23th September 2006,



Hour 10.00 am, Officially opens the 10th and maybe the most important edition of Pianeta Amiga, who takes place ( even this year ) at the " PalaEsposizioni " in Empoli ( Florence ).

This year more than ever, Pianeta Amiga played an important role for our platform, infact, has been shown to pubblic the mysterious project " Samantha " ( there were a lot of rumors about it ). Samantha is the codename of a new mainboard with a PowerPC processor AMCC. It's a SoC ( System on Chip ) who will be able to run Amiga OS 4.0 and/or others Operating System based on the PPC family.

Once again in this edition was possible, thanks to our sellers ( Alternative Holding Group, Soft3, Virtual Works ) and Jasa Communications to have a free stand where show its own work or to bring its computer and let people free to try Amiga OS 4.0 ( that's was i did ).

During the show was possible to see a lot of Amiga One and Micro Amiga One with Amiga OS 4.0 with Update 4 and learn how this operating system has grown up and how is near to the final release.

Saturday 23th there was a Conference of presentation for the project " Samantha ", where it has explained in every detail from our seller who mainly explained the choise of a SoC cpu ( System on Chip ). This cpu will grant the possibility to have a versatile mainboard adaptable to every kind of work especially the industrial sector.

But the good news about the hardware are not finished, infact at Pianeta Amiga was possible to see and touch by hand the prototypes of two others new mainboards, the " Amy 05 " and the " Panda ". These new boards has been bringed to us thanks to GURU MEDITATION. These board are different from Samantha, infact they are not thinked to fit in a laptop case but only in a standard case. The Conference of presentation lasted more than the predicted time so the DevConference ( Developper' s Conference ) has delayed a little bit.

In the DevConference, thanks to Andrea Palmate' and Andrea Vallinotto, has been possible to learn how to make a porting with a cross-compiler in a windows system and how to program ( using the C language ) a module for the Kickstart and how to scan a PCI Bus.

During the Conference have been shown two usefull programs, Emperor and AVDTool. The first is Gui Construction Kit, with few clicks is possible to create Window or Gui under Amiga OS and then adding the required code. The second is, instead, a more complete environment to develop amiga programs.
The AVDTool is sell in two differents ways, the first is the commercial version and it costs $199.95 ( it can be payed also by instalments ).
The second version ( not yet available ) is free but it can be used only to develop freeware software.
The AVDTool has been presented by Dario Soccoli and Eliseo Bianchi.

During the Conference there was also Nicolas Mendoza, who introduced himself to the public for his work on Aminet and UtilityBase. Mendoza is responsible of the technical stuff of Aminet, he developped the new graphics and the engine of the new site. He is also the author of UtilityBase, a site/forum dedicated to the programming under Amiga OS.

To give more importance to this 10th Edition of Pianeta Amiga was the intervent ( registered by him and send per e-mail ) of Bill MC Ewen, president of Amiga Inc. After greeting the people of the show, he congratulated with " us " for the Samantha' s project and how he was happy and satisfied to work with " us " to bring Amiga OS on even more platforms.

At the end of the DevConference, thanks to the undefaticable Nicola Morocutti was possible to partecipate to an IRC Session with the Friedens Bros. of Hyperion-Entertainment who answered to differents questions, assuring the users that their intentions are to release Amiga os for the end of the year.

For all the day of Saturday, was present an important italian network the R.A.I. ( Italian Network Television ) who made a reportage of the show interviewing Enrico Vidale ( Virtual Works ) and Libero Moschella ( Alternative Holding Group ) for the Samantha' s project.

The Samantha' s project was possible thanks to the hard work of three italian seller : Alternative Holding Group, Soft3 and Virtual Works, who combined their experiences to bring us this little " Jewel " all made in Italy.

At Pianeta Amiga were present :

  • BitPlane with the last number of the Italian magazine with a " special " article on Samantha
  • Alternative Holding Group
  • Soft3
  • Virtual Works
  • GuruMeditation who sold AudioEvolution at special price and bringed to us " Amy 05 " and " Panda "
  • AmiKit with the latest version of his suite of programs to use in an emualted amiga environment
  • Amiga DemoMania a site dedicated to the classic amiga demos
  • Golem a linux users group
  • Ikir Sector an italian site dedicated to the Amiga and the IT



Stefano Guidetti ( Betatester and translator of Amiga OS 4.0 ) has showned up two new features of the operating system : The New Kernel and the new Icon.library with support for the PNG Icons without the use of the famous patch done by Elena Novaretti " Power Icons ".

Infact is possible to support a wide variety of icons format, from the PNG with Alpha Channel to the new 32 Bit Amiga os format with support for the double image. It also supports the Ambient' s Icons ( Morph OS ) and Aros' s icons. At the moment it only supports these formats, but in the future will be possible to add more icons formats thanks to the Plug-In system that works in the same way of the Amiga' s datatypes. The new icon.library has been rewritten from Massimo Tantignone, also author of the Amiga os 4.0 ' s Intuition.

Stefano was also showing the new skin of TuneNet, famous player with support for different music format. Now the program look much better and is more professional.

For the first time i can see something real growing up ( three new boards ) and maybe there will be some more news waiting all of us...

That' s all folks ! See you next year on the same Planet, Stay tuned !

Take a look to the photos gallery

Available the first video of the italian tv " Neapolis " dedicated to Pianeta Amiga 2006

On AmigaWorld is possible to read another reportage of Pianeta Amiga 2006