Version 1.5 of the Hollywood AVCodec released

Airsoft Softwair is proud to announce that version 1.5 of the AVCodec plugin for Hollywood has just been released. This plugin allows Hollywood scripts to load all kinds of video and audio formats supported by FFmpeg. Version 1.5 is a minor update which introduces support for parametric stereo and contains some fixes.

Version 1.5 of the AVCodec plugin is now available for free download from http://www.hollywood-mal.com Thanks to Hollywood’s cross-platform plugin system versions for AmigaOS3 (m68k, m881), AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, Linux (ppc, arm, x86, x64), macOS (ppc, x86, x64), Windows (x86, x64), Android (arm, arm64), and iOS (arm, arm64) are provided.

https://www.hollywood-mal.com/download.html

A-EON Enhancer Software 2.2 Released

A-EON Technology Ltd is pleased to celebrate six years of the Enhancer Software. by releasing version 2.2The new update is available to all existing Version 2 users as a free download from the Updater tool. It is also available to purchase for new customers as a boxed CD from Amiga Kit, selected dealers and digitally from AMIStore App Store..Version 2.2 is the cumulation of ten months hard work by the Amiga Developer Team adding new functionality and features to the previous version.This release represents the most advanced and polished edition of the software. Thanks to user feedback and developer diligence, we have increased the software quality, features and functionality to even higher levels.What is the Enhancer Software ?The Enhancer Software adds to or replaces system components in OS4.1 to provide it with a lot more functionality: from essential 2D video drivers to a modern 3D graphics sub-system, more advanced utilities, tools, classes and gadgets. Over the last six years the package has become increasingly important for users.Crucially the Enhancer Software code base is independent so can evolve and be released regularly with the Amiga Developer Team working steadfastly on improving the package. It is not held up or constrained by any hiatus in OS4.1 development.

Source: Amigaworld.net – The Amiga Computer Community Portal Website

Out now!! Hollywood Designer 6.0

To celebrate Hollywood’s 20th anniversary this year, Airsoft Softwair, the hardest working men in code business, are back on your screen with another massive release: This time we are proud to present the brand-new version 6.0 of our famous Hollywood Designer. Hollywood Designer 6.0 is a full-blown multimedia authoring system that runs on top of Hollywood and can be used to create all sorts of multimedia-based applications, for example presentations, slide shows, games, and applications. Thanks to Hollywood, all multimedia applications created using Hollywood Designer can be exported as stand-alone executables for the following systems: AmigaOS3, AmigaOS4, WarpOS, MorphOS, AROS, Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. This is a feature that is totally unique in the Amiga world!

Hollywood Designer 6.0 is a massive update and boasts lots of new features and improvements over the previous version. We do not want to bore you, so here are just some of them:

* Ready for Hollywood 9.1!
* Vector animations are now supported
* Bullet lists and enumerations with an unlimited number of levels are now supported
* Support for custom list bullets and enumerations
* Fully asynchronous thumbnail window including live refresh and live regrouping
* New presentation mode specifically designed for USB presenters
* Forward/backward stepping through projects on a per-object basis
* Over 10 new action events
* Many action events can handle variables now
* Global shortcuts for pages can be defined
* Support for high-DPI displays and custom display orientations
* Multiple monitors are now supported
* Custom linespacing support
* Full z-order support for buttons
* Soft-hyphen and zero-width space support for advanced layouts
* UID manager for convenient administration of UIDs
* Plugin loader priorities can be customized
* Several new example projects are included
* Full support for Hollywood 9.1’s plugin interface
* Lots of other new features, optimizations and bug fixes

More info : https://forums.hollywood-mal.com/viewtopic.php?p=18186&sid=76e3ca611543488c6f64fa1c07d39173#p18186

New Amiga Tank Mouse funded  

Tank MouseTank Mouse is a brand new computer mouse, inspired by the famous Commodore Amiga 1352. However under the classic look a modern technology is hidden. Tank mouse blends retro-computing passion with everyday tasks. This modernized version is a wireless optical mouse, which received a touch panel, placed between the two buttons, for scrolling. Tank Mouse operates under Bluetooth or 2.4GHz, which makes it possible to connect to almost any kind of device, but more importantly it can be used with your original Commodore Amiga computer! The mouse connects directly to all computers supporting Bluetooth, for other computers a small USB receiver is included. The iconic bold design makes the mouse not only unforgettable but also suitable for left and right-handed people.

More info here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lukas-remis/tank-mouse-your-new-amiga-mouse/

Help needed for the Krueger family to pay for funeral expenses.

One of our Amiga Developers (Jamie Krueger -BitbyBit Software) lost his younger brother….

On the 27th of November 2021 we lost our little brother Greg Krueger.
The loss of Greg has been a very tragic for our family, Greg was very loving Father, Son, and Brother. He enjoyed helping others in need. He helped care for our Grandmother and others in the community as a personal care giver for senior services.
Greg also helped improve homes as a very talented window and door installer and worked on many homes in Southern Wisconsin.
We ask for help paying unexpected funeral expenses as we lost Greg way too soon.
Any help would be greatly appreciated

Source: Inzamelingsactie van Eric Krueger : Help the Krueger family pay for funeral expenses

My X5000 with AMD RX570 and HD5450 graphics

As you could have read in one of my previous posts is my AmigaOne X5000 equipped with an AMD RX570 graphics card. The use of the RX line of cards allows us to use the VA library. The Video Acceleration Library has been created to support hardware video decoding on Radeon Polaris (RX) cards. For us AmigaOS4.x users this is a very welcome addition to the use of our beloved OS and X5000.

The downside to switching to an RX based graphics card is not having support in the Linux kernel for this. This results in losing the ability to use LInux on the X5000. The only option I could think of was adding a second graphics card to bring Linux back to the machine.

As there are some posts on the hyperion forum referring to the setup of two graphics cards in the X5000 I thought it would be nice to write about my own setup.

Choosing what card to use.
Since the PCIe X16 slot is already in use for the RX570 card it leaves us with the PCI and PCIe X1 slots to choose from. The PCIe X4 slot in the X5000 is due to bad design blocked by the PCIe X16 graphics card so cannot be used. As PCI graphic cards are hard to find and very outdated (like Radeon 9250) a PCIeX1 card would be the better choice . Finding a PCIe X1 radeon/amd based graphics card is an option, but I tried using a PCIe X16 to X1 converter as those converters are easy to find and cheap due to the whole crypto mining landscape these days. As having a usable linux system for me is more important than the ability of playing games, the performance is not a big issue and a PCIe X1 slot would be good enough.

By using a converter you have many cards to choose from. I started with a Firepro RV620 based normal size graphics card but eventually got it replaced. I could not find a decent way to fit the card in my X5000 case.

For me the best way was to use a low profile Radeon graphics card (MSI HD5450), as this card leaves us the space we need for use of the converter board.
This card also has DVI and HDMI outputs so any monitor can be used, and the connectors are where I want them to be, on the back of the machine.

The monitor.
I first made the choice of attaching both graphic cards to the same monitor. As this is usable, the downside is having to switch input when starting up Linux. As my Philips monitor does not have great buttons and an OSD menu to do the switching, I am using a second monitor attached to the new graphics card just for Linux use.

The result.
So there we have it. The AmigaOne X5000 with RX card for the best OS4 experience and the option to run Linux by using a second graphics card. All stuffed away in the X5000 case and ready for action.

To do.
At the moment the Linux graphics card (HD5450) is using the FBdev (driver) in the Xorg.conf so hardware acceleration is limited… (i think there is a way to make use of hardware acceleration by using the GPU) The other thing will be making use of just on big Linux drive with several partitions instead of two drives.

Thanks.
Big thanks go to the captain of the Amiga Linux Development community, Christian Zigotzky and of course all forum members who keep the scene going. Thank you!

17/2/2022 UPDATE!

As mentioned before the FBdev issue has now been solved. This means that we now have Hardware 3D support. YEAH!!! It was hard to find the correct xorg.conf values needed to get things going…

 

GLXINFO!
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: AMD CEDAR (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.17.0-rc4_A-EON_X5000, LLVM 12.0.1)
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.2 (Core Profile) Mesa 21.3.3
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 1.50
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.1 Mesa 21.3.3
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.40
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 21.3.3
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0.16
OpenGL ES profile extensions:
My Xorg.conf to get it up and running!
Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor0”
EndSection
Section “Device”
Identifier “Device1”
Driver “radeon”
EndSection
Section “ServerFlags”
Option “AIGLX” “on”
EndSectionSection “Module”
Load “dri”
Load “dri2”
Load “dbe”
Load “glx”
Load “type1”
Load “freetype”
Load “record”
EndSection

Section “DRI”
Mode 0666
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
Option “RENDER” “Enable”
Option “RANDR” “Enable”
Option “DAMAGE” “Enable”

Option “GLX” “Enable”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen0”
Device “Device0”
Monitor “Monitor0”
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Viewport 0 0
EndSubSection
EndSection

AmiKit 11.5+ Released, get it now! 

new monitor.png

AmiKit XE 11.6.0 (February 2022) Released…..

CHANGELOG

– ADDED: Be Kool Fool demo by Focus Design: 1st at Gerp 2015
– UPDATED: AmigaAMP 3.29 by Thomas Wenzel
– UPDATED: AmiSSL 4.9 by AmiSSL Open Soure Team
– UPDATED: Ask Your Amiga (AYA) 0.5 by ALB42
– UPDATED: Hollywood Player 9.0 by Andreas Falkenhahn
– UPDATED: iGame 2.1b2 (15-Mar-2021) by Emmanuel Vasilakis and Contributors
– UPDATED: LoadModule 45.18 by Thomas Richter and Etienne Vogt
– UPDATED: VisualPrefs 1.5m by Massimo Tantignone

More info here… https://www.amikit.amiga.sk/

Updated my own system already… see screenshot below.

 

Amiga X5000 Maintenance and Upgrade 2022

Since 2017 my AmigaOne X5000 has been running with the same Gelid Silent 6 Fan. Since a few days, that Silent became Noisy so it was time to replace the fan. I already bought two new Silent 6 fans just in case a thing like this would happen. I also had a MSI RX 570 4GB card ready to replace the R7 250 card the X5000 came shipped with. With the RX series we can use the GPU for hardware decoding things like movies to ofload the CPU.

     

SUCCESS!! 🙂

GfxBench2D 2.9 (27.1.2022)
A benchmark tool for graphics cards.
Written by Hans de Ruiter.

Copyright (C) 2011, by Hans de Ruiter, all rights reserved
————————————————————

System Information:
OS: AmigaOS Release 4.1 – Final Edition Update 2
Motherboard: AmigaOne X5000/20
CPU: Freescale P5020 (E5500 core), 1.2 @ 1.995 GHz
L1 Cache Size: 32768, L2 Cache Size: 524288, L3 Cache Size: 0
Total RAM: 2 GiB
External Bus (FSB) Speed: 798 MHz
Exec.library version: 54.30
Graphics.library version: 54.248
Intuition.library version: 54.28
Picasso96API.library version: 54.18
Rtg.library version: 54.90

Opening screen: RTG-0:Board 0:1920×1080

Board name: Radeon RX Polaris10
Product ID: 0x67df Vendor ID: 0x1002 SubProduct ID: 0x3416 SubVendor ID: 0x1462
Board driver: PCIGraphics.card (53, 18)
Chip driver: RadeonRX.chip (2, 5)
VRAM: 4 GiB
Display mode: 1920×1080@61 (32 bpp)