@rtd324

Are you able to email and I can get you the files to try out.

Thanks

@rjd324

We have a new implementation of Deficons V54

Would you like to privately test it and see if it solves the problems you have with DefIcons V53 ?

Thanks

@VooDoo

Thanks, the developers have worked really hard to get it polished to a high standard. They are keen to get new advanced system software out and keep the A-EON's commitment to release major updates regulary.

Enhancer Software Release 2 is standalone- no need for the previous versions to be installed.

I am pleased to confirm that the latest Version 2.2 will be released shortly. It is the most advanced and polished Enhancer Software created to date representing 9 months development work from it's predecessor.

@LiveForIt

That's very welcome news. Thanks for excellent testing and continued feedback.

It is great to see the commands maturing and progressing.

@msteed

I went through the server backoffice code and fixed a problem that affected users that only have the free Enhancer Software Core on their account. Users that have purchased the Enhancer Software were unaffected by the problem.

Hopefully this will let you download the ES Core files from Updater now.

@LiveForIt

I have emailed you the latest List command V54.14

Hopefully this resolves the issues.

Thanks for the feedback.

Hi

We have a new beta that should fix the problem.

Please email me and I’ll send the beta to you to try out.

Thanks for your feedback

Today the following public releases have been made available to download on Updater utility:

DvPlayer v54.9

@kas1e

Quote:
You are talking about a six digit sum of money. A huge risk to take - one that was done for the X5000 and that took a long time to get a working ISO. Many years after the hardware was manufactured and paid for in advance. Once bitten, twice shy.

Quote:

We have one principal developer working on those- that is his passion. He loves creating commands from scratch! This is of course one hard working member of the Amiga Developer Team. It does not represent everything we are focussing on at all.

We have a range of developers working on very large projects, some smaller GUI tasks, some like making Gadgets and classes, some developer more involved projects too such as MultiViewer and Archiver.

Quote:
If anyone wants to help with a more modern port of NewLib, then get in contact with me.

@walkero

Quote:
So the current Radeon HD/RX driver release that users buy right now and install in their system will cease to work later on ? Thats clearly wrong unless Hyperion make some changes to OS4.1's graphics libraries. Customers buy a driver for the purpose it is advertised for and it does the task they paid for. They don't buy it and expect to get free drivers for life.

A-EON's future drivers will likely feature advanced features such as Multi Monitor support- not something that can be bolted onto to OS4.1 as it stands.

Quote:

RadeonHD 1 is not the very same as RadeonHD 2 (compositing added)
RadeonHD 2 is not the very same as RadeonHD 3 (256MB memory limited removed and Nova support addded)
RadeonHD 3 is not the very same as RadeonHD 4/5 (complete rewrite for Video Acceleration support)

Hans spent many months developing each version and you are seriously portraying that users are charged for a simple version bump?

If you want to see all the differences between Enhancer Software V1.0, V1.1, V1.2, V1.3, V1.4, V1.5, V2.0, V2.1 check out the official Wiki here. Only two of those Enhancer Software were chargable - the rest were free upgrades over 6 years!. Another free update is coming soon too.

Quote:

To date the Tabor ISO has not been given to A-EON- it is still not complete- nothing to do with an RadeonRX driver. Do you advocate release without it? I would have thought you know these details having worked closely with Hyperion.

I am sure you will recall that Hyperion in this period went through many months of being a suspended company pending being struck off- they could not legally trade. Then the Hyperion management all walked out- Team Lead first, then the Technical Director and then the Managing Director. Then Hyperion embrolied themselves with litigation that is still ongoing which goes on to this day.

You are seriously blaming A-EON for not releasing OS4.1 Tabor ?

Quote:

RadeonRX Lite is the intellectual property of A-EON Technology Ltd. An agreement has first to be negotiated/executed by both parties to distribute this software on the OS4.1 ISO. With no team of managers, a handful of remaining developers and an undelivered Tabor ISO, would you hand over software without a legal agreement ? Besides there are many items in OS4.1 that are also A-EON's IP such as MediaToolbox, PCIgraphics.card, ATIRadeon.chip, RadeonHD Lite, Ringhio which all require quarterly sales reports. All housekeeping around these has long ceased from Hyperion.


Quote:
Everyone that purchased the Enhancer Software Graphics Upgrade received a free copy of Enhancer Software V2. Enhancer Software V1 customers received V1.1 (free of charge), V1.2 (free of charge), V1.3 (free of charge), V1.4 (free of charge), V1.5 (free of charge) over a period of 3 years. Did users of OS4.1 who paid 100 Euros get OS4.1 "Final Edition" (aka Update 8) free of charge?

Quote:
They may develop and provide their own graphics drivers with Gallium3D in OS 4.2. So wait for that instead.

Quote:
We sold about three dozen copies so far. Almost all of those have Polaris RX cards so they are not "trapped". Anyone who feels aggrieved can email me. I remind you again that the System Requirements for both product pages on Amistore and AmigaKit state: "RadeonHD v4 driver or better. Enhancer Software V2.1 or better."

Quote:
I very much doubt that the drivers and DvPlayer will stand still in development terms in future Enhancer Software releases.

@trixie

The Tabor hardware was ready and completed by Varisys in 2014, it had to still go through beta test but not much has changed. Last year the BOM had to be updated due to obscelence of some components but essentially hardware remains ready.

Quote:
Internally they did not count on hardware because they were fully in control of the Operating System development and they knew this was not progressing at the required rate.

Hyperion then didn't file accounts- cardinal sin for a corporation. They presumably ignored correspondence about the failure, and finally were put into a process that ultimately leads to the Belgium state closing them down. So once again this does not represent a company serious about expanding the user base by finishing the Tabor ISO.

Final Edition was freudian slip when named? It was certainly priced as a fire-sale without seemingly any forward planning to development and investment. It briefly benefited from a few volunteers fourteen months ago releasing an update based on the remnants of bug fixes left on the cutting room floor. Software bug fixes stuck in perpetual beta test since 2014 that finally saw the light of day in Update 2.

Quote:

Once again: the hardware was essentially ready since 2015.

Customers don't buy a computer for the OS- they buy it for applications that run on top of the OS, such as your Rave.

However before getting there A-EON had to fill the holes in the OS through the Enhancer Software. OS4.1 has no native modern graphics card drivers for example: RadeonHD and ATIRadeon are not part of the OS, they are "third party" owned by A-EON. Warp3D/MiniGL with its fixed pipeline was not fit for purpose. Supposedly Gallium3D will be in OS4.2? A-EON's customers couldn't wait for that so Warp3D Nova has been developed to fill that need. Video Acceleration was built on top of Warp3D Nova.

So many other features need to be implemented going forward so the Enhancer Software remit is expanding. There comes a time when these advancements cannot simply be bolted onto OS4.1.

@walkero

Unlike the 29 Euro priced OS4.1, we want to make sure that the development costs have something contributed towards them (even if it doesn't break even at the time).

Important development, such as Video Acceleration is more often than not funded- A-EON doesn't like to rely on free lunches.

Video Acceleration needs many components to be already installed and the cost base to develop these is very significant: Warp3D Nova, Video Acceleration Library itself, the respective drivers for the RadeonRX and HD cards. Six years of hard work.

On Amistore and the AmigaKit website the DvPlayer product system requirements state: "RadeonHD v4 driver or better".

RadeonHD_drv_video.library is part of the VA library and that in turn is part of the Enhancer Software 2. It makes sense to add it to the next update of the ES, which will be v2.2.

Of course, users with Polaris (RX) cards can right now use DvPlayer V54 with Enhancer Software 2.1 to playback at full speed.

Quote:
Nova will never be sold separately. That is not the direction of travel. As Nova becomes more embedded into the system it will need more dependencies within the Enhancer Software and will be a dependency of other components in the Enhancer Software.

@Petrol @Rob

The Radeon SI VA driver is called RadeonHD_drv_video.library

I have no problem with enabling this file on Updater tool as a free download for anyone who owns Enhancer Software V2 or DVPlayer V54.

However, RadeonHD V5 will be also needed for video acceleration and that is a chargable item. RadeonHD driver had to be overhauled to make it VA ready. A lot of work and many months development time.

Today the following public releases have been made available to download on Updater utility:

ListViewer Gadget v54.8

@trixie

The A1222+ project has the potential to double the user base which is still notable. Unfortunately it is commercially unrealistic to pin hopes of it expanding the user base tenfold. This is assuming that Hyperion can resolve problems with NewLib and other important things in the OS - finally completing the public ISO.

Quote:
It was never revealed by Hyperion management if there was indeed a "hardware plan" or roadmap to commercial expansion. Day by day survival seemed to be default position and this came to a head in 2015 when the company was almost wound up by the Belgium authorities. Hardware distributors were not even informed and found out when the public news and rumours circulated.


@Niels
Quote:
It always bothered me why the then Hyperion management (who are now departed from Hyperion) called it "Final Edition". Slashing the price down to 29 euros seemed like one final push on sales- once you take off VAT, CD/box production and dealer margin, there is little less for any re-investment into meaningful development. A statement of intent? To date it seems so.

Furthermore, it also had the added effect of reneging on exclusive contracts with principle distributors who had invested a lot of money into production of OS4 when it was at its full price. These distributors were suddenly left with pre-purchased licences and boxes/CD that were worthless. Hyperion offered no recompence.


For the above reasons it remains important for the user base that the Enhancer Software progresses to go beyond the vague promises given by OS4.2 announcements.

@mr2

Regarding timing: I don't want to spoil any surprises

@mr2

Thank you for your support.

The annual development costs for the graphics work are very large and with such a small user base here, it is not possible to cover costs at the moment without charging for some incremental future updates. This is why is made no financial sense when Hyperion reduced OS4.1 to 29 EUR - at that price no meaningful OS4 development could ever be funded unless the user base expands tenfold.

Quote:

UVD is provided through the VA.library which requires Warp3D Nova. The VA Lib is 3D software- not all software needing 3D are games.

The good news is that I will very likely include the file RadeonHD_drv_video.library in the free Enhancer Software 2.2 update. This is the Southern Islands Video Acceleration driver.

However, this driver needs the latest RadeonHD V5 driver to operate so this will be a separate purchase. RadeonHD V5 customers will get a discount off the Enhancer Software V54 in future.

@ddni

The forthcoming software driver introduces Video Accelaration on Southern Island chipsets to the X1000. Polaris support in software is already completed and released on the Enhancer Software 2.1. However a CFE firmware update for the X1000 is required first to take advantage of this software.


@rjd324

Hans is a core member of the Amiga Developer Team. The Radeon drivers and graphics sub system are part of the Enhancer Software. Hans has worked miracles over the last decade developing the drivers, video acceleration libraries and a bespoke 3D system (Nova).

@Raziel @DDNI

I very much want to get the CFE update completed.

You may recall that in 2012, A-EON Technology Ltd paid a Hyperion contractor for the last CFE update to fix support for the Voodoo graphics cards and a few minor issues. This was back in the days before A-EON operated it's own Amiga Developer Team server. These days all A-EON source code is held in A-EON controlled server repositories without relying on any third parties (lesson learned!).

When then RX compatiblity issue was first identified I asked for the source code to be returned and updated and was told that the source code was lost. It later transpired that the source code was not actually lost despite what I was told at the time. All along the former Hyperion management had the source code and after some persuasion handed it over to the ExecSG team, not A-EON.

So the next step is for A-EON to retrieve the source to the Amiga Developer server and complete the work within the Amiga Developer Team.

Apologies for the delay to this. The importance on controlling your own code base has been highlighted with this situation.