Pre-boot System Libraries?
 

I have 2 questions:

1 | Can libraries such as Intuition, DOS etc. be used without workbench? (Are they part of kickstart?)

2 | How do I make a program that inserts itself to boot before WB (Installed on HDD), and then can start workbench up itself later on.

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3 | Can Copper or Blitter copy things from the screen into RAM? Like say intuition used copper or blitter to put stuff on the screen, can another program retrieve what it put there?
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Thanks in advance! :)

All libraries (but the workbench.library) can be used without the workbench. Whether the workbench is run or not only depends on the loadwb command in the startup sequence. The only thing ths program does is to open the workbench.library. The question you have may be which libraries can be used without having access to a boot partition (note that this is a different question). The dos.library is apparently not on disk as it is needed for accessing the disk. Intuition is currently also in ROM, but can be upgraded from disk and will be loaded from there if present from Os 3.2 onwards.



By placing it into the startup-sequence. It would be rather unpleasant for the user if such a program starts the workbench itself. That is up to LoadWB.


The copper cannot copy anything. All it can do is load values at particular times into chipset registers. The blitter can copy RAM, but only chip memory, i.e. RAM regions where the chipset has access to (somehow a tautology, of course). It does not have access to expansion RAM of any kind.


AmigaOs does not implement any type of memory isolation, unfortunately, so from a purely physical perspective, any program can access any data from any other program, but that still does not make this a a good design. Typically, programs exchange data through data structures of the operating system, such as messages and message ports (or higher absractions that are build on such primitives, such as AREXX).

How can I programmatically insert a DOS file into the startup sequenc? For instance: A HD installer would copy its program onto disk, and then it would tell the startup sequence to run that file. How'd I do that?

Installer scripts can add commands to the user's User-startup script.

Doing that to the user's Startup-sequence script is not supported by the Installer, to discourage such practices.

Judging from your questions in #1 i doubt you get anywhere, but a simple solution for your s-s question is to rename original s-s, write your own s-s with your dos commands and add a call to the renamed s-s at the end. These changes can be undone easily in case everything gets fucked up.
s-s means startup-sequence

What's an installer "script", and is the user's user-startup sequence a file accessible using DOS?

Have a look at the guide in this archive: https://aminet.net/package/util/misc/Installer-43_3

The installer is a program that comes with the Os that copies files from the distribution package to their destinations in the target system, let the user choose various configuration options and can also modify the user-startup for you. It is the preferred option to get software installed on the Amiga.


The installer script is the installation procedure. It is using a dialect of lisp to define how the installation works. It is not particularly hard to program.


The user-startup-sequence is surely accessible through the dos.library (as all other files), however the installer inserts particular markers into the file that allows the user (and the installer) to find out section of the file belongs to which program.