------------------------------------------------------------------- *** Welcome to the AO update, volume 1, issue 6 - 29 Oct. 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------- *** AO Update is a free weekly newsletter provided by Amiga.org *** to tell you what is happening in the Amiga community. ------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Amiga's not building hardware... Still surprised? ----- Last week in this newsletter I eluded to a theory of mine (it's no more than that) which stipulated that Gateway will be (one of?) the first companies licensed to build hardware around the new Amiga technology specs. Over this past week, my staff and I have been inundated with requests for information and e-mails from a lot of people who were just plain shocked at the idea that Gateway would build machines based on Amiga technology. Let me reinforce the fact for you that we here at Amiga.org do NOT have insider information. We don't work with, or for Amiga or Gateway directly, so we don't know what's really happening. As I stated last week, it is my "belief" that Amiga is designing the new technology specs (both hardware and software) to license out to third-party companies. It is also my "belief" by simple logic that Gateway (the parent company of Amiga Inc.) would be the first to take advantage of said technology since they've been quoted as saying "we intend to make 30% of our income from information appliances in the next few years". The fact that Amiga isn't going to build hardware has been openly stated since almost day one of their existence (except for the nasty MCC fiasco). Unfortunately since we've all been so used to owning machines labeled either "Commodore" or "Amiga" for the last 15 years, it's almost impossible for us to really comprehend buying a "Sony", "Gateway", or a "Panasonic" device built around "Amiga technology". I understand the confusion and resistance to that idea. I really do. It wasn't until about six months ago though that I really accepted what that meant, and in my humble opinion, it's a mixed blessing. Since the introduction of the Commodore Amiga in 1985, this community has always had a fierce loyalty to a name brand as well as the machine. That name brand on the box was always either Commodore or Amiga. We've always had one of 10 or so models of the machine with which to "thumb our noses" at PC and Macintosh users because our machines have always been (simply put) better. Under Amiga's plan of building and licensing technology, the rules of that game might change. Amiga isn't building, or branding their own hardware, they're licensing others to build machines. That means that we might never see another "Amiga" labeled machine, but does that really matter? In the fierce loyalty department, it might, because there's not going to be a single banner to rally behind, instead there will be dozens, all who share the common soul of using Amiga technology. Instead of a single "Amiga MCC", we might see things like a "Gateway Destination II", or a "Sony Ethos laptop" or even a "3Com Boing! PDA". Each machine different in it's design and purpose but each sharing common roots. Each capable of talking between one another without having the problems that Windows machines are just now beginning to think about fixing. In the end, we might see literally hundreds of machines and "Internet/Convergence appliances" based on the new Amiga technology rather the old way of putting out one new model every year and a half. Is it your so-called "classic Amiga"? Certainly not. Are the pending changes to the Amiga universe for everyone? Probably not, but in our opinions here at AO, it's going to be a VERY interesting ride. Your Opinions? ----- No Update next week (for November 5th, 1999) ? subtitled: "Just where do you think you're going"? ----- Yes, that's right... Maybe? I'm talking with Kent and Wayne to see which wants to put out the update. Unless something major breaks next week, it's likely that we just won't have the time. Why no update next week? In two days, Melissa and I are going on a much needed vacation for a week+. Not unlike migratory birds, we're headed south for the winter. Jamaica and Mexico actually, which is a long story in itself. It would seem that over the last couple of years, I've consumed all of my vacation time to attend shows and events for both Amiga.org and the User Group Network (UGN). As such, my wife and I haven't taken an actual vacation together in over two years. Early in January, I was given notice that this year would be different. I was furthermore instructed that we'd save our pennies and that for Halloween (our favorite holiday), I would be taking my wife to Salem, Mass. for the annual festivities. After several days of research, we came to the miraculous conclusion that it's more expensive to go to Salem at Halloween ($400 USD+ per night) than it is to go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans ($250/night in the French Quarter). Since we haven't got massive amounts of stock options just lying around that we can cash in, Salem was out. Back to the drawing board. After much deliberation, we decided to maximize the whole Halloween thing so here's what we decided. Saturday, we'd head down to New Orleans for the pre-Halloween parties and activities. Sunday (Oct 31'st) has us boarding a cruise ship headed for the "El Dia de los Muertos" (aka:"Day of the Dead") festival in Cozumel Mexico. From there, it's a long loop around through Montego Bay where we'll see the "House of the White Witch" and the Grand Caymans. Sincerely, and see you in two weeks :-), Wayne Hunt Site Manager Amiga.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- Got an opinion? Share it with the world and your fellow readers by send it to us at "opinions@amiga.org". We want to hear from you! ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- **** News Items added in the last seven days ------------------------------------------------------------------- **** If you know of an Amiga-related news item and want us to **** cover it, please go to **** http://amiga.org/feedback/submitnews.shtml ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dell, Gateway, others go Windows-less (1999-10-28) Major personal computer makers are quietly working on a wave of products that won't use Microsoft Corp.'s Windows PC operating system, the source of the software giant's market power. URL: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2383313,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01 Article: Users(ADA) Vs. Gateway, Lawsuit by Mark Tierno (1999-10-27) This article by AIO's Mark Tierno, takes a look at a lawsuit filed against Gateway and Amiga (Inc) by a group calling themselves the 'Amiga Dealers Association (ADA)' and the possible consequences of said action. URL: http://www.aio.co.uk/241099.html Motorola pumps up Bluetooth investment (1999-10-27) The phone-to-chips giant will embed Digianswer's Bluetooth technology into the grandly named its DigitalDNA product portfolio for wireless connectivity, portable computing and home networking platforms. URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/991027-000023.html AmiMasterGear 0.62 now available. (1999-10-27) Version .62 of the AmiMasterGear program is now available. AmiMasterGear is a Sega Master system and Game Gear emulator for the Amiga. URL: http://www.arrakis.es/~joanant/emuls/AmiMasterGear.lha Demo of Micro Mortal Tennis now available. (1999-10-27) Epic Marketing has released a demo of their newest game, Micro Mortal Tennis. You can download it here. URL: http://www.epic-marketing.de/ New demo-version (V.45.00 alpha 5) of stormamiga.lib for AmigaOS/68k (1999-10-27) CyberDyne Systems has released a demo version of stormamiga.lib (version 45.00 alpha 5) on their website Download here. The "stormamiga.lib" is a linkerlibrary for StormC and this version fixes many bugs in the original. URL: http://www.cyberdynesystems.de/stormamiga_lib/index_e_SAL.html List of OS3.5 participants. (1999-10-27) Amiga has posted a listing of people responsible for the development and production of OS 3.5 with special mention to Olaf Barthel for his 'faith in OS3.5'. URL: http://www.amiga.de/amigaos35/honors-e.html Instant Rebate on ImageFX - Get $40 back on 4.0! (1999-10-27) If you've been thinking about buying ImageFX 4.0 with the new animation features, now is the perfect time to do so! Nova Design, Inc., in cooperation with your favorite Amiga dealers, is offering an Instant $40 Rebate when you buy ImageFX from any participating dealer. However, this special offer is for a limited time only! URL: http://www.novadesign.com/pr24.htm New CD-based Amiga magazine announced (1999-10-26) Softwave, a new Italian company, announces Amiga.news, a new CD-based magazine that will be presented at the next Cologne fair. URL: http://www.skylink.it/ear VaporWear T-Shirts available (1999-10-26) Vapor has moved into fashion... They now stock T-Shirts :-) Head into the new VaporWear section to find out more! URL: http://v3.vapor.com/index.php3?mode=vaporwear Seal: Raffle! (1999-10-26) At the next two meetings on 10/29/99 and 11/12/99, the South Essex Amiga Link will be selling raffle tickets for some great prizes including: Image FX 4, Epic Encyclopedia, Insight Technology and World Atlas multimedia CD-ROMs, Fonts and Clipart CD-ROM Bundle (5 CDs), Amiga Format CD-ROM Bundle (10 CDs), plus several other prizes! See their website for details. URL: http://seal.amiga.tm/ Update: Information how to set up Samba with Miami (1999-10-26) >From Nordic Global (Makers of the Miami TCP Stack) comes updated instructions on how to set up Samba with Miami or MiamiDx, allowing you to exchange files with other Amigas, with Win95/98, WinNT and Linux. URL: http://www.nordicglobal.com/MSamba.txt MAME for the Kodak DC265 Digital Camera (1999-10-26) >From the 'news we've just got to report' page, If you have a Kodak DC265 Digital Camera, you can now play games on it, as Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) has now been ported. - Editor's Note: One helpful hint? Take extra batteries... URL: http://members.aol.com/JWSurine/ PGPi 6.5.1/Amiga coming soon (1999-10-26) The PGP 6,5,1 SOURCE code has now been completely scanned and proofread, and they've created on international version: PGP 6.5.1i. A beta version for Unix is available (SOURCE code only). Versions for MacOS, Windows 2000, MSDOS, Amiga and OS/2 will appear shortly. URL: http://www.pgpi.org/ ArtEffect 3.0.11 Update (1999-10-26) A free patch for ArtEffect 3.0 is available on Haage & Partner's ftp server. URL: http://www.haage-partner.com/ae_sup_e.htm Phase5 G4 status update (1999-10-26) Here is a status update from phase5 which details their problems obtaining the Motorola MPC107 system controller chips, which have been designed onto the Cyberstorm and Blizzard G4 processor boards as the memory and PCI controller. Their solution (to use another controller chip) would enable the G4's to have AGP capability, but would delay the release of the cards until the beginning of 2000. - Editor's note: Tough choice! :). URL: http://www.phase5.de/amiga/csb1099e.html Yamaha Introduces All New CRW8424 Drive 8X-Write/4X-Rewrite/24X-Read; CRW8424 Series Completely Re-engineered (1999-10-26) The new CRW8424 CD-RW drive from Yamaha Systems Technology, Inc. is completely re-designed for highest reliability and quality. The new drive will write at 8X; rewrite at 4X; and read at 24X normal speed. The SCSI version is available now; the ATAPI version will follow soon. Includes support for the Amiga. URL: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/991025/cqn_yamaha_1.html Amiga Extravaganza99 Report (1999-10-26) Here's a report from the Amiga Extravaganza99 show a few weeks back in Indianapolis, Indiana. URL: http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1999/991023-cucug.html OS3.5 English registration page now open (1999-10-26) As promised, the Amiga OS 3.5 Registration page is now online. Also available are the Support and FAQ pages. URL: http://www.amiga.de/amigaos35/registration-e.html New Spectrum 48k emulator (1999-10-26) For all those nostalgia freaks out there, this is a fast and accurate representation of the good old Sinclair Speccy. Features include fully multitasking, simple font sensitive GUI, stabilised sound, speed regulation, Kempston joystick support, 100% Asm coded. URL: http://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/aminet/aminet/misc/emu/ASpEmu.lha Survey: What is Amiga? (1999-10-26) AmigaActive Magazine is asking what is perhaps the most unanswerable question ever. What is an Amiga? What does it mean to you? Please take a moment to stop by and check this out. URL: http://www.amigactive.com Worm Wars 4.4 is now free to all Amiga users. (1999-10-26) A very advanced snake/Tron game for 0-3 players, featuring 22 object types, 6 creature types, music, sound effects, isometric 3D graphics, field editor, saved high score tables, full system compliance, many levels, human and/or computer control of worms, and more. Extremely addictive. Amiga version includes SAS/C source code. URL: http://users.interact.net.au/~cjaj/amigan.html The Swedish GlädjeStickan is almost back!! (1999-10-25) The Swedish e-zine GlädjeStickan is rising like the Phoenix! They are in the process of rebuilding GlädjeStickan, but are still missing the most important part: - Their subscribers! The complete database over our nearly 350 subscribers was destroyed during the crash and they are now making an open appeal to their former subscribers (as well as new ones) to visit http://www.amigaspel.just.nu and fill in the form for a subscription. URL: http://www.amigaspel.just.nu/ Phoenix getting off to a rough start. (1999-10-25) The Phoenix Consortium is apparently having a bit of trouble getting off the ground as this morning Amiga.org received an e-mail outlining a plan to 'kickstart' the Phoenix Consortium by sending your ideas to all the developers. URL: http://www.boing.net/pa/features/whatucando.html Poll about Piracy in the Amiga Software Market (1999-10-25) Mutivitaminas sent us information about their poll: 'Piracy in the Amiga Software Market', which invites your opinion on how Software Piracy is hurting the Amiga. URL: http://www.misterpoll.com/poll.wga?id=1990764246 Product News Station (1999-10-24) Trogladite Software are taking steps to set up 'AmiData', the only Dedicated Amiga Product News, Previews, Reviews, Opinions and Articles site. URL: http://www.amidata.co.uk Amiga RC5/64 effort celebrates it's second anniversary (1999-10-24) The Amiga RC5 Team effort celebrates second anniversary of RC5-64 challenge. The Amiga RC5 Team effort has now been participating for two years in the Distributed.Net/RC5-64 challenge. During the first two years of the effort we managed to reach a ranking of fifth overall out of over 8000 teams with a total of 200,000 participants. There are now over 2000 people participating under the Amiga team, accounting for about 1.1% of all the work done (or 110 million blocks of 2^28 keys). URL: http://distributed.amiga.org/RC5-64/fm_press-3.html Amigactive Online has been updated (1999-10-22) You can now find details of what's in issue one of the magazine, should you need to be persuaded to visit the newsagents before it's too late. PLUS, you can read a little about what's in issue two of Amiga Active, which goes on sale on *Thursday October 28th* URL: http://www.amigactive.com Photogenics 4.3 to be ported to Linux (1999-10-22) Paul Nolan dropped in to tell us about his upcoming port of Photogenics 4.3 to Linux. Not to worry though, he isn't abandoning the Amiga, just broadening his programming skills and market base. URL: http://www.paulnolan.com/news.html ------------------------------------------------------------------- **** Resources added in the last seven days ------------------------------------------------------------------- **** Is your website or product posted on our site? If not **** please visit http://amiga.org/cgi-local/add.cgi ASAP! ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- Fishing Caffe - On Line Search Engine (added: 22-Oct-1999) http://tofish.tzo.com/fishing_caffe/ Online Search Engine & Guide for outdoors, fishing, hunting, vacation, lodge, camping, skiing, travel, hiking, canoeing, boating, parks, ......... ------------------------------------------------------------------- Apex Designs (added: 22-Oct-1999) http://www.apex-designs.net Developers of Payback and several PD games such as Frontal Assault and 6 Tris. ------------------------------------------------------------------- BjergSOFT's Homepage (added: 23-Oct-1999) http://members.xoom.com/bjergsoft/index.html Free Amiga software download - eg. the very comprehensive and combined biography/discography/filmography; Britney Spears Tribute ------------------------------------------------------------------- Cybertron: The Undernet (added: 23-Oct-1999) http://www.cybertron.u-net.com Sven Harveys Personal Site. Sven is the editor of Amiga Energy magazine (http://www.infinitefrontiers.mcmail.com/). Not much Amiga content yet, some good links. Also has some Star Trek and Transformers content. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Games Totalled (added: 24-Oct-1999) http://www.miggybyte.freeserve.co.uk/totaled NEW - Save Game Files Page, Trainers and Cheats. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The UAE compatibility list & Amiga game directory (added: 24-Oct-1999) http://www.webpan.com/dsinclair/amiga.html A guide to classic Amiga games that run on UAE. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Nutman's universe (added: 26-Oct-1999) http://home.get2net.dk/nutman Here you can find music, made by Nutman of IRIS! ------------------------------------------------------------------- amiga-news.de (added: 26-Oct-1999) http://www.amiga-news.de/ Daily updated news in German, English, Danish and Vlaams ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Amiga in Brief (added: 27-Oct-1999) http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~roofdoc/amiga.htm Various Amiga information, quality scans of Zorro II/III cards made for the Miggy. ------------------------------------------------------------------- AmiData (added: 28-Oct-1999) http://www.amidata.co.uk Amiga site dedicated to product news, bug descriptions, and offer a place to share your opinions on pieces of news with the rest of the Amiga workd. ------------------------------------------------------------------- PD Sjaelland v/Metal Michael (added: 28-Oct-1999) http://hjem.get2net.dk/PDSjaelland Buy Software To ALL Amiga. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Samba Installation (added: 29-Oct-1999) http://www.birrabrothers.com/tiger/data/samba/ An step by step guide in how to install Samba fileshare system for the Amiga OS. It has informative screenshots and take the steps from installing an network card to mounting up an shared resource on a pc. --------------------------------------------------------------------