AmigaOS 4 News – October 2023

Hi,

Thank you for visiting my blog! 🙂

Today it is the 31st of October and it is time to look back at what has happened in the AmigaOS 4 community this month. Not only were two great events held, AmiWest in Sacramento and Amiga38 in Mönchengladbach, but an announcement was made by A-EON Technology that the A1222+ is very near official release. We’ll have a closer look at this later on in this post.

If you’ve missed any of the previous roundups, you can find them all listed on a separate page.

Hope you’ll enjoy this month’s report and I hope to see you again next month!

Software News

First up in October is TouchBench version 0.9b by Alfredo Amendolagine. This is an application that converts touchscreen events produced by touch.device into mouse events.

A video has been uploaded to YouTube that shows it being used with The Secret of Monkey Island II: LeChuck’s Revenge via ScummVM. TouchBench allows all pre-existing applications that do not use touch.device to be used with a touchscreen.

Concerning this, HIDTouchUSBFD has been released. This is the USB driver for the touchscreens based on the HID protocol. The author states that it is a very complex driver, so there is a need to test it on as many devices as possible. He would appreciate any help in testing it on touchscreens different from his own. A list of compatible and/or tested touchscreens is available on this URL:

https://project4a.eu

Speaking of TouchBench, it is interesting to note that a new version of Quickstarter has been released.

This time it is version 2.4. It does sport a table-style layout, which should be useful if you want to use a touchscreen.

PDF2PDF is a utility created by Bern Assenmacher. Version 1.3 was released at the beginning of October. A valid question is why you would want to convert a PDF to another PDF. The author explains that the main purpose is to receive a PDF file where “copy and paste” is not possible anymore. It will therefore be protected against this.

TheMagicSN (Steffen Häuser) reports on Amigans.net that his work on a new port (done from scratch) of Heretic 2 for Hyperion Entertainment is complete. The game will be released soon. A physical edition will be available for purchase! He is also working on finalizing the installer for Quake 2, which has seen a lot of beta testing lately.

In previous reports, I’ve written about Seq, a MIDI sequencer, by Tuomas Hokka. He has now returned with a new version. For an overview of the changes, please have a look here. You can download the program from OS4Depot.

A new version of the OO library was released by Tuomas Hokka. This library brings object class style and easier programming to plain C language and AmigaOS. It also makes it possible to create GUIs using GUIML.

Viivi is a picture viewer created by Tuomas Hokka. The program has been rewritten from scratch and many old features have been ditched.

On Amigans.net, 328gts reported that the Online highscores are working again at AmiBoing.de. Thanks to Entwickler-X for getting the scores up and running again! This is good news for all of you who are enjoying playing games like Tap Jewels, M.A.C.E., Bubbelsche Deluxe, and many more.

Juan Carlos Herran Martin is once again back with a game. 🙂 This time it is Video Slot Machine. It is not the usual fruit machine simulator, since you can customize the machine to include your videos and play them when you earn money from spins. Version 1.10 is available for download here.

An update has been made to the AmigaOS 4 version of Worm Wars, a freeware arcade game by James Jacobs of Amigan Software. Version 9.32 is available for download here.

We’ve read quite a bit about the FlashMandelNG tool in previous round-ups. Dino Papararo and Edgar Schwan are once again back with an update. In version 4.7 they’ve fixed and speeded up Altivec calculations and cleaned up include-files in the source code.

On the 14th of October, version 1.04 (SDL2) of the music program MilkyTracker was released for AmigaOS 4 by Capehill. Being similar to the legendary FastTracker 2, you can compose music in formats like MOD and XM.

AmiArcadia by James Jacobs has been updated to version 30.31. The latest version includes many miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.

Version 1.13.1 of Libvpx was uploaded to OS4Depot on the 17th of October. According to the information provided, it is “(..) a free software video codec library from Google and the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). It serves as the reference software implementation for the VP8 and VP9 video coding formats.”.

NallePuh (Swedish for Winnie-the-Pooh), a program to emulate the Paula chip from classic Amiga, has been updated thanks to the work of Damien Stewart and Kjetil Hvalstrand. After 13 years without updates, they found out it was time to dust it off and get it working again. Version 1.4 was released in October and you can find a list of the changes here. Examples of programs already working are HippoPlayer and Payback.

PT2-Clone is a Protracker 2 clone by 8bitbubsy. It was released for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It was ported to AmigaOS 4 by Smarkusg and uploaded to OS4Depot in October. The program works well, except for a bug in windowed mode, but this will hopefully be fixed soon.

Synergy is a keyboard and mouse-sharing tool. Ryan Dixon has created a patch that can be applied to the source code. Without the patch, games such as first-person shooters can be unplayable. Dixon explains: “Once the Synergy server detects that the mouse has reached the limits of the secondary screen then it will no longer issue any movement commands. This means that if you rotate your character it will stop. This patch changes things so that the clamping is still done, but the delta movement is still sent to the client.”

SDL2 (Simple DirectMedia Layer 2) 2.28.4 was released in October. You can download it from OS4Depot, as well as find more information about it there:

http://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=library/misc/sdl2.lha

AmiSSL received an update to version 5.12. As mentioned in earlier editions of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup, the AmiSSL project is a collaborative effort to develop a port of OpenSSL in a shared library for Amiga-based systems. The download is available here. If you are interested in the SDK, it can be found here. It is a must-have if you use AmigaOS 4 to browse the web!

Speaking of browsing, a new version of IBrowse has been released! This time it is 2.5.9 and the ninth free update for registered owners of IBrowse 2.5. 2.1-2.4 and 1.x owners may upgrade to IBrowse 2.5.9 by registering at discounted rates.

To use the new IBrowse, you also need to download and install AmiSSL 5.12, or you’ll be left without access to HTTPS sites.

Here is the list of changes:

• Fixed the disk cache, which became broken in 25.109
• Now requires AmiSSL 5.12 for secure connections
• Added workaround for AmigaOS 4.x Installer versions 53.1-53.7 which were unfortunately broken, with 53.2 being on the 4.1FE CD-ROM
• Copyright year bumped to 2023
• The full news is available here.

It is great to see continuing development on IBrowse! I finally decided to register a while back, so looking forward to installing the new version. If you want to become a registered user, you can visit this page.

The game AI Kills All Humans, which is being developed by One Joyful Day, is now scheduled for release in the 1st quarter of 2024 according to Steam. AI Kills All Humans is a tactical RTS game in which you play as an AI, which due to a slight change in code, is sending robots to kill all humans.

OpenJPEG is an open-source JPEG 2000 code written in C. It was developed to promote the use of JPEG 2000, a still-image compression standard from the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG). Michael Trebilcock brought version 2.5.0 to AmigaOS 4 on the 30th of October.

Hardware News

On the 10th of October, I updated the post Where to buy AmigaOS 4.x compatible systems? There you will a list of shops stocking the Sam460LE and the X5000.

Speaking of the Sam460LE, ACube Systems decided to prolong the Amiga38 discount for this motherboard.

You can read the news as published on their website below:

Dear valued customers,

We have returned from the amazing Amiga38 exhibition, where we had the pleasure of meeting many fellow Amiga enthusiasts. We sincerely appreciate your support and the enjoyable moments we shared, all centered around our shared passion.

During the exhibition, we presented our Sam460LE board at a discounted price. We are excited to announce that we have decided to extend this special offer to coincide with the upcoming Amiwest event! Although we will not be physically present at the event, you can still take advantage of purchasing the Sam460LE from our store at the exclusive price of 729 Euros (excluding VAT) or 890 Euros (including VAT).

Thank you for your continuous support, and we look forward to serving you!

ACube Systems

Click here to check out the motherboard on their webshop.

Let us now have a look at the A1222+, which Trevor Dickinson of A-EON Technology spoke about at both Amiga38 and AmiWest.

A few days ago, AAA Technology announced a complete A1222+ configuration for pre-order on their Facebook page.

AAA Technology states on Facebook that the A1222+ motherboard comes in a small tower with a 4 GB memory module (SoDDR3), 240 GB SSD storage, and a 4 GB graphics card (RX550). Audio and ethernet are integrated. Besides this, you’ll get AmigaOS 4.1 and the latest Enhancer package from A-EON Technology. Everything will be installed and ready to go. 🙂 The price is 1599 EUR.

If you are interested in pre-ordering or to get more information, you can visit the Facebook page here:

https://www.facebook.com/aaatechnologysarl/

Magazines

Issue 165 of the Amiga Future magazine is due for release in November. There, you’ll find a show report from the Amiga 38 event, part two of the A1222+ article series by Eliyahu, a review of AAMP, and much more. You can find the issue for purchase here.

Amiga Future is not the only magazine around. BOING is a paper magazine created in France for French readers. It is, unfortunately, not available in English. It covers all Amiga flavours, including AmigaOS 4. BOING sports 52 colored pages in the A4 format. In issue 7, released in October, they have a special report about the A1222+ and an exclusive interview with AAA Technology. I placed an order for an issue of BOING today. I’m sure my mobile phone can help me with translating. 😉 If you want to check it out, please click here.

Events

As many of you know, the Amiga38 event took place in Mönchengladbach, Germany, on the 6th and 7th of October.

It was a big success with a large amount of visitors and exhibitors.

amiga-news.de did an excellent job collecting the most important news and announcements from the event. You can find the article here:

https://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2023-10-00031-EN.html

For AmigaOS 4 users, the upcoming release of Enhancer 2.3, should be interesting, as well as the Virtio GPU driver, which will provide increased performance and usage boost when running AmigaOS 4 under QEMU.

Visitors at the event could test the A1222+ computer at the stand of AAA Technology. They could also sign up for a pre-order for a complete system. More information about pricing is available further up in this round-up. 🙂

At the stand of HunoPPC and Alinea Computer, the new port of Heretic II from TheMagicSN and Hyperion Entertainment was on display.

Several videos of Amiga38 are available on YouTube. Here is one from Retro Merlin showing the main hall with the exhibitors.

This video from Propheus was also very nice. 🙂

As mentioned previously, amiga-news.de has more information about the event here, if you’d like to learn more.

The well-known AmiWest event in Sacramento, California, was held just a few days after Amiga38 closed its doors.

First up, on the 12th of October, was the AmiWest Developer Conference. It lasted two days and focused on learning and sharing from experts worldwide on the latest AmigaOS developments, hosted by Steven Solie, lead developer on the ExecSG team. Topics included the Webkit-browser-project and Multicore for AmigaOS 4.

The exhibition started on the 14th of October. Trevor Dickinson of A-EON Technology kicked off the event with news and announcements. Of interest to many viewers was the news that the A1222+ was finally available and that pre-orders had opened at AAA Technology. He also gave the audience a history of the AmigaOne under A-EON Technology.

After Trevor Dickinson, Steven Solie entered the stage as the designated A1222+ Release Coordinator.

On the second day of the event, Bill Borsari and Trevor Dickinson answered questions from the audience on the YouTube chat. Once again, people had many questions concerning the A1222+.

Apart from this, the event had many exhibitors, including 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast, AmigaKit, Rabbit Hole Computing, and Mr. Toast. Garry Hare, former CEO of Amiga Inc., was there (featured banquet speaker), as well as the Amiga legend RJ Mical.

TJ Ferreira, a retro computer enthusiast and YouTuber, made a nice walk around video of the event.

Misc

There is one topic that has been heavily discussed in October, and that is QEMU, the emulation of AmigaOS 4, and the development of the Virtio GPU driver. A-EON Technology has put Hans de Ruiter on the case and development is currently ongoing. According to Trevor Dickinson, it will make the AmigaOS 4 experience via QEMU much better.

That we have the option of emulating an AmigaOne XE, Sam460, or Pegasos 2, in QEMU, is thanks to the massive work done by Balaton. For almost 10 years he’s been working on this in his free time. You can find the website of his projects here:

http://zero.eik.bme.hu/~balaton/qemu/amiga/

Rene Engel is very active when it comes to QEMU. He does a lot of testing and creates videos on YouTube showing it in action. Here is a recent video showing AmigaOne XE under QEMU:

At Amigans.net we’ve been playing Bubbelsche Deluxe during October. In Bubbelsche Deluxe you have to navigate a small bubble through a long, complicated maze without colliding on the game blocks. Manage the bubble as fast and wide as possible without bursting. You have exactly one attempt per game to make it. Highest scores wins. 😉 The contest is not over yet, as it is the 31st when I’m writing this. 🙂 Mcleppa is currently in first place, closely followed by runner-up Levellord. You can find the competition here if you’d like to have a look.

Until next time

You’ve reached the end of this month’s AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup. Thanks again for visiting my blog and for reading. I hope you found the news interesting.

Thanks to all of you supporting this effort by reading, spreading the word, providing feedback, and commenting in forums. 🙂 It is much appreciated! Cheers!

I wish you all a great day! See you in the next roundup!

Best regards,

Puni/Void a.k.a AmigaOldSkooler