NewIcons sucks

[murple]

I tried to install NewIcons, and found out that it looks absolutely horrid on non-interlaced mode Amigas (and EVERYTHING looks horrid on interlaced). Is there anything similar to NewIcons that doesnt want to install gigantic icons? Or is there a NewIcons set that has sanely sized icons?

Also, I ran the NewIcons uninstall script and while it fixed most of my icons, some are still broken, like the Ram Disk icon. I wouldn't care so much since I've never in my life ever used the Ram Disk on an Amiga, but since that icon is kinda stuck prominently on my WorkBench I'd prefer it not to be a little square. I looked in the backups of my old icons and it looks like they were moved back to where they should be.

Is there any fix for this that doesnt involve reinstalling the OS?

[ChaosLord]

Buy a flickerfixer then all ur probs r gone.

[Matt_H]

Check ENVARC:Sys for def_ram.info and remove it. If it's not there, check your startup-sequence or user-startup for commands (or a call to a separate script) that copy some icon to RAM:Disk.info

I think virtually all replacement icon packages expect a screen taller than 200/256 pixels, so you're probably stuck with what you have unless you want to put up with distorted icons or interlace flicker.

You never use the RAM disk? You're passing on one of the Amiga's best features. I can't live without it. Give it a try for temporary storage (like unarchving stuff from Aminet) - you'll love it, I promise.

[Minuous]

Of course NewIcons sucks, you are better using normal OS3.5/3.9 GlowIcons, they are much less kludgy (and less ugly too IMHO).

I suspect you will have to recopy the icons you want manually.

[HellCoder]

NewIcons doesn't suck just because you didn't get what you expected.

[A4000_Mad]

Matt_H wrote:
You never use the RAM disk? You're passing on one of the Amiga's best features. I can't live without it. Give it a try for temporary storage (like unarchving stuff from Aminet) - you'll love it, I promise.

I just had to second that opinion. RAM is an absolutely awesome drive for the Amiga to have. I do indeed unpack/pack all my archives in RAM before transferring them to hard drive, Jaz disk, Zip disk or Compact Flash card 8-)

[jj]

Well hes lying anyway, every time he switches his amiga on hes using it cause all the prefrence stuff is copied there  :-D

[vic20owner]

A flicker fixer isn't going to help.

[murple]

HellCoder wrote:
NewIcons doesn't suck just because you didn't get what you expected.

No, but it does suck for not making it clear that the icons look like crap on non-laced NTSC/PAL, and for having an uninstall script that only partially works.

[motorollin]

I used to use NewIcons on a standard PAL display and they looked fine.

--
moto

[Tenacious]

Forgive the preaching about the Ram disk.

Other OSes have tried to implement a Ram disk (Apple II, Mac, etc) or 3rd parties have tried to add them into existing OSes.  I'm aware of none that have the elegance (over-used word) and function of the Amiga's auto-sizing design.  It's invaluable to try new software from the Ram disk before writing it to some system drive.  Have you ever decided you didn't like some trial software on a Mac or Windows machine and then tried to remove it?

Equally cool is the RAD: drive (if you haven't heard).  If you have extra ram but no HD, you can move the OS there.  Rad: is lightning fast and will survive a warm reset.  Incredible!

Have you tried Magic Workbench and some of the other pre-OS3.5 icon packages on Aminet?  Mr.500 has posted some excellent Workbench screenshots (icons, backdrops, etc) on this website executed in only 8 or 16 colors on original ECS hardware.  Take a look!

[murple]

Did you use the default icon set that came with it? The icons I got were gigantic, and had even more gigantic borders around them. The icon for DH0: was easily over 2 inches tall on my 1084 monitor.

[murple]

Tenacious wrote:

Have you tried Magic Workbench and some of the other pre-OS3.5 icon packages on Aminet?  Mr.500 has posted some excellent Workbench screenshots (icons, backdrops, etc) on this website executed in only 8 or 16 colors on original ECS hardware.  Take a look!

Nope... I'll have to look. I'm a long term Linux user and there are tons of sites with screenshots of various X/KDE/Gnome/E setups that help you pick themes, icon sets, etc. With AmiNet you just get an ASCII description, if that. Screenshots would help a lot! I'll look for Mr 500's stuff.

[murple]

Matt_H wrote:
Check ENVARC:Sys for def_ram.info and remove it. If it's not there, check your startup-sequence or user-startup for commands (or a call to a separate script) that copy some icon to RAM:Disk.info

ENVARC:Sys/def_ram.info doesn't exist, nor does anything that copies an icon to RAM:Disk.info... any other ideas?

[Tenacious]

I don't think you mentioned what version of the OS you are running.  Since the Ram: disk is a virtual device that is created during booting, there are no files there initially.  This includes no disk.info file to define the icon image and it's snap-shotted position.  With earlier versions of the OS, the Ram Disk icon was whatever was defined in the ENVARC:sys/ directory as the default icon for all disks.  With older systems, the user could make a cool icon for the Ram disk and copy it directly to the Ramdisk toward the end of the startup-sequence, usually from some safe location on the boot-up disk (like SYS:Envarc/sys/  or S:). It seems OS 3.9 defines a default icon for the Ramdisk and stores it in the ENVARC:sys/ directory as def_ram.info.  My OS 3.9 does not need to copy a .info file to the ramdisk anymore to present it's icon.

Is this helping or am I writing this for my own entertainment?