Top News im Juli 2001

More News im Juli 2001

Documentation for ColdFire 4e (12.07.2001 - 05:10 Uhr)

Motorola will not ship the new ColdFire 4e, which the xTOS team had chosen for the Pegasus, until the second quarter of 2002, but documentation is available now. It should be noted that the ColdFire 4e is not - as many claim - completely compatible with the 68k processor series. In the link below you can download the documentation in PDF format. (tr)

http://files.dhs.nu/files_doc/v4ecfum.zip

(tr)

ST tunes in MP3 format (12.07.2001 - 05:10 Uhr)

Many music tracks from ST games and demos are now available for download in MP3 format in the "Atari Modulearchive". So if you want to listen to classics from Giana Sisters & Co. again, you should visit the website. (tr)

http://atarimods.dhs.nu/

(tr)

News from invers Software (12.07.2001 - 05:10 Uhr)

Recently a new WindowsPack update for Calamus SL2000 has been released. The changes to CALAMUS.EXE 2.8 in detail:

• Text scrolling in Calamus documents is faster again
• Scroll mice now also support horizontal scrolling (hold SHIFT key)
• Fixed line output error under Windows 95/98/ME
• Revised Calamus parameter dialog
• New system font handling, therefore error "%21" no longer possible
• When passing data to web pages, the buffer has been increased significantly (important for the version checker module to be released shortly)
• The version number of Calamus.EXE and (if loaded) that of GDIPRN.DLL is now shown in the bottom right of the Calamus window
• The dialogue grey is now adapted to Windows 2000

In addition, changes have been made to the GDIPRN.DLL. By the way, invers Software is taking a short summer break from 14 to 29 July, after which some interesting new features for Calamus should be announced. We can be curious... (tr)

http://www.calamus.net/

(tr)

MP3 encoding using MagiCMac (11.07.2001 - 08:10 Uhr)

The current version of Aniplayer enables the conversion of audio data into the popular MP3 format on the Atari with the help of the libmp3lame library. However, this requires an FPU, which is not integrated in the 68k emulation (MC 68020) of the Mac OS. In order to be able to create MP3s under MagiC on the Macintosh an FPU emulation is necessary. A commercial solution is "PowerFPU", a system extension that completely emulates an FPU even on today's G4 machines and therefore also simulates the presence of the floating point unit to MagiCMac. PowerFPU costs US $ 75. The freeware version SoftFPU from the same manufacturer, on the other hand, does not work under the current "Classic" Mac OS 9.1 and can only be used with older versions of the Mac operating system. The installation is very simple: the system extension simply has to be dragged onto the system folder of the Power Mac, the Mac OS does the rest on its own. In an initial test, other Atari programs with FPU support under MagiC also reacted "positively" to PowerFPU. The emulation is therefore a sensible addition to a MagiCMac system, even if it is not quite cheap. (tr)

http://www.jna.com/pfpu.html

(tr)

Photo of the Pegasos board (10.07.2001 - 11:10 Uhr)

Due to many requests, we are publishing a picture of the Peagasos board. This is explicitly not the Tsunami computer, which is said to have slight modifications. The picture was taken during a presentation for our sister magazine AMIGAPlus and shows the first public prototype of the bplan-G4 board. (tr)

http://www.bplan-gmbh.de/

(tr)

Picture of the Tsunami configuration (10.07.2001 - 10:10 Uhr)

The first rendered designs of the Tsunami's exterior can be found on Merlancia's website. The planned massive mini tower made of steel is striking. Another individual detail is the keyboard, which contains no real keys but sensitive pressure points. A draft of the main system can be found here. (tr)

http://www.merlancia.com/

(tr)

More info about Tsunami (10.07.2001 - 07:10 Uhr)

The Tsunami is said to be the first product in a new series of multimedia hardware called "Torro" that the Merlancia company plans to release starting this year. The G4 computer, which was developed in cooperation with the German company bplan, is also to run the Atari operating system TOS (see also Topnews). In the meantime Merlancia gave out further information in a conversation with st-computer. The G4 board corresponds to the standard Micro-ATX design, so that it can be used in any tower of today. The standard case is said to be made of steel. MIDI ports are also integrated in order to place the Tsunami in the music market by means of the TOS operating system.
Merlancia currently employs 13 people, five of whom work on the Toro project. Among these employees, former high-ranking developers from Commodore and Amiga Technologies stand out, especially Dave Haynie. Haynie, for example, was instrumental in the development of the Commodore TED in 1983. He also worked on the C=128, the successor to the C=64. Later he moved to Commodore's Amiga division and was responsible for important parts of the Amiga 2000. He is also considered the "father" of the Amiga 3000. Merlancia's software team also includes Chris Aldi, who among other things developed the new interface system "ReAction" of the AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9.
There are also first details about the pricing. Realistically, Merlancia wants to price the Tsunami somewhat below the prices of a G4 Mac. Depending on the equipment, the price should be between $ 2000 and $ 2500. The Tsunami will be available from the end of November 2001, but it is not yet clear whether the TOS will be included.
To clarify: Merlancia will not release the computer primarily for the Atari market, but sees itself primarily as a company producing for the Amiga market. In addition to AmigaOS and AmigaDE, however, other operating systems are to be made executable on the Tsunami in order to cover a broader market. These primarily include Linux and QNX. Whether BeOS and even MacOS will also be offered for the Tsunami is not yet certain. Merlancia is very interested in running TOS on the Tsunami. The prerequisite for this, however, is the adaptation and cooperation with Milan Computersystems as the owner of the TOS rights. (tr)

http://www.merlancia.com/

(tr)

ColdFire 4e only available next year (10.07.2001 - 07:10 Uhr)

The xTOS or Pegasus project of the company Medusa will not be realised as quickly as hoped. As the xTOS team announces on its homepage, the ColdFire 4e, which was planned as the CPU for the new TOS computer, will not be available until the second quarter of 2002, according to Motorola. At the moment, Medusa is considering which alternatives could be used. For example, a solution that keeps the ColdFire in mind for possible later consideration, but is available before the middle of next year, would be ideal. (tr)

http://www.xtos.de/

(tr)

New versions of Zippatch and ZIP/UNZIP (10.07.2001 - 07:10 Uhr)

On Philipp Donze's homepage you can find updates of his programs Zippatch and ZIP respectively Unzip. Zippatch now supports ZIP 2.2 and UNZIP 5.32. In addition, bug fixes were made in ZIP 2.30 and UNZIP 5.40, which were related to the encryption of files. (tr)

http://home.tiscalinet.ch/donze/

(tr)

MagiCNet 1.3.7b (10.07.2001 - 03:10 Uhr)

MagiCNet is a port of the MiNTNet network driver system for the MagiC operating system. The current version is 1.3.7b, which can be found on the homepage of the developer Vassilis Papathanassiou. The website has undergone some changes. Some new clients are now available, including a SAMBA client. With this, the Atari under MagiC can be connected to any SAMBA server (e.g. under Linux, Windows, Windows NT).

http://users.otenet.gr/~papval/magicnet.htm

(tr)

MagiC 6.2 (10.07.2001 - 02:10 Uhr)

Despite all rumours to the contrary, Application Systems Heidelberg has not stopped further development of its MagiC operating system. As ASH informed us, the update to version 6.2 of the multitasking system for Atari, Milan, Macintosh and PC will be released in a few weeks. All versions have undergone profound changes, primarily in the GEMDOS area, which were extremely complex to realise. MagiC 6.2, for example, will have greatly increased compatibility with MiNT. For the user, a configurability of the devices in the directory "u:/dev" has been added. In addition, the standard tool VT 52 has been revised, which can now also be iconified. In addition, many error corrections have been made. By the way, according to the main developer Andreas Kromke, the patch program is already finished and is currently in the test phase. The update of 6.1x versions will be downloadable free of charge from the ASH homepage. MagiCMac for the new Apple operating system Mac OS X is also still in the works. The new kernel 6.20 will also be used here. However, ASH is dampening expectations for the first release: MagiCMac for Mac OS X will not initially be able to match the performance of the Classic version. For example, the program runs slower than the normal version, and NVDI cannot be used at present. The reasons are the lack of quality of Apple's Carbon API as well as the lack of cooperation with the developers of NVDI. (tr)

http://www.application-systems.de/

(tr)

Website news (09.07.2001 - 05:10 Uhr)

As of today, a preview of our summer issue 07/08-2001 is online. Each issue will be accompanied by a CD this time. Also the first interview with Merlancia about their plans for a new TOS calculator is in the news.
Our new section "Surveys" on st-computer.net is also new. We look forward to your participation. (tr)

http://st-computer.atariuptodate.de/

(tr)

MagiC Online and MyAtari.net with combined online forum (09.07.2001 - 04:10 Uhr)

Perhaps the two best English-language news services, MagiC Online and MyAtari.net, now have a joint online forum that is intended to complement the German-language Atari forums in a meaningful way. So those who speak English can have their say in the international discussions. (tr)

http://www.myatari.net/cgi-bin/forum/forum.cgi

(tr)

PaCidemo area with new uploads (09.07.2001 - 02:10 Uhr)

The "PaCidemo area" is a website about ST demos that have been tested on the Atari emulator SainT, but many of them also work with other emulations like PaCifiST. After some time without anything happening on the website, there are now about 200 MB of demos and files available for free download after the latest update. All demo discs are packed with ZIP. In addition, there are the latest news on various ST emulators.
Unfortunately, the PaCidemo area can only be displayed with browsers that display Flash or JavaScript. (tr)

http://pacidemo.planet-d.net/

(tr)

MyAtari June 2001 ready for download (08.07.2001 - 06:10 Uhr)

The June issue of the American online magazine MyAtari is now available for download. The range of topics is as broad as usual: Reports from EiL 2001, MIDI, upgrades for 8-bit Ataris and much more. (tr)

http://www.myatari.net/

(tr)

TOS computer based on G4? (08.07.2001 - 04:10 Uhr)

The American company Merlancia Industries is planning to release a new TOS machine based on the PowerPC G4. As Ryan Czerwinski confirmed to us in a telephone conversation today, the MMC Tsunami is based on the G4 board from the German company bplan. The CPU is interchangeable. Among others, the Motorola G4/7410 and the G4/7450 can be used.
The "Tsunami" is the first model of a complete series of multimedia hardware, which will include PDAs. The operating systems AmigaOS, AmigaDE, Linux, QNX and maybe also BeOS are supposed to be executable. Merlancia also recently sought contact with the owner of the rights to the Atari operating system TOS via a public mail in the newsgroup "comp.sys.atari.st" in order to make it run on the Tsunami. In the meantime, Milan Computers confirmed that they, as the owner of the TOS rights, had contacted the Americans and were basically interested in a cooperation, provided Merlancia could present an interesting and serious concept.
The bplan board on which the Tsunami is based is convincing with its modern components such as PCI and AGP interfaces, USB and FireWire ports, and so on. Members of the editorial staff of our sister magazine AmigaPLUS were able to convince themselves of the board's ability to run (under Linux) on site. Further key data can be found on the website of bplan.
TOS compatibility is to be ensured by a 68k emulation (MorphOS).
A first interview with Ryan Czerwinski can be found in the upcoming st-computer. (tr)

http://www.merlancia.com/MISEL/torroindex.html
http://www.gotboing.com/merlanciapr/

(tr)

Eureka in version 1.07 (07.07.2001 - 08:10 Uhr)

Eureka is a 2D and 3D modelling application by the French software developer Francois Le Coat. The software uses libraries of the MESA 3D standard (clone of Open GL) and is now available in version 1.07, thus confirming its continuous further development. The improvements primarily concern optimised integration in multitasking environments such as N.AES, Geneva and MagiC. In addition, the speed of the application has been improved. Some results of the work are available on the developer's website (unfortunately only in French). (tr)

http://www.ief.u-psud.fr/~lecoat/

(tr)

History of Shareware (07.07.2001 - 08:10 Uhr)

French is a beautiful language. If you think so too and even speak it, you will find reading material for the sunny weekend on the pages of Europe Shareware with the "History of Shareware (L'histoire du shareware)". It covers the history from its beginnings to the present day and the reasons for the success of this form of software distribution.

http://www.chez.com/europeshareware/pages/hist_shareware.html

(tr)

Software updates by Philipp Donze (07.07.2001 - 08:10 Uhr)

On the homepage of the German developer Philipp Donze, updates of some of his programs have been available for a few days. The mahjong implementation "Clicks" has reached version 1.11. You can find a test in issue 05-2001 of st-computer. New are colour icons as stones, a worst list and the usual bug fixes. Attribute Setter is a program for changing TOS file attributes, even if they are located in subdirectories. The user interface has been revised in version 1.10. The MGVIEW patch has also been optimised. With this patch it is possible to change the standard tab width of MGVIEW.APP. This is useful for all MagiC users who still use the supplied display program. (tr)

http://home.tiscalinet.ch/donze/

(tr)

Collecting for a web browser? (07.07.2001 - 02:10 Uhr)

A survey is currently running in the "Atari User Network" trying to find out how much money you would be willing to pay for a new web browser on the Atari. These payments would go into a fund that would finance the development of a modern browser - an interesting mind game. So take part today! (tr)

http://www.atari-users.net/

(tr)

Hardware bargain for Atari users (06.07.2001 - 12:10 Uhr)

Atari users listen up: NewSell is currently offering hardware surplus items that can also be used with the Atari. For example, scanners from the Umax Astra series are available from DM 79. For the SCSI scanners (look for the "S" in the product name!) driver software is available from falkemedia - just call 04 31-27 365.
Just as interesting is the Wacom ArtPad II, an A6 graphics tablet formerly priced at DM 199, now available for only DM 50. The ArtPad II can be connected via the serial interface and can thus be used together with the freeware PixArt.
A little advice on the side: NewSell also sells the Mac clone "Umax Apus 2000" as barebones hardware. The computer is based on a 240 MHz PowerPC CPU (603e), has 16 MB RAM onboard and is equipped with a 12-fold SCSI CD-ROM and an HD disk drive. Graphics and sound are also onboard. So for an installation of MacOS plus MagiCMac, only an IDE hard disk is needed. Without the hard disk, the computer sells for only DM 250.
All the above offers are valid while stocks last. (tr, ag)

http://www.newsell.de/