Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[rjflory]

Hi- I have a Stupid Question. I have resurrected one of my old A2000s and am trying to setup a SCSI hard disk on a GVP controller using installer s/w downloaded from http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/gforce2030 .

The problem is the software is all in German. Although my great-grandfather was German, I do not comprehend... Sympathizing with our European and Asian friends, I can guess some of the stuff, but was curious if Amiga ever used .info settings for default language. GVP was a US company, but I don't know if they made hard-coded builds/releases for each language/locale, or if there was a runtime config item to control this.

Thanks.

[Jope]

Seems these images have the tools hard coded in German. If you really wish to use FastPrep/ExpertPrep, you can use some other GVP install disk, such as the A1291 install disk from the GVP1230 II listing at amigaresource. Those seem to be in English.

However for a more flexible tool, you could just use Commodore's HDToolBox from the OS install disk. You can point it towards gvpscsi.device in the icon's tooltypes or launch it from the command line with hdtoolbox gvpscsi.device (cd to the correct directory first)

[Firestone]

I got one....
In the 1.3 days there was a file called DEVS:System-configuration
This file was the configuration written by "Preferences" in Workbench 1.3

But this file is still read on 2.x and 3.x systems, and contains information about font size of the amiga startup cli window among other things like the palette and so on.

In 3.x, all prefs-programs seems to be related to iPrefs more or less.
So my question is, were we supposed to use the 1.3 Preferences to edit devs:system-configuration?

[Thomas Richter]

No, not really. This is just a legacy file that is read by the System-Startup process (what you would call the "init" process in Unix) just before the startup-sequence is run and is then installed into intuition via the legacy SetPrefs() function. The only purpose of this mechanism is to keep old programs with a custom configuration working. It serves no purpose anymore, and IPrefs uses a completely different mechanism to install the settings into intuition.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Firestone

So my question is, were we supposed to use the 1.3 Preferences to edit devs:system-configuration?

Pretty much yes, or one of the alternative editors such as PPrefs.

Under v36+ this was mainly useful if you were making a CLI pack.

[Firestone]

Thanks a lot for first class answers as usual!

[d4rk3lf]

Ok, so AGA chipset got the same blitter as a first OCS Amiga chipset.
I've read that many mentioned how cool would it be if there was more advanced blitter in Aga (32-bit).

My question is, would it be hard (and sane) to implement 2 old blitters in Aga? Or even 4? Could they work in parallel? Something like we have with PC's today with multiple processors? Is that even possible on Amiga chipset (2,4,8 blitters working in parallel?)

[desiv]

Just thought of something I'd searched for before and didn't find.
But then just before I posted my Q:, I thought of another possible search option and found it...
So, this is my question, and then the answer (which google of course found on EAB)...

How do I copy a file to the current directory? (i.e. in BASH, "cp /home/file.text ." where the . means current directory)

Well, I found the answer and apparently it is to use ""
So,
copy RAM:file.txt ""

I haven't tested it yet, but I've no reason to doubt it. ;-)
Note: I thought I would recognize the answer when I finally saw it, but I don't. So I'm guessing I always used to type out the full destination path back in the day. <sigh> ;-)

[NLS]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Ok, so AGA chipset got the same blitter as a first OCS Amiga chipset.
I've read that many mentioned how cool would it be if there was more advanced blitter in Aga (32-bit).

My question is, would it be hard (and sane) to implement 2 old blitters in Aga? Or even 4? Could they work in parallel? Something like we have with PC's today with multiple processors? Is that even possible on Amiga chipset (2,4,8 blitters working in parallel?)

No. AGA blitter was not the same as OCS blitter.
Even ECS blitter was different.

[grond]

Originally Posted by NLS

No. AGA blitter was not the same as OCS blitter.
Even ECS blitter was different.

Care to explain?

[NLS]

Sorry no time.
But I remember that OCS Agnus blitter, could do shifts of around 1000x1000 pixels (1024 x something), while ECS blitter could theoretically do 32k x 32k... I don't remember the details. I suspect AGA blitter could do even more.

[Toni Wilen]

All chipsets have practically identical blitter (I don't count possible chip manufacturing technology updates). Tiny and trivial differences like ECS larger blits (width/height counters got few more bits) don't make it any faster or slower.

AGA blitter is almost exactly same as ECS blitter. Only difference is bug fix in blitter finished state bit. OCS/ECS blitter sets blitter blitter finished status bit early if last D write is still in pipeline. AGA fixes this. (Copper blitter waits requiring 2xWAIT if blitter is not in nasty mode is caused by this bug)

Some blit channel combinations have idle cycles, in theory blitter logic could have been optimized (with much more complex sequencer logic) to not have any idle cycles = faster blitter without increased bus width. But only way to really increase blitter speed is to have wider or faster bus. AGA really really should have had at least 32-bit wide blitter.

Having more blitters would not have helped because main limit is chip ram bandwidth.

[Snoopy1234]

Exit and Save and Exit - early version of ED which is without menus?

[NLS]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

...

Well there you have it. If there is someone that REALLY know what's going on under the hood, is Toni.

I just tried my (while-working-) best. :P

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Snoopy1234

Exit and Save and Exit - early version of ED which is without menus?

Quit - Esc,Q - Exits ED without saving changes. If you made any changes to the file, ED asks if you want to quit. If you press Y, ED terminates immediately without saving the changes to the file.
Save & Exit - Esc,X - Exits ED, saving the current file to the designated file name. ED writes the text it is holding in memory to the file that was specified when ED was opened and then terminates.

Haven't tested it.

[Snoopy1234]

Originally Posted by TCD

Haven't tested it.

Cheers Thanks for that!

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Aehhmm.. this is a bit embarrassing to ask ....

but what is the Command line for unpacking an archive with UNZIP in Dopus4/Config ?
(so that the selected item/s gets unpacked to the Destination)

http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/UnZip

Could be handy sometimes

[mfilos]

There is definitely a better way to unarchive a zip file (or most archives) from DOPUS4.

For example you can set a button as "UnZIP" with the entry:
Command - User1 (no flags required)
Then go to Filetypes and add one (AmigaDOS program) with the following:
- Events: Action - Command User1
- Event description: Extracting files from ZIP archive...
- Entry: AmigaDOS: C:UnZIP {f}
- Flags: CD destination, Do all files, Output window, Rescan destination
- Close delay: -1

You can also go to Edit class:
- File class: ZIP archive
- Class ID: ZIP
and under the declarations you can insert:
MatchName - #?.zip

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Originally Posted by mfilos

For example you can set a button as "UnZIP"

This is exactly what i had in mind and thanks to you i can do that now


Most archives are LHA anyway but it might come in handy to have a UnZIP button


Thank you very much Mfilos

[crazyc]

OK - I have tried googling and looking in the relevent threads, but how do people manage their WHDLOAD collections?

I have the Retroplay download tool that downloads all the lha files into a folder on my pc. This tool (as I understand it) reviews that folder agaisnt the FTP and can download any changes.
How do I go from this to the expanded folders on my actual amiga - which are what I actually want to keep updated. Now I have three amigas that I will want to keep updated. I also want to copy over the screenshots pack with the igame data files into this - but to do this I need to copy them over the expanded folders?

Is there an idiot proof guide to how people do this? Whilst it would be slow for an initial setup, to check for updates all my a1200s are networked if there was an 'on amiga' way.