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RISC World

Iyonix Issues

Matt Thompson with the latest news for Iyonix owners.

There has not been a great deal happening this month, but with the Wakefield show not too far off, most companies will be holding back releasing anything of any real significance until then. Anyway on with this months goings on...

VICE

There has not been an update on VICE (The emulator for the Commodore range of computers) for while, but now we have another update. Vice is now at version 1.21 and this appears to be a behind the scenes update, fixing a few bugs rather than adding new features. To be honest there isn't much else that could be added to Vice.

For a complete list of changes in V1.21 of Vice see the supplied documentation in the 'Docs' directory.


Perils Of Willy on Vice - Vic 20

RISC OS Vice has been developed over the years by Andreas Dehmel who is now standing down from the development of this application. Version 1.21 is his last release for RISC OS. The program has been taken over by someone called Marco, and full details can be found here at http://arosshow.blogspot.com/2007/03/marco-van-den-heuvel-interview-aka.html and it does mention the RISC OS version in there!

The Vice homepage is at www.viceteam.org and V1.21 can be downloaded from there. I would like to publicly thank Andreas Dehmel for all the help and assistance he gave me when I was trying to get Commodore 64 tape and disc images to load and a particularly awkward VIC 20 game to run, so many thanks for all your help, it was very much appreciated.

KinoAMP

!Kinoamp is a MPEG movie player which has had a small update released in recent months. The latest version is V0.35 (11th March) and there are a number of changes in this new version which include:

  • Added support for MPEG-2 YUV444 colourspace
  • Added extra checks for MPEG stream corruptions
  • Fixed looping boundary in libmpeg2/slice.c which sometimes caused the non-deoding of the last block in the slice.
  • Modified handling of corrupted streams to avoid the error "Decoding waiting indefinitely after audio/video".


Kinoamp playing the video to Diva DJs VS Nicki French "Total Eclipse Of The Heart 2006

It is good to see continued development on very useful programs such as KinoAMP, and this new version can downloaded from http://users.skynet.be/Andre.Timmermans/image/kinoamp/kinoamp.htm.

ID3TAGED

Another update for this very useful little program, which is now at Version 0.22 (24th March 2007). There is not much that is different in this new version, mainly a few bug fixes and some general tidying up of the application.

ID3TagEd is a program which allows you to create and edit ID3 tags for any audio MP3s that you have. For example you can add artist, title, album, year plus many other bits of information. The Screenshot below shows the creation of an MP3 tag:

When all the relevant information is entered, you simply click 'Write Tag' and that's it, job done. Then when you play back the MP3 you will see the tag is now displayed as shown below:

Anyone who uses MP3s should have this program, and it comes very highly recommended. You can download the latest version of ID3TagED from http://www.chris-johnson.org/software/id3taged.html.

MISSILE LAUNCHER

In the last issue of RISCWorld I mentioned the USB Missile Launcher, but I couldn't say much about what it was like as I didn't have the launcher itself at the time of writing, only the software. However that has all changed now and I now have the missile launcher which has taken up residence on top of my Iyonix next my to my green 'Acorn Bug' - anyone remember them?

Getting it to work is very easy indeed. You need to download the driver program called !Missile from http://www.apts04.dsl.pipex.com/Progs/Missile.htm install it on your hard disc, then double click on it and the program icon will appear on the icon bar. The program will not work if it does not detect a USB missile launcher plugged in, not that you would need this program if you didn't have one!

With the missile launcher connected, insert the batteries, (a screwdriver will be needed to open the battery compartment) and then switch it on. Now click on the Missile program icon on the icon bar and the panel shown below will be displayed:

The panel is self explanatory. Click on the green arrows to move the launcher. The red cross will stop the launcher when it is moving, and the red fire button is pretty obvious. When you click on the fire button the launcher will whirr and after a few seconds a missile will be fired across the room.

That is all there is to this program, not that you really need anything else, although I think that it would be good if some missile launching noises could be incorporated, as with the PC equivalent. It should certainly be possible to add to this program, I would have thought.

Overall this is nothing more than a novelty which serves no useful purpose, but it is good fun and provides a great bit of entertainment. I would also be interested to know what other useless things can be plugged into the Iyonix USB port. I have seen Christmas trees and a cup warmer so far - any other suggestions? (USB massage ball - Ed).

All the software reffered to in this issue can be found in the Software.Iyonix section of this issue of RISCWorld.

And so we reach the end of slightly shorter than normal column, as ever if you have any comments, hints and tips, software releases or anything remotely Iyonix related then you can get in touch with the RISCWorld Iyonix column at iyonix@riscos.org.

Matt Thompson

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