AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 and UGet ;)

AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 with AmiUpdate ;)

Greetings everybody! Just some weeks until Christmas 2012! Today it's November the 30th, and a great surprise happened on this day!

Hyperion Entertainment released Update 6 for AmigaOS 4.1 and all supported hardwares out there!

Earlier today i was just browsing AmigaWorld when i came over a topic referring to Update 6, so i logged myself into Hyperion Entertainment's home page, clicked into the download section for AmigaOS 4.x and found Update 6! Before doing the update, i read the guide which said this update only needs the previous Update 5 installed in the system, so i downloaded the Update 6 archive to my USB pen and unpacked it to Diverse, and from there i just clicked Install for Update 6.

AmiUpdate now officially supported by AmigaOS!

The update happened for a couple of seconds, as it was not a big update, but still important. Didn't have to start from a clean Update 5. Just install Update 6 over your Update 5 setup and VOILA!

The visual change done in Update 6 is that AmiUpdate is now officially supported by AmigaOS! That means when being a registered Amiga user through Hyperion Entertainment home page where you downloaded your registered Amiga products, you type in your username and password the first time, and AmiUpdate will now also check for updates to AmigaOS and it's components, tools and applications. Simply put, AmiUpdate is now a standard updater for AmigaOS, and AmigaOS 4.2 will surely have this included! This is very promising and makes future updates easier for AmigaOS! AmigaOS now becomes more serious and professional that way! Like a true, modern AmigaOS!

A great example of how this new official function in AmiUpdate works (in addition to have a new WB menu saying "Update Software" ) is that when the Hyperion Entertainment registered username and password have been typed for log in, AmiUpdate for instance finds an update to the AmigaOS4 calculator, which was actually the case for me. so it just did that! Very easy! Very cool!

Apart from this official AmiUpdate support, the small improvements of Update 6 seem to be in speed, performance and stability. Nothing much visible, but the minor improvements are there. All in all, this is a very promising, minor update!

UGet Downloader standalone for AmiCygnix

Other updates i have done to my now AmigaOS 4.1.6 setup on my lovely AmigaOne 500 are an AmigaOS4 PPC native version of AmigaAMP (now version 3.4), new version of Audacious MP3 player for AmiCygnix, new version of the HomeBank for AmiCygnix and installation of the UGet Download Manager for AmiCygnix seen here.

Made a new backup of my system, and all in all i am very happy! Everything works as a charm! Time to have fun!

Very soon Warp3D for RadeonHD should appear, and then i can play 3D games and do some serious graphic work. I dear to say AmigaOS 4.1.6 is probably the update that starts making AmigaOS look and feel more professional and serious!

Enjoy the blog, and see you again soon ;) If you haven't installed Update 6 yet, then log into Hyperion Entertainment with your username and password, click the download section, click AmigaOS 4.x updates and Update 6. Read first the instructions which say AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5 is needed for the update, so just install Update 6 over your previous Update 5 setup. That's it. Nothing else.

This completes another fine blog for now ;) Enjoy the new update ;)

Written by
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

AmigaGuide & WookieChat ;)

Preparing a net-meeting in WookieChat

Hi again folks! Recently i got a unique offer from NAF (known as Norsk Amiga Forening), a Norwegian and probably only Amiga Club behind the Norwegian Amiga magazine AmigaGuiden.

For many years ago, in early 2000s, i was an active freelance writer for the magazine AmigaGuiden, writing different Amiga articles in Norwegian. A job i simply loved, even that i did not earn anything on it, but done by will based on the hobby interest.

For 2 days ago, the leader of NAF (Norsk Amiga Forening) and the author of AmigaGuiden announced the magazine to be rebornt again, as well as revealing a "sister" magazine for the international readers, in english called Amiga Guide.

The AmigaGuiden Magazine

At the same time, this contact asked me if i wanted to return as a freelance writer for both the Norwegian AmigaGuiden and the English Amiga Guide, earing 10 Euro (100 NOK) per A4 page i write. I replied quickly and accepted with YES!

That's the main reason why i have installed the IRC program WookieChat for AmigaOS4, which works excellent on my AmigaOne 500 running AmigaOS 4.1.5! No, it's not the wookie Chewie, but the program we're talking about, hehe ;)

Well, most of the meetings with NAF happen through IRC, so using WookieChat is very useful for me to get information from these net-meetings, regarding news, suggestions and advices to articles i am going to work at for these 2 magazines. I'm NOT permissed to talk about my "pre-works" related to these magazines. You will have to read the finished published numbers. What i can say is that i have different articles to work on, so that is all you are going to know for now. Standard NDA procedure, you know.

Shortly put, i am very eager, motivated and happy to have this opportunity and it's an important turning-point for me in my life. An option to earn more money than i already do at present. 2013 will hopefully for me be a BETTER year!

In addition to have installed WookieChat successfully, i also managed to solve the annoying issue with the Finnish Locale Catalog for AmiUpdate (known as the AmiUpdate_Finnish update). I incorrectly thought that the locale catalog was to be in Locate:Catalogs where all the other language catalogs for AmiUpdate have been moved to successfully, while the Finnish had to stay in AmiUpdate's own language catalogs, so Finnish catalog was moved into there, and when doing a new scan for updates in AmiUpdate, i could now see that the Finnish locale catalog update did NOT keep coming back! Solution was solved! Yeah! 

Otherwise i improved the look of some icons for AmigaAMP and WookieChat to match the look of the standard OS4 icons of AmigaOS 4.1, as well as putting the main WookieChat run file in AmiDock along with my other Internet applications, and made a new backup so that nothing is missing. All in all, i'm very happy ;)

Well, i guess this ends yet another blog for now, and for the next blog coming soon, i might even have a nice surprise in form of a video presentation, as an addition to watching the pictures and reading the blog, of course. Stay tuned!

Thank you for reading ;) See you in the future ;)

Written by
Helge Kvalheim, Norway
 

Improving and Adding ;)

Doing the blog with TimberWolf

Hi folks! Been a while since the previous blog, so now something exciting is happening, as we move closer to Christmas. Let me tell.

Recently, about two days ago, AmiCygnix was updated to version 1.2, as well as its' Tools addition. At the same time, AmiUpdate updated itself to the latest version, that is 2.20. Also a new AmiCygnix application called Audaclouds was installed into my system as well.
 

Listening to music with Audaclouds

On the picture to the right, you see Audaclouds - a Winamp clone for the Windows X enviroment AmiCygnix.

RadeonHD driver updated to version 0.54!

Here it runs in a standalone window right on AmigaOS! Audio is quite good! You can see the playlist and the editor as well as the main program. Very nice and powerful amplifier! Perhaps we could see Xine movie player ported, too, from Linux?

A-EON Technology was uploading the latest RadeonHD driver version 0.54, both for the X1000 and AmigaOne 500 14th of November 2012. I downloaded the AmigaOne 500 version and installed it into my system! The edvidence is seen on the small screenshot of me typing the word Version RadeonHD.chip in Shell, and it says "RadeonHD.chip 0.54"! Installation was successful!

A small bug in AmiUpdate 2.20

2 unsuccessful updates ignored

AmiUpdate was, as mentioned, updated to version 2.20 successfully and working as supposed to, but seems to have a bug when trying to open its' preference. Hopefully this will be sorted out for the next version of AmiUpdate. It also showed 2 updates regarding both a Greek and Danish language support for AmiUpdate, but both were not entirely successfully installed, so i included them into the ignore list. 

I don't even need these 2 languages. Now it doesn't bother asking about these 2 updates again. However, i will take this small problem up for a debate at Hyperion Entertainment Support Forum and see what happens. Hopefully these minor bugs will be erased! It's frustrating...

Nevertheless, i also spent time surfing the net. All from regular news to checking for new Blu-ray movies release here in Norway at Platekompaniet.
I even took time to rework the bookmarks in MUI-OWB so that the most important bookmarks are visible as buttons, while the less important bookmarks are visible in the menu only, making it more tidy looking! I'm very happy!

Reworked bookmarks in MUI-OWB and Facebook

This should conclude the blog for now on, so see ya in the future ;) Enjoy the read!

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

Surfing the local news of my city in MUI-OWB

Checking for new Blu-ray movies at Platekompaniet

Some explanations of this blog

Greetings everybody. This blog is different from the other Amiga blogs here, so i want to explain to the readers what this blog really is about and what is the purpose of this blog to better understand why i am having this blog.

What i have done recently is to remove the ability to write comments into the Amiga blog. I have decided to do so because this is NOT to be another forum or a debate site where we talk about Windows vs AmigaOS, MacOS vs AmigaOS, Linux vs AmigaOS, PC vs Amiga, Mac vs Amiga. This is NOT what this blog is for! This blog is for reading about different experiences with different Amiga systems and versions of AmigaOS, as in this case the latest AmigaOS 4.1.5 on AmigaOne 500, also known as SAM460ex. In a forseable future, the blog will focus more on a Mid-range AmigaOne X model running a 32 bit Quad-Core Freescale PPC CPU at 1.5Ghz!

I'm really tired of hearing and reading about people talking so "nicely" about Windows, Linux or even MacOS (even that MacOS is very similar to AmigaOS in almost every way the OS works), because that is completely irrelevant for an Amiga-ONLY blog like this! Sure, Windows and MacOS are much more modern than
even the most modern AmigaOS today, that is AmigaOS 4.1.5, despite missing some very important key elements like JAVA, Flash, Multicore CPU support (SMP),
OpenGL and a couple more, but AmigaOS 4.1.5 is far more modern than the classic AmigaOS most of us have been so familiar with. A lot has changed since then.

In the previous blog, i wrote about pre-emptive multitasking and security. As for multitasking, the Amiga was bornt with pre-emptive multitasking back in 1985 first introduced to the market with Amiga 1000, then to the home market in 1987 with the successor Amiga 500. It took Windows and MacOS 10 years later to have the possibility to multitask. Even today in latest Windows and MacOS X, multitasking doesn't appear as native and "smooth" as in the AmigaOS, because AmigaOS has always managed to do it. It's quite a difference. As long as you have enough power and memory in your Amiga, you can run several programs and tasks at once without slowdown! In Windows and MacOS, there will be a slowndown with high propability. So Windows and MacOS might not be as perfect as one wants to believe. No system is perfect. Every system has their advances and disadvances, but they all have a common fact: They are all improving in their own way!

As for security, latest AmigaOS doesn't yet have such security as you find in Windows and MacOS. Not even Cloud protection, but as the world is moving on and new danger appears every day, it's only logical that AmigaOS too will have such protection in future AmigaOS. Allow me to tell you a story we have experienced.

My brother has a PC with Windows. Several, actually, and not long ago, he was attacked by a hacker who managed to gain FULL control of both his PCs and mobiles, no matter how highly secured the PCs and mobiles where. The hacker managed to take full control of his systems, preventing him to gain control of his systems again and even remove the hacker! It went so far to contacting police and several experts to help eliminate the hacker problem! So even the most advanced Windows or MacOS X is not fully secured, but vulnerable. Especially Windows appear more and more vulnerable, as it is the most commercial, available product and bought by almost everybody today, but a change is happening these days.

Several are moving away from Windows for different reasons. One reason is that they are tired of all the attacks that are happening mostly on Windows, the second reason that Windows is far too "traditional" a system and these people want other solutions, like MacOS X, Linux or even AmigaOS. Alternative OSes are becoming more and more popular as a solution over Windows. You could call it a "great escape" from traditional systems. Why do you think that Microsoft struggles to keep Windows as popular as it always used to be? Why do they fear alternative systems like Linux? Because they know Windows is not perfect. Because they know that Windows is not as cool or exciting as it used to be. Because they realize they are not the only player in the global mass IT market. There are many other too.

You might think "Where does Amiga come in all this?". It's actually very simple. We know that AmigaOS 4.2 is heavily under development by the AmigaOS Development Team in Hyperion Entertainment, and that AmigaOS 4.2 is going to have a lot of changes in features. Features like Multi-core CPU support through SMP, OpenGL hardware acceleration graphic system with Gallium3D and Mesa (possible with Warp3D support/compatibility), brand new Intuition, more than 2GB RAM support, Full memory protection, possible Internet Security with Cloud Protection, New Audio system, brand new Printer system, JAVA and a lot more. Don't expect all these to be intergrated immerdiately into the first release of AmigaOS 4.2, but these are definitely on the To-Do-List for the future of AmigaOS. We are moving on!

If you catched the previous AmiWest 2012 show, you will happen to know that there are several very exciting things going to happen, especially in 2013!

The first to appear before the end of 2012 is Warp3D (3D-support) for RadeonHD, which will be a stop-gap solution until AmigaOS 4.2 with Gallium3D and Mesa is completed. As i understand it myself, AmigaOS 4.2 is still several months away from completion, so Warp3D will be a very nice stop-gap solution, supporting Serie 5, 6 and later 7 of the RadeonHD cards before we have AmigaOS 4.2.

The Friedens brothers who are working closely with Hyperion Entertainment, are also working on porting Libre Office to AmigaOS4. This is going to be a commercial product, and probably sold with other software. I suppose the goal is to bundle this office package with other software to use in the upcoming AmigaOS 4.2 when released. This is very promising, and finally AmigaOS4 will also have a serious office bundle, and people will realize that Amiga is far more than a game system! This was actually the mistake Commodore did back in the 80-ies. Commodore made the mistake of marketing the Amiga as a game system, while it actually proved to be a lot more! We are not to do this mistake again! We are marketing the Amiga as a much more serious product, doing what Commodore never managed to do!

The most exciting news is in term of upcoming AmigaOne X hardwares to be released around 2013/2014. The man behind A-EON Technology, Robert Trevor Dickinson, made a very nice presentation of a promising roadmap for the future of AmigaOne X hardware! Future AmigaOne X models are going to use Freescale Multicore PPC CPUs! Freescale is actually Motorola with a new name and brand new style, so this is like a very happy reunion with a CPU company that was part of our classic Amiga hardwares, and will again be part of the new AmigaOne X hardwares!

The AmigaOne X models were divided into at least 3 different models, all based on a new motherboard dubbed "Cyrus". A name i really think is cool, but should probably not be mistaked with the beautiful girl named Miley Cyrus. Having her to promote the Cyrus motherboard of the new AmigaOne X models would be a nice idea, hehe!

Back to the point: These 3 AmigaOne X models are as following:

Mid-End AmigaOne X: Based on a 1.5Ghz 32 bit Quad Core Freescale PPC CPU and the Cyrus motherboard. Little is known of this model, but will most likely be a cost-effective stationary complete computer system running AmigaOS 4.2, but might as well also appear as a laptop model. Might be shipped with 4GB memory and a 1TB harddrive pre-installed with AmigaOS 4.2 when released. Believed to be released around 2013, closer to 2014. (This is the model i'm saving for, so i am very excited!)

High-End AmigaOne X: Based on a 2.2Ghz 64 bit Dual Core Freescale PPC CPU. Might be a bit cheaper than the X1000, so remain to be seen. Believed to be a complete stationary computer system running AmigaOS 4.2. Release date might be around 2013, close to 2014.

Further AmigaOne X model: The third model (which might appear in 2014, realistic though, is to have a 64 bit multicore Freescale PPC CPU with Altivec. This model might be the most powerful one, but probably not cheap. Also believed to be running AmigaOS 4.2. That's all we know.

That's all we know will happen in the forthcoming future. So you see the Amiga is now going through a lot of important changes for the future, as it is catching up!

That means that the x86 CPU is not the only choice out there. Now Apple are again moving away from x86, probably in favour of ARM. ARM is a new CPU player on the market, becoming more and more popular. Even the next XBox console is to have both PPC and ARM, having the best from both worlds! PPC and ARM seem to have a great potensial future in term of advanced multicore technology, and THAT's the way we are moving, and where the Amiga is also moving, following the technology!

If you thought the Amiga or PPC is dead, you will have to think again. The edvidences are clear! Amiga is greatly moving on, and a company like Freescale is proving that PPC still has great potensial for the future, with advanced multicore technology, speed and power, as well as being cost-effective! PPC is therefore an excellent alternative to the x86, as well as ARM. In a long yet-unknown future, Amiga might as well also be using ARM. Perhaps supporting both PPC and ARM? Only time will tell, and this completes this blog for now.

This is many reasons why i have removed the ability to comment on this Amiga blog. Because this is an Amiga-ONLY blog. If you got something to say, then send an email or find me at Facebook and send a private P.M or debate in an Amiga group where i am available, like the one i lead in Facebook called AmigaOS.

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway

The Power Of Multitasking ;)

The Power Of Multitasking in AmigaOS4!

Greetings, fellow Amigans! We are now into early November already, with a little more than one month to Christmas! Sun is shining nicely in my city (which is Bergen) here in Norway.

In this blog i will show you a new music tracker i have picked up and installed into my AmigaOS 4.1.5 system. The open source HivelyTracker. It uses the AHX audio format, and plays SID C64-like chip music! The music tracker supports both AHI and PowerPC (PPC for short)! A very useful multi tracker music program! A version is also available for Windows, Linux and MacOS X! No doubt that this tracker has a lot of potensiality!

Another thing i want to write about is the power of multitasking! While the Amiga was not really the first computer platform to introduce it to the industry, Amiga was the FIRST to introduce pre-emptive multitasking to the home market already in the late 80-ies! Already at that time the Amiga could do several things at once, like word processing and formating a drive at the same time, while listening to music and watching a movie or an animation! Even today with most PCs and Macs bypassed the Amiga in several areas, these systems STILL struggle hard to show TRUE multitasking in such an excellent, native way AmigaOS does, and this function has reached new heighs in the latest AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5, and with Multi-core CPU support (among many things) in the upcoming AmigaOS 4.2, pre-emptive multitasking in AmigaOS will reach a whole new dimension, opening up a lot of possibilities! The time ahead is promising!

In the above screenshot you can see i have several programs and tools up and running at the same time. HivelyTracker with animated display window, MilkyTracker, Shell typed with Version RadeonHD.chip (which is version 0.53), the AHI preference showing the onboard SM502 chip of AmigaOne 500/SAM460ex using full 16 bit HIFI Stereo++ mode and the Screenmode preference showing my Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6570 1GB DDR3 PCI-E card displaying full 32 bit graphic in 1920 x 1080 resolution! All that on an AmigaOne 500 with 1.15Ghz CPU speed and 2GB of fastest DDR2 memory! Very impressive!

AmigaOS 4.2 MUST have Cloud Protection!

Nowadays there seem to be a massive increase in different type of hacker attacks through the net. Everything from infiltrating a user's account in sites like Facebook and different bank accounts to cloning a user's mobile account and taking full control of other computer systems.

Especially Windows is very vulnearble to such attacks as Windows has been widely known and extremely commercial to customers all around the world, and because MacOS X systems are becoming more and more popular, there is no guarantee that Mac systems will be safe, too. What about AMIGA?

Because Amiga today is viewed as a brand new, next-generation system not known to everybody, hacking and infection the Amiga seems next to impossible, and that is excellent news, but the world is moving forward with new challenges and possibilities, as new danger happens every day, so that practially means that the Amiga will need to adopt new protection technology in future AmigaOS versions like the upcoming 4.2 version heavily under development.

Cloud Protection is one of the new ways to keep a highly secured internet protection as possible. I don't know how it works or why the name Cloud is used, but i understand it that it uses new, highly advanced technology to protect a computer system from massive attacks as best as possible, using the best of Firewalls, Anti-Spams/Anti-Viruses and everything else that helps protect from massive hacker attacks. AmigaOS 4.2 will need to intergrate Cloud Protection!

This is very important as technology moves forward, and AmigaOS needs to catch up by following the changes in technology. Nobody want their computer or mobile systems to be infiltrated by hackers, giving them full control! Remember: HACKING IS A SERIOUS CRIME AND WILL BE PUNISHED BY THE LAW!!! If you are a hacker or know somebody commiting such a crime, then do community the favour: Stop the crime and take the punishment! Do the right thing! You as a hacker might harm others, but yourself most of all in the end. That is the truth!

With this blog i hope we all will be learning the important lesson and the serious consequences of commiting a crime as hacking. Make computing SAFE and FUN again! You have a choice - The right or the wrong way. Very simple!

This completes another blog. See ya soon!

Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway