AmiCygnix 1.4 on AmigaOne X5000

Today I am taking a look at the relatively recently released AmiCygnix 1.4 update for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on my AmigaOne X5000. Due to moving house I had to delay this blog post from December 2018 until I was set up again!

AmiCygnix is a X-windows implementation for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition that allows you to run some Unix applications under AmiCygnix (separate screen) or standalone windows within AmigaOS 4. The advantage of this is access to Unix applications that are not yet available under AmigaOS 4!

I have looked in detail at Amicygnix in the past on this blog, covering a number of versions since 2012! 

https://amigax1000.blogspot.com/2012/06/getting-started-with-amicygnix-11-on.html

https://amigax1000.blogspot.com/2012/11/amicygnix-12-upgrade-and-audacious-on.html

I installed the last 1.3 version update on my X1000 too but didn't cover it in the blog.

It has been a number of years since it was updated, and this update in late 2018 fixes the issue introduced in AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition and updated Radeon HD drivers prevented Amicygnix working on my X1000 with a Southern Islands Radeon HD card installed.

Slightly off topic - Since my last update I have made good progress on setting up my computer rooms, with my Next Gen AmigaOne A1222, X1000 and X5000 all setup.

Here is the X5000 up and running:

I decided to try out Amicygnix on my X5000. Since it has my X1000 setup copied over, it already has AmiCygnix 1.3 installed.

I downloaded the latest AmiCygnix 1.4 from os4depot.net - the base packages is here and the tools package is here. Once downloaded you get the drawer contents (once extracted) of the base package as below:

The installation works much the same as previous versions:

There is a installation readme that pops up to warn that you need significant space and it should be installed on a SFS2/SFS partition. In my case it is installed on SFS2 so we are good to go:

The installer picks up my previous 1.3 installation and offers to upgrade it - which of course I want to do!

I then grab a coffee while the files copy across:

Along the way it asks you to set the screen resolution for AmiCygnix. Since I am using a 1080p screen I choose 1920x1080x16:

The installer then asks for language and character set options - which I leave as default:

The installation then asks me to set the location, and automatically opens the drawer showing the countries and cities inside each:

Glad to see Australia and Adelaide are there, and I input them according to the instructions on the installer.

You also get the option to map unix Ctrl-X Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V keys to be usable under Amicygnix in addition to the usual Amiga+key combinations for cut, copy and paste functions. I choose to enable this:

I leave the next few options as per defaults:

The installer also reminds me that the MyX11Setup program allows customisation of Amicygnix from AmigaOS 4 as needed:

Some libraries needed are copied and caches and databases updated - I won't bore you with those screenshots!

With that done the installation is completed!

After a reboot, I then installed the new Amicygnix tools v1.4 package as well:

The installer works much the same:

As before, it detects my older 1.3 Amicygnix tools installation and offers to upgrade, which I do:

Eventually the installer completes:

With the installation all done, I fire up AmiCygnix using the Start_Amicygnix program in the installed drawer - I then get the main Amicygnix desktop appear as a separate screen under AmigaOS 4:

I fire up Audacious audio player to play some MP3's under Amicygnix 1.4:

I previously installed Gimp 2.6 image processor/editor/viewer and a number of other packages too, all available on os4depot for Amicygnix, which work well. Here is Gimp:

I then tested the standalone functionality of Amicygnix 1.4, by running Gnumeric as a 1024x768 window under the AmigaOS 4 Workbench screen:

You can drag the window around the AmigaOS 4 workbench as with any other window, and click inside the window to use the application running under AmiCygnix.

In Gnumeric you can save in Excel .xls format which is great as it means you can work on spreadsheets on the X5000 under Amicygnix 1.4 and then transfer easily to use on Mac or PC systems with Microsoft Office.

I look forward to the day when Libreoffice is available for AmigaOS 4 and we can do this natively, but this is still a good thing in 2019 that we can work on common Word and Excel documents with any Mac and PC owning friends!

As an aside I had to fix an issue with the X5000 when using MUI patched requesters like WinAmp, Odyssey, etc, which is related to the last version of MUI5 I installed in September 2018. It causes Grim reaper errors (which you can ignore) when opening drawers in the requesters, but getting them every time you use another program is quickly annoying. I disabled the patchasl MUI command from the s:user-startup added by the MUI installer and the issue went away. I should check if there is an MUI update to fix this...anyway, for now back to Amicygnix.

We can run Abiword under standalone mode in Amicygnix too, allowing us to edit and save Microsoft Word formatted documents under AmigaOS 4:

AmiCygnix has a start menu in the bottom left corner to launch games, utilities, applications and settings, and a taskbar for quick launch icons and running applications can be selected to switch focus as needed.

Under settings in the start menu you can customise the look and feel of Amicygnix. It is already set to mimic AmigaOS4 look and feel, but you can change this if you want to:

Of the cool features of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition which is carried over from the Classic Amiga earlier versions is the ability to "pull down" the workbench screen from clicking and holding the left button on the title bar, revealing the other opened screens behind.

For fun I did this again with Amicygnix 1.4 running on the rear screen, and AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on the front. For good measure the standalone Gnumeric is running as a window within AmigaOS 4 as well! Very cool, and smooth operation while doing it too:

There is a lot more to explore with Amicygnix 1.4, and many applications available for it on os4depot so please give it a try!

Debian Linux on AmigaOne A1222

I am pleased to say that after a week with the new AmigaOne A1222, I have now got Debian 8 Linux installed and booting from the hard disk, along with an AmigaOS theme and other goodies!

As you would imagine as a betatester, things are very much in active development right now, and so I have been busy relaying my experiences to the development team and other beta testers on things I have found while working on the A1222 to get Linux up and running.

I have the installation guide A-EON provided to get me started.

I have also received plenty of helpful tips and tricks in response to my initial questions. It is very interesting!

Along the way I have become a bit more familiar with the u-Boot firmware in the A1222 this week.

Initially I loaded the Debian 8 image onto a bootable 16GB USB stick using Windows 10 to boot the A1222 system from it:

 Thanks to the hard work of the developers, this usb image booted and worked out of the box as expected.

One of the more interesting things I found out this week is how to load the image files needed to boot A1222 into Linux into the u-Boot firmware MicroSD card.

The command line can be run from the A1222 directly or via the serial port to another computer - in this case my Windows 10 computer running Putty:

Previously these boot files needed to be located on a separate FAT partition, for example on a CF card on the X1000, SD Card on the Sam460 (firmware not located there), or a dedicated small FAT partition on the hard disk to be used by the system.

With the A1222 though, it is possible to now load these files directly into the firmware MicroSD card to boot the system into Linux. (As shown in part in the screenshot above)

Being able to "reflash" the firmware on the A1222 by extracting the firmware image onto a second MicroSD card makes upgrades a breeze and changing back very straight forward indeed. I believe this is a great feature!

Once booted via USB stick, I then used the Linux command "dd" to copy the original Linux image file to the 1TB hard disk. I then ran GParted to resize the resulting small hard disk partition to a larger size (250GB).

I want to leave space on the disk for loading other systems later on so this will do for now. After this I could then boot up the A1222 using the hard disk:

Here are some screenshots of the booted Debian 8 environment on the A1222, running Iceweasel web browser and Audicious media player (you can click to expand any pictures):

The interesting thing here is that the sound support works through the HDMI connector on the Radeon HD PCI-e card I have installed! I tested this hdmi output (video and sound) and it works well!

This function would make the A1222 easy to hook up directly to a big screen TV for example.

The A1222 also still has on board sound support too, so both options are available.

Video card, sound, USB and Network support worked straight away, and there are already many applications running under Linux to play with!

Some screenshots of Super Tux Kart running on the A1222:

I certainly enjoyed using Audacious media player again (used previously on AmiCygnix under AmigaOS 4 on the X1000). It can play back C64 SID tunes too:

While on the subject of the C64, I have also been working on my C64 with Ultimate 1541 II recently for the upcoming Adelaide Amiga meeting on Jan 25, which this time round has a retro theme with other old systems (not only Amiga) being featured.

I plan to show the C64 running videos (!), cool REU expansion demos and games, among other things! I have also been working on my presentation for AmigaOS 4.1 at the show.

Should be a great meeting, so if you can make it to the meeting I hope you can. More information is on the official website here.

Getting back to the A1222, I was keen to experiment with the AmigaOS GTK themes that are available for Debian, which make Linux look a bit more Amiga-like.

Mine is a mix of a couple of different themes. If you are curious, I got them from here and here.

I think it looks much nicer now:

I will be the first to admit that I am not a Linux expert, although I have had previous experience installing and supporting Linux and Unix for various companies in the past. I am learning all the time!

In the System Monitor you can see the Dual Core processors are active, and the 4GB memory I have on my A1222:

Firing up LibreOffice Writer next and having not used it before I was surprised how nice it is, especially when chilling out to some nice tunes (MP3 and M4A work perfectly out of the box:

I did hit a small issue with the Amiga emulation, which runs fine but has decided it wants to run completely upside down - I had to laugh!

I'll cover more on the Amiga emulation side once I work out how to turn it the right way up...and yes, I have already heard the jokes about it being upside down because it was written for the northern hemisphere and not for us down under! :-)

I reconfigured the timezone to Adelaide time as the Linux image had it set to UK time:

I also stumbled across a rather nice AmigaOne A1222 presentation created in LibreOffice Impress (a Microsoft PowerPoint software equivalent):

 It has been very enjoyable, and I am impressed with the professionalism and helpfulness of the other developers and betatesters. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their ongoing help.

The work continues on the betatesting for the AmigaOne A1222 so there will of course be much more to come. However, I wanted to share some of my experiences so far.