Os 3.2 development preview

[Pgovotsos]

Sorry, but I'm confused. The original Amiga hardware supports one IDE channel, thus two devices (master, slave). The four-way adapters are to my knowledge proprietary extensions that require a hardware installation.

Not much hardware, strictly speaking, only a custom cable is required. However, buffering is preferred so typically a small board is used, that both splits the IDE signals and add buffers.

Why is it a limitation of the Os when it does not support such proprietary extensions from third party?

To connect 4 IDE devices, you DO need the additional hardware to add support for another IDE channel. No playing with cables alone is going to allow you to connect more than two devices. The internal IDE controllers can only handle one IDE channel without hardware to add logic for a second IDE channel, thus only two devices on stock IDE controller period.

The Aminet link you provided is for just this sort of hardware. It's not for any cable shenanigans.

[Pgovotsos]

Not being able to redirect the output of an alias makes them pretty useless as a feature.

Oh, you can redirect aliases. You just cannot place [] in double quotes and expect that the redirection makes it through. What [] does is that it grabs the rest of the line behind the alias and places it wherever the [] are. Thus

Code: [Select]

1.> alias ls list [] all
replaces

Code: [Select]

1.> ls ram: >t:out
by

Code: [Select]

1.> list ram: >t:out all
which works fine of course. However, if you enclose [] in double quotes, everything on the line is captured in double quotes, including the redirection. This may or may not be what you want, but this is how alias works.

Thus, in general, [] and double quotes are *probably* not what you want. Note well that if the argument to the alias is quoted, the quotes will remain intact after substitution of [] with the argument, so it makes little sense to put quotes there in first place. In that sense, the example given is probably flawed to begin with.

Could you please name the character that you are talking about enclosing in double quotes? For some reason it's showing as a block - an unknown character - on my browser.

Thanks

[Pgovotsos]

Could you please name the character that you are talking about enclosing in double quotes? For some reason it's showing as a block - an unknown character - on my browser.

No, it does not. It is really an opening and closing square bracket.

Dang, I had to zoom that all the way in to see that little gap between the brackets. My old eyes seriously saw it as a square

[Pgovotsos]

I believe Workbench needs a lot of improvement from its usability point of view. And you only coved the tip of the iceberg. It lacks so many things...

Besides browser mode, we need Status bars, Control bars, Icon tool bars, Shortcuts, Quick access to recent/most used objects, integrated search, a Navigation/Address bar, a Quit menu entry that actually works, an easier built-in method to customize all menus, MagicMenu functionality, a tree view, and I could go on forever, unfortunately.

The problem is that Workbench is so much behind that it will require a lot of manpower to get to a reasonable state where we can see it as a friendly partner within AmigaOS.

So dont't expect those changes will come out in the short term. Hopefully some small incremental changes may start to appear.

I go back and forth on this in my head. I'm just not sure that all of that NEEDS to be part of the OS. I use, and like, Amiga OS because of its simplicity. So much of it is just so obvious to use. I agree that some times those things can be very nice, but the beautiful thing for me is that it is easy to add them if I really want them with other utilities. Sure, it might perhaps be nice if they were built in, but I enjoy being the one in control of the choice.

Amiga OS is nice, lean, and fast. No it doesn't have every possible feature built in, but if I wanted an OS with everything and the kitchen sink built in, I'd use Windows. Is there really anyone who thinks that that bloated piece of "stuff" is nice, lean, or fast It only takes gigahertz processors, gigabytes of RAM and gigabytes of hard drives to match the performance that I had 20 years ago with an 040, 18 megabytes of RAM and a Video Toaster.

Amiga OS certainly isn't perfect, perhaps far from it, but for what I use it for, it ain't half bad

[Pgovotsos]

Will the new Datatype system still be compatible with older datatypes like Warp and AK or will it require the developers to update them?

[Pgovotsos]

@Pgovotsos

The functionality does not need to get in the way of users, but be available as an extra when required. Following the AmigaOS principle of "power beneath the hood".   

AmigaDOS and ARexx mostly work the same way, you can use the bare minimum, and maybe not even touch them, but if you require to do more advanced stuff, they are already there, sitting in the dark, not getting in the way. 

Have you used ScalOS as a workbench replacement? DOpus Magellan? They can behave and look excactly the same as good old workbench, but are highly configurable to deliver much more advanced functions for power users that require those. They have many flaws in their implementation, but the general concept behind them is good.

Anyway, as said before, this is not something that is going to be happening anytime soon, as there are a lot of other things which have higher priority, and even then, when the time comes, such things will need to be properly discussed and evaluated.

That's actually sort of what I said. IF I want that stuff, I will run DOpus or whatever tool gives me the functionality I want to add.

Many of the changes you are talking about I assume will go into intuition.library making it even bigger. Right now in 3.1.4 the ROM has enough room to add the current intuition.library to it. If it gets much larger that might not be possible any more.

[Pgovotsos]

Is it expected that 3.2 will be released as a complete floppy and Kickstart chip or just another update archive like 3.1.4.1? FWIW I would prefer a complete install kit rather than an update archive.

[Pgovotsos]

Will the new Datatype system still be compatible with older datatypes like Warp and AK or will it require the developers to update them?

The datatypes system did not change in 3.1.4, and there are no interface changes planned for 3.2.

I was referring to Gulliver's statement that "The datatype system has been improved". I was wondering if those improvements would cause any problems with older datatypes. Improvements is a bit vague so was looking for a little more explanation.

[Pgovotsos]

Are there any plans to review the CD32 situation with regard to future OS updates and what were the issues surrounding source code?

I afraid the situation hasn't improved. The issue is that we don't get the CD32 on-board IDE working reliably as it seems to be based on some cost-reduced version of the original chipset, and the auto-detection logic for the IDE used for all other boards does not work there.

Thus, even though there are some compile-time flags in 3.1 that enable or disable support for it, the corresponding code does not work anymore, and we lack documentation on the CD32 to make it working.

Would it help to talk to Stephen "Terrible Fire"? He did a lot of work with the CD32s IDE to get his accelerator to work.

[Pgovotsos]

I'm pretty sure it is about the non-standard CD interface.

Horrors! Commodore not using a standard interface - say it ain't so. I'm sure they always did everything exactly by the book! Maybe the court jester's book that changed every day ending with a "Y" but they must have followed some kind of standard mustn't they? Right? Right?

<sound of crickets in an otherwise silent room>