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Author Topic: AmigaOS 68k development - components, critics, bugs, work-arounds, tips&tricks  (Read 46749 times)

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Offline TribbleSmasher

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

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.

Im using 1 MB ROM now with latest 3.1.4-2
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Offline kollaTopic starter

- have there been changes that you don't like so much?
Yes there have been, several, but let's start with the most serious one - the new shell v46.

While I have enjoyed following the development of shell v45, v46 comes with a number problems:
  * it is buggy, changes are many and so are the bugs, they manifest themselves in the strangest ways and without access to neither sources, nor documentation (aside from the v45 guide on aminet), nor bug tracker, it is sometimes extremely tricky to fathom wtf is going on.
  * it is totally unnecessarily embedded in kickstart ROM chips, meaning its problems are "frozen" -
  * it introduces features "taken out of thin air", no consulting or interaction whatsoever with the shell users at large
  * its features are utter overkill for the so called "most users"
  * many of its features are pointless or have "issues" since they rely on a third party product to work as intended
   (a product with unclear legal status, an update with all ties to to Amiga Inc. removed would clear this up)

If I was Hyperion, I would not have allowed shell v46 in the kickstart chips. I would have insisted on keeping the built in kickstart shell small and tidy and, only with the limited set of required features - all this to make sure it is as tiny and as rock solid as possible. A cleaned up OS 3.1 shell, an amiga equivalent of POSIX /bin/sh. And then this minimal shell can be replaced on boot by more experimental, feature rich v46/47/whatever L:Shell-Seg on boot by SetPatch. And I would not make it available on ROM chips until at least a few months of testing "in the wild".

More later.

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Offline giZmo350

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  * many of its features are pointless or have "issues" since they rely on a third party product to work as intended
   (a product with unclear legal status, an update with all ties to to Amiga Inc. removed would clear this up)

I agree with this 110%.... Nothing against the devs creating this HW but, supporting their HW in ROM makes NO sense to me. They [the 3rd party HW devs] could easily supply an install kit that handles ALL of their HW requirements. SoftKick it! Constant changes could be downloaded & they could make it as dang bloody big as they wanted to! Supporting their HW in ROM seems to be a marketing ploy more than anything.

When I build a machine, whether it be Amiga, DOS 6.X, Win3.X, Win9.X, Apple 68K, (where the BIOS doesn't support optical drives), the first thing I do is get the optical drive working - especially auto-boot! It's a must for me.

If CDDA (auto boot - auto start) support were built into Amiga ROM, that would be a HUGE game changer for me & maybe for a lot of other users! Just load my 68K optical drive supporting software and go! It may be the number one reason users moved to newer HW back in the 90's. It was for me - all HW platforms!

Using 3.2.X ROM space to support optical drives would be a pure joy. I would buy it! Kiss that ERD goodbye!  ;)
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Offline TribbleSmasher

I would rather like to see full PCMCIA support for booting CF cards, micro HDDs etc...
 

Offline kollaTopic starter


  * many of its features are pointless or have "issues" since they rely on a third party product to work as intended
   (a product with unclear legal status, an update with all ties to to Amiga Inc. removed would clear this up)

I agree with this 110%.... Nothing against the devs creating this HW but, supporting their HW in ROM makes NO sense to me.

Hm - HW as in hardware? I was talking about third party software, not hardware (I thought this was obvious)
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Offline F0LLETT

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  * many of its features are pointless or have "issues" since they rely on a third party product to work as intended
   (a product with unclear legal status, an update with all ties to to Amiga Inc. removed would clear this up)

I agree with this 110%.... Nothing against the devs creating this HW but, supporting their HW in ROM makes NO sense to me.

Hm - HW as in hardware? I was talking about third party software, not hardware (I thought this was obvious)

Yes, but he has a point. Why support Vampire in the rom and not CD-ROM on ide scsi thats already part of the machine.

I would rather like to see full PCMCIA support for booting CF cards, micro HDDs etc...

This too would be awesome.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2019, 09:17:17 PM by F0LLETT »
Quote from: Hungry Horace
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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 kollaTopic starter

Yes, but he has a point. Why support Vampire in the rom and not CD-ROM on ide scsi thats already part of the machine.
There is no Vampire support in kickstart ROM, I don't know why you suggest that there is.
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Offline F0LLETT

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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.

Yes, but he has a point. Why support Vampire in the rom and not CD-ROM on ide scsi thats already part of the machine.
There is no Vampire support in kickstart ROM, I don't know why you suggest that there is.

Misread, it takes up address space. Point is, there should be no worrying about other hardware. Each amiga is as is. So it should be updated on that basis.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2019, 10:31:37 AM by F0LLETT »
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"Chris is that you!!!"
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Offline slaapliedje

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I could see how CD-ROM booting would be difficult to achieve, unless you only supported it for systems that have onboard IDE or SCSI by default, or possibly anything that was from Commodore.  Hell, the CSPPC is supposed to have that feature, but I don't think I've ever gotten it to actually work.

I'd like to see the 060 libraries included, but I'm not sure how generic they are, if they work with all accelerators, etc.  But at least they fixed it so it'll detect an 060 and will still actually boot and complain that the libraries aren't in place.

I completely agree getting some of the 'standard' functions in to KS/WB that have been third party things for years.  Hell, I wish MUI could become part of the standard install at this point.  I'm sure it's on the list of 'things to do during a fresh install' since so much software relies upon it.
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Offline TribbleSmasher

Well, for ROM updates sooner or later a reboot will be required, maybe there is a way to configure a path from within loadmodule can install a resetproof cd device and filesystem....
So the configuration would not happen on the very first boot, but after the full installation.
 

Offline DamageX

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I'm not up to speed on everything so I could be talking nonsense, but what about making a compressed ROM image which is able to fit more stuff. The kickstart on '030+ systems is often copied to fastRAM anyway.
 

Offline giZmo350

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Yea, fit more stuff. It could be decompressed on the fly at boot up and copied to RAM:  and off you go.... with a SCSI CDRW whirring away!  Great observation DX! The forum needs new blood like you!  8)
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Offline kollaTopic starter

But at least they fixed it so it'll detect an 060 and will still actually boot and complain that the libraries aren't in place.
The kickstart makes sure that any 040/060 (or similar) FPU is "turned off" on initial boot, and then Setpatch turns it on when loading appropriate CPU libraries.
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Offline kollaTopic starter

I'm not up to speed on everything so I could be talking nonsense, but what about making a compressed ROM image which is able to fit more stuff. The kickstart on '030+ systems is often copied to fastRAM anyway.
I believe your first observation is the most accurate one :) At best, only parts of the kickstart can be compressed, and you would also need a decompressor and validator in place... it quickly grows bigger than what you gain.
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A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
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A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
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A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
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CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 68k development - components, critics, bugs, work-arounds, tips&tricks
« Reply #29 from previous page: October 31, 2019, 06:22:27 AM »
Yea, fit more stuff. It could be decompressed on the fly at boot up and copied to RAM:  and off you go.... with a SCSI CDRW whirring away!  Great observation DX! The forum needs new blood like you!  8)

You can do _all you need_ if you just add a boot device to your system that contains the needed kickstart modules. It can be a partition on a disk, a floppy... anything.  Personally, I am leaning to doing what old 68k Macs had all those years ago - a dedicated "magic" partition at the start of the hard drive, dedicated for ROM modules and updates. One can argue that Amiga users should be smart enough to not need this, and just have the components floating around in SYS:, but I am not so sure.
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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