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Author Topic: The Os 3.1.4 Thread  (Read 239049 times)

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Offline Tygre

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #149 on: October 04, 2018, 04:48:00 AM »
Hi Thomas!

Let me second what Olaf wrote:

b) Testing! The problem with the printer device was not only that it was legacy code, it was also not tested to the degree necessary. This being said, I'm not fully in line that the printer is my accomplishment. It is to a major degree the result of our beta test group that continued to file bug after bug. In the end, I do not remember how many we had for the printer and the HP drivers.


Very nice! I'm curious if you could tell us more about testing: do you use test frameworks? What test cases exist? Did you inherit test cases or build your own test suites?

Cheers!

guest11527

  • Guest
Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #150 on: October 04, 2018, 08:44:33 AM »
I saw that one remit/design goal of OS3.1.4 was to make the OS play nicer with 060 boards. However, does this improve upon OS3.9 support plus Oxypatcher / Phase5 support etc?
Phase5 was/is a closed universe, they did not provide any information concerning their 68060 support. In fact, there is no CPU library included in the distribution because you should always use the CPU library that came from the vendor of the board. Failing that, use the MMULib-driven CPU libraries which provide an open architecture, and come with comparable or better tools than the ones from many vendors.

Is this update really for people that stuck to OS3.1 and forgot to buy OS3.5 and OS3.9?
No. Many components included in 3.1.4 are more advanced than those shipped with 3.9. All the datatypes are post-3.9, the workbench and icon library are post-3.9, all libraries are post-3.9, the printer device is a hybrid, and the preferences are reworked 3.1 preferences as we do not have reaction. Some of the tools are also somewhere in between 3.1 and 3.9 such as the calculator, the clock, the icon editor, and HDToolbox.


I mean I didn't install Boing Bags 3 & 4 because they were unofficial and I found the Boing Bag 2 install painful but that is nothing compared to still using Blue & Grey Worbench 3.1 in 2018!
I thrust you that you are capable of configuring the workbench to your liking. 3.1.4 allows this to the very same degree 3.1 did and 3.9 did.

But I still think this is mainly about stopping Vampire users pirating core OS elements for VampireOS and instead encourage them to pay Hyperion for the pleasure.
Seriously - no. 3.1.4 development started almost three years ago. There is no conspiracy here. The whole thing started because Olaf more or less suggested it as a "tiny bug fix release", which then went more and more overboard.


 

guest11527

  • Guest
Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #151 on: October 04, 2018, 08:48:36 AM »
Very nice! I'm curious if you could tell us more about testing: do you use test frameworks? What test cases exist? Did you inherit test cases or build your own test suites?
I wish we had, but there is no automated tool for that in Amiga land I'm aware of. So it was all manual, bug reports in a bug tracker, and new versions every couple of days. The most complicated part about it was that I had to fix bugs in "dry runs", both lacking an Amiga and lacking a printer.
 

Offline bubbob42

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #152 on: October 04, 2018, 10:29:00 AM »
But I still think this is mainly about stopping Vampire users pirating core OS elements for VampireOS and instead encourage them to pay Hyperion for the pleasure.

Do you really think we wasted thousands of hours of spare time to achieve just that? Especially when we started long before any Vampire/coffin/whateverOS surfaced? Ask yourself: Would this motivate you?

I cannot follow your thoughts, honestly. Especially when you don't have to buy anything and could just enjoy OS3.9. :)
 

Offline olsen

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #153 on: October 04, 2018, 11:28:21 AM »
Very nice! I'm curious if you could tell us more about testing: do you use test frameworks? What test cases exist? Did you inherit test cases or build your own test suites?

Cheers!

The Amiga operating system and all its components matche one of the textbook definitions of legacy code: code for which no automated tests exist. It is not designed to be testable, which makes it very hard to both design effective tests and to deploy a testable version in the same context as it would be in if it were production code and not test code (ROM space is the major limitation here). The operating system source code is a mix of 'C' and assembly code, both of which provide very little leverage to achieve abstraction layers which are much more easily available in object-oriented languages.

If you are used to testing frameworks to make your life easier, you know what you are missing. I did investigate how testing of complex 'C' code is being done, and the sad result seems to be that is an unsolved problem. The testing frameworks I found which apparently catered to the need of automated 'C' code testing seemed to be not much more useful and powerful than the equivalent to planting assert() calls and the occasional printf() in the code (debugging like it's 1983), so I was none the wiser.

As far as I can tell there is no worthwhile test framework for 'C' legacy code, but I'd very much like to be proven wrong on that... So we did not use one on AmigaOS, which is why there are no use cases and no test suite to speak of.

Compatibility testing still worked very much like it did when Commodore was still in business: testing by exercising the features, discovering compatibility issues more or less by chance as well as by methodical exploration.

One exception is the new "Disk Doctor" which I wrote from scratch for Workbench 3.1.4. The code was designed to be testable, and it even includes a damage simulation feature which makes the disk access layer pretend that certain forms of data corruption or read errors exist on the medium. Automated testing involved having Disk Doctor examine and recover data from hundreds of Amiga disk images.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2018, 11:47:13 AM by olsen »
 

Offline olsen

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #154 on: October 04, 2018, 11:43:04 AM »
But I still think this is mainly about stopping Vampire users pirating core OS elements for VampireOS and instead encourage them to pay Hyperion for the pleasure.

Do you really think we wasted thousands of hours of spare time to achieve just that?

They built the Eiffel tower to investigate how well the corrosion-proof coating of the cast-iron tower endures the harsh conditions at 320m elevation, near its tip, didn't they? ;)
 

Offline bubbob42

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #155 on: October 04, 2018, 12:24:32 PM »
They built the Eiffel tower to investigate how well the corrosion-proof coating of the cast-iron tower endures the harsh conditions at 320m elevation, near its tip, didn't they? ;)

You're not being supportive! :D
 

Offline nicholas

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #156 on: October 04, 2018, 03:00:19 PM »
Anyone know why the Hyperion page still charges VAT for those that live outside the EU?
“Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.” - Imam Ayatollah Sayyed  Ruhollah Khomeini
 

Offline number6

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #157 on: October 04, 2018, 03:44:23 PM »
Anyone know why the Hyperion page still charges VAT for those that live outside the EU?

Source

Only Hyperion's "fullfillment partner" will respond to that apparently.

#6
 

Offline olsen

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #158 on: October 04, 2018, 04:26:06 PM »
Anyone know why the Hyperion page still charges VAT for those that live outside the EU?

Source

Only Hyperion's "fullfillment partner" will respond to that apparently.

#6

Not exactly an explanation, but I recently learned how complicated the VAT issue has become for services rendered and goods delivered both within the European Union and from the European Union to non-member states. In my opinion it is quite likely for a payment processor such Avangate to slip up here.

Within the European Union the VAT added on top of the net price used to be the rate current in the country from which it was sold. For example, with the seller in Germany the standard rate of 19% VAT rate would be applied to a customer in Denmark. This was changed recently, and now the VAT rate of the customer has to be applied to the net price, e.g. for a seller in Germany and the customer in Denmark, the standard rate of 25% would have to be applied. Sounds sufficiently complicated, and it certainly is (and gets more so because you have to keep track of the specific payments made and the taxes you charged on top of the net price). It gets more complicated still because of exceptions the individual countries apply to taxation. Luckily, these tend not to affect services and goods rendered through payments made through online service because this has been standardized.

It gets really tricky when you sell from the European Union to a non-member state such as Switzerland or Norway. Services and goods may be taxed differently or not at all, for example. So the buyer may have to pay import taxes on floppy disks and EPROMs, but not on the digital download which contains the same information as the floppy disks and EPROMs (or it might be a reduced tax rate).

There's plenty of opportunity for things to go wrong.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2018, 04:54:37 PM by olsen »
 
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Offline utri007

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #159 on: October 04, 2018, 04:37:15 PM »
Is scsi.device 45.7 better than 43.45p?

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/SCSI4345p

43.45p has been best scsi.device for amiga for years now, it doesn't have typical size limits at all. Including 128gb limit.

45.7 does it offer same features?
« Last Edit: October 04, 2018, 04:39:09 PM by utri007 »
ACube Sam 440ep Flex 800mhz, 1gb ram and 240gb hd and OS4.1FE
A1200 Micronic tower, OS3.9, Apollo 060 66mhz, xPert Merlin, Delfina Lite and Micronic Scandy, 500Gb hd, 66mb ram, DVD-burner and WLAN.
A1200 desktop, OS3.9, Blizzard 060 66mhz, 66mb ram, Ide Fix Express with 160Gb HD and WLAN
A500 OS2.1, GVP+HD8 with 4mb ram, 1mb chip ram and 4gb HD
Commodore CDTV KS3.1, 1mb chip, 4mb fast ram and IDE HD
 

Offline Oldsmobile_Mike

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #160 on: October 04, 2018, 05:59:25 PM »
No. Many components included in 3.1.4 are more advanced than those shipped with 3.9. All the datatypes are post-3.9, the workbench and icon library are post-3.9, all libraries are post-3.9, the printer device is a hybrid, and the preferences are reworked 3.1 preferences as we do not have reaction. Some of the tools are also somewhere in between 3.1 and 3.9 such as the calculator, the clock, the icon editor, and HDToolbox.

How do these first two items compare to Oliver Roberts WarpDT datatypes and Peter K.'s icon.library?
Amiga 500: 2MB Chip|16MB Fast|30MHz 68030+68882|3.9|Indivision ECS|GVP A500HD+|Mechware card reader + 8GB CF|Cocolino|SCSI DVD-RAM
Amiga 2000: 2MB Chip|136MB Fast|50MHz 68060|3.9|Indivision ECS + GVP Spectrum|Mechware card reader + 8GB CF|AD516|X-Surf 100|RapidRoad|Cocolino|SCSI CD-RW
 Amiga videos and other misc. stuff at https://www.youtube.com/CompTechMike/videos
 

guest11527

  • Guest
Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #161 on: October 04, 2018, 06:38:20 PM »
Is scsi.device 45.7 better than 43.45p?
I cannot tell since I do not know this version. What I had available are the versions from Heinz, and a couple of later versions from early Os 4 development which addressed a couple of additional bugs.

So, what do we have here:

A series of bug fixes of known bugs (insufficient memory allocation and memory trashing, and lack of testing memory allocations for success).

Support for LBA48 commands. This might help to avoid the 128GB limit.

MAXTRANSFER is no longer needed for the device, it can handle large block transfers now just fine.

Emulation of SCSI_INQUIRY works now with CF-Cards and ATAPI devices.

Support for the TD64 command was added.

I did not add support for third-party extensions. I believe the device is the wrong place for this. If vendors want to sell third party solutions, they need to supply proper firmware for their extensions instead of fiddling with the device itself.

I neither added any "speed patch" since I do not have any Amiga that runs with the scsi.device, so I'm very conservative on modifying working code just for speed reasons. You do not know what it breaks if you play with it, and if you cannot even test yourself and can only depend on beta-tester input, I'd rather keep my hands off. Don't break things, don't touch things, unless you really have to.

 

Offline graffias79

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Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #162 on: October 04, 2018, 07:15:31 PM »
So if I took an IDE CD-ROM and connected it to an A4000D's IDE port it should theoretically work just with the CDFS that is included in 3.1.4?
 

Offline utri007

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #163 on: October 04, 2018, 07:18:33 PM »
SCSI.device's size limits are quite important for me. My boot partition is 30gb and hard drive is 500gb. That hard drive was not recognized at all with original 3.1 scsi.device, but worked out of the box with with my custon kickstart with 43.45p scsi.device

Has anyone tested big hard drive support?
ACube Sam 440ep Flex 800mhz, 1gb ram and 240gb hd and OS4.1FE
A1200 Micronic tower, OS3.9, Apollo 060 66mhz, xPert Merlin, Delfina Lite and Micronic Scandy, 500Gb hd, 66mb ram, DVD-burner and WLAN.
A1200 desktop, OS3.9, Blizzard 060 66mhz, 66mb ram, Ide Fix Express with 160Gb HD and WLAN
A500 OS2.1, GVP+HD8 with 4mb ram, 1mb chip ram and 4gb HD
Commodore CDTV KS3.1, 1mb chip, 4mb fast ram and IDE HD
 

Offline Gulliver

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #164 from previous page: October 04, 2018, 08:04:07 PM »
SCSI.device's size limits are quite important for me. My boot partition is 30gb and hard drive is 500gb. That hard drive was not recognized at all with original 3.1 scsi.device, but worked out of the box with with my custon kickstart with 43.45p scsi.device

Has anyone tested big hard drive support?

I have been using a 1TB drive without issues since the last 3.1.4 beta days.