My new X5000 1 year Anniversary

               My first year with AmigaOne X5000 system! 

Still looking great at age 49

Haven't been blogging for about 2 years and much has happened since then, so I thought it would probably be about time to write a new blog in 2024. So what is really new since 2022?

I got my new AmigaOne X5000 - A 64bit PPC Dual Core (P5020 Freescale) model based on Freescale P5020 CPU. Actually got this X5000 from a Norwegian good friend of mine at Christmas 2022. Got it up and running in August 2023, after upgrading and updating the system. This is how my new X5000 system from A-EON look like.

The CPU is a 64bit Dual Core version running at 2Ghz! Pretty fast and extremely powerful! I would never be able to afford such a system myself, so I was very lucky to get one as a gift from my Norwegian good friend (thanks, Pål!)! In addition to the CPU, I got the memory upgraded to 8GB of ultra fast DDR3 RAM, 2 internal SSDs, one at 256GB and the other at 480GB, giving plenty of space in my system. Also have a 4GB GDDR6 Sapphire Radeon RX 580 GPU card based on Polaris 10 chipset, supported by Warp3D NOVA system in Enhancer 2.2, that runs on my AmigaOne X5000, along with latest AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 2. Last but not least, I also have the 24bit ESI@Juli XTe PCIe audio MIDI card connected. Works like a charm using 32-bit HIFI Stereo++ mode at 96Hz with all the 128 channels! The ultimate sound card to have! Especially if you're into music.

My cool new AmigaOne X5000/20

The X5000 is the best and the most powerful Amiga system I ever had! I also have the old SAM460ex, which I had for 12 years now and will be a backup system if something happens to my X5000 or the X5000 needs upgrading or something I cannot fix. But in general, my X5000 now serves as my main Amiga system to use, while the PC I had since 2019, running Windows 11, is also used in situations where the Amiga can't. I'm actually writing this blog on my Win11 PC. The Amiga browser is a bit outdated to handle this blog site properly, so had to write the blog on the PC. It's not that bad, really. I was able to bring down all my snapshots taken on the Amiga, down onto a SD memory card at 32GB and it showed up nicely on the PC without problems. Very useful! I will explain more about that in a minute, don't worry. Enjoy the pictures while you read.

The X5000 motherboard

One of the cool stuffs I bought for my X5000 is a SD memory card USB pen reader. Since I love to take photos and edit them on the Amiga, a SD card reader is very useful. I also have an additional 32GB SD memory card that I use for file transfer between the Amiga and the PC.

As an example, I took a couple of screengrabs on the X5000 covering stuffs I do and use, then formatted the SD card on the X5000, named it Downloads and moved those snapshots onto the SD card. Plugged it into the PC and it showed up right away! Very handy and so easy to use! 32GB on the SD is more than enough to bring up most files you need between Amiga and PC.

USB based SD card reader on X5000

Speaking of using a SD card. It's actually a lot faster to use when transfering files. I happen to use the 32GB SD card to download games I want to play on the X5000. Either new adventure games I buy from the GOG site using the PC, from where I can just bring down the game files to the SD card and bring them up to my X5000.

Another thing I can use it for is to transfer samples I record with my new Xiaomi Redmi 13c mobile to the SD card, so that I can edit them with Audacity on PC and further finetune them on my X5000 for use in OctaMED SoundStudio.

WarpView on X5000 reading SD card

    The cool stuffs I do on my X5000

Now it's time to cover up the cool stuffs I do on my X5000. When I don't work with music and painting, I either play the 3D FPS game "Return To Castle Wolfenstein" or different adventure games in ScummVM 2.8.1, being the latest.

Unfortunately, the Broken Sword games got some cracked audio after the ScummVM update to 2.8.1. They worked just fine from version 2.7.1. Probably changed some game codes for those games in ScummVM 2.8.1. Hope these will be fixed again for the next version of ScummVM for AmigaOS4. But all other games run as they should with no audio issue. I especially love the 3D adventure game "The Longest Journey" and also bought myself the 2 first games called Syberia. Currently, only the Mac version of these work, so need to find someone to help me download the Mac version or rather wait for the normal Windows version to be supported in next version of ScummVM.

Black styled OctaMED SoundStudio

As you all know, I use the NSM patched version of OctaMED SoundStudio v1.03c on my X5000 to compose my music. Because AmigaOne systems don't have Paula soundchip from the Classic Amiga, an AHI-compatible audio card or chip has to be used. In this case, I use an AHI audio tool called TheMaestrix, that tricks the old OMSS into thinking my ESI@Juli XTe PCIe audio MIDI card is an old 16bit Maestro Pro soundcard, and using the Mix mode in OctaMED SoundStudio v1.03c to compose music, up to 64 independent, panned stereo channels with support for Echo and Cross Echo! All in glorious 16 bit quality!

New OctaMED V8 with AHI support

It came as a big surprise earlier in 2024 that a brand new OctaMED SoundStudio v8 for the Amiga, would be released now in autumn! For the very first time since 1997. It will support AHI and MIDI as a start, which is pretty impressive! The new A600GS 68k-compatible ARM based Amiga system, that reminds very much about Raspberry, will be the first to use the new version out of the box, optimized to use the ARM technology of the A600GS system natively.

The ordinary 68k version of the new OctaMED V8 will also be released at the same time as the A600GS this autumn, both as a boxed version from AmigaKit and as a digital bought download from AmiStore app. The PPC version might come a few months after that, according to reliable sources from AmigaKit themselves.

A600GS cool bundle

While waiting, the old OctaMED SoundStudio v1.03c with TheMaestrix AHI tool still works very well for my Amiga music projects. I have done Amiga music actively since 2018. That's 6 years.

These days, I'm working on a 12-song Amiga Summer & Chill collection. The first release after the completion of my new Last Ninja 3 Amiga music, the first of 12 of these summer tracks is "Rock Me Baby", recently released. It's a 16bit 4ch mixture of Blues, Jazz and Rock. It got a pretty good score on YouTube. Go to my YouTube channel HKvalhe and look for it.

Latest AmigaAMP with rotating Boing Ball

When not composing music, I listen to my own Amiga music through latest AmigaAMP that is version 3.34. AmigaAMP has full support for AHI and several formats like MP3, FLAC, OGG, MOD, S3M and even XM, meaning you can listen to several Amiga music modules with AmigaAMP as well. The sound quality is simply brilliant when using AmigaAMP. The skin I use for AmigaAMP is the new silver skin with rotating Amiga Boing Ball, which I think is pretty cool and looks very modern on my AmigaOne X5000.

DAPlayer on the X5000

DAPlayer is another very useful music player that works much the same way as AmigaAMP. Supports many different formats and plays MIDI as well. I mostly use this for playing MIDI songs. Otherwise, I stick to AmigaAMP for most music.

Improving my Amiga pixel art work

Pixel art is another thing I happen to do more and more, since I won the second place in Amiga Music during the Amiga Art 2022 Contest. I also contributed a lot of my art and music to the 2023 Contest, but have yet to see the results, after 9 months of delay, due to life event issues kicking in.

Grafx2 running on AmigaOne X5000

For 9 months now, I became very frustrated not to see the results of the Amiga Art 2023 Contest. In the end, it didn't help much to try to reason with the arrangers behind Amiga Art Contest, as it was revealed that they're not paid to arrange either a show or a contest. Therefore, I gave up trying to push the subject, and I believe others who contributed to the 2023 Contest also gave it up and stopped bothering with it and moved on.

It's a pity that the Amiga Art 2023 delay caused so much damage that it became a disaster instead, but this is what can happen when you get a 9 months of delay. A normal person, like myself, can tolerate up to 3 months of a delay, not 9. That's just madness and not even normal. But done is done and the damage cannot be undone. Even if we all move on, most will remember the 2023 Contest to be a disappointment and something that should be learnt from, to avoid such unpleasant situations in the future.

We move on. If you see the screenshot above to the left, it displays the open-source pixel paint program "Grafx2", which is also ported to both AmigaOS3 and AmigaOS4. The version displayed is 2.5Wip, but the latest version is 2.9, the latter one being ported by Kas1e. Kas1e has run some tests with the latest 2.9 version, and should be much faster and better than 2.5.

Grafx2 is a pretty good and cool paint program. It has many cool brushes and an impressive smear technic. What makes Grafx2 so cool is that the result of your painting will look the same, no matter what platform you use the program on. Grafx2 is especially good for Lowres pixel art or for creating game related graphic. I look forward for the 2.9 update coming soon.

Improving my Lowres pixel art in PPaint

The screenshot to the right here displays a pixel work I did for the Amiga Cover for the track named "Rock Me Baby", a WIP. The snapshot was taken directly from my AmigaOne X5000. The figure was drawn and painted in 32 color Lowres 320x256 resolution, in the PPC native version of Personal Paint (PPaint) 7.3c.

PPaint is made by Cloanto but A-EON bought the rights to do the latest ports. A new 7.4 version is on the way, already part of the new A600GS system I mentioned earlier. The A600GS version is using the ARM library for optimized performance. The 68k and PPC version will be available both as a box release from AmigaKit and as digital download through AmiStore. Because I have the 7.3c version, I will receive the PPC native 7.4 upgrade for FREE, which is super-cool! PPaint is the paint program I use most of the time. It's very easy to use and it's powerful, especially with its Image Processing features. Also saving an object as a brush in PPaint is very easy as well. This was actually the case seen from the image above.

Rock Me Baby Amiga Cover I made

This covers most of my current stuffs on my AmigaOne X5000 system. I'm very proud and happy to have it, as I truly enjoy the most powerful Amiga system on earth! It serves as my main Amiga system for my creativity work and for playing cool Amiga games. This ends the blog for now, but there will be new blogs later on, so keep your eyes for any future blog from me.

Thank you all for reading my blog. Hope you enjoy it.

Written by

Helge Kvalheim (HKvalhe) from Norway