Original Article here: http://binarydoodles.ilcannocchiale.it/post/2276273.html

This time will not talk about lua programming, also because since many of the project that i tried to work in either got covered by somebody else, (like the network control panel or the amistart calendar). Am also still thinking on how to build some tutorial to explain the base concepts on how to generate a zulu interface.

Paolo Besser is working too in try to improve its Icaros Desktop distro: recently, beside the new Icaros Desktop 1.1.2 release, he published a new Automatic Upgrade tool that will detects upgrades either from an .iso file, a CD-ROM or from internet, downloading a nightly.iso and using it to upgrade the system I tried it yesterday but it makes my QEMU environment close, guess because the disk ran out of space (my system partition is small) while downloading the nightly .iso from the net.

And Chris "platon42" Hodges is working on fixing the port of Poseidon on AROS: one of the main problems that Chris is having now is that he is lacking a real x86 hardware where to test on: its actual method of testing is to develop on VmWare, upload its latest binaries on the nightly buillds and have users with real hardware report about any problems it might arise. So far some peripherals are recognized and some can also be mounted, but in other cases we still have either system freezes and hangups or the new inserte dperipheral might not be recognized properly by the stack. Once that is done, seems there still are some problems with the fat.handler, where in example the OS command copy does not work properly from FFS/SFS to FAT yet...

Matthias "Mazze" Ruster is busy, together with the YAM developing team in porting finally the well-known Amiga mail client on AROS; the port is virtually finished, beside a necessary bug hunting for some specific system-related flaws.

Last June 6 I had the occasion and the privilege to participate at a monthly reunion of the Southern California Commodore/Amiga Network (SCCAN) in the town of Castaic, north of the Los Angeles County and San Fernardo Valley, almost at the limit of the huge LA urban area. In the garage of one of those almost-cloned suburb houses i was greeted from Joew May, one of the members and the house owner. On ce the garage door slide up i faced its "laboratory": on the various crowded shelf i seen a c64, a sx-64 (c64 executive), several amiga 500, 1200 and a 3000 with or without external hard disk, beside three or four a2000 with toaster piled in a corner. After a while other members of the group arrived, included Robert Bernardo, the founder and brought further hardware and software; i therefore seen UAE on a eee-pc 700, i was able to see a custom version of the c-one board which also supported Minimig in its FPGA programming, the sx-64 mentioned above and other relics from the 64 era, including a plastic musical keyboard overlay similar to the one distributed by SIEL in italy.


It was a pity that, since my wife and my mother in law were with me, i wasunabvle to stay more than a couple of hours but it was nice to see some other people with a common ground to share; beside those little reunions, the SCCAN and the Fresno Commodore Club also organize in Las Vegas the Commodore Vegas Expo (or CommVEx) on the last week-end of July; as usual for budget reasons i cannot partecipate: this was a good edition with excellent guest (among those,Dave Haynie, RJ Mical and miss Jeri "C-One" Ellisworth !!!) but at least it is my intention to go to Castaic again next end of August/begin of September.

In order to show AROS to the SCCAN members, I thought it was about time to introduce it in a much better way than it happened at SCALE, where I introduced VmWAROS on virtual machine, full screen but no sound and the network still to be fixed; that of course was unprofessional and, am afraid, even unconvincing.

The stimulus to do that also came from the IRC channel, where an user asked how Icarosperformed on Virtualbox; nic answered that he has been unable so far to make Icaros run on virtualbox properly and remembered - and me too - that last year Michal Schulz made some fixes for AROS to run properly on it; other reason has been due to my subscription in the FSUGItalia board, where I introduced AROS and one of the users complained about the fact that VmWare was not an "open" virtual machine and was looking for alternatives such as Virtualbox.

So, at the end I downloaded and installed Virtualbox on my own machine and proceedted to look for make Icaros work on it.
According to an old multiplatform tutorial I should have first joined together all .vmdk files with the
vmware vdiskmanager, usually buindled with VmWare server but not with the player (thanks again to Kalamatee that provided me the file via IRC saving me from an approximate hundred megabytes download) and then I should have used qemu and convert the virtual file in a middle format that, using a Virtualbox tool, should then become readable from this one; and therefore I proceeded in all the iter to the Virtualbox converter... that was not there! Hoiw come?

A further search in google clarified that latest versions of Virtualbox can read VmWare virtual drives (nice to know having spent half an hour converting the files...) and so, once deleted the converted files I do the attempt to configure Virtualbox in run Icaros. The first boot attempt ends with the red pointer on the black screen and nothing else; considered that, whan I made my tests, the ata.device still were having big problems with AMD boards (and my Dell laptop has an AMD Sempron), i decided to follow instructions on Icaros site for unsupported SATA drives and so I changed in GRUB the ATA=32bit string in ATA=nopci (ATA=nodma works too btw) and doing so i finally boot on Wanderer.


First of all I need to make clear that, unlike VmWare and qemu that adapt a screen refresh rate to the host machine speed and virtualisation capabilities, Virtualbox will run at full video speed (else known as 1-1 screen refresh) and will run excellent if your hardware support virtualisation else,like in my single core laptop, expect to wait up to three seconds for opening a wanderer window and show its icons.

Second, might be a mistake in my configuration but the Virtualbox network bridge tends to make exclusive use of the network, therefore forget to browse from AROS and windows at the same time; ti make sure the bridge does not give me any problem, i disabled it when i dont use VB, and will keep it like that until i dont understand what to do about it, or somebody will suggest me a workaround.

Third and last, the sound "kinda" work if i set a compatible sound card (AC-97 with a supported chipser) in the virtual machine, but the sound test make a kind of attempt of a sound (sound like BEEreberebereberebeepp-p-p, instead of a two seconds Beep) and then it freezes badly the virtual machine.

So for now Virtualbox is still there, sitting in my disc; probably i will do some more experiments in the future; about me i decided to switch to plan B and try the QEMU option.

Hopeful to have a better result (also because to what an IRC member told me) i decided to install the VE version of Icaros, that also includes KQemu, and follow the instructions given by Paolone in its web site for installing a QEMU environment on a netbook here, with some interpretation, of course. And the final result was really good: double clicking on the executing .bat file shortcut, Icaros start at full screen (i have another.bat file for work in a window), the sound seems to work properly, tried with milkytracker (this .mpeg file make freeze and quit qemu environment btw) and the network works fine thianks to DHCP.


Despite that i still gave problems in transferring files: considered the (damn!) net sandboxing system of qemu, making a subnet with IP addresses like 10.2.xx that is not visible from outside, this mieans that in order to transfer files i have to FTP from inside qemu towards my machine; and that is complicated from the fact that my machine does not have a static address, being used mainly through wireless. I tried a simple FTP address on it but so far it did not work, art least i was unable to see it from inside qemu. When i have some time will install the XAMPP package (doing web sites i need it even for work) and will set filezilla server.

But those were not all the experimentations that I made so far: when the Network control panel came out had the pretty insane idea to make a personal "emergency live-CD" with all I needed to go on line, like OWB, a IRC client, YAFS and the FTP using as base a nightly; this because my old laptop has a malfunctioning DVD drive that can read only CD-ROMs. Therefore, I found a copy of Magic ISO maker and started to experiment burning images. For my perosnal disappointment i have been unable to make any progress: either the CD booted showing a mangled scren or they did not boot at all (but they were showing if i boot from another original nightly). So, seems that so far the only way to make a bootable CD is to build AROS using the toolkit from source; knowing that the GRUB boot file for AROS is called eltorito (yuo, same as the mexican food restaurant chain) i tried to make point the bootable option to it, still without success so far. Any advice for me?

Going on with my activities, lately had occasion to work again on the translation of the Amiga Programming Guide by Gianfranco "ShInKurO" Gignina; he prepared a SVN repository on Google Code for allow other people to partecipate. Since am already susing SVN at basic level from my office in linux shell, i thought that was a piece of cake to handle. But, as usual, murphy decided to pay me a visit. To contribute I decided to download TortoiseSVN, a SVN client for windows that provide a graphical user interface integration. I already prepared the translation of the new parts of chapter 5 but, despite I did inserted the google code repository and the generated password in the settings (as https too) i have been unable to commit in the repository.My caontribution has been uploaded by ShInkUrO itself, which I sent it via email; i really hope to fix this soon.

And, to finish for this time, let me provide an interesting link that I found on the net: the "how to survive poisonous people" talk made by the SVN developer's team and hosted on Google video: it talks about problems that might arise when some community members are, to say it soft, "less cooperative"; thank God this happens less in AROS environment, but is still a good source of advice.