Adelaide Showgrounds Station

This weekend I went to the Adelaide Showgrounds, so for the first time it gave me the opportunity to travel by train to the permanent Adelaide Showgrounds Station, part of the Adelaide Metro train network.

Above is the train I arrived at Adelaide Showgrounds Station Platform 1. The train is 4005, an electric train bound for Seaford Station in the Adelaide southern suburbs. The Tonsley line (a branch line off the Seaford line) also services this platform.

You can click on any of these images to view them in a much larger resolution.

The Adelaide Showgrounds Station is completely under cover, which is great news on this day since it was raining heavily with thunderstorms too!

Before this station was opened in 2013, every year for the Adelaide Show only (in September) a temporary station platform was built/torn down to allow people to get to/from the show - this is a big improvement on the previous arrangement, which was only available at the Adelaide Show time. Now it can be used for any event staged at the Adelaide Showgrounds throughout the year (and there are many).

Below is the view from Platform 2, which is the Adelaide Station bound platform for Seaford and Tonsley line trains:

This is the view from Platform 2 towards Adelaide Station.  Up the stairs is the crossover  bridge to platform 1 and the exit ramp towards Anzac Highway in the distance. Beyond Anzac Highway bridge was the original Keswick Station that was demolished and this station built in it's place.

On Platform 3 is the Belair railway line to/from Adelaide. As the Belair line is one line only, there are no separate up/down tracks - trains to/from Adelaide depart from the same platform. This is the view towards Adelaide Station from the platform:

Next photo is the view from Platform 3 towards Belair. You can see another railway line to the right of the Belair line - this is the standard gauge line to Melbourne, used by freight trains and also the Overland train (Great Southern Rail), which departs from the nearby Adelaide Parklands Station (on the other side of Anzac Highway - behind where the photo is taken from):

I covered the Overland service in much more detail in my blog entry in April 2014 when I travelled on it , if interested.

Here is the Belair line train, a 3000 series Diesel train arriving from Adelaide Station into Platform 3, with two carriages for this service:

Closer look at the 3000 series carriages while stationary at Adelaide Showgrounds Station:

The Belair line is run by Diesel trains only. The overhead electric wires over the Belair line from Adelaide Railway Station only last until the line separates from the Seaford line a little further south allow options for electric trains to use the section also when needed. Not sure if Electric trains use the extra line often or not though.

View on Platform 3 as the Belair line train leaves, headed for Belair Station.

Another 4000 series Electric train arrives into Platform 1 at Adelaide Showgrounds Station. This view is from Platform 2, looking towards Adelaide Station direction:

The 4000 series electric train consists are generally 3 carriages, but 6 is also possible:

Close up view of 4005 stationary at platform 1:

4005 departing the station towards Seaford:

My final movement is the electric train (4007) I was waiting to catch back to Adelaide Station on Adelaide Showgrounds Station Platform 2, a Seaford line service:

Adelaide Showgrounds Station is certainly a nice station, modern, well laid out and very useful when going to/from the Adelaide Showgrounds!

E-UAE JIT Beta 5 with RunInUAE Beta 3 on X1000

Exciting for me is the release of the E-UAE JIT Beta 5 (Feature complete) with the updated RunInUAE Beta to use it on my X1000.

Finally I can run Amiga AGA demos up to the current year at full speed on the X1000! Great stuff!

Update 12/1/2015: V1.00 of the E-UAE JIT has now been released. You can get it from here.

You can download RunInUAE Beta 3 including the UAE JIT Beta 5 from here. This is the Amigans forum dedicated to discussions about it - http://www.amigans.net/modules/xforum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6718&forum=8 . 

There is an installer for the RunInUAE in the archive to get things up and running. It erroneously prompted for an Amiga Appz: assign which I mounted to the extracted archive folder and the install then proceeded as normal. 

Here is the readme for the new RunInUAE Beta which explains the addition of the new UAE JIT Beta 5:

Here is the resulting Emulation Folder after installation, which includes the new E-UAE JIT Beta folder and my custom Emulation folders I created a long time ago (explained on my blog here) for running Amiga 1200, 2000 and A4000 systems.

I renamed the older UAE and copied the updated UAE program to the Amiga 4000D folder so it used the new JIT version when running my customised emulations (not just the default RunInUAE functionality):

I then added the new JIT config sections from the installed RunInUAE Beta 3 files to my custom A4000D emulation config .uaerc file to get it to use the new Beta:

Demo time! I ran the A4000D Amiga emulation to try out the AGA demos. You can run this in a window but full screen is much nicer in my opinion.

Some screenshots of other demos running well - TBL's Starstruck (above/below):

TBL's Silkcut running at full speed on my X1000 - awesome!

 Some other demo screenshots running using UAE JIT Beta 5 - perhaps you know these demos too:

 An oldie but a goodie - Haujobb on the X1000:

Ephidrena's brilliant 2003 effort running nicely too:

Very exciting to finally be able to run all the Classic Amiga stuff on my X1000 - looking forward to the final release of the JIT UAE software!

Icaros Desktop 2 - Internet, IndieGo App Store and Amibridge!

Following on from my initial installation blog entry for the recently released Icaros Desktop 2.0 on my Acer AspireOne ZG5, I had a bit more of a play with it this weekend also.

I got my network settings sorted out, with Wireless now working after adding the Atheros 5000 driver to the network settings and defining the Wireless Access Point SSID to connect to, so next I tried out web browsing using the OWB web browser included with Icaros Desktop 2.0:

OWB version information:

Browsing the AROS-Exec.org forums - some Australian guy introducing himself :-)

I then tried out viewing some PDF viewing of old Amiga Computing PDF magazines, playing back music using the included Harmony Player:

Since my internet access was now working from my Icaros Desktop 2.0 setup on the Acer AspireOne ZG5, I decided to have a quick look at the IndieGo! App store.

I should preface this part by saying that this software is still very much in development, and as such still has a few rough edges to iron out.

That said, unlike AMIStore, IndieGo! is targeting many platforms, not just AmigaOS3 and AmigaOS4. It covers AmigaOS3.x, AmigaOS4, MorphOS, Icaros (AROS), MSDOS, Windows and more...the two app stores are not really in direct competition as they are currently targeting mostly different markets.

In Icaros Desktop 2.0, IndieGo! App store is included in the installation, available from the AmiStartMenu under Extras > Demos > AppStore (the bubble help shows the actual disk path):

On the first launch you have to agree to terms and conditions of use:

Having accepted that it presents the latest release notes:

After clicking OK it then prompts for a login:

In my case I don't have an account yet, so I clicked on Register to setup a new one:

You put in your desired username and password:

Email address is also needed:

You are then sent an OptIn email to your nominated email address. In case, the confirmation URL was malformed - I copied the confirmation URL into the browser and edited out the extra http: in it - it then registered me as expected.

The IndieGo! AppStore Main menu then appears:

There are 8 options here, access the App Store, view your purchased software, download your software, latest news, Profile information, Settings, Logout and Quit.

Within the App Store option, you are presented with more options to choose from:

You can select Software & Media Catalogue, items on Sale, New items, Search function, Redeem a voucher, and Filter platform:

Going into the Catalogue Browser you are then presented with the various genres of applications to select from:

Given the development status, most of these are still empty, but there are a number of areas with content int them - Games for example:

Some areas (Like Graphics) have content in them although there is no example graphic (just the default one) shown:

Clicking on Games I then wait for the contents to load from the internet - this did take a few minutes on my Icaros Desktop machine with a progress bar line as below - your mileage may vary:

 Once the Games category load up, I can see the options to return to the previous screen, and to select a subcategory. There is also multiple screens here, indicated by the white/grey dots at the bottom of the screen - you can use the cursor keys to navigate to the next screen in this view:

 Here is the next screen view:

There are some AmigaOS3.X games here - like the demo of The Speris Legacy:

Also, in the driving subcategory of Games, we can see some MSDOS games available for download:

Here is the Puzzle subcategory - Soko4MUI is a recent release for AROS so I am thinking to try it out:

When I click on the Soko4MUI tile, I get the information screen showing a description of the game, screenshots, pricing and category details shown across the top, with options to Buy, Download, Install, Uninstall, Configure, Run and Close (return to previous screen):

When I select Buy (it is free), I get the following screen:

It then changes the status of the game to Owned:

Next I click on Download to download the game:

Eventually the download completes and updates accordingly:

Hmm, from here I hit some problems though - I couldn't use the Install option (said the files wasn't downloaded) and so I couldn't try it out!

I rebooted, ran IndieGo! App Store and tried again:

I still couldn't Install the program though - so I went back to the Main Menu and selected the option to view Your Software:

I then selected to browse my software:

You can see the software I downloaded is listed - selecting takes me back to the software information for Soko4MUI, so it didn't allow me to install it still:

So Unfortunately I couldn't try the game out! I then tried getting Bopping (full version ADF) and hit a similar roadblock after buying and downloading it - I couldn't install it either:

Update 16/11: I found out that apparently you need a voucher code to download anything from the store - this explains why I couldn't download the programs yet.

The platform filter function is also a work in progress in IndieGo! App Store - unable to filter by platform at the moment, though the future intention to be able to filter to your favourite platform is a useful feature:

 But, as I said - it is a work in progress - just wanted to show a bit of what it looks like as this is my first time to use it. IndieGo! is an interesting App Store, with plenty of potential to be unlocked as the development work continues on it!

Moving on, I still have plenty of work to do on my Icaros Desktop 2.0 build - still trying to unlock the Amibridge, Amiga Forever and integration functionality...having some success - got Amiga Forever installed and a full screen/window Amibridge preset works well initially:

After installing the Amiga Forever files from my original Amiga Forever CD when prompted, I then needed to set the screen resolution in the emulated environment to match the Icaros Desktop screen resolution - which is 800x600:

Next I selected the Preset Loader option from the AmiStart Menu to select how I want to use the emulation under Icaros:

There are a few options available as below - select your preferred one:

Confirms your choice:

Final prompt to Save/Use/Discard your choice:

I was going to use Integration as above, but then changed my mind and selected Full Screen instead (didn't re-do the screenshots though sorry!) - I then select Workbench from the AmiStart Menu to boot into the emulated environment for the first time:

Here is the Amiga Forever emulated environment running on Icaros Desktop 2.0:

The UAECtrl dock entry (bottom right icon) allows you to insert/eject disks (ADF) and exit the emulation.

When I exited and tried selecting Integration as the Preset Loader instead of full screen, I started to get consistent crashes trying to launch the environment, sadly even after I set it back to the original working Full screen preset loader config:

So I still have some work to do to get it working well, but it is certainly interesting! As an aside, if you select Power Off on the Software Failure dialog box, it doesn't power off automatically - instead you get a power off screen I hadn't seen before now - a bit like the old OS/2 and Windows 95 shutdown/power off screens telling you to press and hold the power button to switch off:

When you boot the system again you get the boot loader, which I wanted to show here:

If you Press E while highlighting a boot option you can edit the boot string as needed, which is pretty cool:

Run out of time though so I'll keep trying another day - perhaps reinstalling Amiga forever will fix it:

Well, certainly spending time playing with Icaros Desktop 2.0 is not boring that's for sure but as I said I have run out of time for today! Time for sleep - more tinkering to happen again soon no doubt!