Elite: Dangerous Development Plan

iGame becomes Amigula

iGame has found a new title, it's now officially called "AMI.G.U.L.A." which stands for Amiga Games UAE Launcher (but also translates to "miggy" in Greek).

And what better way to celebrate this than with a new version release, adding a bunch of features and fixing several bugs? That's right, version 1.5.3 is now available and introduces the following new features, among others:

• Auto-detect and use AmigaForever content (ROMs, WinUAE, paths) if it’s installed.
• Mark games as Favorites to find them easier in the list.
• Add custom notes for each game.
• Keep statistics on games played (Times played, Date last played, Most played, Never played).
• Filter games based on statistics or Favorite status.
• Button to Edit or Create New UAE configs from within Amigula (launches WinUAE).
• Extra columns added for game metadata like Publisher, Genre and custom Notes.

Several bugs, minor or major have been fixed as well.

Grab it here and give it a go, then let me know if you find anything.

iGame needs a new title

The title was temporary to begin with, so we need a new name for the application. A few are already under consideration, we’ll have to see if any other ones come up before this has to be done. If you have any brilliant ideas, by all means send them in!

Meanwhile, progress is still being made on the application itself as we’re headed to a new release due in (hopefully) a few days. Here’s a snippet from the features planned to be included with version 1.0.0.5 so far:

• Remember window position/state between application launches
• Sort by Title in the list, in both View modes
• Add a new tab for game named Settings, where the user can define a UAE config and other options in the future
• Right click menu on each game title, with options such as “Open containing folder”, “Edit game settings”, “Launch in WinUAE”, and possibly others.
• Button to select a random game from the list (I’m feeling lucky style)
• Support for WHDLoad games (launch them in UAE, keep saves after shutdown)
• Edit metadata for games (change or add screenshots, music, other metadata)
• Automatically fetch metadata such as screenshots, cheatmodes, year of release, etc. from the web
• Dynamically construct the UAE configuration from the options selected for each game (which will be depending on the metadata) such as kickstart version, RAM, CPU, Chipset etc.
• Possibly include more media files (such as videos) from relevant sources (e.g. EmuMovies)

Most of the above are already in the code and need testing, the rest of them will be there in the following days.

Besides that, there’s a bigger list of “ToDo” items (which tends to grow as we move forward) for later on:

• Support for WHDLoad games (launch them in UAE, keep saves after shutdown)
• Edit metadata for games (change or add screenshots, music, other metadata)
• Automatically fetch metadata such as screenshots, cheatmodes, year of release, etc. from the web
• Dynamically construct the UAE configuration from the options selected for each game (which will be depending on the metadata) such as kickstart version, RAM, CPU, Chipset etc.
• Possibly include more media files (such as videos) from relevant sources (e.g. EmuMovies)

As I mentioned before, feedback is very much appreciated as well as any suggestions for features you’d like to see, or any problems you may discover and I’m not aware of yet.

Amiga blues

As the title says, I've been digging up the old A4000 recently, mostly out of nostalgia but also to install my latest expansion for her (notice it's a "she", all Amigas are of the female gender). The expansion I mentioned? Oh, just a SCSI card reader, which would allow me to use any modern media type (CF, SD, MMC, etc.) as a hard disk in my Amiga and even boot from it. As old hardware gets even older, it reaches a point when it's a) hard to find and b) easy to break down so I like to keep upgrading things to keep up with the times if possible.

my new SCSI card reader

This fits in my free 3,5" second floppy drive bay nicely, connects to my SCSI-2 50-pin CyberSCSI module for the Cyberstorm MK2 accelerator which I have installed, and even has the right color! The activity LEDs next to each card slot are a bonus...

I had tried to get my Amiga to boot from a CF card in the past as well, using an interesting combination of SCSI->IDE adapter with an IDE->CF adapter plugged on it, but I couldn't make it work with any CF card I tried back then. Eventually I had given up, believing that something was wrong with my SCSI-IDE adapter since a) I tried several IDE->CF adapters none of which worked, b) I was having problems getting most IDE drives to work also, only one of the ones I had around did. More on that later however...

It wasn't many days ago that CosmosAmiga released a new version of his scsi.device for A4000D, and while going through it something I read there gave me an idea to try out...

The problem: The Amiga uses a driver for each disk controller (called a "device" in Amiga lingo), in order to access it. The built-in IDE and SCSI interfaces of Amigas use the "scsi.device" which is contained in ROM normally. Accelerator cards with their own disk controllers usually have their own names for their devices, for example the Cyberstorm I'm using has the name "cybscsi.device". The problem is, when that hardware was designed the biggest hard disks in the market were a few hundred Megabytes (yes, that's MB not GB!) and several of the software drivers (or "devices") written back then only supported 32-bit addressing, which means they could only "see" up to 4GBytes of space. In today's world however, there is no hard disk smaller than maybe 80GBytes with the sizes going larger and larger all the time. So we have one level of the problem relating to the device driver of the disk controller itself, depending on whether it supports 64-bit addressing or not.

There are solutions for that depending on your case, but in mine since the "cybscsi.device" which I'm using supports both TD64 and DirectSCSI 64-bit addressing it was not an issue.

Next, we have a second level of the same problem... The drive stores data using a filesystem and there are more than one available (FastFileSystem is the default but not considered to be the best). Again, when those filesystems were designed and written, 32-bit addressing seemed more than enough. So earlier versions of the FastFileSystem have the same limitations as mentioned above, but there have been newer versions released (with AmigaOS3.5 and 3.9 respectively).

Personally I switched to using SmartFileSystem (or SFS) several years back, after using the Professional File System (PFS) before that. Both of them support 64-bit addressing but since PFS had stopped evolving and SFS was still being actively developed, I considered it a good move to keep up with the times...

SFS has been working fine for me for several years, so I had no reason to suspect anything wrong with it. The strange problems I was having however (Amiga starting up but finding no drives, getting just a black screen with no booting, etc.) and the things I read about the Direct SCSI access mode of PFS got me thinking...

The idea I had was to try another filesystem on my disk, namely PFS which is now freely available on Aminet and use the DirectSCSI version of it to test both my CF card and another hard disk.

So I partitioned a disk (the disk was 40GB, I partitioned it to 3.9GB boot and the rest as a Work partition), formatted it with the direct SCSI version of PFS and copied my system partition into it. And surprise-surprise, a reboot later and things were working as normal!

I tried the same with my CF card (a Sandisk Extreme III 8GB), partitioned it as one big partition of 8GB, formatted and copied my boot partition files on it. Reboot, it worked flawlessly as well!

So here it is, in case anybody else runs into the same problem... Try PFS as the filesystem and according to your controller, with or without the DirectSCSI version of it. Sometimes the good old trusted software is better than the new.

Virtual Lighting Studio Will Teach You to Light a Photo or Video Set Through Experimentation [Web Apps]

Random thoughts

On my way to save an Amiga from ending up in the trash, I couldn't help remembering my history with Amigas. It was always a bit troublesome to say the least, but also rewarding in a unique way. My first Amiga, an A500 had some issues with its 512k memory expansion, which resulted in weird crashes here and there. Later on, my A4000 had problems with its audio output, which had to be fixed by sending the mainboard to a technician nicknamed "japanese", apparently because of his skills with circuits. Even after that, it only had 4MB of a special type of RAM on the accelerator, meaning that although it was very fast you could only purchase more from a specific (and quite expensive) brand.
And don't get get me started on costs: the A4000 cost an arm and a leg, even by today's standards (about 3000 euros, monitor not included), the extra memory I bought later on was ridiculously expensive as well (80000 drachmas for 4MB!) and the list goes on...
So you may be thinking, why the frak did I do it? Why spent a fortune again and again on something?
To understand the reason, you have to remember some experience which was uniquely exciting to you, because that's what the Amiga was to its users back then. And even though it had some problems from time to time, you felt like you could solve most of them yourself. And the feeling of solving such problems back in the days of no Internet, was special by itself...
Years have gone by since then of course, things have changed and everybody's moved on. The Amiga lives on in our fond memories of her, or more appropriately of our childhood. We keep it alive with many silly things such as forums, meetings, T-shirts but in essence it's all stored forever in our minds.
Some of us have gone ahead and collected as many Amiga models as they could, most of the time any Amiga they could get their hands on. I never went that way personally, I kept my original Amigas and expanded them with what I considered useful but never was really interested in collection.
And yet, here I am on my way to Malmö in order to pick up an A4000 which would end up in the trash otherwise. I just couldn't stand the thought I guess, guilty as charged...

Signs you're an Amiga user

Originally appeared on KiwiSystems BBS

Signs You're An Amiga User

Hey kids! Find out if you're an Amiga user! If you fit a few of
these categories, then maybe you're one of the crazy few who are lucky
enough to own such a wonderful yet tacky machine.
1. You'd rather say "co processor" and not "graphics chip".
2. You have more than one Amiga, and the other one is an A500.
3. You considered the A500 040/25 board.
4. Sandwiching expansion devices between chips is an acceptable expansion.
5. You thought the Walker prototype case was cool.
6. For you, a local area network means Parnet.
7. You ran a BBS. And you did it with a one floppy A500.
8. You have a Comspec ARM, or know what it is.
9. You seem to always say "but it's popular in Europe!".
10. You have (or more!) one of the following:

• Amiga shirt
• Gold Disk t-shirt
• AmiEXPO t-shirt
• NewTek shirt
• a cinnamon cat lollipop
• prototype Amiga hardware
• a copy of The Deathbed Vigil
• blue button that says "Only Amiga Makes It Possible"
• Amiga promotional literature hanging on your wall.

11. You walked the Deathbed Vigil.
12. You think running an Amiga is possible on 4MB RAM.
13. You said AMosaic 1.3 was a good try.
14. Your main printer is a dot matrix. And it's a 9 pin.
15. That dot matrix is a Star Micronics model.
16. You've compared an 030 to a Pentium before.
17. You tried to explain that custom chips offload CPU usage.
18. You always say "but raw CPU speed isn't important" at the start of every conversation.
19. You mumbled "Windows95 is like the Amiga in 85" but you forgot about constant disk swapping, and the lack of RAM.
20. You saved the January 1990 BYTE cover "Mainstream Amiga: A3000".
21. You thought AmigaWorld was a good magazine.
22. You thought Laura "Maxine Headroom" Longfellow really liked you.
23. Your 1084 has no front panel.
24. You tried to repair the 1084 front panel.
25. You built your own DB23 to DB15HD converter.
26. You forgot the 74Lxx class inverter and fried your Denise chip.
27. You don't mind 15 Khz interlace flicker.
28. You like MUI.
29. At a trade show, you went up to Kiki Stockhammer at the Play booth.
30. You know all the models of the Amiga, including the ones never released. Yes, that includes the CDTV II.
31. You write for Amiga Report International. And you put it on your resume.
32. You built a slingshot hack.
33. Your Amiga sits on a fibreboard built-it-yourself wooden desk with handy monitor hutch with lovely wooden veneer.
34. The A2000/3000/4000 case is never on.
35. You've replaced at least one chip.
36. You sell used Amiga stuff, posting it on BBSes. Or you're a one man Amiga store.
37. You constantly bug me, trying to offer ridiculously low prices in response to my forsale ads.
38. You can recognize at least two of the following terms:

• DMA
• softkick
• upclock
• deinterlace
• sync rate
• copper
• random number generator
• bob

39. You compare the Amiga to SGIs. And the Amiga wins in your comparison.
40. You believe those textfiles about new Amiga specs.
41. You wrote messages describing what YOU think the next Amiga should have.
42. You know what's at 3470 Pharmacy Avenue, or 1200 Wilson Drive.
43. You plan to visit Los Gatos, West Chester and Branschweig in the near future.
44. You took a hacksaw to your A3000/3000T to get Input 1's BNC to stick out.
45. Instead of normal desktop speakers, you have a receiver hooked up to your Amiga. And it's an old one.
46. You're miffed you can't argue with Atari ST users anymore.
47. You've told Mac users that PowerAmigas will be out in 1997.
48. You keep saying the VideoToaster is cool, but you've never used one.
49. Nonlinear editing means cutting up 320x200x32 ANIM5's.
50. You tried the 2MB chip hack.
51. You know Workbench 2.1 is missing narrator.device and translator.library. You copied it over anyways.*
52. You run MagicWB and wonder where all your CHIP RAM is.
53. You tried to set someone up with an Amiga too.
54. You had to expand your desk to fit the expansion modules.
55. You play MOD files and you sample them too.
56. The LIBS: directory is full of libraries you never use.
57. You install pointless software, because it's fun. Then, you wonder which program is crashing your machine sporadically.
58. Instead of buying a A2320 board, you use one of those tinted screen filters.
59. You write letters to the editors of publications that comment on the Amiga negatively, or ones that don't write for the Amiga.
60. You know the story of the Guru Meditation.
61. You have a giant collection of DSDD floppies near your desk. When you see them for sale, you scream "bargain!"
62. You've built one of the following:

• dualspeed HD floppy drive
• mouse adapter
• home made SCSI adapter
• LUCAS/FRANCES board
• parnet cable
• PAL/NTSC toggle switch
• sync strainer for Toaster

63. You balk at paying $349 for Ethernet hardware.
64. You continually say a composite video signal path is not a problem.
65. You'll argue the AmigaOS is faster than Windows, even comparing it on 060's versus, Pentium Pro's, at the same price point.
66. When defeated on an Amiga argument, you complain you're being personally attacked.
67. You say your Toaster/Flyer is broadcast quality. Your main product is wedding videos anyways.
68. * - You emailed me to correct me about narrator.device.