Hi guys,

Thought I’d share a quick press release with you from the Facebook-page of A-EON Technology. It has to do with the Varisys takeover. Read on!

A-EON Technology News Release

Following the news that Varisys, our hardware partners and designers of the Nemo motherboard, had been acquired by Ultra Electronics, we have been in close communication with regards current and ongoing development projects. Adam Barnes, Technical Director commented: “We are looking forward to continuing our relationship with A-EON and the Amiga community. We always hoped to develop IP for embedded applications through the A-EON projects, and that has not changed one bit.” Paul Gentle, General Manager added: “Adam and I are staying with the business, and are excited by the future prospects and opportunities that will arise.” A-EON Technology Director Matthew Leaman commented, “We wish to congratulate Varisys on their acquisition by Ultra Electronics and look forward to strengthening our close working relationship”.

Cardiff 16/06/2013

Seems like everything is as normal, which is good to know.

Have a good weekend!

Hi guys,

ACube Systems is an Italian company that is engaged in the fields of sale, distribution and engineering of hardware and software for both mainstream and alternative platforms. In the world of Amiga, they are known for making the various Samantha (SAM) motherboards, as well as being a distributor of the excellent Minimig.

Back in 2011 (how time flies!) I made a post about ACube Systems announcing a top-secret file. You can read it by clicking here. Now, in 2013, they are back with a new teaser for us.. the following image was found on the front-page of their website:

Secrets… what can it be? (picture taken from the website of ACube Systems)

They sure know how to tease a poor Amigan that is always hungry for something new.

I really wonder what can be hiding behind that envelope?

At first sight, it looks to me that it is something that starts with the letter “m”. The only plausible guess I can come up with is a new Minimig with AGA support. Does any of you have any guesses or perhaps you know something about this? Would love to hear your thoughts.

By the way, I just found a link on Amigaworld.net leading to the Facebook-page of A-EON. Seems like they are in “secret mode” as well. Have a look at this:

New hardware from A-EON? (picture taken from https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=625462064130849&set=a.447768708566853.108540.447768335233557&type=1&source=11)

As you can see from the picture, there is a small motherboard there. I can’t make anything out of it, but surely something is cooking and boiling over in the UK at the HQ of A-EON. Any ideas?

Will post updates as soon as I hear anything more about this. Stay tuned!

Amiga rulez!

(taken from http://fanart.tv/series/102371/derrick/)

Hi guys,

Derrick is a German TV-show that has been aired here in Norway for decades. They have broadcasted reruns of all the episodes for quite a while now and I was lucky enough to catch episode one of season 15 a while ago. I did not forget about what I saw in that film (an Amiga 500) and took note of this information. Now I’ve tracked down the episode in question on the German version of YouTube.

I have included two links for you below. Click on them and you’ll be taken to the point where the Amiga 500 is shown in the episode. I was going to embed them in this post, but couldn’t figure out how to alter the start-time.

Please be aware that the episode is long and that only the first seconds/minute of the video in the links shows the Amiga 500.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcLnsODUfeg&feature=player_detailpage#t=1164s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcLnsODUfeg&feature=player_detailpage#t=2057s

As you can see, the Amiga 500 is situated in the room of one of the characters in the episode. It could be that the Amiga is shown more times than two, but I can’t remember and I don’t want to watch the whole episode closely again.

Anyway, have fun!

Amiga spotting for the win!

(logo taken from the homepage of the TiNA Project)

Hi everyone,

From Italy comes an ambitious and interesting project called TiNA (Tecnologia Informatica Amica).

TiNA is a new board that is being designed and developed in Italy by a team of Amiga enthusiasts. Their main goal is to make a complete implementation of the Amiga 500 and/or Amiga 1200 by the use of powerful FPGAs. They want to make this come true with a 68020 CPU that is even more powerful than any existing 68060 CPU. It’ll be able to execute 2 in-order instructions per clock cycle, but at 400 (!) MHz instead of 50. On their website they state that there is a lot of work to do when it comes to this and they need to investigate fully if the FPGA will allow such features.

Just like the old Amiga tradition, there will be several independent FPGAs to  handle sound, graphics and so forth.

They aim to maintain full backward compatibility, which I think is great.

As far as I’ve understood, they are bringing up AROS Vision 68k as an OS for this computer, which is a good choice.

(picture taken from the official homepage of the TiNA Project)

I really hope these guys can pull this off, especially after what happened to the Natami-project. If they do, I’ll be first in line to purchase one or more boards.

If you’d like to check out TiNA further, please have a look at the official website of the project:

http://www.tinaproject.it/index.html#

The latest news can be found here:

http://www.tinaproject.it/news.html

Let’s cross our fingers and wish the developers the best of luck with TiNA! This must succeed!

Thanks for reading and for visiting my blog. Until next time!

A screenshot of the website called Blow the Cartridge (screenshot by Old School Game Blog)

Hi everyone,

Just read a short comic strip about Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior at the website of Blow the Cartridge. The story was kind of sad, as I felt sorry for the main character, but also uplifting at the end. Will not reveal any details here, but you should really check it out if you remember good, old Street Fighter 2.

If you haven’t checked out the website of Blow the Cartridge yet, then you should if you love video games. There are a ton of cool comic strips there about all kinds of retro games. I have written a short piece about the site earlier. Check it out here.

Hope you liked the comic, I sure did.

(taken from https://www.facebook.com/AmigaOS/photos_stream)

Hi guys,

I read on Amigaworld.net today that there is a page on Facebook dedicated to AmigaOS 4. You can find it by following the link below:

The Official AmigaOS 4 page on Facebook

The page is frequently updated and it contain a wide variety of information. Should be quite a helpful resource if you are interested in following the development of the OS and other stuff related to it. Had a look myself and I thought it looked quite nice. Will pop in from time to time to stay updated on what’s going on.

Speaking of AmigaOS 4, I’m still disappointed that the netbook Hyperion announced back in 2011 still hasn’t been released. Seems like the project has been cancelled or else we would probably have heard something by now. Time will show what happens I guess.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the AmigaOS page on Facebook!

Have a good one!

Had a look at a few demos today and there is one in particular that I wanted to share with you.

It is called Dose 2 and was made by MFX back in 2001. The demo took part in the combined demo competition at the Assembly party in Finland the same year and was eventually ranked as number five.

Dose 2 is meant to be a fun and humorous production. It reminds me of old Amiga demos from groups like Budbrain (have you seen the Budbrain Mega Demo by the way? It’s great!) and Melon Design. I had a good laugh while watching it. Hope you will too! So… here it is:

Did you enjoy it?

(Picture lent from http://aladdin4d.blogspot.no/2009_11_01_archive.html)

Hi everyone,

A new version of the MorphOS operating system was released on the 27th of May:

The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the public release of MorphOS 3.2, which introduces support for Power Mac G5 workstations, iBook G4 laptops and additional PowerBook G4 models. The 3.2 release also has a strong focus on improved network support with a completely new and improved NetStack core as well as support for wireless networks. In addition, there are several new network-related tools such as VNC client, a Remote Desktop Client and a tool showing detailed network statistics. As usual, the latest release also offers many new features and bug fixes. For an overview of the included changes, please read our release notes.

We strongly urge new users to carefully read our installation and troubleshooting guides before they attempt to install MorphOS for the first time. Existing users can upgrade via the familiar procedure but are encouraged to read the guides as well. MorphOS 3.2 is available for download in our files section. (Source: Amigaworld.net)

Now the OS supports even more of those old Apple Mac computers. If you’ve got one gathering dust somewhere, now is the time to bring it to life again with an Amiga OS.

You can find more information concerning the updates that has been made on the official website of MorphOS by clicking here.

I think it is great to see that MorphOS is making progress. The OS can now be used on a wide variety of platforms and you can try the OS before you buy. So if you want to get into NextGen Amiga computing, you can find an old Mac (you can find these very cheap in second-hand stores, eBay etc) and install MorphOS on it.

In case you want to try it out, here’s a link for you: MorphOS Download

I also recommend you having a look at this page for a lot of interesting information and news: Meta-MorphOS.org

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

As if I didn’t have enough games to play and get addicted to, Gradius V arrived in the mail a few days ago. I admit to paying quite a bit to get hold of this fantastic game, but I think it was totally worth it. Already had a few tries to freshen up my memory and it was just as fun as it was in the past.

Stay tuned for some in-game pictures of Gradius V in action in my living room.

For those of you who does not know Gradius V, please have a look at the video below. I found it on YouTube.

So, what games are you currently playing?

Would be great if you could post a comment and tell me what is going on in your gaming-life these days. Thanks in advance.

I’m a happy camper today! Why? Well, R-Type Final for the PlayStation 2 arrived in the mail today. Can’t wait to start playing it, so I guess this will be one of my shorter posts.

I also won an auction for Gradius V (PlayStation 2 game), which is another great shoot’em up. Eagerly waiting for it to arrive.

Anyway, here’s a few pics of my new game:

The front of R-Type Final.. I like it! (photo by Old School Game Blog)

Here’s the back of the box (photo by Old School Game Blog)

Nice manual as well. Lot’s of info to read, but I won’t bother with that, as I want to start playing right away.. hehe.. (photo by Old School Game Blog)

Anyone else playing or having played R-Type Final reading this? If yes, then I hope to hear from you. What is your opinion on the game?

Thanks for reading and see you soon!