os3.1 - Facelift to look/work like 3.9?

[stefcep2]

Hiya,

I used WinUAE with a CF reader to setup all of my OS3.9 installs.  It's very easy, you can just mount your Amiga's HD (the CF card) as the HD under WinUAE and then install 3.9 (using the PC's CDROM drive).  Stick your installed CF back in your Amiga and you're done

yep thats the way to do it if you have no cdrom for your A1200

[stefcep2]

I had "fun" patching my Amiga systems today. Spent nearly half the day upgrading all sorts of 68k resident files to be 020+ optimized. On a dead serious note, my A2500 and A3000 (especially) seem to really fly now. Both of these systems are more responsive (button clicks to applications opening and general WB stuff I am talking) than just about any other computer I've ever used.

Only thing I really miss from my OS3.1 A3000 system compared to my OS3.9 A2500 is the fact that the latter knows what to do with certain files natively. Lemme 'splain... I guess I am aware of the GUIUnarc program (although I've never used it) for 3.1... be nice if, when you double-click on an archived file, that a GUI would pop up like it does with 3.9 giving you options. Other thing I really miss is the smooth scrolling of files within a window using the vertical slider (I plopped what I thought were the appropriate Gadgets into Sys:Classes/Gadgets to no avail) and how Icons are drawn in OS3.9 (WHDLoad icons specifically). They're pretty and colorful - totally opposite in 3.1. Oh and double-clicking on a .txt file, a .jpg/.bmp, etc., Amigaguide should never bring up a frickin' CLI text time requester. All that shit should just "work" and be viewable when I double-click on it. lol   Yes, I think I'm totally spoiled by now with using a Mac all these years. :lol:

I think I could be totally happy with an 030 system and 3.1 if a few of these issues could be tweaked. Not too far off really. I don't mind going up into the requester, backspacing before a compressed file and typing in lha e...  lol

For archive extraction, I use Arcextract.  Its icon sits on the desktop, drop and drop your archive into it and up pops a requester asking you where to extract.

Not sure how i did it but you can get jpg, jpegs, gifs to open with viewtek by double clicking on them, and i used muchmore for the text file. viewing.  I used juno(spelling) to edit text.  Man I've forgotten so much.

[stefcep2]

?

Anyways, I happily prefer RAWBInfo and ClassAct/Reaction apps over MUI apps, I cant really say I have noticed that MUI is any faster or less RAM gobling, more the other way around really.

MUI was always slower and more RAM intensive, but once you got to '030 and 8 meg ram territory it didn't matter.  MUI was also far more configurable and powerful.  I seem to recall rumours that early on in the planning of 3.5, H and P wanted to use MUI over ClassAct, but didn't want to pay the asking price.  As it turned out I think MUI became the foundation for the GUI for Ambient,  shame really, MUI on a 3.1 machine was lightyears away ahead of any other GUI on any platform at the time.

[stefcep2]

You said it! Me too man, but it is fun going back and tweaking these beasts to get 'em to do what you want 'em to do. Thanks for the tidbits. I'll have to do some more investigating. I've definitely forgotten as much, if not more as I once knew. Lots of variables why that is, but let's just say as the more time goes on - with the internet and "computing" where it is now, I'm really digging the simplicity and the 'getting back to basics' (hardly) computing experience that one receives playing around with the Amiga again - after all these years.

that was the thing about Amiga.  For all the stuff that was lacking built in at the OS level, someone somewhere had written a program to cover it, usually for free, and stuck it on Aminet for anyone to enjoy.  

I can remember seeing OS 3.1 screen shots of high end workbench screens that looked every bit as beautiful as what's available today, and each one customized and looking and working differently to the other.  New Menu systems, gui driven archiver systems, multicolored icon systems, filetyping systems, new GUI systems, docks bars, souped-up CLI, all for free.  IMO, the Amiga shareware/freeware scene had no peer in quantity and quality, and the programmers were so talented.