PC still playing Amiga catchup

[stefcep2]

(Disclaimer: this does not mean I don't feel PC's have long since surpassed the old Amiga, it merely means I feel most people on these boards overstate the capabilities of the average PC)

Or they say: "fast booting doesn't matter to me" , or "fast shut down doesn't matter to me" or "jerky menus don't happen""-knowing full well they do or "malwares only a consequence of how popular the PC is, so that makes it ok", or "the registry isn't so bad", knowing full well that the registry is an abomination, or a Linux PC 'just works' because they know a Linux PC can easily send you into command line hell just to get the hardware working at all, or to get the GUI up.  You see if it doesn't matter to them, these things can be ignored and therefore the argument is WON.

[stefcep2]

They don't, many people simply use standby thus negating the issue. Thanks to memory protection, it is rare that a piece of software will take down the rest of the OS.

thanks to saving regularly, booting in 5 seconds, and using stable well written software, memory protection doesn't matter to me.  I'd like it but I bet you'd like a 5 second boot as well.  But to use your argument against you, memory protection doesn't matter to me, so Amiga wins for me.
 

Jerky menus? Take an A1200, put a load on the cpu and watch as the rest of the system slows to a crawl.

turn on your windows PC, wait for the start button/orb to appear and try to launch something and watch the menu stutter and leave garbage behind before it clears itself.  Makes you feel good about your quadcore 4 gig ram SATA?

I have a dual P2 (233Mhz) system here running BeOS, the cpus when running live streaming are constantly at 80%. The menus are just as fast as when the system is idling. Only difference is that app loading slows down, which is to be expected.

i have a freeware scheduler "Executive" and i can render an animation in cinema 4d, whilst editing scenes and objects in Cinema 4D, send the resultant pics to Adpro for processing, save the files automatically, do a spot of house keeping with DOpus, paint a texture in Dpaint and the Operating System menues are just as fast as if had nothing loaded- on a 50 mhz machine with 16 meg ram

Malware is a consiquence of people not bothering to secure their systems. It is not ok.

malware is a consequence of having security risks in the OS that can be exploited.  A security system is what must be used to close those holes- for a few days until another exploit is found.  This then means a performance hit.

The registry is a database. If you can come up with a better solution to address being able to support and intergrate litterally hundreds of thousands of different pieces of hardware, the rest of the computing world would love to know. Linux, BeOS and (I believe) Mac all use a database help address this issue.

i don't have one on my Amiga.  It doesn't matter to me.  Therefore Amiga wins.

That was 2000 calling, their want their distribution back. And flaky hardware drivers are not a linux specific issue.

tell the thousands posting here: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=327 or here :http://forum.mandriva.com/ (just two examples) that they its 2009 and there problems DO NOT EXIST, its just that they are caught in an alternate reality where its always the year 2000

Correct, because many of the issues do not matter to the average user - they just want to use their applications. .

Correct.  So using your argument against you: The software on my Amiga does what i want it to, reliably and efficiently and things such as nuclear physics sims, cloud computing, playing DVD's bluray and games on the PC don't matter to me and (increasingly to the average user) because a $30 DVD player does a better job of playing DVD's, and a $250 Bluray player does better job of playing Bluray and any game genre worth playing is available on any one of 3 consoles without the hassle of a PC (and a $600 PS 3 does all three).

I for one am happy that I don't have to write my own scripts to get a cd-rom to run when I plug it in

That was 1985 calling, their want their Workbench 1.3 floppy back.

And flaky hardware drivers-if any drivers exist AT all that is- are a particularly linux specific issue.

[stefcep2]

Takes less then 5 seconds for me to come out of standby.

Standby does not equal boot.  I asked 14 PC users if they leave the PC on all the time in standby.  None do.  Standby doesn't matter to them.  Boot time does.  Amiga wins.

And when you have either 3.5 or 3.9 running, just getting beyond softkick takes more then 5 seconds on an 040 1200.

i run Workbench 3.1, the OS my machine came with.  Running OS 3.5 is like running XP on your 233 mhz pentium and OS 3.9 is like running Vista on your 233 mHz pentium.  How would you go booting them?  Will you enjoy that user experience, IF you could even get vista to boot.

I don't have a quadcore.

 Sorry i thought Karlos's quadcore was "just an average PC", and on that basis i thought you just had an "average PC".

And when you have a lot of high priority things being loaded up/run at once, even on an Amiga with Executive it'll crawl.

Ah more "if's" and "whens".  I don't, so it doesn't matter to me.  default priorities are fine for me.  Amiga wins.

And how many of those tasks require a realtime/extremely high priority? The music stream, regardless of all else happening on that machine (building up the database from FS queries, accessing and generating a web interface etc etc etc) all are going on, but the stream remains constant. Yes, I could lower the stream's priority and everything else would run a whole lot faster, but at the risk of breaking the streams continuity.

None require it.  And they don't need to be.  Therefore it doesn't matter to me.  i don't stream anything, so it doesn't matter to me, either.  Amiga wins.

Even Executive, which I used to use myself, does not offer the level of granularity that BeOS does in terms of task priorty.

you may be right, i honestly don't know enough about BeOS.  however my A1200 multitasks smoothly, and always prioritises my input over anything else that might be needing CPU time.

Sorry, but ALL operating systems have security holes. Buffer overflows in MUI anyone?

true.  but as it stands as of this moment, i have a greater chance of suffering from malware on a  fresh out of the box windows install than I do on a fresh amiga os 3.1 install.  The why's, buts, ifs don't matter, thems the facts.

Clearly it does matter or you wouldn't have mentioned it.

only to follow the same line of thinking as the PC camp: "yeah the registry is crap BUT....."  But nothing.  the registry is crap.  My amiga doesn't have one, it doesn't matter to me, amiga wins.

Bad drivers happen, wierd and wonderful issues with hardware mixes happen.

i see.  Its now a "feature".  Ms PR dept would be proud of that one..

This is one of the drawbacks in having such a diverse hardware landscape.

I see.  Another  "But...." argument

[/QUOTE]

Heh, that was OS3.5, and rigging up an IDE CD-ROM drive on an A1200. Also had to do the same later with a MO drive.

OS 3.5 has many bugs in it.  try OS 3.9, bet it works-unless you have one of those early almost-atapi drives, but thats a firmware fault on the drive, not a fault with the Amiga.

Flaky drivers can and will happen on just about any OS, I've seen it on AmigaOS, Linux, Windows, Mac, BSD and BeOS... They are by no means specific to any OS.

True.  But linux has more of it.  And no I don't care about the "But", that HW manufacturers don't support Linux as much, or there's so much more PC hardware out there.  No "Buts".  It just is.

do you see a theme?  If a PC can't do something as well as an amiga, its "PC users don't need it/use it/care about it/ so it doesn't matter".  To them.  But play that argument in favour of the Amiga as i have, and what happens?  Amiga wins.  Its pointless, ofcourse and its an argument that can never be lost.

[stefcep2]

Woo, because 14 people, out of 1 billion is totally valid for extrapolating how people use their systems. Standby is perfectly valid if you use it.

Well, I deal in facts.  I asked 14 PC users, ranging from occasional to moderate users and none used standby.  None are computer hobbyists.  You are a computer hobbyist.  As other people on this board are.  Most people are not. When you survey the other 1 billion PC users out there, post here and tell us all.
 

Boot time does not matter unless you have to do it an awful lot, on the Amiga, owing to it's lack of MP, it does. On a windows/linux/mac box, you don't, you boot a maximum of once from the last time you turned it on and that is (for the vast majority of cases) all you need.

Like Is said: When you survey the other 1 billion PC users out there, post here and tell me, and then you can use words such as "for the vast majority of cases".

And in case you're wondering, 14 seconds does me just fine, thanks. I booted my system.... about 8 weeks ago now, so 14 seconds of booting in two months. Suddenly the boot time issue comes into context.

Strange: 14 random users is too small a sample size, but you and a handful of people on a computer enthusiast's forum is representative of 1 billion users world wide.  just coz you boot evry 8 weeks is not representative of the whole world, but do go on..

Yes 3.5 took longer to boot, as did 3.9. But once up and running I found it to be much more responsive more of the time then 3.1 with all the hacks/trimmings. Not to mention far less crash happy.

My 3.1 A1200 with all the trimmimgs, as you call them, - that i need- is at least as fast and as stable as 3.9.  I've tried both.

Do you even understand what the word average means? Clearly not.

i took one semester in Statistics at University level, but please do enlighten me on what the word "average" means.

I rigged that system up specifically for that one task. In that role, it is superb. The problem with forcing a system to specialise in one thing, is that you do so at the expense of others.

That you don't is not my concern.

And that you DID, is not mine.  But thats the point isn't it?

*shakes head and walks away.

 sighs deeply and walks away

And a stock 3.1 install is by itself useless.

 No, its still useful.  But it can be made a lot nicer with a few add-ons that cost no money.

ROTFL. Nothing can be the fault of your perfect Amiga can it?

To be clear, The IDEfix installer produced a script for the drive in question, but for whatever reason that script failed every three or four boots. I wrote my own which didn't.

The MO drive was a little more tricky but in the end it worked fine.

Amigans call these "scripts" dosdrivers.  Clearly a third-party utility generated a dosdriver with settings that were not compatible with your drive.  If I had a dollar that thats happened to me with linux or windows over the years I'd be...you know how it goes.

Try telling that to those who run BeOS on modern hardware. Oh, silly me, that's right. Not knowing anything about it you carry on regardless.

I find it interesting that people need to bring up just about any PC hardware-OS combination to suit their argument even when that represents less than an insignificant percentage of PC's in the world, just to prove a point they've lost.  So you can't win the boot argument with Windows so you bring on the BeOS argument.  But BeOS runs on limited hardware and less people know about it than Amiga, so Windows is back. But Windows has the registry and malware.  So linux is in.  But Linux isn't as user-friendly out of the box.  So we are back to Windows.

Yes, you twist anything and everything that you can in order that "Amiga wins". It's childish.

 Its called "mirroring"

Given that the vast, vast vast number of PC users today haven't even heard of an Amiga, much less used one and use their computers in a different way to how the amiga is used, it is one hell of a stretch to say that. I can run a rediculously stripped down system that boots in short order too, but unless it can do what I want in a reliable and stable fashion all bets are off.

As opposed to the name on everyone's lips: BeOS.  i can do what i need to do on it.  And for evrything else, a simple household appliance or a console can outdo the PC.  And no my Amiga isn't ridiculously stripped down.  But its interesting you have to strip your PC down to a non-functional state in order to compete

Ahh, but you didn't play the same argument. See, with the exception of yourself and amigaski, none of the rest of the folk here had to do mental and linguistic backflips in our interpritations or employ massive cognitive dissonance to "win".

Actually a pro-PC user wnat to debate the grammarof the original post:  Is it a question or a statement, as if that made any difference.  A few others pointed out in what instances their amiga was superior to the PC for the intended use.  And they pointed out some of the deficiencies in the PC that are simply not present in the amiga.  But the usual "i don't care/ doesn't matter to me" cry of the masses drowned out any of that.  BTW I hear Copernicus didn't have much support in his day either, but just goes to show that a popular opinion isn't always the right one.

This discussion was originally about technology, a point you clearly missed. Someone made a specific claim of technical superiority, not usage not preference, technical.

 it was about seeing a PC do picture in picture, which the Amiga did years ago.  As is the way of these things, many interpretations can sprout from a single statement and the PC camp turned it into an argument about usage and preference when it suited their case.  Just providing same balance to the discussion.

[stefcep2]

Actually I'm firmly in the user camp these days. I've niether the time nor inclination to go around tweeking and tinkering. I just want to do the things I need to do with the minimum of hassle.

You're on an obscure forum about a commercially dead computer platform espousing the virtues of an even more esoteric OS like BeOS, you are a tinkerer my friend a computer hobbyist.  No shame in that.  But representative of the 1 billion PC users out there you are not.
 

And when you present documentation to show these people you supposedly surveyed you can claim the opposite.

Ha Ha.  Too funny. Here's my "double blind" study: I asked my work mates: "Do you leave your computer on for days weeks or months?  Show of hands please".  No hands went up.  "OK then what do you do?"  We turn it on when we need to use it and then and shut it down when we finished" they said.  

Well see, at least from this side, we have more evidence then your say so.

of a select bunch of experienced computer hobbyists.

Didn't mention one way or the other whether they were needed, as it happens the vast majority were - I would not for instance be happy using an Amiga without Opus Magellen on it.

I used it on Amikit.  I can easily live without it.

1.   a quantity, rating, or the like that represents or approximates an arithmetic mean.

But it is irrelevant, you made an assumption, which in this case was false.

I use laptops. And whist you can get quadcore laptops (which generally produce more heat then the legendary nut roasting P4 mobility ones did) mine isn't.

Does the word "sarcasm" mean anything to you?   I was being sarcastic that a quadcore with 4 gig ram and 600+ mb graphics card was considered "an average PC".  I wasn't really apologizing to you.  Sorry.......err not really, sarcasm again.



Overspecialise and you breed in weakness. More on this further down.

One of the biggest, and for me nicest parts of moving from AmigaOS was that when I installed BeOS or later Linux, I didn't have to prat around with dozens of disks to install all the other software I needed day to day. So from going from half a day to install, optimise and install all the stuff I needed to... around 20 minutes. It was a revelation and is actually something I miss whenever I had to setup a windows environment. Perhaps I'm spoiled in this.

Don't get me wrong:  I did play around with BeOS ages ago.  And I liked it a lot.  In fact IMO it was the most responsive multimedia OS for a PC you could get.  Has many amiga-like qualities.  I think Be even tried to poach many Amiga users.  But alas I never got it to work on a later P3 and so gave up on it.

But interesting point you make.  Once you've set up your Amiga environment, its pretty much done.  Not sure about BeOS, but remind me again what is the experience of the other 99 % of PC users..

BeOS at it's height barely scraped 1% of computer usage. Depending on who you ask, Linux now, with a much more varied landscape has just about hit 1%. The point was that minority OS's all have hardware support troubles.

Good we agree that Linux and BeOS have hardware support troubles.  So lets get on the Windows bandwagon coz it doesn't..but over at MS Land we have that damn pesky registry, where all the malware hides (we think, no-one can be REALLY sure whats meant to be there or not)

Actually, the boot argument is a non starter - it is completely irrelevant when looked at over the long term. It only becomes a concern if your system is prone to crashing a lot.

Or heaven forbid, if you turn your computer off once or twice a day coz you only want to check an email, or a weather report, or check the latest headlines and then leave your home. And do it again when you get home.  For example.

 I brought BeOS into it with regard your "jerky menus" complaint. I pointed out that other systems did it better then the Amiga at high loads.

And those arguments were negated.

You have not shown why having a database to deal with a huge amount of hardware configurations is a bad thing. Nor have you pointed to a more effective solution.

Like I said: over at MS Land we have that damn pesky registry, where all the malware hides (we think, no-one can be REALLY sure whats meant to be there or not).  Yes your security software will know most of the malware most of the time, but not all of it, and even then many (most?) PC users are paying Symentic, Trend, Kaspersky etc for the privelege.

With few exceptions, all OS's have malware for them, even your beloved Amiga.

 Never said otherwise.  But they don't affect my Amiga.

But regardless, if nothing else it shows that all OS's have different strengths and weaknesses.

Now THAT is a Eureka moment!!!!  Nail-Head.

To get it to do what I take for granted on a modern OS (any of the ones I have mentioned), I would then have to add that functionality back in in the form of hacks, third party replacements (Magellen) and a pile of support software (such as MiamiDX) that on any remotely modern OS comes as standard with.

You have a TCP stack in OS 3.5 and Os 3.9.  DOpus 4 is free, it does the job.

Expectations change. I can do more with an EeePC then I ever could with even a top of the line Amiga and for a fraction of the cost. Amiga, as elegant as the whole thing was could not meet my needs, if it meets yours great. But the rest of the world has moved on.

Absolutely expectations change.  But there still a few little things or not so little things the PC could learn from the Amiga concept.

By the same token though, taking the oposite side doesn't make you right either.

Hey you were the one who sought a safety-in-numbers, not me.

[stefcep2]

And you had the audacity to call my A1200 machine a frankenstein?

Man, Karlos I cut you deep with that "Frankenstein" thing back there.  I really am sorry.  Ok. Look you have an "expanded" Amiga.  Better?

Executive is a complete hack into exec. A very well written one, I might add and one I was happy to use for many years. However, since we're on the subject, why don't you read the documentation and see where the entire motivation and basis for Executive came from? That's right, Un*x. All linux kernels have such a scheduler and modern ones are significantly improved compared to those around when Executive was written.

Actually I did read the guide for executive about a decade ago. From memeory, Executive offers more than one unix-like scheduler.  It offers several, some that have nothing to do with Unix. Which you can select and turn off without rebooting.  Can any other PC OS do this?

In any case nothing wrong with gaining inspiration from others.  Hell it worked for Microsoft.  And the scheduler in Linux was a subject of debate about 12-18 months as it was viewed as good server scheduler, but not that good for a desktop.  Hell an mp3 playing back could make GUI stutter.  Things may have improved, don't know, couldn't be bothered fartsing around with it anymore, but I play with linux from time to time.  Still you can't deny that multi-tasking on the Amiga rocks after all these years. even compared to the latest and greatest from MS.

What's better about the new schedulers?

[stefcep2]

There's AROS X86....

You have a choice of schedulers?   That you can change without re-booting?

Well thats good for the large army of PC's with Aros users out there..

[stefcep2]

Given the resources available to the Amiga, yes, what it does with them is nothing short of outstanding by any measure you care to throw at it. No one here I think would deny that.



Combined with ever increasing levels of optimisation on the various window managers, they seem to make for a more.. Responsive? Free flowing perhaps? user experience. Certainly I've not seen an MP3 stutter type issue for a good many years and even then only on very very overtaxed hardware.

That said, if you used lighter weight window managers such as Enlightenment or IceWM, you tended to be ok even on (relatively) old hardware.

here was an article that I read at the time about the very issue of the multi-tasking abilities of Windows Linux and AmigaOS, by  a kernel developer.  Its an interesting read.  things may have moved on since then, ofcourse.

[stefcep2]

Simply put when the Amiga is running a CPU that is capable of decoding a 1080p Blu-Ray DVD and doing something else at the same time, then I'll believe that it's as fast as a pc or faster.

PC's that are 15 years newer than the last classic amiga that was built have trouble doing this.  What exactly is your point?

[stefcep2]

You might want to work on that then, it came across as pure condescension.

Hmm I thought you took it to be an apology.

Varies depending on their system, many folks these days have vender supplied rescue disks they can lob in to restore in the event of a cataclysm, which not only restores the OS, but the applications. Others, perhaps those who bought their systems from smaller outlets might have an OEM disk and effectively have to reinstall their apps all over again. And then of course there are those that build their own.

i was more referring to the endless updates, some of which will result in a non-bootable system (Linux especially), some which will result in hardware not working as well as before (eg I installed the latest Nvidia drivers for my Windows XP PC, and then could only get VESA), most which just plug security holes, a few which add additional features, all of which seem to slow down your PC then what it was before.

Given the vast amount of options Windows supports, what would you propose as a replacement of the registry database? Remembering that both BeOS and Linux have similar systems built into them.

Here's one possibility:  I understand that having drivers for a lot of hardware allows things like plug and play to work.  But it also means you have information on your system about hardware that will never be used. So why not make hardware with built in flash that holds the drivers for that hardware only.  The software in flash identifies the hardware to the OS, the OS then installs the driver off the flash.  Information only relevant to actual hardware that is installed is then stored by the OS.

The stack that came with 3.5 and 3.9 didn't work with my ISP.

Strange.  Its also strange that you installed Idefix with OS 3.5 to get your IDE CDROM to work.  OS 3.5 has an updated scsi.device with atapi support.  If you install OS 3.5 over an existing Workbench 4.0/3.1 that has Idefix installed then the OS 3.5 will use the atapi.device from Idefix.  If you install Idefix after you install OS 3.5, you may get a conflict.  

Dopus 4 was too limited for me. Either way, functionality that I expected, nay, demanded had to be added into the base install.

fair enough.  Personally i find Dopus 4 fine, actually i even use it to manage my Win XP files running it under Winuae.  With the death of the parent company there was very little official OS support, so that fell on third parties like GPSoft.  

In many ways I feel things like the EeePC and Ebox are pretty much there in terms of concept. Macs possibly more so.

I also feel that those small cheep computers will likely pave the way for more appliance like devices that offer base office and web functionality.

actually office and web are pretty much the only thing that the PC will dominate in the future: console games outsell PC games, and despite Mediacentre/MythTV/Viiv the PC doesn't dominate digital TV/DVD/Bluray/PVR's in the lounge room, where consumer appliances rule.

[stefcep2]

Really ? Now do this simple test:

1. At idle, open a WB window full of icons (let's say 50).

2. Now run something that eats quite a lot of CPU, let's say 80% (like a video player)

3. Close, and open the same window again

Notice the difference. And tell me again that your input is prioritised...

This is where modern OS perform a lot better. First of all they use cache for any sort of things. So this kind of window wouldn't cause all icons to be reloaded again... Then they scale a lot better with high CPU usage... Something Exec cannot do. Because it's, well, simple...

Firstly a drawer with 50 icons is not common and indicates bad organisation of his data by the user.

Secondly, I had Cinema 4d do a render, i could instantaneously select the window, close it an re-open it, and the window was populated a little slower than before but I didn't notice the wait pointer, and yes, it executed MY COMMAND, rather then making me click on the close gadget half a dozen times, and then another half a dozen times to open the folder again.

As regards to caching, you can enable directory caching, thats a function of the file system, has been for a long time.  Works even better with SFS or PFS3.

[stefcep2]

If by that time scale you mean PC's currently on sale, then I'd only be able to agree with the caveat that the observation it applies to some systems. You can buy/build PCs in the 500 quid range that will manage 1080p playback perfectly well. You don't even need a high end graphics card, my work Radeon X300 with MPlayer under fedora manages it, the principal limitation there is the fact it's a single core P4 (which is pretty much yesterdays kit now).

i'm talking PC's that were on sale barely 2 years ago.  On my Win XP Athlon 4800+ using integrated graphics, 1080i Full HDTV occassionally skips a frame.  

What else can you do when you play 1080p on the pentium 4?

[stefcep2]

rotfl; what sort of Internet can a fresh install AOS3.1 reach anyway? Dodging malware because your computer is so ancient isn't a benefit for your system. Otherwise clearly the C64 is much better then an Amiga system because it can't get any malware at all.

"fresh" as in without security software

[stefcep2]

It's not that it isn't possible, it's that doing so makes for a retarded design.

here's some facts:  Linux can and does offer the user a choice of schedulers. A different scheduler does change the behaviour of the OS significantly.  The fact that more than one scheduler exists on Linux suggests the default scheduler's performance doesn't perform as well in all usage scenarios, otherwise there would be no need for a different scheduler.  So allowing the user to choose a different scheduler is not such a retarded idea in the eyes of Linux developers themselves.  Now here's the rub: the scheduler is built into the kernel: and its one scheduler per kernel.  You wanna change your scheduler, then you use a different kernel.  You don't simply switch of the old scheduler, and select the new one from a list of schedulers that you'd like.  like you do with amiga and executive.

[stefcep2]

You missed the point of my reply. You argued that pc operating systems can't change the scheduler and have it valid after a reboot. I said that makes for a retarded design. You can never be sure of what's hanging around in memory after a reset. That is all.

I argued that the amiga can change the scheduler without a reboot,  but you can switch the Amiga on and off if you like to clear what's in memory, its not as if it takes any longer than a soft reset...wait a minute..thats anther argument isn't it...  Actually i don't think windows can change the scheduler at all, reboot or not.  And Linux needs a different kernel altogether to boot from to change the scheduler.  And who knows what other changes you didn't bargain for might be in that kernel..

[stefcep2]

Only time I've ever had a linux update crap out an install was once when moving from Ubuntu 5.x to 6.x.

I've ended up with a non-booting PCLOS just by installing a SNES emulator from the repo.  A dependency was updated, which KDE needed an update for, which was available but not installed by synaptic.

Which in turn would mean that either all OS's adopt compatability for these drivers, or more likely, windows alone gets drivers. The problem is that at some point the OS has to deal with all these different drivers regardless if they're supplied by CD or on onboard flash, now if you've only got to deal with a tiny handful then a loose collection of files as in the Amiga will almost certainly suffice. But at some point this will become very difficult to manage and maintain. The logical way to do with sorting it all out is a database. Given that many other OS's take this approach, perhaps the registry, far from being a bad idea, may simply have earned a bad reputation from the bad old days of windows 9x...

theres a logical leap here ( non-Windows support aside): why does my PC need to keep a database of thousands of hardware pieces that are not and will not be present on my machine, if each piece of hardware that i can buy comes with it own self installing drivers in flash ROM?

And if a hardware manufacturer wants to support alternative OS's whats stopping them from putting a driver on the same flash rom?  And what's stopping the alternative OS users from reading the Win driver in ROM and reverse engineering it, isn't that what they soemtimes do now anyway?

Nono. To get to the point where I could install 3.5/3.9 I had to get idefix to do it's thing, I then had to go back and edit the script so that it worked reliably. This is before I installed 3.5.

Mind you this was all years and years ago now.

the atapi system was a hack to let cheap IDE interfaces-which were ubiquitous on the PC to recognise IDE-equivalents of peripheral which were available for scsi, because PC's didn't come with scsi interfaces.  IDEFix was a commercial third part utility that attempted to give the same functionality to the IDE interface on the A1200 and A4000.  It was therefore a utility based on a hacked idea.  Its not unexpected that early versions of IDEfix may not have worked 100%. No doubt you knew this.  Its not the Amiga's fault that it didn't comply with what was a hacked PC interface design initially.  IDEFix 97 worked well, and OS 3.5 and OS 3.9 included this functionality as standard.