Amiga Laptop E.M.M.A. Part 5: New Look

I've been working on the look and feel of my emulation and wanted an OS4.x feel which meant, for me, the place to start was with the icons and the obvious choice was Mason Icons of which there are a huge selection of OS4.x icons from ADPro to YAD and a lot in between, however there are gaps that need filling so I downloaded Icons Reworked and cha05e90 Icons. Using the all the releases from all three gave me most of the icons I needed, from system icons to software icons.

Loads of Icons and Many More Besides

For an OS3.x machine to be able to display OS4.x icons properly an updated version of icon.library is needed or else the icons appear corrupt.

Changing the icons  and adding a more colourful wallpaper allowed me to take E.M.M.A. from...

Initial Workbench 3.9 Before Tinkering

to...

Updated Workbench 3.9 After Tinkering

As you can see I have made it a little more colourful. I have used the Fire Ice Planet wallpaper, amended the dock to incorporate OS4.x icons, removed some of the apps I will use least, installed NoWinED and dock icon as my text editor of choice and even replaced AWeb with iBrowse, browser of choice, mainly due to the fact that I'm not keen on AWeb and I couldn't get Netsurf working.

I have nine application available on the dock:

1. iBrowse

iBrowse 2.4

2. Personal Paint

Personal Paint 7.2.1

3. AmigaAmp

AmigaAmp 2.11

4. Amiga Shell

Amiga Shell

5. DOpus

DOpus 4.17 pre 20

6. LhA-RAM

LhA-RAM

7. ScreenMode Prefs

ScreenMode Preferences

8. Input Prefs

Input Preferences

9. NoWinED

NoWinED 0.83

I can now turn on my laptop, E.M.M.A., on and it boots straight into a full screen, 1366x768 Workbench, omitting having to see Windows entirely. Unfortunately the boot time is quite excessive, over 1 minute, even having disabled most of the Windows software that used to start on bootup.

I have added some up to date datatypes and libraries and would like to make it look a lot more like my Sam440ep but I am unable to install the DeJaVu font which I use as my default workbench font and I also use it in my InTune program.

I can open Hollywood v7.0 and work on InTune, my music player, allowing me to get on and enjoy programming the Amiga way. I will hopefully, also, take a fresh look at my Star Trek database. 

Hollywood Running Just Fine

Showing My InTune Program Running

As you can see InTune is nowhere near complete. There's no playlist, not all MP3s load, seems to have some error when reading ID3 tags for artist on some MP3s.

I have to admit no matter how time consuming it is to do all I have done to get this far with E.M.M.A. I have thoroughly enjoyed every minute.

Michael Holmes

AMIKIT X INSTALLATION

AMIKIT X INSTALLATION

This is just a short step by step guide on how easy it is to install AmiKit X on a laptop.

When we first start AmiKit X we are presented with the welcome screen shown below, let's just press "Next" and see where it takes us.

We are now asked for the folder where we wish to save AmiKit, I will just keep it as the default folder and select "Next".

It seems we are now ready to install, so let's go right ahead.

So far everything is really straightforward with no messing, let's hope this continues, so let's press "Install" ad see what's next.

After just 2 minutes we get the chance to finish the installation process. So press finish and het presto, we are done. We now have our AmiKit shortcut on our desktop.

Double clicking the shortcut takes us to the launch window. Selecting "Launch" we are given our first glimpse on the Amiga Workbench displaying the AmigaOS install choices.

As I have a copy of Amiga Forever already installed so I'll just select "AF Installed" and take it from there and it proceeds to import system files, which takes a matter of seconds, then asks me to reboot.

Now I am taken to the very familiar Screenmode Prefs screen and I'll select a mode that is slightly lower than my laptops native resolution of 1366x768 so I'll select 1280x720.

Now apparently my AmiKit X installation is complete and I have to press "Enter" and get ready to be amazed.

Well I am amazed, after playing with it for a while I realise I am willing to go full screen with this so I just press F12 which opens up the WinUAE properties allowing me to select AmiKit-fullscreen.

And the process of having a fully functional AmigaOS laptop is complete.

In my next instalment I will be going to the next level.

Michael Holmes