New Kickstart 3.9.1 68k on the way

[Gulliver]

With no downloads available, I dont see a reason to update or even test something that I cannot even lay my hands upon.

[Gulliver]

Not the same, but still seems illegal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI#Sharing_of_copyrighted_works_over_peer-to-peer_networks

There are certainly bigger fish to fry though. Although with TPB down the amount of piracy has dropped considerably, which might put you on the radar.

TPB is no longer down

http://thepiratebay.cr/

[Gulliver]

@psxphill

Thanks, I didn´t know

[Gulliver]

Would you seriously stop talking about what you have no clue about?  There's a huge difference between claiming to be 3.1 compliant and being a 3.1 clone.  AROS already surpasses 3.1 in many ways.

Sorry, but not in a real Amiga, over there, it is crappy shame.

In x86 or high speed emulation it is pretty good and I can agree that it surpasses 3.1. But in an Amiga is a big "NO".

[Gulliver]

This is pretty much what I say. Nothing requires patching anything. What had to be written is only a small bootstrap loader that loads the libraries, devices and resources that are usually in ROM from the flash, and off you go. The bootstrap loader could be put in ROM, but would not require regular updating, unlike the system libraries which could be maintained independently. This is a much more flexible approach than any other "ROM update". It would boot rather quickly, and would allow system components to be upgraded without ever touching the ROM based bootloader. Simpler, easier, quicker...

This is an ideal solution. In these days of fast HDDs and SSDs it is not good to be relying in roms except for bootstraping. Not every user has an rom burner!

Anyway, I only see a minor fixable problem with this aproach. Certain old bootable Floppy disks that require accessing some rom modules for the running of their programs, and even when no HDD is available will fail. This could be solved by having an early boot menu option to softkick like Thomas Richter mentions, (this should be enabled by default) or to boot the built-in legacy kickstart rom (which could even be compressed to save precious space on rom).

Another missing feature in rom is the possibility of having a simple serial transfer program for the cases when users lack bootable workbench floppies. So that with this program they could connect thru rs232 to any pc terminal program and receive an adf/dms file transfer containing a bootable image that could be written back by this program to a new non formated floppy disk.

Well, one could dream

[Gulliver]

All this aside, updating the system components or recompiling parts of them with more modern (ehem) compilers would still be something that would be worth trying. Moving windows partially off-screen is really a no-brainer with the new layer functions, cleaning up the intuition menu handling to allow a really integrated "Magic Menus" would be doable easily. Whether that's 20msecs faster or slower is nothing I would bother about, but there are so many small, tiny improvements that could be made almost immediately - it is a shame that these parts are "locked away". Even the FFS could be speed up by using a smarter block allocation algorithm, and all the "NSDPatch" madness could also be avoided just by having an auto-detection algorithm for the supported device extensions.

Just shut up, and take my money

Seriously, I would pay for this, and I believe many will too.

[Gulliver]

@thor
and you are really sure that they are at all actually in a position and beyond that the only ones who can make legal claims about any work you might invest into amiga sources? have you been presented enough evidence to verify this?

besides the stubbornnes with which they have refused any support for amiga in the past doesnt make me think they might reconsider without actually losing the face and they know it.

also, they will want to apply the same market strategies to amiga they have been maintaining with os4, low volumes, high prices, no honest communication, when its done, two weeks, pay in advance and then we will see, half done and abandoned work on the way, broken or useless hardware of only limited capabilities.. all that kind of things. it all doesnt make me exactly wait to throw money at them just for them finally admitting people like me were right all along.

It doesnt matter if they have the evidence or not. Reality shows that about a week ago they allowed a remastered AmigaOS 3.1 kit to be sold, and no one had proof that they could legaly challenge that action (you can now buy this version at AmigaKit). And most importantly, if I am not wrong, I believe they still have a lawyer that doesnt charge a single penny, and is willing to go all the way (Ben Hermans).

I for one, dont care what happens to OS4. It is just another product, that I have tried, and I do not find it interesting all. But on the contrary, a new or recompiled OS for real Amigas sounds really tempting for me.

And most importantly, Hyperion is just like any other company, driven by profit. So if OS4 doesnt give them enough revenue, maybe a 68k AmigaOS might, and it is not a bad move, it is the way that business are (you choose the product you find its more profitable).

Hyperion may not be the company with the best rep out there to do this, but this is certainly better than having nothing at all (because that is what we have now).

And please, lets not talk about Aros on a real Amiga, because for the time being it is just a pain inflicting OS for our Miggies. Maybe that can change in the future, but not now.

[Gulliver]

There is a new thread with a poll.
It is rather simple:

Would you buy a new OS for 68k Amigas?