Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[klokwirk]

cheers, I will check it out.

[DamienD]

To make things easy to understand: AmigaDOS - Protect

[Foebane]

Speaking of file attributes, who on earth came up with the odd assortment of file attributes that are available on Amiga?

I can understand Hidden and Archive, just like on Windows, but why on earth would you make an executable file un-executable? Or not be able to read a text document?

When I extract files to the Amiga, I don't care what the attributes are, I just blanket-set them to RWED with Protect and everything's fine.

Then again, I'm annoyed with Microsoft at the moment because they've decided to add a few new attributes to Windows that never existed before, like "Pinned" and "Unpinned". I'm forever trying to remove them, as they don't do anything useful (as far as I know).

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Speaking of file attributes, who on earth came up with the odd assortment of file attributes that are available on Amiga?

At the time, so many different systems had their own ways of doing things. The AmigaDOS file attributes make a lot of sense and are quite useful IMHO depending on your use case.

I can understand Hidden and Archive, just like on Windows,

It might surprise you to learn that you don't actually... Archive is more or less the same, although logically inverted from the Windows equivalent. AmigaDOS doesn't have a hidden flag however, it has a "Hold" flag, which is referred to as H. This flag tells AmigaDOS to hold a program in RAM if possible when it is first run, eliminating the need to load it from disk the next time it is run. Quite useful on floppy-only setups.

but why on earth would you make an executable file un-executable? Or not be able to read a text document?

If you wanted to temporarily disable a command for some reason, you can disable the E bit. But there's more to it than that. It also marks a directory as useable, without the E bit you can't "execute" (i.e., enter) a directory, so you can exclude certain directories from normal use by disabling their E bit. It's also useful for scripts, by setting the E and S bits, scripts can be run as if they were executable programs.

When I extract files to the Amiga, I don't care what the attributes are, I just blanket-set them to RWED with Protect and everything's fine.

That's the most common requirement (and thus the default for things like CrossDOS etc.) so that's fine. But you might be missing out on the usefulness of some files by losing their SPH flags.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by klokwirk

thanks but how do I set the write bit for every icon? Is there a simple CLI command?

Something like this:

Protect #?.info +w

Will set all icons in the current directory to writeable.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I can understand Hidden and Archive,

H is actually hold. H + P files would be made resident on first execution, but this didn't work in any Commodore supplied version of the OS, or at least it didn't at first. I forget now. :-)

just like on Windows, but why on earth would you make an executable file un-executable? Or not be able to read a text document?

Well, one particular use case for unsetting E on an exe file is, if you have a file in the current dir that you don't want to execute, instead you want to use a file with the same name that is elsewhere in the search path.

Otoh if you have a non-executable file, it shouldn't be +E at all. However it naturally doesn't make much difference, as it wouldn't have the magic byte sequence in the beginning which makes the OS accept it really is an amiga exe. On the other hand libraries and device drivers ARE valid executables, but you shouldn't run them (even though they just return 0 if you do), so -E on an exe is a valid use case here.

To deny reading, that is not as useful. Maybe you want to start a program with default settings so you -R the config file. More often than not, removing R is just an annoyance.

When I extract files to the Amiga, I don't care what the attributes are, I just blanket-set them to RWED with Protect and everything's fine.

Yep, that's fine.

All in all, like you figured out, they are not very useful in a single user computer with no protection against anything.

[plutonick]

I was always embarrassed to ask if a real AMIGA500 was a LOT faster than an emulated one, or if I misremember my childhood (while wearing my pink tinted nostalgia glasses)

[Jope]

You are probably just remembering it as better than it was.

[malko]

It depends on your host hardware.
With any decent recent hardware you can achieve faster results than a real A500 .
But if you are only considering WinUAE/FS-UAE for gaming, A500 real speed is the way to avoid pitfalls
So tweak the configuration to your needs .

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by plutonick

I was always embarrassed to ask if a real AMIGA500 was a LOT faster than an emulated one, or if I misremember my childhood (while wearing my pink tinted nostalgia glasses)

Yeah, there's a bit of the good old "happy sappy delusion syndrome" going on there.

[Foebane]

Tell me one thing about Lemmings: When you've got a dense flow of them in both directions and you need to click an action onto one going into the direction you want, how do you do that when it's impossible to tell if you're going to click on one going in the right direction?

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Tell me one thing about Lemmings: When you've got a dense flow of them in both directions and you need to click an action onto one going into the direction you want, how do you do that when it's impossible to tell if you're going to click on one going in the right direction?

OK now I can answer you :P

Pure luck is the right answer! Haha. It's very hard, really. Sometimes you can see the Lemming flow and guess you will hit one that faces where you want, but many times you'll get screwed.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Akira

Pure luck is the right answer! Haha. It's very hard, really. Sometimes you can see the Lemming flow and guess you will hit one that faces where you want, but many times you'll get screwed.

I guess that's why I didn't play this "acclaimed killer app" of the Amiga for long, it's fundamentally-flawed gameplay in this example, and I don't think many people like think-on-your-feet puzzles with mouse dexterity - at least I don't. Aside from nice presentation and interesting death animations and a sense of humour, I never really got into this game.

It also doesn't help that it's based on a lie: real-life lemmings don't commit suicide, it was actually Disney documentary-makers decades ago pushing them off a cliff and filming them drowning. Horrible!

[Amiga1992]

You learn to figure out where and when to press your mouse to get the right Lemming. I don't think it's flawed just because you don't like it.

No comment on the second paragraph

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by Foebane

It also doesn't help that it's based on a lie: real-life lemmings don't commit suicide

Ah man, you're really going to be gutted when you find out about Superfrog

[AmigaBoy]

Originally Posted by indigolemon

Ah man, you're really going to be gutted when you find out about Superfrog

Disney visited ponds and gave capes and Lucozade to frogs?

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by AmigaBoy

Disney visited ponds and gave capes and Lucozade to frogs?

Nah, kidnapped princesses and turned princes into frogs. They call it Imagineering

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by indigolemon

Ah man, you're really going to be gutted when you find out about Superfrog

OK, OK, so THESE Lemmings DO just walk into anything dangerous, so they're just cartoon characters, but once again it's just one of those Amiga games I never really liked.

[plutonick]

Originally Posted by malko

It depends on your host hardware.
With any decent recent hardware you can achieve faster results than a real A500 .
But if you are only considering WinUAE/FS-UAE for gaming, A500 real speed is the way to avoid pitfalls
So tweak the configuration to your needs .

I am talking about gaming, yes. I tried a couple of games I used to play when I was youngers and they seems... off.

Super Cars 2 (laggy response to steering the car)
It Came from the Desert (slow transition between screens. Slow response to mouse clicks)

It could be that my setup is wrong, but I used DamienD's configurations. I will have to check Youtube plays to see if those plays are faster than mine. Otherwise, I dunno... I am remembering it wrong

[malko]

Originally Posted by plutonick

[...] Super Cars 2 (laggy response to steering the car)
It Came from the Desert (slow transition between screens. Slow response to mouse clicks)

It could be that my setup is wrong, [...]

It has the value you want to give it but, did you try utilities such as SysInfo to check the performance of your emulated environment ?

Originally Posted by plutonick

[...] but I used DamienD's configurations [...]

This is what is wrong on your computer, for sure .
Hello Damien
More seriously, you can also give a try to Amilator as I achieve better result with it (I still use 4.9.3 as, on the poor laptop I use now, 4.12.3 is less stable for unknown reasons...)