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Author Topic: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"  (Read 37249 times)

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Offline kolla

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #164 from previous page: October 27, 2016, 01:06:42 PM »
Quote
Deactivated "FF" program in Startup-Sequence to prevent problems on 68020/030 processors

FF???
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guest11527

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Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #165 on: October 27, 2016, 01:11:46 PM »
Quote from: kolla;815734
FF???

FastFonts. First, v37 already indroduced a faster font renderning, and second, FF only worked with topaz.8 all the time. You'll find my "FastFonts" on Aminet which also speeds up topaz.9 (the larger cousin).  Nevertheless, none of these programs is essentially required anymore as text rendering has been improved a lot anyhow.
 

Offline kolla

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #166 on: October 27, 2016, 01:36:27 PM »
I cannot remember having FastFonts, only SYS:System/FixFonts, and certainly never had it in startup-sequence.
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
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A1200/Blz1260/64MB
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
 

Offline olsen

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #167 on: October 27, 2016, 01:56:23 PM »
Quote from: kolla;815734
FF???
More like WTF, actually...

The "FF" command ("FastFonts, Copyright 1986 by Microsmiths, Inc, Non-exclusive license granted to Commodore Business Machines") accelerates rendering of the "topaz" font family (8, 9 and 11 point sizes) by adding a simpler rendering path on top of graphics.library/Text.

The original graphics.library/Text function deals with all kinds of fonts, fixed-width, variable width, etc. and features only a single all-purpose bitmap glyph extraction/rendering routine.

If you know in advance what you are dealing with, then you can write special case code for the glyph extraction/rendering and on a 7 MHz 68000 machine that change could really matter.

Commodore shipped the "FF" command with Workbench 1.3, as a standard feature. However, it turned out that on machines with an 68030 CPU or better the accelerated glyph extraction showed a curious bug.

How curious? Imagine you wanted to play a prank on a friend by installing a shell command which would perform real-time ROT13 encryption for all text that would be printed on the screen with a "topaz" family font.

While this can be somewhat entertaining for a while, it looked too much like a bug, which is why the "FF" command invocation in the S:Startup-Sequence has been commented out. it's the only way to be sure.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2016, 01:59:03 PM by olsen »
 

Offline kolla

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #168 on: October 27, 2016, 02:39:37 PM »
Oh... this is Workbench 1.3.3, my eyes must have crossed, thought it was 3.1.
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
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
 

guest11527

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Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #169 on: October 27, 2016, 02:44:36 PM »
Quote from: olsen;815740
More like WTF, actually...

The "FF" command ("FastFonts, Copyright 1986 by Microsmiths, Inc, Non-exclusive license granted to Commodore Business Machines") accelerates rendering of the "topaz" font family (8, 9 and 11 point sizes) by adding a simpler rendering path on top of graphics.library/Text.
Actually, it always *claimed* to accelerate all topaz, but it did not. It only worked for topaz.8 and did nothing for topaz.9 and topaz.11, despite what the command invocation says.

No matter what - the v37 text rendering engine was improved by a lot. It's for topaz.8 not quite as fast as FF (or for topaz.9 for mine), but what's a couple of milliseconds amongst friends if the engine is more flexible.
 

Offline olsen

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #170 on: October 27, 2016, 02:45:26 PM »
Quote from: kolla;815742
Oh... this is Workbench 1.3.3, my eyes must have crossed, thought it was 3.1.
Two out of three ain't bad ;)

Oops, I just found the source code. It seems that what triggers the bug is that the fast rendering operation involves self-modifying code. Which might have worked sufficiently well on the humble 68000, but less so on the 68030 and beyond.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2016, 02:51:35 PM by olsen »
 

Offline LoadWB

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Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #171 on: October 27, 2016, 08:57:36 PM »
Quote from: olsen;815724
Which layout exactly is needed? Could you describe it?


I believe it is divided into EVEN and ODD ROMs, but I do not know if that is bytes or words.  I read somewhere that WinHex will work for this application in EVEN/ODD words.

I need to pull out the 1200 and 4000 schematics.  I am curious if I can go larger.  512k in two ROMs is 256k, but I wonder if I can use 512k ROMs and build a 1MB ROM image, instead -- with the caveat that my CYberStorm will only MapROM up to 512k.

I am pretty stoked, though.  I never bothered to build my own ROM, though I have wanted to.  In my 4000 that is mostly irrelevant since I have a Deneb with the FlashROM loaded with stuff, but for my 1200, 2000, and 500+, I now have a more up-to-date ROM and may even be inspired to build a custom one to eliminate those annoying power-up reboots.
 

Offline Oldsmobile_Mike

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #172 on: October 27, 2016, 09:50:31 PM »
Quote from: LoadWB;815759
I believe it is divided into EVEN and ODD ROMs, but I do not know if that is bytes or words.  I read somewhere that WinHex will work for this application in EVEN/ODD words.

I need to pull out the 1200 and 4000 schematics.  I am curious if I can go larger.  512k in two ROMs is 256k, but I wonder if I can use 512k ROMs and build a 1MB ROM image, instead -- with the caveat that my CYberStorm will only MapROM up to 512k.

AFAIR I just saw this conversation somewhere within the past year or two.  A1200 can take up to 1MB but A4000 needs something like a ROMY to do it.

In the same thread someone mentioned some MapROM software that could support up to 1MB, but I don't recall what thread off-hand.

More info here:  http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=64034
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Offline chris

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #173 on: October 27, 2016, 11:13:52 PM »
Quote from: Gulliver;815596

Furthermore, there is a lot of 68k material from Hyperion that could have been included to enrich this release, at no cost of development at all. It was just a matter of collecting it from OS4 releases and prereleases.


There's even earlier 68k stuff which could have been included, such as the Y2K fixes (I see the fixed SetClock for 1.3, but IIRC there was something for 3.1 too), the "Euro" update (whether a good idea or not, it's marginally better than not having € available at all on the default fonts), the updated Installer (v43) and - and I'd have thought this would be a shoe-in - SetPatch v43, if not Hyperion's later v50 which works fine on 68k and patches some extra stuff according to the output.

I also get the impression from the OS4 docs, that some parts of OS4's diskfont.library (the outline fonts improved API) date back to before OS4 and presumably were originally for 68k.

Of course there are loads of early 68k components in OS4, a lot of which are updated versions of ones in 3.9.

Lots of scope for future updates for not a lot of effort. Given Hyperion are behind this, getting it feature compatible with 3.9 should be possible, although that's not necessarily the goal.

As a side note, I always thought the naming of 3.5 and 3.9 was terrible. Leaves no scope for newer 3.x versions without resorting to increasingly confusing version numbering.
"Miracles we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer" - AJS on Hyperion
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Offline LoadWB

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Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #174 on: October 27, 2016, 11:27:07 PM »
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;815761
AFAIR I just saw this conversation somewhere within the past year or two.  A1200 can take up to 1MB but A4000 needs something like a ROMY to do it.

In the same thread someone mentioned some MapROM software that could support up to 1MB, but I don't recall what thread off-hand.

More info here:  http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=64034

Nice, thank you.  I wonder why Hyperion chose then to limit the 1200 ROM to 512k with the sacrifice of workbench.library in ROM.  I like the ROMY, and will have to see if Cosmos has any available should I decide to build a custom ROM.  I suppose from reading further up someone would have to update a ROM splitter to help pull out the updates from the new ROMs, provided that would be my starting point, anyway.

Quote from: chris;815767
As a side note, I always thought the naming of 3.5 and 3.9 was terrible. Leaves no scope for newer 3.x versions without resorting to increasingly confusing version numbering.

Always wondered about this.  3.9 always seemed too final.  I suppose we were hoping 4.x would be 68k, as well, but with new bang-up features.
 

Offline wawrzon

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #175 on: October 27, 2016, 11:55:08 PM »
They probably wanted to suggest some quantity update in the perspective, justifying major version number jump. However i see nothing inconsistent if there was 3.10..
 

guest11527

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Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #176 on: October 28, 2016, 08:13:21 AM »
Quote from: LoadWB;815768
Nice, thank you.  I wonder why Hyperion chose then to limit the 1200 ROM to 512k with the sacrifice of workbench.library in ROM.
Because 512K is the ROM size of the machine that can be provably addressed. Only the cd32 had a 1MB ROM, and the lower ROM contained some specific cd32 features, so even there it was not exactly part of the kickstart.

Actually, the ROM creation tools get this wrong, too. They write "1MB" as ROM size into the ROM code, but that's incorrect. A 1MB "ROM" consists of a 512K Kickstart, indicated in that size, and the overflow area, which is nowhere indicated in the kickstart itself.

One way or another, the 1MB ROMs may cause trouble as far as compatibility is concerned, so it's just understandable that this route was not taken and the safer and cleaner alternative of offloading some modules was picked.

Quote from: LoadWB;815768
I like the ROMY, and will have to see if Cosmos has any available should I decide to build a custom ROM.  
Except that the tool is not indicating the ROM size correctly...

Quote from: LoadWB;815768
Always wondered about this.  3.9 always seemed too final.  I suppose we were hoping 4.x would be 68k, as well, but with new bang-up features.
I agree. The naming was not logical. The "3.5" should have really been 3.2beta, and the 3.9 should have been "3.2 final", but you cannot sell it as such. One might guess that 3.9 was picked as an indicator that back then the players didn't want to provide another update for the 68Ks.
 

guest11527

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Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #177 on: October 28, 2016, 08:23:46 AM »
Quote from: chris;815767
There's even earlier 68k stuff which could have been included, such as the Y2K fixes (I see the fixed SetClock for 1.3, but IIRC there was something for 3.1 too), the "Euro" update (whether a good idea or not, it's marginally better than not having € available at all on the default fonts), the updated Installer (v43) and - and I'd have thought this would be a shoe-in - SetPatch v43, if not Hyperion's later v50 which works fine on 68k and patches some extra stuff according to the output.
The copyright situation is there a bit delicate, which is likely why it wasn't done. As far as the 3.9 components go, in my case I have a copyright "on the modifications"(!) I did (not on the original source). While that grants me not much (I cannot publish the code or make it available - my code isn't workable without the CBM code, despite it's very hard to separate what is mine and what is theirs), it neither grants Hyperion (or H&P) much (they don't have the right on my modifications either). I guess this also holds for other developments that came into 3.9.

One way or another: Heinz is the contributor of the above components, and he needs to be in the boat to get those updates. Quite frankly: I would be happier without NSDPatch, with a better ROM patch mechanism and with native TD64 support in the FFS and would rather update those two by myself...

Quote from: chris;815767
I also get the impression from the OS4 docs, that some parts of OS4's diskfont.library (the outline fonts improved API) date back to before OS4 and presumably were originally for 68k.
Same problem, likely. There were also improvements in diskfont for 3.9, namely the disk font cache. Same problem again: Partially my code, my copyright. Base code is not my code, so I cannot distribute it either. Bummer!

I don't have a contract at this point, so it cannot go in. Not that I'm unwilling to change that.... I hope I can. I'm really happy that something is moving, and I hope I'll be able to contribute.

Quote from: chris;815767
Lots of scope for future updates for not a lot of effort. Given Hyperion are behind this, getting it feature compatible with 3.9 should be possible, although that's not necessarily the goal.
I believe a lot is possible if you can get hold of the corresponding authors and get them together. I see a market here, so it is very much in anyone's interest.

Quote from: chris;815767
As a side note, I always thought the naming of 3.5 and 3.9 was terrible.
You are not alone.
 

Offline utri007

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #178 on: October 28, 2016, 10:25:52 AM »
Using 1mb rom hasn't caused any problems to me. I have had them inside of my two A1200 Computer some years.

Creating 1mb rom with remus / romsplit is requires some studies, but is simple task after that.

First rom is standard 512kb rom $F80000 and second one is extended 512kb rom $E00000

I have bought both of those, sadly rom split doesn't support them.
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Offline kolla

Re: Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"
« Reply #179 on: October 28, 2016, 11:31:42 AM »
Quote from: chris;815767
As a side note, I always thought the naming of 3.5 and 3.9 was terrible. Leaves no scope for newer 3.x versions without resorting to increasingly confusing version numbering.


What's wrong with 3.10? And then 3.11 for Workgroups - aka built in Envoy? :)
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
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