Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"

[guest11527]

In the past, you were ALWAYS against romabiliy... And now you want to work on the Kickstart ?

No, I want to work on the *operating system*. Note the difference. The build process creates ROM modules along with the ROM, if you want to. The modules you can then load with LoadModule - same as ever. The most likely outcome of this process is anyhow that the updated modules will likely not fit into the ROM space, so something has to go there.  

Traditionally, this has been the workbench.library, though I believe mathieeesing should also better be RAM-based as its proper setup requires the processor libraries anyhow, and the audio.device is another prime candidate to be moved out of ROM since it is really not needed for bootstrap.

One way or another, this is not a decision I will make, and the primary and next goal is to integrate the fixes I have and then see how to move forward from there.

You change your mind because now you smell money (V2, new P5 boards...) with Kick ?

Are you serious? There is no money in Amiga, and that's not why I'm doing this in first place. Remember, I already have a job. Or rather, something close to two jobs. I don't have a contract with Hyperion, and I don't get any money for this. I'm neither expecting anything here.  

I'm very curious to know how much money Microsoft (or other...) give you to destroy the Amiga by the inside using division and different directions between us...

Whoha! If Microsoft research would offer me a position, I would take it... They are doing pretty cool stuff over there.  

But seriously: No, I don't get money from Microsoft, and I pretty much doubt that they see in AmigaOs any sort of threat for their business. If they are even aware of our little toy operating system in first place.

[kolla]

then lost a lot of time testing the results because my only 68000 machine had failed.

I find this... astonishing :confused:

Between a handful of emulators, FPGA, Minimig and rather cheap systems from ebay...how hard is it to get access to a 68000 system? Don't you at least have people who can run tests for you?

[olsen]

I find this... astonishing :confused:

Between a handful of emulators, FPGA, Minimig and rather cheap systems from ebay...how hard is it to get access to a 68000 system?

Until very, very recently WinUAE support for SANA-II hardware was very limited. Roadshow needs to be able to send and receive Ethernet packets for a test to be in any way representatitive of what problems it might encounter on real hardware (e.g. A600 with cnet.device + NE2000-compatible PCMCIA hardware). In fact, it wasn't until yesterday that I was able to use the A2065 support in WinUAE public beta #13 and have Roadshow run through a complete DHCP exchange, assigning it an IPv4 address from my local network.

So far I tried to get by with "real" vintage hardware and did not see the need to with a Minimig.

The (so far) last 68000 machine I bought on eBay was the A600HD which failed in 2015. I did not repeat the exercise, because this year 2016 has been the most stressful and busy in a very long time. My priorities had shifted elsewhere, and something had to give... It happens to all of us, I suppose.

Don't you at least have people who can run tests for you?

In the mean time I managed to ask for help, the end result being the Roadshow 1.12 update, whose README file credits the testers.

I consider it likely that future 68000 testing can be conducted primarily in emulation, now that the A2065 support in WinUAE finally seems to put all the necessary pieces together.

[gregthecanuck]

@Olsen

I believe if you need resources such as a working A600 (either replaced or repaired) or some cash to get some testing machines a simple PayPal account or some way to show support would likely yield some good results.

There are a lot of motivated users wanting to see OS3.x move forward. You just need to ask.

Have a great day!

[olsen]

@Olsen

I believe if you need resources such as a working A600 (either replaced or repaired) or some cash to get some testing machines a simple PayPal account or some way to show support would likely yield some good results.

There are a lot of motivated users wanting to see OS3.x move forward. You just need to ask.

Have a great day!

The A600HD issue (which seems to have gained a life on its own by now, it seems) was not a question of money, but of a different type of resource: spare time. Had that been available in 2015/2016 to a larger degree, Roadshow 1.12 might have shipped earlier I just lacked the necessary time to see it through.

But I'll have to look into how one might get that A600HD repaired here in Germany. With the exception of my first Amiga (a 1987 A500, the type with a red keyboard LED) and of course the A600HD, all other 68000 machines which I own are still in good working order. However, none of these other 68000 machines can be conveniently fitted with networking hardware.

I do appreciate the offer to help

[eliyahu]

@thread

there's a brief update from hyperion. apparently a few customers had difficulty booting from the workbench images on some systems....

Bugfix update for Workbench 3.1 (40.43)
Brussels, October 25, 2016

Hyperion is pleased to announce the immediate availability of an update to the recently released Workbench 3.1 (40.43) to address a few reported issues.

Registered customers can download the free update from the restricted download area on the Hyperion Entertainment website, new customers will automatically get the fixed version via our fulfillment partner avangate.

-- eliyahu

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

apparently a few customers had difficulty booting from the workbench images on some systems....

Wonder if it's a similar problem to what Cloanto had with their "3.X" ROM's?

[guest11527]

Wonder if it's a similar problem to what Cloanto had with their "3.X" ROM's?

If you look at the description of the problems, its rather that the boot block has not been written in one of the floppies and the protection bits have not been set correctly. I'd call this harmless.  As said, this is not a "all new" ROM, but its a minor update of the current 3.1 ROM from the latest CBM sources, with bug fixes only.

[olsen]

Wonder if it's a similar problem to what Cloanto had with their "3.X" ROM's?

If there are similarities, I expect they resulted from changing what used to work back in 1994 and finding that subtle problems slipped through the testing process.

In the case of this Workbench/Kickstart 3.1 update, the changes made were deliberately kept small so as to reduce the risk of breaking anything. That was the plan, but what caused the troubles was for one part the build process itself, and the subtleties of writing installation scripts.

The build process cranks out ready-made Kickstart ROM images and a set of drawers whose contents correspond exactly to the Extras/Fonts/Install/Locale/Storage/Workbench disks. In order to create those disks, the respective contents are copied to RAD: and the result then goes into an .adf image, one disk at a time. The Install/Workbench disks are special in that they both need to be bootable (they have been since the original 1994 release), and that the respective disk boot blocks need to be installed manually (ever tried "install rad:"?). Lack of automation of this process kept the Workbench disk from being bootable (the A4000T has its own issues with the Workbench disk; see below).

The contents of the Workbench disk set in this update are peculiar in that their contents were slightly rearranged so as to make one single set which can be used both on the A4000T and all other Amiga models. Because the A4000T does not have workbench.library in ROM, Commodore shipped a special variant of the Workbench 3.1 installation disk set, and that wasn't going to fly.

Making an installation disk set which works with all Amiga models resulted in disk space constraints, i.e. you can boot off the Install disk, but due to Workbench disk lacking the workbench.library, booting from it is not an easy option on the A4000T. Something had to give

What broke the installation script, which ended up copying the contents of the Install disk to the newly installed Workbench "fonts" drawer, was a change made so that you could more easily install everything from a single disk: just copy all the disk contents into drawers on the installation medium, set up assignments to those drawers and launch the installation script: no more prompting to insert a disk.

Because the Installer tool allows/needs very strict control over whether installation is permitted from an assignment rather than a volume, this caused trouble with the "Fonts" disk. If the Fonts disk was not present, then the installation script would copy the contents of the drawer which "FONTS:" was bound to. Because there is no "fonts" drawer on the Install disk, the "FONTS:" assignment was bound to the root directory of that disk (this is what the boot process does by default), and hilarity ensued... How do you fix that? You can actually test if "Fonts:" is an assignment, and you can test if that assignment refers to the boot disk's root directory. If so, then you can tell the Installer to prompt for the Fonts disk to be inserted and the assignment to be ignored. Even back in the day there was little love for Installer scripts. Now you know why.

Bottom line is: you will likely miss something important if you change anything at all, no matter how little the change was

[Matt_H]

The fonts disk was always a strange one. The other disks all have a 3.1 suffix - Workbench3.1, Storage3.1, etc. but Fonts doesn't. Was that so floppy-only users could simply insert the disk and not have to worry about an assign? (Come to think of it, I think the Locale disk behaves the same way). Kinda strange that they didn't do an "assign fonts: fonts3.1: add defer" line in the floppy startup-sequence instead...

[LoadWB]

The 4000 and 1200 KS ROMs are a single 512KB file.  What can I use to break these KS ROMs into two parts for the even and odd ROMs?  Or, can these motherboards accept a single 512K ROM?

[LoadWB]

The 4000 and 1200 KS ROMs are a single 512KB file.  What can I use to break these KS ROMs into two parts for the even and odd ROMs?  Or, can these motherboards accept a single 512K ROM?

Didn't find (or look, really) for anything for Windows/Linux/Mac, but I found

http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/splitkick13

[olsen]

The fonts disk was always a strange one. The other disks all have a 3.1 suffix - Workbench3.1, Storage3.1, etc. but Fonts doesn't. Was that so floppy-only users could simply insert the disk and not have to worry about an assign? (Come to think of it, I think the Locale disk behaves the same way). Kinda strange that they didn't do an "assign fonts: fonts3.1: add defer" line in the floppy startup-sequence instead...

The Workbench 3.1 disk set has more than one purpose. My pet theory is that this produces certain requirements and limitations.

The first purpose is to provide a bootable Workbench, and you better have a second floppy disk drive handy, because you are going to need it. You will end swapping the Fonts/Locale disks in and out time and again.

The second purpose is to install the contents of the disk set to hard disk. One floppy disk drive is sufficient for that.

The Fonts/Locale disks can be conveniently used both by the Workbench and the Install disks without having to tinker with the Locale and Fonts assignments. It simplifies things a bit. Furthermore, the installation script is using the default Installer command for prompting a disk to be inserted, which is hard-wired not to accept an assignment as a substitute for a volume (you can override this default behaviour, of course). This is really the least complex solution that works.

The updated Workbench disk set, which allows you to use assignments in place of volumes, is comparatively more complex because it overrides the default behaviour of the Installer "prompt for disk" command, which in turn caused further complications.

[olsen]

The 4000 and 1200 KS ROMs are a single 512KB file.  What can I use to break these KS ROMs into two parts for the even and odd ROMs?  Or, can these motherboards accept a single 512K ROM?

Which layout exactly is needed? Could you describe it?

[gregthecanuck]

Well look at that - the Register has an article on the update:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/26/it_took_20_years_to_get_amiga_workbench_31_an_update_and_only_a_fortnight_to_get_patched/

[kolla]

Deactivated "FF" program in Startup-Sequence to prevent problems on 68020/030 processors

FF???