ANNOUNCING A BRAND NEW “AGA” FOR 2023 AMIGA GLOBAL ALLIANCE

Creating a central hub welcoming Commodore (all model) computers and Amiga fans and providers from around the globe to collaborate

BACK THIS PROJECT HERE!

Story

A big hello to all Commodore and Amiga fans wherever you live in the world: The time has come to stand up and be counted – subscribe to AGA (Amiga Global Alliance) and between us let’s build the best Retro Computing Community on the planet!

We’re excited to announce that we’ve secured the domain name “AGA.Directory” as the cornerstone of a groundbreaking new website. 

Our mission is to construct the most all-inclusive platform that fully embodies the rich diversity and exceptional talent that our global community has to offer. This platform is set to become a thorough resource, featuring listings and URL links to any individual or company providing services to our community, no matter where in the world they’re located.

For the first time ever, we’re rallying Amiga enthusiasts, Commodore/Amiga clubs, developers, animators, repairers, wholesalers, shops, magazines, authors, component suppliers, webmasters, musicians, 3D artists, and more, from every corner of the globe, to collaborate together.

The Site

Here’s a sneak peek into the features you can expect from AGA.Directory:

• Open Forum: A space for both group and individual discussions.
• Market Place: A portal to buy and sell new and used items.
• CATS (Commodore Amiga Technical Support): Dedicated technical support for all your Commodore and Amiga needs.
• Calendar: A global events diary keeping you updated on upcoming events.
• Jobs: A platform for freelance services, whether you’re offering or seeking, full time or part time.
• Archive/Library: A long-term storage space that’s always accessible.
• Goodies: A section filled with treasures donated by fellow AGA subscribers.
• Database/Directory: An extensive list of contacts via URL/email/phone.

Plus, anything else our valuable subscribers suggest.

We’re eager to list all clubs and groups who subscribe. We warmly welcome every single Commodore/Amiga fan, regardless of nationality, language, ethnicity, or religious belief, to join this thriving community. As a participant, you’ll be contributing to the welfare and health of the most robust and powerful retro community ever!

Once you join, every club and group, wherever you’re located, will be listed with links to your sites. Whenever you’re hosting meetings or special events, you’ll have the opportunity to advertise on a truly global scale.

Before we delve into the other benefits this project offers to all the creative designers and technical wizards in our community, let’s touch on how we’re constructing AGA.Directory.

The Team

We’ve brought on board a team of highly qualified website and IT professionals to build our platform. They are committed to bringing our vision to life, ensuring that AGA.Directory becomes the go-to resource for the global Amiga community.

Lead Webmaster – Paolo D’urso – Founder/Publisher of Amiga Passione magazine and behind IT company https://lightage.it

Webmaster – Steve Moorehouse – Manazing Director of Albany Computer Services, UK.

Derek Knaggs BSc (Hons) Computing (First Class) – Joint Founder https://flamelily.it UK

Justin Mitchell – Founder of Breadbox and Commodore Computer Museum Youtuber – New Zealand.

Elliot Christensen – Podcaster, Marketer, Futurist – USA

Dave Kirkwood – Bachelor of Computing Science and PhD in Simulation

What We Will Do With The Money Raised:

• Website Construction and Maintenance
• Operational Expenses and Administration
• Governance

At present, we’ve pledged to reinvest 65% of all incoming revenue back into our community. This reinvestment will be utilized to:

Provide seed funding for the development of new software, including productivity tools, apps, and games.

Foster innovation in hardware development of all kinds.

Support advertising, promotional activities, and assistance with social media campaigns.

Facilitate magazine publishing (both print and online), product launches, club activities, and events.

To ensure we meet these objectives and safeguard against errors or poor judgment, we’ve assembled an “Advisory Board” comprising esteemed industry figures with a wealth of experience. Their role will be to guide us in making wise decisions about reinvesting funds back into the community.

Advisers and Technical Team

For technical evaluation and approval, we have so far elisted the help of the following individuals:

Mike Nurney – UK, Tomasz Marcinowski – Poland, Paul Rezendes – USA

Marvin Droogsma – The Netherlands, Frank Linhares – Canada, Dave Haynie – USA

Community Help

We also have some dedicated Amiga fans from the community who have kindly offered to lend their knowledge and assistance on  community liason and promotion, including:

“Amiga Bill” Bill Winters – USA,  Andy C Spencer – UK, Paul Kitching – Global

Dave McMurtrie – USA, Bartek Dramczyk – Poland, Paolo D’Urso – Italy

Joerg Droege – Germany, Dan Wood – UK, Claudio De Castro – Argentina

Launch Date

We are thrilled to announce the anticipated launch date for our website, “Aga.Directory” for August 1st, 2023.  (This date is subject to change, however your 1 year membership will commence from the ACTUAL DATE the website Aga.Directory goes live).

As an AGA member, you’ll enjoy a wealth of benefits, including:

• Early Access: Get a head start with advance notice of and access to new products.
• Member Discounts: Enjoy exclusive member-to-member discounts, which we negotiate on your behalf and will vary by product.
• Membership Certificate: As a token of our appreciation, every member will receive a signed certificate.

Competition – Win a MiniMig

Like all my Kickstarter campaigns, I’m offering an exciting prize to one lucky backer. This includes those who’ve already committed to the Amiga Global Alliance. This time around, we’re delighted to offer the impressive MiniMig v1.97itx 6MB (Black ENIG), CPU MC68SEC000.

This is the new 2023 REV 97itx of the MiniMig board. It boasts major improvements including a 6-layer ENIG, resettable fuse, +5V voltage regulation, super coupling, support for 60MHz MC68SEC000, a new OCS/ECS MIA chip, support for TF030 @ 50MHz, and support for PiStorm kick.rom caching. LED indicators for +3.3, +1.25, +2.5. +5V, fast CBTD shifters, a MiniITX form factor, and 6MB of RAM are other highlights of this revision.

This fantastic prize will be delivered in a stylish crystal case. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of something groundbreaking, and get a chance to win this incredible prize!

Rewards

We’re thrilled to offer a Special Introductory Launch Bonus Bundle as an extra reward for our backers. This bumper bundle is packed with a wealth of digital goodies:

1. “Commodore: The Inside Story” (E-book or Audiobook Download): Delve into the intriguing history of how a billion-dollar company went bankrupt.

1. “From Vultures to Vampires Volume 1: 1995 – 2005” (E-book Download): A riveting account of the battles for Commodore/Amiga Trademarks, IPs, Logos, Patents, and the technology that was being developed by various companies. An essential read for any enthusiast.
2. “From Vultures to Vampires Volume 2: 2005 -2010” (E-book Download): The saga continues in this brand-new release (May 2023), charting the next phase of the Commodore/Amiga journey.

1. “Amiga Live and Kicking” Video (Download): Produced by Wavem Studios, this video provides an inside look at the Amiga journey, featuring compelling interviews.

1. “Cosmic Force” New C64 Game (Download): A highly addictive “Shoot ’em up” action game developed and released by Wavem Studios.

• Commodore Alive and Kicking (Download): Another production by Wavem Studios, continuing the narrative of the Commodore’s enduring legacy.

1. “Everybody’s Girlfriend” Music Album (Download): A musical celebration of 10 years of the Amiga, featuring a mix of genres and styles. This album, recorded by Tangent Music Design, features live performers, including the homage to Jay Miner, “Para mi Amiga”, composed and performed by David John Pleasance.

1. “Rising Sun” Debut Album by Satya (Download): Enjoy the debut album from the Peterborough-based 8-piece Reggae Dub band, “Satya”, featuring Marcel & Emile Pleasance, David’s sons. This album includes 15 tracks, from “Sunrise” to “Sunset”, plus 2 bonus tracks. 

1) Rising Sun

2) Eternal Love

3) Take a Shot

4) Only We

5) In The Sun

6) Bones

7) Change Our Way

8) Dimensions

9) Punarbahva

10) Sometimes 

11) Take me as I am

12) Aquarius

13) Move On

14) The Uprising

15) Sunset

TWO BONUS TRACKS

Like Water 

True to You 

Be part of our journey and enjoy these exclusive rewards!

Testimonials

Thanks to the following members of the Amiga community for showing their support and belief in the idea of the Amiga Global Alliance:

Events

Look out for AGA at Amiga 38 in Germany this October.

Risks and challenges

While we have put in extensive effort and planning into this project, as with any endeavor, there are inherent risks and challenges involved. Here are the potential hurdles we foresee: Project Timeline: The most significant risk involves our project timeline. While we have an anticipated launch date set for August, 2023, unforeseen circumstances could potentially cause delays. These could include technical issues with website development, unexpected setbacks in our operations, or other external factors beyond our control. We assure you that we have a dedicated team working diligently to ensure we meet our target date and, should any delays arise, we will communicate openly and promptly with our backers about any changes to our schedule. To mitigate these risks, we have established a strong plan and team, complete with contingency measures. We remain committed to transparency and will keep our backers informed about our progress, challenges, and successes every step of the way. Thank you for your understanding and support.Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

Questions about this project? Check out the FAQ

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Back at it Again with the A3000

At it again but with the A3000 plastic face. Like the 4000 ones I had done this is in high resolution printed resin. Its very stiff and not brittle at all. I did this in preparation of my upcoming AA3000+ build. Come join us in the Discord server! https://discord.gg/xBrgrFneqt

Amiga 4000 Resin Printed Parts!

I’ve been working on my personal 4000 for some time and sadly had to sell it off to cover some unexpected bills shortly after finished it. It’s with a new owner that loves it as much as I did making it.

So what do I do now? Well I’m making myself a new one. I’ve nearly got the new board completed and just need to solder a few more parts. The one missing thing was a case. I had most of one but it’s missing the front face and other plastic parts. What’s a guy to do? Well, if you know me you know I don’t give up easily. I had access to a large format commercial resin 3D printer. Below are the results from having the replacement parts professionally printed. I can’t wait to show all of you the completed project when I’m done now. Stay tuned!

RIP Taylor Calk

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1722304768?tt_medium=mobile_web_share&tt_content=vod

It’s not ever easy saying goodbye to a fellow member in our community and especially one like Taylor. Please take the time to celebrate and remember him through this great replay Amiga Bill did on Twitch. Taylor was part of the Pintz & Amiga show and will be greatly missed.

New US Layout Amiga keys Arrived!

It’s been a long wait but the first of the two sets of key caps I ordered many years ago from the kickstarter campaign have arrived. As reported other places I can confirm my set of US layout keys is missing the period. I’m told a replacement key will be sent out eventually, but no timeline on that has been announced. They otherwise look pretty great and I’m pleased with them.

WinUAE 4.10.0 Now Available for Download

Another major new release of the gold standard in Amiga emulation is now available for download. Go grab it from here: https://www.winuae.net/

Major update

• 68000 based unexpanded (with optional Slow or Fast RAM expansion) configurations are now 100% cycle-accurate.
• Big thanks to ross for writing test programs that required perfect cycle accuracy. Lots of expected and unexpected hardware features found and implemented.

Featute updates that got delayed but will be implemented in 5.0

• OCS and ECS Denise mid screen resolution changes are not pixel perfect, correct chip model specific bit pattern is not emulated yet. AGA is pixel perfect.
• Not all blitter line draw width != 2 (invalid line draw configuration, normally not used) conditions are 100% accurate.
• Disk status/interrupt timing is not fully confirmed yet.

New hardware emulation features and update

• 68000 emulation is finally fully cycle accurate, last missing part, interrupt level change detection timing, is now cycle accurate.
• Custom chipset interrupt timing is now cycle accurate.
• CIA emulation is now fully cycle accurate. Timers were accurate previously but now also interrupt timing, TOD counting, CPU/E-clock sync, and more, including undocumented side-effects are cycle accurate.
• Serial port internal timing, interrupt timing, including SERDATR status bits are now cycle accurate (I used serial port interrupts as a timer in my cputester real 68000 interrupt timing tests)
• Audio interrupt timing is now cycle accurate (Was almost fully accurate previously).
• Blitter timing is now cycle accurate (previously startup behavior and interrupt timing was not fully accurate).
• Blitter line mode with invalid settings (for example width not 2, octant and line direction mismatch etc) is now almost accurately emulated. Some conditions are not fully correct.
• Copper is now cycle accurate, previously some special cases were not handled correctly.
• More undocumented chipset features implemented.
• A1000 Denise bug emulated: sprites end horizontally 1 lores pixel later than bitplane horizontal window end. Currently enabled when A1000 Agnus is selected.
• OCS/ECS vs AGA EHB on/off mid screen change different behavior emulated.
• Emulated chipset mode display is blanked if programmed mode is active but has invalid configuration (for example too short or too long sync pulses or missing syncs, genlock sync enabled without genlock, etc).
• Optional display mode change resync black screen delay.
• Programmed custom chipset modes again use also blanking timing to position the display in addition to vsync and hsync (Most real world SVGA monitors do the same).
• Max allowed programmed mode non-interlaced vertical line count is now 800 (increased from 592), special 700+ line programmed modes are possible and compatible with real SVGA monitors.
• Refresh cycles conflicting with bitplane DMA is now accurately emulated, including all display and audio related glitches it can cause.
• Optional Chip RAM and Slow RAM power up pattern emulation, enabled by default.
• Color palette is now filled with pseudo-random contents at power up (was all black previously).
• Monitor type selection. Composite sync or H/V sync. ECS Agnus/AGA programmed display modes can generate different C-Sync and H/V sync signals.

New other features and updates

• RTG (uaegfx) Picasso96 v3.0+ mixed mode screen draggging is enabled by default.
• RTG (uaegfx) blitter emulation now supports previously unsupported less common blitter operations.
• RTG (uaegfx and emulated boards) automatic integer scaling support.
• On the fly FloppyBridge drive change to normal or back now triggers automatic disk change condition.
• Harddrive panel Full drive/RDB mode is now normal checbox. Hopefully it is less confusing than button that didn’t look like a button.
• Larger default GUI size and slightly larger font if Windows desktop is large enough (at least 1600*1024).
• CD audio is now always mixed with Paula audio. Separate CD audio output support removed.
• Some American Laser Games didn’t have ROM descrambling support, also added missing ROM variants.
• Added American Laser Games Quickstart support.
• Added NVRAM path to Paths panel. Arcade/CD32/CDTV hardware NVRAM files default to this path.
• Keyboard reset change, reset state is kept until at least one key is released.
• CTRL+C in console log/debug window does not anymore close WinUAE. CTRL+C in newer Windows versions can be used as a Copy operation.
• Changed CTRL+F12 fullscreen/windowed switch: If already switched from full-window to window. Next CTRL+F12 will return back to full-window, not fullscreen.
• Optional interlace mode filter profile added.
• DirectDraw mode was replaced with GDI mode. GDI mode does not support exclusive fullscreen but supports basic scaling modes and uaegfx hardware cursor that DirectDraw mode did not support.
• Palette mode screenshot support. If enabled and screen has <= 256 colors, palette mode screenshot is created. It also attempts to preserve first 32 color entries if possible. RTC is automatically enabled if chipset extra= and system has fast ram, slow ram or chip ram expansion.
• Save MSM6242B RTC model control registers to RTC file if they are modified. Previously only RF5C01A (Used in big box Amigas) control registers (and NVRAM) was saved.
• If Quickstart ROM based Arcade hardware config (Arcadia or ALG) is selected, NVRAM file name is automatically set to ROM name. Genlock video file path is also set if ALG ROM is selected. Config files are not affected.
• ROM file list sorting changed, added grouping, sort by group priority first (KS ROMs, extended KS ROMs, freezer ROMs etc..), then alphabetically.
• Sometimes old graphics was temporarily visible in RTG modes if RTG had visible black borders (depends on scaling mode) and screen was switched and new screen had larger size/resolution.
• Added “Slow” flag to RAM panel. If set, selected memory bank has Chip RAM timing but is not Chip RAM capable. Advanced chipset panel “C00000 is Fast RAM” removed, it is not needed anymore.

4.9.x bugs fixed

• Sprite to playfield and playfield to playfield collisions were unreliable.
• RTG (uaegfx) overlay was not drawn. 32-bit Windows only.
• Magic mouse mode without virtual mouse driver installed: mouse position was incorrect in RTG modes and it also ignored scaling modes.
• If hardware emulated RTG board VRAM was immediately (no gap in address space) after any RAM/ROM region and JIT direct was enabled: first 4096 bytes (host CPU page size) of VRAM was not fully JIT direct compatible and any direct read or write to first 4096 bytes would not access VRAM correctly, causing unexpected graphics glitches.
• Quickstart panel floppy bootblock check used current track of drive (not track 0). Broken when FloppyBridge support was added.
• Hires resolution and hires BPLCON1 bit set (or shres and shres BPLCON1 bit): single pixel horizontal offset may have appeared in right side of screen. AGA and non-subpixel mode only.
• CD32/CDTV Quickstart mode “remembered” previous DF0: setting and didn’t disable it by default (even if Quickstart panel showed it as disabled).
• CD32/CDTV Quickstart panel DF0: was not possible to select/enable.
• Z2 RAM configuration was unreliable.

Older bugs fixed

• CHD CD image CD audio timing fix.
• Direct3D11 with custom shaders leaked memory.
• Directory filesystem softlinks fixed.
• 68060 without FPU or disabled FPU and executing FPU instruction that uses -(An) or (An)+ addressing mode: D7 was modified when exception stack frame was created.
• Reading from non-existing custom register always returned 0xFFFF instead of data that previous cycle’s possible DMA access transferred.
• Higher 68000/010 integer clock multipliers (4x+) in CE mode: chipset access timing was not accurate.
• Second 1M extended ROM bank is now internally split to two 512k banks. Non-aligned bank start and size caused problems in some configs.
• Hardware emulated RTG boards that have physically swapped red and blue output (Spectrum, Piccolo, Piccolo SD64) had wrong colors in 24/32-bit modes.
• Piccolo Z3 and Piccolo SD64 Z3 had wrong autoconfig board logical size (which crashed the driver).
• CD audio was not resumed if WinUAE was unminimized and minimize was configured to pause emulation.

Debugging related updates and fixes

• Ultra extreme overscan mode. Shows complete full raster including blanking regions. Horizontal and vertical blanking disabled. COLOR0 changes are always visible.
• DMA debugger shows CIA accesses (including cycles lost due to E-Clock sync) and Chip RAM RAS/CAS addressing values.
• DMA debugger shows CPU memory access type (instruction fetch or data access). Interrupt level and interrupt level change detection are included.
• DMA debugger shows CPU opcodes in basic form (“NOP”, “MOVE” etc), vertically. Which can look a bit weird…
• Added CPU STOP state information to DMA debugger (| = STOP idle cycle, + = STOP idle cycle and higher IPL detected = STOP ending soon)
• Visual DMA debugger shows conflicting cycles as blinking red pixels.
• Horizontal and vertical position are now included in debugger history output (H/HH)
• Added OR, AND and XOR operators to debugger calculator (|, &, ^).
• sp command parsed attached sprites incorrectly.
• It was not possible to enter debugger anymore if CPU was stuck in stopped state after entering and exiting the debugger once.
• Tracing STOP instruction now works differently, each single step executes one internal STOP “round”.
• Memwatch break point that crossed 64k “bank” didn’t map last 64k “bank” if it was only partially needed.
• Self modifying code (smc) debugger feature now clears detected modifications if 68020+ instruction cache is flushed.
• DMA debugger (both console and visual) better support for variable/toggling horizontal and vertical line counts.

Detailed change log in winuaechangelog.txt

Tank Mouse Goes Into Production!

Lukas Remis, the designer and founder of the awesome Kick Starter project for Tank Mouse has released a new update about the project today. Everything is on track and in production! I have posted his release below, or if you would like to go directly to the source it can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lukas-remis/tank-mouse-your-new-amiga-mouse/posts/3681988?ref=ksr_email_backer_project_update_registered_users

Hello,

Sorry for a longer break since the last update. I’m happy to let you know that everything is going very well. I’ve been busy with organizational stuff, like signing shipping contracts. Unfortunately the shipment will not start before Christmas and I apologize for the delay.

Tank Mouse is now being manufactured and will be ready mid January. The delay was caused by technical problems regarding color of the beige version. The color was not exactly as I wanted and it couldn’t be achieved using the selected production method, so we had to do more tests to nail the color. But it’s been solved and this is the last phase of mouse production.

I’m also very happy to let you know that the USB-to-DB9 adapter is in production as well. Lotharek informed me that the firmware already supports touch scrolling on Amiga, and the adapter will also work with Atari and Commodore 64. He is still working on the firmware, adding mode selection for example, but hardware is being manufactured in the meantime.

Last but not least, AmigaBill was presenting Tank Mouse in his live-stream and he’s preparing a YouTube video about it. So if you can’t wait for your Tank Mouse you might get a sneak peek at: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1670688820

Away From the Workshop

I will be gone again and expect to return on the 18th of November. This trip I wont have the ability to reply to any emails for messages. Thanks for the continued support. All boards that have been completed recently are going out Monday the 31st. Everyone with work in should have been updated with information on your packages if they are going out in this shipment.

Away on a Short Notice Assignment

Hello and welcome to another long over due update! One day I will get better and start keeping things more up to date. So much has been happening in my full time job I can hardly take the time to catch a breath though!

So I just got called out on a no notice assignment for a couple weeks. I will be in Japan and out of contact for most of it. I will return on or about October 12th though. I hope to get all caught up and get the couple things I have here done and back to you all then. Thanks for understanding and we will see you all soon!!

-Paul

Service Updates and Current Work Status

Hello everyone and thanks for being here! Its time again I felt to post an update as to what’s been going on. Its been a difficult year and things are not where I would like them to be.

Things in my personal life have been a challenge. While I love the Amiga and love helping as many of you as I can, life just tends to get in the way more times than not it seems. With my family life being strained, full time job stress, health and the parts shortages from the pandemic I just cant keep up with it all. As a result I have decided to drastically cut back on services being offered. Things here will be completed as best as they can and if a repair looks like it is something I cant complete it will be returned, at my expense. I dont like to charge for things I take in and cant resolve as many of you know.

Fear not though! I am not going anywhere and we have plenty of people here in the US now that have stepped up and offer some great services! Many of them are members of the Discord Server we host, and its become a valuable place to get things resolved, have some gun and learn a lot! If you havent visited the server, I recommend you check it out! Here is the most current invite as of this post: https://discord.gg/xBrgrFneqt

Thanks for being understanding and please feel free to reach out any time! I will continue to post updates as things become more clear and as they change.