Workbench On Windows

[OddbOd]

Originally Posted by prowler

How on earth did you discover these gems?

To deduce what was missing, Process Monitor, to find what was missing, Google.

Originally Posted by Rabbit80

What do we know about this project? How far did it get? Is there any files that we can play with?

Only Bernd Schmidt or Ed himself can answer those questions in any authoritative way.

[Charlie]

Somewhat relevent I guess:
I remember downloading something called WinAmiga, or was it AmigaWin - can't remember & sadly I don't know where I put it, or find any links now...

It was a WinUAE branch that allowed you to run AmigaOS as a shell replacement - Windows apps + Amiga apps all mixed up on WB instead of using explorer...
...how sucessful this was I don't know, but I'd love to have tried it.
I know with care you can achive pretty much the same with WinUAE today but as I understand it the selling point of this branch was 'built-in understanding' of what to do with windows .exe's etc from within WB so it could act as more than just a file utility.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Rabbit80

What do we know about this project? How far did it get? Is there any files that we can play with?

@Rabbit80:

If you're interested in unfinished Amiga emulators per se, Tommo Walker has made his unfinished and abandoned Amiga emulator source code archive available on his emulators page at:
http://www.geocities.com/tommowalker/emulators.html

[prowler]

I have completed my initial testing of both versions of Windows on Workbench.

There's too much to post here, so my findings will be presented in a zipped html format attachment in due course...

[prowler]

@OddbOd:

Sorry, but vcltest3.dll appears to be a red herring. It will not allow the later version to run on my test system.

I did get this running nevertheless, and tonight I have downloaded Process Monitor with a view to discovering what allowed this to happen and to see if it will again reach the same conclusion regarding the missing component when it will not run.

[OddbOd]

On closer inspection you are correct vcltest3.dll is not needed, what actually made the later version run was the fact that I had run the older version first. After rechecking on two more PCs (one XP, one Vista) I'm certain this is the reason.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

On closer inspection you are correct vcltest3.dll is not needed, what actually made the later version run was the fact that I had run the older version first. After rechecking on two more PCs (one XP, one Vista) I'm certain this is the reason.

This is exactly how I got the later version to work!

I intend to use Process Monitor to try to discover what's left behind by the older version which is allowing this to happen. Could you have a go as well, please, OddbOd?

[OddbOd]

I already did and failed, because all my PCs now have "the change" I'm not sure that I'll be able to find the bug without resorting to a virtual machine ... on top of that my ability to debug without source is truly awful, I'm just not smart enough.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

I already did and failed, because all my PCs now have "the change" I'm not sure that I'll be able to find the bug without resorting to a virtual machine ... on top of that my ability to debug without source is truly awful, I'm just not smart enough.

Yes, this would be a problem. I do have an advantage in this respect, since each of my PCs has a boot partition which is recoverable when necessary from a hard disk image prepared with a clean installation of the OS and main applications.

However, I do have one sticking point: all my testing to date has been done on my workhorse 200MMX machine running Windows 95, but to identify this "stub" left behind by the older Windows On Workbench version, which survives a cold restart, I must install a monitoring tool such as Process Monitor, which runs on Windows 2000 SP4 minimum and is thus going to tie up my P4 machine running XP SP2 - the very one I am using online right here and now!

This is nothing that swapping out the hard disk can't solve, but it will slow things down for a while. On top of that, we don't know yet whether I'm smart enough to get my head round anything as powerful as this Process Monitor tool! I could never have anticipated anything like this when I casually posted my first message on this thread.

But for now I will concentrate on getting my first progress report on this released, as promised.

It really is about time I updated my test system, but I seldom get very interested in anything that won't run on Windows 9x. I do have a Windows 2000 SP4 upgrade I have never used and a P3 1GHz machine, but this has Amiga OSXL installed and I would be reluctant to use it for anything else!

Incidentally, I have found the earlier version of Workbench On Windows still hosted on PC Utilities' website at:
http://www.magnesiummedia.com/pcutil...ails20105.html

You need to register with them to download software (it's free), but I already had, so I downloaded it and it's the exact same version you had provided the link for!

Also, I have found an even earlier version of Windows on Workbench (only 364ko) referred to in Czech Amiga News and amiga-news.de items, both dated 5th February 2001, but of course all links to visit the project's home page (then hosted by geocities.com) and download the program were long dead.

I don't suppose anyone would have a copy of this they could upload here while we're in troubleshooting mode?