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Issue 11, Summer 2002

£4.00

8.00Euro

Also in

this issue:

News

OS 4 Update

AmigaOne News

Reviews

Charon

News Coaster

Cordless Mouse

Tutorials

Scala MM400

PerfectPaint

DOpus 5

Three x86 Amiga

Emulators Reviewed

Plus...

PageStream 4.1

MIDI on the Amiga

Amiga Writer

Contents

Contents

2002

Summer 2002 Editorial

Alt.WoA Show Report

Issue 11

W elcome to another issue

Amiga One and their plans for

future versions. We also know

the developers are hard at work

readying MorphOS and the

Pegasos for release but they’re

keeping pretty quiet about it so

maybe we’ll see something on

that front soon too.

Another interesting development

since issue 10 is the release of

the developer version of the ﬁrst

USB stack for the Amiga,

Poseidon. This seems to have

really caught the imagination of

developers and drivers for

several types of USB peripherals

are already in development,

other developers are working to

make Poseidon work on a variety

of USB hardware. Take a look at

the news item on page 6 for

more information.

One of the biggest happenings in

the Amiga market last year was

the release of the AmigaOS XL

package of two fast Amiga

emulators for the x86 PC.

Because no one in the core Total

Amiga Team owns a PC up to

running the emulators at a

decent speed we weren’t able to

look at the package in detail.

However Eyetech very kindly

loaned us a PC system at the

Alt.WoA show so we have now

been able to look at AmigaOS

XL and Cloanto’s latest Amiga

Forever 5 in detail. We found that

each emulator has its pros and

cons which one suits you is

really down to your personal

needs, skill and the equipment

you have available. So in the

of Total Amiga. This issue

is really packed, not only are we

back to 48 pages thanks to a bit

more advertising but we also

have more pages of tutorials

than ever before. In fact things

got so tight that we had to drop

our regular Top Tips and PD

Paradise features, they will

return in issue 12.

Regular readers will know that

we are aiming to move from

quarterly to bimonthly publication

during 2002. This issue has

taken about three months to

produce so we’re on time but not

early as we had hoped. We are

gradually getting more writers for

the magazine (I think you’ll ﬁnd

this issue is already a bit more

varied than previous ones) so we

will try to get the next issue out

in 10 weeks. Our aim is to be

publishing bimonthly by the end

of the year when hopefully there

will also be some new Amiga

hardware and software to write

about too.

On the topic of new software and

hardware it has been a pleasant

change to have a regular ﬂow of

information about OS 4’s

development coming from

Hyperion and Amiga. The new

OS is sounding very exciting,

you can read all about it in our

update on page 10. On the

hardware front we have an

exclusive column from Alan

Redhouse which will bring you

up to date with news of the

Contents

News

Alt.WoA Show Report .... 3

AmigaOne Update ......... 8

Fleecy Moss Column ..... 9

AmigaOS 4 Update ........ 14

Amiga, who’s the moron?

Opinion piece ................. 12

Features

Cable Rounding ............. 13

x86 Amiga Emulators..... 14

Reviews

Spacewaker Mini PC ..... 18

PageStream 4.1 ............. 20

Charon ........................... 26

AmigaWriter 2.2 ............. 28

Cordless Optical Mouse. 31

NewsCoaster ................. 32

Support

Scala MM400 Tutorial .... 36

Introduction to MIDI ....... 38

PerfectPaint Tutorial....... 41

DOpus 5 Tutorial Part 2.. 44

A fter last year’s successful

since WoA ‘99 we had Amigas

running on the SEAL stand as

opposed to our machines being

used in the games arena. Mick

ran Freespace on his A1200

PPC/BVision and through the

day had many people tried

their hand at this fantastic

game from Hyperion, the demo

tied in with Mick’s review in

Total Amiga issue 10. Robert

used his A3000 to demonstrate

Pagestream and ImageFX

which we use to produce the

magazine. When either Mick or

Robert were busy or away from

the stand the machines ran a

slideshow about SEAL and

Total Amiga. We sold many

subscriptions, single issues

and back issues of the

magazine and a large number

of these were due to the hard

work of Elliott Bird who often

manned the stand while Robert

and Mick were away on club

and magazine business...

honest!

Other usergroups represented

were ANT (Amiga North

Thames) who were publicising

the forthcoming WoASE 2002

show which SEAL will be

helping to organise. The

Mediator support team and

GAG (Gloucestershire Amiga

Group) had several Mediator

systems up and running with

TV cards and other interesting

add-ons. Once again Matt

Morris and the Blackpool

Amiga Group came up trumps

with loads of Amigas running

different games, we noticed

Napalm and Payback amongst

several others. Barry Riddiford

ran the ever popular Sensible

Soccer tournament projected

on to a big screen. Also in the

usergroups area were the

Scalos team who

demonstrated their Workbench

replacement system running on

a rather cool black TFT LCD

monitor.

Down on the main show ﬂoor

many of the UK’s key Amiga

dealers were represented.

Eyetech had the biggest stand

and seemed to be doing good

business, they had a working

Amiga One motherboard on

the stand but as it had only

arrived that morning they only

managed to get it to the “BIOS”

screen (more on this later).

They also had an AmigaXL

system for punters to try and

their usual selection of useful

hardware and software to buy.

Mick bought a cool wireless

optical mouse and EZMouse

adaptor which you will ﬁnd

Alt. WoA show (which was

the ﬁrst in the North of England

for a long time) SEAL were

looking forward to this years

show. Unfortunately this year

we could only muster three

members for the trip to the

show, never the less we

started out bright and early

(05:30!) for the show not

knowing about the severe

weather forecast (due to Mick’s

nonfunctional car radio!).

Fortunately apart from a minor

snow blizzard or two we

arrived unscathed, in plenty of

time and even had time to stop

for a mega breakfast!

The venue had been laid out

differently from last year’s

show, as before the

commercial exhibitors were on

the lower level but the

usergroups were moved to the

ﬁrst ﬂoor above the bar on the

intermediate level. A new

feature was a series of

presentations which were held

in the attic above the

usergroups.

On arrival the SEAL team

(Mick, Robert and Elliott) set

up our two tables, one for

SEAL and one for Total Amiga.

For the ﬁrst time at a show

feature we’ve tried to give a

good overview of each emulator

so you can decide for yourself.

When the feature was largely

complete Bernie Meyer, the

developer of Amithlon, made a

statement about some potential

legal problems with the

AmigaOS XL distribution so

please bear in mind the news

item on page 7 when reading the

x86 emulation feature.

Well I think it’s about time for me

to sign off, so I’ll close with my

customary request for feed back

and contributions. Please let us

know what you think of the mag,

in particular we’d like to hear

what tutorials you would like to

see in the future and what you

think of the current ones. If you

fancy writing an article for Total

Amiga (which can be large or

small and on any Amiga related

topic) please get in touch.

Enjoy the mag,

Robert

Mailing List Details ......... 47

Next Issue ...................... 47

Subscription Form.......... 47

Gallery............................ 48

Mick’s A1200 and Robert’s A3000 on the SEAL stand.

About Total Amiga

Legalese

Write On!

We’d like to make Total Amiga

more “interactive” so we need

your input!

Got a question you’d like

answered or an opinion you’d like

to share? Write to us and we’ll

include it in a letters page.

Got a tip for other readers or

even an article up your sleeve?

Send it in and you could very

well see your name in print.

Got a suggestion or comment

on the magazine? Let us know

and we’ll try and make Clubbed

better for you.

Total Amiga is published quarterly

by South Essex Amiga Link. For

subscription details please contact

us at the address below or visit our

website.

Editor: Robert Williams

Design: Robert Williams

Contributors: Michael Carillo

Elliott Bird

Geoff Milnes

Fleecy Moss

Paul Quershi

Alan Redhouse

Mick Sutton

Proof Reading: Sharon Sutton

Cover Art:

Contact Us

If you have any queries

suggestions or want to contact us

for any reason please use one of

the following:

EMail: editor@totalamiga.org

WWW: http://www.totalamiga.org/

Post: Total Amiga,

26 Wincoat Drive,

BENFLEET,

Essex, SS7 5AH,

ENGLAND.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 569937

(19:00 - 22:00

UK time only please)

Only Amiga Made it

Possible

Total Amiga is designed and laid

out using:

Hardware:

Amiga 3000

CyberStorm PPC/060

CyberVision PPC

128Mb RAM, about 13Gb HDD

space.

Software:

Amiga OS 3.9 by Amiga

PageStream 4.1 by Softlogik

TypeSmith 2.5 by Softlogik

ImageFX 4.5 by Nova Design

Photogenics 5 by Paul Nolan

Final Writer 5 by Softwood

Ghostscript 6.50 from Aladdin

Enterprises

There are also some essential

utilities we couldn’t live without:

Directory Opus 5, SGrab, MCP,

Turbo Print 7, MakeCD.

Our thanks to the creators of this

and all the other great Amiga

software out there.

Total Amiga is entirely created on

the Amiga, no other machines are

used at any stage of the design or

layout process.

Fonts

The body text of Total Amiga is set

in Triumvirate Normal as supplied

with PageStream, the heading

typeface is Forgotten Futurist by

Ray Larabie. Take a look at Ray’s

huge range of freeware fonts at

http://www.larabiefonts.com and

his commercial foundry at

http://www.typodermic.com.

The views expressed in this

magazine are those of the author

of each piece, they do not

necessarily reﬂect the views of

the editor, other contributors or

SEAL.

Please Note: Total Amiga is

produced by SEAL members in

their spare time, while we will

always strive to produce the

magazine on time and include all

the advertised contents this is not

always possible due to other

commitments. The price you pay

for Clubbed covers our costs and

nothing more, we don’t make a

proﬁt from it.

If you wish to contact a contributor

please send your message to one

of the addresses in this section

and we will pass it on.

Amiga is a registered trademark

and the Amiga logo, AmigaDOS,

Amiga Kickstart, Amiga

Workbench, Autoconﬁg,

Bridgeboard, and Powered by

Amiga are trademarks of AMIGA

Inc.

All other trademarks mentioned

are the property of their

respective owners.

Robert Williams

TOTAL AMIGA

Summer 2002

2

3

News

News

Let’s Boing

Amiga Office?

A Solid

reviewed later in this issue.

Forematt Home Computing

had their wide range of Amiga

software and games and were

demonstrating their CD-ROM

based monthly magazine,

100% Amiga. Ray from

Kicksoft was up to his usual

antics of “persuading” people

to part with their cash for his

ever growing range of software

products. We saw him

demonstrating PageStream 4.1

and a number of other

products. Also exhibiting were

Weird Science, Classic Amiga,

Stellar Dreams, Cartridge Club

and Datatech DTP.

Amiga Inc. Had a separate

area of the show ﬂoor called

the Amiga arena where several

companies had a stand.

Unfortunately Fleecy Moss was

unable to attend due to the bad

weather (he was turned back

by the Police) as were

Computer City from the

Netherlands who were due to

attend. However the Amiga

arena still had three interesting

exhibitors, Zeo Neo displaying

their AmigaDE games, Cloanto

with the latest version of Amiga

Forever. Last but not least a

representative of Hyperion

demoed Quake II on a

CyberStorm PPC/Voodoo III

machine (unfortunately we

didn’t catch the guy’s name),

Mick had a go and says it kicks

arse!

had all been waiting for (for

many months or even years!),

Alan Redhouse on the

AmigaOne! As we’ve

mentioned there was a working

system at the show, but

Eyetech had only just received

it from the developers.

According to Alan they have

run the system using Linux but

with the limited time available

at the show they were unable

to get it running. So the system

is ready and waiting for OS 4

and Alan said that they could

get it into production in about

six weeks.

Alan Redhouse gave a

presentation that outlined that

changes to the AmigaOne

speciﬁcation over the last few

months. He called the current

design the Amiga One point

Five. The major change is the

move from a custom chipset to

using off-the-shelf north and

south bridges (the north bridge

is the chip that interfaces the

processor with memory, PCI

and AGP buses etc. And the

south bridge is the chip that

gives many basic services

such as IDE, I/O ports, USB

etc.). This means that the

AmigaOne will have many

more integrated peripherals

including AC97 sound,

Ethernet and legacy serial and

parallel ports. Other

improvements are a 133Mhz

system bus and ATA100 IDE.

Because of all the integrated

peripherals there will now be

only four PCI slots, but with the

AGP (now 2x speed) slot for a

graphics card we think that will

leave ample room for

Mirage

Again!

An effort is under way to port

Open Ofﬁce, a popular open

source ofﬁce application suite,

to the Amiga. Volker Grabbe

recently posted a request for

developers interested in

helping him with the port. Open

Ofﬁce is an open source

project based on Star Ofﬁce

which is a cross platform ofﬁce

suite that was bought by Sun

Microsystems in 1999. Sun

then decided to open the Star

Ofﬁce source allowing a wider

community to contribute to the

product, this lead to Open

Ofﬁce. Future ofﬁcial Sun

versions of Star Ofﬁce will be

based on the Open Ofﬁce

source.

Here are some of the key

features of the Open Ofﬁce

Suite:

• Compatibility with many ﬁle

formats including Microsoft

Ofﬁce (including the latest XP

version) for both import and

export.

• All the applications have an

“Auto Pilot” features to help

you with complex commands.

• Writer - Word Processor

• Mail merge support

• Sophisticated layouts

possible

• Indexing and Bibliography

functions

• Calc - Spreadsheet

• Natural language formulae

• StarBasic macro language

• Multiple worksheets

• Draw - Vector drawing

• Shape text

• Quick creation of 3D shapes

• Bitmap tools and effects

• Impress - Presentations

• All the effects and graphics

tools from draw

• Slide transitions

Haage and Partner and Amiga

Inc. have released another

update for OS3.9 in the form

of BoingBag 2. This time there

are quite a number of tweaks

to ﬁx bugs and improve the

functionality of the OS.

Ampliﬁer has been given a

Reaction GUI and a number of

minor improvements such as

supporting ZIPed skin ﬁles.

Other bundled utilities that

have been improved include

Find which gets an updated

interface, new features for

RAWBInfo, more archive

formats are supported by

UnArc and BenchTrash has

been given a Reaction GUI

too. Finally CDPlayer can now

download the track names of

your CDs from the CDDB

database if the cddb.library

(included in contributions) is

installed.

A really useful addition is that

the sound datatype now

supports AHI, this means the

system beep and many other

programs that play sounds

using datatypes can now work

on an AHI device such as a

16bit sound card. To enable

this function you have to set an

Environment variable so be

sure to read the docs. Another

small but useful change is the

addition of a command history

to the Execute Command

window so you can recall

previous commands using the

up and down cursor keys.

A preferences program for the

picture datatype has been

added, with this you can set

which programs support the

new v43 features (chieﬂy

greater than 256 colour

support) and also disable

dithering for 16bit screens

Understandably Eyetech’s

AmigaOne pre-production

system was the highlight

of the show.

If you have a computer running

Linux, Windows or Solaris you

can download a copy of Open

Ofﬁce and try it for yourself

from:

http://www.openofﬁce.org

We don’t currently know the

status of the port although

given the short time elapsed it

is sure to be in its very early

stages. However Hyperion

have mentioned that they hope

to see it available for OS 4 in

the future and Hans-Joerg

Freiden, one of Hyperion’s key

programmers, is acting as a

technical consultant for the

project. Given the importance

of good ofﬁce application to

any computer platform this

sounds like good news.

For more information on the

Amiga port of Open Ofﬁce visit:

http://openofﬁce.vgrabbe.de/

which can slow down image

rendering and is not really

needed for photographic

images.

There have been many

changes and improvements to

the shell including:

expansion. The A1200

connection logic has been

moved onto a separate PCI

card that will now be an

optional extra (about £50), the

A1200 will be connected via a

ribbon cable allowing a much

wider choice of case. The ﬁrst

AmigaOne boards will ship with

a 600Mhz G3 CPU soldered on

to the board, a slightly more

expensive version with a CPU

socket will be available later

allowing faster CPUs (including

G4s) to be ﬁtted. And ﬁnally...

The price for the initial board

including the CPU will be

around £350 plus local taxes,

which is certainly much less

than we were expecting!

For further information “from

the horses mouth” take a look

at Alan Redhouse’s column on

page 8 of this very issue.

The turn out for the show was

considerably lower this year

but it seems this was mostly

(or maybe entirely) due to the

adverse weather conditions,

many roads were shut and the

weather forecast advised

people not to drive unless the

trip was essential! However

just like last year the show had

a great friendly atmosphere

and we all had a really good

time. Thanks to HAUG for all

their efforts!

Elbox have added a new

member to their range of

popular tower cases sold in the

UK as the Power Tower by

Power Computing. The new

Mirage 4000 Pro is a tower

conversion kit for the A4000

Desktop that includes a

Mediator 4000 busboard, PCI

logic card and the Multimedia

CD with drivers for graphics,

sound, TV and Ethernet PCI

cards. The Mirage tower itself

is a new design that is a bit

more interesting than the

normal beige box. It has three

5.25” drive bays and seven

3.5” bays one of which is

externally accessible. The

busboard has 6 Zorro II/III

slots, 1 video slot and 5 PCI

slots although the PCI slots are

in-line with Zorro slots so a full

length Zorro card will block the

coresponding PCI slot. The

tower is ﬁtted with a 300W

power supply to keep things

running smoothly even with all

those slots and bays ﬁlled!

• Running programs in the

background using “&”

• *Job control

• *Easy display of multimedia

ﬁles

• *Extended script support via

#! and ;!

• *New and improved shell

commands: Ask, Path,

PopCD and PushCD

• *Many other bug ﬁxes.

The upgrade of the OS’s disk

related tools has been

completed with full support for

disks greater than 4Gb across

the system. HDToolBox’s

reading of geometry data

should now work properly on

more large disks and the

diskcopy command has been

updated to support large disks

too.

In addition the main archive

you can also download some

new and updated contributions

and locale archives for 19

different languages:

You will need OS3.9 BoingBag

1 installed to perform the

update which can be

downloaded from:

http://www.haage-partner.de

/aos39/index-e.html

There were several

presentations during the show

including sound with Don Cox,

networking with Neil Bothwick

and Amithlon with Bill Hoggett.

Next was the presentation we

The Mirage 4000 system has a

list price of 379.95Euro not

including VAT so in the UK we

anticipate it will be just under

£300.

The full speciﬁcations are

available on Elbox’s website

along with lists of compatible

PCI cards:

http://www.elbox.com

Calc, OpenOfﬁce’s spreadsheet, running on Linux.

Don’t Miss:

Latest on OS 4: Page 10

Exclusive AmigaOne News: Page 8

The Mediator Support stand,

these were just two of the many Amigas running at the show.

TOTAL AMIGA

Summer 2002

4

5

News

News

USB Stacks Up

Getting Flash

AmigaOS XL

New

Legalities

IBrowse

With many digital cameras

abandoning the slow serial port

connection for faster USB ports

it is becoming increasingly

difﬁcult to ﬁnd current cameras

that are Amiga compatible. The

sensible route has always

seemed to be getting a

memory card reader attached

to your Amiga and then any

camera using the supported

type of memory card would be

compatible. The problem with

this idea is that only expensive

and difﬁcult to source SCSI

readers have been available

for the Amiga.

That was until Torsten Jager

released cfd to Aminet, this

package contains a device

driver that allows your Amiga

to read a compact ﬂash

memory card via the PCMCIA

slot. To make the connection

you need a compact ﬂash to

PCMCIA adaptor and an

Amiga with a PCMCIA slot

(that’s an A600 or A1200

folks)! As a compact ﬂash card

is already very similar to a

PCMCIA card the adaptors are

simple and inexpensive at

about £10. The package

consists of

compactﬂash.device and a

CF0 dosdriver, you will also

need the freeware Fat95 ﬁle

system (reviewed in the last

Total Amiga) installed as

compact ﬂash cards use an

MSDos style ﬁle system. Once

these components are in place

you can read the image ﬁles

from you ﬂash card using

Workbench or a directory utility

just as if it was a hard disk.

A recent statement from the

main developer of the

Amithlon, Bernie Meyer, has

cast doubt on the legality of

Haage and Partner’s Amiga

emulator package AmigaOS

XL. The emulators AmigaXL

and Amithon are included in

the package along with

AmigaOS 3.9, 3.1 ROMs and

other software. In his

statement Bernie says he has

received an EMail from Amiga

Inc. and that they consider the

distribution of AmigaOS XL to

be in violation of their

intellectual property rights and

thus illegal. It seems that

Amiga are in dispute with

Haage and Partner over their

right to distribute some or all of

the Amiga owned components

shipped with AmigaOS XL.

Bernie has asked Haage and

Partner to stop distributing

Amithon as he is allowed to in

his contract because he is

personally responsible for

settling any intellectual

property disputes over the

software he provided for

AmigaOS XL. Bernie stresses

that he has no way of knowing

if Amiga’s claims are justiﬁed

but he had to act to minimise

his personal legal risk.

As far as we are aware Haage

and partner is continuing to sell

AmigaOS XL. Although there

has been no ofﬁcial statement

from them one of H&P’s

employees, Martin

Steigerwald, has made several

postings to the Amithon

mailing list that they are trying

to clear up the situation and

that Haage and Partner

guarantees that all users will

get an ofﬁcially licensed

product.

As Bernie has requested that

H&P stops distributing Amithon

this puts potential buyers in a

difﬁcult position which so far

has not been clariﬁed,

hopefully there will news soon.

E3B have revealed that the

stack for their imminent

Highway and Subway USB

cards will be a new

development called Poseidon

which has been written by

Chris Hodges. But even better

news is that the stack won’t be

limited to the E3B cards, it has

been designed so that drivers

for all sorts of hardware can

written. Poseidon is not a port

from another platform and has

been designed speciﬁcally for

AmigaOS, a MorphOS version

will also be available. The

author has stated that there is

no reason why Poseidon

shouldn’t run on OS4 but

Hyperion have conﬁrmed that a

different stack for the new OS

is already well into

development so they won’t be

using Poseidon.

As we’ve mentioned before a

USB stack and supported

hardware is no use if you don’t

have drivers for USB

peripherals . Fortunately

Poseiden already includes

drivers for several classes of

USB device. These include

basic support for Keyboards

and Mice, printers and mass

storage devices. We guess the

printer support will be in the

form of a parallel device

replacement so this may mean

that you can hook up an

existing printer that has an

Amiga driver by its USB port.

USB mass storage support is

one of the most interesting

developments because this

standard is supported by many

storage devices. For example

some digital cameras support

this standard as do most USB

memory card readers. So we

hope that without additional

drivers USB mass storage

support should enable us to

access all kinds of different

memory cards and other USB

storage devices without

needing speciﬁc drivers.

Poseidon has already

generated a great deal of

interest from Amiga

developers. Innovative (who

have recently changed their

name to IOSpirit) have

announced that they are

developing USB drivers for

their VHI Studio package.

These will support USB web

cameras for video grabbing

and USB digital cameras with

several Kodak models being

the ﬁrst supported. Isreesoft

have announced that they will

support Poseidon in future

versions of TutboPrint so there

is a chance we will start to get

drivers for USB only printers.

Vision Factory development (of

CyberGraphX fame) have

developed a hardware driver

that enables Poseidon to work

with a PCI USB card in a G-

Rex PCI bus board and a

MorphOS driver for the built-in

USB ports on the bPlan

Pegasos motherboard. They

have tested a USB webcam

and USB Zip drive using the

drivers supplied with Poseidon.

Developer documentation for

the stack is available, for more

details visit the E3B website:

http://www.e3b.de/usb/

developer.html

At Last

While compact ﬂash is only

one of the memory card

standards available it is

popular among manufacturers

of cameras and other mobile

devices and the cards are less

expensive than the other types.

If anyone out there has an

adaptor for a different memory

format to PCMCIA it would be

interesting to try it with

compactﬂash.device as I think

there is a change other formats

would work. However don’t go

out and spend money as this is

only a chance.

You can download cfd from any

Aminet mirror,

disk/misc/cfd.lha, you’ll also

need fat95.lha from the same

directory.

Development was on hold for a

long time but work is now

continuing apace on a new

version of IBrowse. 2.3 is

expected to be a free upgrade

for 2.x owners and Amiga have

announced that a special

version will also ship with OS4.

The exact features of the

upgrade have not been

revealed but posts from the

developers and beta testers on

the mailing list suggest it will

be quite substantial. In

particular the Javascript engine

is known to have been heavily

improved greatly enhancing

website compatibility. There

have been many posts to the

IBrowse mailing list saying

“this site doesn’t work in

version 2.2” and the vast

majority of the time the answer

comes back that it now works

in 2.3.

In a recent post Stefan

Burström, the author of

IBrowse and the key

programmer, said that they

hope to have the new version

ready for release by the end of

May. Currently the feature set

is frozen and they are working

to ﬁx the major outstanding

issues. To give an idea of the

size of the upgrade Stefan

mentioned that there have

been over 220 changes, bug

ﬁxes and features added!

Well I for one can’t wait, as

there isn’t currently an IBrowse

website the best way to keep

in touch with developments is

to join the IBrowse mailing list

at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/

group/ibrowse

Subway... Highway...

Icon

Norway

Overload!

E3B have been taking notice of

the survey they ran for

potential users of their USB

interfaces the Highway (Zorro

II) and Subway (Clock port).

The most popular add-on

requested for the Highway was

an Ethernet card and E3B

already have a 10Mb/s module

in the works called the Norway.

The card will attach to the

expansion connector of the

Highway card. It features an

NE2000 compatible Ethernet

controller with 16Kbytes of

buffer memory. The card is

ﬁtted with an RJ45 connector

for the unshielded twisted pair

cable used in most modern

networks. SANA2 drivers will

be supplied so the card can be

used with existing Amiga

TCP/IP stacks and other

network applications. The

board has been tested with

030, 040, 060 and PPC

accelerators.

For further details including

extensive compatibility testing

of the Highway card take a

look at the E3B website:

http://www.e3b.de

You can pre-order a Norway

card from KDH, a German

Amiga dealer at 59.90Euro

(about £38), other dealers

have not yet been announced:

http://www.kdh-datentechnik.com

Mason Icons is a

project to create

a common set

of application

images for Amiga

programs based in

the glow icons style. The auto

Martin Merz has made a set of

common images and then uses

them to make new button bars

for Amiga programs giving

them a common look, rather

than the icon sets which have

been available for years these

are images used for buttons

and icons within a program.

This is possible because many

programs have customiseable

toolbars or load the images

they use from disks. Sets of

icons are available for over 50

applications and utilities from

AWeb to Voyager! Martin

releases new and updated

image sets all the time and his

work really does make your

Amiga look more co-ordinated.

To see if your favourite

applications are supported

visit:

http://mason.home.bei.t-online.de

Papyrus is the Future?

Titan computer are porting

Papyrus Ofﬁce to the Amiga.

Papyrus is a suite of ofﬁce

application programs

developed by the German

company ROM Logicware. We

understand MacOS, 68k Amiga

and MorphOS versions are

planned, there hasn’t been an

announcement about an OS4

version yet. Papyrus is a well

established product and is now

on version 9 which is available

for Windows, OS/2 and Atari

TOS operating systems. The

suite consists of an integrated

Word Processor, DTP and

Spreadsheet program and a

separate database application.

On the ROM Logicware

website the developers are

proud to point out that the

complete Papyrus suite ﬁts on

three high density ﬂoppy disks

without sacriﬁcing functionality

so it sounds like this should be

a light weight Amiga style

application.

Here are some of the key

features of Papyrus Ofﬁce:

• Extensive DTP functions

• Graphics import

• Tables

• Full spreadsheet functionality

in tables

• Powerful rich text format

import and export for

compatibility with other

applications including table

and image support.

• Auto correct

• Footnotes

• Full relational database with

multimedia functions

The full version of Papyrus

Ofﬁce for other platforms costs

129Euro, about £80, it remains

to be seen what Titan will

charge for the Amiga version.

The ROM Logicware website

has details of the suite’s

features:

http://www.rom-logicware.com/

You can read the full statement

from Bernie on his Amithlon

website at:

http://www.amithlon.net

Titan have a page on their site

with some initial information on

their ports:

http://www.titan-computer.com/

ami/papyrus/index.html

The Norway pre-production prototype.

TOTAL AMIGA

Summer 2002

6

7

News

News

Fleecy

Amiga One Update

Here is the very latest news on AmigaOne straight from Alan Redhouse, managing director of Eyetech

Speaks

By Alan Redhouse

Amiga’s Chief Technology Officer gives us a taste of what to expect in AmigaOS 4. .

T he ﬁrst issue of Total

N ot much seems to have

full range of legacy peripherals,

and will run PPC Linux (and

PPC UAE) in addition to

running the new PPC-only OS4

natively.

terms also stipulate that all

boards capable of running OS4

must ship with an OEM version

of OS4 and must have built-in

hardware protection to keep

OS4 piracy to a minimum, and

this has been built into the

AmigaOneG3-SE from the

outset.

market (read more ﬂexible but

more expensive) addition to

the AmigaOne range. One of

the prime requirements is to

provide a socketed cpu module

so that user-upgradable

performance enhancements

can be made as and when

faster and more complex chips

- and operating system

enhancements that use them -

become available. I mentioned

above that the Intel Slot-1

socket is not really suitable in

this context, and in fact both

the Intel Slot-1 socket and the

Apple ZIF cpu socket are now

obsolete and no longer

manufactured.

of elegance and simplicity for

those who need the power of

a desktop and beyond to

render their 3D movies, layout

their publications, create their

next music hit or destroy that

alien spaceship and all its

60,000 polygons.

Whilst we are all excited as

hell, we must also be realistic

and realise that this just the

ﬁrst step in a long journey.

The Amiga Power Platform is

starting out in a very deep

hole. Developers will only

write new and compelling

applications for our platform if

they can see it makes

commercial sense, which

means seeing a sustainable

market. Correspondingly,

users will only come to the

platform if they see the

applications. It is a vicious

circle and one in which

community spirit is going to

have to count like it has never

counted before.

they are available to us at a

reasonable price for use in the

AmigaOne-EX cpu modules. At

the moment the target price for

the AmigaOne-XE board with

the single G4 700MHz cpu

module is around

UKP200/USD300/Euro350

more than the AmigaOneG3-

SE - and possibly less if

Apple’s demand for these

cpu’s drops signiﬁcantly.

Amiga was published just a

few days before the Alt-WoA

show at the end of February

where the AmigaOneG3-SE

made its ﬁrst public

appearance. We had been

working on this new board for a

considerable length of time

under strict conﬁdentiality

wraps and the new

AmigaOneG3-SE was clearly a

surprise to show attendees - it

must have been one of the

best kept secrets in the Amiga

community. And there’s been

plenty more happening since

then. But ﬁrst, for those of you

who missed the presentation I

gave at Alt-WoA, here is a brief

summary.

happened in the many

years since the demise of

Commodore. We’ve all done

it. Scouring the websites for

news, reading the ever

diminishing number of Amiga

mags from cover to cover and

becoming more and more

depressed as promises have

been made, deadlines have

slipped, companies have

vanished.

Which is why it gives me great

pleasure to share with you the

wonderful news that has

occurred in the time since the

last issue of Total Amiga.

Not only has the AmigaOne

been seen (running PPC

Linux) but by the time you

read this 200 very lucky

developers should have

actual AmigaOne developer

boards in their possession,

with AmigaOne consumer

systems only a few months

away at most.

Our partners at Hyperion have

also been able to release

actual screenshots of the new

AmigaOS4.0. (I hope that they

are in the magazine

somewhere, but to see them

in all their glory, surf over to

the hyperion website

( http://www.OS4.hyperion-

software.com). Although most

of the work for OS4 is under

the hood, and we haven’t

planned that much of a

revamping in the interface

arena, I’m sure you’ll agree

that it looks very nice and will

allow Amigans to put their

new 40 inch plasma monitors

up against OS X and XP

users and feel pretty smug.

More importantly, what all of

this good news means is that

the Amiga Power Platform is

about to be reborn, a system

In this new design we have

opted to solder the cpu direct

to the motherboard. This not

only keeps costs down, but

signiﬁcantly increases reliability

by minimising trace lengths

between cpu and SDRAM

memory, particularly in

comparison to the original

‘Slot-1 cpu module’ we

proposed for the original

AmigaOne-1200.

A list of dealers who have

already ordered

demonstration/familiarisation

boards is posted on our web

site (www.eyetech.co.uk/

amigaone/dealer). Don’t worry

if your favourite dealer is not

listed - several have either

missed the ordering window or

decided to wait until the end

user boards and OS4 is

shipping. These dealers will be

added to the list on our website

at the time they order end user

boards from us.

So does this mean you should

cancel your existing

AmigaOne-G3 order and wait a

few more months? Not at all.

We anticipate a high private

resale value of used

AmigaOneG3-SE boards, but

to take the uncertainty out of

the process, we, and the

majority of other AmigaOne

dealers, will underwrite a

trade-in value of your

AmigaOneG3-SE during a

period of 6 and 12 months

after its purchase against the

purchase of a new AmigaOne-

XE with single G4 cpu module.

has pushed many of you to

the edge but we said that

somehow, sometime, we

would get a new Amiga to you

and it looks like, working

together, we are so close as

to almost be able to taste it.

Congratulations to us all.

We took orders for developer

boards (for testing OS4,

developing software and for

dealers to demonstrate - the

boards are actually the same

as the end user versions)

towards the end of March.

Most of them should have been

delivered by the time this issue

hits the mailboxes.

So for the next version of the

AmigaOne, the AmigaOne-XE,

we have borrowed the latest

cpu socket technology from

Apple in the form of the

purpose-designed ‘Megarray’

socket. This means that we

can make low cost, tightly

coupled cpu modules using

either G3, G4, dual G4, (and

possibly G5) technology - for

use the same motherboard.

Upgrading cpu power therefore

only needs a simple module

exchange. The prototype

socketed AmigaOne-XE board

and the associated plug-in G3

and G4 modules hve already

been built. Look forward to

some more details in the next

Total Amiga.

The AmigaOneG3-SE

The ﬁrst model in our

AmigaOne range is the

AmigaOneG3-SE. This is in

effect a 600Mhz G3 Amiga

accelerator with built in 10/100

ethernet, USB, PCI/AGP

interface and memory slots for

up to 2GB of SDRAM. As well

as being many times more

powerful and at

(UKP350/USD500/Euro600*)

around half the price of the

previously most powerful

Amiga PPC accelerator (the

phase 5 Cyberstorm PPC 604

240MHz), in my mind the most

remarkable thing about the

AmigaOneG3-SE is that it

comes with a free, built in

computer! This means that you

no longer need an attached

A1200 or special tower case if

you only intend to run

retargetable Amiga

applications. (For hardware-

hitting applications an interface

card to connect an Amiga 1200

motherboard to the A1G3-SE a

PCI card interface will be

available from Escena). The

A1G3-SE also comes with a

On a sadder note, my heart

goes out to the people of

HAUG, who worked so hard

and tirelessly to put on their

show, which was then

decimated by the one thing

not in their control, a monster

of a snow storm that froze up

the entire north of England. I,

along with many others, were

really looking forwards to the

event. Don’t give up. We all

want to see you next year in

Huddersﬁeld and they’ll be

plenty of new additions.

Although we are advertising

the A1G3-SE as an entry-level

machine, have no doubt with

OS4 installed it will really ﬂy.

The 600Mhz 750CXe cpu that

is shipped with it is effectively

that fastest G3 cpu generally

available and some PPC

experts reckon it is likely to

deliver several hundred times

the performance of an ‘030/50

with many applications.

We know we have the

dedicated Amigans who will

buy the new platform. Our

next target after that must be

all our Amiga friends, those

who tried to stay with us but

ﬁnally gave up the ghost a

year or so ago. We all know

many of these people and we

need to get them interested

and back into the community.

This will start to bring

numbers up, which will

interest developers, which will

allow Total Amiga to go to a

monthly format, which will

start to bring new users to

user group meetings, and so

on and so on.

It won’t happen overnight. It

will take time, but if Amigans

are anything, we are patient.

Sometimes we have been

sorely tested, and I won’t

pretend that we as a company

haven’t made mistakes that

The board has also attracted a

lot of attention from the Linux-

PPC community, and we have

had some of the best

developers from that OS - and

of course from the Amiga

developer community - order

the developer boards and

subscribe to the closed

developer mailing list. This list

is moderated by Amiga and

Linux-PPC developer Ole-Egil

Hvitmyren, a name which will

be familiar - if totally

unpronounceable - to those

subscribed to the AmigaOne

mailing list at Yahoo Groups

(www.yahoogroups.com/

group/amigaone).

So if you’ve been sitting on the

fence wondering whether to

buy an A1G3-SE or to wait

until an upgradable G4

AmigaOne is available, you

can now have the best of both

worlds. Get a new, low cost

AmigaOneG3-SE now and

upgrade within 12 months.

What are you waiting for?

Whats next?

Those of you will who have

been paying attention will have

noticed that I said that the

A1G3-SE was ‘the ﬁrst’ in our

AmigaOne range. So what, I

hear you asking, will be

following, and when, what

spec, how much and,

inevitably, is it worth waiting

for?

But before you rush off and

cancel your pending

AmigaOneG3-SE orders to buy

the AmigaOne-XE instead,

bear in mind that this extra

ﬂexibility will come at a price,

and until OS4 supports the

G4’s Altivec coprocessor,

without much performance

beneﬁt either. And at the

moment, unless you are Apple,

G4 cpu’s are on very tight

allocation, which means that it

will be several months before

Full details of this upgrade

offer will be posted on our web

site shortly.

Thats all for this issue.

Alan

Finally it is important to note

that the AmigaOneG3-SE is

fully quality-validated and

licensed by Amiga Inc to run

OS4, with all licence

fees/royalties paid. AI’s licence

Well I can’t answer all those

questions deﬁnitively now, but I

will give you a taster of what

we have planned for an up-

TOTAL AMIGA

Summer 2002

8

9

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