with cover CD magazine. Issue 1 has a special report from Pianeta Amiga 2001 and the Amiga 2001 show. The review of Amiga OS XL, the italian Amiga 3.9 book, Prostation Audio, Physics Laboratory Junior, Aminet 44, Amiga.it 8, Light Rom 8 and Brave new World. There are also tutorials of PHP, Candy Factory and Workbench. A complete guide to Linux, QNX and MorphOS. A preview of Freespace and the review of Shogo and Payback. Last but not least comes the Emulazione with emulator news and reviews. The magazine is available at 7.75 euros + postage. For subscription please consult our website www.bitplane.it or e-mail us at info@bitplane.it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- E L B O X S T A T E M E N T O N M E D I A T O R 29 Jan 2002 MEDIATOR AND SHARK FULLY COMPATIBLE Some news services have quoted untrue statements made by Mr. Harald Frank, VMC, in the Mediator Mailing List about products made by Elbox Computer. Here we would like to explain: Since 16 January 2002, Mr. Harald Frank has been systematically breaching the netiquette binding in the Mediator Mailing List by way of sending messages offensive and abusive against our company, employees of our company, our products and -- most of all -- even our product users. Mr. Harald Frank presented himself in these messages as a person completely devoid of elementary principles of personal humane culture. It is evident now that his technical knowledge on hardware comes from gossips from third persons -- and his ideas do not reflect actual and valid technical knowledge. To make it clear beyond any doubt on our products: ALL the Mediator versions (Mediator PCI 1200, Mediator PCI ZIV and Mediator PCI 4000), starting with the very first piece sold may work completely problem-free with SharkPPC (+) G3/G4 cards. (There is NO need for any hardware update). Due to Mr. Harald Frank statements, which were far from cultural and used offensive language, grossly breaching Yahoo Terms of Service, we have applied to the Yahoo administrators to remove him from this list. Best regards, Mariusz Wloczysiak ELBOX COMPUTER, Press Department http://www.elbox.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- O P E N L E T T E R F R O M M A T A Y Warsaw, Poland 2002-01-08 Some time has passed since I wrote a similar letter. As the beginning of a new year is a good time for changes I would like to share with you some information which will surely get your interest. Half a year has passed since we introduced in the market our main product, the first PCI bridge for Amiga 3000/4000 computers which could be connected to the Zorro 3 slots - "Prometheus". It was an interesting period for us, which allowed us to gain a lot of valuable experience. First of all I would like to thank very much all the Prometheus users for buying our product and for the faith you have in us. Also I would like to thank all those who appreciated our efforts and objectively judged the company and the product. We always try to keep our promises. I would consider it my personal failure if I had disappointed you. For several months we have been working really hard trying to keep up the development of our company in such difficult times for the IT market. We entered a fruitful co-operation with many firms and people, for example the unwavering Amiga Inc. (our first game for Amiga DE - Boing'em is already on the market, and next are being prepared); with a little help from us Amiga is creating AmigaOS 4.0. Irreplaceable Hyperion provides us with its wonderful 3D drivers and the great team: Alexander Kneer and Tobias Abt continue to give us newer and newer 2d drivers. I would like to thank all the above mentioned as well as a whole lot of other companies and people whose names I cannot specify for lack of space [I'm awfully sorry!] for a possibility of co-operation, their patience and trust they have in us; I do hope that our acquaintance/co-operation will prove even more fruitful in future than it has proved so far. Now I would like to present to you the results of our hard work. First of all, "Prometheus". We have finished the work on the firmware upgrade. What does it mean? From now on, "Prometheus" can operate more PCI cards, and especially Fast Ethernet cards, TV tuners and soundcards. The drivers for these cards will appear very quickly after we do the upgrade. The first one will probably be available in this month. I would like to remind you here that our drivers are completely free and the firmware upgrade will be free as well. To make things easier for you, we prepared two options for providing you with the upgrade. Option one is for people who do not want (or are not keen on doing so) to do anything on their own. Those of you can send your Prometheus cards to us (or your local dealer) and the upgrade will be done and the card returned to you. Of course, you will have to pay the shipment costs and wait. Therefore, there is a second option: you can order a programming device which allows to flash the Prometheus chips just like any flashROM. The device is connected to the serial port, flashing lasts some seconds and that is all. For people who already own Prometheus boards, the programming device is FREE. You just have to order it from your local dealer or directly from us. This does not, of course, apply to people who will buy our board from now on. The chips there are upgraded with the latest firmware flash, so you do not have to worry. The next change is connected with the Euro coming to the EU. From now on, the suggested price of the Prometheus board is 219 EURO. To convince you even stronger to buy our product, we now add to each Prometheus sold some bonus software - a great program for learning English language - English Teacher 5. And last, but not least: our webpage has changed. Many things have been rebuilt, the files section should now be more clear, as well as the whole page. We hope you will like it. We are launching the foreign side of our Shop very soon, therefore people from countries without local dealers will be able to buy our products. I hope that is good news for you. We will inform you as things progress, according to our slogan "No promises, just solutions". We have not forgotten about the PPC cards. We are working together with independent developers and it seems like we will be able to give you the solutions for the time Amiga OS 4.0 is shipped. Please support us! Yours, Filip Dab-Mirowski CEO http://www.matay.pl/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Update on the net: All back issues available at: http://www.globaldialog.com/~amigaupdate/index.html Stop by and check out our archive! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified. ====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ A M I G A /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ A M I G A U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ U P D A T E / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_ amigaupdate@globaldialog.com ======================================================================