October 1997
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Microsoft Buys the USA (31-Oct-97 )

    Marcel Devoe posts an imaginary announcement of Microsoft Buying the USA. Read the complete post by clicking on the [L] below.

Amiga RC5-64 team (31-Oct-97 )

    The Amiga RC5 team announces its participation at the RC5-64 RSA Secret Key Challenge. The previous (incomplete) participation at the RC5-56 challenge ended with an overall seventh place for the Amiga RC5 team, out of over 4000 teams. More information is available at http://www.cistron.nl/~ttavoly/rc5.

Carl Sassenrath news (31-Oct-97 )

    According to Skal Loret, Carl Sassenrath's forthcoming OS will come in at 100k. A bare bones version is already working and takes up 75k. Skal adds that Carl Sassenrath once said to me that that biggest problem that exists in OS/Software development is the fact that many programmers get paid by the line of code.

PowerPC MAME! (31-Oct-97 )

    According to Per Jonsson, there will be a port of MAME [the arcade machine emulator] to PowerUp, as soon as its author will have received its PUP card.

Amiga Forever Easter eggs (28-Oct-97 )

    Mathias Ortmann says there may be "Easter eggs" on Cloanto's Amiga Forever CD-ROM.

RC5-64 solved in 80 years? (28-Oct-97 )

    Olger Lubitz says that Amigas may take up to 80 years to find the correct keys for the RC5-64 project; since the Amiga RC5 team managed to get to 7 GKeys/s and there are 1.8*10^19 possible RC5-64 keys.

Amiga-based DVD players? (28-Oct-97 )

    Johan Otterstrom says issue 13 of the magazine "T3" includes a press release from MicroniK that announces two new DVD players based on Amiga technology.

Blizzards 603e (28-Oct-97 )

    Wolf Dietrich says the Blizzard603e Powerp boards are scheduled for the November Amiga show in Cologne. They are mechanically designed to fit in A1200 desktop cases. Even a BVisionPPC graphic card could be fitted in the case. There are only two issues that may make a tower necessaty: CE (or FCC) considerations and power supply problems.

PIOS moved (28-Oct-97 )

    Dr. Peter Kittel says PIOS moved and renewed its website.

Amiga Corporation advertisement (28-Oct-97 )

    Ben Hutchings forwards a 1983 (!) advertisement for the Joyboard, produced by AMIGA Corporation. The Joyboard was a square board, that could be used to play video games on your feet [..] with your hands behind your back. The Joyboard later inspired the Amiga "Guru Meditation" messages.

PowerUp shipping... (28-Oct-97 )

    Ian Gledhill reports that his PPC board arrived and that his preliminary impression is that This baby is FFAASSSTTTT!!!. He says he hasn't heard of any major errors with the board and points out that the CD is a normal CD-ROM, not a CD-R [as used in early shipments].

Amiga Inc. OK'ing the ICOA? (28-Oct-97 )

    The ICOA is getting incorporated right now, with the help of Amiga Inc. However, Amiga Inc. has a lot of work and the ICOA can only do its work as soon as Amiga Inc. have hired technical staff the ICOA can talk to.

ICOA's Fleecy Moss on PowerUp (28-Oct-97 )

    In a personal statement, Fleecy Moss explains that the ICOA can't intervene directly in the P5/H&P controversy. P5 is perfectly within its right to control its own technology. H&P is perfectly within its right to provide an alternative SW solution. [..] Right now, with P5 being the only [hardware] vendor, they don't have to co-operate with anyone.

DKB problems (23-Oct-97 )

    According to Skipper Smith, DKB have left their place of business. All inventory and eqipment has been moved to Dean's house, all phone calls are being rerouted to an answering machine. The Inferno card has been delayed due to hardware problems.

Pirates black list (23-Oct-97 )

    Angela Schmidt is posting a small list of people whose MakeCD registration numbers later appeared in pirate boards and warns all programmers not to send any keys to these persons.

P5/W&P demo programs (23-Oct-97 )

    Claude Mueller reports that he tested both Phase5 and Haage&Partner demo programs on his PowerUP. P5 didn't provide an installer, the CD-R contains many archives but only few icons. Phase5's demo programs are third-party products which don't work very well. On the contrary, the H&P demos (written by H&P themselves) are easy to start and all of them work. Claude concludes that from a "stupid-user-icon-clicker" point of view, the WarpUp software is superb and the Phase5 software sucks; but adds that the hardware is great.

Amiga Inc's plan? (23-Oct-97 )

    Ben Hutchings says Amiga Inc. has a quite detailed plan concerning the ICOA. It seems as if the ICOA will be the official developer support organisation. However, getting employees and starting to work seems to be more important than unveiling ICOA plans to the public. The TSC members and Jason Compton signed a NDA, so they can't reveil anything at the moment.

Jim Drew's ppc.library patch (23-Oct-97 )

    Steffen Haeuser points out that Jim Drew's ppc.library patch was never needed, since it fixes a bug in ppc.library that was already fixed a long time ago by Ralph Schmidt.

ppc.library (19-Oct-97 )

    Steffen Haeuser says PowerUp will never be incompatible to WarpUp. Whenever ppc.library changes, Sam Jordan will simply be resourcing it and adapting WarpUp. Besides that, Phase5 also needs to be careful when changing the hardware [to become incompatible to WarpUp], as neither LinuxPPC nor FusionPPC are using ppc.library either.

Amiga's future? (19-Oct-97 )

    Mathias Ortmann gives a description of what he estimates to be the Amiga's future, as opposed to WinUAE (which he is porting): By the end of 1999, WinUAE will be available as an IA64 binary, running on 700+ MHz CPUs with 100+ MHz memory and 66 MHz PCI or even faster AGP buses, while the Amiga community (particularly George Noel) will still devote itself to a neverending flame war about whether that new machine AI is trying to sell to them actually deserves to be called "Amiga".

WarpUp supported by programmers? (19-Oct-97 )

    Emmanuel Henn says he heard from another source that many programmers prefer WarpUp to PowerUp software the Phase5 solution is not useable for PPC-optimised games. Besides that, the programmer of Fusion [Mac emulator] is also said to be working on his own native PowerUp-support.

IBrowse partly developed on Linux (17-Oct-97 )

    Stefan Burstroem says he's cross compiling SSL support code for IBrowse on a Linux box, since it is much faster and cheaper than using SAS/C. He adds that there's nothing wrong chosing the system which gets the job done best. Linux on a P133 compiles our code faster but AmigaOS runs the code nicer.

New AmiTCP soon? (17-Oct-97 )

    Chris Wiles of Active Software says their new NetConnect v2 CD (scheduled for Oct/Nov) will contain a new version of AmiTCP, currently code-named "Genesis". This version is supposed to contain "pro" features.

Facts about H&P (17-Oct-97 )

    Ralph Schmidt states some facts about Haage&Partner:
    • that the company H&P planned this [WarpUp] for months...probably since last year.
    • that the company H&P told that Phase5 on thursday and that Phase5 told them directly that this won´t be accepted. Netherless Mr. Haage didn´t cared for this.
    • that the company H&P never cared for the initial Elf & System V4 ABI definition we as the System vendor defined for the *AmigaOS* PowerUP Kernel.
    • that the company H&P tries to establish their compiler as the standard future AmigaOS compiler
    • that the company H&P tries to establish their PowerPC kernel to enforce their position in the market and to AmigaInc.
    • that the comapany H&P resourced the Phase5 ppc.library to gain informations for their own kernel to enforce their kernel as the new standard with the usage of their integrated tools.
    • that the company H&P never really cared for the PowerUP System which showed their almost non existing feedback.
    • that the company H&P wants to majorly hurt the Phase5 PowerUP project by offering an own kernel.
    • that the company H&P missused their developer status to do this behind the back of Phase5.
    Laire says this is his last contribution to this thread, as he's got better things to do.

UAE not commercial (17-Oct-97 )

    Mathias Ortmann says that UAE's status won't change. [It will be included in Cloanto's Amiga Forever package, but will remain Freeware.]

Picasso96 supports CV64/3D and Retina BLT Z3 (16-Oct-97 )

    Tobias Abt announces that, starting with v1.29, Picasso96 will support the CV64/3D and Retine BLT Z3 graphics cards. The drivers are not yet complete, but they should work. The latest version is available on home.pages.de/~picasso96/.

Sam Jordan speaks out (16-Oct-97 )

    Steffen Haeuser forwards a message my Sam Jordan, programmer of WarpUp, that suggests that all open-minded programmers with a PPC board should do a complete comparison test [between PowerUp and WarpUp]. The results should be posted and discussed in a friently way; with the goal that both parties accept the other solution. Anyway, those who do not like WarpOS, [should] use the ppc.library, and those, who do not like the ppc.library, [should] use WarpOS.

End of WarpUp/PowerUp discussions? (16-Oct-97 )

    Wolf Dietrich says he has to drop out of public discussions, since business duties will keep him more busy. More information, as well as future issues, will be made public on their website.

pOS on PowerUp? (16-Oct-97 )

    Wolf Dietrich says he has no problems if proDAD port pOS to PowerUp or later A\BOX, but adds that it will not be their choice as a primary operating system or solution.

AmigaOS3.5 including ROM? (13-Oct-97 )

    Alexander W. Dorn says there are rumours that there may be a ROM involved with Workbench 3.5.

Octamed author changed (13-Oct-97 )

    Accordingto Per Jonsson, Teijo, the original author of OctaMED (SoundStudio) has left the Amiga because of piracy. He is now programming OctaMED SS for the PC. Joern Plewka has taken over development. The latest version of the program is available for free download at www.octamed.co.uk.

PowerUp disadvantages (13-Oct-97 )

    In reply to a post by Wolf Dietrich, Steffen Haeuser says the two CPUs can't operate at the same time, since PowerUp doesn't have "local memory" for each CPU. Steffen adds that WarpOS is based on PowerPC documentation and therefore does not "hack" the hardware. Apparently Sam Jordan, the main programmer, is probably the Amiga-user with the most knowledge about PPC Assembler language.

Developing on PowerUp (13-Oct-97 )

    Wolf Dietrich says people may be forced to buy [StormC] to develop under WarpUp and suspects H&P does that because of short-term economical interest. He says that Phase5 supports any developer who wants to build a compiler and adds that there will be soon be two free products [compilers] on the market.
    Wolf also thinks that pOS still is far from being a complete OS; which may be why it wasn't adopted as standard for PowerUp.
    Apparently, Haage&Partner haven't even managed to present a running PPC version of ArtEffects under their WarpUp kernel - which contradicts H&P's statements about "simply recompiling is enough".

No Cooperation between Phase5 and H&P (09-Oct-97 )

    Following the H&P vs. Phase5 controversy, Steffen Haeuser says Haage&Partner approached Phase5 about a cooperation, but P5 declined. He adds that he's sure H&P would not have a problem giving a permission to Phase5 to ship WarpOS with all PowerUps.

WarpOS mentioned on www.amiga.de (09-Oct-97 )

    Apparently, Amiga Inc. mentioned WarpOS as being the first "PPC Kernal" for the Amiga. James McArthur wonders whether this reflects AI's attitude towards Phase5 [who had the first PPC kernel].

Fishwrap closed! (09-Oct-97 )

    David C. Hall forwards the mail that was sent to Colin Thompson by the MIT. It says [..] M.I.T. requires that you immediately cease and desist using "FISHWRAP" in any manner whatsoever, including, without limitation, anywhere on or in your website and in the address of your website. David adds that the M.I.T. would probably not have won a lawsuit, since the name "fishwrap" is about as common as the term "yoyo", which isn't trademarked.

Colin Thompson retiring? (09-Oct-97 )

    After Colin Thompson had to close down the Daily Fishwrap due to pressure by the MIT, it is said that he is retiring from public life and is no longer using his Amiga.

Stefan Burstroem worked on PowerUp? (09-Oct-97 )

    Stefan Burstroem (IBrowse) says he has been working with Ralph Schmidt on the PowerUp software for 3-4 months.

Multiprocessing on PowerUp (07-Oct-97 )

    Phase5 say the PowerUp CPUs work as a real multiprocessing system with full parallel operation of both CPUs. Besides that, the system software is ready to work with any number of CPUs. Theoretically, they could build High-End boards with several PPCs on it. The article also contains some more verbal attacks at Haage&Partner's solution (check out the original posting).

Comparing WarpUp and PowerUp (07-Oct-97 )

    Wolf Dietrich points out that speed comparisons between WarpUp and PowerUp may be based upon Beta developer boards and Beta PowerUp system software. Besides that, he points out that people should not compare StormC compiled programs running under WarpUp to StormC compiled programs running under PowerUp, since software which is developed for PowerUp with Storm C is wasting most of the possible performance of the PowerUp boards due to it's "quick-and-dirty-conversion" concept.

WarpUp vs. PowerUp (07-Oct-97 )

    Steffen Haeuser describes the views of H&P and Phase5 as follows:
    Phase 5
    "H&P did not inform us at all, until it was too late. And they don't use the API we are suggesting, nor do they use ELF Format."
    H&P
    "We tried our best to get a compromise with Phase 5 several times. But they declined every offer for cooperation and they did not want to modify the way they go one millimeter."

WarpUp hardware-independent (07-Oct-97 )

    Steffen Haeuser points out that WarpUp is hardware-independent, so that it will always run on future Amiga PPC Hardware.

Stefan Burstrom on WarpUp (07-Oct-97 )

    Stefan Burstrom, main programmer of IBrowse, says H&P's WarpUp is neither compatible nor very efficient. Stefan adds that this is his personal opinion, based on months of discussions with Phase5 about the PowerUp system and by looking at the StormC solution.

"Driving a Porsche backwards" (07-Oct-97 )

    According to Wolf Dietrich, the WarpUp demo is as useful as testing a Porsche by driving backwards. He then proceeds to say that developing the PowerUp-way means adopting an object oriented approach; whereas H&P promote using StormC to recompile code; which is completely unefficient.

First WarpOS announcement (07-Oct-97 )

    For historic reasons, here is one of the first WarpOS announcements from Steffen Haeuser. It explains the origin, advantages and disadvantages of WarpOS and includes a feature-list.

Problems with QuikPak (07-Oct-97 )

    Joe Freeman posts a summary of his problems with QuikPak and calls them "shit packer". Please refer to the original article for details.

WarpUp vs. Phase5 (4) (07-Oct-97 )

    We are the system vendor, and believe that we should control the system software that controls the hardware underneath the HAL say Phase5. In future versions, PPC-librarary and other parts of the software will be located in a Flash-ROM; WarpUp will no longer run as it is incompatible to their solution.

Colin Thompson's FishWrap (05-Oct-97 )

    Colin Thompson, maintainer of Amiga Alley and The Daily Fishwrap websites was asked by the MIT to remove all references to the term "Fishwrap" (which is MIT's trademark) on his site. Colin took the relevant page content offline, all that remained was the a filename called "fishwrap.html". After a second complaint by the MIT, Colin decided to take the whole site offline. Many people wrote to Karin Rivard of MIT and complained. In return she points out that Colin was not asked to shut down the site, but that he merely had to change the name "Fishwrap" and use a different word in the web address. Karin says she doesn't understand why Colin removed the whole site, since that was certainly not required by the letter she sent. As Henning Tolpinrud put it in his complaint mail, the threat of lawsuit for using the word "Fishwrap" must be the most useless and hillarious thing he's ever heard about...

WarpUp vs. Phase5 (4) (04-Oct-97 )

    Stephan Joerrens forwards a short preliminary statement from Phase5. It is a compatibility warning that speaks of WarpOS as a hacker kernel. Apparently, all functionality outlined and promoted by Haage&Partner in WarpOS is nothing special, but a standard functionality already provided by the Phase5 PowerUp system software. WarpOS hacks the hardware by using an incomplete knowledge of the hardware functionality, it is most likely that it will not work with future revision changes or different product releases of the PowerUp series. [..] Haage&Partner declares it's product being open and Amiga-compliant - in fact, it is only open to the Haage&Partner standard and compliant to their own software solutions. [..] phase 5 digital products highly recommends not to use this incompatible system, as well as the Storm C compiler which - because of the concept - is wasting most of the performance that the PowerUp boards can deliver. Phase5 will completely drop any support for Haage&Partner as a PowerUp developer as well as for any of their products.

Good/bad things about WarpOS (04-Oct-97 )

    Steven Matty posts a good/bad things list about WarpOS. The only "good thing" is that WarpOS is (allegedly) faster. The fact that programmers need to use H&P's commercial C compiler (and not GCC or SAS/C) to develop for it is definately a bad thing; besides that it is not compatible to the de-facto PowerUP kernel; it doesn't run programs compiled to use Phase5's library in ELF format; one needs to reboot to run a PowerUp or WarpUp program and, finally, WarpUp is a kludge based on reverse-engineering of the PowerUp hardware. Steve says he thinks this is a disguised attempt to force Amiga developers to use the StormC compiler as "the standard".

WarpUp vs. Phase5 (3) (04-Oct-97 )

    According to Wolf Dietrich, H&P; developed their strategy over a long time and promised all the time that their solution would be compatible with the PowrUp system software During all that time, Phase5 supplued them with free developer boards and all kind of support. On the 25th of September, they first informed phase5 about their WarpUp stuff and started a massive marketing campaign the next day.

zdnet article (03-Oct-97 )

    J. Walt Covington says there is a story entitled "Amiga Lives!" on www.zdnet.com. Apparently, it's got a fair amount of solid information; it says that 400 companies have applied for developers licenses; that the company is hiring ex-Commodore Amiga employees; that a new OS and new hardware are to come shortly. He adds that it sounds like AmigaCHRP is here, with a new Amiga desktop to possibly run multiple OS's; possibly there could be an "Amiga on a card" for PC owners.

Commodore in Vietnam (03-Oct-97 )

    Fabrice Mansat says Commodore never disappeared in his country. Just recently, a local vietnamese magazine reported that CBM donated a PC to a school.

Olaf Barthel on Workbench 3.5 (03-Oct-97 )

    According to Olaf Barthel, the 6-8 month schedule for the AmigaOS 3.5 update seems irrealistic; he reminds that the AmigaOS 3.1 update took 12+ months.
    What makes me suspicious is that all these statements came from higher life forms known as management while the company currently is practically free of software engineers. Any claim about product availability will probably come from planning software bundling. So AmigaOS "3.5" will probably be the 3.1 ROM with the 3.1 Workbench plus some bundled software.

Dave Haynie on phase5 and AmigaOS licenses (03-Oct-97 )

    A RIVA 128 chip in a PIOS One would be more Amiga-like and have better performance than anything Phase5 is working on, says Dave Haynie; as well as making the following interesting statement:
    we'll do things with the 68K AmigaOS as well -- just what, I can't go into right now, but it has and continues to be a topic of study.
    In reply to seombody who says he doesn't see PIOS as being an Amiga licensee or developer, Dave replies:
    And now you [..] presume to know the mind of AI [..] AND all the details of agreements PIOS may have or may still be entering into?

WarpUp vs. PowerUp (2) (02-Oct-97 )

    The war between phase5 and Haage&Partner may mean that the small niche "PowerUp" will be further divided into two even smaller niches. Furthermore, the incompatibility between WarpOS and ppc.library may mean that rebooting may be required between phase5- and H&P-compliant applications.

Speed differences PowerUp/060? (02-Oct-97 )

    According to Gerd Schniggenberg, the LWShow program used to benchmark the PowerUp vs. traditional 060 systems will display objects in 16bit when run on the PPC; on a 060 it will use dithering; both running on a 16bit Workbench. [This may indeed mean that the benchmarks are wrong, since dithering may have taken some additional time; which made the PowerUp seem faster when opposed to the 060. -CK]

WarpUp vs. PowerUp (02-Oct-97 )

    In addition to recent WarpUS vs. PowerUp discussions, Mathias Ortman mentions that Laire (Ralph Schmidt) said on a German IRC channel that WarpUp may be compatible with the current boards, but this will change in a week or two.

Ralph Schmidt on ICOA (02-Oct-97 )

    Ralph Schmidt of Phase5 says he was on the ICOA mailing list for 2-3 months but left because there was only few valueable content. He has several conceptional problems with the ICOA itself and thinks that both the ICOA and Jay Miner Society represent a very US centric power balance, which only represents a small subset of the Amiga market. Besides that, he thinks that according to his informations, GW/ICOA are moving into an OS direction he doesn't like to see. He said he worked on an evolutionary cludged AmigaOS last year but realized it's not worth it. Ralph points out that he's speaking for himself and not Phase5 in this case.
 
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