I tried to run MUIMapparium on the Draco, but sadly it does not work, mostly it just freezes on start, sometimes it starts but the PNG images are distorted. Seems the PNG Reader has some problems on the Draco, it’s a little bit strange. I while before I created a MUIMapparium using Datatypes instead of the FreePascal PNG reader and do not use CyberGraphics functions anymore, but plain graphics library function. Therefore it also works on a standard AGA Amiga.
And this Version also works on the Draco, it’s really only the PNG image reader which has some problems, maybe I should debug this and really think about to move the Datatype MUIMapparium to the standard option, the only problem with that, you need a good PNG Datatype installed to have it working. WarpPNG for best results, but most do not have that I guess
Long time before I bought a electric plug with WLAN adapter, I wanted to use to turn on the light in the garden (also for the water pump and such stuff). But this WLAN switches are really bad, always want connection to internet only usable via a very shaky app always want so many access rights who knows for what, always must log in. I switched after a while to radio controlled switches at 433 MHz and bought a Raspi 433 MHz sender.
But now I found out that you can change this WLAN switch I bought with a own local server written in nodejs. Of all languages it had to be Javascript with nodejs. It basically never works, on my Desktop computer I got it to work but on the Raspi where it should stay (because must always run) I do not get it to work nodejs, npm is just ****. It always works a while but when the switch contact it, it shows a javascript error. No Idea what that means
Of course I wrote a own server program in FreePascal running on the raspi. It’s not very complicated in principle the WLAN switch just send a part its of the MAC address and a Token you use to switch on and off. was not very difficult, with the http server example from FreePascal I also added a little Webserver to it, that I can control it via browser or standalone apps. The NodeJS server needed > 10% of the Raspi, even there is no WLAN switch connected to it (because it stops when I start it 😉 ) FreePascal, with connected switch and a browser pulling the status <1% CPU time. Without WLAN Switch it’s not noticeable at all.
And because we are on a blog for FPC for Amiga-System I wrote a little MUI App to control the Outside light from my Amiga as well.
I’m really thinking to buy more of them. really nice and easy. Let’s see the next weeks how reliable it is. 😉 The advantage to the 433 MHz radio controlled switches is that the WLAN switches know their own status, and tell the server on the handshake.
A while before I played around with the SMP AROS version sadly I never really got it to work. Either it was just crashing or do not use all cores and now the development of it seems to be frozen. The AROS devs published a Video how a buhddabrot fractal was calculated with multiple threads.
I took that idea, because the buhddabrot fractals look beautiful and wrote an own buhddabrot program in FreePascal to test that with the SMP. But now SMP AROS basically dead now I found the program again and played a little bit with it, make it single threaded and created a little GUI for it, to play with parameters.
As I wrote before I did not get Delitracker to work, and also some other programs, I expected to work seems to have some problems. Now, that was not quite right, Delitracker was working, just the mods sounds very wrong wrong speed too fast and slow at the same time and sometimes it just shows a black screen.. even it’s still playing the background. An other odd thing I noticed, some programs (even my own pascal programs) have very strange timing behavior. Then I remembered that there is even a special Draco Alert when some program try to access the CIA and I saw them when trying to start some programs. My Draco does not have CIAs installed, but of course they are needed for exact (Amiga style) timing, especially when playing modules. I bought two CIAs and installed them today. And voila, Delitracker is working with AHI Noteplayer. With some mods (especially chipies) you can hear that there is a difference to the original Paula sound, but it’s good enough for everyday use, at least for me.
I opened my usual visualization, MonoScope, Quadrascope+ and it’s working very smooth, very fast drawing. This is a little bit odd, or unexpected for me at first glance. I did exactly the same on the A600 with Vampire and the visualization always started to become a little bit slow, especially the Quadrascope+ in combination with MonoScope on bigger Screens (like 800×600) so I disabled the Quadrascope+ there. But here on the Draco, even I make the Quadrascope+ a quarter of the screen and Monoscope and other quarter it stays fast. In my mind this slowdown was always due to RTG vs. AGA/ECS and the DeliGenies are clearly optimized for AGA/ECS. (Vampire was my first RTG Amiga). But now it seems on the Draco everything is smooth and fast, so it’s not an RTG iussue. Very nice.
If you have a Draco, install the CIAs it will improve the compatibility a lot, it’s not difficult, even I was able to do it myself :-P.
I bought a Draco, if you do not know what it is, its a Amiga compatible Clone used for Video editing. It does not have the traditional Amiga Chipset (ECS/AGA) therefore nearly all games will not work. But Workbench based programs and RTG compatible programs will work. For me only interested in FreePascal and stuff its the perfect RTG Amiga and it’s much cheaper than any other Amiga with RTG, Soundcard and a 060 card + 128 MB RAM.
I replaced the (very noisy) Harddisk with a SCSI2SD V6 and removed one of the fans (which was basically for cooling the HD) and now the Draco is nearly silent and very fast, the SCSI2SD V6 reaches the 10 MB/s easily with the Draco SCSI. The Draco also supplies some standard Zorro II slots, I tried a X-Surf 100 to get network access to it (mainly to bring my FreePascal stuff there) but sadly it does not work, even I found some reports that it should work. Maybe the Zorro in my Draco is somehow broken, I cleaned already all the connectors and checked voltages of the power supply but no luck. To get at least slow network I connected an old Raspi via Serial cable to the Draco and used PPP like in the good old days. It reaches the maximum 115.200 baud but even that feels very very slow, at least it works. Maybe later someone can find out whats wrong with the Zorro.
FreePascal works nicely. But some other programs, which should be working (because only use standard API no hardware access) does not for example Delitracker with AHI-Noteplayer seems not really working nicely. Needs a little bit more investigation.
I noticed my navigation system in my car can also read GPX files from a USB stick. Just put the GPX File to a folder “PersonalPOI” and plug to car. Then you can access them in the car (for example as route destinations) even can select them by voice control.
Thats what I tried just now, took MUIMapparium and created two waypoints just to try.
Now go to car and plug in and see if we can find our two waypoints… I gave them especially arbitrary names because it knows already many POIs by default
Very nice, I’m thinking to create some POIs there which makes it much faster to select them. Maybe I should also add an option to set the type of Waypoint, the “Unclassified” means this Waypoint has no type and therefore only a default icon.
Very nice to see that you can use the program for very recent stuff.
I updated MUIPlot and replaced the syntax parser by a byte code compiler which increases the calculation speed for the curve especially on m68k. Downloads for all Amiga Systems
I used the function parser for a function plotter before when testing the TAChart for LCL. Now I gave my Plot component I use for MUIMapparium a little bit of reshape and fit it into MUIClass components and created a new function plotter.
I little video to show how it works:
Running on a Amiga 1200 with 68030 50 Mhz and 68882 50 Mhz on a 32 color AGA Screen. For Hex2 the floating point calculation speed is not very important, because it’s just a single function. But for calculating the full curve it needs a little bit more floating point calculations. Therefore a FPU is included. Also you should limit the number of Points to calculate to for example 100. For NG Amiga systems of course you can increase it to higher numbers.
Of course, when publishing a new program the people will find some problems. Good so at least some used it :-P. I made a new release. Added integer divide and modulo and repaired the swap function (swap endianess) and fixed some minor bugfixes and number overflows.
Downloads for all Amiga Platforms:
The program is based on a very old program (written around 2005) written by me so of course it is also available for Linux and Windows. It has a little bit smaller feature set than the Amiga version but it was always useful for me 😉
I created a little MUI interface for my commonly used calculator Hex2. I use it often for bitwise comparisons to easier see shifts on bits.
If you don’t know it, Hex2 is a programmer and scientific centered calculator with variables support and a little GUI even it’s keyboard centered. Of course I created it with MUIClass, therefore its available for all the common Amiga platforms.
