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Operating System Specific Discussions => Amiga OS => Amiga OS -- Application questions and support => Topic started by: AmigaNG on March 08, 2010, 06:06:43 PM

Title: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: AmigaNG on March 08, 2010, 06:06:43 PM
Not having to boot the OS to load programs, what I mean is on the classic Amiga you could use your Amiga without ever having to load up the OS/Workbench, games could boot straight up, even programs could self boot, all powered by the Kickstart. I think this is one of the reasons the Amiga had a edge over the PC in early days, no having to go into Dos or Windows to load a program, just slam the disk in and let it get on with it. I kind of liked this, because you could just use it like a game console, never having to touch the OS or complicated code to get a game or program running, why are these days gone,  I know this is not really an OS issue but more of a Bios and Uboot issue but do you think we will ever see this again on a computer?
 

 plus why does everything has to be installed, ok I know its quicker and easier no disk required etc, But kind of liked the option of not filling my hard disk up and having to use it to perform every task, these Linux Live disks proves that you dont really have to have a hard drive for everything.
 So what do you lot think?
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: HammerD on March 08, 2010, 06:13:03 PM
Quote from: AmigaNG;546710
Not having to boot the OS to load programs, what I mean is on the classic Amiga you could use your Amiga without ever having to load up the OS/Workbench, games could boot straight up, even programs could self boot, all powered by the Kickstart. I think this is one of the reasons the Amiga had a edge over the PC in early days, no having to go into Dos or Windows to load a program, just slam the disk in and let it get on with it. I kind of liked this, because you could just use it like a game console, never having to touch the OS or complicated code to get a game or program running, why are these days gone,  I know this is not really an OS issue but more of a Bios and Uboot issue but do you think we will ever see this again on a computer?
 

 plus why does everything has to be installed, ok I know its quicker and easier no disk required etc, But kind of liked the option of not filling my hard disk up and having to use it to perform every task, these Linux Live disks proves that you dont really have to have a hard drive for everything.
 So what do you lot think?


Well it is still possible today. The difference is kickstart is loading from hard disk instead of a ROM.  Once kickstart is in memory, if you had no OS partition set to boot, you would get the "insert disk" screen.  So at that point you could start to play your floppy-based game :)

I guess it's the fact that things have moved on.  Hard drives are standard now, games don't fit on floppies, run better off of hard disks than CDROMS, etc etc.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: save2600 on March 08, 2010, 06:19:04 PM
Modern computing has made a lot of things dis-interesting to me as well. I very much like removable storage, working with floppies, etc. Just think if the Zip drive technology had been more popular or standardized. The LS120 drives too, remember them?

But yeah, like an Amiga, IBM clones and Mac's can still boot from floppy or optical drive, but most peoples mindsets have shifted from that way of thinking. It's really only used now to save a HD or install/prep said HD. With the computing power we have today, think of how well certain programs could run if coded so that they were written entirely for a given machines architecture (machine language) and NOT a crappy OS. Oh wait - that's what dedicated consoles pretty much are. lol  Going from MSDOS to Windoze the first time, couldn't help but scratch my head in amazement that, all of the sudden, we need a program to run a program?! I felt exactly the same way about GEOS for the C64. Somehow, the ST, Mac & Amiga all seemed different as they were "born" with the mouse driven interface. Really though, it *is* the same thing. Programs running programs. Supposed to make our lives easier, better - faster. HA!  lol

But when it comes to "computing", perception is everything. Mainstream folks feel the need to be moving "forward" all the time, even if they're going nowhere fast. The digital music industry has already proven that. Using a floppy today, especially a measly 1.44mb one, would just screw with their perception of the computing experience. Besides all that, the format simply isn't large enough to handle all the inefficient coding going on in today's software and I agree with HammerD... just isn't practical anymore en masse.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: persia on March 08, 2010, 06:56:50 PM
It is quite possible to boot from USB flash drives (the 21st century equivalent of floppies), It's great for diagnostics and computer repair, I suppose you could boot a game or other app, but with hard disk space running at less than US$100 per terabyte there's really little incentive to save disk space.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Golem!dk on March 08, 2010, 07:02:34 PM
Quote from: AmigaNG;546710
So what do you lot think?

Progress doesn't bother me.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: scuzzb494 on March 08, 2010, 07:44:29 PM
What's great fun is writing and customising your own Amiga self booting floppy disk. I have a great tutorial from one of the Amiga magazines that kept me occupied for weeks. Still have a folder full of disks....

scuzz
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: KThunder on March 08, 2010, 08:34:28 PM
I've had way too many floppies, cds and dvds die on me to mourn their loss or disuse to much. I kept my n64 alllllllooooong time simply because the carts were so durable, so my kids couldn't damage them. Actually I think I still have one kicking around and last I checked all the games still worked.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: pyrre on March 08, 2010, 09:19:57 PM
Quote from: save2600;546714
Modern computing has made a lot of things dis-interesting to me as well. I very much like removable storage, working with floppies, etc. Just think if the Zip drive technology had been more popular or standardized. The LS120 drives too, remember them?

But yeah, like an Amiga, IBM clones and Mac's can still boot from floppy or optical drive, but most peoples mindsets have shifted from that way of thinking. It's really only used now to save a HD or install/prep said HD. With the computing power we have today, think of how well certain programs could run if coded so that they were written entirely for a given machines architecture (machine language) and NOT a crappy OS. Oh wait - that's what dedicated consoles pretty much are. lol  Going from MSDOS to Windoze the first time, couldn't help but scratch my head in amazement that, all of the sudden, we need a program to run a program?! I felt exactly the same way about GEOS for the C64. Somehow, the ST, Mac & Amiga all seemed different as they were "born" with the mouse driven interface. Really though, it *is* the same thing. Programs running programs. Supposed to make our lives easier, better - faster. HA!  lol

But when it comes to "computing", perception is everything. Mainstream folks feel the need to be moving "forward" all the time, even if they're going nowhere fast. The digital music industry has already proven that. Using a floppy today, especially a measly 1.44mb one, would just screw with their perception of the computing experience. Besides all that, the format simply isn't large enough to handle all the inefficient coding going on in today's software and I agree with HammerD... just isn't practical anymore en masse.

Back in the days it was easy to program software to work on spesific computers. The programmers knew what hardware was inside the computer. and they could program games to that "standard" and it would work on 70 - 90% of the computers in the world. A short port and you would further expand it.

Today this is a whole different story.
Here:
http://www.indexoftheweb.com/Computer/Hard_Drive_Controllers.html
Is a short list of HDD controller makers. Which is one major part of a computers motherboard setup.
If programmers of modern games should make device drivers for any modern computer part. The games would be huge and unnecessary complex. And would possibly only support a sertain component manufacturer.
And what about audio, GFX, network, motherboard drivers, +++...

In pcs early life this was their story. 500 different manufacturers and their components only worked with their own components. unless you purchased components from one of their business associates. It "may" work...

Then arrived standards like PCI which for the first time introduced  plug and play (or autoconfig in amiga), and it worked, relative so to speak (in the beginning).
And of course the operating system became the gateway for games to run an any hardware. The operating system holds the device drivers. And provides the games and programmers with a standardized platform. As is the direct X, open gl, (direct 3d is a part of direct x).

And suddenly we are back to the start. Programmers have their standardized platform and do not need to worry about device drivers. They just need to make an interesting game.
So you see, it ain't so much different in Principe. Its just an evolutionary step further.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: yorgle on March 08, 2010, 09:29:11 PM
In a way, the "boot from floppy direct into a game" thing is about on par with cartridge-based consoles.  Plug in a cartridge (or disk) and have it load the game without an application loader, quickly (or slowly).

That's a really interesting train of thought.  Need to think about this more.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Gulliver on March 09, 2010, 12:25:19 AM
So, A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Simple, the missing feature is the Amiga.

Today you can buy a SAM or whatever and feel it is a computer for either geeks or enthusiast. Now it is just a matter of hunderds or thousands megahertz cpu and sloppy coding, with mostly ports of other architectures that give you a feeling of lost identity. The hardware is unoriginal, not innovating in any area, just a dull motherboard with nothing special about it.

When you bought an Amiga, in the early days, you knew it was an overwhelming high standart computer experience, with tight and smart coding, with programs that were only available to that platform and gave it a special value and a disctintive seal. The hardware was original, ingenious and innovating in many areas, custom chipsets, coprocessors and many dma channels made that, a unique computer arquitecture.

My two cents
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: ChaosLord on March 09, 2010, 01:37:12 AM
Quote from: Gulliver;546757
So, A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Simple, the missing feature is the Amiga.

Today you can buy a SAM or whatever and feel it is a computer for either geeks or enthusiast. Now it is just a matter of hunderds or thousands megahertz cpu and sloppy coding, with mostly ports of other architectures that give you a feeling of lost identity. The hardware is unoriginal, not innovating in any area, just a dull motherboard with nothing special about it.

When you bought an Amiga, in the early days, you knew it was an overwhelming high standart computer experience, with tight and smart coding, with programs that were only available to that platform and gave it a special value and a disctintive seal. The hardware was original, ingenious and innovating in many areas, custom chipsets, coprocessors and many dma channels made that, a unique computer arquitecture.

+1
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: sledge on May 15, 2010, 09:29:52 PM
I agree... it's a very powerful feature indeed. Something I really miss from time to time on other systems aswell.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Karlos on May 15, 2010, 09:57:11 PM
Quote from: AmigaNG;546710
Not having to boot the OS to load programs, what I mean is on the classic Amiga you could use your Amiga without ever having to load up the OS/Workbench, games could boot straight up, even programs could self boot, all powered by the Kickstart.


You still can boot without a startup sequence in OS4 if you like. Of course, OS4's Kickstart lives on disk (how's that for a full on trip into retro land for you?), so you still need it available, even if it is on an external medium (install CD for example).

Quote
I think this is one of the reasons the Amiga had a edge over the PC in early days, no having to go into Dos or Windows to load a program, just slam the disk in and let it get on with it. I kind of liked this, because you could just use it like a game console, never having to touch the OS or complicated code to get a game or program running, why are these days gone,  I know this is not really an OS issue but more of a Bios and Uboot issue but do you think we will ever see this again on a computer?


You are sort of confusing the OS with Workbench, I think. Regardless of whether or not you started a full workbench session, or even just an amigados one without startup, AmigaOS was always loaded right from power on, even when booting from a non-os friendly game. What do you think activated the floppy drive and read in your game's bootloader?

Quote
plus why does everything has to be installed, ok I know its quicker and easier no disk required etc, But kind of liked the option of not filling my hard disk up and having to use it to perform every task, these Linux Live disks proves that you dont really have to have a hard drive for everything.
 So what do you lot think?


This is a bit of a nonsense argument these days, IMHO. How is it an advantage? Storage is vast and cheap today. You aren't going to fill a modern HD quickly by installing applications, especially Amiga ones. It's your data that takes up the room. My oldest still-in-service Amiga hard drive (1.2GB, utter peanuts by todays standards) still has plenty of free space after 15 years!

Booting straight into an app from disk was useful before I had a hard disk but I'd much rather be able to launch something without having to rifle around in a drawer full of disks, which usually takes longer than it does booting the system :) It was the whole reason I bought a hard disk for my Amiga in the first place and it was one of the single most useful hardware upgrades it ever had.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: TomJ on May 15, 2010, 10:25:00 PM
I think maybe some of us like me are just getting lazy many of the disks actually had the same boot info as the workbench. I remember creating a special Pagestream disk  that loaded every thing on my ram and would run faster. Of course all the games especially the good one .....:)
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Karlos on May 15, 2010, 10:30:55 PM
Quote from: TomJ;558719
I think maybe some of us like me are just getting lazy many of the disks actually had the same boot info as the workbench. I remember creating a special Pagestream disk  that loaded every thing on my ram and would run faster. Of course all the games especially the good one .....:)


I used to have custom configured boot floppies for running various software, such as octamed, protracker and the sampler software for my old parallel port sampler on the same floppy.

It was necessary in the days before getting a hard disk but I'd argue that having to boot a different disk for each major application you use made a mockery of a system designed around multitasking.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Piru on May 15, 2010, 10:42:08 PM
it died a deserving death. it would bring no benefits with current systems.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: kolla on May 16, 2010, 01:22:34 AM
There's this adventure game that you boot directly into also on Amiga NG systems, I heard it's quite addictive... Linux I think it's called.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Amiga_Nut on May 16, 2010, 01:54:19 AM
I think it's important to remember PC<>AMIGA, never has been never will be.

Now the fact there are millions of combinations of all the necessary components to get a PC to power on is no excuse for the complete pile of bloatware crap that is Vista or Win7 no....requiring Ghz of CPU speed just to show a mouse pointer on a screen and double click on things to run them from icons IS A JOKE!

But it is also important to remember only Amiga made it possible, because when a disk boots on an Amiga it knows there will only be one type of chipset, or a very compatible subset of it. Also important to remember some of the functionality in the Kickstart ROM includes things that you need to copy onto even an MS-DOS floppy with the Format /S command. Command.com is required on all PC boot floppies in the 80s, but on the Amiga there is core OS code already there ready to run. Tandy tried this by putting Windows V2 onto a set of 1mb boot roms for one of their machines. Disaster though because Windows is too much of a work in progress to want on a boot ROM.

The Amiga was a console and a computer at the same time, it had the advantages of both. The 360 doesn't let you do anything beyond play games or movies, the PC has so many levels between the crappy Win7 code (let alone the game code) and the actual hardware that it's a real joke, but necessary due to how the PC has always been.

Can't really blame IBM, they designed the PC as a business machine, you CAN blame Microsoft for all their dirty tactics to get their crappy OS everywhere since Win95 though.

Taking Linux as an example, yes you can boot a Live CD distro sure, but it will be like running Windows games in 'Safe Mode' which if you have ever tried it doesn't even work usually, and even on 2D games runs about 20x slower if it does work. I am guessing people have forgotten the DOS days where you needed to run a different EXE depending on which brand of 3D card you brought ;)  There are just too many combinations of components in a PC to ever allow it to become a replacement for consoles. And yes the fact Amiga died as a paradigm/ideal and Playstation began its meteoric rise to conquering the home market to the tune of nearly 300 million consoles sold by Sony alone so far in various generations you see why.

Just because the MSN/Facebook brigade buy PCs, many many people got fed up with dodgy PC OS and just went and bought a PS1/2/3 for fuss free gaming, before this time consoles were just geeky things or toys for little babies who wanted to play Mario in the 80s. The fact these 3D games machines generated graphics far in excess of a PC costing 3x as much was the final catalyst. The PC gaming market is now in serious trouble....and if it dies so does the Microsoft hold on the OS market. Hooray \o/

OS4 on PS3 would have given you back your dream situation...creative computer, beautiful OS, games that PCs can't compete with on price because its running on a close platform. Sadly Amiga Inc were a bunch of clueless twats and so the opportunity is gone forever. Ho-hum.

edit: There's no real commercial games market for Mac OS X but even so it is just Linux on expensive hardware for fanboys. Neither OS X or Windows is a real choice, it's like saying you can either be strangled or drowned to a victim die...what a choice NOT!
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Tension on May 16, 2010, 02:00:48 AM
Quote from: Amiga_Nut;558747

OS4 on PS3 would have given you back your dream situation...creative computer, beautiful OS, games that PCs can't compete with on price because its running on a close platform. Sadly Amiga Inc were a bunch of clueless twats and so the opportunity is gone forever. Ho-hum.


Sony were the real twats by disabling the OtherOS option.

Sure, it's a 'voluntary' upgrade, but if you dont upgrade, you cant play online.

Bastards*

*http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=52115&highlight=bastards
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Cammy on May 16, 2010, 11:57:13 AM
I really hope someone at A-Eon or Hyperion is in contact with these guys to get their new SDK and 3D rendering engine before it becomes the next big thing http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/

Some cool new technology like that might make the new Amigas more attractive.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Karlos on May 16, 2010, 12:24:39 PM
Quote from: Cammy;558814
I really hope someone at A-Eon or Hyperion is in contact with these guys to get their new SDK and 3D rendering engine before it becomes the next big thing http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/

Just checked out their site quickly. How intriguing...

I dunno if it is my imagination but in each screen shot, every instance of a given object in a scene appears to have the same orientation (look at the bundles of grass, for example). I hope that's not a feature of how it works.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Cammy on May 17, 2010, 12:01:26 AM
I have a feeling those demonstration models and videos are only limited by the amount of time the artist could put into them, hopefully the technology itself allows for more creative freedom than the demonstrations show.

One thing that I was concerned about was dynamic lighting, all of the objects seem to have their own lighting and shading but no shadows around them.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Karlos on May 17, 2010, 12:16:08 AM
Quote from: Cammy;558926
One thing that I was concerned about was dynamic lighting, all of the objects seem to have their own lighting and shading but no shadows around them.

Yeah, the lighting was particularly poor by current shader model technique standards.

I wonder if the same algorithm they use to calculate which "3d atoms" are hit by the viewport can be applied to light sources in the scene in order to project shadows.

Also, although their renderer runs on the CPU, perhaps it can be reimplemented to run on a GPU using one of the existing cross-GPU compute platforms (OpenCL/DirectCompute). Doing it on the card has got to be more efficient, unless the algorithm has no inherent parallelism (hard to imagine for a rendering technique) to exploit or requires a lot of random/scattered memory accesses.

Also, if you are rendering with the GPU, I imagine it's also easier then to perform proper depth culling (you may have noticed glitches in their videos) when rendering the points since z-buffers operate per pixel and are designed for precisely this job. It would also theoretically open up mixed-mode rendering. A lot of pixel shader effects are still available even when rendering point primitives.

-edit-

Regarding polygon detail, their arguments were rather old and I noticed they showed most games running in their lower detail settings (particularly noticable in the crysis/fallout 3 shots). Both games use more modern techniques, with better results, for simulating bumpy surfaces. However, DX11 introduces hardware tessellation via displacement maps. These have the effect of increasing the geometry in a scene substantially. Rather like applying a bump map that works on the actual geometry rather than as a dataset for a pixel shader.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: zylesea on May 17, 2010, 12:22:13 AM
Quote from: AmigaNG;546710
Not having to boot the OS to load programs, what I mean is on the classic Amiga you could use your Amiga without ever having to load up the OS/Workbench, games could boot straight up, even programs could self boot, all powered by the Kickstart. I think this is one of the reasons the Amiga had a edge over the PC in early days, no having to go into Dos or Windows to load a program, just slam the disk in and let it get on with it. I kind of liked this, because you could just use it like a game console, never having to touch the OS or complicated code to get a game or program running, why are these days gone,  I know this is not really an OS issue but more of a Bios and Uboot issue but do you think we will ever see this again on a computer?
 

 plus why does everything has to be installed, ok I know its quicker and easier no disk required etc, But kind of liked the option of not filling my hard disk up and having to use it to perform every task, these Linux Live disks proves that you dont really have to have a hard drive for everything.
 So what do you lot think?


I don't miss that. I like the convenience of having all ready after a fast boot up. But if i want to I can make a self booting CD with the apps I want and a tailored OS distribution. Really easy. Instead of a CD I can use an usb stick on devices that support booting off these things. But while I like that as backup solution or little exercise I don't use that option since, as said, I like the convenience of my full full featured system.
I am rather happy that floppes and the likes have more or less died out. usb sticks/drives for moving data/back ups is another issue.
Title: Re: A Big missing classic feature on the new Amiga's?
Post by: Karlos on May 17, 2010, 12:36:09 AM
Since installing NICs in my classic machines, I can count the number of times I've used a floppy disk on the fingers of one hand. A hand that hasn't got any fingers.