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Contents

Contents

Rainboot 4

Editorial

News

had a number of people offer to

write the occasional piece. While

this is helpful and much

appreciated what we really need

is a number of writers (two or

three would make a big

difference) who are willing to

write every issue, perhaps

contributing a regular column

and another article such as a

review or tutorial related to their

area of interest. While I think we

cover some aspects of the

Amiga scene well such as

graphics and DTP we realise

there are areas that currently get

little coverage in Total Amiga.

This is purely because no one in

the current team has a great

interest in them, off the top of my

head I can think of music, 3D

graphics and programming as

cases in point. If we could recruit

writers with an interest in those

areas then it would be much

easier to ﬁll the mag each issue

and would also take some load

off the current team.

So what are we going to do to

improve this situation? The ﬁrst

step is this editorial, if you think

you could offer your services to

the magazine as a regular writer

please get in touch, also if you

know someone who would be a

good contributor please let them

know we’re on the lookout for

writers. As a non-proﬁt

publication we can’t pay writers

but you will get a free copy of

each issue you contribute to.

Once this issue is out the door I

will add these details to the Total

Amiga website and we will post a

“wanted” advert to Amiga

websites and mailing lists to let

the wider world know.

We know from our experience so

far that ﬁnding reliable writers

who are willing to commit

themselves to the magazine is

very difﬁcult. Especially with the

Amiga market as quiet as it

currently is many people have

lost their enthusiasm for the

platform as it stands and are in a

wait and see mode. There is also

the fact that the number of new

product releases is currently low

which makes ﬁnding enough

content to ﬁll a magazine more

regularly difﬁcult at the moment.

Taking all this into account I think

that it is not realistic to move to

bi-monthly publication until OS4

and the AmigaOne systems have

been released. Although it’s hard

to say exactly what effect this will

have on the market it has to be

positive and, at a minimum, we

will have the new machines and

OS to write about!

Before you thank “oh that means

sometime... never then” take a

look at our Amiga OS4 update

on page 10, it really does sound

as if OS4 is getting close and will

almost certainly be out by

Christmas so we shouldn’t have

too long to wait.

I’ve had a few E-Mails asking if

there will be a letters page this

issue but... no letters to publish!

So if you would like to see a

letters page please write in,

letters can be commenting on

the magazine, Amiga products or

the general Amiga situation.

We’re also looking for questions

for a Q&A section and to spur us

on with ideas for tutorials and the

Top Tips section. Please E-Mail

your letters to me or write to the

address in the grey bar below.

Enjoy the magazine and I hope

you’ll take the time to help us

make it better,

Robert Williams

editor@totalamiga.org

Bytes...

W e’re back with another

Issue 12

Autumn 2002

issue of Total Amiga! The

theme of this issue has turned

out to be bringing new

technologies to the Amiga. First

off we have a feature on

connecting to the Internet via

ADSL. Although ADSL on the

Amiga has always been possible

the new wires only packages

mean that at last you can buy

and ﬁt your own equipment so

you don’t need a PC or to rent a

modem you don’t need. Another

technology which has been

around for a while but which is

new to the Amiga is USB. E3B

have produced the ﬁrst Amiga

USB card in the form of the

Highway Zorro card, we put it

through its paces on page 22.

But before you read the rest of

the mag (what do you mean you

don’t read my editorial ﬁrst!) here

are some thoughts about the

future of Total Amiga, please let

me know your thoughts.

If you read my editorial in a last

issue you’ll know that we were

aiming to get this issue out two

weeks early as the ﬁrst step in a

move to bi-monthly publication.

We haven’t been able to achieve

that although this issue is on

time (give or take a week)

according to our current

quarterly schedule. Rather than

promise the next issue early and

not make it again we’ve had a

think about what would need to

happen to enable us to publish

bi-monthly. As we’ve said before

the crux of the matter is getting

more writers for the magazine.

Since our last appeal for writers

a couple of issues ago we’ve

Smarter than your average boot picture?

Contents

News

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

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

Frogger NG Preview ..........7

Alan Redhouse Column.....8

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

AmigaOS 4 Update ......... 10

INet Dial & SolarNavigator

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

buzzword......................... 13

Features

ADSL Broadband ............ 14

NTL Broadband............... 17

Reviews

ADSL Router................... 18

Highway USB.................. 22

The Feeble Files ............. 28

NEC TFT Monitor............ 31

PD Paradise:

Taskbar Roundup ............ 34

Jabberwocky ................... 38

Support

UK Usergroup Lisiting ........8

ADSL Router Tutorial ...... 19

TFT Monitor Speciﬁcations

Explained ........................ 33

PageStream 4.1 Tables... 40

Photo Panoramas ........... 44

You may have heard of

Rainboot before as a program

to create very fancy boot

screens, complete with system

information and other effects. A

new version is now in the

works that will extend its

capabilities so it can be used to

create presentations too. The

really exciting thing is that

Rainboot can work on chipset

and graphics card screens so it

may well be the ﬁrst program

that can be used to make

presentations and multimedia

applications which can be used

on all Amigas. Presentations

created will not be tied to a

particular screenmode and can

even run in a window on a

public screen, these can even

have transparent sections.

Rainboot presentations are

controlled by a script ﬁle which

is created in a text editor and

calls separate sound and

graphics ﬁles. The ﬁnal

presentation can then be

compiled into an executable

needed no special support

ﬁles. Don’t expect a GUI for

putting the presentation

together but according to the

author the process should be

Eternity have announced

that the Amiga version of

their Tales of Tamar game

will be released on the 1st

of September. Tales of

Tamar is a turn based

strategy game set in time

similar to the middle ages, it

is designed for on-line

Internet play via EMail and

incorporates an on-line chat

facility so players can talk in

real time. ToT will be

released for the Amiga ﬁrst

but Eternity are also working

on versions for Linux,

Windows, Mac and Java so

the potential is there for a

huge base of players.

Tales of Tamar has been in

development and testing for

several years and by the

look of the website and

screenshots it will be a very

professional and engrossing

game. We’ll have more

details and possibly a

review in the next issue of

Total Amiga. The Tales of

Tamar website is at:

http://www.tamar.net

An example transition.

This time Rainboot is running

in a normal window.

quite simple for most people.

Here are some of Rainboot 4’s

key features:

• 100% system friendly, runs

on all Amigas.

• Transition effects.

• Smooth graphics scrolling.

• Transparent graphics

• Easy monitoring of user input

from keyboard and mouse

• Supports different fonts

• Use anim brushes, sound

modules and samples

The euro calculator is a Rainboot 4

presentation with a transparent

background running on the

Workbench screen.

Rainboot is shareware and the

current version (3) costs

12USD (about £8.50), we’ll

bring you a full review of

version 4 when its released.

For more information visit the

Airsoft Softwair page at:

http://www.airsoftsoftwair.com/

About Total Amiga

Legalese

Back Issues..................... 47

Subscription Form........... 47

Colour Screenshots ........ 48

Total Amiga is published quarterly

by South Essex Amiga Link. For

subscription details please contact

us at the address below or visit our

website.

Editor: Robert Williams

Design: Robert Williams

Contributors: Elliott Bird

Michael Carillo

Philip Corner

Geoff Milnes

Fleecy Moss

Alan Redhouse

Mick Sutton

Proof Reading: Mick Sutton

Cover Art:

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,

ENGLAND.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 569937

(19:00 - 22:00

UK time only please)

Only Amiga Made it

Possible

Total Amiga is designed and laid

out using:

Hardware:

Amiga 3000

CyberStorm PPC/060

CyberVision PPC

128Mb RAM, about 13Gb HDD

space.

Software:

Amiga OS 3.9 by Amiga

PageStream 4.1 by Softlogik

TypeSmith 2.5 by Softlogik

ImageFX 4.5 by Nova Design

Photogenics 5 by Paul Nolan

Final Writer 5 by Softwood

Ghostscript 6.50 from Aladdin

Enterprises

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 on

the Amiga, no other machines 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 SEAL members in

their spare time, while we will

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

please send your message to one

of the addresses in this section

and we will pass it on.

Amiga is a registered trademark

and the Amiga logo, AmigaDOS,

Amiga Kickstart, Amiga

Workbench, Autoconﬁg,

Bridgeboard, and Powered by

Amiga are trademarks of AMIGA

Inc.

All other trademarks mentioned

are the property of their

respective owners.

Advertisers

Index

Amiga Super Bit .............. 30

Eyetech ........................... 26

Forematt Home Computing

........................................ 21

Kicksoft ................... 39 & 43

North West Micro ............ 21

Robert Williams

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2002

2

3

News

News

Bytes...

Keep on Scanin’

Bytes...

Another

Radeon for

CyberGraphX

GoldEd

Prometheus

IOSpirit (the new name for

Innovative, the developers of

fxPaint, and VHIStudio) have

released a new version of their

all-in-one scanning package

fxSCAN. Version 4 has many

new and enhanced features.

One of the most interesting is

the improved OCR (optical

character recognition) engine

which now had improved

accuracy and can output the

scanned document as an

HTML ﬁle complete with

pictures. Native modules are

supplied for PPC (WarpUP and

PowerUP), MorphOS and

Amithlon so fxSCAN gets

maximum performance on

these systems, this should

especially beneﬁt the OCR

function. As far as we are

aware fxSCAN is the ﬁrst

commercial application to

provide direct Amithlon

support, this means the

module is compiled as x86

code so it does not have to run

through the 68k

emulator. The

author of fxSCAN

says this doubles

the speed on

Amithlon.

With the optional

IO USB module

fxSCAN 4 will

support USB

scanners, initially most of the

Epson USB range except the

1250 and 1250 are expected to

work with the driver.

Here are some of the other

interesting features:

• PDF Support - scans can be

exported as multi-page PDF

ﬁles for cross platform

compatibility, Ghostscript is

not required.

• Improved Photocopy

Function - includes preview

with brightness, contrast and

gamma controls.

• Direct support for TurboPrint -

Development

Vision Factory Development

have revealed that they

have a working driver for

ATI’s Radeon range of

graphics for their

CyberGraphX version 5

driver system. Version 5 is

part of the MorphOS system

which is under development

for BPlan’s Pegasos PPC

computer. VFD report that

most of the driver work is

ﬁnished and in time they

expect to back port the

driver for Amiga PCI

busboards such as the

GRex. Radeon VE and 7500

cards have been tested and

the driver supports the

common PC BIOS variants

(as opposed to the less

common Mac cards).

Further details on

CyberGraphX can be found

at:

http://www.vgr.com/cybergfx

AIX

Elbox have announced another

member of their growing family

of Amiga tower kits, the Mirage

3000 is a sleek but

undoubtedly huge tower for the

A3000 desktop. Unlike the

A4000 model mentioned last

issue the Mirage 3000 does

not include a bus board or

Mediator logic card however a

Mediator 3000D bus board is

required to use the tower so

you will need to purchased one

with the Mirage. The tower has

three 5.25” drive bays, a bay

for the A3000’s ﬂoppy drive

and ﬁve internal 3.5” bays for

hard disks. The whole shebang

is powered by a 300W power

supply. The Mirage 3000 costs

179Euro excluding VAT

(£159.95 including VAT from

Power Computing) and the

Mediator 3000D busboard and

logic card is 289.95Euro

(£244.95).

Resumes

Over the last few months

there has been little news of

progress on drivers for the

Prometheus PCI to Zorro

card which looked so

promising when it was ﬁrst

released. Filip Dab-Mirowski

from the manufacturer,

Matay, recently posted to

the Amiga-Prometheus

mailing list that development

had been delayed due to

some personal issues not

related to Matay but it was

now in progress again. A

ﬁrmware upgrade for the

Prometheus has been

developed which will allow

DMA (Direct Memory

Access) transfers between

PCI cards and a

programmer device will be

available to allow users to

upgrade their cards without

returning them to Matay.

The ﬁrmware upgrade will

allow PCI cards which rely

on DMA such as sound, TV

and 100Mb/s Ethernet cards

to be supported. Matay say

they are currently working

on drivers which will take

advantage of the updated

ROM and will release it

when some drivers are

ready.

To keep up-to-date with

Prometheus developments

join the mailing list at:

The enhanced photocopy options.

The ﬁnal version of Dietmar

Eilert’s well known text

editor, GoldEd Studio, is

about to be released. Some

time ago Dietmar

announced that the

development of GoldEd had

been cancelled even though

he had said version 7 was in

development. The new

version is an update on

version 6 and will include

the work on version 7 that

had been completed, which

includes an overhaul over

the user interface giving it a

slicker look and new icons.

The full version of GoldEd

Studio costs 59.99 Euro

(about £40), discounts are

available for existing users.

Anyone who preordered

version 7 will get the

upgrade free.

For further details and to

download a demo visit:

golded.dietmar-eilert.de

not via graphics publisher.

• Support for automatic

document feeders and

transparency adaptors if they

are enabled in the driver.

• PNG Saver

• New HTML and PDF

documentation with

illustrations.

Plus many other

improvements, look out for a

full review of fxSCAN 4 in the

next issue of Total Amiga.

fxSCAN 4 is available now

from the IOSpirit website, a

downloadable version is

39.99Euro (about £26) and the

CD version is 44.99Euro

(£29.25). Owners of version 3

can download an upgrade for

22.99Euro (£15) or buy a new

CD for 24.99Euro (£16.25).

The USB module is 10Euro

(£6.50) extra.

Details on Elbox products can

be found at:

http://www.elbox.com

Elbox products are available in

the UK from Power Computing:

http://www.powerc.com

+44 (0) 1234 851500

WoASE Returns

After last years successful

show that was attended by

over 350 people several UK

usergroups are again working

together to stage World of

Amiga South East 2002 on

Saturday the 2nd of November.

The show will be at the same

venue as last year, Poplars

Hall, near Brentwood in Essex,

just a few minutes drive from

the M25 and walking distance

from a main line railway

station. The venue has free

parking and a licensed bar,

sandwiches and snacks will

also be available on the day.

The following exhibitors have

already conﬁrmed that they will

be attending:

• Amiga (in the form of Fleecy

Moss)

• Eyetech

• Forematt Home Computing

• Kicksoft

• Weird Science

Mediator

USB

We are talking to other

potential exhibitors including

several European retailers and

developers and hope to

announce more exhibitors over

the next few weeks.

With the excitement about

USB support coming to the

Amiga Elbox have

announced that Mediator

users will not have to wait

long for drivers so they can

use a USB PCI card in their

Mediator. Elbox are

developing their own USB

stack (the software that

drives the USB card) but

have not yet announced

what type of USB devices

they will support, we also

wait to hear which PCI

cards can be used.

According to a posting on

the Amiga-Mediator mailing

list from Elbox the drivers

should be out by the time

you read this.

For further details and to order

on-line visit:

Using OCR (left) to convert a document into an HTML ﬁle

complete with images, layout and font sizes.

Windows Ke ys be Gone!

http://www.iospirit.com

In addition to the exhibitors

there will be many other

attractions at the show. We’re

planning to have more

demonstrations and games

and there will be a strong

usergroup presence offering

information and friendly advice.

To keep up to date with news

of the show please visit the

website:

http://www.worldofamiga.com

PageStream

4.1 .4

Thanks to emulators, keyboard

adaptors and new systems

such as the AmigaOne more

and more “Amiga” systems are

being used with standard “PC”

keyboards usually equipped

with inappropriate “Windows”

function keys. Netherlands

based Amiga dealer Computer

City are planning a solution to

this blight, ofﬁcial Amiga key

caps to replace the Windows

keys. The key caps will be

sourced from Cherry and will

be available separately or ﬁtted

to one of Cherry’s CyBo@rd

keyboards. To keep the cost

reasonable

Computer City

are looking for

pre-orders so

they can bulk

order the keys

caps, the pre-

orders will not

be charged

until they are

shipped.

The key caps alone, for you to

ﬁt to your own Cybo@rd will

cost 16Euro (about £10.50), a

complete keyboard is available

for 40Euro (£26) and a wireless

www.yahoogroups.com/

group/Amiga-Prometheus

You can also try the Matay

website at:

http://www.matay.pl

A free upgrade to

PageStream 4.1 (reviewed

last issue) is now available

from Grasshopper. This

version ﬁxes numerous

minor bugs from the 4.1

release, registered users

can download it from a

secure section on the

Grasshopper website:

www.grasshopperllc.com

keyboard and mouse is

140Euro (£90).

To place a pre-order visit:

http://www.compcity.nl/

amigakeyboard

Prototype of the

programmer device.

Right: the 2001 show was packed.

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2002

4

5

News

News

Frogger NG

Bytes...

USB Market Hots Up

Audio

Evolves

AWeb Now

Open Source

Preview

Australian Amiga retailer and

ISP Boing.net have announced

a Zorro II USB card called the

Thylacine, the card is slated to

be available in August.

Interestingly the card will be

supplied with the AmigaOS 4

USB stack but compiled for

68k. Prototype Thylacine cards

have been used as the

hardware reference for the OS

4 stack’s development. Initially

drivers will be supplied for

printers, keyboards and

scanners. Printers are said to

work with the exisitng version

of Turbo Print without

modiﬁcation so we expect a

USB device is provided for

printers. Printers are supported

by a human interface device

class driver, at the moment this

is basic and only supports

simple keyboards and mice

(we expect this means no

scroll wheel or “multimedia”

key support.

A new version of Audio

Evolution is set to be one of

the ﬁrst applications released

exclusively for Amiga OS 4.

The program allows audio to

be recorded directly to hard

disk while playing back a

number of other tracks. It also

offers real-time effects,

automation, editing and

synchronisation with other

applications and MIDI

sequencers.

The new version is being

developed on exisitng 68k

hardware but with the power of

the new PPC hardware in

mind, the ﬁnal application will

be 100% PPC code. In a

recent Interview on Amiga

Arena Audio Evolution’s

developer revealed a few of

the features which will be

present in version 4:

The bad news: Yvon Rozijn

has stopped development of

his well know web browser,

AWeb. The good news: He

has opened the source code

so that other developers can

continue his work and

improve AWeb.

A project has already been

formed to continue work on

AWeb and already they

have released a new

version which can be

compiled with OS 3.5/3.9’s

Reaction libraries rather

than ClassAct which

required a commercial

developer kit and is fully

functional without a keyﬁle.

Some new JPEG and GIF

plug-ins have also been

released.

The AWeb Open Source

team are looking for more

developers to help them

improve AWeb, for more

details and to download the

latest version visit:

http://aweb.sunsite.dk

The new version of Frogger promises to be one of the first multi-format media players on

the Amiga, Michael Carrillo takes a first look.

The Thylacine prototype.

Scanners are supported by

drivers for the freeware

Betascan package. Several

Epson USB scanners have

been tested and most others

(with the notable exception of

the Perfection 1250 and 1250

Photo) are expected to work.

An Epson Stylus 740 printer

has been tested and again

USB printers which have a

driver in Turbo Print are

expected to work.

device support (which as we

have seen with the Highway

opens up support for some

digital cameras directly and

others via memory card

readers) and Robert is working

on Ethernet drivers.

The Thylacine card should be

available by the time you read

this, it costs 134.95 Australian

Dollars (about £47) plus

shipping and VAT direct from

Boing.net. We have been

promised a board for review so

you should be able to read all

about it in the next issue.

For now visit:

http://thylacine.boing.net

for further details.

It’s not often I feel the urge to

review a piece of software, I

prefer to bore people with my

pompous opinions, still, every

now and then something comes

along that just grabs me by the

proverbials. So why has

FroggerNG caught my attention

you may be thinking to yourself?

Well although it is in beta,

FroggerNG now supports AVI,

MOV and more interestingly,

RealMedia ﬁles, including

RealMedia audio. The list of

video and audio formats Frogger

play is very impressive with the

supported audio formats list

being as extensive as the video

formats. As you would expect,

FroggerNG still plays MPEG

ﬁles, although in this release not

as well as it’s earlier incarnation.

Bear in mind though that it is still

in beta and Sebastian

Jedruszkiewic, the author of

FroggerNG acknowledges that

there are still some issues to be

addressed. Finally though,

Amiga owners are able to

access media formats that have

been around on other platforms

for ages with the obvious

exception being Microsoft media

ﬁles. This isn’t really a major

pain since the since the amount

of WM ﬁles is small by

comparison to the other media

formats.

So how does it play you are no

doubt wanting to know, well, the

version being tested is the

WarpOS version downloaded

from the Frogger download area,

running on an A1200 with a

Blizzard PPC603@240mhz and

a BVision.

MPEG’s - Pretty poor, as

previously mentioned, the code

is un-optimised but should be

ﬁxed in the next release.

AVI & MOV ﬁles - Pretty good,

plays all pop videos found on a

music CD single, with only a

slight, barely noticeable jerk

every few seconds. However, a

Thylacine developer, Robert

Tsien tells us that additional

drivers are in the works.

IOSpirit are working on digital

cameras, another developer is

working on mass storage

This AVI ﬁle played back perfectly.

few hiccups were noticed on the

AVI side on an internet download

of a Cinema movie, with the

images and audio being a few

seconds out of sync. Whether

this is the fault of FroggerNG or

my slow PPC603 is unclear at

this time.

Real Media - At the time of this

mini preview, the real media side

had not been tested however

various reports on the Frogger

mailing list and elsewhere have,

overall given the RealMedia a

thumbs up as well.

VideoCD - Unsure, the ﬁles used

to test this function were all all

jerky and often would have large

pixels all over the FroggerNG

window but again this could be

because of the Amiga’s IDE bus

limitations.

What’s Missing?

Sebastian should be

congratulated on the hard work

he has put in to this. I eagerly

look forward to the next release

of FroggerNG and despite it’s

beta limitations there is nothing

better on the Amiga at the

moment. Despite it’s beta

limitations I cannot recommend it

enough.

Lastly, I hope Sebastian

implements some form of play

list so that I can play all 20 odd

pop videos on my Amiga next

time I have a party.

Stop Press!

• Non-linear, non-destructive

editing on the time line

including cut, copy, paste,

move, split, trim and

crossfade actions.

• Unlimited undo.

• Real-time effects with real-

time parameter control.

Parameters can also be

remotely controlled by MIDI

controllers and can be fully

automated.

More information will be

available closer to the ﬁnal

release of the new version.

Audio Evolution is published by

Computer City, pricing for the

new version has not yet been

conﬁrmed but it is expected to

be a bit more than the current

version 3 but less than

comparable PC and Mac

products. For further details

visit:

www.compcity.nl and

www.audio-evolution.com

You can read the full interview

at:

www.online-club.de/~ARENA

Stargazing from you Desktop

Digital Almanac III, the latest

release of this astronomy

program, came out some time

ago, since its release regular

updates have appeared. The

latest is version 4.8 which

includes experimental access

to the GSC-2 catalogue of

nearly half a billion stars! A

beta copy of version 4.9 can be

downloaded from the

program’s website and the list

of changes and enhancements

looks impressive:

• Improved textures for the sun

and several satellites

• Plus many more ﬁxes and

improvements (most of which

I didn’t understand!)

so they can try the full program

free of charge. The full version

of DA-III on CD-ROM costs

45Euro (about £30) including

postage and can be ordered

direct from the author. For

more information and to

download a demo of DA-III

visit:

www.soft-ware.de/dalmanac

More Flickers

Fixed

Users who want to try out

Digital Almanac can now

download a keyﬁle for the DA-II

release from Aminet

(misc/sci/DAlmanac_Key.lha)

Individual Computers have

added a new product to

their wide range of handy

Amiga expansions. The

Indivision is an external

ﬂickerﬁxer for all Amigas, it

boosts the horizontal

frequency of Amiga

screenmodes to 31kHz so

they can be displayed on a

standard SVGA monitor and

also removes ﬂicker from

interlaced screens. The

unique feature of the

Indivision is that it can be

used with video mixing

equipment such as a

genlock. The Indivision is

available now from

Individual and their resellers

and costs 99Euro (about

£65). Further information

should be available at:

http://www.jschoenfeld.com/

Since writing this article,

Frogger202 beta for WarpOS

was released as well as versions

for 68k, PowerUp and MOS.

There have been some

improvements since the last

beta, amongst them support for

.MP4 ﬁles produced in Quicktime

6 as well as support for motion

JPEG, MJPA and MPJP

amongst many others, plus of

course more bug ﬁxes. Still not

quite good enough for a full

commercial release, but if the

updates continue at this pace it

won’t belong before the Amiga

community has a product that it

can show off with the best.

Check it out at

http://www.frogger.rules.pl

• Improved settings GUI

• Automatic star booster for

ﬁeld angles smaller than 20

degrees

• Dynamic star data cache to

improve responsiveness

• Automatic low memory

handling

• Various improvements to star

data included

• Implementation of the

Hertzsprung-Russel diagram

with star ephemerides

• Detailed graphics of solar

eclipse circumstances from

the years 1900 to 2100

This version is stripped down

and by that I mean there is no

menu options. CLI or Icon

tooltype are the only means

available at the moment, the

menu option should be re-

enabled by the next update, also

glaringly missing is the open

FroggerNG on own screen

function, which generally speeds

up the display of a video ﬁle.

Overall this is a very positive

step in the right direction,

Apparently this is a Hertzsprung-Russel diagram used to

determine star type!

The mixer from AE 3.

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2002

6

7

News

News

Fleecy

Amiga One Update

Speaks

Eyetech’s MD, Alan Redhouse updates us on the most anticipated Amiga hardware for years.

W hat a busy two months

Amiga’s Chief Technology Officer gives us a taste of what to expect in AmigaOS 4. .

which initialises the hardware

and loads the OS) had several

limitations. Accordingly, and in

parallel with OS4 development,

we and Hyperion have put

together a team to port the

PPCboot ﬁrmware to the

AmigaOne. This has actually

proceeded much more quickly

than we originally expected

and so we now expect to ship

the remaining developer

boards - with the new ﬁrmware

- at the beginning of

September.

Having brought the BIOS

development ‘in-house’ means

that we/Hyperion are able to

add in some signiﬁcant ‘Amiga-

like’ features to the boot

process as well as maintaining

full compatibility with Linux-

only and dual-boot systems. It

also means that we should be

able to ship end-user systems -

initially with Linux, but with a

free upgrade to OS4 - at the

start of October. This will not

suit everybody - for example

those that want a load-and-go,

ready built OS4/A1 system, but

sufﬁcient people have

requested it to make it a

worthwhile option. For those

who want a complete ready-to-

go OS4/A1 system both us and

Hyperion are on track to have

these available in time for

Christmas - i.e. by the end of

November 2002.

Of course this PPCboot

development also beneﬁts MAI

Logic, the manufacturers of the

Articia ‘S’ chipset used in the

AmigaOne, by allowing them to

offer a compatible version of

PPCboot to developers of set-

top boxes etc. who want to use

their chipset. In fact one spin-

off of this that I am particularly

proud of is that MAI and

Eyetech have formed a long

term business partnership

outside of the AmigaOne

project.

Finally I would like to say a big

thank you to all those who

joined the ‘I am Amiga’ club in

June/July. Although neither

Eyetech nor Hyperion beneﬁt

ﬁnancially from this scheme it

does give us a much ﬁrmer

basis to estimate initial

production volumes, and may

even allow us to make some

small - but no doubt welcome -

price reductions to end-user

boards (subject, as always, to

exchange rate variations).

So - if you haven’t done so

already - now is the time to

start saving for your new

AmigaOne, and quickly!

T here has been a lot of

this has been! Whilst

OS4 continues its development

- now with most of the planned

OS4.2 features built-in - we

have shipped AmigaOne G3-

SE boards with (Linux/UAE-

PPC) to developers, and the

AmigaOne has itself made

several public appearances -

including at the AmiWest show

in Sacramento at the end of

July.

We initially shipped these

boards to a group of

development experts to

thoroughly test out the

hardware and to port modern

Linux distributions - and UAE -

to the AmigaOne board. They

did an outstanding job, porting

ﬁve modern Linux-PPC

distributions in a matter of

weeks. However it soon

became apparent that the

BIOS that we had originally

speciﬁed (i.e. the code in ROM

in the past; and again with just

one or two companies blight-

ing the reputations of the rest

of the community.

The second issue raised is the

inclusion of an authentication

mechanism in AmigaOS4.0,

namely the infamous `dongle

code’. In short it is a section of

code inserted into the boot

ROM which the OS refers to

at various times during an

AmigaOS session to ensure

that it is on a certiﬁed and

authentic AmigaOne machine.

The single reason for this is to

prevent piracy of AmigaOS.

Whilst we have all heard the

stories of piracy in the past,

we have to ensure that from

the start of the rebirth of the

AmigaOS, we are actively

promoting anti-piracy

measures. Firstly, we will be

glad if we can get 10k users of

AmigaOS4.0 in the ﬁrst 12

months, not just from a user

base perspective but also

from the revenue that that will

bring in, going directly to

those who have worked on

AmigaOS4.0. Secondly, if we

are to attract developers back

to such a small platform, they

have to see evidence that

Amiga is serious about

protecting not just its property

but also the property and

potential sales of the devel-

oper itself. Nothing can dem-

onstrate the curse of piracy on

our platform so much as the

Freespace situation, where

Hyperion’s actual sales of the

product were four times less

than the number of product

registrations for the updates.

People such as Davy Wentzler

(Audio Evolution), Ron of

Computer City (Inga,

Mediapoint) and Stefan

Burstroem (Ibrowse) have not

just stuck by our platform and

created product that we all

debate on various Amiga

forums relating to our announ-

cement of both a certiﬁcation

program for hardware to run

AmigaOS4.0 and the inclusion

of authentication code in the

boot ROMs that will ship in

such hardware. Whilst much

of the argument has been

reasoned, much has been ab-

solutely rot (the best one

being the all existing Amigas

were open hardware platforms

- hello, can anyone say

custom chipset?), and a small

amount has been pure mis-

chief, its aim apparently to

force us to drop this plan so

that pirated copies of

AmigaOS4.0 can then run on

non certiﬁed hardware.

The purpose of the hardware

certiﬁcation program is to

ensure that consumers know

when they are buying a

machine that will run

AmigaOS at its optimum ef-

ﬁciency. Many reputable

dealers in the past have been

tarnished with a brush made

black by a few rogue dealers

and companies that have sin-

gularly failed to provide the

service they advertised,

whether that be shoddy com-

ponents, badly installed soft-

ware or worse, just disappear-

ing entirely with hard earned

pre payment money.

Whilst that is the primary aim

of the certiﬁcation program, it

also has a wider agenda,

namely to ensure that as we

begin to move the Amiga plat-

form back into the mainstream

markets, existing and new

consumers can be guaranteed

a quality experience, from ﬁrst

contact with a developer all

the way through to post pur-

chase support, something that

has been notoriously lacking

use, but they are at this very

moment working hard on

product for OS4.0. We as a

community owe it to them to

do everything possible to

ensure that they are

rewarded. Without that

reward, there will be no new

products, and the Amiga

rebirth will falter and die.

I want to end on a high note

though. The Amiwest show in

Sacremento showed that

there is still huge interest in

Amiga, and Bill McEwen said

that he could have sold an

AmigaOne and OS4.0 to

everyone there if it had been

ready. Sore point I know, but

Bill also reiterated our policy

of announcing only progress

and not giving a ﬁnal ship date

until we have the product

working in front of us, and

most people seem to be

happy with this method.

Progress is being made.

There are more screenshots

of the new interface up on the

Amiga website, almost all of

the AmigaOS4.0 modules

have been completed,

ExecSG is booting on CSPPC

boards, and the AmigaOnes

are now running Linux and

UAE - one was demonstrated

by Randir of Compuquick.

That’s all for now,

Alan

A prototype of the AmigaOne XE motherboard.

Notice the removeable CPU module above the two DIMM slots.

UK Usergroup Listing

Looking for some hands-on help with your Amiga or somewhere to meet other Amigans?

Why not contact one of these fine usergroups and visit http://www.amigroups.co.uk.

London

Amiga Support Association

www.amigasupport.org.uk

Contact: Paul Qureshi

EMail: paul@world3.net

Kickstart Amiga

Based in Surrey

www.kickstart-amiga.co.uk

Only Amiga User Group

This is a new group just starting.

Based around the

Berkshire/Hampshire border.

Website: www.onlyamiga.all.at

Contact: Kelvin

EMail: jumpship@amiga.org

Mobile: 07811 270792

SEAL - (South Essex Amiga

Link)

Based in Essex

Website:

www.seal-amiga.co.uk

Contact: Mick Sutton.

Phone: 07710 039664

East England

Wales

West London Computer Club

Based in West London

Contact: Alan Paynter

Phone: 07951 909262

ANT - Amiga North Thames

Based in North East London

Website:

www.amiganorththames.co.uk

Contact: Michael Carrillo

Phone: 07956 867223

South East England

Felbrigg Amiga Group

Based in East Anglia

Contact: Andrew Beeson

EMail:

andrew.beeson@ukonline.co.uk

South West England

Cymru Amiga User Group

Meet in Cardiff

Website: www.caug.org.uk

Contact: Simon Eastop

Phone: 07788 137560

Scotland

North England

BAC - Blackpool Amiga Club

Website:

www.blackpoolamigaclub.co.uk

Contact: Barry Riddiford

Phone: 01253 397339

Huddersﬁeld Amiga User Group

Website: www.alt-woa.org

Contact: Geoff Milnes

Phone: 01484 322101

SSAmiga

Based in Wigan and West

Lancashire

Website: www.ssamiga.co.uk

Contact: Wesley Potter

Phone: 01942 863798

Mobile: 07775 747429

Gloucestershire Amiga Group

Based in Cirencester

Website:

www.glosamigagroup.co.uk

Contact: Nick Darley-Jones

Phone: 07779 365155

South West Amiga Group

Meets in Bristol

Website: http://www.swag.org.uk

Contact: Andy Mills

Phone: 01275 830703

AGNES (Amiga Group North

East Scotland)

Website: http://clix.to/agnes

GAUG - Glasgow Amiga User

Group

Based in Glasgow

Website: www.gaug.cjb.net

or: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/

donaldwm

Mailing List:

gaug-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Contact: Duncan Gow

Phone: 01436 679226

AmiSEK

Based in Kent

Website: http://uk.geocities.com/

pagan_johnuk

Contact: John Worthington

EMail: pagan@amiga.ca

Slowly but surely the Amiga

rebirth is occurring.

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2002

8

9

4

News

News

AmigaOS Update

The New HDToolbox

possibly some options speciﬁc

to certain hardware will be

added (memory timing options

were mentioned so I think this

may be similar to the

Cyberstorm PPC’s early start-

up screen).

Several options are being

evaluated for how the new OS

will be booted on existing

Amiga hardware (with a PPC

accelerator). A third party has

suggested producing a plug-in

card which would contain a

ROM to boot the new OS, this

would obviously add signiﬁcant

cost and several models might

be needed to suit different

Amigas. Another option would

be to have a program which

ran in classic Amiga mode then

re-booted the Amiga to load

the new kernal, this is how

current Amiga Linux

distributions work. Obviously

this method would require the

existing AmigaOS to boot and

then re-boot into OS 4 slowing

the boot process. The ﬁnal

option and the one that seems

to be favoured by Hyperion is a

custom boot loader installed on

the hard disk, this would still

require a re-boot but it could

happen very early in the start-

up process and so should only

add a few seconds to boot

time.

Some more of the utility

programs that will be included

with OS 4 have been

announced. The ﬁrst being a

new PPC native version of the

media player Action, this will

support more modern codecs

including DivX and MPEG 4, in

combination with the processor

power offered by the

AmigaOne these should open

up lots more Internet content to

Amiga users. A new PDF

document viewer will be

included, again this will be

PPC native and include print

and search functions. The

familiar Commodore Installer

utility will be replaced by

InstallerNG which adds

features while remaining

compatible with existing

scripts.

On a slightly less happy note

fans of dragable screens (I

know many people don’t really

care) will be disappointed to

hear that this feature will not be

in OS4, the problem is that

modern graphics chip sets just

don’t support this feature

(before anyone says that

CyberGraphX does support

dragable screens note that it

does not on Permedia based

cards, the most recent type to

have a driver). It is possible

that a software emulation will

be added in a future OS4

version but it will require

signiﬁcant work to make it work

smoothly. I will just point out

that OS 4 will support multiple

screens, just not dragging

down one to reveal another.

I’ve mentioned OS4’s USB

stack before, now we know it is

the same one that will be

shipped with the forthcoming

Thylacine Zorro card (see

news) and it will have basic

scanner, printer, mouse and

keyboard support. The stack

will also support the Highway

Zorro (reviewed in this issue)

and Subway clock port USB

cards so CyberStorm and

BlizzardPPC owners will have

the option of USB in OS4.

Since the last issue several

batches of new screenshots of

OS components have been

released on the Amiga website.

These have included a snap of

the new Palette preferences

editor which looks very similar

to the Full Palette utility,

offering the option to lock

certain colours to make the

most of low colour screens and

to solve problems with palette

mapped icons such as those

supplied with Magic

Workbench. The ﬁrst grabs of

the preferences for the new

TCP/IP stack have been

shown, this looks similar to

Genesis or Miami as you would

expect but it’s nice to see it will

have easy conﬁguration in

addition to its claimed speed.

Another interesting new

preferences program is the

GUI preferences which seems

to include options for both

Intuition (menus, window

borders etc.) and Reaction

applications. In the ﬁrst release

of OS4 the options for the look

of windows is expected to be

similar to Visual Prefs, the aim

is to offer a fully skinable look

similar to some Linux window

managers. This looks much

more comprehensive than the

current preferences and it

These screenshots show that AmigaOS’s venerable hard drive

preparation tool has had a real make over.

Loads more news and a bunch of new screenshots, Robert Williams gets his teeth into the latest OS 4 information.

I would have liked to be able

OS 4 however they have

decided to implement a more

complex memory system than

was planned. This will include

a full virtual addressing model,

which means that rather than

an application being allocated

a particular area of physical

memory it is given a virtual

area which the OS then relates

to physical memory. The

advantage of this model is that

the OS is in control of what

memory is used, fragmentation

is eliminated and it becomes

possible to implement various

schemes to protect the system

from crashes. One direct

beneﬁt that Ben Hermans

mentioned is that this system

will allow program’s stack

allocations to be dynamically

increased, he estimated that

30% of Amiga crashes are due

to applications running out of

stack space so this would be a

major boon. When virtual

memory has been mentioned

in the past many

knowledgeable Amiga

programmer have commented

that it would not be possible to

implement it without breaking

existing applications, it remains

to be seen how Hyperion will

handle this, perhaps some

features will only be available

to new OS 4 applications. Ben

stated that although this

improved system would add

about three weeks to the

development it was justiﬁed by

the extra functionality and

improved stability.

to start this article by saying

that OS 4 is out there for all of

us to buy, however although

this isn’t the case things are far

from gloomy, Hyperion have

been keeping us up to date

with their progress, most

recently with a number of

interviews held at the AmiWest

show. So once again here are

the nuggets of information I’ve

been able to ﬁnd from various

sources.

Although delays are never

pleasant one of the reasons for

OS 4’s longer than planned

development period is that

many more aspects of the OS

are being ported to PPC than

was originally intended for the

ﬁrst release. Thomas Freiden

(one of the OS4 developers)

said that they found that having

large parts of the OS emulated

meant that some of the

Amiga’s legendary

performance and quick

interface response was lost.

On a similar note Ben

Hermans (Hyperion’s manager)

pointed out that after waiting so

long it would be silly to rush out

the product with known bugs or

inadequate testing, he said

they would rather wait a little

longer and release the best

product they can.

Development of the enhanced

kernal, known as Exec SG, has

been completed to the level

Hyperion originally planned for

The main window is similar to the OS3.9 version but note the

removeable media control and SCSI Utilities buttons.

The new GUI preferences editor looks like it will take the

conﬁgurability of both Intuition and Reaction to new levels.

Most of the OS 4 modules

have been developed on

Classic Amiga systems with

CyberStorm PPC accelerators

so far. The new OS uses a

hardware abstraction layer

(HAL), this is the part of the OS

code which is speciﬁc to a

particular PPC hardware

platform, currently this is being

perfected on the CyberStorm

PPC and once it is complete it

can be quickly ported to

another platform such as the

AmigaOne. Hyperion are

making sure they have the HAL

speciﬁcation complete and

debugged before they start on

the HAL for the AmigaOne

hardware to prevent having two

code bases in development.

Once the HAL is complete it is

expected to take about one

and a half to two weeks to port

it over to a new hardware

platform. That said Ben

Hermans and Bill McEwan

have both conﬁrmed that the

new Exec kernal (the heart of

the OS) is already booting on

the AmigaOne and that the

boot sequence is ﬁnalised.

Support for Blizzard PPC cards

now seems to be conﬁrmed but

it will not be ready until after

the CyberStorm because

drivers have to be developed

for the on-board SCSI (which

uses a different chip to the

CyberStorm) and the OS

needs to support A1200

speciﬁc ports (clock port etc.).

Hyperion are now working on

the BIOS (Basic Input Output

System) for the AmigaOne, this

was to be provided by a third

party who failed to deliver. The

BIOS is stored in ROM and

initialises the basic

motherboard devices such as

memory and the North and

South bridges and gets the OS

loading from disk. The

Hyperion BIOS will be based

on the open source PPCBoot

BIOS. If the user desires it will

be possible to dual boot

AmigaOS 4 and another OS

such as one of the Linux

distributions which have

already been prepared for the

AmigaOne. Note that the BIOS

is not the same as the Amiga’s

Kickstart ROM which performs

BIOS tasks and much more.

For OS 4 much more of the OS

will be stored on disk including

the early start-up screen. On

that subject Hyperion expect

the early start-up screen to be

largely unchanged for OS 4,

The install window allows many more RDB options to be

changed directly. This is the expert version, a simpliﬁed

interface is available if you just want to get a drive installed!

The partitioning window now lists partitions with their details

as well as showing them graphically. Note the options to load

and save RDB’s for easier drive recovery.

Hot Links

Download the announcements from the recent AmiWest show

in mp3 format (Ben Hermans’ and Thomas Frieden’s

interviews are particularly interesting from an OS 4 point of

view:

The SCSI utilities window looks powerful.

http://aurora.merseine.nu/amiga

The latest screen grabs from OS 4 are linked from Amiga’s

site at:

http://os.amiga.com

seems to be getting close to

the options offered by MUI with

many different border styles

and independent control over

different gadget types. It also

has options labelled Controls

and Menus which we assume

will cover the menu and

window conﬁguration options

shown in the ﬁrst OS 4

TOTAL AMIGA

Autumn 2002

10

11

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