AmigaKit distributing Vampire Boards

So far, they are only carrying the Vampire v2 for the Amiga 500’s but that is probably the biggest market as there were more 500’s sold than the other models.  Of course, they soldout very fast on the first batch but don’t be surprised to see more available soon.  Target price is about $350USD when I last looked.

Not bad considering this is the fastest Amiga Accelerator (better than a 68060 or even PPC 603/604).  And it comes with a special version of the AGA chipset (SuperAGA/SAGA), and a Picasso96 driver so RTG on the lowly 500 running superfast!

Good job Team Apollo, Majasta and AmigaKit!

 

Amiga on the Lake, the lone North American x5000 suppliers, stops selling them

It appears that there was a fallout between Amiga on the Lake the A-EON/AmigaKit. That means there will be no local supplier for North American Amiga customers that want to get hold of the x5000 and a1222 Tabor boards. We will have to go international. As AmigaKit have been sending their stock of x5000 boards out to other distributors, they don’t have any in stock. I wonder what the problem ended up being?

Here is their statement found on their webpage:

“We have made a decision, concerning both A-EON and AmigaKit. The decision we made is grounded in our experience during the last 8 months in regards to both companies. As a result we have made the choice to no longer support A-EON or AmigaKit in any way, shape or form.

We are still here and “may” be carrying more stuff soon. However no more X5000 or A1222 or, frankly anything produced from either company. AOTL Donations is going on a temporary hold so we can refocus now that we are not supporting A-EON or AmigaKit.”

Very good new Workbench Explorer for OS4.x

Amiga enthusiast and developer mritter0 (Mark Ritter) has released a new program called Workbench Explorer.  It’s only for OS4.x (let’s hope a 3.x comes out soon), but it looks very good and has modern features for a navigator.

It’s found here: –> link <–

Some screenshots:

Very Good Amiga Podcast

If you like informative podcasts and love the Amiga (why else would you be here?), then check out the Amiga Ireland Podcast.  It’s full of news and interactivity between the hosts.  I found it well worth the time.

Here’s episode 3:  –> link <–

Amiga Shell Hacks

Thomas Richter, big Amiga.org forum contributor, has a good thread over at amiga.org about using the Amiga Shell.  His posts are sprinkled about the thread, surrounded by comments.

It’s always good to find out command line tricks and syntax, so I recommend it.  I learned a few things too.

–> link <–

MorphOS Storage over 800 files

If you are looking for files for MorphOS, go to the latest website repository for all things MorphOS:

–> link <–

Picasso96 sold to Hyperion and Individual Computers

What is probably the defacto RTG standard, Picasso96 (which I believe edged out CyberGraphX years ago because of WinUAE’s support of P96), has been sold by the owners to Hyperion (makers of OS4.x) and Individual Computers (makers of many Amiga Hardware products).

I’m guessing Hyperion wanted greater control of this RTG system.  CyberGraphX, the main competitor, was owned by some of the authors of MorphOS, and it is the default RTG system on the MorphOS system.

I’m guessing this is a good thing as I would think it would get more updated support for OS4.  However, Hyperion have their hands full so I’m not sure if they’d have the resources to dedicate to P96 support.

We’ll keep an eye out for this.

Announcement –> link <–

The XENA expansion article

The Newest North American Amiga hardwere dealer, Amiga By The Lake, has started a very interesting blog and their first article looks at the XENA programmable controller and user expansion port found on all AmigaOne x1000 and x5000 systems.

It can get pretty technical but is worth the read.

Check it out –> here <–

IBrowse Development continues

Well, anyone around in the late 90’s remembers that there were many web browsers coming out for the Amiga at the time. The big one I recall was IBrowse, and it was very Amiga-centric. For a long time, v2.4 was the last big one that I used. I mistakenly thought that it was abandoned, but I was wrong.

Development has been continuing over the years and while it isn’t up to the specs of some of the HTML 5 JS/CSS current browsers (like OWB and NetSurf), it’s still a good browser. Check out the latest updates as of last month (April 2017):

–> history <–

EZHomeX10 Amiga software released

Jim Hines, author of EZHome X10 for Amiga, has released it and is no longer actively supporting it.  For those that don’t know, X10 is a communication protocol for home automation that has been around for a couple of decades.  They communicate through the powerlines in a house or building.  Many devices have been built to use this protocol.  Long before ZigBee and ZWave wireless home automation protocols were invented, x10 was THE way to control lights, thermostats, alarms, sprinklers, etc in your home.  Since the 90’s we’ve seen many PC and Mac based x10 software packages. Well, in the late 90’s, one was made for Amiga called EZHomeX10.

You can read an in-depth analysis of the many pieces, including EZHome, EZCron (cron-jobs, scheduled tasks), EZCID (caller ID) and control of infrared remotes and integration with the GVP PhonePAK card if you have it. And it is AREXX scriptable.  Very cool stuff!

Read the released with download links here:

software link

And an article by Jim Hines here:

EZHomeX10 – Amiga