WhatIFF Issue 1.01 WhatIFF Issue 1.02 WhatIFF Issue 1.03 WhatIFF Issue 1.04 WhatIFF Issue 1.05 WhatIFF Issue 1.06 WhatIFF Issue 1.07 WhatIFF Issue 1.08 WhatIFF Issue 2.09 WhatIFF Issue 2.10 WhatIFF Issue 2.11 WhatIFF Issue 2.12 WhatIFF Issue 3.13 WhatIFF Issue 3.14 WhatIFF Issue 3.15 WhatIFF Issue 4.16 WhatIFF Issue 4.17 WhatIFF Issue 4.18 WhatIFF Issue 5.19
Download PDFWhatIFF? Issue 1.05
TopWhatIFF? For The Creative Amiga User
CONTENTS WhatIFF?-Issue 1.05 June 2022 For The Creative Amiga User T ================================================= |T | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|[L | __________________________________________________[| |I __==___________ ___________ . ,. _ . __ T| ||[_j L_I_I_I_I_j L_I_I_I_I_j /|/V||(g/| == l| lI _______________________________ _____ _________I] |[__I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_] [__I__] [_I_I_I_]| |[___I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_L I ___ [_I_I_I_]| |[__I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_L_I __I_]_ [_I_I_T || |[___I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I_I____] [_I_I_] [___I_I_j| | [__I__I_________________I__L_] | | | -Row l__________________________________________________j ENTER MAGAZINETopWelcome to WhatIFF?
CONTENTS *WhatIFF? - Issue 1.05 - June 2022* --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --EDITORS DESK-- MEET THE WRITERS A few word from the current editor about the magazine. ---SHELL TALK--- A place for WhatIFF? writers and readers to air out their Amiga laundry or just talk about anything Amiga related! -----REVIEWS---- Reviews of hardware and software, old and new covered. -----GUIDES----- Guides and support to all things Amiga related, probably the best part of the magazine! --AMIGA PEOPLE-- Hear from the people making hardware and software for the Amiga and in issue 5 we talk to YouTuber and Amiga musician MsMadLemon and Karl Jeacle, programmer of AmiGemini. -----LINKS------ Links to the important and not so important websites, BBSs can also be found here. -INVENTS CORNER- We welcome back Kevin Saunders for his next article on Amiga graphics and game graphic design. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEXT ISSUE *All content copyright of the respective authors 2022*TopFrom The Editor's Desk
CONTENTS -= From The Editor's Desk =- by: Timo Paul It seems like it was only a few weeks ago that I was sitting here writing the 'From The Editor's Desk' for issue 4, but that was now over two months ago and a lot has happened in that time. As you may have already noticed the magazine has moved to a bi-monthly format, while it had been my initial intention of producing the magazine in a monthly format, the lack of time afforded by myself and the other writers meant that it became a difficult task to accomplish each month. It was compounded also by the fact that the magazine does not deal with gaming, which means less reviews and guides. However with the newer format we will hopefully be able to provide more indepth articles, reviews and tutorials. For this issue it is my great pleasure to welcome Maddi a.k.a MsMadLemon to the magazine, she has her first article in the form of a tracking tutorial and an interview. In fact this issue we have two interviews, the other being with Karl Jeacle the author of AmiGemini. The reviews and guides have been my sole job this issue due to time constraints of John Scolieri and Steve Lord however fingers crossed they will have more time for the next issue out in August. Kevin Saunders continues his usual column, Invent's Corner, talking about the new Amiga Art Contest 2022. I have decided to remove the news section due to the change to a bi-monthly format. Most of the news will have been old by the time the magazine is released and I thought it might be better used as a soapbox column or as it called Shell Talk, John Scolieri is doing the honours with an article about Amiga OS on a x86 hardware. Well I will not take up anymore of your time, I just want to thank all the contributors for this issue and you the reader. In addition, to help fund the magazine I have added a donation button to the www.whatiff.info website, this will help with the running of the magazine and help in paying a little bit towards the efforts of the writers. For this issue I want thank: Christopher White and Anthony Jarvis for their kind donations to the magazine. As always if you have any comments or want to contribute to the magazine please send an e-mail to: submissions@whatiff.info Thank you for taking the time to download and read this magazine, I hope that you enjoy it and find the content useful. Until next time!TopFree For All About The Amiga
CONTENTS -= Shell Talk =- Written by: John Scolieri - = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = - RANT...why not port AmigaOS to x86 hardware? Without fail every year since Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 and new ownership seemed to make promise after promise about new hardware to run Amiga OS there's been rumblings about the cheap and easily available PC's of the time and why should amigans wait for new hardware and why not just run AmigaOS on the cheap PC's of the time? Simple enough question back then right? Well...the new owners in the late 90's were Haage & Partner (H&P) and Amiga users were losing patience with the direction of their favourite computer and OS. They were working on OS3.9 at the time for existing Amiga computers while entertaining the idea of running a QNX backend and emulating AmigaOS on top of it. The alternative was an Amiga running on PC(x86) hardware called AmigaOS XL and promising all future hardware problems would be solved. The Amiga community seemed ok with this direction at first BUT H&P's PC(x86) hardware was the opposite of affordable and made an Amiga 4000 Tower look really cheap! Luckily Amiga developers figured out a way to get cheaper off the shelf PCs to run AmigaOS XL (later named Amithlon) but alas the start of legal issues was just around the corner as Amiga Inc. had an issue with H&P regarding some embedded files on the AmigaOS XL CD which was the intellectual property of Amiga Inc., ultimately this would stop the sale of it in the early 2000's. This didn't stop some Amigans from developing Amithlon to run on different motherboards and updating the QNX kernal but without the support of H&P and Amiga Inc. due to the legal issues AmigaOS XL/ Amithlon didn't reach the main stream potential it was originally aimed for. There are still users today running AmigaOS XL/Amithlon systems but it's a pretty complicated setup process with very specific hardware requirements and it's been quite a while now that emulation packages such as Amikit and Cloanto's AmigaForever easily allows even the most technically challenged user to install and run modern verisons of AmigaOS on any possible x86 hardware avialable even on the inexpensive Raspberry Pie. So why is the Amiga community still today divided about porting AmigaOS to x86 hardware then? There's a group of users that are happy to use original hardware and keep the spirit of AmigaOS and 68K Motorolla CPU's today by creating new games and software. There's a group that says the old hardware is getting even older, rarer and more expensive to keep going with every passing year. There's another group that is using FPGA technology to improve on the original OS and improve it with more modern features. Theres another group that uses the PPC version of Amiga OS4.1 on dedicated PPC hardware and another group using existing old Apple PPC hardware to run MorphOS (AmigaOS 'like'OS) and lastly there's another group that uses AROS (an open source Amiga implemantation at the API level aiming to be compatible with AmigaOS programs) on specific available X86 hardware. The way I see it is that I have no idea why the topic comes up all the time? We already have AROS which is free to use and open source to use on specific modern PC hardware. The current PPC options of AmigaOS and MorphOS have invested countless developer/testing hours on specific PPC hardware and it would require infinite more time and resources to port to x86 hardware and honestly I don't believe that even if it miraculously would happen I doubt that sales would drastically increase(that is if never ending lawsuits would allow it sigh). The FPGA crowd can run AROS or AmigaOS so there's no issue there. Emulation via UAE is getting better and better every year for even the casual Amiga user that wants to roll down nostlgia lane even for a little while can easily be up and running within minutes. Today Amiga users have all kinds of choices to run their favourite OS in one shape or another. There are dedicated developers for each user group and many times I see co-operation between developers and users of different groups. Of course there's the usual 'disagreements' between groups but overall we are truly lucky to have new software and games coming out quite regularly for all AmigaOS options avalable today! Juat don't be surpised when you see this topic come up again next year :-) Rant over. cheers, G. ScolieriTopWelcome to the reviews section!
CONTENTS -= Welcome to the Reviews page =- Welcome to issue 5 for this issue we have an assortment of hardware and software reviews. Two alternatives to the Indivision, a calendar utility and more. If you have some hardware or software that you would like reviewed in What IFF? then contact us at - submissions@whatiff.info - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Framemeister X-RGB Scan Doubler Review Known as a good scandoubler for retro games, we look at how does the Framemeister fare on the Amiga. SCART to HDMI Adapter A one stop easy and cheap solution for outputting your Amiga to an HDMI television or monitor. Is it too good to be true though? Anno - Calendar Reminder Are you always forgetting what you need to do on a particular day? Then Anno might be just what you need, have a look inside to see what we think of this new application available from Aminet. Clover Icons Bored of the deafult Workbench icons, want a change but don't want to lose memory? Clover Icons might be just what you have been looking for. Replacement Amiga Power Supply We take a look at one of the replacement power supplies available from eBay and see how well it can handle an Amiga laden down with expansions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------TopFramemiester X-RGB Review
Reviews *Framemeister X-RGB Review - April 2022* Product Name Reviewed by Timo Paul Micomsoft Framemeister XRGB Mini Available From www.solarisjapan.com or ebay JPY 50,000 Hardware/Software Requirements EURO SCART Adapter Cable Machine Used For Testing Commodore Amiga 1200 Little Box Of Wonders For those of you who are serious about their retro gaming with orginal hardware the Frameisters will most likely be on your radar. Those of you who are not aware of the Framemeister please let me explain a little about this wonderful black box. The Framemeister was made (since it is out of production now) by the Japanese company Micomsoft, they have a long history of making scandoublers/upscalers for older hardware and the Framemeister is it's best known product. The Meisters are known for their reduced input lag, outstanding image quality, and wide variety of visual and audio settings. The Framemeisters before the XRGB Mini were large and expensive though they did sport several SCART inputs allowing more than one device to plugged in at a time. In 2011 Micomsoft released the XRGB Mini, a much smaller, lighter device that soon became their best selling product. The original asking price was 50,000 Japanese Yen and since then the prices have been going up. However it is still possible to buy new Framemeisters from the Japanese resller Solaris for around 53,000 Japanese Yen. This is not cheap by any means but as you will find out later there is a good reason for this price. The XRGB Mini comes with several inputs: AV, S-Video and RGB (SCART), you can also add 2 HDMI inputs, so it is possible to use your Bluray player or modern console with the XRGB Mini as an HDMI switcher. The unit comes with a Japanese SCART cable but it is recommended to buy a European SCART cable and one with a sync cable. I did this at the time of purchase since all my SCART cables are European even though I am using Japanese hardware. Alongside the SCART cable, you get a remote and power supply, the remote is in Japanese so for those unable to read Japanese I suggest buying an overlay with English translation of the buttons. Before using my Amiga with the Framemeister I had used it with several Japanese consoles: Super Famicom, Megadrive, PC Engine, N64, PC-FX and Sega Saturn. All of these consoles output a beautiful crisp and bright picture, with the added scanlines it took me right back to playing on my old CRT TV, but this time the TV was 50 inches instead of 14. It is difficult to describe how much of a difference the XRGB Mini made to the gameplay experience, it was the first time in over 10 years since I had seen such a crisp picture on a modern TV. Although there is apparently input lag, I did not notice this during game play, though it could be down to my slower reactions. The only console that I had a little issue with was the Super Famicom, the original SCART cable was not a true RGB cable and as such the picture was quite dark and there was a buzzing sound present. After a quick search on eBay I found a true RGB SCART cable for the Super Famicom, once the cable arrived it was startling the difference. The Super Famicom picture was bright and crisp with no buzzing sound either. So after having used the XRGB with my consoles I started to think maybe it might be a good fit with the Amiga. Find out below to see if this just might be the box to fix all your upscaling needs. Amiga 1200 Meet Framemeister The beauty of the Framemeister is that it is ready for SCART input and can handle NSTC and PAL with ease, as such hooking up the A1200 to the XRGB Mini was easy with a standard RGB SCART cable. The XRGB can handle 240p but anything above that and it will not work, so the Amiga is limited to HiRes Laced PAL/NTSC, any of the other screenmodes and the upscaler will not accept the signal. If you use your Amiga primarily for games this should not be an issue. The XRGB produced a sharp and bright image from the A1200, it looked much better than I had expected. The only niggle I could see was a blurring on the mouse pointer when moved. It is not a big issue however it was not noticable when using an Indivision. I am not sure why it does this, but when I run the XRGB with scanlines on my TV and play a scrolling shooter the scanlines seem to disapear, I wonder if this is a possible setting issue as there is much that can be changed on the Framemesiter, or it could be an issue of my TV. The next issue is a bit more frustrating and exposes the limitations of the XRGB, if you stay in the same resolution of PAL/NTSC LoRes/HiRes the XRGB will have no issues, however if you change to a higher resolution such as Hires Laced the Framemeister takes a long time to change resolution, it is long enough for you to start worrying something might have gone wrong. Other than these two issues the XRGB allows you to use your Amiga on a modern monitor along with other retro computer/consoles. However if you wish to use the AGA chipset's more advanced resolutions then the Framemeister XRGB Mini is not the scandoubler for you. I did check the scandoubler with other software such as Final Write, Brilliance Lightwave, OctaMED and found the image quality to be superb as long as I did not stray from the default Amiga resolutions. The picture is rock solid and very clear coming close to that of the Indivision. Final Thoughts The Framemeister XRGB Mini has gained a legendary status as the upscaler for playing older consoles on modern TVs. It rightly deserves the reputation, while it is far from being cheap it allows you to enjoy most of your 80s and early 90s retro consoles and computers in beautiful RGB with scanlines. The Amiga is supported by the XRGB Mini but only if you stay within the 240p resolutions of NTSC/PAL Hires/Lores screen modes. If you want one box for all your retro gear then the Framemeister is the device for you. It is more expensive than the OSS open source scandoubler but it provides you with a slightly better picture quality and more IO options. Pros and Cons + Beautiful picture quality + Scanlines done properly + Not limited to Amiga computers - Expensive - Limited resolutions supported - Only available from JapanTopSCART to HDMI Review
Reviews *SCARt to HDMI Review* Product Name Reviewed by: Timo Paul SCART to HDMI Scandoubler Available From eBay Price: $15.00-50.00 Hardware Requirements SCART and HDMI Cables Machine Used For Testing Commodore Amiga 1200 Classic WB + 3.2 Kickstart TF 1260 A Cheap Alternative To The Indivision Getting the Amiga connected to a modern device can be a quite a struggle at times, and more so it can become increasingly expensive. Over the last few years there have been devices popping up on auction sites such as eBay advertising SCART to HDMI scandoublers for an average price of $30. In most cases they are generic devices made in China and are easy to get hold of. A device that takes in the Amiga's RGB signal and upscales it to HDMI for the price of an Amiga game seems a little too good to be true, so I invested in one for myself to see how well these little boxes fare. The device itself is very small, smaller than a CD case, has one SCART input and HDMI output, there is an audio out port and custom power cable that ends in a USB plug. In addition there are buttons for PAL/NSTC and for changing the output resolution from 480p, 720p up to 1080p. Setup is very easy as all you need is a standard Amiga SCART cable and then an HDMI cable to connect to your display. The device quickly picked up the signal from the Amiga and up popped my Workbench. First impressions were good, it looked relatively clean with minor ghosting around the edges of windows, however upon opening a window I noticed the white balance was on the extreme side with the colours looking washed out. The mouse pointer also had a shimmering effect when moved. This seemed to include anything that moved on the screen, causing the screen to have a blurred look when in movement. For me the ultimate test is using Brilliance for some pixel pushing and unfortunately the scandoubler did not produce a result that I was happy with. It was difficult to see the individual pixels due to heavy blurring making it impossible to do any decent artwork. I tried to change the settings and monitor but still came up with a picture quality that was not acceptable for my situation. Over time the box became quite hot and the picture disapeared a few times, turning green and purple. It is clear this scandoubler is not suitable for long computer sessions. Final Thoughts The SCART to HDMI scandoubler fits a segement of users who are on a limited budget and are more concerned about using their Amiga for games. While I would find it frustrating to play games on the device it is still better than using the built in upscalers in modern televions. If you want to do word processing, graphics or something productive I would suggest saving up for an Indivision or similar card. It is a nice product for the price, but you get what you pay for and as such do not expect something that can handle all Amiga resolutions or give you a pixel perfect image. Pros and Cons + Easy to use + Cheap - Average to poor video quality - Not able to be used for long periods of timeTopCloverIcons Review
Reviews *CloverIcons Review* Product Name Reviewed by: Timo Paul CloverIcons Available From Aminet Special Hardware and Software Requirements Any Amiga / Amiga OS 2.0.4+ Machine Used For Testing Commodore Amiga 1200 Kickstart 3.2 ClassicWB Indivision MK3, TF1260 Clover Icons Review As Amiga users we are luckly to have a system that can easily be tailored to our tastes, it is a stark contrast to the modern OSes out from Microsoft and Apple which do not allow much of any customisation. Over the years various iconsets have come and gone with MagicWB and NewIcons being the most used and recognised. Of recent GlowIcons has become part of the new newer Amiga OS but like NewIcons it really benefits from a high colour and resolution dispay. Where as MagicWB provides a metalic 8 colour alternative, great for the lower spec Amigas. What has not been released however is a 4 colour icon replacement set, one that will take up the least amount of resources and provide a new lick of paint freshening up the default Workbench icons, until now that is. During my daily search on Aminet I came across Clover Icons, a low resource, 4 colour icon replacement. Why would you want a 4 colour icon set? If you are running stock Amiga hardware without any expansions you are limited by what iconsets you can use, as such this is where Clover Icons steps up. The basic icon set is reminiscent of Workbench 2.0/3.0 but look a bit closer and you will see there is more detail and variety to the icons than the vanilla WB icons. The drawers and disk icons in particular look quite nice even though they only use 4 colours. The Preferences, Tools and Utilities icons look very similar to the default icons but still have enough new detail to make Workbench look that much more fetching. The package comes with an installer for installing the basic Workbench icons and default icons along with some extra drawers and programmes. There is an additional package available on Aminet with more icons for drawers and various programmes. At the moment the selection is quite small but hopefully other icon artists will provide some more icon sets. Should You Change Your Icons? If you are looking for a change to the default icons and do not want to use up many resources then this icon set is for you. It creates a more modern looking Workbench without the overheads that other icon replacements come with. They are made for being used without borders so look very nice when used as such. Pros and Cons + Comes with a proper installer for all icons + Low overhead + Made with borderless icons in mind - Lack of other icons - Too similar looking to the default Workbench iconsTopannoreview
Reviews *Anno Review* Product Name Reviewed by: Timo Paul Anno: Reminder and calendar utility version 2.5 Available From www.aminet.net/package/util/time/Anno Created by: Juergen Klawitter Never Forget Another Appointment I am quite the forgetful person, so I often write even small events in my diary to help me keep on track of things. While it is great to have a physical schedule book it would be nice to have the computer remind me. So it was with considerable interest that I spotted Anno on the recent uploads page of Aminet. The text describes it as a 'Reminder and Calendar Utility', and appears to the full programme. It comes in at only 300kb so will be an easy download to an Amiga. Once unpacked the drawer contains 2 guides in English and German, 2 example pictures in English and German, plus the programme. I suggest reading the guide first as the programme is not that user friendly, upon bringing up the programme for the first time you presented with an empty window displaying the current date of your computer. At the bottom are some buttons but they only have single letters on them making it a bit hard to figure out what each one does. However each button is explained in the guide but I feel that it could have been made a bit more explicit what each button does. The main button that you will be interested is the 'Add Date', clicking here will bring up a requester asking for the date. Unfortunately at the moment there is no way to choose from a calendar so you need to type in the date in a particular format, for Anno it is: the date, month (written) and year, like this: 14 May 2022. After the year you can then add extra notes such as the place, person or event that will take place. Click on 'Okay' when you have typed in everything you need and it will appear in the main window. That is pretty much to it, there is no way to set an alarm or sound notification on the day of the event at the moment though. You can view the whole month with the appointment days highlighted by pressing on 'M' at the bottom of the screen, otherwise there is not much else you can do with the programme aside from printing and saving your file. For the moment Anno is a very simple and limited piece of software, I hope in the future the author will add some more features such as a sound notification maybe on the day and the option to choose from a calendar instead of typing in the date. Aside from these issues the software works nicely and is something that I will be using on a daily basis. It is a real pleasure to see new programmes being made for the Amiga that help it become a bit more useful in everyday life. The Amiga still lives on thanks the efforts of people like Juergen Klawitter. Pros and Cons + Simple and effective + Free + Does what it sets out to do - Lack of useful features - GUI can be confusing for the first time userToppowersupplyreview
Reviews *Amiga Power Supply Review* Product Name Reviewed by: Timo Paul OLED Digital Display Power Supply for the A500/A600 and A1200 Available From www.ebay.com - $49.99 + shipping Seller: keelog We All Need Power The standard power supplies that came with our Amigas are beginning to look a bit long in the tooth. Some just refuse to turn on or are not giving your Amiga the proper power it needs. It is possible to try and fix them but for most users we are happy to buy a replacement. Of recent there have been quite a few replacement PSUs available, some using a ATX power supply which is quite bulky but gives you the power for you Amiga and all it's expansions. Others are smaller but no less powerful, it was for this case that I was looking for a replacement PSU, it had to be 100v since my Amiga resides in Japan and if possible not too large but capable of powering my A1200 with its various expansions. I came across a power supply sold it seems solely by the seller 'keelog', it is smaller than the original A500 brick, has a touch sensor, OLED display and is available in 110v. The listing states it provides a +5V DC, +12V DC, -12V DC and comes in black and grey. I chose the grey version, the total cost including shipping to Japan was $54.98, not exactly cheap but pretty reasonable considering it can only be used with an Amiga. The seller quickly contacted me after purchase and shipped the item quickly, it took about two weeks to arrive. It was packed in a very strong cardboard box and had black foam on the inside, overall a very professional product. The plastic of the powersupply almost looks like it was 3D printed but is still very nice looking. In particular I like the OLED that shows either the Amiga logo or the up time of your Amiga and the current voltage. The plug has the typical US plug along with a third gound which means that if you are in Japan you will need an adapter, if I remember correctly in the States the wall sockets still have the third hole for ground. Once I plugged in the adapter the plug into the A1200 fit nice and snuggly so there is no chance of it falling out. I turned on my A1200 and put it through it's paces, rendering Lightwave animations, playing 3D games, listening to MP3s and audio editing. The Amiga never once froze or seemed unstable, the power supply itself got a little warm but I would not say uncomfortably hot like you get with the Apple chargers, those things can be too hot to touch at times. Now it must be noted that this PSU did not work so well with the ACA1221lc if you run it at 40mhz, Jens has mentioned that you need a particular type of power supply and apparently this is not one them. If you run the card up 28mhz you will have no problems, but moving beyond that you will end up with your Amiga locking and potentially losing your hard disk data. However when I overlocked my TF1260 up to 62mhz I encountered no issues, I have been unable to overclock my TF1260 beyond that yet so I cannot say how well the power supply will work with more overclocking. I believe this power supply should be enough for the needs of most users, if you have an ACA1221lc and want to run it at 40mhz then you will need to look somewhere else. The small OLED display is quite charming and it is nice to see how much time I have spent (wasted?) on the Amiga. It is small enough to hide behind the Amiga or desk without taking up too much space and the cables are long enough so as the PSU can sit on the floor whilst still reaching your Amiga. Final Thoughts Bottom line, if you are looking for a well put together power supply that can meet the needs of your expanded Amiga, looks good, is small and has the added benefit of a small display then this is a good choice to go with. There are other power supplies available, so you should always have a look however this is one of the best power supplies I have had for my Amiga, and if I ever can afford another orginal Amiga I would buy some it again. Pros and Cons + Works very nicely + Does not get too hot + OLED display suprisingly useful - Uses a three prong plug for 100v countriesTopWelcome to the guides section!
CONTENTS -= Welcome to the Guides page!=- This issue we have some great tutorials, the big one is from the YouTuber Ms Mad Lemon with her tracking tutorial, also included in this issue are the Lightwave and Brilliance 101 guides plus how to retrobrite your Amiga the easy way. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lightwave 3.5 - 101 Texture Mapping In our fourth part of the Lightwave 101 series we will work on adding texture maps to your objects. Brilliance - 101 A Look At Tweening Tool This issue we have a deeper look at the Tweening menu and how to use it for creating simple animations. Setting Up A Wireless Printer Connect your Amiga to a modern Wifi/Network printer in this short tutorial. Basics Of Tracking With MsMadLemon MsMadLemon graces our magazine with her guide on the basics of tracking. Easy RetroBrite Find out how to get your Amiga back to or at least close to it's original white colour with just one product. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------TopLightwave 101 - Adding Textures
Guides *Lightwave 101 - Part 4* Written by: Timo Paul Textures A warm welcome back to the Lightwave 101 series, I hope you have been having fun playing around with Lightwave during our absence. It still amazes me how powerful Lightwave 3D is, and more so when watching TV shows such as SeaQuest, Babylon 5 and the Robocop series. To see the GC they made and knowing that the same hardware and software is sitting in the next room fills me with wonder and excitement. For some reason if a show had the graphics done on a PC at the time it does not seem the same, I imagine it has something to do with the time period. At the time of the Amiga most CG was done on Silicon Graphics super computers, knowing our humble Amiga could do similar graphics was extremely exciting. Well enough rambling from me, let's get on with this issues tutorial. Today we will look at adding a texture map to your objects, a such we will not be working in the Modeler but the main Lightwave programme. To start off we need to load an object into Lightwave, let's start simple and use the coin object supplied with Lightwave 3.5. This can be found in 3D:Objects/Misc/ once you have the coin object, click on 'Surfaces', in the 'Surface Color' section you will see several boxes marked with 'T', if you click on one of them a new requester will pop up with several buttons and options, for this tutorial we we will be interested on only 'Texture Type' and 'Texture Image'. If you click on 'Texture Type' a popup menu will appear with several options. Let's take a closer look at what each one means. You are presented with 14 options: - Planar Image Map - Cylindrical Image Map - Spherical Image Map - Cubic Image Map - Front Image Map - Checkerboard - Grid - Dots - Marble - Wood - Underwater - Fractal Noise - Bump Array - Crust For this tutorial we will concentrate on the 'Image Map' options only next time we will look at the other options which are the default surfaces that come with Lightwave 3.5. Images as you know are usually rectangular and the surfaces of your objects will not always be the same shape as your image map. In this case you need to tell LightWave how you want to map the image onto your chosen surface. A general rule of thumb is to choose the shape that is closest to your surface shape. An example would be if you are mapping a label onto the side of a soda can, you would want to use the 'Cylindrical Image Map' option, or for a boing ball or planet you would choose 'Spherical Image Map'. Let's take a closer look at some of the image map options. Planar Image Map works like a projector projecting onto a wall, as such this option works best on a flat surface. You want to be aware of the X, Y, an Z axis options here, X mapping for example would be useful for mapping a logo onto the tailfin of an aeroplane. Y axis mapping onto an aerial photo of terrain. Finally Z mapping is useful foronot a TV screen. X and Y axis Planar Images are projected from positive side of the surface towards the negative side. In basic terms this means the image will appear correct when viewed from the positive side and reversed if seen from the negative side. Z axis the planar images are projected from the negative side hence the reason Z axis is good for projecting onto a TV screen. Cylindrical Image Map wraps an image around your selected axis, much like wrapping a bottle of wine with paper. An image is wrapped so it covers the surface once by default, great for your soda can or pillar. Spherical Image Map wraps an image around the entire surface, image stretching a piece of rubber around a ball but not having to worry about the edges meeting up correctly. As you can imagine this would be great for planets, balls and ummm ... round things. Cubic Image Map basically is the same as Planar but you are not able to select the Texture Axis, cubic projects the image from all three axis at the same time. This is useful for when you want to wrap an image of bricks around the side of a building. Front Projection Map is relatively simple, it works much like a chroma key effect, generally the image you use will be the same image you use for a background. If you have a background image of some trees and a path for example, you can use the same background image and map it onto the floor. This will allow you to place an object and have it's shadow caught o ht image map, giving you a much more realistic image. That pretty much covers the basics of the various Image Mapping options, let's get back to applying a texture map to our coin. First let's reorientate the coin so one side is facing the camera. Now that is done let's find a texture to add, for the moment let's go to the 'Surfaces' button, a new requestor window will open up and at the top you will see 'Current Surface', it should say 'Coin Face', if you click on it some more options will appear, 'Coin Sides' and 'Default', for the moment choose 'Coin Sides'. Now click on the first 'T button, we need to think of what type of image mapping we want to do, since we want to map an image onto a flat image, the coin side we shall use 'Planar Image Map', from here you would usually click on 'Texture Image' to choose your image map but if you do that now you will come up with a menu saying '(none)', what we need to do is preload our texture map, this can be done via the 'Images' button at the top of the screen. A new window will pop up with several buttons, the one that we are interested in is the 'Load Image' button, from here you can load an image to be used as a texture/image map. You need to be aware though that you will be in the default drawers set up by Lightwave as such you might need to change the hard disk, most likely you will have the options: DF0, HD0, HD1 - if you are using different names such as DH1 instead you will need to type in the drive name. In the next tutorial we will cover how to edit the file that defines the default drawers and drives for Lightwave. Getting back to our image map, choose any image map that you would like, for this instance I have chosen the marble image map that we made in the Brilliance 101 series. In Brilliance I had cropped the image to Pal Low Res and made sure that there was no gap between the texture and the inage size. After you find your image map and loaded it, you will see a grayscale thumbnail of the image. From here you can click on 'Continue' and proceed onto the 'Surfaces' button at the top. Clicking here will bring up the surfaces editor for our current object, you will need to concentrate on the 'Current Surface' requester, click on it and choose 'CoinSides', next find the 'Surface Color' button, next to it will be a box with the nubers 200 200 200 and a button with 'T', click on the 'T button. Another requester will pop up showing a thumbnail of your image map, make sure 'Texture Type' is 'Planar Image Map', leave the rest of the buttons and values as is, but do click on 'Automatic Sizing' under 'Texture Axis', if you do not do this the texture will be zoomed in and we will lose the checkerboard effect. Once you have done this click on 'Use Texture', finally, it is a good idea to click on the button labeled 'Smoothing' to get rid of any jaggies in your image map. For now you don't have to change any other settings, so click on 'Continue' to get back to the layout screen. From here you will want to adjust the coin object, camera position and any lights, once you have everything to your liking remember to click on 'Create Key' at the bottom, once again no need to change anything except clicking on 'All Items' and then 'OK', this makes sure that your camera and light positions are saved and do not resort back to the default positions when rendering is finished. Finally before we start rendering you will want to save your image, just a quick reminder on how to do this. Click on 'Record' at the top then choose your RGB Image format, I usually use 24Bit IFF but if you are only going to view the image on a standard Amiga then 6 or 8Bit HAM might be a better option. Now you can choose where to save your file and the file name by clicking on 'Save RGB Images', once you have set the file location and name, you can exit the window by clicking on 'Continue'. Now comes the easy part, click on 'Render' and wait while your Amiga creates the image, it might take a little while to save the file so don't be alarmed if you see your hard disk light flashing for a while. Since you now know how to load images into the Lighwave layout screen, you can add a background easily to your scene. All you need to do is click on 'Effects' at the top of the screen, a new requester will pop up, you can see the first line at the top is 'Background Image', here you can use any pre-loaded images as a background to your image to make it a bit more snazzy. Well that does it for this issue's tutorial, I hope you have learned a bit more about how to use Lightwave and can experiment with more confidence. See you next time and until then keep rendering!TopBrilliance 101 - Reflection and Gradient
Guides *Brilliance 101 - Part 4 Tweening Tool* Written by: Timo Paul To Tween Or Not To Tween In the last few issues we have been working on how to create textures, perspective, reflection and smoothing. For this part we will delve deeper into the 'Tween' tool and see how it can help us create a simple animation in just a few steps. If you remember back to our perspective tutorial, we had used the 'Tween' tool to adjust the angle of perspective for our floor. In this case we will be going back to the same tool and adjusting our brush. First Steps For this tutorial we are going take a brush and turn it into a spinning animation. The power and versatility makes this a very easy and quick task in Brilliance. For our brush, let's make a round circle, you can add any detail/texture however you like, for my example I made a simple gold coin. Once you your image ready, use the 'Cut Brush' tool remembering to click with the right mouse button to cut the image from the screen, then right click on the 'Cut Brush' button and paste it into one of the black squares for safe keeping. Now we have finished that part, it is time to move onto the 'Tween' menu. If you don't remember what it looks like, it is on the left side of the screen and has three boxes overlapping each other. Left click on the button to bring up the tool box. Click on the 'Adjust' button and you will be presented with the familiar black screen and red wire frame representation of your brush. First things we need to check are the values in the blue bar near the bottom of the screen, if they are all 0 then we are set to go. Click on the button labeled 'End' and then on the 'Y' button in 'Rot'. Left click and hold while you drag the mouse to the left until the middle number in the blue bar reaches -180. Click on 'Use' and you will be brought back to the main tool bar. To see what you have done, click on 'Preview' at the right side of the tool bar, when you do this you will be presented with a wireframe animation of a spinning object. Our First Animation To make an animation we need to go to another section of Brilliance, click on the camera button labeled 'Animation', when the tool bar pops up you will need to click on 'Set#', another tool bar will pop up with some more options, from here you will need to add some frames for your animation, at the moment we will do just 10, so type in 10 in the box next to 'Add' and press the Return key, then click on 'Proceed'. (You can add more frames for a smoother animation however for this tutorial we are using the default settings). From here you can go back to the 'Tween' tool bar and click on 'Draw' at the far right under 'Preview', the screen will go black and bit by bit you will see your brush rotated. Once it is finished you can go back to the 'Animation' tool and click on the play button to see it play once, to loop the animation press the button next to the play button with the curved arrow. Now the sharper eyed of you may have noticed that the image finishes on a reversed image, that is because our finished frame was -180. If we were working with a true 3D image then -180 would have been sufficient but since we are working in 2D -360 will get us back to our starting point without the image looking reversed. Well that is all for our simple animation tutorial, you can save the animation from the 'Animation' tool and perhaps save it out as an animated GIF or anything you can imagine. Until next time, good luck with your creative endevours and I hope that these series of tutorials have been of help. See you next time!TopPrinting From Your Amiga To A Networked Printer
Guides *Network Printing From Your Amiga* Written by: Timo Paul First Steps ... For those of us who used an Amiga in it's heyday connecting a printer was a relatively easy job thanks to parallel port being the standard way of connecting printers in the 80s and 90s. Find a driver that worked how you wanted it could be a bit hit and miss though. As we got into the 2000s the lack of a USB port made it harder to print from the Amiga and now it is more common to have your printer connected to the local network. Thankfully it is now easier than ever to connect your networked printer to your Amiga through some free software available from Aminet and the default Workbench printer drivers. This is something that I had been wanting to do for a while as it is much easier to check grammar and spelling of articles if I can print them out. After some help from the guys at EAB I managed to get my A1200 to print out to my Brother laser printer and for the benefit of others I will let you know how I did it. I am presuming that you already have your Amiga networked in one form or another, so we will skip over that part. What you will need next is the 'NetParLpr' software available from Aminet. Before installing 'NetParLpr' you will want to set your printer to a static IP address and note down the address that you chose. We do this as when installing 'NetParLpr' you will be asked for the printer's IP address, if you are using DHCP the Amiga will not be able to find the printer since it will change each time you turn it on and off. So fire up the installer, you can click on through leaving the default settings as is, just remember when it asks for the IP address to write down the static address you assigned to the printer. After it has installed, reboot your Amiga, now we will need to find a printer driver that is closest to your printer or the same if possible. For my printer I chose 'HP_LaserJet' which seems to be compatible with a lot of the laser printers out there. Once you have the printer driver copied to the 'Devs' folder, reboot and try printing. If you get a lot of garbage printed out then you will need to find another driver, your best bet is to go to our friend Google search and find your printer and see what other drivers are compatible. You can print out from Workbench and even print out graphic images and documents from programmes such as FinalWriter, you will need to adjust the settings for margins etc. to make sure it prints out properly. However that is all there is to printing to a networked printer. Before finding out about this programme I had imagined it would have been much harder to do but the hardest part is finding which printer driver is most compatible with your printer, good luck!TopTracking 101 - The Basics of ProTracker and Other Trackers
Guides *Tracking 101 - The Basics of Tracking* Written by: Maddy a.k.a Ms Mad Lemon Tracking 101 - The Basics of A Tracker Whether it's Protracker, Soundtracker, Octamed or any other tracker that's close to your heart. There are so many out there, some may be set out differently to others. However that special one you choose, it could be because it has more features or functions or it could be due to the captivating environment, which draws you in and really motivates you to let your heart free and create a good, solid music track. The core principle of all of these trackers, however, is essentially the same. The way they work is universal. There's a pattern editor, where you record your notes and type in the effect commands, which allow you to alter or adjust the characteristics of the notes you play. You can adjust or alter anything from volume, pitch bend to tempo, arpeggio, portamento and much more. There is a pattern sequencer which allows you to sequence all the patterns you have created, allowing you to add a structure to your piece of music. Finally, there's a sampler/sample editor for you to get creative with sampling your own sounds for use with your music or editing an already loaded sample from disk. The Sampler Let's deal with the sampler firstly, after all there can't be music without sound samples. Here is where you sample sounds either from an external source using a sampling cartridge, or you load from a sample disk or a directory if you have a hard drive. Here you will pretty much find ways to edit the sample. Making changes or adjustments to things such as the length, adding loops to the sample, changing it's key and tuning etc. For me personally, I tend to start off with a handful of basic samples to create a main structure, and I then replace them with more suited sounds as my track develops. There are certain times where I manage to get it right first time and end up with a sound perfectly suited to what I'm creating. Other times it's a case of getting the feel of it as you go along. The Patterns The patterns are basically the 'pages' you see on the tracker, on which you record the notes you play, as well as effects commands. Since Amiga's beloved sound chip 'Paula' has four hardware audio channels, you will see four columns, each representing an audio channel. Usually there are 64 rows on each pattern typically starting from 00-63. Some tracker programs such as SoundTracker Pro 2 allow you to change these to however many you want. But the standard is usually 64 rows. You will notice that each channel/track is set out like this: - - - 00 00 00 - - - 00 00 00 - - - 00 00 00 An example of a note: - - - 00 00 00 C-3 02 0C 03 - - - 00 00 00 So let's break this line of numbers and letters down. C is the note you've played. The '3' after it is the Octave. You will notice that the notes always have octave numbers after them, for example:C-3, F-2, E-3, G-2, C-1. The 02 next to the Octave number is the sample number from your bank of samples which you've either loaded from disk or sampled. Each is naturally assigned with a number. So basically the '02' is the sample you want this particular note to play. The 0C is an effect command, as in which effect you wish to have on your note, and the 03 after is the parameter for that particular effect command. So in this case, the 0C is the volume effect and the '03' after it is what the volume is set at. Yes, you got it! This is playing note C on the 3rd Octave, using Sample number 2. C is the volume command of the note, so it's playing it very quietly at Volume 03. Now with this knowledge, let's see if you can figure out the little adjustment I've made here: - - - 00 00 00 C-3 02 0C 25 - - - 00 00 00 You'll have noticed that I've increased the volume of the note from 03 to 25, so it plays much louder. Isn't it just much more straight forward when broken down like this? A side note, you will notice that some tracker programs will have less command numbers, such as Protracker. Which can look a bit like this: - - - 00 0 00 - - - 00 0 00 - - - 00 0 00 Don't let it throw you though, it's only a number less, so the same note and command as above, would be: - - - 00 0 00 C-3 02 C25 - - - 00 0 00 In other tracker versions it can even be: - - - 0 000 C-3 2 C25 - - - 0 000 As you see, things like this can sometimes vary across different trackers but essentially the same thing is happening. You will notice however that the effect commands are not entirely universal across different tracker programs, some will vary slightly, others will be totally different, however the general function of them will be the same across all trackers. So an example of a short melody, would be: E-2 02 00 00 - - - 00 00 00 A-2 02 00 00 G-2 02 00 00 - - - 00 00 00 - - - 00 00 00 D-3 02 00 00 Here, we've played a little sequence of notes. It is indeed as intuitive as it looks, the gaps between the notes played are how you would expect to hear if you played this back. There is a short gap after E-2 which stretches this note slightly. G2 plays directly after A2 and there is a longer gap after G2 stretching it out until D3 is played. It also depends on the speed the tracker is running, of course a higher speed would play these notes at a higher tempo and the opposite is true. The thing to note is, running the tracker at a faster tempo means you can add more detail, i.e faster notes, more intricate drum sequences and more intricate tunes, melodies and arpeggios overall. Back to the construction of the melody for a moment. A little example task: Just for effect, If I want the notes A-2 and D-3 to be played using different samples. Also for note G2 to play slightly quieter than the others, I can simply make the following changes: E-2 02 00 00 - - - 00 00 00 A-2 01 00 00 G-2 02 0C 15 - - - 00 00 00 - - - 00 00 00 D-3 04 00 00 Since effect commands are unique to the tracker program you use, I won't go too much into effect commands. The documentation for each tracker should list it's effect commands. But here I show the volume command above is an example of generally how effect commands are used. Now let's talk about completed patterns. Each pattern has a number assigned to it, for example, you may have created your music intro on patterns 0 and 1, created your first verse on patterns 2 and 3 and so on. At this stage you may not have created a song structure, you'd have created multiple patterns which are sections of your song. These patterns need to be tied together in a certain sequence to create your song. At this stage your patterns will not be tied together. The Pattern editor Now this is one of the fun parts of creating a music track, this is where you arrange your patterns (pattern pages) to how you want your music track to flow. Here is where you tie together the patterns you've created, essentially creating the structure of your music, the intro, the verse, the chorus, the drop, the peak, how it ends. Now throughout the creation of your music, you'll have created multiple patterns, all having their designated number of course. You will already have a structure of your music in your mind and how you want it to be. In the pattern editor you will find a sequence of numbers, in my case, I use SoundTracker pro 2 which gives you a full view of the pattern sequence. 000 000 001 000 002 - 000 003 000 004 000 This will initially just look like a bunch of numbers to you, just like the pattern editor initially did. Notice you have two main columns, each column has three numbers, the first column of numbers is the sequence number, you cannot change these of course. Think of these as bullet points. Just like when you're writing an ordered list, you put numbers as bullet points. The second column of numbers, which is all set to zero is where you put your patterns, you change these to the pattern number you will to play on a particular sequence number. For example, I want my music to start with pattern 1 which is an intro, to move onto pattern 3, which is the continuation of the intro, repeat pattern 3 to build some suspense, progress to pattern 2 which is a build up and finally slam right into the main melody of verse one which is pattern 4, continuing the verse one melody which is pattern 5, then wanting to repeat verse one which is patterns 4 and 5 again. So lets have a look at the pattern numbers of the above sequence, we have: 1 then 3 then 3 again then 2, then 4, then 5, then 4 again and 5 again. How would this look on the pattern sequencer? Easy, the second column is the one you change to the order you want your patterns to play, like this: 000 001 001 003 002 003 003 - 002 004 004 005 005 006 004 007 005 The hyphen in the centre indicates the sequence number that is currently playing or selected. In Protracker or Octamed, you will probably notice it not showing a full pattern sequencer like it does in Soundtracker Pro 2. It will only display the part that is playing, for example:003 002 The look is minimized until you click on it and it will open a dedicated menu or window which has the entire pattern sequence showing. Regardless of how it's presented in different tracker programs, the pattern sequencer works exactly the same in all trackers, it's a universal characteristic of the tracker. Hexadecimal numbers Now one very important thing that will get you far with trackers is knowing your hexadecimal numbers. When you're learning a tracker, hexadecimal is your friend. Once you know and get used to it, it's pretty much straight forward. There are just six values being added to every ten. Let's break it down. Decimal, as we know it is: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20...etc Hexadecimal is: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18, 19,1A,1B,1C,1D,1E,1F,20, 21..etc So essentially, with hexadecimal or Hex numbers, you get 6 extra values (Think hexagon, six sides). You figured it, it continues like 26,27,28,29, 2A,2B,2C,2D,2E,2F,30,31..etc. It's simple once your mind gets used to working with it. So an example, lets have a look at our C3 note from above: C-3 02 0C 25. If I increase the value of the volume effect by 7, In decimal C25 will become C32 whereas in hexadecimal, it will be C2B due to the six extra values. C-3 02 0C 2B Finally, with regards to how a tracker works, this is pretty much the core and you can apply it to the tracker of your choice, be it Protracker, Soundtracker Pro 2, Octamed or any other. There is of course so much more to trackers but these essentials will help you get started and figure out what exactly is going on while you're watching your Amiga play your favourite MOD files. Adios! ~Maddi aka Ms Mad LemonTopRetro Brite Your Amiga The Easy Way!
Guides *RetroBrite Your Amiga* Written by: Timo Paul An Easy and Simple Way to RetroBrite Retrobrite The One Step Way It is a sad fact that our lovely Amigas tend to turn an ugly shade of yellow brown as they age, as most know it is due to the fire retardent chemical added. In most cases the process can be slowed down by keeping the Amiga away from direct sunshine and in a non-smoking area. In the past some clever people found a way to "retrobrite" the yellowed plastics of Amigas and other older hardware, however it involved mixing some rather dangerous chemicals and in some cases requiring a UV light. Last year my Amiga had started to turn a nasty shade of yellow along with the keys and being in Japan it is a bit more difficult to get hold of some of the chemicals needed for creating a retrobrite solution, not to say the least that I am rather clumsy and would most likely poison myself in the process. As such I searched the web in Japanese for a solution that would be easy for one such as myself and using easy to find materials. To my amazement I found a site in Japanese that showed a very easy retrobrite solution using only one product that is easy to buy in any store. The product is called Wide Haiter EX Power, it is a standard bleach for clothes (oxygen type) that comes in liguid form. Many househods add it to the to standard laundry detergent to take out odors and stains. According to the website, use about 25-45% of the bleach with added water in a bowl, add the plastic you want to turn white and leave it in the sunsine for 1-2 days. It seemed unbelievable that something so easy could achieve such a clean effect. The photos on the website showed a very yellowed Famicom turning back to it`s original white after 1 day. Well I quickly went down to my local Aeon (same as Tescso in the UK) and bought 1 litre of Wide Haiter EX Power. I used 45% Wide Haiter EX Power and 55% water, in a large plastic zip lock and clear 90 litre rubbish bag. For this experiment I took off all the keys of my A1200 and took apart the top and bottom cases. I washed everything first with soapy water, dried them off and placed them into the zip lock and the rubbish bag. This took place during August when it is most hot in Japan and sunshine all day long. I made sure that the bags were flat so as to get as much sunshine as possible, then left them out for one day. After the first day I had a look and to my amazement the yellowing had almost completely disapeared, some parts still had a little yellowing due to the angle of the sun, so I moved them around to get the most sunshine and left for another day. At the end of the second day, I removed the plastic from the bags and rinsed them with warm water. To my surprise everything had turned a lovely crisp white colour again, the darker keys such as the Shift and Enter keys had turned a little lighter grey but not enough to make me worry. After rinsing and drying the parts, I put the Amiga back together and observed the A1200, it looked like new, the difference was quite drastic. Now almost one year on and the yellowing has not returned yet, I do try to keep the Amiga covered with a towel so as to keep it out of the sunshine. While this was done with a Japanese detergent product I had a look on the internet for similar products and it seems that you need to find an oxygen clothes bleach such as OxiClean but in liquid form. The powder type does not work as well as the liquid, I suggest finding a strong liquid bleach for clothes and maybe use one key from your keyboard to see if it works. The Wide Haiter EX Power is a standard clothes bleach so I imagine a similar product will exist in other countries. If you do find something similar on your country and get the same results, let us know at WhatIFF? and we can add your experience to the magazine. Good luck and enjoy whitening your Amiga without the typical associated risks with traditional retrobriting.TopWelcome to voices of the people behind Amiga hardware and software.
CONTENTS -= Amiga People - MsMadLemon and Karl Jeacle =- - = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = - Last issue we talked to Chris Edwards of PiMiga fame, this issue we are lucky to have interviews with two people creating waves in the Amiga community. -= MsMad Lemon Interview =- First off we are talking to MsMadLemon, known for her Amiga audio productions and YouTube channel. She has released several albums via Bandcamp and teaches about music creation on the Amiga. We delve into her love of the Amiga and her music creation processes. -= Karl Jeacle Interview =- Secondly we have a chat with Karl Jeacle the author of AmiGemini which we reviewed in the last issue. In addition to programming AmiGemini he is also the author of the book - First Steps Amiga Surfin' - one of the first books about using your Amiga to 'Surf' the net. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga People - WhatIFF? Issue 1.05 - June 2022TopMs Mad Lemon a.k.a Maddi Interview
Amigaspeak 1. On your Twitter and YouTube channel you have a variety of videos about the Amiga and other electronics. What got you first interested in electronics and the Amiga? My interest in Amiga began at around seven years old when my brother got an Amiga 500 back in around 1989, The first thing I saw on it was Avenger Megademo. I spent a lot of time on it, initially with games, but then eventually on things like deluxe paint II which brought out my creative side further. Electronics I got into around a similar age where I first found a motor and connected a battery to it, it then began, I started connecting a battery to everything that had two legs, light bulbs, LEDs even a resistor (not sure what I was expecting it to do) Then the three legged spider (transistor) confused me. Where do I connect the battery?! Years went on and so did my electronics. 2. You are very creative, making music, art, photography and building projects, if you had to choose to do one, which you most prefer? Oh that is a very difficult question. Right now I'm in the music creating mode and would choose music as it would let me use an Amiga, however, I know in a couple of months I'l probably start doing photography or something else. Whatever mode I'm in, whatever I'm doing becomes my whole world. If I was pushed to choose it would probably be photography or making music. Tough question! 3. Do you think owning an Amiga helped in nurturing your interest in computer graphics and music? Definitely! I got a Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard when I was little which started something off. Imitating tunes which I already knew. But treated as a toy really, it wouldn't have gone much further. So here comes the Amiga and pulls me into this world of hours and hours of music creation. I'd say the Amiga not only helped in nurturing, but gave me a platform. With regards to graphics, it's definitely Deluxe Paint II on the Amiga which got me into that side of things. 4. You have released two albums in 2020, Memories and Waterfall, what Amiga hardware did you use to make the albums? Actually these two albums may be released in 2020, but most of the tracks I created on an Amiga in the 1990s using Soundtracker Pro 2. In fact all of the tracks on the album 'Waterfall' are from the 1990s and early 2000s. The album 'Memorias' has got tracks I created in recent years but on the Amiga, exactly the way I did back in the 90s. There is an upcoming album 'Zaman' which will also have a couple of tracks from the 1990s but all the same, created on the Amiga using Soundtracker Pro 2. 5. What did you find easy and difficult about making the album on an Amiga? Its difficult because it's very different from conventional way of music creation or songwriting and you have to learn the concept of the tracker and how everything works, to piece together segments. Easy because you can do everything at your own pace if you wish, there's no need for rehearsing, no issues with timing or sync. 6. What is your process when making a track? I start of messing around on a musical keyboard or synthesizer, just playing what sounds right, if I get a melody, I play it onto the Tracker and then build a chord progression around it, then a beat and bassline. Other times I have a chord progression and then build a beat and bassline around it, then create a melody around that. 7. The tracks on Memorias sounds reminiscent of the early 90s demos, was this intentional? I've had similar comments about my latest track 'Mirrors' sounding Kraftwerk-esque. Quite a compliment actually! But neither was intentional, I'm just into that kind of music. I don't listen to modern music much at all. I listen to a lot of Amiga music, C64 SID, and anything from back in the day. Basically I just create what naturally comes to me or how I feel, I don't aim for it to sound like it's from back in the day or something specific. Perhaps it's me who is still stuck in the 1980s-1990s 8. In your videos you are creating music in ProTracker, have you used any other trackers or music software on the Amiga? I create music on Soundtracker Pro 2, which works pretty much like Protracker but has it's own proprietary MOD format, which unfortunately is incompatible with MOD because it can do a few more things. However the basic principle is pretty much the same. Mostly yes, I create music on Soundtracker Pro 2. I've tried using Octamed but I cant get on with the interface, I've had a few people tell me that Octamed 4 is the one to try, Octamed 5 and above had been changed and is apparently more confusing for many. 9. Are there any Amiga musicians that you have take influence from? I wouldn't say direct influence, but I suppose what you enjoy listening to would have a natural influence on your creativity. Though my track 'Waterfall' is a direct influence from Matthew Simmonds (4-Mat) track 'Waterfall'. I sort of fell in love with that track of his for some reason and just wanted to do my own take of it. Other artists I enjoy listening to are 'Pic Saint Loup', Chris Hulsbeck, but there's too many to list. I like quite a mixture, so I listen to many artists rather than a specific few. 10. Is there anything that you have not tried on the Amiga i.e. software or hardware and would like to do in the future? I haven't tried much of video work, using Genlocks or frame grabbers. I've always wanted to so I may try some of that at some point. 11. The Amiga has been gaining in popularity again with the A500 MINI coming out this year, why do you think there has been an increase in interest in the Amiga platform? There seems to be a wave of people looking back at the past and feeling nostalgia for lost years. Frankly I never left these years and always lived feeling Nostalgic. I held onto my Amigas until around 2005-2006 and only sold my stuff because I thought I had to, that is a huge regret I have, but I have everything back now. I can understand why people look back, there seems to be a movement going on to bring back elements of the past. Amiga being a big one in many people's lives. This has been going on for a few years though, I'm surprised the A500 MINI has only just come out now. 12. You had an interesting video about PD games, since we do not cover games, can you tell us what is your favourite non-game PD software? Well, Soundtracker Pro 2 :o) But also Diskmaster 2 and X-Copy. 13. What would be your dream Amiga setup and what would you like to see in a future Amiga if one was ever released? A future Amiga. Well back in the day I would have said a towered Amiga, but over time I've fallen in love with the original desktop A500/A1200 form factor. Okay I'm going to let myself go crazy now when answering this question.. I'd love to have an Amiga which resembles the original A500 or A1200, with a DVD drive and floppy built in (Kickstart ROMs that can boot directly from CD/DVD). USB ports. Fast IDE. To have graphics and video that can upscale the standard RGB output resolutions but also have an RTG mode and high graphics/chip RAM. For it to be switchable between three modes: A500 kick1.3 stock mode. A1200 AGA Kick 3+ stock mode. A1200 accelerated mode with FPU and switchable PPC mode so that I can finally try Amiga OS4.1 on a classic Amiga :o). The ability to be able to choose the amount of fast RAM to have in all three modes. An updated Paula chip (which really should have been done on the A1200) Okay, my ideal Soundchip would be a Paula+SID hybrid, 4-8 Paula Channels (with 8-16bit sampling) + 3-6 SID Channels with both 6581 R4 filters and 8580. And a version of Soundtracker Pro 2 which can deal with all this including the SID Channels and synthesis. I would be in heaven!! :o)) 14. Thank you Maddi for taking the time to answer our questions, is there anything you would like to say to our readers or about your future projects? Well, one thing I've not got is a shortage of ideas for videos and future projects, there is a lot lined up, so do check out my Youtube channel and all what I do. Thank you for including me in your magazine!TopKarl Jeacle Interiew
Amigaspeak 1. Karl, can you please tell us a little about you, where you come from, what you do, etc? I live in Dublin, Ireland and have been working in the telecoms and ISP business for almost 30 years. 2. You are the programmer for the AmiGemini protocol browser,before we get into that project can you tell us how you started with computers? My first computer was a ZX Spectrum 48K. I played games and learned how to program in BASIC. I upgraded to the +2 and +3 models but my first serious computer was an Atari PC3 8088. I bought a PC because I thought that's what grown-ups used. It was good to learn about DOS and how PCs worked but when I saw my friends' Amigas, I sold my PC and bought an Amiga 2000 with a bridgeboard. The bridgeboard was handy but ultimately it was the Amiga that was used the most. 3. What attracted you to programming? I used to type in the programs in the computer magazines in the 1980s. In those days there were lots of books and magazines teaching you how to program in BASIC on your 8-bit home computer. When you got bored of playing games, it was fun to make your computer do other things. 4. What other projects have you worked on the Amiga before AmiGemini? In the 1990s, I wrote a book called First Steps Amiga Surfin - a guide to getting online with the Amiga. A couple of years ago, I wrote AmiSpeedTest - a program to measure your Amiga's download speed on the Internet. As you can see, there's a sort of networking theme developing here. 5. Why do you programme for the Amiga, and what other platforms do you develop for? At work I use Python a lot. It's a great language for quickly building all kinds of projects. Outside of work, I have an Android app that's written in Java, and there's an iOS port written in Typescript. While these are popular modern languages, they are all very high level. You take for granted the layers of libraries and abstractions. Programming in C on the Amiga with no memory protection is like an antidote to this. And learning about the 68K reminds you how computers actually work. 6. The Gemini protocol was created in 2019, can you explain what the Gemini protocol is? It's like a simpler text-only version of the Web. Instead of Web servers, there are Gemini capsules. Instead of TCP port 443, there is TCP port 1965. Instead of HTML, there is Gemtext, a markup language that's closer to Markdown than HTML. Instead of CSS? Nothing. It's up to the client browser to layout pages in a user-friendly way. As for Javascript, that's a non-starter. In common with Gopher it is text-only, but like today's Web, it uses modern encryption to secure connections. Privacy is one of the motivations behind Gemini. Many Gemini users were growing wary of the amount of tracking that takes place on web sites today. There is no place for that in Gemini. There are no cookies or other tracking devices. Requests have no headers with extra information that can identify the user agent. The server only sees the page request and its source IP address. 7. What drove you to create the AmiGemini programme? In addition to being a nice hobby project to work on the Amiga, I thought that Gemini could be a good fit for the Amiga. The requirement for TLS encryption does require some CPU power but the rest of Gemini is simple enough that it's possible to browse Geminispace on an Amiga 1200. 8. What benefits does the Gemini protocol offer to Amiga users? It's a relatively lightweight way to browse content on the Internet. There is a small but growing amount of Amiga content available. At the time of writing there are Gemini mirrors of the latest files on Aminet and the latest Amiga Future news. 9. What would you like to implement in the future releases? I would like to make sure AmiGemini implements most, if not all, of the Gemini specification and supports any future developments. I have a few ideas for new features and have had some good feedback so if I don't get too busy on other projects hopefully I'll be able to develop it further. 10. Do think that Gemini protocol has a future or will be forgotten about in 10 years time? The web is getting heavier and heavier and so there is a growing "small web" movement. I don't know if Gemini will still be around in 10 years but Gopher is still alive after 30 years. It's likely that there will be some form of text-based protocol that will be in common use. 11. Do you have any other ideas for new Amiga software? Nothing at the moment but who knows what the future holds? 12. What Amiga computers do you have and do you develop your software on the Amiga? I have a small collection of Amigas but my original A4000 is my primary machine. I do all of my testing on the A4000 but I use my FreeBSD desktop for development work. 13. Thank you for your time Karl, is there anything else you would like to say or add about yourself, the Gemini protocol or about Amigas? I would like to say thanks to everyone who has helped test and provide feedback about AmiGemini. I would also like to thank Frank Wille and Oliver Roberts for their respective work on VBCC and AmiSSL. Without these great pieces of Amiga software AmiGemini would not exist.TopWelcome to the links section!
CONTENTS -= Links =- - = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = - Here we will provide links to other pages on the internet where you can get software and other information. www.amiganews.net/en/ One of the most up to date and comprehensive sources for Amiga news from around the globe. www.eab.abime.net One of the best Amiga centred forums on the internet. www.exxoshost.co.uk The resource if you need help or information about the new Terrible Fire cards. www.amibay.com A great place for buying and selling Amiga hardware, they also have some very nice people to give advice about the Amiga. www.amiga.org Probably the longest running Amiga forum on the world wide web, it is more centred on the American Amiga users. Websites you should not visit. www.amiga.net.pl This was quite a popular website for people since they had a number of books and software available, but over the last few years more and more people have lost their money with items not being sent. It is sad that that this is still happening in the Amiga scene.TopIvent's Corner
CONTENTS -= Ivent's Corner - Amiga Art Contest =- Written by: Kevin Saunders - = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = - AMIGA ART CONTEST - 2022 I have been working closely with Doug/10Marc with the Annual Amiga Art Contest that has just launched for 2022. Every year I create a special promo video posted on youtube. This years promo is here: -> [ youtu.be/il41AgB5v7w ] Each year every Amigan has an opportunity to show off their various creative talents using the Amiga, either real or emulation. This year we have 5 categories: 1. Hand Drawn Artwork 2. Digital Photography 3. 3D/Ray Tracing 4. MOD/Music 5. Animation Normally Vikki helps in Judging the entrants and this year she is unable so Doug asked if I would like to and I jumped at the opportunity. So this year I look forward to seeing what great art or music people submit. If you would like to see Doug's official Youtube with more information please visit this youtube link ->[ youtu.be/XlxoWrTpqXc ] The Official Website (including all the previous entrants and winners) https://amigaartwork.com Best of luck everyone, and don't forget we may even have even better prizes this year Kev | InventTopWhat's coming up in the next issue?
CONTENTS -= Coming up in issue 1.06 of WhatIFF? =- - = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = - Thank you for reading the 5th issue of WhatIFF?, the next issue should be out by August and will include the usual tutorials of Lightwave, Brilliance, plus installing an FPU on the A1200 motherboard, reviews of the AmigaKit A1200 fast ram card and the A500 Mini. Plus more articles from our resident writers John Scolieri and Kevin Saunders. See you in issue 6!TopMeet the writing staff of WhatIFF?
CONTENTS WhatIFF? is an independent magazine created by Amiga enthusiasts from around the world looking for a more serious magazine. The main writers at the moment are a small group but we hope to grow in the coming issues. Timo Paul Steve Lord Kevin Saunders John Scolieri Maddi We are always interested in new articles, guides or stories, so you have something you wish to submit please send it to: submissions@whatiff.infoToptimopaul
Writers Name: Timo Paul Aliases: amifan (EAB) Contact info: timopaul@whatiff.info Websites: www.whatiff.info www.binarybeats.meTopstevelord
Writers Name: Steve Lord Aliases: stevelord (EAB) Contact info: stevelord@whatiff.info Websites: www.thedorkweb.substack.comTopjohnscolieri
Writers Name: John Scolieri Aliases: klx300r (EAB) 328gts (amigans.net) Contact info: johnscolieri@whatiff.info Websites: