Advantages of 3.1 ROMs and OS 3.5/3.9

[mr_a500]

Piru wrote:
Not quite, this is Workbench 3.1 vs Workbench 3.0. They're font sensitive with KS 3.0 and WB 3.1 aswell.

No, you're wrong about that one. I run WB 3.1 with 3.0 ROMs and "Execute Command" and "Icon Information" use Topaz. When I run WB 3.1 with 3.1 ROM, they use the System font.

Besides WB 3.9 (and programs written using the annoying Reaction GUI), there are only two programs I know of that have problems with the 3.0 ROM (vs. 3.1): The Matrix screensaver (the required WriteChunkyPixels is only in 3.1) and graphics corruption using the latest SystemPatch quicklayers.library. (so I just use the older quicklayers.library and run AFA-OS before running The Matrix)

I use scsi.device 43.35 to access partitions >4Gb with Workbench 3.1 and 3.0 ROMs. Also, there is a program to convert WB 3.9 colouricons for use in WB 3.1.

The only 3.9 advantage I can think of (Amigas without graphics cards) is the 3.9 BB2 HDtoolbox when installing new drives. This is the only version of HDtoolbox that actually reads the correct information from large harddrives.

[mr_a500]

AFA-OS is Aros For Amiga. It is a back port of AROS (Amiga Research Operating System ...kind of makes the -OS redundant in "AFA-OS" ;-)) for 68K Amigas. I think it is meant for Amigas with graphics card because nothing really works on my A500 - except setting graphics.library as version 45, allowing me to run The Matrix (which looks for graphics.library 40+).

I think some people here use AFA-OS on their Amigas with graphics cards to get anti-aliased text.

[mr_a500]

I've just dropped back to KS3.1 and WB3.0, after using 3.9 for the nearly 5 years (I think it was 2001 when i got it). My old 3.0+goodies set-up was much nicer, especially when used on TV (like I have to now due to lack of space).

Why WB 3.0? Why not 3.1?

I dropped back to WB3.1 after using WB3.9 for 2 months. I also had a much better setup than 3.9 and when I tried to reproduce my 3.1 setup in 3.9, I found that I couldn't.

The main problem was the stupid 3.9 picture.datatype. It always tries to remap and dither images that are already perfectly mapped - making image display 3X slower than the 3.1 picture.datatype and making all my WB images look like crap. There's no way to tell it "do not remap and dither images". I think the options are the lamely labelled "Best, Good, and Worst". (Worst still dithers and remaps!)

Maybe the 3.9 picture.datatype is great if you've got a graphics card, but if you've got an ECS Amiga, don't get WB3.9. Other ECS problems - no colourwheel for palette, annoying 256-step palette sliders - painful for ECS (what's 16x9 again?)...

Oh, and I think the 3.9 icon editor is total garbage. It is unbelievably badly made. It is extremely slow and jerky, painful to use, missing basic tools, remaps incorrectly and crashed on me many times. (the problem: is there another icon editor for colouricons?)

Now that I think of it (painful memories coming back), I think I was most digusted about what was NOT in 3.9. There were about 50 things that bothered me in 3.1 and I fixed them with excellent stuff from Aminet. When I got 3.9, I had expected that at least some of the major ones would be fixed. Instead, they just added some of the Aminet stuff I already had, other Aminet stuff that was worse than what I already had and left some of the major ones unfixed. Then they added more bugs and other things that needed fixing (by other programmers of Aminet stuff).

Well, I ended up stripping out the one or two useful things (like scsi.device 43.35) and using them in 3.1 and said "Hasta la vista" to 3.9. (...except when checking correct Cylinder counts on new harddrives ;-))