Looking back at 2013 on X1000

Let's take a look back at 2013 on the AmigaOne X1000!

I should first sincerely apologise for the time between blog entries - October - wow, I had no idea how quickly the time has passed since then.

I have been very busy at work, working nights and weekends too, and had little time to spend on firing up the X1000. But, enough of that!

The games front this year has been quiet, but there have been a number of interesting games released on AmigaOS4, which all run well on the X1000.

Huenison (Retream)

The Legend of Edgar (Parallel Realities)

Frogatto (HunoPPC)

GigaloMania (Mark Harman - ported by kas1e)

M.A.C.E (AmiBoing)

A remake of the Innerprise Amiga classic Battle Squadron by Cope-Com was also released this year for AmigaOS4, which means we no longer require Classic Amiga emulation to run it! (no picture sorry)

An AmigaOS4 game released in 2013 that I haven't tried yet is Age of Thieves (Mrdarek) available on os4depot.net.

Some ports of QT framework games were also released in 2013, following the release of the QT framework on AmigaOS4 in 2013. Tanglet is one example, with plenty more available on os4depot.net to try out!

Tanglet (QT):

On the application front in 2013 we saw a number of updates and some new software as well.

A-FTP Server

AmiVNC4

Directory Opus Magellan II Beta

QT4.7 Framework

qMetro (QT):

MihPhoto (QT):

A music player front end called aTunes (Guillaume Boesel) was also released this year, providing a convenient way to collect all music files in a database, and then organise playlists and play music on AmigaOS4 using TuneNet or AmigaAmp as the player.

There were also plenty of updates released this year for existing applications!

On the hardware front 2013 saw the release of Catweasel Mk2 X1000 modification (and updated driver software) from AmigaKit to enable Amiga floppy disk support on the X1000.

In 2013 A-Eon has built a number of AmigaOne X1000 systems, and the X1000 is available now and in stock to purchase from AmigaKit, either as a complete system or just the X1000 motherboard. they even reduced the costs for Xmas! It is good to see that people who want one can more easily buy X1000 systems in 2013.

A-Eon also announced new AmigaOne systems to replace the X1000 at AmiWest 2013. These systems will be a way off yet, but it is good to see a future plan for the AmigaOne hardware platform into the foreseeable future.

A-Eon and ACube Systems (makers of the AmigaOne Sam line of AmigaOS4 compatible systems) announced a future cooperation agreement during 2013. Hopefully this should streamline the hardware used to make driver support easier and quicker to market moving forward.

We also received HD Audio drivers for the onboard X1000 soundcard in 2013, allowing me to finally remove the PCI soundcard, freeing up a slot for other hardware! We are still waiting on the internal network card driver for the X1000 - hopefully we will get this in 2014.

On the Operating System front unfortunately we didn't see the much awaited release of AmigaOS4.2 in 2013, and no idea of when we are likely to see it on the X1000. There is some rumours of AmigaOS4.1 Update 7 being released in 2013 still, but not as I write this.

On a personal level I still think the X1000 is a great AmigaOS4.1 machine, but the lack of visible development progress or updates on the intended AmigaOS4.2 platform on X1000 (which has been already pre-paid for by X1000 owners in 2012) is frustrating for all owners. We are looking forward to having hardware 3d graphics card support and multi-cpu support in AmigaOS4 so we can get the most out of our X1000 and the considerable financial investment made.

This frustration may not be confined to just myself, as it seems apparent by the amount of multiple linux distribution development work happening on the X1000 in 2013 in lieu of visible AmigaOS4.2 development progress being seen.

I admit I have no interest in running Linux on the X1000 and will not do so. I bought the X1000 to use AmigaOS4. I bought it to continue to enjoy using an AmigaOS under active development, and with the X1000 I finally transitioned from regularly using Classic Amigas. To be honest, I would prefer that future X1000 development efforts was focused on AmigaOS4, AROS or MorphOS Amiga like operating systems rather than Linux.

To that end, it would be good if the MorphOS development team could port MorphOS to the X1000.  I heard they are already doing some work on the Sam AmigaOne systems so it would be a logical extension. I would be interested in seeing how the two operating systems compare on the same hardware. The latest MorphOS 3.4 was also very recently released, with MorphOS 3.5 expected in 2014. I run MorphOS on a Mac Powerbook and it is nice (although having to use an old Mac and purchase a separate PC-Card wifi card for internet is frustrating)

Please note that I will be on holiday in Japan from Christmas until late January 2014, without access to my X1000. So unfortunately you will have to be patient again for the next X1000 blog update from me.

In the meantime, I wish you and your family a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year, and I am looking forward to an interesting 2014 for the AmigaOne X1000.

Installing Qt 4.7 Quickfix 7 on X1000

I noticed today that there is a patched release of Qt called Quickfix 7 now available. I wanted to show how to install this on the X1000, as there were no instructions on how to do it in the archive.

You can download Qt Quickfix 7 from here. It includes a number of bug fixes to the original Qt 4.7 released on www.os4depot.net. I did another blog entry covering the installation of the original Qt 4.7 program here.

Once the qt-quickfix7.lha file is downloaded, when you open the archive you will see the 3 new Qt lib .so files below:

So, where do they go? There is no readme to explain this!

In the Qt-4.7 folder from your Qt installation from www.os4depot.net you should already have installed (see here, right click on the folder window, highlight Show and select All Files. You should now see the lib folder unhidden as below:
 

If we open this lib folder, we can now see the old versions of the Qt lib files we need to patch here:

So, going back to the UnArc program, extract to work:qt-4.7/lib (in my case this is where Qt is installed on the X1000). You could also extract to RAM: if you prefer:

This will create a folder called qttemp in the lib folder containing the 3 new files:

 





Next, I backed up the 3 current lib files in the lib folder in case we need to restore them in the future, without having to reinstall Qt again. Simply right click on each file in turn and select Duplicate, and you should end up with these 3 files as a backup:

Ok, now open the Shell and go to work:qt-4.7/lib/qttemp folder and a quick list will confirm the newer files are there:

And copy them over the old files with the command copy #? work:Qt-4.7/lib/ as below:

And you are done! Qt 4.7 is now updated to Quickfix 7. You can delete the qttemp folder and contents as it is no longer needed.

 



Small OS Updates on X1000

Today I went to run AmiUpdate (it has been a few months since I did this) and found 12 updates to install! Looks like the AmigaOS developers have been busy!

Normally I would just let the update run without paying too much attention, but given the number of updates I thought I would take a quick look at what was being updated in some of the updates.

 

Intuition.library:

Looks like some small additional functionality added.

asl.library:

This looks like the first asl.library update in over 2 years...

System Kernel:

The kernel update (last update was 10 months via Update 6) is the most interesting, although most of the performance improvement updates look like they apply to AmigaOne Sam 460ex systems rather than the X1000.

timezone.library:

Looks like this fixes a bug when setting an incorrect date in the X1000 CFE or Sam firmware? Not sure if this applies to all AmigaOne firmware..

wbstartup.library:

Just a Bug fix.

list:

 

DOS list command receives first update in over 5 years, fixing large file support and relative soft link fixes.

md5sum:

 

MD5sum receives first update in almost 7 years, fixing 4GB+ file progress indicator.

LogViewer:

Fix for Log Viewer to work with ClickToFront functionality.

After installing all these and rebooting my X1000, I checked AmiUpdate again and two more OS updates appeared!

The details about these updates...

dos.library:

Lots of fixes here to dos.library...

GrimReaper:

Have to admit most times I click Continue in the Grim Reaper (when an application crashes) it makes no difference to the application which caused the Grim Reaper to appear, and I normally just reboot the computer. Nice to see some fixes here.

After another reboot I checked AmiUpdate and there was one more update for newlib.library - more bug fixes for that!

I realise these OS updates may not be all that exciting for everyone, but it shows that AmigaOS 4 developers are actively working to improve the system for AmigaOne X1000 and AmigaOS4 users generally, and this is a positive step forward - thanks guys for your efforts.

Of course I still look forward to AmigaOS 4.2, which I know is still in progress!

I also do hope there will be an onboard network driver for the X1000 soon, I can then remove the PCI network card and use it for something else!

In the meantime though I am grateful for the ongoing work to enhance the existing AmigaOS 4.1.6 operating system on my X1000!

DOpus 5.9 Magellan II BETA on X1000

I was reading on www.amigans.net forum the other day and discovered an interesting thread on a BETA version of DOpus 5.9 Magellan II for AmigaOS4. Even though it is still in beta, I just had to try this out on my X1000!

DOpus 5.82 Magellan II (Directory Opus) was originally released on the Classic AmigaOS 3.1 back in the late 1990's by Australian developers GP Soft. I bought it back then and used it extensively on my A1200 and later my A4000.

It was subsequently updated to support AmigaOS3.5 (and 3.9) icon changes, which was really needed when I migrated to AmigaOS3.9.

Since then it hasn't been updated on Classic Amiga as the GP Soft team left the Amiga market and moved Directory Opus to Windows in the early 2000's - I still run Directory Opus (now version 10) on my Windows 7 PC today too. It has changed a lot since then, as you can see below (click to expand)...

An older version of DOpus (Version 4) was open sourced by GP Soft and an AmigaOS4 port was quickly done in the 2000's.

However the last DOpus 5.82 Magellan II version for Classic Amiga was never ported to AmigaOS4 as it was not Open source software, until very recently.

Thanks to the efforts of Kas1e and testers, we now have the first BETA version of DOpus 5.9 Magellan II for AmigaOS4 in 2013!

Update 28/10/2013: kas1e has updated file location for Dopus5 BETA - updated links are below.

You can download the latest BETA from here. Kas1e maintains the website http://www.dopus5.org/ which has the latest nightly builds available for download.

I should stress that this software is BETA and as such is not finished as yet, but you can already use quite a bit of the functionality so let's take a look.

After downloading the archive, I extracted it to System:Utilities, and you get the folder below:

Launching Directory Opus 5.9 for the first time you are greeted with a separate Workbench screen, which uses the default Workbench 3.1 Topaz font (click to expand)....

As with the original DOpus 5.9, you can view via icons or text listers, and everything is customisable, one of the key features of Dopus. So first things first - get rid of the ghastly topaz font, and get it using my dual display setup..

To change this, Right click on the top of the DOpus 5.9 screen and highlight the Settings Menu and then select the Environment... option. Then first change the fonts under Lister Display section below from Topaz to the standard AmigaOS 4 font (Bitstream Vera Sans Font) and increase the font size to 14 so it is readable on the high resolution screen on the X1000:

Also need to change font settings on Icon Display section in the Environment settings:

Next I changed the screen it uses from a clone of the Workbench screen to use the Dual Display Radeon 9250 video card on my X1000. This is accessible under the Display option in the Environment settings. Once again, we need to change the default font to display the AmigaOS 4 font instead of the default Topaz font in the same Display section:

Now DOpus 5.9 is up on the Dual Display setup on the X1000 using the correct fonts I think it looks pretty good (click to expand):

It is certainly great to have Dopus 5.9 Magellan II on AmigaOS4, very nostalgic and will add some good functionality to AmigaOS4 when finished! Perhaps once finished it can be included as a Workbench replacement mode selectable in AmigaOS 4.2? :-)

By the way I am aware that DOpus 5.9 can be set to be used in Workbench replacement mode, but given the BETA nature of it right now, and the known conflict of the shift key to select between DOPus and Workbench on bootup and the native shift bypass startup programs in AmigaOS4,  I think it is best to wait for now until this can be fixed up. Besides, at the moment I prefer the flexibility of using Dual displays for DOpus!

Below is some more screenshots of DOpus 5.9 in action - first showing the default lister text view, with source and destination folder highlighted in green and red respectively (all customisable). You can also see the button list at the bottom of commonly used functions like copy, delete, all files, none, etc, which are within easy reach. This button lister can be customised to be vertical or horizontal, rectangle, etc (click to expand):

You can see below the various icons in each window to create folders, show devices, delete file(s), edit and more besides. In addition, you can click on the < icon in the green bar at the top to go back a folder and the down arrow gives options to copy/move/delete files, amongst other things:

You can easily change the listers to icon and action view by right clicking on the lister (or from the Lister menu at the top of the screen) and selecting this appropriate option under View As. In this mode AmigaOS4 Icons render well in Dopus 5.9, and the old Newicon, MagicWB icons also display well:

Another screenshot showing the older icon format support works well in DOpus 5.9 (click to expand):

Double clicking on files uses the DOpus defaults as defined in the configuration - in this case below it uses Multiview to display an image - under AmigaOS4 I have set this to be LoView so as you can see DOpus is very customisable. I also have Schismtracker, Notepad and Cinnamon Writer running on the DOpus screen (click to expand):

There are still some known bugs, like not displaying the drive sizes correctly for drives over 4GB (a carryover from AmigaOS 3.1 drive size restrictions), Title bar text overlays the AmigaOS4 screen title bar, and the Menu focus seems to have some trouble from time to time between screens (sometimes when on AmigaOS4 screen can right click but no menus come up when highlighted).

Note 7/10: Several people pointed out that FTP is actually working in Dopus 5.9, my sincere apologies for the error.

There are nightly builds of DOpus 5.9 being released at the moment and a lot of work being done on it so I expect these issues will be resolved soon, and I look forward to having the final version! In the meantime it is great to be able to play with the BETA version of DOpus 5.9 Magellan II, and it is a great addition to AmigaOS4 applications on the X1000!