_________________
That'll Put Marzipan In Your Pie Plate, Bingo
💻 Pro-Amiga, 🌍 Pro-Globalism, 🍅 Pro-Vegan, 🛦 Pro-NATO & 🇪🇺 Pro-Joint EU Defense Intervention Initiative

@Petah


a fox in hen's clothes

_________________
I HAVE ABS OF STEEL
--
CAN YOU SEE ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? OK FOR WORK

@MEGA_RJ_MICAL

feral creature is only a ScummVM, old jump and run away to Hoozdo Hahoodzo right after the power wolf failed at the end of ww2.zimbio.com

and Fox is me!!
Believe me, here is the proooooouuuuuuuuuuuuf!!!

http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-06-00056-EN.html

@Amigo1

Quote:

Amigo1 wrote: @MEGA_RJ_MICAL feral creature is only a ScummVM, old jump and run away to Hoozdo Hahoodzo right after the power wolf failed at the end of ww2.zimbio.com and Fox is me!! Believe me, here is the proooooouuuuuuuuuuuuf!!! http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-06-00056-EN.html

Crystal clear.

_________________
I HAVE ABS OF STEEL
--
CAN YOU SEE ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? OK FOR WORK

@Petah

The chickens are coming home to roost.

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This is just like television, only you can see much further.

@Petah

There are many wannabe foxes under the Amiga chickens.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 27-Jun-2020 at 11:46 AM.

@Petah

I have ruminated on the meaning of this poll for days now, and I still fail to understand the metaphor.

_________________
"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@Petah

If there is, then it’s surely the farmer's fault.

_________________
"Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard, be evil."

The farmer can't really be blaimed if the gate to the hen house was, because of diminishing resources, not maintained properly.

Then again, this poll is not about who's at fault, but rather about the presence of a fox in the Amiga hen house. No matter what you think, kindly cast your vote.

_________________
That'll Put Marzipan In Your Pie Plate, Bingo
💻 Pro-Amiga, 🌍 Pro-Globalism, 🍅 Pro-Vegan, 🛦 Pro-NATO & 🇪🇺 Pro-Joint EU Defense Intervention Initiative

More importantly, my friends,
as the song goes, "what does the fox say?"

It says, I believe,

Quote:

In my previous blog update I wrote about the growing threat of the COVID-19 virus. I followed this with the contagion update in my Soapbox article which will appear in the next edition of Amiga Future magazine. Since writing both updates there has been an exponential growth in the spread of Covid-19, so much so that I'm writing this blog in week 3 of New Zealand's total country wide four week lockdown. Although the number of Covid-19 cases is still quite low in New Zealand at 1440 (confirmed and probable cases) and twelve Covid-19 related deaths at the time of writing, the county has gone into total hibernation with all non-essential businesses, restaurants, schools and even takeaways closed down. New Zealand, a lockdown paradise? People are restricted to their homes and required to stay within their family bubble. All non-essential car and air travel is banned. AirNZ, the country's award winning flagship airline has virtually shut down and our borders are closed to non-residents. The New Zealand lockdown is not unique of course and many countries have implemented similar isolation measures. Many other countries have shutdown all non-essential businesses which is having a massive detrimental effect on the economy. With many parts of the world also shut down because of the virus companies, both large and small, are facing a very uncertain future. If the pandemic is not brought under control you can expect to see a lot of companies, some household names disappearing from the scene. AAA Bundle Our Amiga community is not immune from these dramatic world events. The lockdown will delay the release of the A1222 Early Adopter edition with Matthew Leaman stating on AmigaWorld.net it could be pushed back towards the end of the year. In better news, AmigaKit, as an online retailer, can still mail shipments to most parts of the world and Matthew has confirmed that the AAA Bundles will begin shipping in April/May. The AAA bundle was originally due to ship in February but the COVID-19 pandemic caused an unavoidable delay. However, Matthew has also confirmed that components of the AAA software bundle are being uploaded to Amisphere to allow registered AAA Bundle owners to start downloading titles. For news and updates on the A1222 Plus release please check the A1222 Plus Early Adopter website. Amiga35 Celebrations on hold? The year 2020 marks the 35th Anniversary of the Amiga's birth and many Amiga groups around the world were planning celebrations to mark the event. Needless to say the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown all plans into total disarray. The three Amiga35 events I'm involved with as a sponsor have either been postponed or cancelled.In the USA, Amiga35.us was scheduled for early June in Santa Clara, California the spiritual birthplace of the Amiga. Unlike some parts of the USA, California has imposed strict isolation measures to combat the spread of Covid-19. As of March 19th and until further, all Californian residents are required to stay home except to get food, care for a relative or friend, get necessary health care, or go to an essential job. The hotel selected for the event in Santa Clara cancelled the booking and decided to bring forward a planned refurbishment programme. There are signs that the situation in California is improving and the organising team, headed by Bill Borsari and Dale Luck, are now trying to decide whether to reschedule for later in the year or delay the event entirely until 2021. Likewise, in the Netherlands, Rene' van der Steen, Marvin Droogsma and Marcel Franquinet, the organisers of Flashback 20/20, an ambitious retro-computing party featuring an Amiga35 celebration, have postponed their event due to stricter measures imposed by the Dutch government on March 23rd. They have rescheduled Flashback 20/20 for September 12 and 13 and are currently taking bookings for the show in the hope that Covid-19 restrictions will have eased by then. Meanwhile, the Amiga35 UK event, originally scheduled for October this year has now been cancelled altogether. The organisers, Johnathan Taylor, Paul Bridger, Katrina Taylor, Andy C. Spencer and Paul Hesford made the difficult decision to cancel the show after months of planning. Paul wrote, "Hi Trevor, it comes with a heavy heart and due to unforeseen circumstances and current climate out of our control we have decided to cancel Amiga 35 UK due to the coronavirus uncertainty and to avoid any disruption to the event, the venue and most importantly people's health especially those travelling." Their event included a charitable connection whereby part of the ticket sales and the proceeds from a special raffle/auction were to be donated to the Retro Computer Museum in Leicester. Although the show has been cancelled this year the organisers have put out a request for donations to the museum which is under threat of closure due to the Covid-19 lockdown. The organisers now plan to hold Amiga 35 UK some time in 2021. With so many international borders now closed to non-residents, and international air travel decimated with at least half the world planes presently grounded, I think it will be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for travel between certain countries. I hope these restrictions will be eased soon but I fear the various lockdowns and border controls will continue for much of this year. There is some hope. In China, where the Covid-19 outbreak is now abating, the amount of flights taking off has begun to increase. Hopefully we will see similar improvements in the rest of the world as the fallout from the pandemic wanes. Fingers crossed. Does A1222 into A1500 go! So what does an Amigan do when stuck inside during a pandemic lockdown? I was a backer of Steve Jones' Checkmate A1500 Kickstarter campaign and I received my case towards the end of last year. When Steve was planning the A1500 project I supplied him with the Tabor dimensions so he could ensure his case would support the motherboard. Checkmate A1500 Plus computer case Needless to say when my A1500 case arrived I eagerly unpacked the box only to discover that, although I could install the Tabor motherboard in the case, I needed an PCI-e extender cable for my Radeon RX560 gfx card which needed to be installed horizontally. I could not even install the gfx card vertically as a temporary fix since the case backplate prevents the card from being installed in the PCIe slot. Anyway, I ordered the extender cable online and waited for it to arrive. That was several months ago. As the Covid-19 pandemic began to spread worldwide, I forgot all about the extender cable but, just before the New Zealand lockdown the cable finally arrived. So last week I removed the Tabor motherboard from the Fractal mini-tower case I originally used and set about installing it in my A1500 case. As you might expect, since Steve allowed for the Tabor board in his case design, the motherboard was a perfect fit. Dennis' A1222 backplate When I attended Amiga34 in Neuss last year, Dennis Zweedijk assited me with the A-EON Technology display along with Christian Zigotzky and his partner Nadine. Dennis is a long-time AmigaOS 4 beta tester and has helped beta test AmigaOS 4 on all of A-EON's AmigaOne machines to date: X1000, X5000/20, X5000/40 and A1222. Dennis created a 3D printed backplate for his A1222 beta system and brought a few extra backplates to the show to give away. I'm pleased to report that Dennis' 3D printing skills did not go to waste and the backplate was a good fit with the Tabor board and A1500 case. I installed my Radeon RX560 Polaris card horizontally and inserted the PCIe extender cable into the PCIe slot and connected the other end to the gfx card. The gfx card is two-slots wide and quite heavy. Although it installed horizontally without any problem, the whole of the weight of the card is being support by the gfx card backplate alone, since it is not supported by the PCIe slot. It not a problem for the moment but in the longer term I may have to install a prop to hold up the other end and take some stress off the card. Brings back memories of towering my A4000 motherboard all those years ago. 😉 A1222 board installed with Rx560 gfx card A bigger issue is that the Rx560 gfx card requires additional power through a 6-pin PCIe connector. The connector is on the side of the card facing the left-side of the case and protrudes out the side of the case. With the connector in place it is impossible to install the case lid. I could replace the Rx560 card with a less powerful model that does not require an additional PSU connection and there are plenty of single slot Radeon cards available which do not require any additional power. PCIe PSU connector issue However, I would prefer to keep my Rx560 card which plays 4k videos very nicely with A-EON's new video drivers. Searching online, I've tracked down some right-angle 6-pin PCIe mod connectors which just might do the trick? There might be enough space at the side of the case for the right-angle connector to attach to the gfx card and still allow me to install the case lid. It will be a tight squeeze but I'm hoping this will work. In the meantime I have no option but to leave the lid off the case. I connected the Power and HDD LED cables and the Power On/Off lead to the motherboard along with a reset switch cable. I drilled a small hole in the A1222 backplate and installed the reset switch there. Out of the way but still easily accessible. The Tabor board has two additional onboard USB headers. Ideally I would like to bring them to the front of the case but that will require cutting holes in the plastic facia and finding a way to fix them in place. For the moment, I've connected a short USB cable to one of the onboard headers and run the USB cable out of the back of the case. I will need to replace this with a dual USB cable and socket solution in the future. Probably by cutting a hole for the USB connectors on the case's metal backplate. Finally, I connected the monitor to the HDMI connector on the gfx card. With everything connected, and the case lid off, now was the time for the acid test. I switched on the power to the external PSU, powered up the monitor and then pressed the power button on the front A1500 case. A1222 powered with external PSU The green Power and yellow HDD LEDs both lit up. After a short while the yellow LED turned off. After the kickstart files loaded the yellow HDD LED began flashing as the HDD was being accessed. It gave me a nostalgic feeling to see the traditional Amiga LEDs in operation once again. I'd read conflicting reports which suggested that not all PCIe extender cables work but I'm pleased to say that I had no problems and the Tabor board booted into the AmigaOS 4 Workbench at first time of asking. So what's my opinion of the A1500 case? It's faithfully modelled after the elegant A3000 case design, although it's 6 cm wider and the height is approximately 0.5 cm less. It is very sturdily built and has the same depth as the A3000 case so there is plenty of room for the Tabor motherboard. In fact so much room it is almost too big. Even with a suitable internal PSU the mini-ITX Tabor motherboard hardly takes up much space. Of course the A1500 case was designed to take a variety of motherboards, many of which are much larger than the Tabor board. The issue with the gfx card PSU connector means I cannot install the case lid at the moment. I've ordered a slim line 300W internal power supply and I will try to track down a suitable right-angle PCIe power connector. At the moment though, it's not really an issue as I'm frequently testing different gfx cards and continually removing the lid, which takes a bit of practice, would be a nuisance. However, I do want to install the lid because I want to place the monitor on top of the case, just like in the good old days! 😉 So does the A1222 into A1500 go? The answer is yes and with a whole lot left over. A nice pair: A1222 in A1500 with A3000 Update: the internal 300w PSU arrived just as I was about to post this blog so I quickly replaced the external PSU and installed the internal PSU in the A1500 case. The cable and PCIe PSU connector on the internal PSU are smaller than the connector on my external PSU and with a little bit of fettling (don't ask) I was able to connect the additional power cable and attach the case lid. I will need to create a special backplate to secure the internal PSU but for the moment it is OK. I placed the monitor on top of the A1500 case and, for comparison, put an A3000 desktop alongside it. The footprint of the A1500 is a little too big for my liking but the fact I can place the monitor on top of the case is a big bonus. I have to admit the A1222 in the A1500 case together with the original A3000 make a very nice pair. I created a short video of the A1222 playing a couple of HD videos simultaneously using a beta version of eMotion from EntwicklerX. We are in the fourth week of lockdown in New Zealand and the signs are the government might reduce the status to Alert level 3 this week. It won't make a lot of difference and I will still be mostly stuck at home. Maybe it's time to finally rebuild by A4000 Ateo tower system? 😉 Spring is in the air If you follow the Remotely Interested podcasts you will know that Dr. Adam Spring, PhD is a closet Amigan, not that he really hides that affliction. 😉 Adam with Colin & Anneke Proudfoot & me at Amiwest 2019 In addition to his podcast work he is a regular contributor to IEEE Spectrum with articles covering Amiga 30 and the late Dave Needle. A self confessed technogeek, last year he was awarded his doctorate by Manchester Metropolitan University for his research into 3D documentation and digital heritage and recently he was elevated to IEEE Senior member status for his significant contributions to the profession. One of the people who nominated him for IEEE Senior member status was none other than Joe Decuir, who is an American fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and, of course, one of the original Amiga founding developers. Adam with Larry - Laser scanning The Alamo It will come as no surprise to learn Adam is an expert in applying 3D imaging solution for digitising cultural heritage sites. Last year he worked on a project with 'Laser' Larry Kleinkemper of Lanmar Services to help digitise, via laser scanning, The Alamo Mission in Santo Antonio, Texas. Adam & Tim Jenison - laser scanned Adam's friend Tim Jenison, yes that Tim Jenison the co-founder of NewTek, offered to come along and film them laser scanning The Alamo. Subject to receiving permission, Adam hopes to be able to release the short film and scan data in the near future. Adam even manged to laser scan Tim during the filming! Anyway, congratulations on your IEEE recognition Dr Spring, you clever b****r! 😉 Lockdown viewing If you are stuck inside during Covid-19 lockdown, apart from rebuilding that old Classic 68k Amiga you could always watch one of the excellent Commodore or Amiga documentaries that are available on the web. Two immediately come to mind. The first dates back to 2010. That year was the 25th Anniversary of the Amiga's birth. I attended AmiWest 2010 to present the first public display of the AmigaOne X1000 in North America running a beta version of AmigaOS 4.1. I was joined by AmigaOS 4 contract developers, Thomas and Hans-Joerg Frieden and even Ben Hermans made a brief cameo appearance on behalf of Hyperion Entertainment. It's hard to believe that the past ten years have flown by so quickly. At the show I was interviewed by Zach Weddington for the Viva Amiga documentary film.It would take another seven years before the film was officially released which by that time it would also contain footage of the Amiga30th Anniversary event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California in 2015. An early version of the movie was premiered at the Amiga30th's Saturday night banquet and, as I wrote at the time, I sat at a table with many of the original Hi-Toro/Amiga founders and staff and there was barely a dry eye at the table as the movie played. One criticism frequently levelled at the film, apart from the length of time it took to release the final version, was that, at just over an hour playing time, it was too short. Well that is all about to change. With my support, Zach has been working on an extended version of the film entitled, funnily enough, Viva Amiga Extended Remix. I recently received my review copy of the updated documentary which is now over 2 hours and 20 mins long. The new version includes a lot more interviews and stories from key Amiga developers and other Amiga luminaries and enthusiasts. Apart from being longer it has a more upbeat feel compared to the original. It was my plan to offer the movie for screening at the various Amiga 35th events this year and hopefully this can still be achieved assuming the shows are able to go ahead. If not, there is always next year. Arcadia - on Kickstarter soon Meanwhile Zach has been working on another movie project in collaboration with Amiga Bill and a host or other notable Amigans. Arcadia, will travel through time to discover the secret history of arcade games. The people, the places, and the stories behind a century of gaming. As with Viva Amiga, the documentary will be funded through a Kickstarter campaign which should be launched in the near future. Click here for more details. Steven Fletcher - Amiga 2020 The second documentary I can recommend is the The Commodore Story, released in 2018 by Steven Fletcher who directed and produced the film. The movie covers Commodore's 8-bit and Amiga machines with a heavy focus on the Jack Tramiel years. It is certainly worth watching if you want to find out more about the man and his often quoted philosophy that "business is war". Steven has another Kickstarter campaign running at the moment for a new documentary: Amiga 2020. Unlike the Commodore Story, his new film covers the post Commodore years and all the wild, wacky and wonderful Amiga developments and the Amigans who work hard to keep the Amiga spirit alive in 2020, 25 years after the demise of Commodore. The Kickstarter campaign has easily exceeded its minimum target of £12.5K with almost £30K already raised from 748 backers.Although all of the stretch goals have also been achieved you can still back Steven's Kickstarter campaign which (at the time of writing) has another 8 days to run. Personally, I really like the look of the Amiga 2020 baseball caps myself! 🙂 There are plenty of other excellent Commodore and Amiga documentaries available online if you find yourself with time on your hands during the lockdown. And if you are really bored you could always watch an Atari or Apple documentary. Yeah nah, as we say in New Zealand. 😉 ExecSG update from kernel Solie Despite the Covid-19 pandemic the ExecSG Team has been quite busy over the past few months. I asked ExecSG Team lead, Steven Solie for a brief update and this is what he sent me, "The very first set of rebuilt kernels were produced in late August 2019. It took some time to get everything up and running smoothly so we didn't start adding new features until around November. Features like accelerated SPE copy routines for the A1222 and a brand new DMA engine API for the X5000 and A1222. There have also been many general bug fixes as we get ready for the release of the next update of AmigaOS 4.1 by Hyperion Entertainment. Of course, multi-core support continues to be a top priority and we've made significant strides with the first implementation targeted for the X5000 with the X1000 and A1222 to follow. The team has now grown to 15 members, including Trevor. I recently completed streamlining the build process for all supported AmigaOne platforms." Thanks for the update Steven, now get back to work! (Just kidding ) Linux corner While most of A-EON's development effort goes into supporting Classic and next-generation Amiga hardware and software it good to know our dedicated team of core Linux enthusiasts work hard to ensure that our AmigaOne machines continue to support modern PowerPC Linux distributions. Christian in his Amiga cave Although many people contribute to our Linux cause, I want to single out Christian Zigotzky who continues to ensure that A-EON's hardware is supported by the mainstream Linux kernel. He provides Linux support for all of A-EON Technology’s AmigaOne PowerPC hardware. This includes the AmigaOne X1000, X5000 and A1222. He is also an active member of the AmigaOS 4.1 beta test team and together with his wife Nadine has assisted me at every Amiga Germany show in Neuss. He is also very generous with his time, providing Linux support to other users including writing installation instructions and helping with installation problems. Casey Cullen - Fienix Project Christian also works closely with Casey Cullen who is the founder and maintainer of the Fienix project, a PowerPC Linux distro specifically designed for modern-day PowerPC machines. Christian provides Casey with kernels for his X5000/20 kernels and assists with debugging and help building several programs. Christian has posted screengrabs of Fienix running on his X1000 and X5000/40 and just to prove a point Casey has recently posted a video of his X5000/20 running Fienix steaming an HD video in youtube. One good thing about Fienix is that Casey has pre-configured the distro to work out of the box with modern PowerPC hardware. As Casey, says in his video, "One thing I see online, quite a lot is that PPC can't stream HD YouTube videos", "Most definitely, if you have an AmigaOne system there's absolutely no reason why you cant stream an HD video from YouTube".Not only does Fienix allow you to play YouTube HD videos but it also allows video editing. In fact Casey has pre-configured Fienix to be a fully featured distro without the need to search for all those missing components to make it usable. If you want to read more about Casey and his PowerPC Fienix distro check out this interview. Some Boing cheer Boing cheer to all Amigans With all the negative news surrounding Covid-19 it's good to finish this update with a little Boing cheer. I think most people who follow my blog will know I'm always on the lookout for Amiga "signs" in everyday objects. Some might even say I was little obsessed! To feed my addiction people regularly send me their own Boing inspired photos so I thought I would post a few of the recent ones I recently received or spotted myself. Until next time, stay safe... Filed under: Uncategorized Comments Off 24Feb/20Off Contagion edition With the whole world worrying about the coronovirus threat, or COVID-19 as it's now officially called, I returned from my winter trip to Europe and have since come down with a heavy summer/winter cold! And before anyone starts worrying, I had the coronovirus test and I passed, well I think I passed, the result was positive! That was a joke by the way, quite a weak one I agree but in my current state of health its all I could manage. My trip to Europe was hectic and varied, covering both Amiga and non-Amiga business coupled with a great trip to Athlone to attend Amiga Ireland 2020, the first major Amiga show to celebrate the Amiga's 35th birthday. Tripple_A fun Amiga Ireland 2020 Reflections - Amiga Ireland 2020 I've written a very short report about Amiga Ireland in my next Soapbox article for Amiga Future magazine so if you want to know more you will have to read the next edition. One thing I can say is Amiga Ireland is a great show and well worth a visit if you get the chance. The friendliness and socialising is "contagious" and this year Dave Haynie made a special appearance. A small group of us, including Dave, ended up talking and drinking through the night and most still made the opening of the show at 9am on Saturday morning. Mind you, international travel from Summer to Winter and back, little or no sleep coupled with heavy helpings of triple-A fun does have its consequences. Cough, sneeze! A1222 Plus Update While COVID-19 poses a threat to world health it has also had a major affect on international business which, according to a recent CNBC report could impact 5 million companies worldwide that rely on the output from Chinese factories and other businesses in the affected areas. According to reports, "Dun & Bradstreet analyzed the Chinese provinces most impacted by the virus, and found they are intricately linked to the global business network. The affected areas with 100 or more confirmed cases as of February 5 are home to more than 90% of all active businesses in China." There is a genuine concern that the coronavirus outbreak could damage the global electronics industry.Even A-EON Technology and AmigaKit have been affected with the supply of electronic components and circuit boards drying up. Matthew Leaman informed me that, due to factory shutdowns, several of his new classic Amiga hardware products have not been shipped or are now greatly behind schedule. A-EON Technology's A1222 early Adopter development and release schedule has similarly been affected and Matthew thinks the delays could push production into the third quarter of this year. Of course none of this compares to the concerns over the loss of life but it make you realise, in case you'd forgotten, what a global interconnected world we live in. In better news, Serial Codes will be emailed to all AAA Bundle Customers next week which will allow them to register for the A1222Plus Early Adopter edition. Matthew also confirmed that the AAA Bundles themselves will now be shipped out the first week of March. For more information and updates check out the A1222Plus website. What the h*ll is Trevor's Axiom? South Park's theory of online trolling Continuing with the virus theme. While I was travelling in Europe I found myself in a hotel room with some time to kill. Hey, who said you should have watched the hotel's XXXX channel? Anyway, I skimmed through Netflix's offerings on my ALICE laptop looking for something light and easy to watch. I spotted a more recent series of South Park being promoted. I haven't watched South Park for years and decided to watch "The End of Serialization As We Know It" from Series 20. About four and half minutes into the episode, a group of trolls explain Trevor's Axiom to Kyle, who immediately responds with, "what the hell is Trevor's Axiom?" I was thinking the same thing myself. According to South Park, it is a theory of online trolling in which one person can create a massive reaction on the internet. Their theory goes - Person A trolls Person B but it's not really about Person B. Person A wants to provoke a reaction from a third party, Person C. The intention is that person C's gross overreaction and self righteousness to the trolling of person B will elicit further reactions from persons D through F, who are not trolls but cannot help themselves from ripping on person C . Their reactions lead to outraged persons G through N and it keeps going like a fission reaction creating a fusion explosion bringing out the worst in humanity. Hmm, I may have seen this in action on one or two community websites? Trevor the Troll First and foremost, I categorically deny that I have anything to do with the Trevor's Axiom or trolling! Honest. 🙂 But the wacky theory put forward by the crazy, genius minds of Trey Parker and Matt Stone did get me thinking about trolling and the spread of misinformation and fake news on the interweb. An MIT study found that fake news travels faster that real news on Twitter. The research reported that, "falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude." Even worse, "the spread of false information is essentially not due to bots that are programmed to disseminate inaccurate stories. Instead, false news speeds faster around Twitter due to people retweeting inaccurate news items." Is it a wonder that cyber-risk researchers at Stanford Engineering have been using tools for modelling the spread of infectious diseases like a deadly strain of Ebola to analyze the spread of fake news? Much like a virus, the researchers say that "over time being exposed to multiple strains of fake news can wear down a person’s resistance and make them increasingly susceptible. The more times a person is exposed to a piece of fake news, especially if it comes from an influential source, the more likely they are to become persuaded or infected." Aint it the truth? The European Union issued a JRC Digital Economy Working Paper on the digital transformation of news media and the rise of disinformation and fake news. It concludes that news from strong newspaper brands still attract large audiences to their newspaper websites and that real news consumption on these sites dwarfs fake news consumption. However, it also concludes that fake news travels faster and further on social media sites. Now there's a surprise. Not! Don't get me wrong, the Internet has become a vital and interwoven part of modern society and I for one would not want to return to a time before the birth of the WorldWideWeb and graphical web browsers. It impacts all of our daily lives and has brought positive benefits to education, business, communications, healthcare and government which still far outweigh the negative elements but, just like the Force in Star Wars, it does have a dark side. As for Trevor's Axiom, I wondered where South Park got the name Trevor from? On searching the web I found a children's book entitled "Trevor the Troll" and various other Trevor trolling references. It's on the internet so it must be true! An unexpected journey Apologies to Peter Jackson for using the film title to the first movie in his Hobbit triology, but with Robert Bernardo shortly arriving in New Zealand I thought it was fitting. As many of you will know Robert is the President of FCUG, (Fresno Commodore Users Group) and every year attends AmiWest in Sacramento to capture videos of the Devcon sessions along with the AmiWest presentations and speeches which he posts online during and after the show. Although I used Jackson’s film title, Robert's journey was not totally unexpected. 🙂 Commodore Pentium Laptops Robert retired from his teaching job a few years back and made the first of his round the world trips in 2016 to attend as many Amiga and Commodore user events he could find. He visited me in New Zealand and of course he wanted to see my Commodore and Amiga computer collection. He was very surprised to discover I had a couple of Commodore branded Intel Pentium 75 laptops which he and his fellow FCUG members did not know even existed. Robert with Jane - Adelaide Retro Computing meeting After his short stay in New Zealand we both travelled to Australia to attend the Adelaide Retro Computing meeting coordinated by Epsilon of Epsilon's Amiga Blog fame. If you want to read Epsilon's excellent report of the event click this link. Robert also produced a video of my presentation at the meeting which should be available online. Safe travels Robert, see you soon in Wellington. Amiga 35 Events in 2020 I mentioned that Amiga Ireland was the first Amiga's 35th birthday event this year. There are many other 35th birthday celebrations in the planning stages. I know because I'm involved with and sponsoring at least three events around the world on behalf of A-EON Technology. Amsterdam, Netherlands June 27-28 Some like Marcel and Marvin, the organisers of Amiga30 in Amsterdam, have already posted details of their event, FLASHBACK 20/20, while others are in the very late planning stage and should be announcing information very soon. Anyway, watch this space. Viruses permitting, 2020 should be full of Triple-A fun for all Amiga enthusiasts whatever your Amiga flavour. Until next time.......... Filed under: Uncategorized Comments Off 31Dec/19Off Another sunny day Christmas in NZ summertime Summer has arrived in New Zealand. The sun is shining, the pohutakawa trees are beginning to bloom bright crimson so it must be Christmas time again. I think I've said this before, my northern hemisphere imprinted brain will never get used to Christmas in summertime!Fortunately, I will be heading to Europe next month to attend Amiga Ireland 2020 so I'm sure to get some traditional European winter weather coupled with a generous helping of great Irish hospitality. So if you are looking for something to do during the cold, dark winter days of January get yourself to Athlone in Ireland and have yourself some triple-A fun. I will be joined by Matthew Leaman, who will be selling a good selection of AmigaKit goodies, and this year, Commodore engineer supreme, Dave Haynie who will be making his first visit to the Ireland show. So what are you waiting for? Come along and enjoy some great company and be one of the first Amigans to help celebrate the Amiga's 35th birthday. Amiga Ireland 2019 Amiga Ireland 2019 Amiga Ireland 2020, 17th - 18th January, Sheraton Hotel, Athlone, Ireland The long and winding road Apologies to the Beatles for plagiarising their song title but the development of A-EON's AmigaOne A1222 has certainly followed a tortuous path.Back in 2011 I gave an AmiWest presentation about the long development but eventually successful release of the AmigaOne X1000 computer. My intro slide showed an image of a winding road with multiple switchbacks which represented my feelings about the twists and turns that affected the X1000 development programme. While the development of the A1222 has not been so difficult from a hardware perspective, a series of unrelated events conspired to slow the development and delay the commercial release. The first A1222 prototypes were manufactured at the end of 2014 and since that time the A1222 Tabor motherboard has certainly been put through its paces. Initially by A-EON's core Linux team and then Hyperion's AmigaOS4 beta testers.We've even had a couple of Tabor motherboards, code-named Atlantis & Pathfinder, running 24/7 helping John Paul Adrian Glaubitz with Debian SPE builds. In the future I will have to write about the A1222 development journey. It should make an interesting story. Anyway, getting back to the A1222, it gave me great pleasure when news of A-EON's A1222 Plus Early Adopter pre-registration finally broke. Of course I already announced A-EON's Early Adopter plans at the recent Amiga 34 and Amiwest 2019 shows.I also revealed in my Soapbox article in the upcoming edition of Amiga Future magazine that Stephen Marshall from Canada was the lucky winner of David Pleasance’s special raffle prize. He will receive an A1222 Plus Early Adopter system donated by A-EON Technology supplied in a Checkmate A1500 case donated by Stephen Jones. The complete system will be assembled tested and supplied by AmigaKit, with Hyperion Entertainment providing the latest version of AmigaOS 4.1. Now that's what I call cooperation!Talking about the Checkmate A1500 case, my own Kickstarter backed case finally arrived in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago. I was planning to install my A1222 Tabor motherboard in the case but unfortunately I discovered I needed a PCI-e extender cable for my Radeon RX gfx card. Without the extender the card cannot be installed. I'm now waiting for the cable to arrive, so for the moment I will have to make do with my existing mini-tower case. So if anyone is planning to order a Checkmate A1500 case for your A1222 remember you will need a PCI-e extender cable. AAA Bundle Even better, Tony Wyatt, long-time and active Hyperion Entertainment developer is producing updated AmigaOS 4.1 isos which are being fully tested by the current A1222 AmigaOS4 beta test team.The newly formed ExecSG team, under the supervision of Steven Solie, is also working hard to optimise and maximise the A1222's performance. Meanwhile, Matthew Leaman has been coordinating with the original Varisys design engineers and together they have selected the company who are manufacturing the A1222 Plus Early Adopter run. Since posting the Early Adopter News Release, A-EON has been inundated with requests to purchase the AAA Bundle and for more information about the A1222 Plus. The number of hits on A-EON's Facebook page has smashed all previous records by almost 100%. As a result we have decided to extend the Option 1 period until the January 31st. A1222 Plus video - click here to play The first hundred customers who purchase and register the new AAA package will have a limted time option to purchase the A1222 Plus motherboard at the special low introductory price. More information will be provided on the a1222plus.com website which will go live in the next few days. By the way, if you are wondering what the Plus is all about, here is a short video entitled, "art imitating life, imitating art", brought to you by Enhancer Software V2.0 and the AAA Bundle and a nice little surprise from EntwicklerX. Oh yes, and its running on the A1222. 🙂 Croatian Amiga party 2019 Domagoj Ožanic It seems only natural that a country which has a red and white chequerboard on its national flag would have an Amiga user group. So it was good to hear from Domagoj Ožanic, who is one of A-EON's very active A1222 beta testers, about the Croatian Amiga Party that was held in FER (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing) in Zagreb on the 21st of December. Domagoj sent me some photos and a brief report about their Amiga show. The event was by invitation only and was the first Amiga-only party held in Croatia since 2014. Fifteen people turned up for the party although twenty people were expected. According to Domagoj, most of the attendees were diehard 68k Amigans but there was a lot of interest in his A1222 system which he had set up with a selection of classic and next-generation games and demos. He did his best to answers questions from the attendees about availability, costs, status of drivers, boot speed and where to purchase the various games and demos he was presenting on his A1222 beta system. Amiga Croatia 2019 reflections Domagoj wrote, "People were interested in A1222, playing Tower57, Battle Squadron and other Next-Generation games and demos. I saw a sparkle in the eyes from most Amigans that came. It was very important on Amiga party to show legacy software that works....so Battle Squadron was a right thing to do. I showed also Final Writer and UAE JIT with AGA games. First I showed how the A1222 early startup control is the same, then legacy software, then next-generation software. All in 1920x1080 resolution. Domagoj's A1222 beta system I showed a lot of demos also. Of course - all those demos run this fast and are amazing on our new kernel that was made by our new ExecSG team! That was a first Amiga Party in Croatia since 2014. Now we are ready for the big one in 2020 that will be open for (the general) public." Thanks for the update Domagoj and for keeping the Amiga passion alive and kicking in Croatia. Sage advice When I attended the recent Amiga34 Germany show in Neuss I came across the Sage II, another early 68000 based computer which was being displayed by Stephan Kraus of classic-computing.org. Sage II 68000 PC I'm ashamed to say I had no real knowledge of the Sage II machine and Stephan explained to me that the original Hi-Toro development team used 68000 based Sage computers in the early development of the Lorraine prototype, which would eventually become the Amiga computer. Needless to say I was impressed. Later that day I met up with Commodore engineer Dave Haynie, who was a VIP guest at Amiga34 and asked if he had ever used a Sage computer for Amiga development. Me & Stephan with his Sage II Dave confirmed that he had only used Sun workstations for Amiga development which were provided by Commodore after the Amiga, Inc acquisition. He suggested I contact Dale Luck or RJ Mical who would have more information. Last week I happened to be on a Skype call with Dale Luck to discuss possible plans for an Amiga35 Celebration next year. He confirmed that Hi-Toro/Amiga Inc used several Sage models for the early Lorraine development. Dale also confirmed that, following the Commodore acquisition, the Californian engineers were supplied with nice new Sun workstations. He also revealed he was unsure about the suitability of the Sun workstation for Amiga development and made Commodore buy him a Sage IV machine. However, he said he shouldn't have worried. The Sun machines worked out very well and the Sage IV was hardly ever used. The true father of low cost 8-bit computing? I read the sad news that Charles "Chuck" Ingerham Peddle, an early pioneer of the microcomputer revolution recently passed away. A lot has been written about the contribution that Chuck made to home computing.As the lead designer of the low cost 6502 Microprocessor he helped light the fire which dramatically changed the future of home computing and eventually allowed Jack Tramiel and Commodore to deliver computing to the masses. Chuck originally worked for Motorola and could see the benefits of creating a low cost CPU at a time when Motorola was having difficulty selling its 6800 design kit for $300. Unfortunately his bosses at Motorola did not agree with his vision so in August 1974 Chuck jumped ship with Bill Mensch and a small team of other like-minded Motorola engineers and joined MOS Technology in an attempt to realise their technical ambition.A move that would ultimately allow Commodore to acquire MOS Technology and turbo charge the 8-bit microcomputer revolution. Chuck and his team created the low cost 6501 CPU which was pin compatible with Motorola's 6800 (although actually incompatible with the 6800) which allowed hobbyists to use existing Motorola development systems. However, on the 6501's release in 1975, Motorola sued MOS Technology claiming the design was based on its 6800 CPU. In an attempt to circumvent the legal challenge, Chuck and his team made a few simple design changes to create the 6502 CPU which was pin incompatible with Motorola's 6800 and sold for $25, a fraction of the costs of other CPUs at that time. Commodore MOS Kim - 1 No longer able to use existing Motorola development kits, Chuck created the KIM-1, a small single board computer to showcase the 6502 CPU. Priced at $245 for the Kim-1 kit, it allowed engineers and hobbyists to build their own computer for under $500 with the addition of a PSU, cassette tape player and a user terminal. However, Motorola was a massive company with deep pockets and faced with an expensive legal challenge MOS Technology eventually settled with Motorola in 1976. Coincidentally, MOS Technology also had a thriving calculator IC business and, just like Commodore, its business collapsed when Texas Instruments entered the market with its own calculator products. In late 1976 Commodore acquired MOS Technology for $12m and Chuck Peddle was appointed Chief Engineer. Peddle convinced Tramiel that the calculator business was a dead end and the new craze would be home computers. Fortunately, Tramiel agreed and the rest as they say is history. Commodore PET 2001 Peddle designed the Commodore PET 2001 which was released in 1977 and the 6502 CPU, and variations of its design, went on to power a whole range of 8-bit machines fueling the microcomputer craze of the late 1970s & early 1980s. In addition to the PET, the 6502 CPU (and its variations) powered the Apple I & II, VIC20, the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit family, Nintendo NES, Oric, Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Atari Lynx and the record selling Commodore C64 plus many others. The 6502 design was also licensed to other companies such as Rockwell and Synertek and in its CMOS form, developed by Bill Mensch who is a co-owner of the 6502 patent, continues to be used in hundreds of million embedded systems. Peddle left Commodore in 1980. My first computer was a Commodore CBM 4032 and Chuck's passing is especially poignant for me. RIP Chuck. You were a true pioneer of the microcomputer revolution. Christmas Presents If you are already the lucky owner of A-EON's Enhancer Sofware package for AmigaOS4.x you will already know that it includes advanced graphics drivers for a large selection of RadeonHD gfx cards together with Warp3D-Nova & Warp3D-SI 3D libraries along with many applications, utilities and commodities.This includes updated versions of TuneNet, AmiDVD, AmiPDF along with powerful interactive utilities like Muliviewer, MulitEdit and ClipViewer plus others like InfoWB, TimeGuard, and the ever popular Workbench CANDI. The Enhancer Software package also inlcudes additional datatypes, audio modes, gadgets and drivers along with the Amisphere Server and special Updater utility which ensures that, as long as you have registered your copy of the Enhancer Software, you can download all the latest freely available updates and bug fixes. Version 1.5 was the last major release although there has also been several smaller releases of key files. The most recent free update includes new verions of the RadeonHD driver v3.7, Warp3D-Nova library v1.68 and ogles2 library v2.11, a must if you want to play some of the latest games ported to AmigaOS4 by Roman 'Kas1e' Kargin based on the excellent GL4ES work of Sebastien ‘ptitSeb’ Chevalier. Kas1e game ports Of course none of this would be possible without the hard work that Hans der Ruiter and Daniel Mussener perfom for A-EON on Warp3D-Nova and openGLES2 respectively. In other good news, Enhancer Software 2.0 is nearing release and includes support for the latest Radeon RX graphics cards and many new exciting features and a few surprises. OK Matthew (Leaman), my lips are sealed for the moment! 😉 Christmas Present two You realise your family really knows you when your daughter & son-in-law buy you Debbie Harry's semi-autobiographic memoir, "Face It", for Christmas. Harry is best known internationally as the talented voice and face of "Blondie", one of the most successful early American new-wave punk bands of the late 1970's who went on to sell over 40 millions records worldwide and is still active today. But for Amigans, she will forever be remembered as the extremely beautiful and exotic face linked with the Amiga launch at New York's Lincoln Center in 1985. A publicity event, which according to Wired webzine, eclipsed even the launch of the Macintosh a year earlier. Wired wrote, "Forget the Apple Macintosh, Ridley Scott, and "1984." As computer launches go, we'll take the Commodore Amiga, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry. In January 1984—as the entire Western World is well aware—Apple unveiled the Macintosh with its Orwellian "1984" ad during the Superbowl, directed by Ridley Scott. But it was soon eclipsed by Commodore International, the company behind that seminal personal computer, the Commodore 64." And you tell the kids today............... 😉 Fortunately for me, my daughter, who was brought up on Amiga computers, understands my Amiga obsession passion. 😉 Marilyn Monroe by Warhol Way back in 1985, Warhol was the acknowledged eclectic king of American pop art, famous for his earlier paintings of Campbell soup cans and Marilyn Monroe montage prints. As every Amigan knows, for the launch of the Amiga, Commodore commissioned Warhol to use the Amiga to create a digital painting of Debbie Harry to demonstrate the Amiga's advanced graphics capabilities compared to the monochrome Macintosh and limited PC graphics. Working with an early buggy version of ProPaint he created the now iconic digital painting of Harry in the style of his earlier Marilyn Monroe portraits. Debbie Harry - Warhol Polaroid 1980 What many people don't know, myself included until I did some background research, was that Warhol and Harry had been friends long before the Amiga launch. In 1980 he had already taken a series of Polaroid photos of Harry and had created several of his trademark mixed medium images of her. Debbie Harry - Warhol 1980 I quickly flicked through the pages of the book to find out if Harry had mentioned the Amiga launch in her book. I was not disappointed. On page 194 there is a picture of Warhol sitting in front of the Amiga, holding an Amiga tank mouse in both hands, with Harry standing behind him leaning on the Amiga monitor with Warhol's now famous painting of her displayed on the monitor screen. Debbie Harry, Face It memoir - 2019 Ah those were the days! Harry also writes about her friendship with Warhol and the Amiga launch but spoils it a little by labelling the famous image in her book, "Andy and the Amiga 2000 in 1985". Debbie how could you! 😉 If you want to see the original Amiga launch video search Youtube for the link or better still buy or rent a copy of the "Viva Amiga" movie which includes some video of the Lincoln Center event. Warhol later went on to experiment with graphics and video on the Amiga. AmigaOne X1000 - 2013 Back in 2013, as a homage to Warhol's original Amiga painting, I created an updated version of Harry's image for the launch of the AmigaOne X1000. I've always thought that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 😉 Another Super Nova? Given my Amiga passion you might be surprised to learn that I do have other business interests. One of the companies I work with has created the Nova platform, an untethered VR motion simulator which they describe as the ultimate in virtual reality simulation. (Note: I did not choose the Nova name which has nothing to do with Warp3D-Nova). Flying sim video - click here to play Unlike other VR experiences which can cause mild to severe motion sickness symptoms, well they certainly do with me, Nova's unique design delivers full 360 degrees of motion from inside a spherical capsule so you can not only see the motion in your VR headset your body can physically experience it too. Whether you are the fighter ace performing barrel roles over an airfield, or a jet pilot performing high speed, low altitude manoevers through the mountains or even driving a humvee over rough desert terrain the Nova sphere rotates, spins and judders as your body feels the motion that your eyes see in the VR visor. Driving sim video - click here to play I tested one of the early prototypes a while back and found myself flying upside down with coins and keys falling out of my pockets. My only excuse was it was a very early prototype and the interface and controls mechanism were still in their infancy. 😉 I know, a lame excuse. Driving Nova The latest model has ironed out most of the early kinks and Nova already integrates with a host of 3D PC games and simulators including DCS World (Digital Combat Simulator), X-Plane and the NoLimits2 roller coaster simulator. Apart from the hardware design, the real smarts are in the proprietary digital interface which links to the 3D software and controls the servo motors which drive the 360 degree motion of the spherical capsule. Applications include entertainment, flying, advanced driver training and so much more. Remember you saw it here first. That's all for this update, All that is left is to wish all Amigans a very Happy and Prosperous New Year Filed under: Uncategorized Comments Off 6Nov/19Off Only the shadow knows! With Amiwest 2019 well and truly done and dusted and I began writing this update as I was about to leave the USA to fly to Europe. Amiwest started a day earlier this year to accommodate a full extra day devoted to the Classic Amiga workshop on Friday before the main event. This meant Steven Solie's tradition AmigaOS DevCom began on Wednesday. There were several contenders for this year's Amiwest quote of the show, a tradition which has grown over the past few years but actually started at AMIJAM 2013 in Calgary with the, "that's not what you said last night" quote. It spread to Amiwest the same year. I blame the Canadians Steve! 😉 (Steve replied, "Hey, weren't you at both shows?) Another good phrase was to be heard a couple of years back, when Eldee Stephens was told, "you are not on the list!" What a difference a year makes! Last year's winner was Daniel Mussener with his, "I really can't say anything bad about that", when describing a light American beer which Mark Ritter had given him to taste. (he couldn't say anything good either! ) This year there were several really good contenders. Robert 'Goody' Goodlett's, "Noted!", which apparently comes from the military and is usually said by a superior to a junior when the said junior has just make a stupid comment or suggestion. Close second was Mark Ritter's or was it Steven Soile's, "I was at that party!"But the clear winner was Solie's, "Only the Shadow knows!" A quote from a cult US fictional detective series created by Walter B. Gibson which first appeared on radio in the 1930's and later in magazines, books, TV series and movies. The Shadow was a mysterious masked invincible crime fighter. The quote was used to good effect throughout the show, usually when someone asked a searching question. Hey who said, when is the A1222 going to be released?, "Only the shadow knows". 😉 A more complete Amiwest show report will appear in the next edition of Amiga Future magazine. Show me the money! or [m68k] backend support in the new GCC compiler If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that John Paul Adrian Glaubitz, or Adrian as he prefers to be called, is maintainer of Debian SPE using the 'Atlantis & Pathfinder' code-named Tabor motherboards. Show me the money! Adrian reached out to fellow Amigan Alex Perez, of Rabbit Hole Computing and Inertial Computing, to alert him that the GCC compiler was being upgraded and there was a real threat that future versions would not include [m68k] backend support. The m68K migration work required an experienced GCC developer and would need a minimum of US$5,000 to pay the coding work otherwise m68k support would be dropped. Adrian created a campaign on BOUNTYSOURCE to raise funds to pay for development work. Alex immediately donated to the cause and passed Adrian on to me to help promote the funding campaign. As there was still $1,378K needed to reach the minimum funding goal, on Friday evening, after the Amiwest Classic Amiga day, Alex and I made a plea to everyone who attended the traditional informal Friday night gathering. Bounty Amiwest Amiga Community donation We did a quick whip round and I agreed to make up any shortfall with assistance from Matthew Leaman of AmigaKit (although he did not know this at the time ). Everyone in the room made a donation and we collected almost $500 in cash. We gave the money to Alex and he made the full donation of $1,378 on behalf of the Amiwest Amiga Community which ensured Adrian's [m68k] campaign reached its minimum funding goal of $5,000. When we informed Adrian he responded with, "Wow, I'm speechless. Thanks so much and thanks to everyone to the community! You rock!" If you want to add your support to the [m68k] backend porting work please visit the BOUNTYSOURCE link. [Err, cough, ummm, Matthew we now need to pay Alex the difference. 😉 ] ALICE & ALEX ALICE (Ken Lester) Talking about Alex and Rabbit Hole Computing, there were six ALICE laptops at the Amiwest show. This included one brought along by Ken Lester, one of the key ALICE developers and of course my own ALICE machine. In addition, Alex brought along 5 or six refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre mini PCs which he has set up as mini ALICE desktop machines. Alex and Ken demoing ALICE/ALEX to Michael Battilana These tiny energy efficient PCs appear to work very well as a portable ALICE desktop and, just like the ALICE laptop, these mini PCs boot directly into AmigaOS or AmigaOS 4 Classic running on top of a Linux subsystem, complete with the cool "Rabbit hole" feature we developed for the original ALICE machine. ALICE Desktop The PC case even has a little red stripe on the front. I suggested Alex name his ALICE mini PC A.L.E.X. which stands for "Amiga Linux EXperience" but for some reason he did not appear to like my suggestion! 🙂 Euro travels Amedia dinner celebration Matthew & me with Laurent After Amiwest I flew on to London to meet up with Matthew Leaman to discuss plans for the upcoming release of the AmigaOne X5000 Plus edition and Version 2.0 of the Enhancer Software pack. We also firmed up plans for the A1222 Early Adopter limited edition and a news release will be posted after I return to New Zealand. Matthew and I then travelled to France and Luxembourg to visit Laurent and Frank of Amedia Computer to discuss future cooperation for European sales and distribution of AmigaKit's and A-EON's hardware and software products. It proved to be a very productive trip. We visited Amedia's offices and afterwards Laurent treated us to some traditional food from the Alsace region of France. AmsteRJam frolics While Matthew returned to Wales, I made my way to Amsterdam to attend RJ Mical's AmsteRJam 2019 party being coordinated by Marvin Droogsma and Marcel Franquinet. Unfortunately RJ, who was visiting Ireland with Gary Koffler, before travelling on to the Netherlands, had to return to the USA for personal reasons. However, although the main event was cancelled a few intrepid Amigans, who had booked flights and hotels, decided to still travel to Amsterdam for an impromptu Amiga meetup. Gary was loaded down with special RJ emblazoned T-Shirts created by RJ's boyhood friend Michael Schifferdecker, for everyone who was going to attend the original event. With RJ returning to the States, Gary rescued them from being donated to an Irish homeless shelter. Some were being picked up by a local Irish user group and Gary dragged the rest through London and on to Amsterdam where he passed them off to Marcel. Our perfectly formed little group of Amigans included Omar Cornut from France, Chris Collins and Robert Bernardo from California, Amiga artist and software developer Leo Schwab, and of course Marvin, Marcel and me. Timothy, Ben and me in Brussels When I was in Europe I visited Timothy de Groote and Ben Hermans of Hyperion Entertainment in Brussels before travelling to Cardiff to meet up with Matthew Leaman the Managing Director of AmigaKit and my partner in A-EON Technology. While I was in Cardiff we welcomed the visit of Laurent Zorawski and Franck "Sheldon" Bednarski from Amedia Computer France and discussed possible future cooperation to help expand the Amiga market. Gamescom 2019 I will also have my latest ALICE Laptop with me, courtesy of Alex Perez of Rabbit Hole Computing, and will be able to demonstrate the Classic version of AmigaOS 4.1 Classic and the AmiKit version of AmigaOS 3.x with it's unique Rabbit-hole features which allows mainstream Linux programs such as Firefox and Libre Office to be run from the AmigaOS workbench. While I'm in Cologne I will be staying with Daniel and his family and will get to meet his new baby daughter. Before I return to New Zealand I will also try to squeeze in some other Amiga related business. It's a very busy schedule but, as I've said several times in the past, it's a hard life and someone's got to do it. 😉 Of course the trip is not just about Amiga fun and I have to attend to some other non-Amiga business too. Mike Clarke using Bars n Pipes - AmigaOne X1000 I'm sure Lyle Hazelwood will be pleased that Michael Clarke of Psygnosis fame composed a tune using Lyle's AmigaOS 4 version of Bars n Pipes. Even better, knowing my interest/obsession in all things Commodore, Mike presented me with a Commodore LED watch dating back to the mid 1970s. Commodore LED watch Neil online via wifi and X1000 hamper basket 😉 Meanwhile, driver wizard, Neil Cafferkey took the most unusual case prize for his AmigaOne X1000 wicker basket system on which he demonstrated the latest version of the A-EON sponsored wifi driver. Expect more news soon. Although the show was dominated by Classic Amiga machines there was good interest in the Tabor motherboard, especially from the Polish contingent at the show. Dan & Ravi from the Retro Hour Podcast gave a presentation and John Shawler of the Amigaos Podcast made the long trip from the USA. Michael Battilana of Cloanto also made another appearance. A1222 running AmigaOS under AmigaOS 4.1 He acquired a Sam 460CR board to try out AmigaOS 4.1 and was very impressed with the performance of the OS. So much so that he is now the proud owner of an AmigaOne X5000 and a member of A-EON's Amiga Developer beta test team. Keith has been fine tuning UAE to optimise the performance of AmigaOS 3.9 on the AmigaOne X5000 and A1222. More recently he has also been comparing the performance of his AmigaOne X5000 running UAE 060 against his A4000 equipped with an 060@96 Warp Engine and Merlin RTG and CF card by running some classic Amiga demos. Demo running on X5000 (l) & A1222 (r) His conclusion: the X5000 can emulate a classic Amiga 060 running AmigaOS 3.9 with perfection. Of course most of the demos can be run directly under AmigaOS 4.1 and do not require UAE emulation, so why does Keith do it? And the answer is because with the AmigaOne X5000 and A1222 he can! 🙂 Filed under: Uncategorized Comments Off 15Jan/19Off Fukubukuro Amiga Ireland Meetup 2019 This will only be a short update as I'm about to leave summertime in New Zealand to fly to the frozen Northern hemisphere to attend the Amiga Ireland 2019 meetup and SWAG's (South West Amiga Group) Workbench 2019 event. I will be joined at both shows with Matthew Leaman who will no doubt be bringing along a fine selection of Amiga goodies from his vast AmigaKit catalogue. This will the third Amiga Ireland show that I've attended and sponsored and I'm looking forward to catching up with Iarla Ó'Riada and his team. This year he has managed to entice former Amiga developer and all round entertainer, RJ Mical, to make a first-time appearance along with ex Commodore UK Joint M.D., David Pleasance who will no doubt be selling and signing copies of his book, Commodore: The inside story. A week later I will be attending my first ever SWAG event and I'm looking forward to making some new Amiga friends. SWAG - Workbench 2019 Before I leave New Zealand I need to finish the third and final part of my 'X1000 backstory', a series of articles for Amiga Future magazine which reveals the many challenges and obstacles that were successfully overcome bringing the AmigaOne X1000 to market. Over the past four months I've been digging back through my old emails and files dating back to 2004 to remind myself of the history and lead up to the roller coaster ride surrounding the birth of AmigaOne X1000. Whatever way you look at it, the AmigaOne X1000 it is truly a unique machine. It's built around the Nemo motherboard, which was custom designed from scratch to run AmigaOS 4 and is powered by the exotic PA6T-1682M CPU, a high performance and power efficient 64-bit dual-core PowerPC microprocessor designed by PA Semi as part of its planned PWRficient range of PowerPC CPUs.

among other things.



REGARDS,
MEGA?_RJ_MICAL

_________________
I HAVE ABS OF STEEL
--
CAN YOU SEE ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? OK FOR WORK

@Petah

Quote:

No matter what you think, kindly cast your vote.

OK, I voted for option #2. Whatever ails Amiga, it's been around for years, so that disqualified option #1. I'm having trouble working out who the hens are, so that eliminates option #3.

So I guess there's a fox in the House of Amiga. Next poll: is the "fox" a commercial entity?

_________________
"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@MEGA_RJ_MICAL

Yup. Well, that’s what we tell ourselves...

_________________
"Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard, be evil."

Who is foxy again?

From the desk that’s more finally carved than MEGAS.

_________________
Sent from my Quantum Computer.

Quote:

DiscreetFX wrote: From the desk that’s more finally carved than MEGAS.

Friend DiscreetFX,

in wondering whether you're a native English speaker as I thought you were, I ask myself if perhaps you intended to say your desk is (allegedly) finely carved.

If on the other hand you really intended to express some finality, your desk being finally carved, as you typed, then I am glad you ultimately got to obtain the carvings you desired.

With you always,

MEGA_RJ_MICAL
(whose desk, however, will forever be better than yours)

_________________
I HAVE ABS OF STEEL
--
CAN YOU SEE ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? OK FOR WORK

@MEGA_RJ_MICAL

Frayed not

From the desk that’s altimatly carved more integrated than your meger imitation chinese COVID-19 infected cheap dollar store plywood desk.

_________________
Sent from my Quantum Computer.