New page: More of the best - Amiga games you must have seen, part 2!

When researching for our previous article "Best of the best - Amiga games you must have seen", a lot more games came to mind that excel in one or the other way, and need to be mentioned but didn't make it into the article. So here's part 2! Again, we're focussing more on technical or stylistic achievement, and less on mass appeal or nostalgia.

Have fun with our new page...

More of the best - Amiga games you must have seen, part 2

 

AmigaOne X5000 in "Supercuts" tv commercial

That's a nice one: Charles Paek has used A-EON's AmigaOne X5000 (precisely: an X5000 beta in a X1000 case) in a tv commercial for US hairdressers "Supercuts", 9000 branches strong. You can see the X5000 with it's boing ball design prominently standing on the desk, and even AmigaOS 4 running on it for a brief moment.

Sources:

http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2017-09-00043-DE.html

http://blog.a-eon.biz/blog/?p=10435

https://vimeo.com/230639859

Building the TerribleFire TF530 accelerator board, part 3: Parts inspection, and soldering

Let's see what we've got. And how we're gonna put it together. This one had a little surprise for me.

Disclaimer: This is not an instruction. Use at your own risk. No responsibility taken for whatever you do. Safety first. Kids, dont try this at home. 

Parts and BOM, and the shiny blue PCB.

It looks like I haven't missed much so far. Everything required to populate the board is there (except for the CPU socket connector, for which some substitute will be built), and I'm still able to identify the individual components! :-)

Parts and tools.

So, with Stephen Leary's instructional video (see below) on my computer's screen, I started soldering. May I note that not only does his video provide helpful and important information and hints, but also is a pleasant accompaniment when working on the TF530.

Soldering the first SMD chip on to the board quickly resulted in the chip being roasted, and the PCB damaged. Lol. Surprise. It turned out to be waaaaaay more difficult than I had expected.

Working with tiny SMD components poses some unexpected problems. For example if you're used to soldering hole-though parts you will most likely use way too much solder on your first attempts. Well, I did. Then, when you got used to using really very little solder, you find out that you cannot easily suck away the solder if you've made a mistake, because the amount of solder is too little for the desoldering pump to work on. Then you may learn the painful way that tiny PCB chip pins are reeaaally weak, you have to treat them really gently. And finally, when checking results of your soldering, you may find out that your grandma's magnifying glass does what it's supposed to do - to magnify - but it's scratched or unclear, and really creates more confusion than it does help.

First chip in place. Dirty, but undamaged!

But after some practicing with the damaged board and chip, things looked better. I learned to use the right amount of solder, the right amount of soldering flux, and to move the soldering iron at the right speed, and started working on a new board - with far better results.

More components.

After some hours of focused soldering and (visual) checking it looks as if my first TF530 might soon be ready for testing.

TF530r2 fully populated!

She's currently no beauty and needs some serious cleaning, but she makes her owner very proud. :-)

If you wanna try to build one, here's Stephen Leary's first "how to" video (we're still waiting for the second):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG_5oDeLdGE

Next time we need to find out if she's alive - watch out for part 4 of our series "Building the TerribleFire TF530 accelerator board"!

Overview and back catalogue of the series:
http://amigaalive.blogspot.de/p/hardware-building-terribefire-tf530.html

AMIGA alive 03: Juggler (1986) and BoingBall (1984) (Video)

"AMIGA alive 03 - Juggler (1986) and BoingBall (1984)" is out! The legendary Juggler and BoingBall demos, shown in the early days of the Amiga, and responsible for stunning the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMy1CyJveKM

AMIGA alive software: rewincy v0.8 - window and screen cycling

Our second - still rather tiny - software release is out. It's rewincy v0.8, a Workbench commodity for AmigaOS2.0 and higher. Rewincy will add Windows-"Alt-Tab"-like functionality to your Workbench: cycle through windows and screens, and zip windows, using your keyboard.

You can configure keys and colors, and run it from CLI or Workbench alike. Rewincy is based on M. Cortese's "Altabber", with added features, and just like Altabber it's freeware, of course. It has been cross-compiled from Linux to AmigaOS with vbcc, sources and makefile are included.

See Readme-file included for more information.

You can download it from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/util/cdity/rewincy

AMIGA alive software: rentp v0.4 - NTP time synchronization

Our first - tiny, admittedly - software release is out. It's rentp v0.4, a Network Time Protocol time synchronization utility for AmigaOS2.0 or higher.

Here's a usage example:

rentp -o120 0.fedora.pool.ntp.org

...will sync time from Fedora's timeserver, using 120 mins.
UTC offset (=Germany summer daylight saving time). UTC
offset should be supplied, otherwise time will probably be
wrong (unless you live in UTC zone 0).

And...

rentp -h

...will give you help.

You can download it from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/comm/tcp/rentp

New page: Best of the best - Amiga games you must have seen

Our take on the "Best Amiga games" / "Top 10 Amiga games" subject, from a slightly different point of view, where a Competition Pro joystick is not the only Amiga expansion device allowed, and exceptional technical achievement, sweaty pixel art or perfect overall style may put a game on the list.

Have fun with our...

Best of the best - Amiga games you must have seen