Advantages of 3.1 ROMs and OS 3.5/3.9

[Piru]

@amije

if you where happy with any workbench from 3.0 to 3.9 you probably didn't jump (finaly) to morphos, or not?

AmigaOS versions I've used:
AmigaOS 1.3 (KS 1.3, WB 1.3.3)
AmigaOS 2.1 (KS 2.04, WB 2.1)
AmigaOS 3.0 (KS 3.0, WB 3.0)
AmigaOS 3.1 (KS 3.1, WB 3.1)
AmigaOS 3.5 (KS 3.1, WB 3.5)

Out of these only AmigaOS 3.5 was bit of a disappointment (mainly because it didn't deliver what was promised, and because it was hideously buggy).

Regarding the MorphOS bit: I've been developing MorphOS since about end of 1999 (iirc, it's a bit hazy either end of 99 or early 2000). The transition to full MorphOS system was gradual, basically it started with combination of OS 3.5 and MorphOS on the BPPC. Eventually I used less and less AmigaOS components until finally there were none (this process was quite necessary as MorphOS lacked many components initially). The final switch to pure MorphOS only occured when I switched to peg1 development system.

Today I don't have any AmigaOS installation in use. I still have my AmigaOS 3.5 box somewhere stored though. ;-)

Anyway, my argument was that KS 3.0 and KS 3.1 aren't really that different, and that if you're not going to use WB 3.5/3.9 it doesn't really matter much whether you have KS 3.0 or KS 3.1.

[Piru]

[amigagr]

@Piru: you are right about 3.5, i was disappoint too about it, mainly because i had a very good 3.1 setup that i blow it out as a lot of stuff i was using, with 3.5 was obsolet, but the new (at the time) os didn't cover the functionality (at least for me) of the old similar stuff. some stuff fixed in 3.9 but not all...

[boing]

What's AFA do?

[amigagr]

may this help you: latest afa

[mr_a500]

AFA-OS is Aros For Amiga. It is a back port of AROS (Amiga Research Operating System ...kind of makes the -OS redundant in "AFA-OS" ;-)) for 68K Amigas. I think it is meant for Amigas with graphics card because nothing really works on my A500 - except setting graphics.library as version 45, allowing me to run The Matrix (which looks for graphics.library 40+).

I think some people here use AFA-OS on their Amigas with graphics cards to get anti-aliased text.

[uncharted]

The big advantage that I remember for moving over to KS3.1 was that it was required for the spectrum analyiser on one of the WinAmp clones to work.

WooYAY!  :afro:


I've just dropped back to KS3.1 and WB3.0, after using 3.9 for the nearly 5 years (I think it was 2001 when i got it).  My old 3.0+goodies set-up was much nicer, especially when used on  TV (like I have to now due to lack of space).

[Angus]

I originally upgraded to 3.1 roms because Eyetech were doing a decent rom swap deal and they said 3.1 roms would be needed to fit the forthcoming AmigaOne card to my 1200. As you know, this sadly did not come to pass.

With 3.1 I found the booting a bit slower, and very occasionally it seemed to get a bit confused because of the delay and tried to boot from floppy - I think.

Anyway, later I decided as a serious Amiga fan I should get OS3.9, and although I had some difficulty getting it all up and running properly - my Blizzard 1260 has never co-operated with Blizkick - it now all works very nicely, and I can tell myself, that at least in classic Amiga terms, I am "current".  

Probably my favourite thing is that it comes with its own professional TCP stack, Genesis, oh yes and big Hard drives work with no messing about.

[mr_a500]

I've just dropped back to KS3.1 and WB3.0, after using 3.9 for the nearly 5 years (I think it was 2001 when i got it). My old 3.0+goodies set-up was much nicer, especially when used on TV (like I have to now due to lack of space).

Why WB 3.0? Why not 3.1?

I dropped back to WB3.1 after using WB3.9 for 2 months. I also had a much better setup than 3.9 and when I tried to reproduce my 3.1 setup in 3.9, I found that I couldn't.

The main problem was the stupid 3.9 picture.datatype. It always tries to remap and dither images that are already perfectly mapped - making image display 3X slower than the 3.1 picture.datatype and making all my WB images look like crap. There's no way to tell it "do not remap and dither images". I think the options are the lamely labelled "Best, Good, and Worst". (Worst still dithers and remaps!)

Maybe the 3.9 picture.datatype is great if you've got a graphics card, but if you've got an ECS Amiga, don't get WB3.9. Other ECS problems - no colourwheel for palette, annoying 256-step palette sliders - painful for ECS (what's 16x9 again?)...

Oh, and I think the 3.9 icon editor is total garbage. It is unbelievably badly made. It is extremely slow and jerky, painful to use, missing basic tools, remaps incorrectly and crashed on me many times. (the problem: is there another icon editor for colouricons?)

Now that I think of it (painful memories coming back), I think I was most digusted about what was NOT in 3.9. There were about 50 things that bothered me in 3.1 and I fixed them with excellent stuff from Aminet. When I got 3.9, I had expected that at least some of the major ones would be fixed. Instead, they just added some of the Aminet stuff I already had, other Aminet stuff that was worse than what I already had and left some of the major ones unfixed. Then they added more bugs and other things that needed fixing (by other programmers of Aminet stuff).

Well, I ended up stripping out the one or two useful things (like scsi.device 43.35) and using them in 3.1 and said "Hasta la vista" to 3.9. (...except when checking correct Cylinder counts on new harddrives ;-))

[uncharted]

mr_a500 wrote:

Why WB 3.0? Why not 3.1?

I only bought the 3.1 ROMs not the complete set, just so I could use OS3.9

[iamaboringperson]

Since I almost never use my Amiga these days (I occasionally boot into it to use PPaint - but very rarely), I was thinking of 'downgrading' (to some: upgrading) from 3.5 to 3.1, since it takes so much longer to boot, and since I basically only use the one app, there seems to be no advantage to me using 3.5.

[DrDekker]

Thanks again for all the responses folks - plenty of food for thought.

Would it be true to say that whilst there's a real advantage in upgrading the ROMs to 3.1, there's little advantage in upgrading the OS beyond 3.1?

Is OS3.9 still available?

When considering hardware/software support for printers, scanners, wireless devices, internet, etc., what version of OS will provide a good level of connectivity? (i.e. Epson R300 printer, Epson 1200 SCSI scanner, wireless mouse/keyboard/ADSL 'modem').

Cheers

Dekker

[amigagr]

you can find oe3.9 here: vesalia but in most cases 3.1 is enough.

@amigakit: i thought you had os3.9 once...