Back for the future...

My AmigaONE 500 has been gathering dust for the best part of a year after moving house and the birth of our baby daughter. It has been a busy year with all the nappy changes and sleepless nights with the house needing more work than I initially thought. Finally now the renovation work on the house is slowing down as the bulk of the major work is done and my back account has dried up.

A few weeks ago my wife tasked me to ’sort out’ the corner of our bedroom where I had been stock piling all my ’junk’. Mostly DVDs and blu–rays, but amongst it all nestled my A1–500.  So got the A1–500 setup again but have only started using it in the past week really, prompted by the need to generate a registration key for someone who kindly ordered an Assist.

Disappearing SSD in Media Toolbox

A strange thing happened with my SSDs while the A1-500 was in 'storage', the larger of the two drives was not appearing on Workbench or in Media Toolbox. I checked all the SATA leads thinking something must have worked lose, but all looked fine. Not having time to investigate further I left it, but after a few more power ups it reappeared and has been there ever since.

Not sure what to make of the disappearing SSD as have little experience with them. Should I ditch the second SSD and squeeze everything on the primary drive for now? I’m a bit concerned it might disappear again and not return.

Amiga Workbench

Anyway, I’ve discovered a few half finsihed blog posts so I'm going to get them finished off and posted in the coming weeks. Watch this space!

Introducing RecordBox

Some time ago I wanted to make an AmiDock subdock that would act as a playlist launcher. Intially I just added all my playlists to AmiDock and used DefIcons to setup a default icon for M3U files that pointed to AmigaAMP. The end result was a very text heavy subdock which I was not too keen on. I decided to try making some album cover icons to improve the subdock. To do this I used images downloaded from the net which I then converted to icons with Image2Icon. Initially I planned to upload these to OS4Depot as an icon pack, but wondered if there was a better approach.

I wanted a tool that could simplify the task of making these icons and adding them to AmiDock, ideally one that searched online for appropriate art work, downloaded it and created the icon in as few clicks as possible. I found various scripts and tools for this on other platforms, although some were broken and others I couldn't work out how to adapt to AmigaOS. After some experimenting RecordBox is the end result.

RecordBox's subdock showing some albums

AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Review

I recently updated my AmigaONE 500 to AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition (FE) and have decided to write this review giving my first impressions of this 'final' update of AmigaOS 4.1.

Installing AmigaOS 4.1 FE must be done as a fresh install, from scratch, there is no update option. With this in mind I backed up my existing system to a CD-ROM and made a start. Knowing that writing to JXFS formatted drives is no longer possible under FE I also backed up the rest of my SSD.

Having backed everything up I inserted the FE disc expecting it to boot automatically, no luck. I tried changing the boot priorities in U-Boot, but to no avail. Next I swapped around the optical and SSD drive's SATA cables and the problem was solved. It seems the optical drive must be plugged into the SATA port nearest the motherboard to work as a boot device. Before updating AmigaOS I also added an additional SSD to my AmigaONE 500 and while doing this I must have replugged the SATA cables in a different order.

The optical drive's SATA cable connected to the correct port

Finally...

After what seems like a long wait since pre-ordering back in December my copy of OS 4.1 Final Edition arrived today, as did the mouse mat and calendar I ordered at the same time. Looking forward to getting the A1-500 updated sometime over the next week!

Updated Odyssey Web Browser

Earlier this week an updated version of the Odyssey Web Browser was released for AmigaOS 4.1 that includes HTML5 video and audio support! This means you can finally playback YouTube videos in the the web browser amongst other things. First impressions of Odyssey 1.23 are very good and despite the slow HTML5 video playback on my AmigaONE 500 it is certainly closer to being usable than Timberwolf. Apparently the speed of playback will improve once overlay support arrives, so for now I will still use getVideo but it's a step in the right direction all the same.

Odyssey 1.23 playing a YouTube video

Another nice 'feature' I just discovered is that Odyssey is able to upload photos to Blogger, something that previously wasn't working for me. Many thanks to all the developers involved, you're hard work is much appreciated!

Workbench Refresh

Since getting my AmigaONE 500 up and running again (sometime ago now) I have freshened up my Workbench a little.

The most frequently changed part of any desktop must surely be the humble wallpaper? First I set about changing mine, or rather FlipPaper did. A while back I asked the author of FlipPaper if he could add support for changing the wallpaper through the day to allow the use of a wallpaper set for Ubuntu I came across. He has added the feature and the results are very nice with the wallpaper changing hourly through the day.

;

Kicklayout

Two weeks back I decided to have a go at shaving a few seconds of my AmigaONE 500's boot time. I did this by editing the the 'Kicklayout' file, a file which determines what kickstart modules are loaded at boot. I knew this process was hazardous, possibly resulting in the machine failing to boot if the wrong line was commented out, however having done this on my old Sam440flex I decided to have a go.

First Impressions

A couple of months back I received an email from amigakit inviting me to to order an AmigaONE X1000. I had registered interest in the X1000 some time before and joined the queue for this flagship AmigaOS system. I was disappointed to discover the price had crept up, due to rising CPU prices, with the configuration I wanted now coming in at almost £2300. To be honest I think the long wait also took the shine off the prospect of an X1000 for me. Eventually I contacted amigakit to let them know I was going to pass on the offer and instead decided to take a second look at ACube's AmigaONE 500.

The AmigaONE 500 is a system based on ACube's Sam460ex motherboard. I already have a Sam440flex which I have had a lot of use out of over the last few years, but fancied an upgrade. I decided to order the AmigaONE 500 SSD edition which came in at less than half the price of the X1000. Although not as powerful as an X1000, and perhaps less 'future proof', the difference in cost ultimately swung the decision for me.