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Issue 16, Autumn 2003

Find out all about

this feature-packed

Zorro card inside.

AmigaOne-XE G4

We preview the fastest PowerPC

motherboard in Eyetech’s range.

Improve your digital photos

and scans with our image

enhancement tutorial.

Contents

News

Editorial

PageStream

for Amiga OS 4

Issue 16

Autumn 2003

W elcome to another

Chandler’s Amiga OS 4 Update

on page 10. This time he

reports some interesting

developments relating to

developing programs for OS 4

and some changes in priority

that should mean the

AmigaOne version is available

earlier than would otherwise

have been possible. This

should please Mick and

AmigaOne owners everywhere!

After our review in issue 15

Genesi released a major

upgrade to their MorphOS

operating system (which

features wide compatibility with

68k and PPC Amiga

programs). Version 1.4 ﬁxes

many of the issues pointed out

in our earlier review and

incorporates “Trance”, the new

JIT 68k emulator so we set

Sam Byford to work on an

update. The result is a

detailed, and to my mind very

balanced, look at the new

version on page 18.

Another program that has

recently received a big upgrade

is Hollywood. Vversion 1.5

adds even more ﬂexibility, but

not a content creation GUI, to

an already impressive

application. I summarise the

enhancements and give my

verdict on the new version in

the review on page 26.

Grasshopper LLC has

announced that they will

support AmigaOS 4 with a new

version of their professional

DTP package, PageStream 4.

As regular readers will know,

PageStream is a powerful

program and, I think most

people will agree, one of best

Amiga applications currently in

development. Apparently

PageStream is running on a

beta version of OS 4 already

and the developers will

continue to update it to take

advantage of new OS features.

Other recent PageStream

news has included the release

of a Linux version that sports a

beautiful anti-aliased text

display. Hopefully this feature

may be added to the new

Amiga version too. The

standard retail price of the full

version of PageStream has

been reduced to just $99

(approximately £65) making it

much more affordable. There is

also a new professional edition

which costs $149 (£97), this

edition is based on the same

program but includes the

TextFX, Gary’s Effects and

Borders1 & 2 plug-ins plus

Paper Direct and Home &

Ofﬁce templates which were

previously available as extras.

An upgrade to the pro version

is available for $50 (£33).

Contents

News

Editorial ..............................2

News Items ........................3

Amiga OS 4 Update ........ 10

Features

Alan Redhouse Column.....8

Fleecy Moss Column .........9

AmigaOne XE G4 Preview

........................................ 12

Divided Loyalties, Historical

Similarities....................... 16

Reviews

MorphOS 1.4................... 18

AmiAtlas 6....................... 22

Hollywood 1.5 ................. 26

Algor USB ....................... 29

Perfect Paint 2.93 ........... 30

MAS-Player..................... 33

PD Paradise.................... 34

Mediator and SuperTV.... 36

ScummVM ...................... 38

Support

Tales of Tamar................. 39

Image Enhancement

Tutorial............................. 42

“C” Programming Tutorial 46

bumper 52-page edition

of Total Amiga! As I write this

the production of this issue has

gone very smoothly and it

looks like it will be out on time.

This has largely been made

possible by all the people who

contributed to this issue, as

you will see there are several

different authors and a wide

variety of subject matter.

Dave Pitcher’s “C” article on

page 46 is the ﬁrst

programming tutorial we’ve

had in the magazine. Dave has

chosen to start with the basics

and plans to build up to more

complex topics in future

instalments. Thanks to Dave

for having the courage to start

work on such a big subject.

AmigaOne-XE G4

motherboards started to arrive

earlier in the year but it took

Eyetech a while to clear the

backlog of orders. Mick Sutton

received his board just after

issue 15 went to press and

now brings us a preview of the

board. Although it currently

only runs Linux, Mick has been

able to talk about his choice of

the board itself and

components with an eye

toward future OS 4

compatibility.

ﬁnding software currently in

development so we thought it

would be worth reviewing. Find

out what Mick Sutton thought

of the latest version in his

review on page 22.

The Linux version of PageStream sports this slick anti-aliased

display; hopefully Grasshopper will implement it for Amiga OS 4.

An upgrade from Amiga

PageStream 4.1 to the OS 4.0

version costs $40 (£26) and

the full AmigaOS 4.0 package

costs $99 (£65) as mentioned

above. If you buy PageStream

for OS 4 before it is released

the 68k Amiga version will be

supplied immediately with a

free upgrade when the new OS

is available.

For more information and to

order on-line visit the

Grasshopper site at:

www.grasshopperllc.com

We have a winner

In issue 15 we gave you the

chance to win a copy of

Hyperion’s Quake 2 for the

Amiga by answering three

simple questions. The

competition has now been

drawn from all the correct

entries and the lucky winner is

Paul Mellor of Northumberland

in the UK who will have his

prize by the time you read this.

Our thanks go to Hyperion and

Forematt Home Computing

who donated the prize.

AWeb and KHTML

Little visible progress has been

made on AWeb since the

original developer, Yvon Rozijn,

released the source code in

2002. Plans are afoot,

however, to kick-start the

development by adopting an

alternative HTML rendering

engine. This approach should

help overcome the problems

small development teams tend

to have in keeping up with the

latest web technologies. In a

recent announcement the

AWeb open source team say

they are considering the

KHTML engine developed for

KDE’s Konqurer browser on

Linux. KHTML was recently

selected by Apple to form the

core of their Safari browser for

MacOS X so the AWeb team

are keeping good company

with their choice.

the Document

Object Model. By

using just the

HTML rendering

engine it should be

possible to retain

an Amiga look and

feel without porting

a complex user

interface from

another platform.

To read more and

to ﬁnd out how to

contribute to the development

effort visit: aweb.sunsite.dk

As usual I’m looking forward to

reading your comments on this

issue and any suggestions you

might have for the future. Don’t

hesitate to email me at the

address below.

Unlike the current version of

AWeb, and indeed the other

Amiga browsers, KHTML is

fully HTML 4 and XML

compliant and supports

Cascading Style Sheets and

Enjoy the magazine,

Robert Williams

editor@totalamiga.org

Mailing Lists .................... 51

Next Issue ....................... 51

KDE’s Konqueror browser

uses the KHTML engine.

On that note, our Amiga OS 4

coverage continues with John

While AmiAtlas is not a new

application it is the only route

About Total Amiga

Legalese

Colour Screenshots etc. . 52

Total Amiga is published quarterly

by South Essex Amiga Link.

Editor: Robert Williams

Design: Robert Williams

Contributors: Sam Byford

Markus Castro

John Chandler

Peter Gordon

Jonathan Haddock

Fleecy Moss

David Pitcher

Alan Redhouse

Kelvin Shirley

Mick Sutton

Proofreading: Sean Courtney

Sam Byford

Sharon Sutton

Contact Us

If you have any queries

suggestions or want to contact us

for any reason please use one of

the following:

EMail: editor@totalamiga.org

WWW: http://www.totalamiga.org/

Post: Total Amiga,

26 Wincoat Drive,

BENFLEET,

Essex, SS7 5AH,

UK.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 569937

(19:00 - 22:00

UK time only please)

Only Amiga Software

Made it Possible

Total Amiga is designed and laid

out using:

Hardware:

Home built x86 PC

AMD Athlon XP 2000+

nVidia gForce 2 MX400

256Mb RAM, 40Gb HDD.

Software:

Amithlon by Bernie Meyer et. al.

Amiga OS 3.9 by Amiga

PageStream 4.1 by Softlogik

ImageFX 4.5 by Nova Design

Perfect Paint 2.93

by Georges Halvadjian

Photogenics 5 by Paul Nolan

Final Writer 5 by Softwood

Ghostscript 8.00 from artofcode

ported to AmigaOS by

Whoosh777.

There are also some essential

utilities we couldn’t live without:

Directory Opus 5, SGrab, MCP,

Turbo Print 7, MakeCD.

Our thanks to the creators of this

and all the other great Amiga

software out there.

Total Amiga is entirely created

using Amiga software, no other

platforms are used at any stage of

the design or layout process.

Fonts

The body text of Total Amiga is set

in Triumvirate Normal as supplied

with PageStream, the heading

typeface is Forgotten Futurist by

Ray Larabie. Take a look at Ray’s

huge range of freeware fonts at

http://www.larabiefonts.com and

his commercial foundry at

http://www.typodermic.com.

The views expressed in this

magazine are those of the author

of each piece, they do not

necessarily reﬂect the views of

the editor, other contributors or

SEAL.

Please Note: Total Amiga is

produced by the editor and

contributors in their spare time.

While we always strive to produce

the magazine on time and include

all the advertised contents this is

not always possible due to other

commitments. The price you pay

for Total Amiga covers our costs

and nothing more, we don’t make

a proﬁt from it.

If you wish to contact a contributor

send your message to one of the

addresses in this section.

Amiga is a registered trademark

and the Amiga logo, the “Boing

Ball” device, AmigaDOS, Amiga

Kickstart, Amiga Workbench,

Autoconﬁg, Bridgeboard, and

Powered by Amiga are

trademarks of AMIGA Inc.

“Amigan” is copyright by Bob

Scharp and used with his

permission.

All other trademarks mentioned

are the property of their

respective owners.

Advertisers

Amiga .............................. 15

Amigaworld.net ............... 37

Eyetech ............... 24 and 25

Fore-matt Home Computing

........................................ 17

Kicksoft ............... 14 and 41

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2003

2

3

News

News

Video Amphibians

Bytes...

IBrowse gets

Bytes...

Documented

Keyboards for

CatWeasel

Goodbye,

The latest version of Frogger,

the movie player for AmigaOS,

PowerUp, WarpUP and

MorphOS by Sebastian

Jedruszkiewicz, adds more

features and support for more

video codecs. The key

changes in the new version

include:

• Support for ASV1, ATI VCR1

and ATI VCR2 video codecs.

• More settings can now be

saved in the preferences ﬁle

(so they don’t have to be set

on the command line).

• New AREXX commands

enabling more powerful GUIs

to be created.

• Seeking in ASF, WMV and

WMA ﬁles has been added.

• Improved subtitle-rendering

engine.

• Problems with AVI audio

synchronisation ﬁxed.

• MPEG 4 decoder optimised.

Petra, we’ll

miss you!

Individual computer’s CatWeasel

Mk III ﬂipper interface card has a

socket for an Amiga 4000

keyboard (or an A2000/3000

keyboard using a standard

adapter), as the card uses a PCI

slot this is a handy way to use a

classic Amiga keyboard on a

computer with PCI slots. Chris

Hodges (of Poseidon fame) has

released a driver for this

CatWeasel port that uses the

OpenPCI library. This means the

driver can be used with all PCI

systems supported by OpenPCI,

that is: Amithlon, MorphOS,

Prometheus and GRex. The

driver also works on Amiga

systems with the CatWeasel

ﬂipper connected to a Zorro slot.

This option is mainly useful for

A1200 systems with a Zorro bus

board since all Amigas with Zorro

slots as standard already have a

keyboard socket.

The driver is freeware and can

be downloaded from:

www.platon42.de/

download.html#tools

More information on the

CatWeasel can be found at:

www.ami.ga

Since our review in issue 15,

Dave Fisher has completed

comprehensive documentation

for the new release of IBrowse.

Unsurprisingly the

documentation is presented in

HTML format and includes

plenty of illustrations. I have to

say that this is the best

documentation I have seen for

any Amiga product in a long

time. It covers all the program’s

features and has a good

balance of reference material

with short tutorials and step-by-

step instructions. Many less

obvious features

of the program

are pointed out,

as are potential

pit-falls. The

documentation

covers complex

topics such as

Postscript

printing and fonts

in a detailed and

understandable

way. Oh, and it has a quote

from the Total Amiga review on

the front page!

The Toad GUI (above) and snapshot window (below).

The improved AREXX support

in FroggerNG has lead to a

new GUI called Toad being

released for the program.

Unlike earlier interfaces, which

just provided a comfortable

way of setting command line

parameters, Toad provides

VCR-like buttons that can be

used to control a movie as it is

playing. Dave “Targhan”

Crawford has written Toad in

ARexx using rxMUI; its

interface can be customised

using graphical skins. The

latest release (1.2a) also

includes a utility called

“Frogger Snap” enabling still

frames from a movie to be

captured.

Frogger is shareware and

costs 15USD to register. On-

line registration is available

from the program web site via

RegNet. Both Frogger and

Toad can be downloaded from:

frogger.rules.pl

After ﬁve years at the helm Petra

Struck has decided to leave the

excellent German Amiga news

web site amiga-news.de (which

also has a good English

translation). To help ﬁll her shoes

the site are looking for two news

editors and other assistants. On

a personal note I’d like to thank

Petra and the Amiga-news.de

team for their dedicated work on

the web site and in particular

their excellent show coverage.

The announcement (in German)

is at:

www.amiga-news.de/de/news/

AN-2003-09-00035-DE.html

Complex topics such as printing are covered

in the new documentation.

The IBrowse documentation is

a free download from:

www.iospirit.de

Pegasos II

MPlayer

for

Plans Emerge

MorphOS

Duke Nukem:

GhostScript 8

Genesi have released some

further information regarding

the release of their forthcoming

Pegasos II motherboard. There

will be an initial production run

of 600 boards followed by a

run of 5000 boards when the

boards and MorphOS are

considered to be ready for a

wider market. 100 G4 Pegasos

IIs will be available for

Pegasos I owners wanting to

upgrade, the cost will be

200Euro plus a 35Euro

handling charge which includes

the return of the Pegasos I.

Upgrades made through a

reseller will incur a reduced

handling charge of 10Euro.

Pegasos II boards with either a

G3 or G4 processor will be

available through resellers and

the PegasosPPC web site at

prices of 299Euro and 499Euro

respectively, not including local

taxes. Detailed speciﬁcations

of the Pegasos II such as

processor speeds and built-in

features had not been released

when we went to press, nor

had a release date. For the

latest details visit:

www.morphos-news.de

A port of GhostScript 8.0 to the

Amiga has recently been

completed by someone going

under the moniker of

“whoosh777". This is a

considerable improvement over

the previous 6.50 release where

Amiga development seemed to

have stalled. The other important

factor is that “whoosh” has

incorporated support for

TurboPrint which was missing

from the 6.50 port. Ghostscript is

an open source utility for dealing

with Postscript ﬁles and the

formats based on Postscript

including EPS and PDF.

GhostScript can convert between

formats, display ﬁles on screen,

print them or generate a bitmap

image. As an example here at

Total Amiga we use Ghostscript

to convert PostScript output from

PageStream into a PDF ﬁle that

we can check on screen and give

to our printers.

Download the 8.0 port from:

www.whoosh777.pwp.

blueyonder.co.uk/atlast.html

“DET Nicolas” has ported the

popular open source media

player, MPlayer, to MorphOS.

The player supports many

audio and video formats

including MPEG4 (DiVX), DVD

and SVCD. Both types of video

disc can be played directly

from a DVD (or CD-ROM in the

case of SVCD) drive.

The port has received many

optimisations for use with

MorphOS including:

• Use of the asyncio.library

• Native AHI sound driver

• Native CyberGraphX driver

(can use overlay, direct

vmem access or WPA).

• Native timing routine

• Optimised and ﬁxed YUV ->

RGB routine

• Optimised and ﬁxed (when

possible) OSD routine

• Patched input routine

Bring It On!

Amithlon

Update

This handy GUI set-up utility

is supplied with the port.

3D Realms recently released

the source code to their classic

3rd person shooter Duke

Nukem 3D and, as with Quake

before it, it wasn’t long before

ports to the Amiga appeared.

For those that don’t know,

Duke Nukem is set in a future

Los Angeles that has been

invaded by aliens which, of

course, have to be blasted to

smithereens. Unlike many

games in this genre Duke, the

player’s character, has a strong

personality and there is a great

deal of humour (some of it of a

Bernie Meyer, the main

developer of Amithlon, has made

available a new upgrade that

allows many more sound and

network cards (and also those

built-in to a motherboard) to be

used by accessing them through

Linux kernel drivers. The

package includes a new utility to

load Linux kernel modules while

Amithlon is running based on the

hardware it ﬁnds in the host PC.

A selection of kernel modules for

popular sound and network cards

are supplied. When the modules

are loaded network cards can be

accessed via a SANA II device,

compatible with most networking

programs. An AHI driver is

supplied for sound cards.

The upgrade is particularly useful

for users with laptops that do not

have slots to which compatible

network and sound cards could

be added. The new package of

drivers, known as contrib3b, can

be downloaded from:

www.amithlon.net/en/

amithlon_updates.shtml

fairly adult nature) throughout

the game.

The port, by Dante and

Oxyron, has been extensively

optimised for the Amiga and

supports graphics cards and

audio via AHI. A native

MorphOS port is also available.

Both versions have a GUI to

set-up the game. To run Duke

you need AmigaOS 3.x or

MorphOS, 32Mb RAM and an

installed version of Duke

Nukem Atomic edition. The

original game is available from

3D Realms; you may also be

able to ﬁnd it on a budget label

or second hand.

Download the Amiga and

MorphOS ports from:

www.neoscientists.org/~dante/

More information on the game

can be found at:

www.3drealms.com/

duke3d/index.html

Subway Review Update

Johnathan Haddock contacted

us with some additional

information relating to his

review of e3b’s Subway USB

card for Total Amiga:

“I’m pleased to report that the

problems I mentioned in my

Subway Review (TA15, page

36) have been overcome.

IBrowse now recognises

mouse clicks properly; this was

solved by installing the new

input.device as described in

the documentation. The reason

for my Keyboard problems is

that, unfortunately, my

keyboard was dying and has

now died completely. This was

not a problem caused by

Poseidon just by my dodgy

hardware.”

E3B have also announced that,

after selling out the ﬁrst batch,

another production run of

Subway cards have been

produced. So if you are

interested it would be a good

idea to order one as soon as

possible before they sell out

again.

The E3B web site has full

details of all their products:

www.e3b.de

The MPlayer port requires

MorphOS 1.4 (take a look at

our review on page 18 for more

details), a ready-to-run binary

and its source code are

available in the download

section of MorphZone:

www.morphzone.org

The graphics may be dated but Duke Nukem is still worth

playing for its humour and mindless violence!

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2003

4

5

News

News

Out of the Burner

Bytes...

Simple Mail Fights SPAM

Web Bytes...

into the Fryer?

Poseidon

Spider

Support Ends

The open source (under the

GPL) mailer, Simple Mail, has

added yet more strings to its

bow with the latest 0.20

release. The major additions in

this release are preliminary

support for downloading from

IMAP mail servers and, most

interestingly, a statistical spam

ﬁlter. As usual there have also

been a raft of minor bug ﬁxes

and enhancements.

Many people’s email boxes are

bombarded with unsolicited

commercial email, commonly

known as spam, often of an

unpleasant or offensive nature,

so Simple Mail’s new spam

ﬁlter is a welcome addition.

Rather than working on a set

list of keywords or addresses

of known spammers; Simple

Mail analyses messages you

have marked as spam and

those that you mark as ham

(genuine messages). From

those messages it builds a list

of words that characterise

spam and another list that

characterises ham. Two new

buttons have been added to

the toolbar, one which analyses

the messages in your In box

and marks those that look like

spam and another that moves

the marked messages to a new

spam folder. If Simple Mail

misses any messages or

marks a genuine message as

spam you can correct it; this

improves the accuracy of the

spam detection next time.

Further anti-spam options allow

you to set a black list of

addresses that always send

you spam and a white list of

your genuine contacts.

Because you train Simple Mail

with your own messages in

theory it should be much more

effective in blocking spam than

list-based methods.

Download the latest version

from:

simplemail.sourceforge.net

http://ada.planet-d.net/

The Demo Scene has always

been an important part of Amiga

“culture”. The Amiga Demo

Scene Archive aims to collect

together some of the best demos

along with information about their

release and what awards they

won. As many Amiga users (or

ex-Amigans) no longer have

hardware compatible with some

or all demos (particularly the

older and, ironically, the newer

PPC demos can be problematic)

ADSA also holds screenshots of

most demos. Some even have

movie ﬁles so you can view the

whole demo on any computer

capable of playing back a video.

For each demo you have the

opportunity to submit a comment

and read comments left by other

users. The ADSA site is very

attractive to look at with a dark

understated tone that reﬂects

some of the best demo

productions.

ADSA is a very impressive site,

it’ll have you pulling that A500

out of the loft in no time!

FryingPan is a new shareware

CD writing application; early

versions have been around for

a while but version 0.3, a

complete re-write, seems to be

the ﬁrst really usable release.

Frying Pan has been designed

to be logical to use with each

of the steps required to burn a

CD represented by a button

along the top of the single

program window. These stages

include selecting ﬁles for a

data disc, organising the tracks

on the CD, settings such as the

writing device and speed and

ﬁnally writing the disc itself.

FryingPan can build both audio

and data CDs; it is able to read

tracks from an existing CD

enabling you to make

compilations. When making a

data CD, Frying Pan has an

“ISO Builder” feature; this

enables you to add ﬁles to the

CD from your hard drive

without creating the directory

structure on disk. This powerful

Chris Hodges, the developer of

the Poseidon USB stack, is no

longer accepting registrations

from buyers of Elbox’s Spider

USB PCI cards. This means that

a newly purchased Spider cannot

be used legally outside the short

trial period of Poseidon or until

Elbox supply alternative USB

software. Chris cites differences

of opinion with Elbox as the

reason for his move and has

published a long history of his

communications with them on his

web site:

www.platon42.de/index2.html

Frying Pan’s ISO builder lets you add ﬁles from any drive on

your system to a CD.

Web Bytes...

feature is not found in Make

CD; the Amiga’s only other CD

writing software currently in

development.

FryingPan should work with

most reasonably modern CD

recorders and offers a full

range of speed settings. Track

at once, session at once and

disc at once writing are all

supported. Data can be written

on-the-ﬂy, if your system is fast

enough, or you can create an

ISO image on disk and then

burn it later. Burn Proof and

similar technologies can be

used on those CD writers that

support them.

Registration is on a per CD-

writer basis. The initial

registration, including one

drive, costs 10Euro and each

additional CD writer you wish

to use costs another 6Euro.

Currently there is no on-line

registration, you must contact

the author to arrange payment.

Further details and step-by-

step instructions on writing

CDs with FryingPan can be

found on the web site:

www.tbs-software.com

After training with only a few messages the spam ﬁlter was

surprisingly effective on my heavily spammed account.

(The spam subjects have been hidden to protect the innocent!)

Warp Datatypes

http://www.genesi.lu

http://www.pegasosppc.com

http://www.morphos.net

Up until recently Genesi, with

their Pegasos and MorphOS

products, had rather a mish-

mash of web sites, each with its

own style. Now all the sites have

been given a make-over in the

same consistent style which

looks clean and modern (my only

complaint would be that there is

quite a lot of text in graphics).

Genesi.lu contains the corporate

information such as strategy and

marketing along with an overview

of Genesi’s products.

PegasosPPC.com has the full

speciﬁcations of the Pegasos

motherboard, details of the

operating systems it supports

and the software with which it is

supplied. There is also a useful

help section and a list of

resellers around the world.

Finally MorphOS.net goes into

detail about Genesi’s operating

system and has a section called

the “MorphOS Developer

Connection” for developers.

Genesi’s new sites are a big

improvement and well worth a

visit if you are interested in the

Pegasos and/or MorphOS.

Oliver Roberts has expanded

his range of “Warp” datatypes

to support six ﬁle formats:

BMP, JPEG, PNG, PSD

(Photoshop), TIFF and the

latest addition, PCX. Datatypes

were one of the most

innovative features introduced

with AmigaOS 3, enabling

applications to load ﬁle formats

that didn’t even exist when the

application was designed. In

recent years Oliver’s datatypes

have proven to be among the

best offering wide format

support, fast decoding, and

conﬁguration via a preferences

program.

PCX is a bitmap format that

originated with PCPaintBrush

by ZSoft and is quite common

on Windows. The new

WarpPCX datatype supports

standard PCX ﬁles and the

more unusual formats that can

be exported from Personal

Paint on the Amiga. The

datatype can decode 1 to 24bit

colour and RLE compression.

As with all his datatypes, Oliver

supplies native versions of the

PCX datatype for 68K Amigas

(and emulators), WarpOS PPC

and MorphOS. A version for

AmigaOS 4.0 is planned when

the new OS is released.

After several years as freeware

Oliver has now made the Warp

datatypes package shareware.

There is a single fee which

covers all the datatypes and,

currently, any added to the

range in the future (users

already registered got the PCX

datatype when it was released

for example). One registration

covers all the CPU/OS

versions too. The datatypes

run with no restrictions for a

thirty day evaluation period so

you can try them out, giving

you plenty of time to register if

you like them. Registration

costs £15 and can be carried

out on-line on the new WarpDT

web site:

www.warpdt.co.uk

http://www.swaug.org.uk

The South Wales Amiga User

Group site is very useful even if

you will never be able to visit the

group. In their support section

they have tutorials on several

subjects and a version watch

panel to keep you up to date with

the latest versions of popular

software.

The star of the show is the

reviews section which is updated

regularly. Sometimes SWAUG

members review Amiga speciﬁc

hardware but their speciality is

covering the use of standard

hardware on the Amiga. They

have covered products as

diverse as digital cameras, CD-

writers and USB pen drives. One

interesting review covers a D-

Link DWL 810 wireless bridge

that can be used to connect any

Amiga with an Ethernet card to a

wireless network.

SWAUG’s site should deﬁnitely

be in your hot list.

A New Look for YAM

Frying Pan should work with most CD writers.

Is your YAM looking a bit drab

or are you just fed up with your

current icon set? If so then

Lorraine Design have a treat

for your classic Amiga mailer.

Their “New YAM” package

includes new toolbar icons,

MUI graphics and a suggested

MUI conﬁguration to give YAM

a complete makeover. The end

result is a clean modern look in

blue-grey shades, a nice

change from GlowIcons.

www.lorraine-design.8m.net

The preferences program gives you control over each datatype.

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2003

6

7

Features

Features

AmigaOne Update

unlikely to be under ukp6-700

plus VAT. If there is enough

demand (i.e. a minimum of 200

units) we will put these

modules into production

around December. Please

email us at info@eyetech.co.uk

if you are interested.

Changes at Eyetech

As many Total Amiga readers

may know we fell into this

Amiga business, several years

ago, almost by accident. Our

main expertise was, and still is,

in providing cost-effective, IT

solutions into specialist

commercial and industrial

markets. In the early 1990’s

some of the presentation

systems we supplied were

based on the Amiga platform.

Then Commodore went under

and we started a retail

operation whilst the Amiga

operation was sorted out. Its

taken nearly 10 years – and a

lot more involvement than I

ever expected – but the

resurrection of the Amiga,

hardware and OS, is now all

but complete.

However, in bringing the

AmigaOne hardware to market

we have – in the UK –

undertaken a dual, and

increasingly conﬂicting role:

that of wholesale supplier and

retailer of the AmigaOne. With

the increasing sales of the

AmigaOne this is no longer a

practical proposition – our best

added value to the future of the

Amiga is to ensure new models

are brought on, dealers and

user groups are properly

supported and peripheral

opportunities - such as the

Beijing Forum - are fully

exploited. The upshot is that

from the end of September

2003 we will be concentrating

our efforts on industrial

markets and dealer suport and

will no longer handle retail

sales of Amiga products to end

users directly. (We will of

course satisfy existing orders

and handle warranty etc.

issues from past sales).

I am delighted, however, to be

able to announce that from 1st

October retail sales in the UK

will be handled by Stellar

Dreams. Stellar Dreams is

Sven Harvey’s (author of the

Amiga column in the UK’s

Micromart magazine and well

known Amiga enthusiast)

company, they have a web site

at www.stellardreams.co.uk.

Sven is a long-time and ardent

Amiga supporter, and is in my

view ideally placed to make a

great success in the UK of the

Amiga’s coming global rebirth.

Please give Sven and Stellar

Dreams your full support.

Until next issue,

Alan

Once again we drag Alan Redhouse, MD of Eyetech, away from international commitments

to bring us up-to-date on the AmigaOne.

OS4 Betatesters Offer

We have reached agreement

with Hyperion and most

dealers to make AmigaOne

Earlybird boards available to

registered OS4 beta testers at

a 10% discount. If you are

eligible and wish to take up this

offer please contact an ofﬁcial

AmigaOne dealer – see the

following page for contact

details:

www.eyetech.co.uk/

amigaone/dealers.php

L ooking back at my column

live, on-screen demonstration

to an audience of several

hundred delegates of the

multitasking capabilities of

OS3.1 running on a CD32 with

SX32, 4Mb of memory, 170MB

hard drive, and an ‘020 CPU at

14MHz. It worked, it

impressed, and the technical

audience were able to

translate, in their own minds,

the performance they saw on

this minimalist hardware to the

expected performance of OS 4

on AmigaOne hardware.

Sufﬁce to say that as a result

of that presentation there are

now several signiﬁcant

Taiwanese companies – plus

IBM – who are anxious to

evaluate OS4 for commercial

applications as soon as it and

its SDK are ready. In Beijing –

ﬁngers (and other more

sensitive parts of my anatomy)

crossed – I hope to

demonstrate OS4 booting and

running on a real AmigaOne.

The forum will largely focus on

Linux-PPC as an alternative to

Windows – the Chinese have

at least heard of Linux – but I

will be doing my best to ensure

that the compact, near-

realtime, ROM-able nature of

OS4 comes over as a very

cost-effective alternative for

the industrial, embedded

and STB markets. In

parallel IBM will be

doing their level best

(to a very receptive

audience it has to be

said) to show that

PPC is a better

technology than

x86 for a new

industry with

little Wintel

legacy

baggage. And

more PPC

acceptance =

more OS4 opportunities = the

best chance for the rebirth of

the Amiga in mass markets.

Wish me luck in Beijing!

AmigaOne Status

I am pleased to say that we

have ﬁnally just about caught

up with the backlog of

AmigaOne orders and are on

the point of being able to

deliver to dealers ex-stock.

This means that board orders

should be able to be delivered,

Worldwide, within 2 weeks of

ordering and bespoke systems

in less than 4 weeks. However

I am still surprised how strong

the market for Earlybird

systems continues to be – I

guess the reason is that now it

is quite widely known that OS4

is booting on the AmigaOne

many people are keen to

secure the Earlybird offer (with

OS4 for free) whilst the offer

still lasts (it stops when the

release date for OS4 is

announced by Hyperion).

purchasers is that the

AmigaOne is a rock-solid

platform and that the nay-

sayers and rumour mongers

who insisted otherwise before

its widespread release now

have huge facial omelettes to

try and remove.

in the last Total Amiga (to

make sure I’m not repeating –

or, worse, contradicting –

myself!) I notice that I wrote it

just after the IBM PPC

Technology Forum in Boston.

I’m writing this just before I set

off to speak at the next one.

This time it’s in Beijing on 24th

September to an audience of

movers and shakers in the

Chinese IT sector. The

audience comprises

representatives of CNITSEC

(the Chinese government’s

‘China Information Technology

Security Certiﬁcation Centre’ –

catchy isn’t it?); the Chinese

Academy of Sciences and

around 75 major Chinese IT

manufacturers. So it’s another

sweat to get the column out on

time – Robert certainly

chooses his deadlines well!

So what’s all this got to do with

the price of peas, I hear you

ask. Well China is now

embarking on the next stage of

its IT industrialisation program,

and – surprise, surprise – they

aren’t too keen to pour a

signiﬁcant proportion of their

GDP into Mr. Gates’ pockets.

They are actively looking for

viable alternatives to the Wintel

platform. The PPC is such an

alternative, and given the

relative success of the

‘Earlybird’ Linux-based

AmigaOne, I’ve been asked to

bafﬂe the Chinese at this

conference, after apparently

successfully bafﬂing the

Taiwanese audience with my

presentation at the ﬁrst PPC

forum in Taipei last February.

At the Taipei Forum I took my

life in my hands and gave a

AmigaOne-Lite

The pre-production AmigaOne-

Lite is now up and running and

we will be sending samples out

to selected developers to

port/test drivers for the new

hardware (RAID, gigabit

Ethernet, IEEE1394 etc.) in

early October. If you wish to

participate in this program

please email us at

info@eyetech.co.uk. Sort the

driver and keep the board!

Fleecy Speaks Amiga’s CTO tells us why he

has a positive outlook on

the lauch of Amiga OS 4.

A lthough all issues of Total

pure PPC and that percentage

is rising almost every day.

Indeed it is so usable now that

even the brave and hardy

editor of Total Amiga has

decided to step out from the

dark dungeon of his editing

room and join the ranks, to see

Frank Wille’s VBCC

development environment and

the GDB debugger, which

allows for breakpoint, register

and memory analysis, source

step through and a lot more.

The Guru even has a new

friend, culled almost straight

present at the beginning of the

new era of the Amiga. This is

being planned to happen in

2003, although again, if an

errant asteroid hits the homes

of some of the key developers,

it might be pushed back.

It has been a long time since a

new version of the AmigaOS

was released. It has been a

long time since we said

AmigaOS 4.0 would be

released. Many have given up

and left the platform, others

have jumped in to spread

rumours and push their own

agendas. However, we at

Amiga, those in the AmigaOS

4.0 team, developers, dealers,

journalists and the users and

user groups have never given

up. Looking back is a

wonderful thing but looking

forwards has suddenly gotten a

lot better.

I hope that the next time I can

write this column, it will be

written on AmigaOS4.0. I hope

that the next time Robert (The

Editor to you) builds Total

Amiga, it will be on

AmigaOS4.0. Most of all, I

hope that the next time you

read this, you will be next to

YOUR AmigaOS4.0.

Amiga are special, this

one may be more special than

most because, unless we hit

an unforeseen pot hole in the

road, it should be the last one

of the 68k AmigaOS period. I

say ‘should’ because the last

three years of being the CTO

at Amiga has taught me that

nothing is ever certain, which

has led to our announcement

policy that we will not ofﬁcially

announce a launch date for

AmigaOS4.0 until we have the

gold master in our hands.

However, as I look around in

the bottom of tea cups (damn

those athiest teabags) and shift

through the entrails (digital) of

old computers, the portents

indeed look good for the

launch of at least the CSPPC

version of AmigaOS4.0

between this issue and the

next issue of Total Amiga, with

the long awaited AmigaOne

version itself following not too

far behind. Can I share these

portents with you? Absolutely.

1. the AmigaOS4.0 CSPPC

beta testing team has been

working around the clock

testing an AmigaOS4.0 build

that is now more than 50%

High Performance

CPU Modules

The 1.3GHz G4 CPUs are

expensive, and unsurprisingly

dual cpus are twice as much.

Exact prices will depend on

volumes, exchange rates etc.

but the price of dual 1.3GHz

G4 cpu modules is

At the time of writing there are

still some Linux driver – and

VIA south bridge initialisation –

issues to sort out, but the

objective opinion of the vast

majority of Earlybird

“I hope that the next time you read this

(column), you will be next to YOUR

AmigaOS4.0.”

for himself (and hopefully tell

all you readers) [I’m currently

organsing the loan of the

CyberStorm PPC to take

Fleecy up on his offer, Ed.]

exactly what is going on.

from the Discworld, the Grim

Reaper (cue bass voice and

ominous drumbeat) which

intercepts and captures

miscreant applications,

providing the user with a

variety of options.

4. A new third party developer

forum has been created,

allowing for developers new

and old to have access to the

development environment, to

ask questions of the

AmigaOS4.0 team and to begin

both creating AmigaOS4.0 only

versions of their products and

to start developing brand new

applications.

2. AmigaOS4.0 running on an

AmigaOne will be shown

privately to a very important set

of potential OEM customers

before the end of September,

to be followed by its public

debut at various events from

October onwards.

3. Internal and third party

application developers now

have a powerful selection of

development tools available to

them in one single SDK,

including an AmigaOS4.0

native compiler and Linux x86

and MacOS cross compilers,

Buzz Word...

5. Plans are well under way for

the launch event for

AmigaOS4.0, to which I hope

many of you will come, to be

Our under-cover agent is

currently busy on a case, he

will return in a future issue!

A pre-production

AmigaOne-Lite (without CPU card).

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2003

8

9

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