When scrolling through my Facebook news feed I noticed that
AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 was released. But at the same time I read this was announced by mistake. After going to the forums it seems it was put back on again. Apparently someone released it by mistake. I am still running with Update 4 so I would have to install Update 5 first before I can install Update 6. Besides that I need to put my A1SE back together first since I took the graphics card and sound card to use in my desktop for Aros. But since I use VirtualBox on my Acer laptop for Aros I can put the components back in the A1SE.
BoingsWorld episode 34 is also out. Always on time like promised and this time with Petro Tyschtschenko as guest. Sadly I did not see Ernie and Locke on the credits for this episode. I really hope they return in the next episode. I can’t wait to listen to episode 34.
Another great bit of news is that apparently MorphOS will run on the Sam460ex board. Suddenly such a board becomes an attractive piece of hardware. The fact that you can run both OS4.x and MorphOS kind of justifies the purchase of the board. No longer would you have to invest in two machines if you want both worlds. Even better, it will also run Aros.
Currently I am also working on an article about X-AMOS. Giving it a bit of a try to see if it is something you can work with. Another article I am working on involves games and their great memories. Plenty of stuff in the pipeline and let’s hope I find the time to get it done.
I did this for the first time last year August. You can read it again if you like. I thought it was time for a part 2. Week 45 experienced by me with you the reader in the front seat.
Monday 5-11-2012
My last day of my holiday before I have to return to work. I enjoyed a good 3 weeks of holiday which is about to come to an end. I had the opportunity to play a lot with Aros, writing for my blog and playing a lot of classic games. Sadly from tomorrow on I would have less time for all of this. Still I am determine to do as much coding for Aros as I can. I am currently trying to get the syntax highlight to work with Annotate. There is some kind of issue with Aros which causes issues with the pen colors. So if I set certain key words in the C syntax to certain colors it will be different the next time I reboot Aros.
Atari Flashback
Yesterday I came across the Atari Flashback for (I think) €17,50 but since I don’t know anything about it (except for it being a modern classic Atari device to play classic games) I did not pick it up. Anyone know this was a good deal or maybe has some nice, or not so nice, stories about this device? I did see newer versions of this device on the internet.
I had a few more coding attempts which was not bad. Still getting used to Zune (MUI clone) but I got to open two windows at the same time. I had some crashes at well bringing VirtualBox to a complete halt. But currently I got two windows open which will be the basis for my further attempts.
Tuesday 6-11-2012
Reality hits hard on your first day back at work after your holiday. What is noticeable right away is the lack of time again. I managed to have a quick peek at my e-mail and visit the Aros-Exec site around midnight. Not that I came back from work at midnight. It takes me one hour to drive to work and also (well yeah) one hour back home. Normally I am home a bit after 6:00pm. When I came back I had to hit the road with my wife for her business and we came back around 10:00pm. Still had to cook dinner so it got to be a long day. We grab something on the road of course but you want a decent dinner as well.
Wednesday 7-11-2012
Today I managed to catch up with the BoingsWorld podcasts. I finished both episode 32 and 33. As always great shows. It is in German so it is only for those who understand German.
Sadly there was no Ernie & Locke in episode 33. I do hope they return in episode 34.
Thursday 8-11-2012
Today was all work as I did overtime which left me with no free time at all. And that on the third day back after my holiday. It suddenly, like it was not already there, daunted on me that time is just going to be very limited for me to pursue my Amiga endeavours. Hopefully I can find some kind of solution that will leave me with enough time to work on my Amiga stuff. Fingers crossed!
Friday 9-11-2012
Weekend! As I thought and already reported the free time was just like I thought it would be, just about none. But it was not a bad week all together. Coincidence or faith, you decide, with the first Bucket Diary style column I was talking about the new car we got. I am going to do the same in this part. We won’t have a new car this week but we kind of sealed the deal so to the speak. Hopefully it will all happen next week so we got a really cool car.
We started with season 3 of The Walking Dead. Great start of the season and right away me and the missus are hooked. So much that we watch into the early hours of Saturday morning. Great start of the weekend if you ask me.
Saturday 10-11-2012
Saturday is always a busy day for the missus as she buys new products for he business. With me “tagging” along we have a very busy day. I “tag” along with her a lot and I enjoy it. Her business is growing so fast she is unable to supply all demands. Demand overshadows stock which is not a bad thing if you ask me. She is already thinking about expanding the business even further. Her wish is for me to join her business. I can’t tell you how excited I am about joining her.
With episode 4 of The Walking Dead finished we are left hungry for the next episode which will be broadcast tomorrow Sunday the 11th. Sunday, also known as the last day of the weekend. This Sunday I will clean the car and also the garage for this upcoming week when hopefully we have our new car.
Some time ago I wanted to use remote desktop so I could take over my Icaros desktop when I would be sitting downstairs with my laptop. The downside of course is that you have two computers on and also I found it to be a bit slow and also the resolution was not that great. With very little time I don’t want to sit upstairs in my office every day instead of sitting downstairs with my wife in the living room. Some of you might know how that is. You work all day and the few free hours you have in the evening are used upstairs (or a different room) which can lead to some issues with the missus. So better would be if you can do the work in the living room so you sit with the missus. My wife is never without her laptop for long so we are both busy but if I can join her in the living room it just works so much better. So remote desktop was not the solution so what now?
I can of course install Aros on my laptop but I need to use Windows so that is not an option for me. Also I don’t want a dual boot system. I suddenly remembered that in the past I ran Aros within Windows so after posting at the Aros-Exec site I was directed to the Windows hosted version. Soon it became clear that I could not run it in full screen so that was not the solution for me. I started to think about a virtual emulator like VMWare that will allow you to run a different operating system within Windows. I used VMWare before in the past. But it is not for free so I Googled for open source alternatives.
I came across VirtualBox from Oracle. (** The site seems to be not accessible for some days already) This just rocks and it turns out this is even discussed in the Icaros manual. The problem you will run in to is the resolution. You can’t set anything resolution in the Prefs settings for the screen mode. But as always there is a solution for this. Over at VMWAros you can find the solution for the screen resolution. I have the same resolution (1366×768) so I could just follow the instructions and now I am running it full screen. The speed is perfect and switching between VirtualBox and Windows a lot has no influence on the speed.
With having Icaros running hosted I thought about my issues with not having a C syntax highlight editor. What if I can have a shared folder available on both Windows and Aros? This way I can use a C syntax highlight editor on Windows and save it to that folder and right away compile it. I use SMBFS on OS4.x to mount these Windows shares to exchange files. Sadly due to the buggy network on my A1SE it is far from being the best solution. SMBFS can also be used on Icaros and again it is described in the Icaros manual. Sadly there is a problem with VirtualBox in combination with Windows 7. Files on Aros will be truncated in the first 49 bytes or so. Sadly this will prevent me from using this as a solution. I have not tested it yet but this would also affect a FTP connection. So using a FTP client on Aros to connect to a FTP server on my Windows 7 installation would also cause issues. I guess this is the first “major” issue I have found with Aros.
Currently I am playing with the syntax highlight settings of Annotate. You can change it to your liking. Sadly there are some issues with Aros when it comes to setting the colours. There is a solution that requires you to run a script that calls a utility that fixes the colours issues. I have done this but I am still experiencing issues. For example if I set something to yellow the next time I reboot it will have the colour red. When I reboot again it will have another colour. It could be, and I guess it is, that I am filling it in wrong in the syntax file since for example comment in my C source file keeps its colour. I hope this can be sorted soon. For now I am over the moon with VirtualBox and Icaros. It runs really great and I can switch between Aros and Windows 7 without everything coming to a halt. If I can have the syntax highlight issue with Annotate fixed nothing can stop me from doing some serious coding.
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