New Kickstart 3.9.1 68k on the way

[olsen]

Commodore ingenieers were paid. Me no... Another big troll...

...


Because these updates from the 3.9 were from SuperTroller : he will cause me trouble later...

So... what exactly is your justification for picking one component over another, considering its qualities and origins?

It's not as if the components of Kickstart 3.1 were flawless, and neither is the case for the 3.0 components. For example, bugs in the 68k scsi.device V40 are the reason why scsi.device V39 is used in the V40 A600/A500/A2000 ROM.

Are you going to pick an older component, with known issues, because you don't want the hassle of dealing with a developer who worked on a more recent version because he questions your choices?

Knowing what went into building the original ROMs, compatibility issues, hardware dependencies and space constraints, I consider your goals extremely ambitious. Good luck! This is certainly going to be interesting to watch

[olsen]

I see great motivation in the work that Cosmos does.

I agree, but as far as I can tell this is a hobby project, meaning that it will be finished when it will be finished, with no guaranteed feature list, with properties determined solely by what Cosmos considers appropriate. Nothing wrong with that, I'd say, as long as you do not expect more, such as bug fixes or changes for the better that would involve major rewrites of the existing software.

I also Thomas point here that if this effort of Cosmos would be coordinated more with the OS4 guys or with the AROS guys the end result might even be better.

I doubt that this is going go happen, seeing how Cosmos has picked his priorities, and how he engages with other developers who may not share his outlook on the work being done.

Updating the Amiga operating system is a tough task to begin with, and if it is to be taken beyond a hobby project, the work will have to involve a plan as to what goals should be achieved, a development work schedule, documentation, testing, collecting feedback and a release schedule. This calls for a coordinated team, and a one-man-army approach is likely to be overwhelmed by the workload.

Any such team effort will require motivation, time and likely money. Vote with your wallet if you want to see this type of thing happening. If you don't consider this worthwhile, which certainly is a valid choice, you may have to accept the constraints under which Cosmos' project evolves, and which results is produces.

[olsen]

I meant the internal controllers provided with scsi.device in kickstart, like A600, A1200, A4000, A3000, A4000T and I have probably forgotten some. Those are mainly the reason why there are different kickstarts in the first place.

You are correct.

The SCSI "scsi.device" versions in the A3000 and A4000T ROMs are built to assume that the hardware required for SCSI operations (DMA controller, WD or NCR SCSI chip, respectively) is present. This built-in hardware is not placed in AutoConfig space.

The IDE "scsi.device" present in the A600HD, A1200HD and A4000/A4000T can auto-detect the presence of the required Gayle/Gary hardware, which as far as I know is not a given for the A3000/A4000T specific SCSI hardware.

The other reason why there are ROMs specific to the A3000 and A4000 models is in that the RAM controller (Ramsey) may have to be asked to support page mode for the peculiar type of DRAM that may be installed in these machines. As far as I can tell this does not seem to be necessary, though. Support for page mode (also called "static column mode") was intended to improve DRAM performance on the A3000, using the 68030 under certain circumstances. In practice the gains were not as significant. If I read my A3000T service manual correctly, Ramsey should boot with safe defaults, which makes switching to page mode unnecessary; it's also quite difficult to do without crashing, because you have to fiddle with the Ramsey configuration while not running afoul of ongoing DRAM refresh and other flaming hoops to jump through.

Finally, different types of ROMs are required by different machines, with respect to where the kernel is to look for ROMTags, how much stack space it may use, etc. If I remember correctly, the big difference here is between the machines built around the architecture of the A3000 (which includes the A4000 and A1200 models) and those which precede it (this being the A2000 and the A500; I think the A600 belongs here, too).

In a nutshell, if you're going to bootstrap the system, from the bare metal, in a real Amiga, then you will have a devil of a time getting the basic three "scsi.device" variations to work together in ROM: one of them will always crash.

[olsen]

No. If for example an A3000 is not detected, the scsi_3000.device inside my kickstart won't init... You really take me for a beginner in coding...

Please don't assume that I make assumptions about your abilities.

How do you detect the A3000 hardware, as opposed to the A4000 hardware? As far as I could claim to understand the specs, the A3000 hardware was not designed to support auto-detection of features, as opposed to the Gary/Gail hardware used in the A4000/A1200/A600, respectively.

[olsen]

How do you detect the A3000 hardware, as opposed to the A4000 hardware?

With Ramsey !

Hm... both A3000 and A4000 have Ramsey chips installed, no other shipping model does. There's a hardware version register at $DE0043 which can be read and should contain a specific value. Reading from the Ramsey control register at $DE0003 should be possible from supervisor mode (with trap handlers, etc. installed and armed), and if the system just came up then it probably holds a default pattern. That could work, for A3000 and A4000 detection. To discriminate between the two, the Denise/Lisa version could be used, or the presence of the Gary/Gayle chip (if this works on the A3000).

That looks plausible to me. Now, how do you discriminate between the A4000 and the A4000T?

[olsen]

Olsen, i may be reading this wrong,but static column ram and page mode are 2 different things. static column is just that static ram,and page mode ram is more akin to the fpm style ram. the ramsey revision 4 had a bug in it where when the a3000 is used with a A3640, it will not detect and use static column ram properly,hence page mode zips must be in the first bank to thwart this bug(page mode and static column can be mixed in this situation still-but all runs in pagemode). This was fixed in ramsey 7 which detects the ram correctly as i understand. This has been my real life experience using the real machines.

You must be correct. My documentation (A3000T service manual, page 2-58) on the Ramsey control register does not mention static column mode by name, it only mentions page mode prominently.

Some snooping in the A3000/A4000 bonus module suggests that "static column mode" a combination of the burst, wrap and page mode options. The bonus module enables these options and then performs a non-destructive read/write test to memory. If the data read back matches what was stored then static column mode can be left enabled, otherwise the DRAM does not support static column mode and the default control options are restored.

That test for static column mode is skipped if the Ramsey version suggests that the chip is too old.

[olsen]

The A1200,A3000,A4000 & CD32 versions are 020+ optimized .. not working on 68000.

I did not check the details just yet, but the use of '020 specific code is rare in the bulk of the operating system, which would be components such as intuition.library, graphics.library, workbench.library, etc. The 'C' compilers used at the time were not considered sufficiently mature to produce '020 code suitable for ROM code.

This leaves components written in assembly language, or those which use assembly language subroutines. This would likely include the utility.library which contains integer math routines optimized for '020 CPUs.

The CD32 ROM is peculiar, by the way, because of its size, which like the CDTV ROM includes all the assets of the user interface (sound, graphics, animations, etc.), the CD-ROM file system and game "middleware".

The A3000 is very special .. the ONLY rom with real FPU-code inside !!!

I would expect that this is in "mathieeesingbas.library".

A600/A1200 includes some PCMCIA-code.

Yes, and the operating system auto-detects the presence of the hardware. For example, the A600 ROM is used in the A500+, the A600 and the A2000, if I remember correctly. Of these only the A600 has the necessary hardware to support PCMCIA devices.

A3000/4000 includes "bonus" for onboard fastmem.

Yes, and it may be that this could be safely omitted, or the necessary hardware could be auto-detected. As it is, the "bonus" module is hard-coded to expect the Ramsey chip to be present and acts accordingly.

[olsen]

Thomas isn't stupid, he's simply stating copyright law... If you don't like the law, you need to take that up with the elected representive for your country's government.

The words "stupid" and "copyright law" tend to go awfully well together these days, though. But just because one fails to take the laws seriously it does not follow that they do not apply in this case.

[olsen]

Let me clear some points up for you:

1.  I'm not sure what you mean by "creative work" but if you are referring to a copyright it is 70 years after the death of the author.  Creator is vague and has different meanings in copyright.

2.  If you mean "Creative Commons" then you are going to be really surprised.

3.  Finally, none of this applies to Cosmos.  He is French. Viva la France!

I am not a lawyer. The last time I had a look at how these things play out my impression was as follows:

1) There's the Berne convention, which covers works created by authors and those created for and owned by corporations. Protection covers 70 years after the death of the author, and 120 years after the creation of the work as owned by a corporation.

2) The protection/restrictions given by this legal framework do apply to citizens of the member states of the European Union.

3) Ownership of the Amiga operating system and its components, as well as works created for the AmigaOS updates 3.5 and 3.9 which may be relevant here is rather well-defined.

4) Authors and owners of said Amiga operating system and AmigaOS update 3.5/3.9 components may not want to enforce these rights, or may not be in a position to do so. It does not follow that their rights, in particular the moral rights of the authors, are forfeit if they do not enforce them.

[olsen]

Have there yet been any legal dispute over such things in "amiga land"? No? If noone takes any action to upheld the copyrights of the works, then for all practical purposes there is no longer any copyright on the works, regardless of the 70 years mickey mouse law.

From what I gather, it is not quite so straightforward. Copyright persists even if the owner does not enforce it. It persists even if the owner cannot be found (orphaned works).

This is in fact one of the "bugs" of the framework. For example, the unpublished letters of British soldiers who perished in WWI cannot be shown in UK libraries and museums because copyright protection for these "orphaned works" will persist until the year 2039. And that's a consequence of copyright reform, as otherwise the protection granted would have expired following 70 years after the death of the respective author (which would be around, say, as late as 1918 plus 70 years and a bit = 1988/1989).

Even if you wish things were different, and if you decided to ignore the possible ramifications, there may still be consequences to your actions for acting against the law.

[olsen]

I must have a half dozen of his patches on my system.  Every single one has been just the patch file, and required a copy of the original file to work.  I've also got some of @Thomas Richter's stuff on my system, as well.  With the way these two go at it, it's a wonder my Amiga hasn't exploded!  

You guys are making a mountain out of a molehill, here, IMHO.  Bunch of cranky old men arguing about copyright law for long-dead software.  Life is too short!  :furious:

Even if we accepted that the law's authority is rather shaky and has negative side-effects (orphaned works, no motive to preserve them, etc.), our position will be weaker if we work against the rules of the law. You can't sell it, you cannot sell derivate works, you're basically reduced to bootlegging. This is not how you care for the Amiga, in my opinion.

[olsen]

Olsen,

As a University Professor I had to teach basic copyright and patent law.  They are very complicated with an endless list of exceptions depending on certain situations.  I could list all the ones that come to mind but I just don't care enough about this thread.  :-)

However, without comparing and contrasting French and American copyright laws I have no idea what parts of copyright law are the same in both countries.  However, I can tell you from starting my own company that patents laws are very different from the US and Europe.  Having experienced that, I am skeptical copyright laws in the US are the same in France.

My super objective was really pointing out that one cannot blindly apply US Law to the rest of the world.  Though, it does seem like we do that too often.

Thanks for the reply though!

-P

Yes, this is a complicated subject. As a layperson I can barely hope to avoid misinterpreting the state of affairs, so what I picked up is probably no better than an opinion.

As for the copyright law governing American and French citizes, I believe it may actually be identical today. If I remember correctly, copyright law was harmonized rather recently both within the European Union, and between the US and the European Union.

Strangely, the expiration times were extended as a result of that process, which has certain-side effects that may not be beneficial to society as a whole, on either side of the Atlantic. Culture and its artefacts are not preserved unless somebody actively cares for them, and incentives for preserving these usually work best if there is some money to be made in doing so. If that is not possible, the works protected by copyright may be lost.

We already had that for almost all the film output of the silent movie era, which only covered some 20-30 years of the 20th century, and it was considered an ephemeral medium in the first place. Who knows what will survive 120 years of copyright protection, what will still be relevant, and what would have been relevant it if were not allowed to decay.

[olsen]

Who's selling anything here? As Cosmos has stated multiple times, all his patches are free to download. He only pulled them recently because (as the quote on his website said, anyway) someone else was selling them over on EAB.

Hell, I've been downloading his patches for years. After all this kerfluffle, I feel like I should probably send the guy a donation or something, LOL.

................................................
 
 IMHO it's because of all of this public slagging that developers get fed up and leave our community. So, a round of applause, everyone. Good job!

I have a dog in this fight, because I'm actually selling Amiga software, specially made for the platform. As nice as it is to create software, it's one thing to do it as a hobby or for personal enjoyment, but it's another thing to be able to take time off your regular job and use that time to build something complex that might call for a larger audience.

As far as I know us old time Amiga software developers are few today. Many have moved on, maybe moved up to more rewarding tasks. The thing is, if you want to spend time on a project, it will cost you. You won't be able to spend that time with your family, you won't be able to spend that time on your day job. Something has to give.

If you are satisfied with rebuilding Kickstart ROM contents, which amounts to assembling existing components, then that's fair. Some of us would, however, like to go beyond that and build new components, build better components, make things that do not exist yet, and combine that into Kickstart ROMs and Workbench distributions.

This kind of work is likely to cost money, and you cannot appropriate existing code that others have a claim to and charge money for that. This is what I'm getting at: more complex work requires that the foundations you are building upon are legit.

[olsen]

If i remember correctly ... you were the last person who compiled a complete 3.1 rom out of the sources, with the latest compiler versions ... saving some bytes here and there.
with exec.library v40.11 and "escom ag copyright" text ... including a 40.68/40.70 for a500/600/2000 models (not that 40.63 stuff).

I believe Heinz Wrobel worked on those parts, and he also built a special ROM image for the "Walker" machine, using existing components and modifications made which were needed to use the machine.

The work which I did eventually produced a complete working AmigaOS 3.1 build which runs completely native under AmigaOS. That build saved *a lot* of ROM space because intuition and other components could now be rebuilt using compiler technology not available in 1994, when the last ROM images were created by Commodore.

did you know the current owner of the "rights" on aos 3.x-sources?
escom -> gateway -> and now acer ?

I believe that Hyperion owns these rights, as a result of the lawsuit between Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion.

[olsen]

Did AmigaInc. ever owned the rights?
I thought, they only owned the brand.

I'm sorry, this is not my field of expertise. I could only speculate that if a product is sold which requires the assent of the brand owner, then that assent must have been given. Whoever owns the brands and the trademarks must be public information, and is likely available online. I wouldn't where to start looking, though.

As a sideeffect, the rights and patents are still at escom (acquired by gateway, acquired by acer).

It's been more than 20 years since Commodore folded. Assuming that Commodore was granted patents in that final year, then these patents have likely expired by now.

Gateway was said to have bought the Commodore patents along with the other assets because it allowed them to save money on patent licensing.

How the Amiga's keyboard operates, and how it communicates with the main computer was covered by patents. The IBM PC design was covered by patents (probably still is), and if you wanted to build and sell an IBM PC compatible machine, you needed to pay IBM license fees. That was back when IBM was still building these machines. Funny thing, the way the 1990'ies incarnation of the IBM PC keyboard was connected to the main computer was covered by the Commodore patent for the Amiga keyboard. Instead of having IBM pay Commodore for the use of the patent, the companies traded licenses, and thus saved production costs. Gateway did the same thing as Commodore did.

That Amiga keyboard patent must have been filed in the 1980'ies when the Amiga was new. Which probably means that it has expired around 2005-2006.

There is likely no patent left Commodore used to control which is still valid today. Note that this is a layman's opinion and if you want to be certain, you should call upon an expert in this field.