Available now: AmigaOS 3.1.4

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by kolla

http://www.abiyo.net/retrocomputing/...intme08onlinux

You'd still have to find a system image, etc. to make this work Emulating a Sun 3 on a Sun 4 sounds a bit scary to me, too.

It would probably be easier to use NetBSD 68k instead, if one wanted to.

[BarryB]

So, without wading through 5 pages, I gather this is a better OS than OS 3.9 due to the many fixes? I currently have OS 3.9 installed for my Towered A1200 with Mediator + Blizzard PPC + Voodoo 3 so wondered if it was worth upgrading it to OS 3.1.4 and can it be installed over an existing OS 3.9 install or has it got to be installed from scratch?

Would it also be better to wait and buy the physical ROM replacements/disks later rather than buy the ADF/ROM files now and then have to wait to buy the physical ROMS later?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

The Green Hills 'C' compiler is not exactly lost The compiler and its component parts need a vintage 1980'ies Sun 2/Sun 3 workstation to run. This is the major technical constraint which prevents its use (aside from the licensing issue, but let's not go there).

I fully understand, that nobody wants to include some SUN3 emulator in the build process, just to reimplement one feature, while sacrificing tons of other features by doing so...

But would it be possible to reimplement (maybe with the help of this old compiler) this specific feature in question on a modern C compiler?
Or is that far to complicated?
(after all CGX is maybe not the only legacy software expecting it)

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I fully understand, that nobody wants to include some SUN3 emulator in the build process, just to reimplement one feature, while sacrificing tons of other features by doing so...

This has been done before, for example in-house at Commodore. The A225 TCP/IP stack and the tools that came with it, including the nfs client, were used in-house to access the Sun workstations.

But would it be possible to reimplement (maybe with the help of this old compiler) this specific feature in question on a modern C compiler?
Or is that far to complicated?
(after all CGX is maybe not the only legacy software expecting it)

This is far too complicated, I'm afraid. The rationale (if there is a good one) for possibly involving the old build tools would be in providing maximum binary compatibility with the 1993/1994 version of intuition.library, right down to the register assignment level and stack frames.

As long as there is no documentation on how software such as CyberGraphX (and for that matter, Picasso II and MacroSystem Retina) interact with intuition.library, emulating the exact same behaviour will be very difficult.

Not only would you have to know how the compiled code (using, for example, SAS/C) looks like, but also how a compatibility layer would fit in between the respective RTG solution and the recompiled intuition.library.

And it's not only code behaviour which would have to be emulated, there's the data structures, too.

Back in 1992 when out of the blue Commodore dropped Kickstart 3.0 and the A4000 on us unsuspecting developers, it was discovered that the "Picasso II" monitor "driver" no longer worked correctly with it (no surprise there).

At the time the "Picasso II" supported screen dragging, and Kickstart 3.0 broke that. The "Picasso II" driver was subsequently updated to support screen dragging on Kickstart 3.0, too, but it required a major feat of reverse engineering.

The data structures which allowed screen dragging to be emulated under Kickstart 2.04 changed significantly for Kickstart 3.0. The relevant information was attached to the non-public part of the intuition.library Screen data structure which in this form did not exist under Kickstart 2.04.

How do you make sure that data structure compatibility reaches the same level as code compatibility? Tough one...

[Leffmann]

@Olaf Barthel

Will the newly updated SetPatch be made available for free, like older versions have in the past?

[nogginthenog]

Thanks for the hard work Olaf, Thor & everyone involved!

Looking at the resident modules (A4000 version) one does stand out:
dos.library dos 40.5 (24.7.1993)

No bugs found in dos.library in the last 25 years
3.9 didn't update dos either IIRC.

[bubbob42]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Looking at the resident modules (A4000 version) one does stand out:
dos.library dos 40.5 (24.7.1993)

We didn't touch that pit of snakes, this time.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by bubbob42

We didn't touch that pit of snakes, this time.

I believe the new setpatch kills a snake or two.

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

@Olaf Barthel

Will the newly updated SetPatch be made available for free, like older versions have in the past?

Sorry, I don't know yet.

Commodore used to make SetPatch updates available when necessary (rarely), so there's definitely merit in doing so for the AmigaOS 3.1.4 update when the need arises.

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Thanks for the hard work Olaf, Thor & everyone involved!

Looking at the resident modules (A4000 version) one does stand out:
dos.library dos 40.5 (24.7.1993)

No bugs found in dos.library in the last 25 years
3.9 didn't update dos either IIRC.

Volunteers for tackling the 68k dos.library are hard to come by.

The last person to step up and do the job was, as far as I know, Colin Wenzel who is the AmigaOS4 dos.library Guru. We are indeed lucky to have him on the OS4 team.

I do doubt, however, that Colin would be willing to look into the abyss that is the 68k dos.library again and wait for dos.library to blink first.

[kgc210]

Just placed my order for 3.1.4

I guess I will get a download link at some point via email?

Edit, yep email popped up about 20 mins later.

I'm off to play now...

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

....
....
How do you make sure that data structure compatibility reaches the same level as code compatibility? Tough one...

Thank you for the detailed answer!
As long as it is not entirely clear, what the old compiler did, or what programs like CGX expect this is of course not really possible ...

I was misled here (or misinterpreted) gullivers post:

The problem with intuition.library and cybergraphx is that instead of
attempting to patch libraries in a clean way for CGX to do its work,
its developer relied on specific compiler features.

this led me to the conclusion, that specific feature is well known and could be replicated...

[gregthecanuck]

@OS 3.1.4 developers

You might want to get someone to do some more promotion on this release. I see no announcement of any sort on Amigaworld.net or Amigans.net?

[Heiroglyph]

The unpaid devs are doing all the PR work too just because they want to be involved and talk about their hard work.

Someone that's going to be paid for this should really handle more than just the money.

[kgc210]

Originally Posted by bubbob42

A new and exclusive icon GlowIcon set done by Masion is included on the storage disk. We'll supply more icons in this style later. By default, reworked classic icons with four colours will be installed.

Is there an installer script for these new Icons or do you have to manually install them?

[bubbob42]

Originally Posted by kgc210

Is there an installer script for these new Icons or do you have to manually install them?

Just created a new FAQ entry:

I was promised nice GlowIcons. Where are they?

On the Storage disk, glowicons folder. It has no icon itself, so use Workbench’s pulldown-menu to make it visible.

Installation is a manual process for now. Insert Storage disk. Open a shell and enter:



copy Storage3.1.4:glowicons/#? sys: all



and reboot.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by kolla

Where is the CD32 version?

Originally Posted by alenppc

The CD32 uses a 1MB rom, so I can't burn the ROM (also my burner doesn't support 1MB roms). But software wise I can try.

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

I can be wrong, but I think it's not a good thing to change the CD32 ROM, the CD32 might lose CD boot and some other functionality

Originally Posted by kolla

Done properly, you can have an updated kickstart for cd32 too, with cd drive working, it's been done before.

The CD32 has a 1MB ROM with KS3.1 and an Extended ROM interleaved. Is the KS3.1 in the A1200 compatible with the CD32 and vice versa? In that case it should be possible to interleave the new A1200 KS3.1.4 with the CD32 Extended ROM and burn it to an EPROM, or am I missing something?

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Thank you for the detailed answer!
As long as it is not entirely clear, what the old compiler did, or what programs like CGX expect this is of course not really possible ...

I was misled here (or misinterpreted) gullivers post:


this led me to the conclusion, that specific feature is well known and could be replicated...

The operating system had no dedicated means to implement the kind of functionality which the Picasso II, MacroSystem Retina, CyberGraphX and Picasso96 would offer.

If you will, what all these systems have in common in addition to making SVGA graphics hardware usable through graphics.library, intuition.library, etc. is that they leveraged the exec.library/SetFunction API to the max

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by MickGyver

The CD32 has a 1MB ROM with KS3.1 and an Extended ROM interleaved. Is the KS3.1 in the A1200 compatible with the CD32 and vice versa? In that case it should be possible to interleave the new A1200 KS3.1.4 with the CD32 Extended ROM and burn it to an EPROM, or am I missing something?

Yes, you are missing something.

The Amiga 1200 Kickstart ROM does not scan the entire memory range which is reserved for the CD32 extension ROM and the FMV expansion, and it also lacks the driver software for the CD32-specific hardware, which includes the built-in CD-ROM drive.

By using an Amiga 1200 Kickstart ROM in the CD32 you would likely be reducing the CD32 to an Amiga 1200 of sorts.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

Yes, you are missing something.

The Amiga 1200 Kickstart ROM does not scan the entire memory range which is reserved for the CD32 extension ROM and the FMV expansion, and it also lacks the driver software for the CD32-specific hardware, which includes the built-in CD-ROM drive.

By using an Amiga 1200 Kickstart ROM in the CD32 you would likely be reducing the CD32 to an Amiga 1200 of sorts.

Thanks but I know that using only the KS3.1.4 in the CD32 is not enough, it would have to be interleaved with the Extended ROM for the CD32. The KS3.1 part of the ROM in the CD32 might be different than the one used for A1200 though, at least it is an older revision.