89030083 5/amiga-30th-anniversary-in-california

On July 23rd, 1985, the world was introduced to the Commodore Amiga
Computer. This year marks the 30th Anniversary of the Amiga's launch and
to commemorate that seminal event in computer history we are throwing a
party.

Join us on Saturday, July 25th, in a celebration of the amazing Amiga. Our party will feature an evening of epic Amiga Fun. The event will be a
banquet with feature speakers, panel discussion, historical artefact
displays, and more.

The main event for the banquet will be a panel discussion of original Amiga developers including:

* Dale Luck
* Carl Sassenrath
* Dave Needle
* RJ Mical
* Plus more

The panel topics will cover start-up life in 1985, building the Amiga 1000,
and how the Amiga influenced technology over the last 30 years.

Additional speakers will include:

* Trevor Dickinson, co-founder of A-EON Technology, makers of next
generation Amiga systems and software.

* Colin Proudfoot, Former Managing Director of Commodore Business
Machines (UK)

* Mike Battilana, Founder CEO of Cloanto, maker of the Amiga Forever
emulation software.

We will also have video presentations including a special extended clip
from the upcoming "Viva Amiga" documentary video [produced] by "Viva Amiga" producer Zack Weddington.


*************************************
AIFF AND PCX PLUGINS FOR
HOLLYWOOD RELEASED
*************************************

Hollywood SDK comes with source code for several example plugins. Among
them are source codes for loading PCX images and AIFF sound files. Due to popular demand Airsoft Softwair has released these two plugins as binaries
for all platforms supported by Hollywood.

You can download the plugins from the official Hollywood portal. www.hollywood-mal.com/ Thanks to Hollywood's cross-platform plugin system versions for AmigaOS3 (Classic), AmigaOS3 (FPU), AmigaOS4, MorphOS, WarpOS, AROS (Intel), Linux (PowerPC), Linux (Intel), Linux (ARM), Mac OS
(PowerPC), Mac OS (Intel), Windows and Google's Android platform are
provided.


*************************************
NEW ARTICLES ON OBLIGEMENT
*************************************

The following articles have been added to the website of the French Amiga/MorphOS magazine Obligement (obligement.free.fr) during the last two months:

Obligement is an online magazine (webzine) dedicated to the world of the
Amiga at large (Amiga machines and their clones, operating systems,
AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS, emulators Amithlon and UAE) as well as
alternative computing.

* January/February 2014 news.
* Old articles from Amiga News 66 to
68: Review of Quarterback 6.0,
Review of Caligari 24, File: fonts
on Amiga, Review of Adibou,
Hardware: MSP 9000, Reviews of
Aladdin 4D 3.0, Report: Mayotte,
meteo and Amiga, Hardware: Emplant
3.7, etc.
* Interview with Thomas Zighem
(developer of Genesia).
* Review of Workbench CANDI (update).
* Review of TwittAmiga 4.
* Review of Icaros Desktop 2.0.
* File: Amiga Games List (update).
* Hardware: CDTV SCSI Controller.
* Report: Loren Eyrich travel with an
Amiga.
* Report: DevCon Commodore 1992.
* Tutorial: cracking of Turrican 3.
* Tutorial: installation of AmigaOS
4.1 Final Edition on AmigaONE
X1000.
* Special quiz about the year 2014.

Rendez-vous on obligement.free.fr for this nice reading.

All translations are welcome. Please contact David "Daff" Brunet for more info.


*************************************
NEW EXTERNAL FLOPPY DRIVES
*************************************

New external floppy drive for Amiga now available for preorder at RetroAmi shop!

retroami.com.pl/index.php?id_product= 153&controller=product

The drives are manufactured by Sakura company, which previously has successfully completed the project of PCMCIA SRAM expansions.

The drives are compatible with all classic Amiga models equipped with
external disk drive connector. The only version available in preorder will
be shipped with PC drive mechanism, but behave exactly as original
Amiga-style 880kB DD disk drives (thanks to flexibility of the interface board).

The price in preorder is 195 PLN (around $53). Note that after preorder
ends, the price will increase. The drives are covered by 24-months
warranty and will be shipped to users late April.


*************************************
HATARI V1.8.0 - AMIGAOS 4
*************************************

Hatari is an emulator of the 16/32 bit Atari machines - the Atari ST, Atari STe, Atari TT and Atari Falcon. The Atari was the main rival of the Amiga during the 1980ies and early 1990ies. Early Amiga games were straight ST ports, which made the computers look almost the same in comparison. Later native Amiga games took advantage of all the Amiga capabilities and moved
the Atari ST away from the entertainment area.

The emulator gives exact emulation of all the hardware resources of the
Atari ST computers with raster interrupts, cycle precise border effects and accurate PSG sound. The Atari Falcon computers had DSP onboard unlike any Amiga model. Hatari emulates the Falcon DSP too, along with 68000, 68010, 68020, 68040 processors and FPU. Blitter emulation is supported as well. Joysticks can be remapped to real Joysticks and Joypads, thanks to the AmigaInput support built in. Atari Hard Disk also can be emulated, via
disk image, or by using natively the drawers. Free implementation of the firmware ROM is included in the archive.

hirudov.com/amiga/Hatari.php


*************************************
A-EON TECHNOLOGY ACQUIRES OCTAMED
*************************************

Announcement from A-EON Technology Ltd

www.a-eon.com/ is pleased to announce that it has concluded the purchase of
the source code and exclusive rights to develop, publish and distribute
MED, OctaMED and OctaMED SoundStudio for the AmigaOS and Amiga-inspired operating systems, including MorphOS, AROS and emulation from the current
owner Ray Burt Frost. As part of the sale agreement A-EON has the
exclusive right to use the MED, OctaMED and OctaMED SoundStudio in all
product marketing, promotion and branding for AmigaOS and Next-Generation AmigaOS inspired versions including emulation.

PDF news release

a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_OCTAMED.pdf


*************************************
AMICAST - FIRST EPISODE
*************************************

The first episode of Amiga Podcast - AMIcast. With guest Jan Zahurancik - author of AmiKit. Every month you'll find a new episode with invited
guests. The Podcast is about Amiga: the best parts from past and new
future with next generations Amigas. Every episode will include some of
famous Amiga music. First time recording podcast in English,

Podcast is available:

* website amicast.ppa.pl

* iTunes itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/ amicast/id961455301?l=en

* Feedburner feeds.feedburner.com/ppa/JOZp

* more news and info radzikpl.blogspot.com


*************************************
AMIKIT ON BOOTABLE FLASH DISK.
*************************************

AmiKit 8.2 with updated MUI4 released.

Announcement from AmiKit

Solid metal design. Limited Edition.

The bootable AmiKit USB Flash Disk provides 8 GB of capacity and contains a very small lightweight "live boot" Linux system, called AmiPUP, with AmiKit pre-installed. At boot, EVERYTHING is loaded into RAM, so all applications load blazing fast! The host system is never touched. Thanks to Kenneth E. Lester, Jr. for this magic.

Buy now from amikit.amiga.sk

WHAT IS AMIKIT?

AmiKit is a free project, powered by enthusiasm that turns your computer, tablet or phone into legendary Amiga computer. This emulated software
package includes more than 350 of the finest Amiga programs. Everything is polished and pre-configured at your service. AmiKit is available for
Windows, Linux, Mac and Android.

WHAT'S NEW IN AMIKIT 8.2?

Thanks for using AmiKit. To make it even better for you, we have released
a new update which installs automatically thanks to integrated Live Update feature. AmiKit download and update is always FREE.

* MUI 4 (Magic User Interface) has been exclusively updated for AmiKit
again! For example, keyboard support for virtual groups has been
implemented, as well as support for menu item images. MUI 4 now
contains a stack check feature, and many bugs have been fixed.

* We introduce a special MUI version of EvenMore in this release.
EvenMore is a decent text viewer with a plugin system.

* Ukrainian developer Lyubomyr Lisen has updated the AmiKit app for
Android. It now uses a graphical user interface, which can be
invoked by the Back or Menu key.

* Other software updates include a new SimpleMail, Amiga Image Storage
System, IconLib, Layers Library, MUIbase and NetSurf. Russian locale
is also supported (beta).

* Last, but not least, a very addictive "run and jump" platform
game, called Boxx2, is waiting for you in AmiKit:Games folder.

New MUI4 for OS3.x - a Graphical User Interface by Stefan Stuntz, Thore Böckelmann and Jens Maus:

New EvenMore - a MUI text viewer by Chris Perver:

AmiKit application for Android, now with GUI! By Lyubomyr Lisen:

Boxx 2 - a retro "jump and run" game by Lemming880:

FREE DOWNLOAD from amikit.amiga.sk


*************************************
BOUNTY TO PORT QT 5.4 TO AROS
*************************************

Port Qt 5.4 or newer to AROS and prove it working with an AROS Version of SMTube.

Requirements

* port of the Qt build system (qmake, moc, uic, rcc, etc.)

* port of these Qt modules: QtCore, QtNetwork, QtGui, QtScript, QtXml
(static libraries)

* working port of SMTube

Link to the bounty:

power2people.org/projects/qt5/

Please donate to support it

Also it is a chance to get QT for 68K Amigas (running AROS) and ARM


*************************************
ICAROS DESKTOP 2.0.3
*************************************

Paolo Besser has released an update for Icaros Desktop. There are
enhancements or updates to: local, themes, 68K Wanderer, Bochs scripts for FreeDOS and Linux, Italian locale, AROS core system files, ProTrekkr,
Harmony Player DOpus 5 and YouTube Center.

Icaros Desktop is a pre-configured AROS desktop environment for the PC platform, distributed on a bootable live media. The AROS Research
Operating System is an open source lightweight, efficient and flexible
desktop operating system, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 at
the API level, while improving on it in many areas.

www.icarosdesktop.org/



*************************************
REVIEW: THE MUSIC SYSTEM
By Commodore Free
*************************************

Sometimes you find an application and wonder what life would have been like without it. This application (when released) was in my opinion one of
those applications, wonderfully slick, elegant, stylish, simple and
polished to name just some descriptive words.

What we are looking at here is superb programming skills from and based on; both the present and or passed. The list of designers in the manual is
quite large; with the names mentioned covering some twelve individual
people, they ranged from programmers, synthesizer editor, designers and supporters; I guessed they only left out the runners and tea making person.

"So what" you may ask "is The Music System"?

Well, The Music System is "a synthesizer, composer and editor" for the Commodore 64 or Commodore 128 in 64 mode (ok so it doesn't add any extras
for the Commodore 128 and I didn't say it was without flaws!)

I remember a friend purchasing this system for the BBC micro back in 1984,
the package lists April 1983 as the finished BBC program date, so I must be
on the right time line. After seeing this on the BBC Micro system, I
thought long and hard about purchasing a BBC system myself; for one reason;
to run this application, and the other was to run Elite! Good fortune then that I was that I was given a Commodore 64 for my Christmas present by Mr. Claws himself. Even better; when I bought a disk drive, and this
application to go with my system a few years later! My school teachers
used to wonder why I was off school sick so often, (the secret is out now,
and the culprit was "the music system"!) The manual that accompanies the application is very well written, and is easy to follow with lots of
pictures and examples. Just by way of temptation, the standard version
also has a copy of the advanced versions manual! Oh there so cruel I never managed to track the advanced version down, well not a physical one, I do
have a disk image.

According to the manual, the system was used by "black Uhuru" a leading Jamaican band on an album called anthem. I can't say I have heard of the
group or the album, oh well who cares....... on with the application.
This is they en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Uhuru

Here is the box info:

Now you can make music you want to hear. Whether a stylish performer or complete beginner, With THE MUSIC SYSTEM you can be a composer/studio
engineer (and rock star)

The advanced version had full MIDI support, here I am just discussing the standard version that supports only Commodore SID chip.

If you have the advanced version I would love to here from you, maybe you
would like to sell/donate me a really physical copy. Also to prove I am a
liar the package actually came in four versions if you want to be picky,
tape or disk for both the advanced and standard versions. The package
coming on tape or disk got the programmers out of the problem. The problem they solved was that of not having to select a media to save to. For
example the disk version always tries to save to a disk drive 8. Now I am
not calling this a short coming, as it have seems a logical thought process
for 1984, who would ever need 2 disk drives The other question of course is "who would ever use more than 64k of memory" I think we can all answer that one!

After the initial stylish loading
screen that still looks good even by today's standards, your eyes are in
for a graphical display of goodies or eye candy.

On the main screen we can see a file menu items listed are for FILES VALUES COMMANDS and finally INFO. I will go through each option so we don't miss anything out. While accessing the menu items, they actually dropdown with
a scrolling animation effect very nice touch.

FILES

As you may have guessed this all relates to file manipulation, so..
saving, loading, renaming and deleting to access this menu press F1 key to scroll down the list press the space bar, the return key executes the
command. The top item catalogue displays a directory of the files on disk.
I won't go through the others, as they are self-explanatory.

VALUES

Here we can set key signature, keys Q and W to change the options and
scroll through a list of key signature types. Then we can set the time signature, 4/4 is the classic dance floor filler 4 beats in a bar.

We can set the tempo of the piece, but all the words are Italian (standard
for notation). If your Italian leaves something to be desired, then
helpful is the fact, that as you scroll through the tempo words, the
metronome will either go up or down in value, (music will play faster or
play slower). Andante means walking speed, there you go you learnt one
word already!

You could select the Tempo and hit the left arrow key next to 1 top left of
the commodore 64 keyboard this will toggle the tempo display to display
beats per minute instead of Italian names. Resolution has three options beginner, average and advanced this sets the minimum note value allowed by
the program helping you to input notes in real-time from the keyboard.

Next we have Volume and filter number followed by voice Number. Pressing return on the voice displays another dropdown box for octave and a filter
on off toggle.

COMMANDS

V.M.W or (Voice monitor window) displays a music stave where notes can be entered manually, in step time.

To get out of the V.W.M window press the commodore k

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