Hi,
As I've just "come back" as it where I was wondering if people here could just clear up a few questions regarding things Amiga. These questions are not to knit pick, but to gain a better understanding of the situation/capabilities. (Note when I say integrated, I mean is part of the OS, or is shipped with the OS).
1) What's the physical memory limit? (Guessing that OS4 is 32bit, memory 4GB?). At work all the PCs have at least 512MB of ram, with most having 1GB, and some with 2/4GB. 512MB is the minimum to do anything useful on Win2K, so what is a "comfortable" amount of memory to run on OS4?
2) What is the file system? I remember from my Amiga days there where several flavours. I'm just interested in max HD size the OS can cope with, and the performance of the file system, plus ability to read PC formatted media.
3) Does copying still block? :-P
4) CLI (the dos prompt, but much better than that thing), does this have proper cut and paste, and quick selections, (ala CTRL+SHIFT+Arrow keys on PC). I found it annoying on my old Amiga that it didn't do this.
5) MUI and other such 3rd party programs existed to pretty up Workbench and add featurallity. Are these still required add-ons, or is some/all of it integrated into OS4?
6) Is AmiDock, that is a kind-of PC/Windows taskbar, integrated with OS4? (I know its "better" than the PC task bar!:-))
7) I read somewhere that it mentioned OS4 been PPC native. Does this mean it's just compiled for that hw target, or does it have PPC asm? (The former AFAIK).
What graphics API's exist? I know OpenGL is going/has been ported, but I also mean the "GDI" equivalent. And is it easier/better than Win32 GDI, in that is 32 bit, (RGB+A) and is logically named, has some sort of Device independence bitmap type stuff and not overly complicated like Win32 GDI is:-). ( I really find it tedious all the: create dib, do a dance, do this and that, select/create lots of objects, get it draw blah blah blah in Win32 just to draw a square on the screen:)
9) Same as above but for sound.
10) Same as above but for input, (joystick/keyboard/mouse etc).
I feel the above 3 are important, since a solid API is required if any progress is to be made. There is nothing worse than shifting sand underneath you when you are trying to develop something.
11) How is USB (& USB 2 for that matter) supported? Is it in the OS, or does a patch/program have to be run so USB things work. I was wondering how memory sticks, joysticks (We use PS2 joypads via a USB adapter on our pcs at work), and all the usb stuff, such as printers, scanners etc.
12) Is there a user logging type approach, so you can have multiple users (not at the same time though!) for a machine with different logons. Do they have separate user settings? (Ala evil Windows registry, but done properly!)
13) I saw this in another thread
by Herewegoagain
"AmigaOne Lite perhaps? That's my guess anyway."
So what is an AmigaOne Lite? A complete system box? (HD + CD + RAM + GFX + Sound + Mouse + Keyboard)
14) Also in same thread
by legion
"Agreed. But if they can get them below $300 US, I *will* buy one."
Depending on answer to above, for just £/$300 I'd get one. (I assume thats with out monitor!:-D)
15) Classic support (AGA etc), is this via UAE or what?. I'm not to bothered about supporting legacy software, since that how the PC+Windoze got so shabby IMHO.
16) Relating to above, I bought Wordworth 6&7 plus Dpaint 5, will these work? (Assuming there is some emulation)
17) Drive support. The bane of my life was getting data to/from my Amiga<->PC. So are 3.5" drives available and can read/write pc Format 1.44mb disks? I guess CDs are kind of ok due to ISO standards.
18) I see references to Radeon, what versions? How much support for their features? (Guessing 3D via OpenGL when it gets ported fully?) What resolutions can you do, and what is the perfomance like? (i.e. eating cardboard is less painful:-) )
19) How is the message pump handled? I should point out I never programmed on the Amiga, and so my knowledge of such things is slight. I do (much to my anguish) know Win32 stuff. And the message handling system/GDI and such like is a bit "annoying" at times. The BEOs approach of virtual functions is quite an interesting idea.
20) Can you connect an AmigaOne+OS4 to a Win2k PC via a network card or such like? Since I envision the two side by side, and file sharing between then would be handy. (Well better than copying 10MB+ worth onto floppies:-D)
