Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga community support ideas => Topic started by: Gulliver on February 08, 2011, 11:57:21 PM
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BetterWB release 1.0 - 08.02.2011
BetterWB is a new workbench pack, much like AIAB, Amikit, AmigaSYS, ClassicWB, etc. but applying a totally different aproach.
It aims to be much like an enhancement, an updated extension to AmigaOS 3.1, without all those hardware requirement penalties tipically associated with these kind of packs. It is indeed a better 3.1 than 3.1 itself!
http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/BetterWB.htm
This is my pet project, it took me just 2 days to assemble. Just voice your opinion if you think it is useless or whatever.
I will be glad to hear your comments, either good or bad.
Thanks
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Looks good to me, great idea. I'm glad you didn't add "eye candy" stuff. Let users pick and choose that stuff out.
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"-Low end Amiga computers that are left in storage deprived from any usage, and only regarded as antiques"
I think that about accounts for them all! ;)
Seriously though, this is a great idea. I've not tested it out, all my Amiga's have accelerator's, but I can see a need for this especially for devices running uae that have limited resources themselves such as the XBOX Classic.
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Nice job Gully!
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@TheGoose
Well, that was the idea, If you want eye candy, you know what and where to get it. Getting better performance with low resources, that is difficult.
@XDelusion
You are right, I never thought of it, but as you said, it is also interesting for devices that run UAE on limited resources or limited ports of UAE
@Dannyp1
Thanks Dan :)
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This looks great! this is just what I'm looking for. It's nice to have an add on for regualar 3.1 that just adds the basics.
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very cool! I will give it a go here soon when I get my 3.1 ROMS in the mail and upgrade to 3.1
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Just downloaded it and I'll give a try on one of my miggies when the new HDs arrive from motrucker... :)
I really like what you've done here, in particular the "no eye candy" as I'm not into that stuff on my miggies, looks and sounds like an excellent piece of work, nicely put together and hat's off to you for doing so... :)
(PS:you should really be a bit more positive with your wording on your homepage, don't put your own work down be proud of it and say so... :))
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(PS:you should really be a bit more positive with your wording on your homepage, don't put your own work down be proud of it and say so... :))
Ya, don't be afraid to let your hair down, kick off your high heels, and scream,"I am a woman"! Be proud, be independent, and most of all, be you! It's empowering!
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Just downloaded it and I'll give a try on one of my miggies when the new HDs arrive from motrucker... :)
I really like what you've done here, in particular the "no eye candy" as I'm not into that stuff on my miggies, looks and sounds like an excellent piece of work, nicely put together and hat's off to you for doing so... :)
(PS:you should really be a bit more positive with your wording on your homepage, don't put your own work down be proud of it and say so... :))
I am glad you like the concept.
PS :I am sorry if it sounded too negative, It is not about not being proud of my work (I am proud of it), it is about telling the user what are they going to come across, just to avoid complaints for the missing eye candy stuff people expect from these type of packs. :)
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This looks fantastic! Just what I need!
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Excellent work as always Gulliver! :)
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Good job for a 2 days work, and good targets behind it!
Go on!
BY!
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Seriously though, this is a great idea. I've not tested it out, all my Amiga's have accelerator's, but I can see a need for this especially for devices running uae that have limited resources themselves such as the XBOX Classic.[/QUOTE]
I just got a old xbox, how do I convert it to be a Amiga?
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I just got a old xbox, how do I convert it to be a Amiga?
You will first need to mod the Xbox. Either Soft or Chip, it doesn't matter. Then load a Dashboard onto it that will run UAE-X and then UAE!
There are a lot more stps then that, btu that is the gist of it.
If you have never moded an Xbox before, PM me and I can give you a few pointers.
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Awesome! I'm going to have to try this out!
[edited]
I just realized why I think this is a great idea.
Many of the expansions I've seen seem to try to add flair and stuff to try to make the older systems appear to be a lot more than they are, at the expense of resources. Your approach seems to be more of; make it work really well without squandering the resources... not to mention it doesn't require trying to track down and overpay for 3.9. ;)
Cheers!
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Good idea, good job. Congratulations.
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Just checked it out, very nice selection of tools and updates. It's a pretty good start for people starting with a clean WB 3.1 setup.
Good job.
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I feel bad now cause I just upgraded my A3000D to 3.9 for big HD support. Looks like I might have to throw this puppy in reverse!
:)
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Now, when it says drives up to 8G in size, does this mean that the total drive size is 8G, or that max partition size is 8GB?
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@All
Thank you for your comments. Iam glad you find BetterWB meaningfull.
@TheBilgeRat
Don't create partitions greater than 2GB(Dos Limitation).
Harddrives are the ones which are supported for upto 8GB.
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Seriously though, this is a great idea. I've not tested it out, all my Amiga's have accelerator's, but I can see a need for this especially for devices running uae that have limited resources themselves such as the XBOX Classic.
I just got a old xbox, how do I convert it to be a Amiga?[/QUOTE]
This site is full of guides to do just that:
http://xbox-scene.com/
You can do the mod chip method, or flash your tsop, or the easiest of them all, a soft mod.
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@All
Thank you for your comments. Iam glad you find BetterWB meaningfull.
@TheBilgeRat
Don't create partitions greater than 2GB(Dos Limitation).
Harddrives are the ones which are supported for upto 8GB.
Ofcourse you can create partitions greater than 2GB without problems, but just make the BOOT partition under 2GB. Other partitions can be bigger if needed. Otherwise with a 40GB harddrive you would have what, 20 2GB partitions?? :)
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I just might try that out on my Amiga 1200. I have 3.1 installed but nothing else so it would be the perfect machine to check it out.
I am one of those that tried to go above 3.1 but decided I would rather have a fast non crashing Amiga over a slow, pretty but useless Amiga
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Small bugfix update of BetterWB (ver1.01):
I managed to screw up Amiga file protection bits. If you are using version 1.0 just open a CLI window and execute the following command:
protect SYS:#? +rwe ALL
That should fix it all.
Anyway, the floppy sets have been bugfixed accordingly so that if you are installing BetterWB for the first time, you get it all okay now.
I am sorry for any inconviniences. :)
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So, installed this - looks good! The icons on my setup are a little funky and seem like they are made for MagicWB or somesuch.
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Well, I couldnt find any source of good 4 colour workbench 3.1 icons, and some of them were borrowed from MagicWB, if you happen to find proper replacements, please let me know, so I fix the offending ones.
BTW, I am glad you like it. :)
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Well, I couldnt find any source of good 4 colour workbench 3.1 icons, and some of them were borrowed from MagicWB, if you happen to find proper replacements, please let me know, so I fix the offending ones.
BTW, I am glad you like it. :)
They're fine-it makes it easy to know which ones are new :lol:
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:D
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It installed great.
I can not get it to make a partition bigger than 4Gig though. The new HDTool box works great, shows drive geometry perfect. But when I go to format it, it only says it's going to format a 3,700-ish MB capacity.
I have never used:
FastFileSystem 44.5 patches NSD64 devices to support drives bigger than 4GB (upto 8GB)
Maybe my drive doesn't support this "NSD64 devices" ? (http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp%3Fvgnextoid%3Ddc495a802efbd010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD%26locale%3Den-US%26reqPage%3DLegacy&col=en-USall)
Any thing more I should know? My HD is a real SCSI drive in an A3000, 18Gigs.
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Well, I couldnt find any source of good 4 colour workbench 3.1 icons, and some of them were borrowed from MagicWB, if you happen to find proper replacements, please let me know, so I fix the offending ones.
Hi Gulliver, I was wondering if you liked the look of the TinyIcons Rebel and I are working on. They're smaller than the standard Workbench icons so take up less room on the disk. Try to ignore the window patterns if you don't like the dithering, but I assure you on a 1084 monitor or TV it looks fine.
http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/5087/2_TinyWorkbench.png
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I get an error on boot up, something about "Load Monitor driver" or dev. I forget the exact error, but I can write it down and post it.
I went into C and tried to launch it, but it says it is not an executable. Same message from CLI, so I had to comment it out of the Startup-sequence.
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@XDelusion
It is a bug.
Simple fix is to issue on a CLI window the following command:
protect SYS:#? +rwe ALL
That should fix it. (BTW version 1.01 is available which fixes this issue).
@Cammy
Thank you for your generous offer!
There is a user who has contacted me before, and told me he was making a 4 colour iconset for this pack. So I will wait for him a bit.
In the end if nothing happens, I will be more than happy to include them. They are really cool.
Thank you.
@TheGoose
I believe it is just a problem of the format command that does not support >4GB drives (as everything else is ready for >4GB HDDs).
I suggest as a temporary fix to use this:
http://aminet.net/disk/misc/Format64.lha
It should work now.
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Hi Gulliver, I was wondering if you liked the look of the TinyIcons Rebel and I are working on. They're smaller than the standard Workbench icons so take up less room on the disk. Try to ignore the window patterns if you don't like the dithering, but I assure you on a 1084 monitor or TV it looks fine.
http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/5087/2_TinyWorkbench.png
:eek: WOW! Those are relly good! I'd grab them just for the heck of it. I wonder if there is a way to have BOTH Icon groups as part of the install and the person could choose...
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Hi Gulliver, I was wondering if you liked the look of the TinyIcons Rebel and I are working on. They're smaller than the standard Workbench icons so take up less room on the disk. Try to ignore the window patterns if you don't like the dithering, but I assure you on a 1084 monitor or TV it looks fine.
http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/5087/2_TinyWorkbench.png
Is intentional for each drawer icon to have half another drawer underneath it?
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Is intentional for each drawer icon to have half another drawer underneath it?
Yeah, we wanted to keep the icons all a standard size so that was the way it ended up looking. It sort of fades out.
It's a shame there's no place to make something like an icon set a collaborative effort, I wouldn't mind in a way open sourcing the icons so other people can add to and adjust them.
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Hi Gulliver, I was wondering if you liked the look of the TinyIcons Rebel and I are working on. They're smaller than the standard Workbench icons so take up less room on the disk. Try to ignore the window patterns if you don't like the dithering, but I assure you on a 1084 monitor or TV it looks fine.
http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/5087/2_TinyWorkbench.png
I like the icons, they're cute. Also the font, although on a TV you might want to make each vertical 2 pixels wide rather than one (and the same for the gaps between verticals). That would also prevent some aliasing issues with the vertical pinstripe patterns you're using to get some subtle shades - could you dither, um, XXX rather than | | | perhaps?
When I get an FPGAArcade I will happily sit there and tweak the font if you like, I used to love spending hours doing bitmaps fonts.
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We tried both dithering methods, the vertical lines and the regular cross-hatch pattern but the cross-hatch one caused more aliasing issues so we opted not to use it. Anyone can easily change the window patterns though, and in the pack I was going to make I will include both types of patterns and a bunch of others to choose from.
I think it would be great to have some extra help with the fonts. Currently the screen font also has several special characters which are tiny black&white images that I use in the ToolsDaemon menu to give the appearance of an icon before each entry, similar to the way it looks in more modern OSs. The icon font is a ColorFont with a black shadow, needing no extra patches.
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Ah, well if you've tried then that's cool.
I like the idea of custom characters for icons in a colour font. I presume it's 4 colours, clear/white/black/grey? Maybe some room for a little anti-aliasing between the white text and black drop shadow then. It's been a while since I played with colour fonts though...
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@XDelusion
It is a bug.
Simple fix is to issue on a CLI window the following command:
protect SYS:#? +rwe ALL
That should fix it. (BTW version 1.01 is available which fixes this issue).
@TheGoose
I believe it is just a problem of the format command that does not support >4GB drives (as everything else is ready for >4GB HDDs).
I suggest as a temporary fix to use this:
http://aminet.net/disk/misc/Format64.lha
It should work now.
Thank you again Gulliver, think I'm gonna be much happier with this setup on my A3000, with some Awesome icons Cammy should hand over! It will be really cool, tidy.
I ended up copying over OS3.5 FFS to my setup. The partitions report correctly if I look at the 'drive information' on the icon.
Still the odd thing is that the window, the title bar, will not display the correct size / free size, it appears to have some max number about 3gig.
I think this is somehow unrelated to the HD setup, a OS bug, some .library bug.
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Hey Gulliver!
I've been playing around with the betterWB and found the unixDirs3 in the commodities drawer. Pardon my ignorance, but if I throw that baby into my startup folder, do I get an AmigaDos CLI that behaves like a unix command line?
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Hey Gulliver!
I've been playing around with the betterWB and found the unixDirs3 in the commodities drawer. Pardon my ignorance, but if I throw that baby into my startup folder, do I get an AmigaDos CLI that behaves like a unix command line?
No, what you get is Unix style paths, like: cd.., cd..., cd...., *, etc., from the usual CLI. For more information, just read the UnixDirs3.guide located in your SYS:Locale/Help/
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No, what you get is Unix style paths, like: cd.., cd..., cd...., *, etc., from the usual CLI. For more information, just read the UnixDirs3.guide located in your SYS:Locale/Help/
sweeeet. will do.
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No, what you get is Unix style paths, like: cd.., cd..., cd...., *, etc., from the usual CLI. For more information, just read the UnixDirs3.guide located in your SYS:Locale/Help/
Can't read them for some reason. Opening the mwith multiview gives me the front pages, but then it complains and says that they cannot be opened. Must be something in my setup.
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Can't read them for some reason. Opening the mwith multiview gives me the front pages, but then it complains and says that they cannot be opened. Must be something in my setup.
Multiview fails on very low memory conditions. If that is the case, then boot without startup-sequence by holding both mouse buttons and the run multiview from the cli. Another solution, not ideal though, is to open the .guide with a text editor such as ed, textengine, or microemacs.
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Hey Gulliver!
I've been playing around with the betterWB and found the unixDirs3 in the commodities drawer. Pardon my ignorance, but if I throw that baby into my startup folder, do I get an AmigaDos CLI that behaves like a unix command line?
GNU Bash for Amiga (http://aminet.net/package/dev/gg/bash-src)
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Multiview fails on very low memory conditions. If that is the case, then boot without startup-sequence by holding both mouse buttons and the run multiview from the cli. Another solution, not ideal though, is to open the .guide with a text editor such as ed, textengine, or microemacs.
if I'm eating 2M chip and 16M fast I am doing something wrong indeed. I'll try it with memacs and see where I get.
EDIT: Opens fine with ced. I shall have to figure out what the hey. I'll give your solution a go with early startup and execution from CLI
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I just wanted to say thankx again Goose, I didn't really expect to make much use out of this software except for on the XBOX or what ever, but it goes nicely with an Amiga 1200 with 060 and 32Mb of RAM. :)
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You mean @Gulliver - just got your Gs mixed up... :)
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OH ya!
Let me rephrase that then.
Gulliver, BetterWB is working great on your 1200 with 060 Blizzard. ;)
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Errr wait.
I had to comment out that C:LoadMonDrv (or what ever it is) command from my Startup-sequence.
It causes some games and apps to produce garbage on the screen, thus rendering them un-usable.
As an example:
Alien Bash 2 and Aural Synthetica. Two things I'm not willing to live without. :)
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Great work!
Could you please compile a "heavy edition" with all the 68k OS updates and productivity gems based on this kind of software
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56731
I need for emulated 68k in UAE and Natami guys will need something to play with.
So your specs are now 68060 fast sys and 128MB+ FAST RAM, 512MB at Natami
and as much as PC users gives to WinUAE ... (or UAE under MOS and OS 4.1)
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@XDelusion
That bug has now been fixed in version 2.0
@All
BetterWB 2.0 thread is available here
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=639108#post639108
Thanks