AmigaOne 500 1 Year Anniversary!

Me with my AmigaOne 500

Hi folks! Guess it has been quite some time writing a new blog. There has been numbers of updates and some new tools to try out.
  
My AmigaOne 500 1 Year Anniversary

Friday 2th of August 2013 was exactly 1 year ago since i first ran my AmigaOne 500 system, which came with AmigaOS 4.1 Update 4.

My Amiga system has come quite a long way since then, being a fully modern, very up-to-date AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 system!

As an introduction to something new, i can reveal that i have got myself the 24 bit/192Khz ESI@Juli XTe PCIe audio card! A fantastic audio card based on the greatly updated ENVY24HT AHI driver done by ACube Systems!

The updated ENVY24HT driver finally allows several PCIe x1 audio cards based on the driver to be used, including the top-of-the-line ESI@Juli XTe card i ordered from GGSData in Sweden earlier this summer, around the end of June, if i am not mistaken. I paid 2000 SEK for the card, which was truly worth it!

Setting up ESI@Juli XTe PCIe audio card

The beautiful 24 bit/192Khz ESI@Juli XTe!

Installing the audio card was deadly easy, carefully opening the side door of the cabinet, unsrewing the metal bracket where the audio card is to be fitted into, and carefully inserting the card into the PCIe x1 slot. The J16 jumper of the SAM460ex motherboard has been removed, and now fully enabled in the UBoot BIOS.

Few seconds later, the bracket of the audio card has been screwed in place, where the metal bracket was.

Now the card was correctly and safely fitted, ready to be used!

Put back the side door of the cabinet, turnt on my AmigaOne 500 and VOILA! Using the RCA-to-Jack connectors, audio is ready to be played through my HIFI 5.1 surround system from Logitech! :)

ESI@Juli XTe fitted nicely in the PCIe x1 slot!

Shortly after, i went into the tool Ranger and it showed the card located on the PCIe x1 slot supporting the updated ENVY24HT driver! Now it was time to configure the settings in AHI for ESI@Juli XTe!

In AHI, i adjusted all the ENVY24HT modes that are Music UNIT and UNIT 0-3, to use full 16 bit HIFI Stereo++ mode in glorious 96Khz!

24 bit mode is not supported yet, but that will appear later on.

RCA-to-Jack connectors on the audio card

Despite playing in full 16 bit mode, the audio quality compared to the onboard SM502 is crystal clear, clean, powerful and gorgeous beautiful! Excellent in every possible way, and as a bonus, it supports MIDI, too! Even that i am not into MIDI, i gave it some test within Timidity Player, and it worked awesome!

ENVY24HT CAMD driver has been installed in DEVS, in an own sub drawer it automatically had, called MIDI. The top-of-the-line audio card 
is undoubtly the best audio card out there! An audio card with many opportunities! Check out this YouTube video i made of my audio card. You find the provided link right here:

HKvalhe's AmigaOne 500 with ESI@Juli XTe! 

AHI, AmigaAMP and Ranger using ESI@Juli XTe

AmigaAMP has been updated to version 3.10, and it plays great MP3 songs as usual!

More of my songs done in OctaMED SoundStudio will appear soon!


My MP3 songs will be found on SoundCloud in the near future.

I really enjoy my audio card! The unbalanced analog outputs are really great! Even that Mixer is not supported, the audio card seems to have its' own way to adjust and boost the audio the way they should without distortion! Perfect, isn't it? I really think it is.

Audacious plays beautiful Jazz music!

Java in AmigaOS with JAmiga?
 

Latest JAmiga 1.1 successfully installed!

Until now, it has not been possible to run JAVA in AmigaOS4. JAmiga is currently the only available, fully JAVA environment possible in Amiga!

JAmiga has been under development for many years and it's now that an Amiga user is able to run it. JAmiga will be further developed and improved in the future.

JAmiga is in fact the FIRST program i have donated 25 EUR for through PayPal! An easy, fast and secure way to donate and pay for stuffs you want!

With latest version of JAmiga, which is now v1.1, it now supports AmiUpdate. That simply means future versions of JAmiga will be updated through AmiUpdate! Just recently, AmiUpdate updated itself to version 2.33, with many improvements and a good numbers of bugfixes, getting even better! Wow!

So how does JAVA in AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 works? You don't really see much of it, but it runs in the background. Interesting enough, you get a speed boost when surfing the net with different browsers that rely heavily on JAVA, and JAVA-based sites seem to appear correctly in the browsers. No doubt that JAVA proves very useful! Even in TimberWolf browser, using JAVA increases its' speed!

JAVA is only one of many tools that have greatly improved my Amiga system!
   
Multiple wallpapers in FlipPaper

FlipPaper flips several wallpapers

Not sure if i remember mentioning FlipPaper, but this tool is excellent for displaying many, different wallpapers you choose to use in your AmigaOS4! Another fine tool i have donated for!

Currently, i only have 3 different wallpapers to flip through, but i'm looking for many more, impressive wallpapers to use, which will change to the next available wallpaper in every 30th minutes! Cool, isn't it?

FlipPaper, Fast Compress, FastView, Jack and JAmiga, among the things, will be automatically updated through AmiUpdate, making it much easier!

But now let look on some other programs, shall we? Programs like Pidgin, QOrganiser and QtWeb. We start here with a new version of Pidgin.

Pidgin with Facebook Chat Support!

Latest Jack shows rain in Bergen

Pidgin for AmiCygnix is a multi instant messenger, which has now been updated to support Facebook XMPP Chat and a couple of other chat systems than just MSN and Yahoo, which proves very useful!

For giving Pidgin the true look of a Messenger, i adjusted the settings to show 552 x 232 in resolution, which makes Pidgin look like the picture below, as you can see right here!

Now, chatting with your Facebook friends is possible, thanks to the new version of Pidgin! It's also possible in the QT based Vacuum-IM.

 Pidgin now supports Facebook Chat

Some more QT stuffs

Two more QT applications have been added to my system. One is QOrganiser and the other one is QtWeb. We start with the first.

QOrganiser is a nice, simple organiser program. It allows you to set up the days and time you have different missions to do. You can print them out and even create a database to store your saved events.

Although, printer support is very limited, due to the fact that AmigaOS4 currently has no updated or new printer system yet, but that is believed to appear AFTER the release of the forthcoming AmigaOS 4.2.

A fast and simple QT based Organiser

The other QT program installed to my system, is the QtWeb browser, based on WebKit. It's not fully completed yet, but it is quite useful to surf most sites. Having JavaScript (not to be confused with JAVA) DISABLED and Disk Cache ENABLED, makes QtWeb work faster. When it's completed, it should certainly be a lot more faster!

QtWeb looks really good and simple! It's a pleasure to have another, decent browser. I'm very happy!

Below here you see QtWeb in action.

QtWeb - Another decent browser based on QT

My Amiga in Zen mode

I found myself a very nice wallpaper based on Zen. The most harmonic, religious asian relaxing method, finding peace in yourself.

Therefore, my Amiga is in Zen mode, which i think is very cool!

The screenshot below will show you the Zen mode i talked about.

My AmigaOne 500 with AmigaOS 4.1.6 in Zen-mode!

Well, this ends another fine blog for this time. People not understanding english or want to read the blog in your own language, can choose that from the Translator function that will show up when accessing the blog. Don't worry.

Enjoy the blog and the pictures! At last, another blog been updated now!

Written by
Helge Kvalheim, Norway