AmigaOS 4.1 Classic Available To Buy

[JurassicCamper]

One thing I am a little annoyed about with Classic OS4.1 is that there does not appear to have been any work done to support more modern printers under the OS, which really is a poor situation. Will Turboprint (any version) work under OS4.1?

Turbo Print 7 works here. You will have to copy over your 3.x installation and duplicate the turboprint: assign. The 1st floppy disk has a version of unlzx that crashes.

I was looking on EAB and saw one new user for Classic OS4.1 have trouble starting his system with the Fast ATA card installed, and had to go to the trouble of fitting a 4xIDE interface to get his PPC system to boot-up. Is that situation a regular problem?

It depends on the FAST ATA Cards in use. My understanding is The MK1 FAST ATA is supported directly by scsi.device.
SCSI.Device is still 68K and needs to be to allow the CD to be booted from 3.x
Myself I don't have a Elbox IDE addaptor.
I have a DCE 4 Way Buffered IDE splitter and an IDEFIX Express, both work fine.
To be fair I only uses the native IDE now to boot the kickstart files off a CF card and my sys: partition, dvd +/-rw and other drives are all sata.
There is a article coming soon on how to go just SATA and use the onboard IDE for booting the kickstart only.

I have a Fast ATA Mk3 in my machine, and the release info states that it runs as a native Classic OS4.1 driver, so why isn't it working in that person's machine, which it seems to work for them under OS3.9?

It indeed does have a new driver and prefs program provided by Elbox.
Could be that its not a MK3.
Darren is updating his hd-zone soon with some more info about IDE controllers.

[Karlos]

So what does the acronym 'ISI' stand for?

Take a guess:

Bad applications may also generate ISI, when you get the same sort of illegal access made by an instruction fetch. This is usually non recoverable.

Oh, incidentally:

Like the yellow bordered 'click left mouse to continue' warnings that often related to graphics library or other recoverable errors under 68k.

No, not quite. AmigaOS recoverable alerts (the yellow ones) are usually caused by a sanity check failing, rather than an illegal access to memory. An example would be trying to free memory twice resulting in corruption in the free memory list which is detected by the OS allocation system. Illegal memory accesses are lower level than that. On OS3.x and below, you can usually read from almost any memory location that physically exists without generating a Guru. It's still a bug, it's just that you'd never have known it was there unless as a side effect of reading an unexpected value from that bogus location the application does something weird. Whether or not it is harmless depends on what the consequences of that read are. However, in OS4 such accesses in tend to cause DSI, unless the memory being accessed is explicitly public.

[itix]

It's still a bug, it's just that you'd never have known it was there unless as a side effect of reading an unexpected value from that bogus location the application does something weird. Whether or not it is harmless depends on what the consequences of that read are. However, in OS4 such accesses in tend to cause DSI, unless the memory being accessed is explicitly public.

In both case result is the same, though.

[Karlos]

In both case result is the same, though.

That's true only if you decide to allow the program to continue. On getting a DSI, you might decide instead to generate a crashlog, terminate the process and hound the author for a fix

[Nearly-Right]

Take a guess:

OK, my guess, Instructed Statement Innuendo

or could it be Instruction Storage Interrupt?

Either way, it would be much easier for you to use words in conjunction with the acronym, for the terminology rather than just the abbreviation/acronym as there has got to be more than just me that's unfamiliar with OS4.x's operating terminology.

No, not quite. AmigaOS recoverable alerts (the yellow ones) are usually caused by a sanity check failing, rather than an illegal access to memory.

OK, I think I understand that one.

[XDelusion]

Anyone wanna give me their PPC card so I can use this?

[Nearly-Right]

Turbo Print 7 works here. You will have to copy over your 3.x installation and duplicate the turboprint: assign. The 1st floppy disk has a version of unlzx that crashes.

OK, that's a nuisance, but if you've a backup of your Turboprint files on a CD then that would be simple enough, as long as you don't forget any prefs/ENV files for Turboprint, or are they not required? As I'm not sure how ENV works, if it still exists, under OS4.x.

I really believe that some NEW printer drivers, in the form of some thought & effort should have been put in to write up-to-date printer drivers for currently available printers for Classic OS4.1. New OS, new printer support - should go hand-in-hand really, don't you think?

Commodore, and even Amiga Inc. always kept basically up to date with printers, as some people actually use their Amigas to write letters, printout photos, etc, and not just play games. It's a bad way to start off a new OS anyway, don't you think?

It depends on the FAST ATA Cards in use. My understanding is The MK1 FAST ATA is supported directly by scsi.device.
SCSI.Device is still 68K and needs to be to allow the CD to be booted from 3.x

So, in my case I have a Mk3 FastATA device, so what device has Elbox made for it to work natively, and is it installed during the initial bootup with the OS4.1 start floppy?

Myself I don't have a Elbox IDE addaptor.
I have a DCE 4 Way Buffered IDE splitter and an IDEFIX Express, both work fine.

I know the board you mean, and I'm sure I've got one or 2 knocking about somewhere, but I either use the FastATA or a few 4xEIDE buffered interface cards made by Elbox, the small, slightly wedge shaped ones that were for the A600 and A1200, so do they work under OS4.x if you use the 68k scsi.device?

To be fair I only uses the native IDE now to boot the kickstart files off a CF card and my sys: partition, dvd +/-rw and other drives are all sata.

Yes that's OK once you've installed it I believe, but the basic installation states a minimum 20GB HDD is required for the install, so is that not correct, as at that time, pre-installation, there won't be any SATA drivers installed on the floppy disk, or will there?

There is a article coming soon on how to go just SATA and use the onboard IDE for booting the kickstart only.

Where will that article be, and how long before it's available?

It indeed does have a new driver and prefs program provided by Elbox. Could be that its not a MK3.

OK, his might not be but mine definitely is a Mk3. I wonder if you know of anyone on the betatesters list who does use a FastATA Mk3 under OS4.x as a native driver, and how easy that was to get working with Classic OS4.1?

Someone must have tested it for that to have been stated as a working piece of hardware, well I'd certainly like to think so, and most definitely need to confirm that before I make a decision on buying OS4.1.

Darren is updating his hd-zone soon with some more info about IDE controllers.

OK, will check over at Darren's site at some point, but really, all this information should have been put in place, BEFORE Classic OS4.1 was released.

I seem to asking quite a few fundamental questions that other people who would be considering migrating from a 68k Workbench to Classic OS4.1 who've got the right PPC hardware would want to know how much they can utilise, and what they've got to go dual boot on or use as a separate system.

I still feel this information should have been available before release, as it is just going to slow down sales until people feel happy that they aren't going to get ripped off again, as with Classic OS4.0 - the dire one !!

[amigakit]

I use the latest MKIII FastATA in my A1200T in the office.  When installing OS 4.1, the FastATA was immediately recognised and utilised- there was no need to install any drivers.   AmigaOS 4.1 Classic is supplied with FastATA MKIII Prefs in the Prefs drawer.

At home on my A1200T, I have an original FastATA MKI ("Powerflyer-Gold Edition"), I had to manually install the original 68k drivers for this as this product was last officially supported by Elbox in 2005.

If you use IDEFIX, you need to select to enable support during the Installer as explained in the printed Installation manual that is supplied with AmigaOS 4.1 Classic.

As for printer drivers, I recently bought a new HP printer and used the standard AmigaOS HP Printer Driver and it worked immediately: because HPs have a common printer language.  Just avoid printers that are software driven such as Lexmark inkjets etc.  Also OS 4.1 contains a native port of Ghostscript which can be used to print to any printers that are PostScript compatible.  

Expecting printer driver support for new printers that arrive onto the market every few months is unrealistic due to the developer resources that would be required.

[itix]

That's true only if you decide to allow the program to continue. On getting a DSI, you might decide instead to generate a crashlog, terminate the process and hound the author for a fix

Only if terminating the process was safe operation ;-)

[cha05e90]

@Nearly-Right

Maybe you'll find this list(s) useful:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=29215&start=40&post_id=618049&order=0&viewmode=flat&pid=618047&forum=32#618047

[xeron]

Only if terminating the process was safe operation ;-)

At least it catches it and gives you a good deal of information about what caused it, providing really good feedback for developers. Better than just doing nothing.

[Fab]

At least it catches it and gives you a good deal of information about what caused it, providing really good feedback for developers. Better than just doing nothing.

Except when a crash is hard enough and that grimreaper will fail or crash itself as a consequence (and it happens quite frequently, from what i've seen of  various unstable apps). So having a robust log service (on serial port/whatever) with proper information is much more reliable.

[Karlos]

So having a robust log service (on serial port/whatever) with proper information is much more reliable.

The information is also written to the debug buffer and by extension the serial port if serial port debugging is enabled regardless of whether or not the Grim Reaper is able to launch.

Without it, debugging the Permedia2 driver would have been extremely difficult, since most of the DSIs that rendered it unusable were happening within a hardware lock and nothing could update the screen let alone open a window on it.

[samo79]

>OS3.9 lists 6MB of Fast RAM in its requirements... Still a lot less, but 16 times less, not 50...

I know, but 6Mb isn't necessary, it will indeed boot on a 2Mb system.

Maybe but what you can do today with only 2 MB ...
From time to time I continue to use OS 3.9 under emulation and hey to use it decently i need 16/32 MB at least ...

As other say OS4 is far advanced compared to the old OS 3.9 so there is a reason to require 64 or 96 MB (just for the new memory system and tons of the new features, graphics and so on)

Also how mutch cost memory today ?

[HammerD]

Except when a crash is hard enough and that grimreaper will fail or crash itself as a consequence (and it happens quite frequently, from what i've seen of  various unstable apps). So having a robust log service (on serial port/whatever) with proper information is much more reliable.

I can usually write serial logs at 56700bps no problem...out the serial port to another machine, but 115200bps sometimes gets some errors from the 4000.   But most of the characters come across OK.  If I want a 100% error free debug log I use 56700, otherwise 115200 with the occasional garbled text is ok.

In beta testing and development it is normal to run with a Debuglevel=5  so you can always see what is going on.

[Nearly-Right]

I use the latest MKIII FastATA in my A1200T in the office.  When installing OS 4.1, the FastATA was immediately recognised and utilised- there was no need to install any drivers.   AmigaOS 4.1 Classic is supplied with FastATA MKIII Prefs in the Prefs drawer.

OK, that's great news, as it was more of a nuisance trying to get it working under Classic OS4.0, even though I didn't get much use out of that OS release.

At home on my A1200T, I have an original FastATA MKI ("Powerflyer-Gold Edition"), I had to manually install the original 68k drivers for this as this product was last officially supported by Elbox in 2005.

But good to know it still offers the additional IDE ports even under OS4.1.

As for printer drivers, I recently bought a new HP printer and used the standard AmigaOS HP Printer Driver and it worked immediately: because HPs have a common printer language.

I believe the common printer language in HP printers is PCL (Printer Command Language) as well as PS (PostScript) though they have moved through various versions of PCL over the years, but I believe the backwards level of compatibility is still very good.

However, HP have changed some of their printers of recent years to be host based printers, which means you have to have the software designed for the operating system you want to use the printer with, i.e. an Operating System driver intended for that platform such as Windows or Macintosh, in the main, or you'll get nothing out of the printer, which means that PCL, and even PostScript is not supported in those products, such as the HP 3550 Color Laserjet - no PCL or PostScript printing capability.

There are other HP, and other manufacturers, printers that we should all be aware of with those limitations and not buy a printer that won't work under Amiga OS as there's no driver for it, which is the reason I mention that there are no new printer drivers with OS4.1 which is an area that needs urgent attention, IMHO.

Just avoid printers that are software driven such as Lexmark inkjets etc.

OK, thanks for that info

Also OS 4.1 contains a native port of Ghostscript which can be used to print to any printers that are PostScript compatible.

 

That's handy, but I don't suppose many people own a PostScript capable printer, even though I do. We shouldn't forget that TurboPrint 7 offers "PS" printing which will enable Ghostscript to print the data via that Postscript function even to non PostScript printers, and I believe Turboprint 7 works under OS4.1 so that's good.

Expecting printer driver support for new printers that arrive onto the market every few months is unrealistic due to the developer resources that would be required.

I think you've tried to escape the real point as there is NO NEW PRINTER support in OS4.1 as far as I am aware, so it's not like there has been some work done in OS4.1 to provide up-to-date printer functionality as there is NOTHING NEW in that area of the OS, but please correct me if I'm wrong there, as I'd really like to know there is something new.

What's more, rather than say it's unrealistic - all the development time for OS4.x to get so far, 2003 to 2011 - 8 years approximately, has gained us NOTHING NEW in the printer area, which is the truth of the matter. Not even Turboprint 7 has been updated in a good few years.