Hello my first Thread

[Karlos]

As this thread isn't really news, I've moved it to "new user introductions"

[Karlos]

hi Templario, you will soon find out that it's best to not talk too much about AmigaOS4.x on this site anymore unfortunately...just a friendly word of warning

Nonsense. It's fine to talk about OS4, just don't expect everybody to share your enthusiasm for it. The only points to note is that the Operating Systems Specific Discussions section does not have an OS 4.x specific sub-forum (actually, there is a one for 4.x compatible hardware discussion). AmigaOS is considered to be everything from 1.x to 4.x inclusive. Likewise, MorphOS is not split into 1.x / 2.x sub-forums and AROS is not split into distro-specific sub-forums.

[Karlos]

I really wish it was nonsense....anyhow I hope the OP finds my comment to be nonsense too

Well, in my experience it is. There's no amiga.org bias to/against OS4, MorphOS, AROS or classic. Any perceived bias is merely a reflection of us, site members. Discussion of any and all is welcome.

[Karlos]

On the flip side of the coin, I've used OS4.0 on the same 240MHz 603 with 256MB, motherboard IDE and basic PCMCIA network and just vanilla AGA.

It works fine provided that you apply the same common sense you do to 3.x and remember that just because you are now using a CPU with up to 5-10x the clock speed of your 68K, your native chipset is no faster than it ever was:

1) You stick to the same rules you use for native displays that you do under 3.x. That is to say, don't use 256 colour dblPAL modes and the like. I ran a flicker-fixed 16-colour PAL laced display and it was fine.
2) Turn off all the gradient fills and related candy. They are designed for RGB mode displays. Hence they don't look so hot on a 16 colour display anyway and they do slow down rendering.
3) Turn off solid window moving/sizing. AGA/ECS is no faster than it was under 3.x.
4) Don't use anti-aliased fonts, for the same reason as (2).
5) Replace the default 4.x RGBA icon set with icons from 3.x. Again, they are designed for real RGB displays, not indexed colour modes on planar hardware.

If you apply these simple steps, you will find that far from being as slow as a tortoise, it's perfectly usable. OS4 cannot make your AGA display go faster and the default installation is heavily biased towards RTG.

Of course, just like OS3.x, the experience on RTG is much improved.

[Karlos]

I'm not disputing your experience of it, I'm just providing some balance. Those settings worked fine for me, 256 colours / solid moving / gradient filled / antialias font / ARGB icon stuff made the system very slow. Ditching those, corrected the problem.

Other things that may help are editing the kicklayout to remove unwanted modules and using SFS rather than FFS, but I don't know if that applies to your situation or not.

I certainly dispute the claim it was as fast as a "chip ram only" machine that you made previously, I mean if that's not exaggeration then there had to be something seriously wrong somewhere. Running 3.x my 040 on just chip ram is insanely slow.

[Karlos]

Try running your 68K only setup without any PPC datatypes, media players or anything like that. You may have gotten used to your PPC doing some of the lifting in the background that you forgot about.

[Karlos]

I remember my first thread....

I think I remember mine...

In fact, it might even have been to do with threads...

[Karlos]

I think I remember mine...

In fact, it might even have been to do with threads...

:lol: I think I found it: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=525

Certainly not my first post, but I think the first thread I created. Sure enough, it was thread related, too.

[Karlos]

I never use datatypes (worst thing ever invented for 68K).

Erm, since when did you have the choice? In OS3.x, <> alone uses datatypes for all image and sound decoding.

I never use any MorphOS progs prefer the plain vanilla PPC code anything I've tested, for example Lame or Frodo run much faster and better using plain PPC when compared to their MorphOS counterparts, so for me MorphOS on my A1200s is a big no no....  

Ok, just so we are clear, you've actually tried MorphOS 1.4.x (or possibly an earlier version) on your BizzardPPC and found native applications for it to be slower than their basic WOS/PUP versions under OS3.x?

PS: This threads meant to be Templario's introduction not a debate on OS 4.X, PPC's or when did you first post a thread, apologies to Templario for the hijacking of your thread...

I don't think he'll mind, it was a test thread to make sure he knew how to do it, not a formal introduction.

[Karlos]

Ok, just so we are clear, you've actually tried MorphOS 1.4.x (or possibly an earlier version) on your BizzardPPC and found native applications for it to be slower than their basic WOS/PUP versions under OS3.x?

You see, I only ask, because on my MorphOS 1.4.5 installation disk's MorphOS.readme file it states:

Code: [Select]


$VER: MorphOS.readme 1.4.5 Release 4 (6.6.2006)

Hardware supported:
-------------------
- Amiga4000, 4000T with phase5 CyberStormPPC
- Amiga3000 with phase5 CyberStormPPC
- Amiga1200 with phase5 BlizzardPPC
- Grex PCI slots

Graphic cards supported:
------------------------
- Voodoo3/4/5 (with GRex)
- SiS6326, SiS305 (with GRex)
- Permedia2/Permedia2v (either BVisionPPC, CyberVisionPPC or GRex)
- PicassoIV (68k driver)
- CyberVision 64 (68k driver)
- CyberVision 64/3D (68k driver)

AGA chipset is NOT supported.


So, fine on the BlizzardPPC side, but you've said a few times you have no RTG card at all. I was just wondering what you were using for your Ambient/Workbench/ display, given that according to the last line cited above, AGA isn't actually supported.



Obviously if the MorphOS team have added that line in error, they should be informed.

[Karlos]

I've never read much of the docs for MorphOS and can't tell you which versions I tried as I deleted them all a long time ago, yep still no RTG board.
...
MorphOS Version = Window on Workbench no option for full screen/ skip every 2 to 3 frames (depending on game) No Audio

Erm, ok... You know how I wasn't convinced about the OS4 being as slow as you made out? I have to say I am just an incy bit sceptical now too...

It's the fact you were able to run it in a "Window on Workbench", on MorphOS without a supported display mode. The mind boggles. How did you persuade it to open an AGA mode in the first place?

[Karlos]

@ Karlos & Franko

Keep up the OS4/PPC/MorphOS chat please guys as it's very interesting :drink:

Well, I can see I am going to have to revisit my 1.4.5 installation and possibly one or two older versions, because other than the odd game or demo that took over the native hardware, I never got it to open an intuition screen under AGA.

[Karlos]

@franko

I did wonder if you meant WarpOS as it does sound superficially similar to "MorphOS", but you seemed quite insistent.

@kronos

I can't even remember getting that version working at all, let alone on AGA.

[Karlos]

@franko

Now that this MOS/WOS mystery has been put to rest, what's your specific beef with datatypes?

I'm a bit surprised to hear them referred to as the "worst thing ever invented for 68K". How is a modular system of file descriptors and corresponding codecs that allows applications to open new formats they couldn't support previously a bad thing?

If anything, my only criticism of them has been that their implementation did not run far enough, support for exporting data in a particular format was often overlooked. As an import mechanism, however, they are incredibly useful.

[Karlos]

@ Karlos

Right then... DataTypes... where do I start... :rolleyes:

Generally, using Datatypes in comparison to a dedicated self contained util are slow in comparison...

That depends very strongly on the datatype. On OS3.9, the picture.datatype is capable of using PPC for colour remapping and dithering. That made a big difference on my machine. Coupled with PPC capable datatypes for png, jpg etc. I found that multiview ended up being significantly faster than most "dedicated" 68K image viewers that were capable of viewing such formats directly (Hardly a surprise, considering the performance difference between 68040@25MHz versus 603e@240MHz).

The modular concept of Datatypes is another big no no for me, I prefer code to be one piece (ie: self contained) where possible and not rely on installing lots of extra libraries and other small files scattered here there and everywhere all over your HD...

The whole OS is modular and always has been. If a criticism of datatypes is that it's modular, then you might as well regard the whole OS as the "worst thing ever invented for 68K" for exactly the same reason.

Far from being scattered all over the place, datatypes live in SYS:Devs/Datatypes (descriptors) and SYS:Classes/Datatypes for the actual implementations. Client applications also require SYS:Libs/datatypes.library.

I know so called self contained utils use various OS libraries and sometime some external ones, but these are usually contained in the ROM and not scattered all over the HD to the same extent that most Datatypes requires.

Again, scattered is a big misnomer. The AmigaDOS directory structure is very well organised compared to most operating systems.

It's one of my biggest bugbears on the Amiga is a program or util that uses this so called modular approach and is not as self contained as it could be, the likes of MUI or ImageStudio for example and the hundereds of so called modules that they use scattered all over the place...

MUI classes and libraries pretty much live in the one place on your HD too.

I reckon my reasons for disliking such things goes way back to the day's when things mostly ran from floppies and if you had 4Meg of fastram this was a luxury (MUI was totally unusable if you had no HD). This was when I first began coding in 68k and I followed the path of what most coders were doing back then, make your prog as small as possible, self contained as much as possible and to run on as basic a system as much as you could.

I know those constraints don't apply as much today, with almost everyone having HDs, plenty of extra ram & accelerators, but it's just a habit and method that has stuck with me to this day. I very rarely use Workbench to do anything and operate mainly from the Cli/Shell and a customised version of DirWork that I made cos I don't like Dopus that much either, but thats another story...

You have a BlizzardPPC with 256MB of RAM on it and I strongly doubt you are still using a floppy-only system. I don't see how your criticism of stuff being "scattered" all over your HD really apply any more.