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Author Topic: AmigaOS 68k development - components, critics, bugs, work-arounds, tips&tricks  (Read 46740 times)

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Offline kollaTopic starter

Since other threads about "OS 3.1.4" and "Os 3.2" keep derailing because of "most users" who prefer to not see any discussion on the actual operating system, and rather wish that everyone shut up and just hail the whatever the "official team" might come up with... here is an alternative thread, where those of us who are not unconditional "yes men" can also air our thoughts regarding the development of the operating system that is among our favourite hobbies.

From your point of view
- have there been changes in OS 3.1.4 (and the 3.2 preview) that you like in particular?
- have there been changes that you don't like so much?
- have there been changes that are irrelevant for how you use the Amiga?
- have you found bugs? have you reported them? what happened?
- have you needed to make work-arounds as counter-measures for bugs and changes in the OS?
- have you found unintended "features" in the updates that can be exploited in cool ways?
 - what more changes and improvements do you wish to see?
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

I can start with saying that the number one killer feature in OS 3..4 for me, is 68000 support for v45 Workbench and ASL prefs.

Sadly the Workbench prefs does not include the Ghostbuster functionality (http://aminet.net/package/util/cdity/GhostBuster) and the OS developers seem incapable of understanding why anyone would wish to hide a device icon, especially since it would prevent the user from selecting the hidden device and formatting it (not really, but that is what an OS developer has given as reason) - and I wish for that functionality for 6800 systems as well - Ghostbuster comes with sources, but it uses Reaction, for which there is no 68000 support, plus I am no big fan of Reaction in the first place. So what to do, what to do... aside from cloning the Workbench prefs program from fresh, there is one option, I suppose - use the Ghostbuster commodity, and just binary patch the prefs (or wait for OS 3.1.4 sources to leak).

Regarding ASL.. I prefer v45 ASL over ReqTools and others, so I use http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/AslToRT to trap calls to reqtools.library etc and use ASL requesters instead. A more "clean" way, like implementing reqtools.library as a wrapper for ASL, would probably be preferable. Lastly, the "official" family of C:Request#? programs has always been lacking one member - RequestString - there is a myriad of third party variants around, mostly incompatible with each other - it would be very useful with an official RequestString that make all the others redundant.
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline F0LLETT

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I personally have not seen any issues, when using 3.1.4-2.
However the only thing I dream of is a romable module to scan for CD-ROM, if found mount it. So we no longer need stuff in the DosDrivers to mount it.
Quote from: Hungry Horace
Resolute and Industrious Grand ruler of the yellow people and the Ultimate Amiga Empire
Ultimate Amiga Network (Home of SONY PSP Amiga Emulator and AMOS Factory)

Quote from:  He who shall not be named
"Chris is that you!!!"
My all time favorite quote.
 

guest11527

  • Guest
There is no generally valid way how to identify a CD-Rom, or in particular, a device a CD ROM could be connected to. Only those boards that come with an on-board SCSI or IDE might be able to support it. The CDFileSystem itself is ROM-able, though.

Even then, we are out of ROM space and the CDFilesystem does not fit in anymore (about 16K remains free). Before you argue "but we could have 1M ROMs"... well, we could not. The lower 0xE0 ROM space is now populated by the Vampires, so this option is taken as well.
 

Offline F0LLETT

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There is no generally valid way how to identify a CD-Rom, or in particular, a device a CD ROM could be connected to. Only those boards that come with an on-board SCSI or IDE might be able to support it. The CDFileSystem itself is ROM-able, though.

Even then, we are out of ROM space and the CDFilesystem does not fit in anymore (about 16K remains free). Before you argue "but we could have 1M ROMs"... well, we could not. The lower 0xE0 ROM space is now populated by the Vampires, so this option is taken as well.

How does ATAPIMajik work. That seems to detect fine.
Yes, CDFileSystem is romable but pointless, if it doesn't mount CD-ROM.

I don't own and never will own a Vampire, so Im not interested in it taking up space.
What about catering for both. People who use there Amiga as is and people who want to nuts on upgrades.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2019, 11:58:51 AM by F0LLETT »
Quote from: Hungry Horace
Resolute and Industrious Grand ruler of the yellow people and the Ultimate Amiga Empire
Ultimate Amiga Network (Home of SONY PSP Amiga Emulator and AMOS Factory)

Quote from:  He who shall not be named
"Chris is that you!!!"
My all time favorite quote.
 

guest11527

  • Guest
How does ATAPIMajik work. That seems to detect fine.
As the name suggests, it probably only addresses ATAPI CDRoms connected to the on-board scsi.device - if you have one. But that is the easiest part of the problem - it already has a device name ("scsi.device"). The hard part is to find the name of a device a CDRom could be connected to, because there are so many. ("gvpscsi.device", "omniscsi.device", "oktagon.device", "2060scsi.device" just to name some I am aware of). In general, if you have a device name, you do not know whether this is something "scsi-like" or something completely different that may crash or do some other strange things if you try to submit a "HD_SCSICMD" to it.

Thus, in general, the problem cannot be solved without some additional knowledge of the host adater available on the system, and this knowledge has to come from the user creating (or modifying) a mount-list for the CDFileSystem.

Yes, CDFileSystem is romable but pointless, if it doesn't mount CD-ROM.
Right, and creating a suitable mount file is something that cannot be automated for reasons given above. There is no generally valid and robust way how to detect a device a CDRom may be potentially connected to. It requires some user-interaction and some knowledge on the components installed in the system.
 

Offline F0LLETT

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How does ATAPIMajik work. That seems to detect fine.
As the name suggests, it probably only addresses ATAPI CDRoms connected to the on-board scsi.device - if you have one. But that is the easiest part of the problem - it already has a device name ("scsi.device"). The hard part is to find the name of a device a CDRom could be connected to, because there are so many. ("gvpscsi.device", "omniscsi.device", "oktagon.device", "2060scsi.device" just to name some I am aware of). In general, if you have a device name, you do not know whether this is something "scsi-like" or something completely different that may crash or do some other strange things if you try to submit a "HD_SCSICMD" to it.

Thus, in general, the problem cannot be solved without some additional knowledge of the host adater available on the system, and this knowledge has to come from the user creating (or modifying) a mount-list for the CDFileSystem.

Yes, CDFileSystem is romable but pointless, if it doesn't mount CD-ROM.
Right, and creating a suitable mount file is something that cannot be automated for reasons given above. There is no generally valid and robust way how to detect a device a CDRom may be potentially connected to. It requires some user-interaction and some knowledge on the components installed in the system.

Fair enough. Thanks for the info.
Quote from: Hungry Horace
Resolute and Industrious Grand ruler of the yellow people and the Ultimate Amiga Empire
Ultimate Amiga Network (Home of SONY PSP Amiga Emulator and AMOS Factory)

Quote from:  He who shall not be named
"Chris is that you!!!"
My all time favorite quote.
 

Offline Gulliver

ATAPIismajik besides using a cdfilesystem (BootCDFilesystem) works together with the CDMounter command to mount cdroms.

It only works, as Thomas mentioned in a very few select device interfaces, which are:

scsi.device
2ndscsi.device (A4000T scsi)
cybppc.device (CyberStormPPC scsi)
« Last Edit: October 25, 2019, 01:38:46 PM by Gulliver »
 

Offline Louis Dias

The CD32 can boot from CDROM...

Long live the CD32's extended ROM!
 

guest11527

  • Guest
The CD32 can boot from CDROM...
Yes, of course. But this is not an art and quite easy. It has a CD fie system in ROM (a precursor of the CDFileSystem we have now), and the init function of the ROM component creates a DosList entry (aka "mount entry") that starts the CD file system on the scsi.device.

But as said, it is easy in this case, the mount parameters are known.
 

Offline F0LLETT

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ATAPIismajik besides using a cdfilesystem (BootCDFilesystem) works together with the CDMounter command to mount cdroms.

It only works, as Thomas mentioned in a very few select device interfaces, which are:

scsi.device
2ndscsi.device (A4000T scsi)
cybppc.device (CyberStormPPC scsi)

That situation is what I would expect. This is why I said about it. We are talking about default config, not fancy stuff. So booting from CD with scsi.device and 2ndscsi.device would be great.
Quote from: Hungry Horace
Resolute and Industrious Grand ruler of the yellow people and the Ultimate Amiga Empire
Ultimate Amiga Network (Home of SONY PSP Amiga Emulator and AMOS Factory)

Quote from:  He who shall not be named
"Chris is that you!!!"
My all time favorite quote.
 

Offline paul1981

I personally have not seen any issues, when using 3.1.4-2.
However the only thing I dream of is a romable module to scan for CD-ROM, if found mount it. So we no longer need stuff in the DosDrivers to mount it.

Why though? I honestly don't understand this... it's two files isn't it stored on the boot disk. Why have it in ROM? If it's CD booting you're after, then I'm sure you're aware it can be achieved via scripting in your startup-sequence.
Also, this leads me to something which no one has mentioned really which is the poor old 68000. The more bloat added in the OS or ROM, the slower it will be for poor 7MHz 68000 users who will certainly notice the difference.
 

Offline F0LLETT

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I personally have not seen any issues, when using 3.1.4-2.
However the only thing I dream of is a romable module to scan for CD-ROM, if found mount it. So we no longer need stuff in the DosDrivers to mount it.

Why though? I honestly don't understand this... it's two files isn't it stored on the boot disk. Why have it in ROM? If it's CD booting you're after, then I'm sure you're aware it can be achieved via scripting in your startup-sequence.
Also, this leads me to something which no one has mentioned really which is the poor old 68000. The more bloat added in the OS or ROM, the slower it will be for poor 7MHz 68000 users who will certainly notice the difference.

Thats why there are different roms for different machines. Like using floppy or HDD, I would rather it all there on boot on a 1200 / 4000.
Anyways, Ill just stick to my CD32 startup-sequence.
Quote from: Hungry Horace
Resolute and Industrious Grand ruler of the yellow people and the Ultimate Amiga Empire
Ultimate Amiga Network (Home of SONY PSP Amiga Emulator and AMOS Factory)

Quote from:  He who shall not be named
"Chris is that you!!!"
My all time favorite quote.
 

Offline paul1981

I personally have not seen any issues, when using 3.1.4-2.
However the only thing I dream of is a romable module to scan for CD-ROM, if found mount it. So we no longer need stuff in the DosDrivers to mount it.

Why though? I honestly don't understand this... it's two files isn't it stored on the boot disk. Why have it in ROM? If it's CD booting you're after, then I'm sure you're aware it can be achieved via scripting in your startup-sequence.
Also, this leads me to something which no one has mentioned really which is the poor old 68000. The more bloat added in the OS or ROM, the slower it will be for poor 7MHz 68000 users who will certainly notice the difference.

Thats why there are different roms for different machines. Like using floppy or HDD, I would rather it all there on boot on a 1200 / 4000.
Anyways, Ill just stick to my CD32 startup-sequence.

We can't have a 1MB ROM now anyway to fit this extra stuff in thanks to the Vampire.  It seems they're going to be very successful - I'd love to have a stake in them.  :P
 

Offline TribbleSmasher

Seems like you misspelled stake for stab... :P