Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: koshman on December 03, 2011, 09:27:38 PM
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Hi,
I am an Amigan and never owned an Atari in my life (okay, my father did, but it was 8bit - before Amiga came to be). But lately I've been eyeing the Falcon and will probably buy one in the near future (if I can get by with just one kidney...). By all accounts it must have been quite an interesting machine.
Anyway, in the last few days I have visited a few Atari forums in an attempt to become more familiar with different 3rd party HW expansions that exist for the Falcon (would you believe they don't have a centralized HW information storage like a BBOAH or amiga.resource.cx ???). Of course, in the end I ended up reading those various Amiga vs Atari, 'what was the biggest flaw in ST design' etc threads.
One thing I noticed is that quite often when talking about Amiga, Atarians (is that a word?) complain about its lack of stability. Now that I think about it it's not the first time I heard someone outside the Amiga community complaining about 'too many guru meditations'.
Now I'm wondering - compared to modern machines and OSs (realistically, even Windows...) classic Amigas are not that stable. The thing is I always thought it normal for a platform basically designed in the 80s to behave like that, not have memory protection etc. Based on what I read lately it seems like Amiga wasn't that stable even compared to its contemporaries.
I wasn't there in the late 80s/early 90s so I don't really know what to think about this. What is your opinion?
Also do you think that the quirkiness of the funny guru meditation messages may have contributed to the fact that Amiga system errors stuck more in people's memory?
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I think MSDOS was more stable than Workbench. But Workbench was more stable than Windows2000
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While I haven't used the Atari (though I do know that it didn't have memory protection, either,) I've used DOS, Win3.1, classic Mac OS, and Amiga Workbench (1.3 & 3.1.) Honestly, I'd put them all about on par in terms of stability. None of them had memory protection, so one errant process could potentially take down the whole system. Only the Amiga had pre-emptive multi-tasking, so an ill-behaved process could stall out the system almost as easily as a crashy one on Windows and Mac OS. And all three GUI OSes seem to have crashes about as frequently (not terribly often, but it definitely does happen.)
Really, it seems to come down to the quality of the applications you're using, as none of the OSes really have any way to protect themselves from an ill-behaved application. Part of the perception with the Amiga, though, might be because so much software was regularily run off floppies - one or two undetected disk errors can absolutely kill a program's reliability, so the gradual decay of a poorly-manufactured floppy can make software act a lot more unstable than it really is. With Windows and Mac, on the other hand, hard disks were pretty much a given by the time they got well-established.
Really, crazily enough, if you want stability in older computers, you just can't beat DOS. One application has absolute control of the system, with no others to get in its way (barring those pesky TSRs,) and you don't have to worry about any other programs being taken down if it does crash. Of course, that's because there aren't any other programs, due to the whole "no multitasking" thing, but hey! Stability's stability - which is why you'll still find ancient DOS boxes chugging away in the back room of countless little shops when Mac and Windows systems have long since been retired and replaced.
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I read somewhere that the first release of Amiga 1000 suffered of instability. But this was corrected in the subsequent versions.
The funniest thing about guru meditation is the origin of this expression.
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When they claim "lack of stability" do they mean hardware or software wise?
The fact that the Amiga implemented a preemptive multitasking system without a memory protection scheme just means that you have more moving parts that can potentially conflict with each other. If you were to refrain from running multiple applications contemporaneously, then I suspect that the stability would be more-or-less the same on both platforms.
I can't comment on the Atari vs Amiga hardware wise having never owned one. I do know that Commodore were plagued with some hardware issues from time to time.
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if you want stability in older computers, you just can't beat DOS.
You could always try to look for alternatives with memory protection (assuming your CPU has an MMU of course).
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You could always try to look for alternatives with memory protection (assuming your CPU has an MMU of course).
You could, but IIRC there really weren't that many alternatives at the time. Xenix, I guess, but how many people really used that? And by the time the free Unices really took off, Win95 had already brought memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking to the PC world (write your own commentary on whether that actually improved stability or not :lol:)
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Only serious alternative on the Amiga is to write a new OS from scratch, but there are two problems:
1) Someone has to write it. Not necessarily a big deal, but still.
2) Even if successful, new software will be needed that's not just a port of existing open source software.
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Really, crazily enough, if you want stability in older computers, you just can't beat DOS.
DOS OK as long as you only wanted to address a total 1MB or ram one 64K segment at a time.
Once you tried to address over 1MB of ram through various extended and expended memory schemes, or enter "386" 32bit mode stability went out the window. Those memory managers were massively temperamental when trying to optimize your valuable "conventional" RAM.
If you want to real treat, you could add in a splash of multitasking with various DOS extenders like Desqview windows 3X :) I can't imagine Amiga being any less stable than that mess :)
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Only serious alternative on the Amiga is to write a new OS from scratch, but there are two problems:
1) Someone has to write it. Not necessarily a big deal, but still.
2) Even if successful, new software will be needed that's not just a port of existing open source software.
Yep. And it seems like most people figure that'd be more trouble than it's worth...
DOS OK as long as you only wanted to address a total 1MB or ram one 64K segment at a time.
Once you tried to address over 1MB of ram through various extended and expended memory schemes, or enter "386" 32bit mode stability went out the window. Those memory managers were massively temperamental when trying to optimize your valuable "conventional" RAM.
I never had stability problems with protected-mode DOS, but then, all I ever did was run Descent on it... ;D
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DOS OK as long as you only wanted to address a total 1MB or ram one 64K segment at a time.
Once you tried to address over 1MB of ram through various extended and expended memory schemes, or enter "386" 32bit mode stability went out the window. Those memory managers were massively temperamental when trying to optimize your valuable "conventional" RAM.
I never had stability problems with protected-mode DOS, but then, all I ever did was run Descent on it... ;D
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Maybe if some of the contemporaries of the time could actually multi-task they too would have crashed as they would have had more programmes trying to use the same unprotected resource.
Personally the crashes didn't bother me that much as I always saved my work regularly. It was just something you did back then.
Anyway, you just rebooted and you were up again in seconds.
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Yep. And it seems like most people figure that'd be more trouble than it's worth...
Indeed. The only good reason I can come up with to do it, is to see how good you can actually make such an OS while keeping it fast.
Personally the crashes didn't bother me that much as I always saved my work regularly. It was just something you did back then.
It's ALWAYS a good idea to save your work often, even on a 100% stable system, for the simple fact that the user can do things wrong, too, not just the software ;)
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Wish I could remember where, but I read or saw something from the Amiga designers.
They were talking about the original designs and mentioned that they were always planning on the original Amiga being 512k RAM.
When the 512k was cut back to 256k late in the game, some of the software that had been written would crash, as it expected 512k.
Now, as this was a "multitasking" system, I would think that it might have crashed with 512k also, if enough other programs were running, but the bit wasn't that in depth...
I think it implies tho, that some of the very early software might not have been totally "ready for prime time" so to speak.
I think part of that also, was the rush to complete as that company who was going to write part of the OS had to be dumped and that had to be done in house...
So I think the early AmigaOS was probably rushed and had some issues.
But, I'm guessing by the time 1.2 probably came around, it was pretty much stabilized.
Of course, as has also been said, being a multitasking OS without memory protection, a BAD program could crash the OS.
Frankly tho, it didn't happen to me all that often, and I ran a LOT of public domain stuff that I'm sure wasn't of the highest quality. ;-)
Also, I saw my share of sad Macs back in the day....
I didn't play with the ST, so I'm not sure how common or not the BOMB was, but it was an existing OS. GEM was a pretty stable OS already, so I would guess that it was more stable that Amiga or Mac OS early on..
That said, I didn't like it... I "much" preferred the AmigaDOS/Workbench combination than a locked in GUI like GEM or MacOS.
desiv
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I enjoy the Amiga experience but even my Winuae Amigasys setup crashes all the time and I've only added a few extra programs.
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I didn't play with the ST, so I'm not sure how common or not the BOMB was, but it was an existing OS. GEM was a pretty stable OS already, so I would guess that it was more stable that Amiga or Mac OS early on..
GEM was just a GUI, which started on CP/M (and DOS.) The actual underlying operating system for the ST was Atari's own creation.
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TOS is stable because it barely does anything.
I never had stability issues with Workbench, but the original release was pretty dicey.
When the old fan wars rear their heads again, you'll notice that Atari fans like to pretend only the A1000 exists.
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TOS is stable because it barely does anything.
See also: MS-DOS :D
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The Amiga can be pretty stable if not many hacks are used and buggy software is avoided. My Amiga 3000T with AmigaOS 3.9 is very stable. I can go days without a guru. It is possible to protect kickstart (soft ROM) with the MMU which can improve the OS stability.
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TOS is stable because it barely does anything.
Good one!
The two times in my life I briefly had an ST (520 & 1040), separated by about 10 years, I remember seeing those damn bombs piling up way more often than I thought they had a right to. And I was hardly "power using" those machines.
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It was the '80s, instability was a feature back then....
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Good one!
The two times in my life I briefly had an ST (520 & 1040), separated by about 10 years, I remember seeing those damn bombs piling up way more often than I thought they had a right to. And I was hardly a power user.
I remember one computer lab in HS filled with Macs. All I had to do was enter that room and 3 or 4 of those machines would get those little bombs...
DING!
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Wasn't there a sort of guru catcher that would .. .. well catch the guru in workbench before it happened.. I am sure i used something like that.. Sooo 20 years ago lol I think i got it off the fred fish collection..
lost
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Wasn't there a sort of guru catcher that would .. .. well catch the guru in workbench before it happened.. I am sure i used something like that.. Sooo 20 years ago lol I think i got it off the fred fish collection..
lost
I used MuForce (http://aminet.net/dev/debug/MuForce.lha) on my Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000. It helped me a lot in preventing random crashes and finding bugs in software. In fact it helped me resolve a random crash in the assembler AHX replayer that I used in my games. It took me some days to make free of Enforcer hits version, but it was worth the trouble. No more random crashes after using it. Many programs don't need to reside in the memory to cause a crash. They just do some changes and later some program when trying to use the altered resources crashes and you go to blame that program, without having a clue that it was some other buggy software.
On AmigaOS 4 the GrimReaper is even better than MuForce. I still compile 68K programs with VBCC and Assembler, that help me remember the old times of instability.
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Really, it seems to come down to the quality of the applications you're using, as none of the OSes really have any way to protect themselves from an ill-behaved application.
That´s the core of the problem. In the early days, many programmers thought they could just write software for the Amiga the same way they were used to on other platforms. Not only did they waste resources, but they didn´t properly clean up after themselves and ended up trashing system data structures.
the gradual decay of a poorly-manufactured floppy can make software act a lot more unstable than it really is.
Never happened to me. Most of my old disks are still working.
Really, crazily enough, if you want stability in older computers, you just can't beat DOS.
You can. DOS is a stability nightmare! I don´t know how you can forget that installing extra memory would break your software installations. Mice would stop working because of programms that reconfigured the COM-Port. One program would install something in your config.sys or autoexec.bat and the system would refuse to start at all. It took people days to make a new GFX-Card work with their games. And if you didn´t have a Souindblaster, but a compatible card, you were likely to have no sound in 30% of the games. Drivers would hang themselves midway in a program and there would be no error message at all.
Don´t kid yourself. The DOS you are seeing nowadays is a standardized virtual machine. The real DOS was very different in stability.
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When Amiga 1000 its operating system and applications were quite crash prone. Things improved when Amiga 500 was released in 1987 but you can make first impression only once.
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Heavily modded workbenches are prone to crash, and that is a fact. There will be always a 3rd party app that could bring the system to his knees.*And it happens be it winuae, or real amiga.
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\You can. DOS is a stability nightmare! I don´t know how you can forget that installing extra memory would break your software installations. Mice would stop working because of programms that reconfigured the COM-Port. One program would install something in your config.sys or autoexec.bat and the system would refuse to start at all. It took people days to make a new GFX-Card work with their games. And if you didn´t have a Souindblaster, but a compatible card, you were likely to have no sound in 30% of the games. Drivers would hang themselves midway in a program and there would be no error message at all.
Don´t kid yourself. The DOS you are seeing nowadays is a standardized virtual machine. The real DOS was very different in stability.
I've used real DOS plenty, thanks. And yes, configuration could be a nightmare - but once you got it configured, if you didn't change anything, you could keep the same setup running pretty much forever. I never said it's a great all-around operating system, just that when it comes to responding the same way to the same input with the same settings, day in and day out, year after year, DOS is where it's at.
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GEM was just a GUI, which started on CP/M (and DOS.) The actual underlying operating system for the ST was Atari's own creation.
Of course I was simplifying..
I used to use GEM on the PC, so I was familiar with it from there.
But when people talk about the ST being stable, they are (IMHO) talking about TOS and GEM together.
When they are talking about the Amiga being less-than-stable, they are (again, IMHO) talking about the full desktop experience.
Especially since TOS does (as has been mentioned) virtually nothing without GEM.
That's like comparing TOS to the Amiga Kickstart.
Both of those were very stable. Both did nothing, but allowed other programs to do things.
TOS w/GEM seemed to be more stable than Amiga w/Workbench.
In that situation, GEM was a much more mature product, and didn't have to deal with the memory issues from a non-protected multitasking system.
However, that being said, I remember GURUs, but not that often...
desiv
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I think MSDOS was more stable than Workbench. But Workbench was more stable than Windows2000
Hmmmm... I cannot agree with you on that...
I have used pcs since spring 1999 and the most stable windows based os i have ever used (disregard any hardware specs causing instability) is windows 2000 (professional).
second place goes to XP. I only changed to Xp because drivers were no longer written to support win2k.
and third place goes to win98se...
Judging by my experiences with PCs over the years...
And by my experiences workbench do not come even close to win2k.
But amiga os beats the crap out of win95, early 98 releases and win millennium with regards to stability.
It does not beat win 3.11 in stability, but sure as hell beats it in userfriendliness and of course, multitasking....:D
With regards to msdos. i have very little experiences with it.
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That's like comparing TOS to the Amiga Kickstart.
Both of those were very stable. Both did nothing, but allowed other programs to do things.
AmigaOS was missing the essential "dir" command from ROM. When I think back when I was using an A500+, I remember always having to load the dir command from a disk with it when I wanted to see the contents of a disk.
If we had "dir" inside ROM, it would have been much better.
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That's like comparing TOS to the Amiga Kickstart.
Both of those were very stable. Both did nothing, but allowed other programs to do things.
Right. Kickstart doesn't do anything. Except set up a whole multitasking environment with various things going on in the background...
In that situation, GEM was a much more mature product, and didn't have to deal with the memory issues from a non-protected multitasking system.
More mature... and of course not even remotely as powerful as kickstart.
Please do your homework ;)
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Kickstart on his own has no use without the os, so you can use kickstart alone.
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btt...
Define 'stable'.
AmigaOS by itself is stable. By running the OS and its various tools coming along with it it's hardly possible to crash it.
However, when adding software, tools and applications it can be made to crash quite easily - a single severe bug in any application is sufficient. There's no protected memory and trashing kernel memory is bound to sink the system, a complex multitasking system being much more delicate than a simpler OS.
In order to overcome this, memory protection and a decent HAL would need to be added (which isn't possible without extensive changes to the system as has been discussed adequately).
But as can be seen in MS Windows (NT), this may not even be enough. Windows drivers are still required to run with Ring 0 privileges where they may do whatever they like. Any driver bug can still crash the system. Is this better? Definitely. Is it stable? It's more stable but you're still short of 100%.
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Kickstart on his own has no use without the os,
Kickstart IS the OS :rolleyes:
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Kickstart on his own has no use without the os, so you can use kickstart alone.
The only thing you need is a floppy disk with bootable flag, the rest is all in kickstart: workbench/intuition/dos/graphics/timer/input... almost everything you need.
I used KS1.3/2.0/3.x many years and the OS is pretty stable. It never crashed unless you ran an unstable app. MacOS7-8, Win3.x, Win9x... all these were more unstable and as easy to crash deliberately.
DOS was simply crap, comparing MSDOS stability with AmigaOS is ridiculous, following that logic I could compare my NODOS games stability with MSDOS ones too since msdos was so thin but so crap in the little things it did (stupid filename limits, ridiculous memory limits, retarded mono-task, lack of any autoconfig, lack of graphic apis, lack of sound apis, lack of codec/datatype support, lack of everything!...) than running a game inside was like running a NODOS game as it took the OS entirely.
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The only thing you need is a floppy disk with bootable flag, the rest is all in kickstart: workbench/intuition/dos/graphics/timer/input... almost everything you need.
According to Wikipedia, that's only true for KS1.2/1.3 systems, 2.0 and later separated Workbench out to a library file on disk. Still, it is true that Kickstart is a whole lot of the system software (Old World Macs also did this, with the Toolbox ROM holding a lot of the fundamental OS code.)
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Right. Kickstart doesn't do anything. Except set up a whole multitasking environment with various things going on in the background...
You missed the whole point.
I'm talking about from the users perspective.
I'm fully aware of what's inside kickstart.
But, you boot a machine with just kickstart, you get a hand asking for a disk.
That's it..
You can't even boot an ST with TOS and not GEM.
More mature... and of course not even remotely as powerful as kickstart.
Please do your homework ;)
You again miss the point. It was more mature in that it was around longer.
Stable code base. More time for bug fixing.
Of course it wasn't anywhere near as powerful as the Amiga, which I mentioned as a reason the Amiga might have been less stable.
desiv
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I think MSDOS was more stable than Workbench. But Workbench was more stable than Windows2000
I had to read this twice because my first reaction was, "This guy can't be serious."
Windows 200 was one of the most stable Windows OS I've ever encountered. It was a great step from Windows NT 4.0 on the way to Windows XP.
IIRC Windows NT 4.0 driver model was still in kernel mode and not user mode which is where Windows 2000 started that migration.
I'm not saying that Windows is perfect but I'm not sure you or others here give Microsoft the credit they deserve. I take issue with:
1. Memory Protection. I can crash any classic AmigaOS by writing to memory location $4. Poof! Gone! AmigaOS stability is based on the premise that Amiga Apps are written to behave properly. There is nothing in the OS that can stop a malicious program from trashing your memory, data, or hard drive.
2. AmigaOS runs on one platform. Windows has to be open to a plethora of hardware configurations and try to work with all of them. Now Windows 2000 was much less driver friendly than Windows XP.
You know, I have students that will bash Microsoft all day long. Then they have to take class where they must implement virtual memory in a simulated OS. They come out of that experience with a new respect for Microsoft and Linux.
3. The AmigaOS FileSystem is terrible. Without support for file permission, journaling, or even basic recovery it was the source of many stability issues. "Volume Work: is Not Validated" was never a good alert to see during a boot.
Please do not mistake my comments as being negative towards Amiga, the OS or the great people that were behind it. It was and is from a different time and place. In 1985 it was from the future. Sadly, by 1994, it was no longer cutting edge.
If you wish to talk about stability between AmigaOS and other Operating Systems from that area than I think Commodore did a great job with it. The AmigaOS was so much more complex than the MacOS (System 6) or Atari TOS. Neither of which was a true multitasking OS.
TOS always seemed toyish to me and I think that is because Digital and Atari were walking softly around Apple since they were suing everyone in sight.
Commodore continued to refine and upgrade the AmigaOS.
You cannot compare a Model-T to a 2011 Ford Mustang. They are from different worlds. Both will get you where you want to go but certain advances have become mandatory for a reason. In the case of Operating Systems, Memory Protection and security are necessary.
Cheers!
-P
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The first batch of Atari ST's need a TOS Disk just like Kickstart on the Amiga 1000.
Here is a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1jscTrkeso
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1. Memory Protection. I can crash any classic AmigaOS by writing to memory location $4. Poof! Gone! AmigaOS stability is based on the premise that Amiga Apps are written to behave properly. There is nothing in the OS that can stop a malicious program from trashing your memory, data, or hard drive.
MuForce (and probably Enforcer) stops writes to the zero page (includes address $4). The MMU can provide some protection even on the Amiga.
3. The AmigaOS FileSystem is terrible. Without support for file permission, journaling, or even basic recovery it was the source of many stability issues. "Volume Work: is Not Validated" was never a good alert to see during a boot.
Fast File System is not very advanced but terrible is rather harsh. I have not had very many issues with it over the years. I do use PFS3 now which is an improvement but I believe FFS has less bugs. File permissions are supported by the way and recovery tools work great after waiting for the validation provided there is enough memory for the partitions size ;).
You cannot compare a Model-T to a 2011 Ford Mustang. They are from different worlds. Both will get you where you want to go but certain advances have become mandatory for a reason. In the case of Operating Systems, Memory Protection and security are necessary.
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I like to think of the Amiga more like an AC Cobra with no air bags, traction control, abs breaks, power steering, or other non essential bloat. It's bare bones and slower than some of today's cars and you can kill yourself in a jiffy but it's worth the ride ;).
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I like to think of the Amiga more like an AC Cobra with no air bags, traction control, abs breaks, power steering, or other non essential bloat. It's bare bones and slower than some of today's cars and you can kill yourself in a jiffy but it's worth the ride ;).
Couldn't agree more. A Model T Ford is more like the C64 OS.
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According to Wikipedia, that's only true for KS1.2/1.3 systems, 2.0 and later separated Workbench out to a library file on disk. Still, it is true that Kickstart is a whole lot of the system software (Old World Macs also did this, with the Toolbox ROM holding a lot of the fundamental OS code.)
Who wrote that Wikipedia? That is just plain wrong....
I workbench.library still in my 1200s 3.1 ROM.
I do know that it is one library you can remove to make room for other stuff. I was experimenting with doing this with Remus.
Maybe that is something specific to the 4000.
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You cannot compare a Model-T to a 2011 Ford Mustang. They are from different worlds. Both will get you where you want to go but certain advances have become mandatory for a reason. In the case of Operating Systems, Memory Protection and security are necessary.
Cheers!
-P
2011 Ford Mustang still has a live rear axle, not a good example;)
I like to think of the Amiga more like an AC Cobra with no air bags, traction control, abs breaks, power steering, or other non essential bloat. It's bare bones and slower than some of today's cars and you can kill yourself in a jiffy but it's worth the ride ;).
You should check out that Weineck Cobra 780CUI (http://www.webwombat.com.au/motoring/news_reports/weineck-cobra-780cui.htm):)
And yes, Amiga is fun the same way:)
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Windows 200 was one of the most stable Windows OS I've ever encountered. It was a great step from Windows NT 4.0 on the way to Windows XP.
too bad its almost useless due to lack of drivers (compared to win9x)
1. Memory Protection. I can crash any classic AmigaOS by writing to memory location $4. Poof! Gone! AmigaOS stability is based on the premise that Amiga Apps are written to behave properly. There is nothing in the OS that can stop a malicious program from trashing your memory, data, or hard drive.
-P
well then, thank god there are so few malicious programs for Amiga..
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Who wrote that Wikipedia? That is just plain wrong....
I workbench.library still in my 1200s 3.1 ROM.
I do know that it is one library you can remove to make room for other stuff. I was experimenting with doing this with Remus.
Maybe that is something specific to the 4000.
only Amiga4000T have workbench.library outside because there isn't enough space.
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Obviously compared to modern machines, Amigas were/are very unreliable. I sold my Sam 440 simply because of the the instability, I could not program it if every time I did anything, it crashed hard.
Compared to peers of it's time, I only had experience of Acorn RISC OS, and the Mac. I'd say the Amiga was less stable than both, but not by a significant margin. I expect the Guru meditation stuck in my mind, so maybe it did seem more unreliable than it was, but RISC OS crashing, was very annoying, so that stick in my mind too. RISC OS just brought up these modal dialogs, replaced with another modal dialog when one went away. It did that until bits of the UI disappeared and you knew it was all over.
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It's perfectly simple, like many people here have said. The OS itself is very stable (apart from the early versions), but due to the unprotected memory and the open multitasking nature of the OS, it was very easy for a running application to trash system memory, thus causing a crash. The ST didn't really have that problem since it couldn't multitask that way, so naturally it'll feel more stable.
@commodorejohn
It's on Wikipedia, so it *must* be true ;) Workbench.library was only supplied on disk for the A4000T, since the ROM space was needed for a driver for the onboard SCSI. Every other kickstart ROM has had workbench.library included, meaning that once the boot flag was set on a floppy, or a hard drive was installed, you could boot. It wasn't much fun to use, but it was all there - GUI, DOS, mouse, sound etc.
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Obviously compared to modern machines, Amigas were/are very unreliable.
Unreliable? Right, that's why they still work after 20+ years :rolleyes:
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If your Amiga is unstable, then you'll want to check the little rubber feet on the bottom, if you lose one, the thing can be a pain to type on...
:-D
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There's theoretical instability and actual instability. Yes no MP --> increase risk of a bad program bringing the whole system. But don't use cracked software/ beta software/ software written by someone who got Blitz Basic for Christmas, and suddenly Amiga becomes a very stable machine.
I like to point to all the stuff on aminet that has been created by ordinary users on aminet: if everyone was losing data all the time, how could Aminet at one stage end being the world's biggest repository of PD software?
Personally, my A4000 with 68060 and CV64 running a reasonably-heavily patched 3.1 was rock solid with the Apps I ran, most of which were original and commercial. Amazing given that the software support for the CPU itself and the RTG graphics card were basically third party kludges. And thats the thing here: after Commodire went under so much of the OS was updated by so many different people, adding CD support, RT audio and graphics, datatypes, tcp stacks, floating point libraries, screen drawing routines, menu hacks, things which really go to the heart of what the OS should be doing was all written by third parties without any central quality control.
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Hi,
I am an Amigan and never owned an Atari in my life (okay, my father did, but it was 8bit - before Amiga came to be). But lately I've been eyeing the Falcon and will probably buy one in the near future (if I can get by with just one kidney...). By all accounts it must have been quite an interesting machine.
Anyway, in the last few days I have visited a few Atari forums in an attempt to become more familiar with different 3rd party HW expansions that exist for the Falcon (would you believe they don't have a centralized HW information storage like a BBOAH or amiga.resource.cx ???). Of course, in the end I ended up reading those various Amiga vs Atari, 'what was the biggest flaw in ST design' etc threads.
One thing I noticed is that quite often when talking about Amiga, Atarians (is that a word?) complain about its lack of stability. Now that I think about it it's not the first time I heard someone outside the Amiga community complaining about 'too many guru meditations'.
Now I'm wondering - compared to modern machines and OSs (realistically, even Windows...) classic Amigas are not that stable. The thing is I always thought it normal for a platform basically designed in the 80s to behave like that, not have memory protection etc. Based on what I read lately it seems like Amiga wasn't that stable even compared to its contemporaries.
I wasn't there in the late 80s/early 90s so I don't really know what to think about this. What is your opinion?
Also do you think that the quirkiness of the funny guru meditation messages may have contributed to the fact that Amiga system errors stuck more in people's memory?
Hey you read my post! Atarian63 or whatever always claims this and I return him with factual experience that I didn't have any problems multi-tasking professional software together and the only thing that GURU'd my A1000 was copied software and PD hacks/shovelware. Never things like Dpaint and Digi-View running together even with just 1.5mb of RAM in 1988 etc
The point is multi-tasking has it's own problems over and above single tasking systems like the Atari ST CP/M 68k + GEM solution. Windows might not crash as often but then it is 2.5 decades since Workbench came out so not surprising. However there are still processes that can randomly shut down on Windows 7 and XP is quite easy to blue screen with a rogue app.
So all things considered....notably Microsoft have had 25 years to improve on Amiga's multi-tasking kernal....they have not made improvements that Amiga did to OS technology 25 years before Workbench first booted up on an A1000 prototype :)
So yeah the ST was stable enough but no more so than my Amiga. I had just as many 'bombs' on my 520ST screen as GURUs on my A1000 and for the same reason and owned an ST since 1986 or whatever (before the butt ugly models with the built in disk drive). I think I had a task manager from a PD disk that was quite useful too (no less sophisticated than the ineffectual task priority controls in Windows today)
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There's theoretical instability and actual instability. Yes no MP --> increase risk of a bad program bringing the whole system. But don't use cracked software/ beta software/ software written by someone who got Blitz Basic for Christmas, and suddenly Amiga becomes a very stable machine.
Exactly, in 1992/3 I was using both an A1200 and a 486 PC to do various things. I NEVER lost any work due to my Amiga crashing.....not something I could say for the time spent re-typing stuff at 3am because my PC just hung or corrupted a file on shut-down :)
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I had an Atari 520 ST and a 1040 ST for a few months before I got an Amiga 1000 (this is back when all of them were new). I rarely saw the Ataris crash, but my Amiga crashed all the time. However I was also doing a lot of development on the Amiga so maybe it just seems like it was less stable in retrospect.
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I like to think of the Amiga more like an AC Cobra with no air bags, traction control, abs breaks, power steering, or other non essential bloat. It's bare bones and slower than some of today's cars and you can kill yourself in a jiffy but it's worth the ride ;).
Well put.
I agree on that. :D
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@commodorejohn
It's on Wikipedia, so it *must* be true ;)
Well, that's why I specified, when in doubt, pre-shift the blame :D
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@crumb
You said it, a disk. Without a disk, on his own, the kisckstart is unable to do anything.
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@crumb
You said it, a disk. Without a disk, on his own, the kisckstart is unable to do anything.
Not if you boot without a startup sequence using the boot menu. In this case the core of the OS is setup and you get a command line interface. Basically the OS is now functional. The only thing you can't do is run programs, because they're not available ;)
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You could load something over the serial port ;)
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You could load something over the serial port ;)
Not without the "type" command (or some other program), which you need on a floppy disk.
One of the things I like about the Apple IIs is that you can bootstrap them over serial (or even AUDIO!!).. No need for any media to use them...
I wish all computers would let you do that... ;-)
Hey you read my post! Atarian63 or whatever always claims this
I wasn't going to name names, but that was my first thought also.
He and I have a history... :bitch: :) :)
He's just believes that his world/life experience must be the way it is for everyone and everywhere else...
desiv
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Not if you boot without a startup sequence using the boot menu. In this case the core of the OS is setup and you get a command line interface.
Hmm..
I haven't tried that.. I'll have to give it a shot.. :)
Still, that's only with Kickstart 2 and above..
desiv
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I had an Atari 520 ST and a 1040 ST for a few months before I got an Amiga 1000 (this is back when all of them were new). I rarely saw the Ataris crash, but my Amiga crashed all the time. However I was also doing a lot of development on the Amiga so maybe it just seems like it was less stable in retrospect.
You were lucky, I had the 'loose ROM chips' 520STM and it would sometimes crash randomly. Not say that's the OS though as dropping the machine from a 3 inch height above the desk usually allowed the machine to boot without bombing.
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Not without the "type" command (or some other program), which you need on a floppy disk.
What about WACK?
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What about WACK?
I thought you could only get to that after a GURU???
Never tried tho..
desiv
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I thought you could only get to that after a GURU???
Huh, I could've sworn there was a way to boot into it, but I'm not finding anything about it...
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I used MuForce (http://aminet.net/dev/debug/MuForce.lha) on my Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000. It helped me a lot in preventing random crashes and finding bugs in software. In fact it helped me resolve a random crash in the assembler AHX replayer that I used in my games. It took me some days to make free of Enforcer hits version, but it was worth the trouble. No more random crashes after using it. Many programs don't need to reside in the memory to cause a crash. They just do some changes and later some program when trying to use the altered resources crashes and you go to blame that program, without having a clue that it was some other buggy software.
Btw I just read interesting tidbit about Atari ST. In Atari ST first 8 bytes in RAM is shadowed to ROM and actually write protected. Any attempt to write to first 8 bytes (happen easily with NULL pointers) will result in immediate bus error and you catch such errors quickly in development phase.
On Amiga other hand it is not write protected. Writing to memory location $4 causes an immediate crash with random guru displayed and writes to location $0 go unnoticed. Amiga is really crash prone for an illegal NULL pointer write access unless protected by Enforcer/Cyberguard/MuForce tools.
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Hmmm. What do you think is "happening" in the background of an FPGA design? Once it's configured, all that is fixed. Configuration 1's stay 1's, and configuration 0's stay 0's.
Don't have a clue, but the fact that there is a background in the first place is what matters. For a circuit in an FPGA to work, extra components are needed, and whether they are as active as a software emulation or not isn't important.
In an ASIC, does it make a difference if I use a library cell carrying the name D flipflop which serves the function of a D flipflop, or if I do an ECO design change, have no empty spaces to put another "real" D flipflop library cell that I somehow forgot, and have to combine a handful of NAND gates that I do have room for here and there, in order to effect a D flipflop function instead? Or, oh crap, that NAND gate should have been an AND gate. The AND (6 transistors) is too big to directly replace the NAND gate (4 transistors), but I have room over there for an inverter.
Can't say much about ASICs, but if they have overhead components needed for a circuit to work, while those components aren't part of the circuit design, then perhaps an ASIC is an emulation as well.
Do a NAND plus an inverter emulate an AND gate, or implement it in an ASIC?
Well, you can do an AND gate using a single relay or two transistors. Using two components made of transistors to make another that can actually be made of fewer transistors seems like imitating the behavior of that made part.
An emulated computer needs software. Some group of instructions that are continuously fetched from one of several types/levels of storage somewhere, decoded, ALUed, reading values from parameters and writing values to register or memory destinations, in order to effect the target opcode format, ALU, instruction decode, registers, memory map, etc. In what way do you think this activity is continuously occurring in the FPGA underneath your logic circuit?
In that way? Not at all. Don't ask me how it does work, but it should be obvious that FPGAs and computers do things very differently.
And another thought about "fixing" an FPGA. We'd once looked into but never sold a metal mask fixation option for our FPGAs, which would replace the configuration SRAMS and the LUT memory with metal hardwired 1's and 0's, should a security concerned customer want to do that to get a fixed die design instead of going through the effort of ASIC conversion. If I had a Minimig core designed to work well in my FPGA, and I did this metal mask replecement, most of the die is the same as the reprogammable FPGA, all those multiplexors are still there exactly the same way, but I can no longer change their controls, have I de-emulaterified this metal hardwired thing?
No, because there are more parts to replace with metal than just the SRAMS and LUT memory.
Thorham, what about CPLDs and ASICs. Are those also considered emulations of the real thing? I mean, in a CPLD, you don't have, say, two transistors which are directly, mechanically connected (such as using a printed circuit board that's custom made, which the components are soldered onto).
Don't know about CPLDs, but in general, if you have a programmable device in which you can make a circuit design actually work, then it's an emulation (also because of extra components needed which aren't part of the design).