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Issue 19

Winter 2004

£4.00

8.00Euro

Real Photos...

From Your Amiga

We test the Canon A80 digital camera and

i560 printer and ﬁnd whether the Amiga

can cut the mustard as a home photo lab!

Also in this issue

Features

OS 4 on Classic Amiga

Reviews

AmigaForever 6 CD

ShowGirls

USB Flash Drive

Tutorials

Envoy

Audio Compression

Programming in C

Contents

News

Editorial

Opus Guru

News

Bytes...

Bytes...

Ken’s Icons

Issue 19

Winter 2004

Over the years Amiga users

have found Directory Opus an

essential tool to help them

manage their ﬁles and with

version 5 it became even more

pervasive as a “Workbench

replacement”. GP Software, the

original developers, stopped

updating the Amiga version

some time ago in favour of the

Windows release, now at version

8. It was announced some time

ago that the rights for the Amiga

version had been sold to

Hyperion but we understand that

agreement fell through. The

prospects for a future Amiga

version looked bleak.

Because Opus 5’s Workbench

replacement mode is closely tied

to the underlying operating

system having the application

under development is particularly

important as the existing version

is unlikely to work if the OS has

been updated. This is already

the case with AmigaOS 4, Opus

5 does not currently work on the

new OS and even if it did it

would not support new features

such as more colourful icons. On

MorphOS DOpus does work,

with the exception of not

displaying PNG icons, but the

platform would still beneﬁt from a

proper port.

Most of the Total Amiga staff are

staunch DOpus 5.x users so we

were ecstatic to learn that the

world wide exclusive rights to

Directory Opus Magellan for the

Amiga platform have been

acquired by Guru Meditation, a

Swedish Amiga dealer. In their

announcement, Guru Meditation

say they have entered into an

agreement with a UK based

specialist software ﬁrm who have

begun work on porting the

program to AmigaOS 4 and

implementing new features.

Guru Meditation told Total Amiga

that they are keeping a close eye

on the classic Amiga and

MorphOS software markets and

if there is sufﬁcient demand to

justify the development effort

they will consider a port. Guru

Meditation hope to have more

details on the new features they

plan in time for our next issue.

Their ﬁrst release of Opus for OS

4 is expected in the new year.

The full press release is

available on:

http://www.gurumeditation.se/

press

Algor Gets

More Flash

A new collection of icons has

been released by Ken Lester

which uses the 256 colour

icon format supported by

AmigaOS 4. The additional

colours allow these icons to

look more smoothly shaded

without needing a patch. The

pack, called “Ken’s Icons”,

includes drawer icons for all

the Workbench directories

and many common

applications too. The icons

can also be used on earlier

AmigaOS versions if you run

the PowerIcons patch.

Download the pack from:

http://www.os4depot.net

Welcome to another packed

issue of Total Amiga! Thanks to

several new contributors who

responded to our request for

articles we have more variety

than ever in this issue.

As well as making contributions,

several people suggested ideas

for future articles. One of the

most popular requests was for

interviews with people important

to the Amiga scene. So in this

issue we have two interviews for

you to enjoy and we plan to

make an interview a regular

feature of the magazine from

now on.

On the AmigaOS 4 front, the ﬁrst

pre-release update is out now

giving early bird AmigaOne

users a very usable OS while

they wait for the ﬁnal release.

We have details of the update,

further developments and a

round up of some of the OS 4

native applications in

development in our regular “OS

4 Update” feature.

Most issues of Total Amiga seem

to end up having a theme, and

this time we have several

reviews of technology products

that can be used with the Amiga.

We start with my review of the

Canon PowerShot A80 digital

camera; which has been widely

praised in digital photography

magazines and on the web. I

cover the camera itself from my

point of view as a very amateur

photographer and the ways it

can be used with the Amiga.

Recently I was helping my

parents choose a new inkjet

printer to use with the their PC

and we happened to pick the

Canon i560. We set-up the

printer and were very impressed

with its performance and print

quality on Windows. Only at that

point did I think to see if an

Amiga driver was available and

rather to my surprise the i560

was listed as supported by the

latest TurboPrint release, 7.60.

Just how well does the printer

work on the Amiga? Find out in

our full review.

To accompany my audio

compression tutorial, Anthony

Hoffman has submitted a

detailed review of the Philips

EXP 431 a handy, pocket-sized

machine that can play your

Amiga encoded MP3s (or any

other for that matter) recorded

onto 8cm CD-ROMs. Finally

Mick Sutton has reviewed his

EasyDisk USB ﬂash drive which

is great for ﬁle sharing between

platforms.

In the fast moving world of

consumer technology products

particular models like these tend

to get replaced by enhanced

versions very quickly. We will try

to ﬁnd out the Amiga

compatibility of the current

versions when this issue hits the

doormats and will post details on

the “Current Issue” page of the

Total Amiga web site.

True to their word (as always),

Cloanto have supplied us with a

copy of the Amiga Forever 6 CD

edition. You can read my opinion

of the additional features it offers

over the download edition in our

review. Sam Byford has

contributed a review of

ShowGirls, a very promising

image viewer for MorphOS that

includes thumbnailing, icon

creation and basic image

processing among its wide array

of features.

Another reader suggestion was a

for a tutorial on Commodore’s

Envoy Amiga ﬁle and printer

sharing package. This is

especially useful now that many

Amigans have and AmigaOne or

Pegasos in addition to their

classic Amiga. I’m pleased to

say that Simon Archer has

stepped into the breach and

provided us with an excellent

article, you’ll be swapping ﬁles

between your Amigas in no time!

Also in the “Support” section is

my audio compression tutorial

which covers creating MP3s on

your Amiga in various ways. We

round off with the fourth part of

DaveP’s fantastic C tutorial.

So as you can see our call for

articles and suggestions was a

success, but we need your help

to keep it up! Please get in touch

if you would like to write

something for the magazine or

have an idea for a future article!

Enjoy the mag,

Robert Williams

editor@totalamiga.org

News

Editorial ..............................2

News Items ........................3

Features

AmiWest Show Reports .....8

Mick’s Take of Woe ......... 10

Kermit Woodall Interview 12

Bill Panagouleas Interview

........................................ 14

Open Video Toaster ........ 16

AmigaOS 4 Update ......... 18

AmigaOS 4 on Classics .. 20

Reviews

Canon A80 Digital Camera

........................................ 24

Canon i560 Printer .......... 26

Amiga Forever 6 CD ....... 28

Philips EXP431 ............... 30

ShowGirls........................ 31

EasyDisk USB Flash Drive

........................................ 34

Support

Audio Compression ........ 36

Envoy .............................. 43

C Tutorial Part 4 .............. 46

E3B have released a new

“Pro” version of their Algor

Zorro II USB/Flash ROM

card. The new version is

equipped with an enlarged

Flash ROM offering 1Mb

capacity, additional data can

be stored using the integrated

compression support. The

purpose of the ROM is to

allow software modules such

as the Poseidon USB stack

and OS3.9 Kickstart modules

to be available directly at boot

up without requiring disk

access or additional reboots.

The Algor is also compatible

with AmigaOS 4 and allows

the new Kickstart modules

(kmods) to be located in

FlashROM for faster booting.

Of course the Algor Pro still

features the excellent USB

1.1 controller with 3 ports

driven by Chris Hodges’

Poseidon USB stack.

For further details visit:

http://www.e3b.de

The AlgorPro is available

from KDH Datentechnik at

E114.95 (about £80) and

should also be available from

other dealers:

http://www.kdhshop24.de

Next Issue ....................... 50

Colour screenshots etc. .. 52

Opus Magellan may be beginning to look a little long in the tooth but

it still offers many features and options not yet found in Workbench.

It will be a valuable addition to OS4.

About Total Amiga

Legalese

Total Amiga is published quarterly

by South Essex Amiga Link.

Editor: Robert Williams

Design: Robert Williams

Contributors: Simon Archer

Sam Byford

Darren Glenn

Anthony Hoffman

Magnus Johnson

Warren Katchmar

Bill Panagouleas

David Pitcher

Paul Rezendes

Mick Sutton

Proofreading: Sam Byford

Mick Sutton

Sharon Sutton

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, UK.

Telephone: +44 (0) 1268 569937

(19:00 - 22:00 UK time please)

Only Amiga Software

Made it Possible

Total Amiga is designed and laid

out using:

Hardware:

Home built x86 PC

AMD Athlon XP 2500+

nVidia gForce 2 MX400

512Mb RAM, 40Gb HDD.

Software:

Amithlon by Bernie Meyer et. al.

Amiga OS 3.9 by Amiga

PageStream 4.1 by Softlogik

ImageFX 4.5 by Nova Design

Perfect Paint 2.93

by Georges Halvadjian

Photogenics 5 by Paul Nolan

Final Writer 5 by Softwood

Ghostscript 8.13 from artofcode

LLC ported to AmigaOS by

Whoosh777.

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

using Amiga software, no other

platforms 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 the editor and

contributors in their spare time.

While we 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 Total Amiga covers our costs

and nothing more, we don’t make

a proﬁt from it.

If you wish to contact a contributor

send your message to one of the

addresses in this section.

Amiga is a registered trademark

and the Amiga logo, the “Boing

Ball” device, AmigaDOS, Amiga

Kickstart, Amiga Workbench,

Autoconﬁg, Bridgeboard, and

Powered by Amiga are

trademarks of AMIGA Inc.

“Amigan” is copyright by Bob

Scharp and used with his

permission.

All other trademarks mentioned

are the property of their

respective owners.

Advertisers

AmigaKit.com.................. 51

AmigaWorld.net............... 42

Audio Evolution ............... 35

DiscreetFX ...................... 13

Forematt.......................... 45

Stellar Dreams ................ 23

TOTAL AMIGA

Winter 2004

2

3

News

News

Snoopium

The Incredible

Bytes...

AmiStart 0.65

IOSpirit

and OS 4

Shrinking Amiga!

Darius Brewka has released

version 0.65 of his start menu

and taskbar utility, AmiStart.

While it has many functions,

AmiStart’s key design goal

seems to be to look good, and to

that end it supports bitmap

textures, transparency,

antialiased TrueType fonts (using

the ttengine.library) and several

types of icon including PNG

icons if the PowerIcons patch is

installed.

• Enhancements in the latest

release include:

• Now requires a Hi/True colour

(16, 24 or 32bit) screen mode

• You can now use different tint

and label colours for each

layer/menu.

• Corrected a bug affecting

MorphOS in the start-up code

• Able to show PNG icons

through PowerIcons patch or

Scalos with proper

transparency.

• Better Scalos support for

launching applications and

opening drawers.

• Gamma slider for TrueType

fonts.

• Added smoothing of rounded

edges for a nicer look

• Option to display screens on

the taskbar.

• Many other minor

improvements and bug ﬁxes.

Ilkka Lehtoranta has released

Snoopium, a new ﬁlesystem

monitoring program for

MorphOS. Snoopium is based

on the classic Amiga utility

SnoopDOS, which was

released as open source

software by its original author

Eddy Carol. Ilkka has got

Eddy’s approval for his

development which adds a

new GUI to the program based

on MUI (MorphOS’s native

user interface) and other

MorphOS speciﬁc features.

Following the SnoopDOS

licence, Snoopium is also free

software, the application and

its source code can be

downloaded from:

http://www.lehtoranta.net/

snoopium/

IOSpirit (the developers of

applications such as fxPaint,

VHIStudio and fxScan) have

added a useful new

compatibility page to their

web site. The page lists the

compatibility of each of their

products with various

AmigaOS versions as well as

add-on PPC cards, MorphOS

and the Draco (a 68K based

Amiga compatible computer

made by Macrosystem). The

table is based on testing

carried out both by IOSpirit

themselves and compatibility

reports from users.

The four key products

mentioned above are all

compatible with Amiga OS 4

but run under the 68K

emulation. IOSpirit state that

OS 4 native ports are not

currently planned, however

the applications already

support the WarpUP. So all

three programs will be able to

use the PPC when the

planned WarpUP compatibility

is integrated into OS 4.

View the compatibility list at:

http://amiga.iospirit.de/

compatibility/

Prototype AmigaOne

motherboards in the mini-ITX

form factor (170 by 170mm)

have been displayed at various

Amiga shows over the last year

and now they have been

productionised. The ofﬁcial name

for these boards is the Micro

AmigaOne, which is abbreviated

as µA1. Eyetech are producing

two models, the µA1-C,

“commercial” version which has

a separate CPU board and is

available now via AmigaOne

dealers and the µA1-I (Industrial)

which has a soldered on CPU

and more features.

Many more features than the full

ATX size AmigaOne-XE have

been packed onto the µA1’s tiny

board, making up for their limited

on-board expansion options.

Both models include:

• 1 SODIMM memory expansion

slot (populated with 256Mb on

µA1-C)

• 1 33MHz PCI slot (support for

a third party riser with up to 3

slots).

• 40 and 44 way IDE headers

• 6-channel (5.1) surround

sound (CMI8738)

• Radeon 7000 on-board

graphics with 32Mb Video RAM

AmiStart is freeware and

supports AmigaOS 3.1 - 3.9 and

MorphOS, a graphics card

running in 16bit or better is

required. Compatibility with OS 4

is not known at the time of

writing. Download the latest

version from:

http://people.freenet.de/dariusb/

A µA1-C Package complete with manual and OS 4 pre-release.

• SVGA, S-Video and Composite

video connections

• 2 USB 1.1 connectors on the

back panel and two on headers

• PS/2 mouse and keyboard,

serial, parallel and game ports

• Uboot 1.1.1, supported by

Linux and Amiga OS 4.

In addition the µA1-C features:

• A1-XE type MegArray CPU

connector

• CPU module with fan cooled

800MHz PPC 750GX CPU

• VIA 686B ATA100 IDE

controller (DMA issue affecting

XE boards resolved)

• 3Com 10/100 Ethernet

controller

The µA1-I has many more

features (listed below) built-in

aimed at satisfying customers

who want to build it into industrial

applications such as kiosk

machines. To make room for

these features, the CPU module

connector has been dropped in

favour of mounting the CPU

directly on the board. In an

industrial setting this is an

advantage as it removes a

potential failure point (the

MegArray connection) in a

situation subject to vibration or

rough handling. Similarly the

CPU is passively cooled and the

system can be booted from a

Compact Flash memory card,

removing the need for a fan and

hard disk respectively, two more

failure prone mechanical

devices.

• PC104 expansion slot

• ATA133 IDE using the Silicon

Image 680 chipset

• Bootable Compact ﬂash slot.

• Gigabit Ethernet

• 256Mb on board memory plus

1 SODIMM slot

• Passively cooled, board

mounted 800MHz PPC 750GX

The ﬁrst batch of µA1-C boards

has been shipped to their lucky

owners and more are currently in

production. Stellar Dreams, the

UK distributor for the AmigaOne

can reserve one for you in the

next batch. The board costs

£512, which includes a copy of

Amiga OS 4, initially the latest

pre-release will be supplied

followed by the full version when

it is ready. For further

information and to order on-line

visit the Stellar Dreams web site:

http://www.stellardreams.co.uk/

The µA1-I is not publicly

available at the time of writing.

Photos of the board, which were

shown at the BigBash 2 party,

can be found at the following

URL:

http://lain.ziaspace.com/~ryu/a1

For more details on the board

and to make business enquiries

visit the Eyetech website:

http://www.eyetech.co.uk

Snoopium packages all the features of SnoopDOS into this

attractive MUI GUI which ﬁts in with the rest of MorphOS.

Bytes...

Making Fantasy a Reality

Hollywood

Update

Some of you may remember a

set of great 3D images of a

future desktop Amiga computer

rendered by Marko Hirv in about

1998. The photos showed a

sleek black computer similar to

an A1200 but with more ﬂowing

lines and a built-in CD-ROM.

Marko called his machine the

“Amiga Fantasy”

Project Reality has been formed

to bring that machine, in the

classic desktop Amiga form

factor used by the A500, A600

and A1200, to market. The plan

is to produce a case of the

recently µA1-C or µA1-I mini-ITX

motherboards and will use other

off-the-shelf components such

as hard drives and optical drives.

A provisional speciﬁcation has

been drawn up as follows:

• - Integrated USB based Amiga

style keyboard

• - PCI-Riser card, room for 1x

PCI card

• - Space for 1x EIDE HD and 1x

slimline slot-loading optical

drive

• - Access to µA1-I Compact

Flash slot

• - 60W integrated PSU, fan less

• - External power adapter, 110 -

240VAC

view Marko’s original images, 3D

renders and animations of the

work-in-progress model of the

new case and much more

information about the project on

its website:

http://realitydesign.asn.org.uk

Airsoft Softwair have released

a minor update to Hollywood,

their script-based multimedia

application. The new version

1.9.2 has numerous bug ﬁxes

and a few new features

including:

• Updated GUI and settings

tool.

• FULLSCREEN tooltype for

easily creating attractive full

screen presentations.

• One settings tool can now

be used to conﬁgure all the

supported systems (OS3,

WarpUP and MorphOS).

Work is under way to build a 3D

model of the case which can be

used for manufacturing. You can

The update can only be

applied to an existing 1.9

installation and can be

downloaded from the

Hollywood page of the AirSoft

website:

http://www.airsoftsoftwair.com

One of Marko Hirv’s original Amiga Fantasy images which

has inspired the Project Reality effort.

A pre-production µA1-I. Notice the Compact Flash slot

(bottom left) and the soldered on CPU (middle right).

TOTAL AMIGA

Winter 2004

4

5

News

News

Native AWeb

Bytes...

Faster, Better, More!

GoldEd

AWeb has become the ﬁrst

Amiga web browser to offer a

native version for AmigaOS 4. A

PPC native compile of version

3.5 has been released on the

Aweb open source project

website. The new release also

contains some minor bugﬁxes to

the Javascript support.

We tried the new release on an

AmigaOne XE G4 800MHz and

were very impressed with the

speed. Complex pages with

tables render very quickly and

overall the speed is deﬁnitely

streets ahead of IBrowse running

under interpreted emulation. On

the other hand Aweb failed to

load some images in web pages

(this seems to be a common

problem with recent releases of

the browser) and was rather

unstable. Some users have

replicated the stability problems

we experienced while others

report few problems. Overall the

native version seems to be a

promising start and shows how

native applications make the

most of the AmigaOne’s

performance.

The Aweb team has also

reported that they have started

work on porting the KHTML

engine to AmigaOS so it can be

used in a future Aweb release.

KHTML is the HTML rendering

engine developed for the Linux

KDE Konquerer browser and is

also used by Apple in Safari. The

plan is to have two versions of

Aweb, “Lite” that retains the

existing HTML engine and is

suitable for slower Amiga

systems and the full release,

based on KHTML, which is likely

to require more resources to run.

It currently seems that the port is

in the planning and research

stages but tasks to work on each

Proliﬁc Polish hardware

manufacturer Elbox have

released a third revision of their

FastATA 1200 enhanced IDE

controller for the Amiga 1200

(popularly known as the Power

Flyer in the UK).

Like its predecessors, the

FastATA 1200 III connects to the

A1200 via the Kickstart ROM

sockets and the Gayle chip

and can be ﬁtted to a

standard desktop system

or in a tower. It offers two

IDE channels that can

operate at up to PIO

(Polled IO) mode 5, which

has a maximum transfer rate

of 16.6Mb per second. The

controller is supplied with Elbox’s

FastATA ‘99 software that

supports hard drives, ZIPs,

LS120s and optical drives such

as CD and DVD writers.

AllegroCDFS, Elbox’s fast CD

and DVD ﬁlesystem is also

included.

This new version of the FastATA

adds support for 48bit Logical

Block Addressing enabling it to

work with drives of up to 2Tb (2

terrabytes, 2048Gb) capacity. It

also offers improved

performance and lower

processor load during transfers.

Visit the Elbox web site for more

details of the FastATA 1200 III

including listings of compatible

accelerator cards. You can

purchase it directly from the

Elbox on-line shop for E84.95

(about £60) plus postage:

http://elbox.com/products/

fast_ata_1200.html

Power Computing are Elbox’s

UK distributor, but at the time of

writing they do not list this new

revision, this may well have

changed by the time you read

this:

http://www.powerc.com

Telephone: (01234) 851500

Updates

& OS 4

Dietmar Eilert has been hard

at work updating his powerful

text editor suite, GoldEd

Studio AIX and its simpliﬁed

(and more affordable) cousin,

microGoldEd. Service pack

21 and later (23 is current at

the time of writing) have

removed some

incompatibilities with

AmigaOS 4 and Dietmar

supplies some speciﬁc

instructions to avoid

installation problems if you

have an older CD.

On MorphOS, support for the

gcc 2.95.4-3 C compiler has

been integrated and this is

accompanied by a MorphOS

native syntax parser which

should speed up rendering

long source code texts.

For most mGED and AIX

owners, these updates are

free and can be downloaded

from the GoldEd website after

entering a valid serial number.

Owners of CDs prior to

service pack 14 will need to

order a new CD (for a

handling charge) because the

combined updates have

become too large for on-line

distribution.

http://projects.dietmar- »

eilert.de/

Go East!

of its modules have been added

to the “Work Overview” section

of the web site.

To download the OS 4 release

and to ﬁnd out more about the

KHTML development visit:

http://aweb.sunsite.dk/

To celebrate the Amiga’s 20th

anniversary in 2005, Mr.

Hardware Computers are

organising the ﬁrst Amiga

show on America’s East coast

for many years. AmigaEast

2005 will be held on May the

28th and 29th at the Marriott

Courtyard hotel, LaGuardia,

just across from LaGuardia

Airport in New York City.

The latest Amiga hardware

and software will be

demonstrated at the show.

Exhibitors and retailers

including major vendors and

shareware developers will be

in attendance on both days.

AmigaEast will also feature

free seminars and product

demos from guest speakers

including industry veterans

and experts in Amiga and

AmigaDE.

Tickets for the show cost $20

for one day or $25 for both

days. There will be a banquet

on the Saturday night and

tickets for this are priced at

$38 per head. For further

details and to order tickets

on-line visit:

http://www.mrhardware »

computers.com

Join the Wireless World

Aggregation’s What you Need

Soft3 Development have

announced a new RSS news

feed reader for Amiga OS 4, it is

expected to be released into

private beta test by the time you

read this and should be available

publicly by the end of the year.

So what is RSS?

News can be retrieved directly

from feeds in on-line mode and

is also saved to disk so it can be

reviewed off-line. OpenURL is

used to enable links in RSS new

articles to be displayed in any

web browser.

Xnet-RSS requires AmigaOS 4

and will be freeware, for further

details and more screenshots

visit:

http://www.soft3dev.net/

xnet-rss_e.php

These days it is rare for a new

Amiga retailer to enter the

market so we were happy to

hear of AmigaKit.com, a new

company offering a range of

general and Amiga speciﬁc

products via their website.

Products include accelerators,

memory, hard disks and cables.

One of Amigakit.com’s most

interesting products is an

802.11b compatible wireless

PCMCIA network card for the

A1200 and A600. 802.11 is the

standard used by most wireless

networks and although faster

“11g” hardware is now available

it is backwards compatible with

“11b” cards like this one. This

card is supplied with Neil

Cafferkey’s freeware

prism2.device driver, a CD of

networking software and

illustrated instructions to help

you get it working with the Miami

and Genesis TCP/IP stacks.

Amigakit have written some

custom front-end software called

EasyNet that enables you to

control your connection from a

comfortable GUI; it includes

features to conﬁgure the wireless

card and set-up encryption that

would otherwise require editing a

text conﬁguration ﬁle. The

wireless card kit costs £34.99

plus postage and packaging.

Really Simple Syndication is a

protocol originally designed to

enable web sites to share their

news headlines with other sites.

You may have seen it in action

when one site has a “headlines

from” box which is updated

independently of the rest of the

page. As sites added RSS feeds,

utilities have been developed on

other platforms that collect news

from these feeds and display it in

a desktop application. The

utilities, often called news

aggregators, enable you to

monitor many news sites without

surﬁng between multiple sites.

Along with each headline the

RSS feed also supplies a brief

description of the article and a

link to the full text on the web

site, it is also possible to embed

pictures and other information.

XNet-RSS is likely to be the ﬁrst

publicly available RSS reader for

the Amiga. The software

features a Reaction GUI and

supports the RSS 2.0 standard.

The NETPCM010 wireless card is compatible with the A1200

and A600 and works with standard 802.11 wireless networks.

Also available is a wired

PCMCIA network card for the

A1200 and A600, this is supplied

with the cnet.device driver and

the suite of software mentioned

above. Although the wireless

settings part of the EasyNet GUI

is obviously not needed with this

card, you can still use it to

control the wired connection and

easily make some basic settings

such as your Amiga’s name and

IP address. This kit is £24.99

plus p&p.

Although mostly concentrating

on hardware, Amigakit.com have

recently been made an ofﬁcial

distributor for Cloanto’s Amiga

Forever 6 emulator package.

The CD edition, complete with

KX/Light CD boot facility and

additional multimedia content (as

reviewed in this issue) costs

£37.95 plus p&p.

Take a look at the Amigakit.com

advert on page 51 to get 10% off

selected products, exclusively for

Total Amiga readers! For more

information or to place an order,

visit:

http://www.amigakit.com/

Web Byte...

www.amigahardware.com

Just enough room this month to

mention this fantastic site which

chronicles the many and varied

items of Amiga hardware from

complete machines through to

a battery backed clock. Each

entry has plenty of info. and

many have high quality photos

too. The “Big Book” is regularly

updated and essential to any

Amiga enthusiast!

Setting up your wireless card to access an WEP encrypted

network is easy thanks to Amigakit’s EasyNet interface.

TOTAL AMIGA

Winter 2004

6

7

Features

Features

AmiWest Show Report

Chiles was the place that we

chose. The conversation

bounced around as we ate, it

settled for awhile on the

upcoming talk of Garry Hare.

Then from within the group the

thought... let’s make up a

business card, yes one saying

that we are now the new CEO of

Amiga.inc. Ah, the plans that are

made at a business lunch. We

returned to the show and got

busy with the plan of making a

business card for anyone who

wanted one (except Garry of

course). The name was left

blank, so people could print in

their names. As I was doing the

layout of the card, in walks Garry

Hare. Hmmm, quick, ﬂip

screens. With the help of the

lunch group, getting the original

card and then the Boing picture,

the card came together before

the start of the dinner. Garry had

left by now and it was

announced what the plan was for

the business card. Everyone

could have a card, put their

names on the card and at dinner

hand the card to Garry. The

cards were handed out to all that

wanted one.

The buffet banquet was well

done, thanks to all those who

helped in making it happen. We

were getting closer to the time of

Garry’s speech and

announcements. Again I will not

give the speech here. I will say

that Garry presented himself

well. There was a sense that

yes, Garry is a businessman.

The Question and Answer period

was good. Garry did not seem to

be in hurry. Then after the Q&A,

a group walked up to Garry’s

table. There was still some

questions being asked. At a

break of questions, I said

something like, Garry, now that

you will be hiring people for

development, I would like to give

you my card. There was a pause

as Garry looked at it. He looked

back at me like what? Argh, I

had pulled out my dinner ticket

and gave that to him. Time to re-

group, I said oh, wrong card. I

want to give you my business

card. Then I handed him the

correct card. Now, he looked at it

and then came the smile, as the

smile grew, more cards were

being handed to him from the

group. I am glad to report that

Garry Hare does have a good

sense of humor. As I thought

about the setting it struck me

that we were with the CEO of

KMOS having dinner. I found

that quite interesting, “if” plans

move on and KMOS is able to

bring to pass their plans will we

look back and say, I was there, I

sat there with Garry Hare, we

talked and laughed together? I

do not know how this will unfold.

For me, knowing what the show

was, it was good to be there.

May there be more shows and

better times ahead. I was not

able to attend the show on

Sunday, so my report will end

here. If you are interesting in

knowing more please look on the

Internet, I am sure you will ﬁnd a

site where you that your can

read or listen to the show talks

and interviews.

AmiWest 2004 was the show when KMOS met the Amiga community and Warren Katchmar was there...

B ack in the early part of this

needed. I was doing some ﬁnal

touches for my Hollywood

presentations. I had taken some

photos of my computer and I

wanted them in my

presentations. Okay, I needed to

get them from my camera to my

hard drive. Hmmm... I did not

have USB on my Amiga One to

connect my camera. I looked

around and saw that the

MorphOS guys had their system

up and running. I walked over

and we chatted about their

machines. I then asked if they

would download my pictures to a

CD. They were more than willing

to help. Great, I was then able to

include my pictures of my A1 into

my Hollywood presentations.

BTW, Hollywood is a great

program. If you need to do a

presentation, then take a look at

using Hollywood. By the time I

had ﬁnished cleaning up my

presentations it was time to close

the show room ﬂoor.

The day of the show was here. It

was a good feeling for me to be

at the show. The last AmiWest

show that I attended was in

2000. At that show was Amiga

Inc. If you have followed the

Amiga during the last ﬁve years

or so, then you know that a lot

has happened since then. I

remember the last time that I

was here and how it felt better

for me this time. I am not sure

why? Maybe it is because I feel

that this is the part of the core

goup that is now left. In my way

of thinking I do not feel that the

Amiga scene will become

worse? Okay, enough, I just want

to say that for me there seemed

to be a more relaxed feeling with

this show compared to the one in

2000.

Last minute things were being

taken care of as we got ready to

open the show on Saturday.

There was not a massive turn

out for the show, but that was to

be expected. As I thought about

the turn out, yes the number was

not great, but the distance

travelled by those that where

there was amazing! From

Belgium, New York state, North

Carolina, Washington state,

Texas, and yes even some from

California. I am sorry if I missed

any other places.

Ben Hermans was walking

around, so I took the time to

introduce myself. You may guess

what the topic became? No, not

OS 4, but being a lawyer and

comparing the laws here to those

in Belgium.

Those people that I saw seemed

to have an good time. They

made their way around the show

room ﬂoor checking out the

setups. There was a gathering

around Mr. Hardware. The news

that Sbase4Pro is being worked

on for a OS 4 port was really

great news. A OS 4 port would

be a big plus. There was also the

prototype Catweasel MK4 card, it

looks great and offers a lot. The

planned release date is for this

coming October. Next to Mr.

Hardware there was the UGN

group with Bill “tekmage” Borsari.

Bill was a very busy person

taking care of all the interviews.

You can hear those interviews on

a couple of different web sites. I

will not go into what was said

during the interviews as you may

listen to them for yourself.

The other displays were from the

host of the show, SACC. There

was a bit of a hardware and

software for sale on their table.

There was a display of two

Pegasos machines. MorphOS

was looking really good, felt solid

and was quite responsive.

Houston Amiga users group

were showing Amiga Forever 6,

it also felt good. Plus there were

a couple more Amiga Ones with

Amiga OS 4 on them. So there

were several choices for users to

look at and try.

year, when I learnt that

there would be an AmiWest

show, I made plans to attend and

now the show has come and

gone. I am glad that I experinced

the show, it was good to be with

other Amiga users.

Yes there was the news of Amiga

Inc. being acquired by KMOS

and other news that one can

read from various places on the

Internet. So, I will not go into the

all the details of the news.

I arrived on the Friday in time for

the show and went to the Clarion

hotel where I was greeted by

some members of SACC. I was

told that the hotel needed some

more time to get the show room

ready. We did some prep work,

such as unloading gear to the

room next to the show room.

Shortly after that we were

allowed to begin the setup.

During the setup time, I had a

good time introducing myself to

the others that were setting up

their gear. I met Richard

Drummond (Mr. Hardware /

UAE) and he told me that Russ

Norrby was coming in later. I

also met Bill Borsari (UGN) and

Jens Schoenfeld (Individual

Computers). From there I walked

around and met two guys setting

up their MorphOS machine. We

had a nice talk and I told them

that I would like to see their

machine running when they were

done. I also met other members

from the SACC group.

It seemed to me that most were

willing to give a hand wherever

Video toaster and other Zorro

cards at Creative Computers.

Computer Connection was

showing the Toaster-Tower/Flyer.

For whatever reason I did not

spend a lot of time there but they

did have an impressive set up.

Grasshopper LLC was being

represented by the SACC group

as Deron Kazmaier could not be

at the show. It was hoped that

there may have been an OS 4

version of PageStream for the

show. From what I know (yes

take it for what is worth) Deron

was hoping to have an A1

machine to work on the port, but

the machine did not show up in

time for him to have the OS 4

version ready for the show, but

knowing Deron, I feel that we will

see a port for OS 4 soon after

Deron gets his machine.

As for me I was running my

presentations and one of

http://www.intuitionbase.com/. I

did get a lot of nice comments

about the presentation. I also ran

another presentation, it was

showing the apps that I had

installed and running on my A1.

Ben walked by while my

presentation of my apps was

showing. He came up and

started to ask me questions on

what I had done. We had a nice

talk and during that talk, I

remember him saying something

like, just think, this is as slow as

your machine will run, from now

on it will only get faster. I was

thinking to myself, bring it on! His

point made me feel good. Here I

was running my apps and I was

pretty happy that they were

running. Remembering that this

is “just” a pre-release. Yes, the

ﬁnal version will be so much

better... Wow!

Getting hungry, a group got

together to ﬁnd a place to eat.

AmiWest: Take 2 Paul Rezendes also went to

the show with his Pegasos

II, and here’s his take...

I ’ve been wanting to attend

The show was scheduled to start

Saturday at 10 AM so I arrived in

Sacramento in the late afternoon

the Friday before the show.

Steve found me in the parking lot

of the Clarion hotel and told me

we had a few hours to kill before

we could bring in the equipment

and set up. A few hours later we

were in the gallery room with

boxes unpacked and cables all

over. After a short time

everything was up and running

looking good as ever so we

cleaned up and called it a night.

The ﬁrst day of the show went

well. Sadly not many visitors

were present. This gave me a

chance to walk the ﬂoor, get

some pictures and look at the

Amiga One systems on display,

all of which had the pre-release

of OS4 installed.

With more people starting to

come in for the show I moved

back over to my booth where I

was for the rest of the evening. I

got to give some great one on

ones with a few Amiga users that

haven’t had the chance to see

MorphOS in action. It gave me a

good feeling to see and hear the

good reactions and compliments

they had for it. Many had no idea

that it was as compatible and

Amiga like as it truly is. We were

able to show off the new

upcoming version of FroggerNG,

which is just fantastic. It has a

completely new GUI which can

be skinned. Also shown were the

Papyrus Ofﬁce Beta, several

classic apps, some freeware

ports and the hardware itself.

At the end of the ﬁrst day, even

though attendance was much

lower then expected, we made a

great ﬁrst impression. Several

die hard Amiga users were sold

on the fact that MorphOS was a

valid alternative to the Amiga

experience and they could still

have that same long loved look

and feel of using the real thing.

We did our job well.

Day two of the show was much

the same as the ﬁrst. The

vendors were showing off what

they had to offer and I didn’t get

to walk the ﬂoor as much as I did

Saturday. I had to leave early to

make the long drive home and

wanted to make sure the Genesi

booth got lots of coverage and

plenty of demos going. I did just

that, showed off a lot more of the

machines and even managed to

get a few users to the Pegasos

site and get all the info on

placing an order for a system.

Packing up and looking back, I

thanked everyone for having us.

I would have thought a show like

Amiwest would have had more

visitors. It didn’t. With two brand

new hardware solutions

available at last we should start

seeing more users coming back.

I look forward to next year and

hope I can attend again.

another Amiga related event

for several years but work has

always come in the way of me

making it to one. This year I

found I could go to Amiwest and

take a nice vacation at the same

time. Shortly after the show was

announced I asked Bill Buck of

Genesi if I could attend and

demo the Pegasos II and the

latest available release of

MorphOS (1.4.2), which he

gladly accepted.

This being my ﬁrst show since

Commodore went out of

business I was excited and had

no idea what to expect. I was

even more excited being an

ofﬁcial part of the show with a

booth and a fully working product

to show, my personal Pegasos II

G4 system. I started planning

and decided I needed some

help. Steve Hodges, also a

fellow Pegasos II user, agreed to

give me a hand. His living in

Sacramento was a huge help.

He really got this together for us

and took care of all the

reservations.

Over the next couple of months

Steve and I made some contacts

with various MorphOS

developers and collected some

fantastic software to show,

ﬁgured out how we would show

everything, and got to know each

other through email and IRC

conversations. Everything fell

right into place.

One of the A1s on display at the show, this one’s in a ﬂash case.

8

Paul and Steve’s Pegasos machines ready to please the visitors.

TOTAL AMIGA

Winter 2004

9

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