AmigaOS 4 News – January 2024

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the first AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup of 2024!

2023 was a busy year in the world of AmigaOS 4. Perhaps not in terms of an official AmigaOS 4 update, but the community and its developers delivered on many fronts.

On the hardware side, the A1222+ was finally put into production, while the Sam460LE shipped to globally. You could even buy the X5040 from Amedia Computers in France, with a more modern graphics card and drivers.

As for software, we were lucky to get plenty of games to try. Examples are Fallout, Super Mario 64, AstroMenace, BreakHack, and Nanosaur. We must not forget ScummVM being maintained and updated by Raziel, which opens the world to many excellent graphical adventures.

Applications? Rave from Trixie got improved, IBrowse got updated, jPV^RNO delivered RNOXfer, RNOTunes, and much more.

If you want to have a deeper look into what 2023 brought us, I recommend checking out the previous monthly roundups, which are available here.

Now, without further ado, let us move on to the news concerning January 2024. 🙂

Software News

FUPPES is a free, multiplatform UPnP A/V Media Server. It supports a wide range of UPnP MEdiaRenderers, and on-the-fly transcoding of various audio, video, and image formats. It also includes DLNA support. Thanks to the porting done by Krzysztof Sowinski (SOVA), it is available to us on AmigaOS 4. You can download the latest version, uploaded to OS4Depot on January 8th, by clicking here.

Sandro Barbagelata has released version 1.1 of the utility EasyRapa, a tool for programmers using RapaGUI with Hollywood. It provides an interface to handle most of their RapaGUI classes for creating a single form and automatically generates the HWS and XML files according to the selections done.

The SNES9X NG has been updated! Version 1.62.3r2 was uploaded to OS4Depot on January 5th. A lot of work has been put into it:

• MSU1 Pcm / Fmv Working now!!!
• Added new covers 3D for support MSU1 games
• Added new folder “Roms-MSU1” for copy your games patched with MSU1 files
• New options on the GUI:
• Activate TurboFrameSkip + select of number of frames (thanks to Maijestro)
• No Overscan for 320×240 mode (for speedup on low machines)
• Activate MSU1 files support
• New locale for GUI
• New images style for GUI
• Added new logo for MSU1 roms
• Now GUI support extensions : .zip/.smc/.sfc/.fig/.swc on native (thanks to Kas1e and Samo79)
• Added column TYPES OF EXTENSIONS (zip smc sfc fig swc)
• Added Video Hack for choice your resolution manually (thanks to Kas1e)
• GUI is now V1.0.6
• Added 1 icon on listbrowser Snes_cartbMsu1.png
• Fixed crash on QUIT after launch a bad rom or using a old newlib.library (thanks to Samo79)
• Optimized a new audio buffer for MSU1 and a new DSP
• SaveState with 9 SLOTS is now activate by keys: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 for loading and for saving press LSHIFT+number of key
• Added PAUSE with Key P
• Modified Key P on Player2 by M now for using PAUSE on engine

McFly PPC shows the new version of SNES9X NG in action on his AmigaOne X5000:

Amiga-news.de reports that Hyperion Entertainment has released elf.library version 54.1. For a full overview of the changes since the last version, I recommend visiting amiga-news.de by clicking here.

If you are in the market for a utility generating strong passwords on AmigaOS 4, then you should check out PWGen. It is a password generator created by Miriam Schinagl. It supports the use of special characters if wanted.

In previous reports, I’ve written about Seq, a MIDI sequencer, by Tuomas Hokka. A new update is out with the following changes:

• FIXES to song intro and flashing buttons while in intro or in the last song step
• FIXES to flashing advancing led
• Added 2nd Play button to the 2nd window
• Base note: Fixes to triggering
• Base note: Renamed Trigger shift to Note shift
• Base note: Added 2 new values to splitting option as lo shift and hi shift

Oliver Roberts has updated WarpWebP DT to version 45.5. Here are the changes since the last release:

• Updated with libwebp 1.3.2
• Decoding of lossless images on 68k is now 30% faster
• Various minor optimizations
• Removed some redundant code

You can get it from the official website. It is shareware, which means you are expected to register if you find it useful after an evaluation period of 30 days.

Bernd Assenmacher has released version 2.5 of the Image2PDF utility. With this tool, you can convert PNG- or JPG files to PDF. The author labels it as “EmailWare”, so please send him an e-mail if you use the program. 🙂 The new version contains a lot of new functions, an updated guide, and cosmetic changes to the GUI. For a full overview, please have a look here.

Woof is a continuation of Lee Killough’s port of Doom. Changes since 1.397 are as follows:

• Added versioning to SDL window
• Transient assigns of ETC and USR to avoid requests caused due to soft-openal if ETC/USR are not assigned (caused due to soft-openal) (reported by jabierdlr)

Here is a video from Demo Tube Net showing the game running on an AmigaOne X5000:

Some may wonder why they chose the name Woof. I did include information about this last month, but here it is again for new readers. This is an explanation taken from the GitHub page of the project:

“If you turn the Doom logo upside down it reads “Wood” – which would be a pretty stupid name for a source port. “Woof” is just as stupid a name for a source port, but at least it contains a reference to dogs – and dogs are the Marine’s Best Friend.”

AmiArcadia by James Jacobs has been updated to version 30.8. Here is a summary of the of the changes:

• AY-3-8500: added 1976 version option
• Assembler: added INCBIN directive
• Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes

A more detailed overview is available on OS4Depot.

RNOEffects is an image processing program with a focus on good batch conversion options and alpha channel-based effects.

It runs on AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, AmigaOS 3 (68K/WOS), and AROS.

The new features for version 2.0 can be seen in the video below:

The video shows the program running on MorphOS, but it is the same on the other platforms, including AmigaOS 4.

If you want to download the program or view a list of the changes, please visit Aminet by clicking the link below:

RNOEffects 2.0 on Aminet

MCE, Multi-game Character Editor, is a user-friendly open-source editor of character files, saved games, high score tables, levels, and graphics for 114 games. James Jacobs, the author, has now released version 14.5. Changes include a level editor and viewer for Dungeon Master 1 and Chaos Strikes Back, as well as miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.

McFly has uploaded a set of 8 nicely looking backgrounds for Workbench with an AmigaOne X5000 theme. The resolution is 1920×1080. You can download the archive with all the backgrounds on OS4Depot.

The PCI Utilities package contains a library for portable access to PCI bus configuration registers and several utilities based on this library. It was developed by Martin Mares and ported to AmigaOS 4 by Olrick Lefebvre.

Version 2.13r1 of Cppcheck was released on January 24th. This is a static analysis tool for C/C++ code. It provides unique code analysis to detect bugs and focuses on detecting undefined behavior and dangerous coding constructs. The goal is to have very few false positives. Cppcheck is designed to be able to analyze your C/C++ code even if it has non-standard syntax (common in embedded projects). It was developed by the Cppcheck team and ported to AmigaOS 4 by George Sokianos.

AmigaGPT is a text generation program that runs on the classic AmigaOS and AmigaOS 4. Utilizing the power of OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4 architectures, this program provides state-of-the-art language modeling.

Features:

• Generates text based on input prompts
• UI customization
• Full conversation history
• Text-to-speech

You can now download version 1.4.1 (2024-01-20) from OS4Depot. They fixed a bug where the prompt textbox remained in a read-only state when switching from image mode to chat mode.

Pythonssl_amissl5 has been updated to version 2.4. A makefile has been added, and all compiler warnings have been fixed. More information is available on OS4Depot.

Version 3.420 of IMP3, a utility created by Juen a.k.a Pawl Nowak, has been released! The program was originally meant for 68K but does run OK on AmigaOS 4. With IMP3, you can listen to over 168.000 music files through the Internet. These are ProTracker modules, SID tunes, and so forth. Besides this, it has cloud storage and Online gaming with high scores.

An update to Report+, a ReAction-based utility with nine functions, has been released by James Jacobs. It was made available on OS4Depot on January 27th. This tool can help you with generating Aminet- and OS4Depot-style readme files, performing batch processing on icons, and much more. Click here to go to the download page or to find information about the recent changes.

Version 1.0 of JSON Hollywood has been released. This is a JSON encoder and decoder for Hollywood MAL. It is a port/conversion of the json.lua library.

AmiSSL received an update to version 5.14. 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!

That was all the software news I had for January. Let us move onto other news. 🙂

Miscellaneous

Issue 166 of Amiga Future was released in January. There you can read about the new IBrowse 3, RNOSlides, AstroMenace, and much more! The magazine is available for purchase directly from various Amiga shops, as well as directly from the publisher.

ACube Systems has released a guide for using Radeon graphics cards on the different Sam4x0 models. Besides this, they’ve published a guide on how to make bootable USB sticks and SD cards containing AmigaOS 4.1.

Here is the news as published on their website:

Dear valued customers,

We have received numerous inquiries regarding the appropriate Radeon driver to use and how to go about it. We understand that using AmigaOS 4.1 can be a bit challenging in this regard, so we would like to provide you with some helpful information to make the process easier.

Please take a moment to read the linked article, which discusses the various versions of Radeon drivers and provides instructions on how to install them on AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition. It is crucial to carefully go through the article to ensure a smooth installation.

www.acube-systems.biz/download/Radeon_QuickGuide_v.1.0.pdf

Additionally, we have prepared an article on utilizing an USB key or SD card that contains an AmigaOS 4.1 system, allowing for easy booting on Sam4x0 systems. We understand that working with an USB key / SD card may not be as straightforward as it should be, so we are here to assist all our customers and fellow Amigans in the Community.

www.acube-systems.biz/download/Make_Bootable_USB-SD_QuickGuide_v.1.0.pdf

We genuinely hope that you find these details invaluable and that they enable you to utilize AmigaOS 4.1 on Sam4x0 at its best.

Sincerely,
ACube Systems

I’m sure many customers of the Sam460LE (and other models) will find this helpful, so thumbs up to ACube Systems for creating these guides!

Mufa of the AmigaOne Zone, a Polish website, has written a review of the year 2023 in terms of AmigaOS 4. It provides an excellent overview over what took place last year. It is in Polish, but I used an Online translator, which worked fine. 🙂

Some of you might remember that Nukleus and Void have released several issues of the diskmag/chart Versus in the past for Amiga OCS and AmigaOS 4. Now it is time to announce issue 10!

Here are a few words from the editor Browallia/Nukleus:

Excited to announce that we once again go for Versus, issue 10 for Amiga where you decide what you like! At Gerp we will open for votings for the people there and be able for chats.

The voting at Gerp 2024 will be pure old school with traditional paper votesheets + pencil. We hope to get votes during Gerp so we can continue serve the Amiga scene. See you there! /brow

On behalf of Versus team (menthos, ghandy, cefa, and browallia of nukleus, and puni, powerslave and hukka of void)

Versus (vS) comes out on OCS, OS4, smartphone and online.

I’ll post here once the Online vote is open so you can vote for your favorites. I hope as many as possible will contribute by filling out a votesheet. It will be exciting to see who will be in the charts!

If you’re interested in checking out previous editions of Versus, please look at Versus 9. It is available for download from OS4Depot:

http://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=demo/magazine/vs9.lha

Here is the link to the announcement concerning Versus and GERP 2024:

https://gerp.traktor.group/

This month I updated my blog post called “Where to buy AmigaOS 4 compatible systems?” with new information from Amiga shops. If you are looking to purchase a computer compatible with AmigaOS 4.1, I recommend having a look. 🙂 The latest news I found was that GGS Data in Sweden will be selling the A1222+.

During January, we’ve been playing the game Virus Killer over at Amigans.net. It was developed by Parallel Realities and ported to AmigaOS 4 by Cyborg and ToAks in 2005.

Most games have a story, and Virus Killer is not an exception. According to the readme file, the story is about viruses invading your desktop through various security holes. With the help of your trusty mouse, you must shoot the viruses before they destroy your precious files. Some will steal files from your directories and bring them to their security holes, while others will feast upon them! The aim is to survive as long as possible until all your files are lost. To accomplish this, you must move the crosshair around the screen, blasting away and picking up items to help you (freeze time, more power, etc.) survive.

You can find the contest and the current highscore list here.

The AmigaWARP organization in Croatia has once again created a nice calendar for the year 2024. 🙂 They are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year! Congratulations! The calendar can be downloaded from their website.

TJ Ferreira has published a video on his YouTube channel showing his AmigaOne X5000 booting both AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS.

The Lost C shows Super Mario 64 running on a Sam440, Sam460, and Amiga 1200 with PPC.

Ice Princess is the title of a new song by Helge Kvalheim. You can watch the video containing the song here:

Rene Engel has created many videos lately. These show AmigaOS 4.1 running in QEMU. If you want to get an overview of all of his videos, I recommend checking out his YouTube channel. 🙂

Mufa has created an interesting video showing the top 10 games on AmigaOS 4 in 2023! The video is in Polish, but if you turn on subtitles, you can easily follow the narration.

If you are waiting for the upcoming Heretic II release from Hyperion Entertainment, I recommend checking out McFly PPC’s new video about it.

Demo Tube Net created a video showing CANDI (Composite ANimated Desktop Images) in action on an AmigaOne X5000.

Until next time

You’ve reached the end of this month’s AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup.

Many thanks for visiting my blog and for reading. 🙂

Thanks to all of you for supporting this initiative by reading, spreading, commenting, and sending me messages. It is much appreciated!

I wish you all a great day and a nice February! 🙂

Best regards,

Puni/Void a.k.a AmigaOldSkooler