Blastaway Preview on X5000

Today I wanted to take a look at an upcoming AmigaOS 4 game from Retream called Blastaway.

It is a throwback to games on Classic Amiga, and is in development now. It is being developed in 2019 for Windows and also AmigaOS 4.1.

I am focused on the AmigaOS 4.1 version on my AmigaOne X5000 today. You can download the work in progress game from the Retream itch.io website here for free.

Retream have delivered a lot of great games for AmigaOS 4, Windows, Mac, C64 and more! I have reviewed Huenison in this very blog.

I have previously bought BOH (AmigaOS 4), Skillgrid (Classic Amiga) and C64 games MAH and QUOD INIT EXIT IIm on C64 cartridge from Retream as well! I enjoy their games!

Please support ongoing development of original games for AmigaOS 4.1 and buy some of the games! We need original games too and not just ports of games from other platforms!

This is not the final game and many Blastaway levels and gameplay details are to be completed before the final game is released.

It is looking promising so far, and you can follow along with the very active game development log on their Twitter, Youtube pages as it takes shape!

Here is the Blastaway drawer on extraction:

The game runs in full screen on my X5000:

In the options you can change the video mode to run in a window and lower resolutions, and modify the keyboard controls for the game:

I quickly get into the game:

The game kinda reminds me of Dynablaster and Chaos Engine blended together, with keys to collect to unlock doors, and needing to kill all the aliens on the level to clear.

There are transporters on the level to get into inaccessible areas too and the levels get harder quickly:

You start with three lives, and those are shown at the bottom entrance to each level. If you die you take over the next life from the start point.

I already find the game is playable and fun, and I can't wait to see the final version:

I hope to see this game completed for AmigaOS 4.1 and hope this helps Retream in their efforts to raise awareness of the development work they are doing for our favourite Amiga platforms, both classic and Next Gen!

ABC iView TV streaming and downloading preview on X5000

Back in 2015 I covered a script written by MickJT to allow AmigaOS 4.1 users to stream local Australian TV channel ABC iView programming.

In May 2015 the ABC changed the method to stream iView dropping PS3 support which broke the script, as I reported back then.

Now, in 2019, thanks again to MickJT, we have a new script and ABC iView streaming works again, now using my AmigaOne X5000!

I have been beta testing the new version of the iview script, which should be released in the not too distant future, and I can report it streams very well.

For this to work well, you do need the latest versions of ffplay and ffmpeg 4.0.2 (as I write this) which you can get from os4depot.net.

Make sure you follow the instructions to use the Shell to unpack the latest versions. There are altivec and non-altivec versions, which means you can use ffplay and ffmpeg on AmigaOne X1000 (Altivec) or X5000 (non-altivec) without a problem. I copied the programs to c: so they are available anywhere I want to launch from.

You step through the menus via a text sequence in an Amiga shell, able to search or browse to find programs you want.

Once a program is chosen, you can choose the resolution to stream the video at:

The script then launches ffplay and shows the content! You can (in theory) modify the script to launch ffplay in full screen, and other options too.

Here is one of my favourite shows at the moment, The Good Place, streaming well on my X5000:

I binge watched The Good Place seasons 1 to 3 on Netflix, bought the DVD's because I really enjoyed it, and now you can watch it on Free to air (ABC) - and no, I don't work for Netflix or the company that made it! Just a fan!

This ABC iView streaming development is maybe not so interesting for people not in Australia (I am not sure you can view it from outside AU without a VPN), but it is very exciting if you are here!

Streaming TV on AmigaOS 4.1 in 2019 - loving it again!

I even watched 'Mad as Hell' featuring the often funny Shaun Micallef (originally from Adelaide):

Next I tried out using the latest ffmpeg to download the streaming programs to hard disk on my AmigaOne X5000! It works!

To do this I need to use the iview script first to get the required header and URL for the video - I then copy the relevant part (as shown below) from the script executed into a text editor:

In the text editor I next need to add ffmpeg to the beginning, -i in front of the URL and add -c copy <outputfile.mp4> to the end, as shown in this example below. I put some line feeds in so you can read it easily, but in reality this should all be on the one line:

I then feed this line into the AmigaShell and the program downloads to my X5000:

With that completed successfully, I then checked the file in the drawer and it is there:

I then opened it in Mplayer, using the MPlayerGUI, both also updated on os4depot recently so grab the latest versions!

With MPlayer for the X1000 use the Altivec version, for the X5000 the non-altivec version.

The resultant downloaded file worked perfectly and played back great!

As mentioned, the new version of the script should be available on os4depot in the not too distant future. Thanks to MickJT for his work in making this happen!

Starting out with ESXi 6.7 Update 2

Following on from my purchase of a HPE Microserver G10, I got to work installing ESXi 6.7 Update 2 on a 32GB USB stick installed into the internal USB port.

I connected a CDROM drive externally and burnt off the ESXi 6.7 update 2 ISO to boot from CD on the server:

The system boots from the CD and loads the installer:

Here is the installer, ready to start:

As covered in my previous blog post, I created a RAID10 array on the G10 of 4x4TB SATA disks. This is not permanent as I plan to purchase a NAS soon, but allows me to get started with using the server.

You can see the disks and also the 32GB Samsung USB stick at the bottom, which is where I plan to install ESXi 6.7:

The install gets underway and doesn't take long to complete:

I removed the CD drive and after the system reboots I went to the BIOS to change the boot order to use the USB stick first:

With that done, the server boots off the USB stick to run the ESXi Hypervisor on my new server - exciting!

With the ESXi hypervisor launched on the server, I can now connect to it from my Mac to get started configuring it. I have always used the Windows VSphere client in the past, but now VMWare has 100% migrated to the web client I am now using that:

After logging in with the username and password supplied during the installation, I now get the view of the new server:

By default ESXi is in eval mode and we need to add a license key to use it permanently.

I got a license key for the free hypervisor version via the MyVMWare portal so I could activate this installation:

With the activation done, I moved on to connecting the RAID10 array hard disks in the Microserver to the ESXi environment so I can create Virtual machines on it.

With RAID10 we end up with a bit over 7TB of usable space for our VM Datastore:

I use the whole lot at this stage - as mentioned earlier it is not permanent to have these disks in this server and I will blow away anything I create soon anyway:

So with the Datastore1 created, VSphere web client now shows the new Datastore formatted with the latest VMFS version and now ready for use:

Next I reviewed the network settings - the default VM Network is active, with only one of the two ethernet NIC's connected at the moment. I have plans to connect the other to an iSCSI port group/virtual switch network to have a dedicated separate iSCSI network to connect to the NAS when I get it:

I browsed the datastore to create a folder for ISO's so I could transfer Windows Server and other ISO's for building VM's in this environment.

I then take the ESXi host off the default DHCP addressing and give it a static address.

The hostname is set to the MAC Address so I want to fix that too:

Fixed.

The machine is at a point where I can play with some VM's!

I got onto installing Windows Server 2019 from the ISO, which I downloaded from Microsoft and uploaded to the ISO folder I created on the Datastore. This is all done from the VSphere web client.

I am creating a Windows Server 2019 VM, so I select the profile for that in the VM creation wizard, so it will set the recommended default machine configuration (memory, hard disk, cpu, etc)

Wow, if I am feeling nostalgic I can build a Windows NT4 box, or even Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS 6.22! Maybe I will at some point :-)

With Windows Server 2019 you now have Windows Virtualisation based security, which is supported under ESXi 6.7 update 2 and can be enabled if required.

I then adjust the settings to add the CD Drive ISO link to the Windows Server 2019 media so it will boot from it - don't forget to click on Connect though otherwise nothing happens!

With the newer Window server version like 2016 and 2019 they now REQUIRE UEFI secure boot, which is natively supported in this ESXi version. This is a change for me, as normally the operating systems I deployed run on (what is now called) legacy BIOS firmware. Time moves on!

Ok, ready to complete the VM Creation:

Here is the new VM, powered off:

If you forget to mount the ISO, you can still do so prior to power on by editing the VM settings:

Again, don't forget to click on Connect afterwards or it won't be connected at power on.

I can now power on and view the console to see what is happening and interact:

Success! I can now install Windows Server 2019 on my newly created VM:

I am just using this in eval as Windows Server 2019 Standard version with no intention to activate it - just wanted to try it out:

With the install completed I now have a Virtual Machine I can use on my new ESXi server!

My ESXi 6.7 update 2 installation is done, and the new (temporary) server based datastore and network configured, with a test VM created and running on the new Microserver G10!

This seems like a good point to end this blog post. I will continue the build work in the next post as I have more hardware to buy and add to create my intended home lab setup.