So many news in Amigaland!!! [Update: AOS 4.1.1 + Blender]

[Raffaele the Amigan]

It was so many time that I did not give you any news of Amiga, due to lack of time, excess of news, and in the end, due to my lack of presence on this site....

But my dear friends, there are really plenty of Amiga related news since my latest update in Amigaland, almost one year Ago.

Even our colleague OSTAN user coldReactive in this thread:

http://www.ostan-collections.net/viewtopic.php?t=1152

...he gave news about new hardware AmigaONE X1000 but these news about new Amiga hardware were largely over noticed in worldwide hardware an OS Fora in spite of many upgrades, updates and new software announcements in Amiga scene.


Lets start with OWB.

- Origyn Web Browser is an Open Source browser for embedded devices.

As it is very light browser and accomplishes the Amiga philosophy of lower consumption of hardware resources and light OS experience, it has becoming DE-FACTO Inter-standard Amiga Browser.

OWB is being developed any week and there are continuous new version releases any moment on Amiga sites.

It is available on:

* AmigaOS 4.0/4.1

* MorphOS (MorphOS version of OWB has also SWFDec standard Plug-In to run Flash sites and animations)

* AROS/ICaros Desktop (the Open Source X86 version of Amiga3.1 OS that our beloved friend C-Chan loves soooo much!)

* AmigaOS 3.x (Yes, OWB runs even on elder Amigas, as long as they were powered at least with high speed 68060 processors.)

OWB is powered by SAFARI Webcore Webkit engine, so it sports all lates features of CSS and HTML 4.0 specs.


- TimberWolf Firefox

Firefox Browser version for Amiga is being developed by Fireden Twins (The authors of new Amiga Kernel EXEC-SG)

It is based on Shiretoko Firefox and due to the fact it is an indipendent project and not related with mainstream source of Firefox then it has been renamed as TIMBERWOLF.

To port Firefox on Amiga the Frieden Twins had ported first XUL and XUL-RUNNER that is the engine that is now enforcing Firefox development.

Unfortunately actually they want to release it just only for AmigaOS to keep an advantage step upon MorphOS and AROS clones.

Here are some sceeenshots:

http://www.amigabounty.net/?function=viewproject&projectid=44

http://www.amigabounty.net/?function=viewfiles&projectid=44

http://www.amigabounty.net/attachments/project/44/t3.png

http://www.amigabounty.net/attachments/project/44/t4.png

http://www.amigabounty.net/attachments/project/44/tw7.png

This last image posted on 31 dec 2009 makes Amigans wonder what is "X" and what was A-Eon site.

It caused an enormous giant thread of about 3000 comments that was split in three parts on http://www.amigaworld.net international Amiga forum site.

the

http://www.a-eon.com

Site was an enormous PUZZLE-RIDDLE site, updated day by day until 5th of january 2010 on which at least Hyperion (the developers of the AmigaOS), revealed they had established a new hardware firm factory in UK, near Bristol, called A-Eon, and starting producing the new High-End Amiga called AmigaONE X1000.

Since this announce the italian made ACube motherboard called SAM 440EP, Amiga 1.440, already on sale in all online Amiga shops will became de-facto the Low-End Amiga.

http://www.acube-systems.biz/

As long as OSTAN-Collection site users love the riddles, then try to resolve yourself the puzzles that are hidden in the images and the HTML code of a-eon site...  ;012


- Amiga Inc. and Hyperion trial in US Court.

Amiga Inc. and Hyperion ceased the litigation and set up an extra-judiciary agreement.

Now Hyperion is totally entitled of the use of amiga name, AmigaOS, AmigaOS 4.x and further releases, the name of AmigaONE and Amiga logos and Boing ball logo.

At least Amiga is now entirely in the hands of Hyperion that could keep continuing developing AmigaOS and starting building new hardware.


- AmigaOS 4.1

AmigaOS 4.1 now runs even on its competitor motherboard Pegasos II.

all owners of Pegasos II motherboards (just as like me  ;012 ) can run any AmigaOS incarnations.

Pegasos II can actually run MorphOS 2.4, AROS Open Source for PPC, AmigaOS 4.1 modern Amiga OS, and also the elder AmigaOS 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9 versions by using E-UAE emulator.  ;010


- AmigaOS 4.1.1

The long awaited update AmigaOS 4.1.1 (that is the last before the announcing of SMP multi-core CPU capabilities of new AmigaOS 4.2) should has been relesed as Christmas Bonus Gift to all registered users of AmigaOS 4.0/4.1 but has been delayed due to the discovery of an annoying last hour bug.


- AmigaOS 4.2 or 4.x???

Next release of AmigaOS is a very really tease.

It seems it will sport MultiCore Simmetrical Multi-Processing (SMP) in order to using multicore PowerPC processors such as 8610, Titan, 8641, PPC G5, PA-SEMI, etcetera.

The memory protection system that is available but not active due to retro-comptibility with elder AmigaOS 3.x versions will be made active.

this fact will mean that elder Amiga Software will be completely deprecated.


- MorphOS 2.4 for MacMini and Powerbook

In the meanwhile MorphOS, as long as new Pegasos machines are still not availble, made itself keep running on any MacMini which are powered with  PowerPC as main processor.

So people who have older MacMini PPC based could give their machines a new life as long as Apple abandoned developing of PPC based MacOS-X with Snow leopard.

Also many people who wants Amiga hardware and run Amiga based operating Systems could buy cheap used MacMini machines on Ebay and install MorphOS 2.4 on it.  

Mac Mini PPC with PPC G4 at 1,5 GHz and featuring 64 MB of videomemory are the best in performance to be used with morphOS 2.4 beacuse of hardware acceleration 3D GUI Ambient that requires lots of graphic memory to run (3D hardware accelration feature could be disabled any moment by user preferences).

[Normal Pegasos are more performant than MacMIni PPC in graphics, as they can use cheap AGP 3D ATI Radeon Cards featuring use 128 MB or 256 MB of video memory)...

...But sure MacMinis featuring 1,42 GHz and 1,5 GHz PPC G4 processors (and sporting ALTIVEC multimedia circuit) gave enormous enhance BOOST in every day MorphOS experience.]

Also MorphOS next release has been seen running on Mac Powerbook machines, and it is soon to be released.

It will able the Powerbooks to became the first very Amiga notebook machine.

http://www.morphos-team.net/releasenotes-2.4.html

MorphOS 2.4 full version can be Freely Downloaded and run for 30 minutes as demo version.

After these 30 minutes the machine will slow annoyingly and will present the user with a Pop Up Window on the desktop asking you to reboot or purchase with Paypal online the commrcial key to run MorphOS unlimited version.


- Natami

Natami is a little motherboard presenting Motorola 68060 COLDFIRE processor as main CPU and using FPGA programmable processor to REPLICATE and ENHANCE the ancient AGA graphic and sound Chipest of Amiga A1200 and A4000 over their limits and make a complete new Amiga with very modern features and still capable of running AmigaOS 3.x versions.

http://www.natami.net/

http://www.natami.net/gfx/NAe60R/NAe60R_3.jpg

Natami new 3DCore pushing ancient Amiga far beyond its hardware legacy limits.





It runs flawlessly even very very old Amiga software




- Icaros Desktop

Icaros Desktop is the new LIVE version of AROS!

It is no longer tied with VMWARE Virtual Machines that were commercial, and is is now based upon the Open Source QEMU virtual machine.

it is now available as standalone, LIVE (based on Virtual Machine by QEMU), hosting in window on Linux and Windows, etcetera.

Presenting a new development IDE and OWB browser version of its own, it has begin to became very stable and usable not for the low end user but surely for for the professional OS users that could start using it without being harassed by little bugs.

Enjoy starting experiencing the new ICAROS DESKTOP Operating System.

http://vmwaros.blogspot.com/

Icaros Desktop is also available on a dedicated commercial netbook called iMica, featuring Acer Aspire One A150s and Icaros Desktop.

(Due to the fact it has been developed its own hardware drivers the project is sold as comercial one)

Icaros Desktop runs ancient Amiga Software by simply clicking on its icon.

This will open automatically E-UAE emulator and run the software on the fly.

Also just two days ago AROS reached another milestone by featuring for the first time Accelerated Hardware Capabilities thanks to a very first Alpha version of GALLIUM 3D libraries.


- AmigaONE X1000

AmigaONE X1000 is a very big project and for the first time since the demise of commodore Amiga returns with common hardware that fills the gap with Intel X86 clones.

Also it features a new concept in COPROCESSORS that brings Amiga again ahead of any competitors:

The XENA X-CORE multi-purpose programmable I/O Chip capable of featuring great data streams and elaborate it on-the-fly.

It is a feature still unseen on any hardware of any manufacturer.

AONE X1000 specs:

ATX Formfactor
Dual-core PowerISAâ,,¢ v2.04+ CPU
"Xena" XMOS XS1-L1 128 SDS
7.1 channel HD audio
4x DDR2 RAM slots
10x USB 2.0
1x Gigabit Ethernet
2x PCIe x16 slots (1x16 or 2x8)
2x PCIe x1 slots
1x Xorro slot
2x PCI legacy slots
2x RS232
4x SATA 2 connectors
1x IDE connector
JTAG connector
1x Compact Flash

(also FPGA chip XILINX 500 -extra chip- has been spottted on the mainboard)

Multiple XENA X-Core chips could been connected together, in order to form a cloud computing facility platform thru XORRO slot, (Xorro has being named in honour of ancient Amiga Zorro Expansion slots, the first in the world with auto-configuring capabilities. It is nothing than a common PCI-e connector slot which has being modified to support high stress bi-directional 64 channels I/O streaming data).

In 1985-1994 ancient classic Amigas were aheead of its competitors due to their advanced coprocessor archtetcure that will free the main CPU from stressing calculations, DMA, graphics and audio necessities.

Nowadays modern computers are powered with excellent GPU cards capables of hundreds of thousands of MIPS, and overwhelming noteworthy ancient Amiga chipset capabilites.

AmigaONE X1000 nowadays it is also capable to make use of any 16x PCI-e accelerated 3D graphic cards, and introduces for the first time in computer market the concept of a programmable coprocessor capable to deal with Data I/O Stream and freeing the CPU from this stressing task in caclulation, and in elaborating data streams and making processor free to perform other tasks as it happened with ancient Amigas.  

The core CPU has still not being revealed, but some rumors by the developers had revealed it will feature a dual core PPC Cpu and sure it will be more than 1,5 GHz clock, so at least this could really mean that the incoming AmigaOS 4.2 4.x-> has finally gain MultiCore SMP capabilities, or perhaps it could run 2 instances of AmigaOS or even AmigaOS in a core and Linux in another core.

Price has been stated it will be less than ancient Amiga 1000, and Amiga 1000 in 1985 was launched for just 1,295 US Dollars.

And this last announce ends the current Amiga news for today, folks!  ;hi

[Red-Machine]

Thanks for the detailed info, Rafaelle!  As you can probably tell by my sig, I am an Amiga user myself (I have an A600) and would be very keen to get one of these.  I wonder if Mac OS X could run on it...

[Raffaele the Amigan]

Thanks for the detailed info, Rafaelle!  As you can probably tell by my sig, I am an Amiga user myself (I have an A600) and would be very keen to get one of these.  I wonder if Mac OS X could run on it...

Mac OS -X, except Snow Leopard that is Intel Native Only, runs flawlessly on Pegasos II machines thanks to Mac-On-Linux loader software which installs MacOS-X on these Peggy Amiga clone machines...  ;010

Unfortunately pegasos II was dismissed due to it was not RoHS complaint for CEE laws for containing pollution.

Also Mac-On-Linux on recent dismissed AmigaONE PPC G3 600 MHz, PPC G3 800 MHz and PPC G4 1GHz has been reported to run with some minor bugs (I don't know if these bugs were corrected as I am Pegasos user and no AmigaONE user).

I have no news of Mac-On-Linux for SAM 440 EP and SAM 440 Flex machines, but it seems me a pre-release has been seen in action in some some Amiga sites threads dealing with Mac emulation.

Obviously there are still no software Mac-On-Linux for new AmigaONE X1000 as being too young hardware.

Those who have MacMini PPC and soon also Mac Powerbook users can make dual-boot with MorphOS 2.4 and their native MacOS-X.

Best configuration is adviced by MorphOS users as being Pre-installed MorphOS 2.4 on MacMini hardware as MAIN OS and dual booting MacOS-X from external Hard Disk tied thru FIREWIRE IEEE1394 connector.  ;010

Hope these infos will help you.  ;hi

[Raffaele the Amigan]

http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5256

Update 1 for Amiga OS4.1 available for immediate download
on Hyperion Entertainments site

http://www.hyperion-entertainment.biz

18:00 CET there is currently website trouble, the problem is being worked on, so have a bit of patience (according to Rogue.)

hm it says 13 jan 2010
did i miss something



""
Fryguy provided details of what is in the update:

""

Kernel
Offers more stability on SAM, a more reliable and efficient memory management system and improved memory paging to and from harddisk.

DOS
A new mechanism for launching preset programs for specific taks, such as email clients and web-browsers (URLopen).
Application tracking for ease of program location (AppDir: handler).
Improved shared object support with significantly decreased loading times.

Intuition
Improved window support, fading and rendering - including drop shadows.
Reduced video memory consumption due to improved screen handling.
New internal methods for better system "theme" support.

System
Updated ASL requesters and imagery for a fresh new look.
New notification system.
Enhanced automatic detection of installed hardware (including DDC support).
Improved support for external USB devices.
Updated sound.datatype and wav.datatype.
New screenblankers.
Improved calculator with extended mode.

Workbench
The new Startup preferences means no more copying files to WBStartup.
A brand new icon set to complement higher screen resolutions.
New window themes offering enhanced visual feedback.
Scalable icons.
Workbench auto update feature.

Python
Tested with the regression suite.
Enhanced distutils module for easy installation of Python packages.
New Amiga modules including catalog and icon.
New OS module methods.
MiniGL V2.2"

First screenshot of the Silver-Green AmigaOS 4.1.1 Desktop Theme (one of the various desktop themes that are available)

[Aurora Borealis]

The new GUI looks really nice!

[Bella]

Thanks for sharing all this news with us!

[Aurora Borealis]

I'm also really glad that all the legal troubles over the Amiga name and such are FINALLY resolved, and progress can be more easily made!

[NejinOniwa]

Quite a silly thing to throw such a fit over, really -w-;

[Red-Machine]

Well, Amiga, Inc didn't really have a lot to its name, so I think it's understandable they'd feel protective over AmigaOS.

[Raffaele the Amigan]

As a first result of this new OS Update then AmigaOS gains immediately new software (and very useful and famous too... BLENDER 3D)!

We users of MorphOS had our version of Blender 3D ported into our system since 2 years ago, and we often laughed to our cousins in AmigaOS red camp because they lack such useful software.

Now thanks to the release of AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1, it has been released also the AmigaOS porting of Blender 3D.

Blender3D for AmigaOS was developed by persons who had access to prerelase of OS Update 1 and it seems it was already completed since 6, 8 months ago, but it could not be released due to the fact it made use of new features of AOS 4.1 Update 1.

AmigaOS version of Blender has all the features of the main version and plus havesome features unique of Amiga:

1) Can open itself on a proprietary graphic screen of its own, or it could be opened as a window into another graphic screen from any Amiga program which has its own desktop screen acting as a "Public Screen".

(In Amiga any program can open its own indipendent graphic screen with its own size resolution modes, its own bitplanes or chunky modes, indipendent palette color sequence [if minor than 24bit color mode], and its own stack of dedicated memory.
These indipendent graphic screens also could act as a separate desktop from the main one, the Amiga standard Workbench GUI screen, by invoking at moment of its initializing that this new graphic screen should act as being PUBLIC.
Then other programs could open itself windowed into any Public Screen as it were were such another GUI indipendent desktop.

Main Workbench GUI Screen, in Amiga is is mandatory as Public and could be changed just in fixed resolution sizes and colors (256 colors, 16k colors, 32k colors, 24BIT mode). but users are free to decide not to boot with it, or even to open and close WB GUI at their wish any moment.
Any other program ould be launched as windowed mode or perhaps could open its own graphic screen.
Decision about open a program as window mode or indipendent all lays in the hands of the user.)

2) Internal AReXX Language port (experimental), so it can be piloted externally from a script program written in Amiga ARexx official Script language.

(It has be stated that AmigaOS will abandon soon AReXX and adopt officially Phyton as Internal Script Language, but nowadays all vaste majority of Amiga software has AReXX port built in, to access its features from external script programs)

Download archive of Blender is available in AmigaOS 4.0 official repository:

http://www.os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=graphics/raytrace/blender.lha

(spotting the counter, it shows that almost 240 Amiga users who are interested in 3D graphics downloaded Blender in this first 24 hours it was available to public)


Site of developers of Blender for AmigaOS:

http://www.broad.ology.org.uk/amiga/blender/