Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: eliyahu on October 28, 2014, 11:02:05 PM
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@thread
since so many folks have been posting on amiwest, i thought i'd type up a quick walk-through of my time at the show this year. here goes....
i arrived in sacramento on wednesday on the train from chicago a day before the programming seminar was due to start as i usually do. brian deneen (president of SACC, the user group that runs amiwest) and steven solie (@ssolie) were kind enough to pick me up and take me to the show hotel. after checking in we piled into len's truck and went to brian's office to start carting the signs and other equipment needed for the show to the hotel. andy (@broadblues), Epsilon, and others were already starting to show up.
thursday morning we all set up our next-generation machines up in one of the hotel meeting rooms to start the programming seminar. this year was more akin to a hackathon, for those of you familiar with the term in the linux world. we each brought an idea or a project to work on while developers from the AOS4 team helped out. there were eleven attendees and four developers on-hand to help. i wanted to port over libvncserver as a standard amiga library and from there work on a new VNC server to replace amivnc. i learned plenty, as did others. one husband-and-wife team is interested in continuing jabberwocky development, for example.
friday some of the regular attendees started rolling in, with many of us still hacking away on our machines. during the show, one of the tables in the presentation area was set up for folks to keep their computers there so they could continue to code during the show. the SACC guys all started showing up that afternoon to set up the best display of classic hardware and software i've ever seen. every system commodore shipped was available for folks to use, with plenty of installed software ready to go; the 'jay miner' software library was available to peruse, which includes hundreds of titles; and daniel and alan were available throughout the show to help repair classic gear that needed some TLC. friday night was the classic clinic, and folks brought in machines needing repairs. bill borsari brought his A4000 desktop which needed re-capping, and there was an A3000T, too, which was being worked on. someone also brought an A1200 to have looked at by amigakit. many of the attendees went out to an italian restaurant afterwards for dinner, and upon their return, the party continued late into the night, with everyone helping themselves to some of the beer brought by robert goodlett (@goody).
saturday morning the show officially was kicked off. this year the vendors included hyperion entertainment showing off an amigaone 500 and sam440ep running the latest build of amigaos 4.1 final edition; intuitionbase.com, which on saturday was ably represented by mike brantley (@mbrantley) and samantha brantley demonstrating digital painting with sketchblock and other graphics tools; A-EON, which was showing off amistore, radiance, and a couple of beta testers brought their amigaone x5000 systems; SACC, which had an awesome display of classic gear taking up a good portion of the show floor; bill borsari (@tekmage) of UGN, who did a great job of streaming the presentations with a video toaster-based broadcast setup; Epsilon came all the way from australia and was showing a powerbook with MOS 3.7, a macbook pro running AOS4.1 classic under winuae, a netbook running AROS, and a minimig runing some classic games; infocessories, which was showing off amiga REBOL on a sam440ep; matthew leaman of amigakit (@amigakit), who had a couple of tables with classic kit for sale; and alex perez, who was showing a chameleon 64 and an X5000 running linux.
the presentations were kicked off by the indomitable steven solie, who updated the crowd on amigaos 4.1 final edition and where things were with amigaos 4.2. hyperion followed up the presentation with a formal press release on AOS4.1 final edition (http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=157:amigaos-41-final-edition&catid=36:amigaos-4x&Itemid=18) with details on what's included. for some reason hyperion wanted to keep some of the details under wraps until the next issue of amiga future is released, in which is an exclusive preview article. kinda wanting to give the attendees a bit more info, i actually did a demo of the new release on sunday (with permission, of course :)), but more on that later. next up was trevor dickinson (@TrevorDick) of A-EON who had tons of news, including:
- the official unveiling of amistore with a terrific apple-style introduction video
- the official unveiling of radiance, a great suite of graphics and video tools
- the official unveiling of version 2.4 of the radeonhd drivers, which now supports composited video, much-improved performance, and support for most AMD R5, R7, and R9 video cards
- an update on libreoffice for AOS4
- an update on warp3D support for radeonhd cards, including news that A-EON has purchased the rights to the W3D source
- an update on the amigaone X5000 beta testing
- news that A-EON has acquired the rights to octamed soundstudio from the original developer and is working on a native AOS4 version
- the official unveiling of the first xorro board and news that more are in the works
- and, lastly, that amigaworld.net, like amiga.org, is now being sponsored by A-EON
paul sadlik, a very active beta tester for amistore, was running it on his SAM at the hyperion table for folks interested in checking it out, some of the X5000 machines were around the show floor, the new drivers were up and running.... so, yeah, nothin' going on in amiga-land, huh? ;)
after lunch we were treated to the first of several presentations by andy broad, this one showing up some of the components in the radiance multimedia suite for AOS4. the package includes:
- version 2.4 of the radeonhd driver set
- an updated dvplayer to use composited video, plus new performance tweaks
- an updated mplayer to use composited video, plus major performance enhancements
- sketchblock 2.7 and sketchblock fractals for radiance, a terrific digital sketching and image editing program
- personal paint 7.3 for AOS4, which has received a pile of new features and runs natively now on next-generation machines
- workbench candi -- animated and composited backgrounds for the workbench
- animated icons for workbench
- and tons of new backdrops, videos, posters, etc.
andy also walked us through the new sketchblock and personal paint features, which looked terrific. my only frustration was having to wait a few more weeks to get this stuff. all of it will be made available via amistore through the radiance bundle or individually. i've been using sketchblock for over a year now, and am a big fan, and have already paid for personal paint 7.3. now we just need amistore to release to the public.... (hint, hint ;))
bill borsari did his annual review of games released in the past year including the latest from cherry darling and some indie releases for the classic amiga, like solid gold. bill also showed off some CD32 games, the chameleon 64, and the new bespoke joystick from amigakit. afterwards folks started to shuffle out while the banquet was being setup by the caterers.
... continued in part two ...
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... continued from part one (above) ...
the banquet turned out to be outstanding this year. andy broad was the headliner this year, and walked us through his views on the state of the platform, his own amiga history, and treated us to some wonderful blues music. for those of you not familiar with andy, he's the developer behind sketchblock for AOS4; blender for AOS4; ports of perl and PIL for AOS4; proaction, aorganiser, animicon, and aweb. he's also a tremendously talented blues musician. you can find out more about andy, his software, and his music at http://www.broad.ology.org.uk/. and if andy's terrific keynote wasn't enough, this year we were honored with the presence of colin proudfoot and his wife. colin was the managing director at commodore UK and served up some great stories about the old days, including plenty of dirt on mehdi ali. this year there were around fifty people (i counted 49 exactly, but may have missed some) who stayed around for the banquet, although, truth be told, while everyone was eating, i was busy debugging one of the X5000 machines.
naturally there was the after-party in which copious amounts of beer flowed. a bunch of us stayed behind in the lobby of the hotel, drinking and talking the night away. some more than others. in fact a certain new zealander whom i won't name needed sunglasses the next morning. ;-) this is one of the best features of amiwest: the social aspect. the forums can be a rather, er, lively place at times, but at amiwest everyone gets along splendidly. it's a great event: amigans spending two days talking amiga, discovering new things, watching demos, playing games, tinkering with hardware, and otherwise having a great time. plenty of commodore veterans stop by every year, and it's always nice to see folks from the forums, like ken lester (@klesterjr) and TJ (@AmigaSociety), in real life. there were so many amiga.org members around, maybe next year we should do an official get-together at the show. any thoughts?
sunday morning dawned earlier than many of us expected and the first presentation of the day was, actually, me. i had asked steven solie the previous night if i could show off some of the new features of amigaos 4.1 final edition to the local crowd. he agreed and since hyperion wanted to keep some things exclusive for the amiga future article, it wasn't supposed to be streamed. whoops. ;) anyway i walked through the new graphics subsystem, intuition and BOOPSI updates, 3D stack updates, workbench enhancements, the new shell and console device, performance boosts, etc., etc. from my own personal experience it's by far the best release of the amiga operating system to date and worth every penny. but folks can make up their own mind.
the next presentation that day was Epsilon who showed off amigaos 4.1 classic running under winuae. this was a great talk which walked folks through all of the setup required to get things going. i was surprised to find out how popular this was since PPC support was included in winuae beta builds, for example. alex perez was next up who talked us through linux on the amigaone X5000 beta machines. the performance looks to be really terrific, and i'm looking forward to putting linux through its paces on my beta system next month. the last presentation of the day, REBOL on amiga, wasn't possible due to a systems issue on brian deneen's SAM, unfortunately.
matthew, trevor, dave (@AmigaDave), and i had a chance to sit and talk about amiga.org briefly. more on this later, by the way. towards 5PM the party had to break up, and with samantha brantley running around, teasing some the guys on IRC, we started to pack up. for those of you watching the streams, i hope you enjoyed the presentations, but i really think the best thing about amiwest is the people. for two days you can really see how the amiga is very much alive for so many people and even how the new generation is being introduced to it. my son has access to tons of games and computers, but his favorite is M.A.C.E. on my pegasos2. my daughter prefers typing on my amiga to her mother's windows 7 machine. despite all of the in-fighting and negativity we sometimes see on the forums, amiwest reminds us that there's a bunch of us out there who really love this hobby and that development continues on the software and hardware fronts apace.
anyway -- that's my story. i'm happy to answer questions folks might have. :)
-- eliyahu
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Nice report :)
Since you make a summary thread, I figure the PDFs concerning releases announced on AmiWest belongs in this thread;
http://www.a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_RadeonHD24.pdf
http://www.a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_Radiance.pdf
The collection of PDFs from AEON site;
http://www.a-eon.biz/?news=25-10-2014
And the AmiStore youtube presentation;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RABMLbU8iwE
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Nice report. Glad to see things moving along.
Quick question: Will my current X1000 video driver update themselves using Ami-Update, or will I need to download the new video drivers from A-EON and install them manually?
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@Niding
thx for keeping track of the links!
@Darrin
good question. i don't really know. my understanding is current driver owners can upgrade to version 1.2, and i think that's through the A-EON site rather than amiupdate, although i could be wrong. version 2.4 will be available through amistore. maybe matthew/trevor/hans can answer this for you definitively?
-- eliyahu
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Great post Eldee! Was great seeing you again at the show. Sorry we never found the time to chat more about fly fishing and showing you the gear I use. But was nice to chat Amiga with you at the show. TJ
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@eliyahu,
I missed the update talk regarding progress on the Libre Office port, can you enlighten me as to what was said, or shown?
Thanks for your report.
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Great post Eldee! Was great seeing you again at the show. Sorry we never found the time to chat more about fly fishing and showing you the gear I use. But was nice to chat Amiga with you at the show. TJ
heh. don't worry. we'll be talking in a few months before i go on my next vacation. :)
@amigadave
basically the port is complete at this point, but there are some very tricky bugs thomas is having to hunt down. he's working on a fuller, more complete native version of GDB (the GNU debugger) for AOS4 to help him in that endeavor.
-- eliyahu
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Nice report eliyahu.
It's good to see some uplifting news and can't wait for the new stuff to be available. I get sick of reading all the negativity on the forums lately. I'm glad for the direction provided by Trevor/A-EON/Hyperion et al. I think the work done so far has been great by all!
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@eliyahu
Really good detailed report, thanks for taking the time to scribe it.
@Darrin
All A-EON products are available as updates through AMIStore and the RadeonHD 1.0 driver can be updated to v1.2 shortly by authorised users through your AMISphere account login on the A-EON website.
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@ eliyahu and Amigakit
Thanks for the info.
All A-EON products are available as updates through AMIStore and the RadeonHD 1.0 driver can be updated to v1.2 shortly by authorised users through your AMISphere account login on the A-EON website.
AMISphere??? I think I'm missing something.
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AMISphere is the login name and password you were provided with your AmigaONE X1000 when you first purchased it in order to download RadeonHD and other updates. You will need this login also for AMIStore.
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AMISphere is the login name and password you were provided with your AmigaONE X1000 when you first purchased it in order to download RadeonHD and other updates. You will need this login also for AMIStore.
Oh dear! Hmmm..... now what did I do with that? I never used it. :D
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Great summary! Hopefully next year I can make it to one of these things. Not trying to start a flame war or anything else, but only out of idle curiosity, was there no MorphOS stuff there at all?
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Great summary! Hopefully next year I can make it to one of these things. Not trying to start a flame war or anything else, but only out of idle curiosity, was there no MorphOS stuff there at all?
Epsilon and AmigaDave both had systems running MorphOS on them.
In fact Epsilon had MorphOS, Aros, WinUAE, etc...
TJ
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Thanks for the detailed report. Quite interested in the turnout.
Glad to see we are still having fun, like me on IRC.
Cheers!
Didn't get the lights out though xD
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@thread
mike brantley (@mbrantley) has posted some terrific pictures from show on his website:
http://www.thevideojunkie.com/AmiWest2014/
-- eliyahu
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"-an update on libreoffice for AOS4
-an update on warp3D support for radeonhd cards...
-an update on the amigaone X5000 beta testing
-news that A-EON has acquired the rights to octamed soundstudio from the original developer and is working on a native AOS4 version
-the official unveiling of the first xorro board and news that more are in the works"
Any transcript / video about trevor announcements?
(do I need to wait AmigaFuture magazine for all details?)
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"-an update on libreoffice for AOS4
-an update on warp3D support for radeonhd cards...
-an update on the amigaone X5000 beta testing
-news that A-EON has acquired the rights to octamed soundstudio from the original developer and is working on a native AOS4 version
-the official unveiling of the first xorro board and news that more are in the works"
Any transcript / video about trevor announcements?
(do I need to wait AmigaFuture magazine for all details?)
videos will be posted by robert (@RobertB) and bill (@tekmage) as time goes on, but it might be a while. some of these things will be detailed further in press releases from A-EON at some point, too.
-- eliyahu
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- news that A-EON has acquired the rights to octamed soundstudio from the original developer and is working on a native AOS4 version
This is the best Amiga news I've heard in over a decade.
Fantastic!
:pint:
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@thread
looks like tekmage is starting to post his videos from amiwest. first up is steve solie's presentation from saturday morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuqm452uYGE
-- eliyahu
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Thanks for the link :)
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looks like tekmage is starting to post his videos from amiwest. first up is steve solie's presentation from saturday morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuqm452uYGE
in addition to ssolie's presentation above, there is also:
- news from A-EON presented by TrevorDick (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySXwGX7n7RE))
- games presentation from tekmage (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EMYfhEXABM))
- banquet presentation from Colin Proudfoot (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIccyrUvex4))
i'll try and update this post as new ones come in. :)
-- eliyahu
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Nice report :)
Since you make a summary thread, I figure the PDFs concerning releases announced on AmiWest belongs in this thread;
http://www.a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_RadeonHD24.pdf
http://www.a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_Radiance.pdf
The collection of PDFs from AEON site;
http://www.a-eon.biz/?news=25-10-2014
yet more press releases from A-EON have been posted, including:
- A-EON acquires amigaworld.net (http://a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_AmigaWorld.pdf)
- amistore launch imminent (http://a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_Amistore.pdf)
- workbench CANDI announced (http://a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_Candi.pdf)
- sentinel x-logger announced (http://a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_Sentinel_X_Logger.pdf) (new xorro board)
apparently more announcements are to come. :)
-- eliyahu
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in addition to ssolie's presentation above, there is also:
- news from A-EON presented by TrevorDick (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySXwGX7n7RE))
- games presentation from tekmage (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EMYfhEXABM))
- banquet presentation from Colin Proudfoot (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIccyrUvex4))
i'll try and update this post as new ones come in. :)
yet more videos posted:
- the amiwest 2014 evening banquet (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J1aBy-x0pk&list=UUeJYhevphgCZwgm1hS_2z4w))
- andy broad presenting on sketchblock (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy1MOqZS1ek&list=UUeJYhevphgCZwgm1hS_2z4w))
- alex perez presenting on GNU/linux for the X5000 (link to youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJIATwbr6M0&list=UUeJYhevphgCZwgm1hS_2z4w))
a big thanks to tekmage for posting these videos so quickly!
-- eliyahu
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Thanks for the report, interesting stuff!
Good to hear when a popular classic program like Octamed is being updated for OS4.
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Nice report!
It was a very fun and tiring time. I don't think I slept more than a few hours. :D
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@eliyahu
Thanks for the links :) and for hinting that he's been posting videos ;)
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@tekmage
That was quickly :eek:
Thank for the vids :D
:drink:
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@thread
a few more things from amiwest:
- another show report (http://webplus.broad.ology.org.uk/blog.php?blogid=560) from andy broad (@broadblues)
- a youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdeQ1iLJpl4) walking around the show floor
- epsilon's presentation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Wzt5mpzn4) on running AOS4 using winuae
and since this thread is becoming more about links to videos and pictures than just my initial write-up, i've changed the thread title to reflect that. enjoy!
-- eliyahu
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My version --
Andy Broad talks SketchBlock
http://youtu.be/LN2ceyUFhT4
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
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Eldee Stephens and Steven Solie on Amiga OS 4.1 Final Edition
http://youtu.be/uDiHM9us9QE
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
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Epsilon talks about Amiga OS 4.1 with UAE
http://youtu.be/9UIXHO8dh0M
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
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Thanks everyone for the videos!
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Two more of mine are on-line --
Perez shows Linux on the AmigaOne X5000
http://youtu.be/gcR-QhEIHeQ
Steven Solie fields questions on Amiga OS 4.1 Final Edition
http://youtu.be/C-rXgj5PNiI
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
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@thread
looks like tekmage is starting to post his videos from amiwest. first up is steve solie's presentation from saturday morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuqm452uYGE
-- eliyahu
Great but AFAIR, Bill did record the Amiwest programming 2013 any chance that one day the videos get uploaded to wiki.amigos.net?
Thanks
Kamelito
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Great but AFAIR, Bill did record the Amiwest programming 2013 any chance that one day the videos get uploaded to wiki.amigos.net?
i didn't think the 2013 sessions were recorded, but i could be wrong. best thing to do would be to PM @tekmage and see what the scoop is. let us know. :)
-- eliyahu
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Dickinson tells of A-EON Technology's plans
http://youtu.be/8YAQG-5WY4w
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
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Dickinson tells of A-EON Technology's plans
"my name is dickinson. trevor dickinson." :lol:
-- eliyahu