AmigaOS 3.2 released!

[matt3k]

All you should have to do is mount the iso, copy the files to a folder, change the protection bits, and assign. I would think it would work fine after that. There is a nice program I think called diskgui on aminet that mounts iso's well.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by pgovotsos

I THINK what he is asking about the super drives is if he make it a 3.2 boot disk and have the installation files copied to it. I think his goal is to make a single super drive disk be all he needs to boot to the installation environment that the normal boot floppy does and to be able to continue the installation from the same super disk.

If I am misrepresenting his question, sorry, but this idea is interesting as an optional method to install on a machine without a CD for some reason but has a super drive and not have to use a bunch of floppies.

With the total of 35 floppies on the CD plus the extras, I would think that any of the super drive disks would be able to hold all of the files I mean that the amount of data on the 3.2 CD wouldn't be more than the 100 or 120MB of the super drive disks.

Would something like this be possible for a user to set up or is this simply a "What if" idea that is a non starter?

You can always replace the AmigaOS 3.2 CD-ROM on machines without CD
drive unit by using any Amiga compatible bootable media in which you
copy the AmigaOS 3.2 CD contents and that is able to automount its
partition as long as the folowing provisions are taken:

1.The media in which you copied the contents of the 3.2 CD-ROM is
labeled or assigned the name "AmigaOS3.2CD" (without quotes)

2. To be on the safe side, the mediun should be formatted using the
standard AmigaOS FastFileSystem (FFS) without any long file name
extension.

This will make the machine boot AmigaPE and allow you to start the 3.2
installation if that is what you want.

The entire CD-ROM contents occupies only 77899776 bytes (74 MB).

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by saimo

Thank you for the hard work and congratulations on the achievement! I'll probably buy the digital version and maybe the physical ROMs (to replace AmigaOS 3.9 on my A1200 equipped with 3.1 ROMs) once available.
In particular, I appreciate the debugged and more "unified" system, the new Intuition and ReAction, the hardlink solution for ENV:.
I'd like to ask the following questions. Thanks in advance for the replies.


Q1 - Modules for systems that don't have the 3.2 ROMs

How is System-module loaded?

Currently I load battmem.resource, misc.resource and potgo.resource: are they still needed?


Q2 - scsi.device and IDE CF adapter

To get the maximum performance out of my IDE CF adapter, I'm using scsi.device 43.45 + IDEFix 199.19 (i.e. IDEFix patched with the IDEFix_patches): do you know if there are issues with the new scsi.device and/or whether IDEFix is still needed?


Q3 - SetPatch

The FAQ says "[SetPatch] doesn't just load the corresponding CPU libraries and builds MMU tables": can the user decide to leave the MMU unused?

Does SetPatch have a QUIET option? (Just wondering, not really important.)


Q4 - Patches

The following patches are not mentioned in the FAQ: is any of them no longer needed or known to cause trouble?
CopyMemAIO, TagLiFE, FPPrefs, PatchInterleaved, WinSpeed


Q5 - Context-sensitive pointer

If one changes/removes Pointer.prefs to disable the dynamic changing of the pointer, does Intuition keep on checking what the pointer is hovering on?


Q6 - Shell auto-completion

What happens if TAB is pressed without any character having been entered first? (Yes, I'm thinking of KingCON's feature of opening a file requester.)


Q7 - Shell commands

I've been using AmigaOS 3.9 and 4.x for so long that I no longer remember the behaviour of the commands included in the previous versions (in fact, I've been surprised to see the SORT option added to List or FORCE added to Copy: those were a given to me - well done, of course!), but the fact that Eval interprets ^ as binary xor doesn't sound right: the Eval I have here uses ^ for the power operator; maybe I'm using an unofficial replacement and I can't even remember that? The version is 45.2 (05/06/01).

More in general, are the updated commands meant to be 100% compatible with the previous ones? For example, it was a bad surprise when I found out that Join from AmigaOS 4.x does not sort the input files when they are indicated by means of wildcards.

WBLoad: is this equivalent to WBRun (which opens a file as if it were opened from Workbench)? If not, does WBRun still work?


Q8 - DefIcons

Has the core engine been improved and how?


Q9 - Localization

Is it still possible to use the system without catalogs?


Q10 - icon.library

Is icon.library new and how does it compare to this replacement library?


Q11 - Initial startup operations

On my AmigaOS 3.9 system, SetPatch resets the machine once at boot. I see that MoveLow resets the machine as well and that, from the currently available documentation, it does not have a NOREBOOT flag: does this mean that the machine will reboot twice?

What't the best order?
a) MoveLow, LoadModule, SetPatch
b) LoadModule, MoveLow, SetPatch
c) LoadModule, SetPatch, MoveLow

If System-module is to be loaded from the startup-sequence, where should it go?


Q12 - Workbench title bar

Can it be hidden?


Q13 - Performance

Are there speed and/or memory improvements? How does 3.2 compare to 3.9 in this regard?

1) ROM modules are loaded in the startup-sequence by the following
line:

LoadModule L:System-Startup ROMUPDATE

2) There have been no issues on scsi.device. If you want IDEFix-like
functionality get:

https://aminet.net/driver/media/AtapiMagic.lha

Read its instructions and try it out.


3) The MMU is only used if programs require it on systems that support
it.

The QUIET switch of SetPatch is still there.

4) I still haven't found any compelling reason to use CopyMemAIO,
except what synthetic benchmarks note. I look forward to see any real
world speed example difference, like let's say, for example, that it
speeds up the frames count on a game, or makes a rendering application
faster, or something along those lines.

IMHO, using patches for the sake of it, it only contributes to
possible instability issues.

That said, I have never tested this particular patch for this exact
reason.

TagLiFE is not needed.

FPPrefs is part of FullPalette and is particularly useful if you need
to lock some specific set of palette colors. It works under 3.2.

PatchInterleaved: I have never heard nor used this one before.

Why use WinSpeed? Let Intuition do its work. I wouldn't risk it
screwing up my system. And even more considering that this patch
predates the current Intuition which has suffered a lot of changes
structurally speaking.

5) Yes, it is its job.

6) No KingCon feature requester-like TAB completion functionality. If
you press TAB, without any previous character being printed, a TAB is
issued on the console.

7) Commands are intended to be backwards compatible.

I am not an OS4 user and have not touched 3.9 since 2018, so I cannot
comment much further on what they do and why.

WBLoad is different from WBRun, although it shares some common
functionality.

It loads Workbench programs from the CLI/Shell. However, it does not
require the Workbench. Hence, it is safe to use in the
Startup-sequence before LoadWB, and it operates synchronously, i.e. it
does not return until the started program returns.

OTOH, it does not open Workbench drawers, unlike WBRun, but you can
use the newly included "Win" command for that (well, Win is actually
an ARexx script sitting in S: ).

8) The DefIcons engine as you have defined it, is a backport of the
OS4 version with a modified location for its files in order to make it
more backwards compatible (OS4 changed locations).

9) Yes, you can use the system without catalogs, but then it will
default to built-in English strings.

10) It is the same icon.library supporting GlowIcons we have been
using all along with only minor fixes.

IMHO, an advanced user is better with PeterK's reimplementation.

11) Please go to Aminet, download and read LoadModule's documentation.
We are using that same version. Modules are loaded as explained in the
first question you asked.

12) Yes, the Workbench title bar can be hidden. Check the
corresponding box in WorkbenchPrefs for this.

13) AmigaOS 3.2 runs on a 7 Mhz 68000 processor with, depending on
your system, just 2 MB of RAM.

This is a huge difference from the 68020 and 4 MB (or was it 6/8 MB ?)
that AmigaOS 3.9 demanded.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by slaapliedje

I skimmed through bits of the FAQ, but didn't see for sure. But does this finally allow booting from a CD? Seems it'd be useful to be able to make a custom bootable CD for some things for sure. Pretty sure 4.1 Classic has the ability, as long as the ROM from it is loaded into memory.

AmigaOS 4.1 Classic only worked on Amigas with either a Blizzard PPC
or CyberStormPPC accelerators and it used features specific from those
accelerators to boot from the CD.

AmigaOS 3.2 is different in that it works on all Amigas. But it still
allows booting from the CD only in the Amiga CDTV and CD32 models.

[gulliver]

ShowConfig looks much better than before on its new ReAction interface.

Don't worry, it still can fall back to its former ugly text output if you instruct it to.

[CaptFuture]

Originally Posted by gulliver

It was written by the CDTV creators somewhere in the source code.

I have no reason to believe it is wrong. But as everything in life, there could be a possibility they made a mistake. After all, they were humans AFAIK.


That is another matter altogether. That could be just lazyness.

There is indeed a known hardware bug, which is referred to in the CDTV Developer Reference Manual and is also present in the CDTV autodocs. Every now and then DMA transfers from the CDTV drive RAM into CDTV system RAM will fail to transfer the last 8 bytes. It is also referred to in the well known Commodore file server dump which contains lots of Amiga source code (just search the archive for READ_PAD_BYTES and you'll find the references soon enough). It is a flaw which, unless a CDTV title is specifically authored to account for using a padding mechanism, seriously impacted I/O performance on CDTV, because CDFS will work around this hardware bug by DMA'ing incoming CD-ROM sectors into a padded buffer first, and then CPU copying it to the target destination. It also decreased the amount of available system memory on CDTV due to the necessity of the afforementioned buffer.

However, to my knowledge, this hardware bug has nothing to do with the accelerator issue, which (as I understand it) is primarily caused by the current implementations of cdtv.device just blindly allocating memory anywhere, even there where the DMAC can't DMA into. This works fine on an unexpanded CDTV with just 1MB of Chip RAM, but will fail with 32-bit memory.

[alexh]

Thanks for the technical description of the bug.

Originally Posted by CaptFuture

This works fine on an unexpanded CDTV with just 1MB of Chip RAM, but will fail with 32-bit memory.

It works with 24-bit FastRAM too.

The extended kickstart had to work with both KS2.x and KS1.3 exec's so was probably limited in what kind of memory allocation attributes it could use.

I think KS2+ introduced an attribute for buffers only in 24-bit memory but extended kickstart only used MEMF_PUBLIC which can be anywhere

Once again well done to those who brought us this work for our CDTVs. The active community isn't large, probably 1000 users, so I understand this work is for love not economic sense

[gulliver]

@CaptFuture

I will pass along your comments if someone decides to review CDTV code.

[saimo]

@Gulliver

Thank you for the quick answers. Please let me ask a few more...

1) ROM modules are loaded in the startup-sequence by the following
line:

LoadModule L:System-Startup ROMUPDATE

Out of curiosity: since LoadModule already has an option to autoload any modules it finds, where's the advantage of loading a module that does (or, at least, seems to do) the same thing?

Q2 - scsi.device and IDE CF adapter

To get the maximum performance out of my IDE CF adapter, I'm using scsi.device 43.45 + IDEFix 199.19 (i.e. IDEFix patched with the IDEFix_patches): do you know if there are issues with the new scsi.device and/or whether IDEFix is still needed?

Thanks for the pointer - I didn't know AtapiMagic. However, it isn't what I'm looking for: I only have one CF attached to the IDE CF adapter and, as said, I use IDEFix to maximize the performance. Therefore, I'd like to know whether IDEFix might cause trouble on AmigaOS 3.2.

That said, I have just tried AtapiMagic to see if it could make a good substitute for IDEFix and, at least speed-wise, it can't - results:
* with or without AtapiMagic: 1705926 B/s
* with IDEFix: 2131252 B/s

3) TagLiFE is not needed.

Does that mean that utility.library has been updated so that it performs like or better than TagLiFE?

Q5 - Context-sensitive pointer

If one changes/removes Pointer.prefs to disable the dynamic changing of the pointer, does Intuition keep on checking what the pointer is hovering on?

Excuse me the ignorance, but let me rephrase the question: if there is no feature/application that requires an action depending on what the mouse is hovering on when no mouse button is being clicked (e.g. mouse pointer shape or AutoPoint), does Intuition keep on checking nevertheless? If so, what for?

7) Commands are intended to be backwards compatible.

I am not an OS4 user and have not touched 3.9 since 2018, so I cannot
comment much further on what they do and why.

For a future update, is it possible to have Eval use ^ for the power operator? It's a pity to have two ways to specify the xor operator and no power operator at all.

Q11 - Initial startup operations

On my AmigaOS 3.9 system, SetPatch resets the machine once at boot. I see that MoveLow resets the machine as well and that, from the currently available documentation, it does not have a NOREBOOT flag: does this mean that the machine will reboot twice?

What't the best order?
a) MoveLow, LoadModule, SetPatch
b) LoadModule, MoveLow, SetPatch
c) LoadModule, SetPatch, MoveLow

I already know and use LoadModule - this is what I currently have in my startup-sequence:

C:LoadModule >NIL: DEVS:battmem.resource DEVS:console.device DEVS:FileSystem.resource DEVS:misc.resource DEVS: potgo.resource DEVS:scsi.device L:shell-seg LIBS:layers.library REVERSE NOREBOOT
C:SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES=console.device,scsi.device,FileSystem.resource,shell QUIET

My questions were different - in short:
* will the machine have to reboot twice if MoveLow is used (given that both SetPatch and MoveLow cause a reboot and don't have a NOREBOOT switch)?
* where's MoveLow put best, with respect to LoadModule and SetPatch?

Q13 - Performance

Are there speed and/or memory improvements? How does 3.2 compare to 3.9 in this regard?

This is a huge difference from the 68020 and 4 MB (or was it 6/8 MB ?)
that AmigaOS 3.9 demanded.

Just for the record...
I can't remeber the requirements, but here are the amounts of RAM in use right after fully-booting my AmigaOS 3.9 system (not the standard installation, though: it's carefully fine tuned and heavely patched to be lean and fast):
* CHIP 331760 = 324 kB (125 kB of which are taken by the raw bitmap of the 640x400x16 screen);
* FAST 3610712 = 3.44 MB (1.22 MB of which are taken by the buffers - I added quite a few - of the four partitions on the CF).

Anyway, what about the first, more general question? Does AmigaOS 3.2 bring speed and memory optimizations?


Q14 - (new question I had forgotten to ask) Image datatypes

How do the new datatypes compare with the WarpDT ones? Are they universal or are there CPU-specific versions? (Just to know whether I should keep on using the WarpDT package.)

[CaptFuture]

Originally Posted by gulliver

@CaptFuture

I will pass along your comments if someone decides to review CDTV code.

Sure thing, @gulliver. You can have them PM me if they need more info about the CDTV Extended ROMs. I might be able to help out since I've reverse engineered some portions of cdtv.device, bootstrap and bookmark.device for a project I'm working on. There's definitely some low hanging fruit that can be fixed in bookmark.device by setting proper assembler directives for the existing bookmark source code (I wrote about current issues with the 2.30 bookmark.device in my blog here).

And let me echo alexh's sentiment. My compliments to everyone involved with the CDTV support. It is really appreciated!

[Rotzloeffel]

Originally Posted by saimo

Q14 - (new question I had forgotten to ask) Image datatypes

How do the new datatypes compare with the WarpDT ones? Are they universal or are there CPU-specific versions? (Just to know whether I should keep on using the WarpDT package.)

The warp Datatypes working only with the picture.datatype of CybergraphX and not with the picture.datatype of 3.9 3.1.4 or 3.2..... they use a "hack" to ignore the API of picture.datatype V43.... this is NOT working anymore with picture.datatype V47.


Of course, you can use this Datatypes, but there is no benefit anymore.... or never was

[gulliver]

@saimo

I suggest you reroute all the LoadModule doubts you have to its maintainer as you seem to have many doubts despite reading its docs.

I only try to look at user perceivable performance differences, not benchmarks. I find them deceiving most of the time for one thing or the other (I learned this the hard way).

So perhaps some of these answers you are looking for should better be found by you, or someone that you trust performing the specific tests under the particular scenarios and considering the exact settings you wish to use.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by CaptFuture

Sure thing, @gulliver. You can have them PM me if they need more info about the CDTV Extended ROMs. I might be able to help out since I've reverse engineered some portions of cdtv.device, bootstrap and bookmark.device for a project I'm working on. There's definitely some low hanging fruit that can be fixed in bookmark.device by setting proper assembler directives for the existing bookmark source code (I wrote about current issues with the 2.30 bookmark.device in my blog here).

And let me echo alexh's sentiment. My compliments to everyone involved with the CDTV support. It is really appreciated!

Thank you again for your interest in bringing things forward regarding the CDTV.

We only took a small but important step towards restoring the long lost glory of the CDTV.

[gulliver]

The built-in Help subsystem.

[saimo]

@Gulliver

Originally Posted by gulliver

I suggest you reroute all the LoadModule doubts you have to its maintainer as you seem to have many doubts despite reading its docs.

I don't have any doubts about LoadModule (and my previous post doesn't express any).
Also, I addressed you with my reply because you kindly answered first, but I'd be more than happy to hear from anyone else who can provide answers

Originally Posted by gulliver

I only try to look at user perceivable performance differences, not benchmarks. I find them deceiving most of the time for one thing or the other (I learned this the hard way).

So perhaps some of these answers you are looking for should better be found by you, or someone that you trust performing the specific tests under the particular scenarios and considering the exact settings you wish to use.

Sorry, but I didn't ask you to perform benchmarks, report figures or anything like that. I asked some questions (not all related to performance) that are not covered by the FAQ and that could well be included there, as they might interest others too.

If you or anyone else feels like answering, it will be much appreciated. To make things easier, here are the questions in the shortest form I'm capable of (also, I have removed the question regarding WarpDT).
1. What's the advantage of System-Startup over LoadModule?
2. Does IDEFix work with AmigaOS 3.2?
3. Has utility.library been updated so that it performs like or better than TagLiFE?
4. If there is no feature/application that requires an action depending on what the mouse is hovering on when no mouse button is being clicked (e.g. mouse pointer shape or AutoPoint), does Intuition keep on checking nevertheless? If so, what for?
5. For a future update, is it possible to have Eval use ^ for the power operator?
6. Will the machine have to reboot twice if MoveLow is used?
7. Where's MoveLow put best, with respect to LoadModule and SetPatch?
8. Does AmigaOS 3.2 bring speed and memory optimizations?
9. Are the new picture datatypes universal or are there CPU-specific versions?

If the rationale behind the questions is of any interest...
1. The FAQ says that System-Startup is meant to "alleviate LoadModule of some its loading duties" and lists the modules it loads; LoadModule is capable as well of autoloading the modules, so it looks like they perform the same job - except that System-Startup has first to be loaded precisely by LoadModule. It would be nice to know where the advantage is. (A layman explanation would do perfectly.)
2. I need IDEFix (and I might not be the only one).
3. Gulliver said that "TagLiFE is not needed".
4. It would be nice to know whether Intuition wastes time doing something useless or not.
5. It's a pity that Eval has two ways to specify the xor operator and no power operator at all.
6. Both SetPatch and MoveLow cause a reboot and don't have a NOREBOOT switch.
7. Given that LoadModule, SetPatch and MoveLow all perform critical and low-level tasks, it would be good to know if MoveLow is best or needs to be placed before or after LoadModule and SetPatch.
8. It would be nice to know whether the OS has also been optimized to be faster and/or consume less memory.
9. Given that they perform CPU-intensive tasks, it would be nice to know whether they are CPU-optimized.

[PeterK]

Originally Posted by saimo

Q10 - icon.library

Is icon.library new and how does it compare to this replacement library?

gulliver:

I don't know OS 3.2 and the new v47 libraries yet, but expected more changes than just minor fixes, maybe something like a faster color mapping interface or function as an alternative to the slow ObtainBestPenA() in the graphics.library. Is there no speed improvement for the 3.2 icon.library?

In case that somebody still wants to use my library with 3.2, you will need at least a v47 version like TC020 now. You can downgrade it with my option "ConvertTrueColor" if you prefer to work with ColorIcons only.

My old v46 versions are not accepted anymore by OS 3.2 and they also have no support for the new file type identification features of the DefIcons tool.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by saimo

@Gulliver

I already know and use LoadModule - this is what I currently have in my startup-sequence:

C:LoadModule >NIL: DEVS:battmem.resource DEVS:console.device DEVS:FileSystem.resource DEVS:misc.resource DEVS: potgo.resource DEVS:scsi.device L:shell-seg LIBS:layers.library REVERSE NOREBOOT
C:SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES=console.device,scsi.device,FileSystem.resource,shell QUIET

My questions were different - in short:
* will the machine have to reboot twice if MoveLow is used (given that both SetPatch and MoveLow cause a reboot and don't have a NOREBOOT switch)?
* where's MoveLow put best, with respect to LoadModule and SetPatch?

LoadModule and MoveLow are products on Aminet and are maintained by the same developer, just email him. He knows better than everyone on this planet, since he designed them.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by gulliver

LoadModule and MoveLow are products on Aminet and are maintained by the same developer, just email him. He knows better than everyone on this planet, since he designed them.

I know, it's Thomas Richter. But he happens to post regularly here, other people might be interested in the answers and those commands are dealt with in the FAQ, hence the best place where to ask the questions is this

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by saimo

I know, it's Thomas Richter. But he happens to post regularly here, other people might be interested in the answers and those commands are dealt with in the FAQ, hence the best place where to ask the questions is this

Yes, well, let's hope he chimes in.

He can also give you the long explanation about TagLiFE that you may want. As this happened very early on 3.1.4, when it probably was not even called 3.1.4 but mentioned as the 3.1 Update.

[spudje]

Just to be sure. Does the CDROM contain ROM files both in formats usable in emulators/maprom tools (unsplit_unswapped) and formats that can be burnt in EPROMs (.bin), like with the 3.1.4 digital releases?