Official update to OS 3.1 from Hyperion

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Ho, ho, i think you misunderstood :-)

I was not saying you should compare AmigaOS in its application area to VxWorks or so. We can all agree that this whole 'AmigaOS for embedded!1' thing people whine about is stupid.

What i meant is development methods.

And here I was, naïvely hoping that just for once, I could finally have nice things for a change

That said, having gone through the hard knocks school of writing 'C' for the Amiga (started in 1988, if I remember correctly) has served me well in all these years.

Yes, i've been paid to port software off of or 'blackbox' even more arcane operating systems then AmigaOS :-D

I fear you will be working with a lot of external harness constructs to facilitate you're tests. Might not be as clean but you have to do with what you have to do.

So it is just as I had expected: the more abstractions the implementation language provides, the more leverage it gives you to perform testing. If you are that close to the CPU with assembly language and 'C', the more primitive your testing methods and tools need to be.

Oh well, it's not as if we haven't been there before.

Well, from a modern perspective the codebase is really bad, not just the various build systems but also a lot of code quality is questionable. The A4091 device driver code scared me.

You should be scared. Now you know why it's in there, and you shouldn't have looked. What has been seen can never be unseen.

This particular SCSI driver is a combination of the unified scsi.device build, which encompasses ST/XT/IDE/WD/LSI hardware, and the rather too complex LSI Logic hardware itself. This SCSI hardware is programmable, and the A4091 device downloads a control script to it during initialization. This is some extraordinarily complex code. The author, Randell Jesup, sat on the ANSI SCSI committee for Commodore, if I remember correctly.

Which is of course one of the core problems, in essence when you look through the RCS data it becomes very obvious how the OS development was a set of very specific personal kingdoms, inter module cooperation is very low. (https://scholar.google.com/citations...J:WF5omc3nYNoC a fun paper on this subject).

I do not know how much of the change history you looked through (something more which, once seen, can never be unseen, I suppose).

From my point of view it was possible to see how many hats the different developers used to wear at the time the original Kickstart 1.x was built. You could also see how much interaction there was between the engineers who designed the low level drivers and .resources. This looked like the work of a very small, dedicated team to me. I have worked in, and with teams like that. It looked familiar to me.

What neither of us can see is the history beyond the 1985 starting point of the RCS history. It's possible that such a history exists, maybe in the form of SCCS files. The collaboration between Dale Luck and RJ Mical was said to be very close when graphics.library and intuition.library were "cast". This cannot be seen in the RCS change history, which seems to begin right when Commodore acquired Amiga, Inc.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

That said, having gone through the hard knocks school of writing 'C' for the Amiga (started in 1988, if I remember correctly) has served me well in all these years.

C (...and completely different LISP) are Timeless, imho :-)

This particular SCSI driver is a combination of the unified scsi.device build, which encompasses ST/XT/IDE/WD/LSI hardware

In my opinion the continued reuse of that code might perhaps not have been that wise, seperate implementations would have been far cleaner, easier to debug and test and also less steep for other developers to work on (which you want).

I do not know how much of the change history you looked through (something more which, once seen, can never be unseen, I suppose).

It covered from ~1.3 to slightly post 3.1.

I wrote a bunch of ELISP code wrapping around Emacs' RCS support to mine statistics and relationships etc.

Great history fun :-)

This looked like the work of a very small, dedicated team to me. I have worked in, and with teams like that. It looked familiar to me.

Yes such things are really awesome, sometimes this results though in situations where knowledge of the codebase doesn't disseminate and developer mobility across the project drops.

What neither of us can see is the history beyond the 1985 starting point of the RCS history. It's possible that such a history exists, maybe in the form of SCCS files. The collaboration between Dale Luck and RJ Mical was said to be very close when graphics.library and intuition.library were "cast". This cannot be seen in the RCS change history, which seems to begin right when Commodore acquired Amiga, Inc.

Indeed, (lets call it) the whole SAGE era is massively fascinating, i'd love to see archives of that but i fear its all since lost.

When looking at the tree/history of AmigaOS you see a pattern of really big (and often impressive) large code drops by the Big Names and then only very little continued feature development by others.

All this stuff is the most fascinating Amiga history in years (ever!). Its so sad that Cloanto/Hyperion cant just put this on AF or whatever under a read-only license for historical value.

[Acill]

I guess I should have read more into this. I just bought it and noticed after when I got the download link its only in single .rom format???? I needed to burn this and cant. Can someone tell me what I need to do so I can burn this to a 27c400? I need it in .bin and more than likely bite swapped I assume.

[utri007]

Originally Posted by Acill

I guess I should have read more into this. I just bought it and noticed after when I got the download link its only in single .rom format???? I needed to burn this and cant. Can someone tell me what I need to do so I can burn this to a 27c400? I need it in .bin and more than likely bite swapped I assume.

I bought it also, mostly to find out what is inside. Unfortunately Romsplit / Remus doesn't support it. You could ask Dooprey to add support to it?

http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/contact.html

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Acill

I guess I should have read more into this. I just bought it and noticed after when I got the download link its only in single .rom format???? I needed to burn this and cant. Can someone tell me what I need to do so I can burn this to a 27c400? I need it in .bin and more than likely bite swapped I assume.

.bin is just a file suffix, you may call it .diaper if you want and your burner won't care. Just double it up, byteswap and burn.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by utri007

I bought it also, mostly to find out what is inside. Unfortunately Romsplit / Remus doesn't support it. You could ask Dooprey to add support to it?

http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/contact.html

I have sent him an email about that and other things about a week ago. Still no response, but lets be patient.

I dont have such 3.1 update, but I thought it would be good to be supported.

[HanSolo]

There is also Kickstart v3.2 r43.1 (1996)(Escom AG)(Walker).rom maybe doobrey will add this too ?

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by HanSolo

There is also Kickstart v3.2 r43.1 (1996)(Escom AG)(Walker).rom maybe doobrey will add this too ?

That one has been already done.

[wXR]

A message to the Amiga community and (supposed) AmigaOS copyright holders: I want AmigaOS 3.1 re-licensed under the GPL, and I will contribute $50,000 to any pot of funds seriously set on that goal. Is there any lawyer present who would have an interest see to its legal disentanglement, while holding this and future funds in escrow?

[utri007]

Originally Posted by wXR

A message to the Amiga community and (supposed) AmigaOS copyright holders: I want AmigaOS 3.1 re-licensed under the GPL, and I will contribute $50,000 to any pot of funds seriously set on that goal. Is there any lawyer present who would have an interest see to its legal disentanglement, while holding this and future funds in escrow?

Likewise, if there is anyone present who has an unheard legal grievance (of any kind) against Hyperion and/or Cloanto, please send me a private message. If your case would cost either of the above companies money, or just substantially annoy them, I might be interested in funding it.

Happy easter everyone!

When talking about copyrights and lawyers, 50 000$ is like 50$ of household money.

[Lord Aga]

Don't belittle his gesture. If it comes down to a serious legal fight I would also contribute. Although I'm far from 50,000 bucks But I'm sure others would step up too.
Quite a lot of people is tired from legal shenanigans Hyperion and Cloanto are pulling.

And to think I once loved Cloanto for PPaint...

[michaelz]

Originally Posted by utri007

When talking about copyrights and lawyers, 50 000$ is like 50$ of household money.

To be honest, if I were Cloanto, I would seriously talk with the man. I can't imagine that they make that much money on the product in a scope of two-three years.

[Mr.Flibble]

Awesome gesture, I really hope someone takes up the offer - I wonder if there are any like-minded souls on here or the other amiga sites like a1k or amibay?

If the groundwork can be completed, then expand into crowdsourcing if there aren't sufficient funds?

[wXR]

Before deciding on a detail like crowdfunding or not, we need first to find an attorney who can disentangle things. The Amiga Documents site would need to be reviewed carefully, and probably quite a lot of additional documentation would need to be pulled. After that, some kind of strategic briefing should be generated by the attorney, and the relevant parties would need to be approached with an opening offer. This would all be time-consuming, which is why I would love to have leading this, an attorney who is also an Amiga fan. I feel like it might be a good idea to ask someone like David Pleasance. Do any of you know him?

Only after the above is done can we move forward. I am under no illusions about the fact that this will be costly. On the other hand, I believe that michaelz' intuition is correct: The disentanglement may be the most expensive part. Therefore, if the $50K only gets us to a clear strategic briefing (i.e. how to move forward when there are further funds), that's certainly better than nothing. We can raise more at that point, to see the rest through.

If any of you guys are serious about a legal, open source AmigaOS 3.1, lets talk. I'm offering this because I can't stand this nonsense any longer; hopefully I am not the only one.

[idrougge]

In what way would David Pleasance be able to help out? He's not been involved with the Amiga since the Commodore days.

[wXR]

Simply, he may know an attorney that retains a love for the Amiga. Especially since he has been heavily networking in the Amiga world lately, with an autobiographical book about his experiences at Commodore coming soon. In addition he's been reassembling some of his old team for the FriendUp project.

Its possible that he knows no one relevant who would give a toss, but I intuit that it is worth a shot.

[Mr.Flibble]

I did mean crowdfunding for initial legal funds should the generous offer not be sufficient to attract a suitable lawyer.

That said, there are plenty of avenues to explore before we get to that.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by wXR

Before deciding on a detail like crowdfunding or not, we need first to find an attorney who can disentangle things. The Amiga Documents site would need to be reviewed carefully, and probably quite a lot of additional documentation would need to be pulled. After that, some kind of strategic briefing should be generated by the attorney, and the relevant parties would need to be approached with an opening offer. This would all be time-consuming, which is why I would love to have leading this, an attorney who is also an Amiga fan.

I know a former Amiga owner and a family friend who is a patent/trademark lawyer. He currently works for the FCC in D.C. and owes me a favor. Just freeing/opening AmigaOS 3.1 is not a good enough game plan to interest me, though. There needs to be organized development of AmigaOS for the 68k which provides a path forward. I like the idea of the source being available but not necessarily copyright/trademark free as this limits standardization and allows for forks. Perhaps a development and standards council could make development decisions. I'm not convinced a business/non-profit model is wrong either. I don't like control to be in the hands of the few (usually authoritarians) but rather some kind of representative system is good (stockholders and board of directors is not bad). I believe there are plenty of Amiga investors and money other than you but a good plan is needed and some investors would want a chance at a return.

A complete plan would include affordable mass produced 68k hardware, probably including a 68k ASIC. It is unlikely possible to achieve a price as cheap as a Raspberry Pi but a 68k product would have more value due to uniqueness. Staying 68k keeps the biggest part of the Amiga community together and allows it to grow. Without new affordable hardware, you might as well wait for Hyperion and A-Eon to go bankrupt or give up and buy up all the Amiga assets in the fire sale.

[kolla]

Cloanto want to open source OS3.1 too, but it is not their call to make.

[wawa]

matt, you outline a complete utopia..

apart of that, on one hand you dont want to have power in hands of a few, but you wont give it freely to the people either.. even if it took off, it would end like your engagement with apollo team, the guys who do the most work, might well keep it away from access of others, who they ve chosen not to be worthy.

whats the difference, now?