Minimum requirements for AmigaOS 4

[freqmax]

@Daedalus, Easy, load the driver, probe, save result. As for USB load the USB bus driver but treat other sub-drivers like the first one.

Just because there are resources isn't a good reason to waste them. One example is embedded usage where less resources saves equipment and battery etc..

[commodorejohn]

I guess, if you really need to be miserly with resources in this age of GHz and GB...

That's a pretty poor excuse. If OS4 provides that much more functionality than 3.9 that it requires 60MB more RAM, that's one thing, but the attitude of "eh, why bother being light, resources are cheap" is the kind of thinking that got us Windows Vista. Not cool. Not cool at all.

[redfox]

@freqmax

Here is a good place to start.

The minimum requirements are:
   An Amiga 1200, 3000(T), or 4000(T) with Blizzard PPC or Cyberstorm PPC accelerator card
   Minimum 96MB memory installed on Blizzard PPC or Cyberstorm PPC
   Kickstart 3.0 ROMS
   IDE or SCSI CD-ROM drive (on Cyberstorm PPC) for installation
   1GB hard disk drive on IDE internal port or Cyberstorm PPC SCSI
   Amiga 880K Floppy Disc Drive

The actual installation fits in less than 300 MB of disk space.  A 500 MB partition will give you lots of extra room if you want to add some programs to your system partition.

[Zac67]

@Daedalus, Easy, load the driver, probe, save result. As for USB load the USB bus driver but treat other sub-drivers like the first one.

Errm - hot plug?

[freqmax]

Kind of, anyway this kind of optimization is possible. And bloat is just the sign of sloppy programming.

[Daedalus]

Errm - hot plug?

How do you think hot plug works? The OS needs to be told that something is plugged in. And how would it know that if there wasn't a USB stack running in the background? Say you plug in an external hard drive. The USB stack detects it, identifies it as mass storage and loads the appropriate driver. This driver identifies the geometry and then mounts the drive as a volume. That doesn't happen until you plug in a device, but the USB stack still has to be running to be able to see the hot plug event. That's pretty much as efficient as you can make it, without disabling the stack itself and thus removing hot plug capability.

Edit: Sorry, I thought you were talking to me - were you talking to freqmax there?

@freqmax

@Daedalus, Easy, load the driver, probe, save result. As for USB load the USB bus driver but treat other sub-drivers like the first one.

Load the driver, probe, save the result... That's pretty much what OS4 does though. You can plug several CD-ROM drives into an OS4 machine, but it'll only load drivers for the ones which are connected. If you don't have a 2 CD drives connected, it won't load two drivers. I don't understand your point there...

Just because there are resources isn't a good reason to waste them. One example is embedded usage where less resources saves equipment and battery etc..

That's very true, and as someone who writes firmware for embedded devices, I'm well aware of resource management issues there. But again, I don't see what's being wasted here with OS4. It only loads what it needs, but the powers that be have decided that modern features are needed...

@commodorejohn
Well, waste depends on your perspective. Most of the features are a little more advanced than OS3.9, and so take up more RAM. On top of that, it's all rewritten in C, which is bigger and less efficient, but means easier development. How much RAM does a 3.9 machine with USB, TCP/IP, and all the patches that would bring it to similar functionality use? I know mine uses a sizeable chunk of RAM, and I wouldn't get much change from 32MB... I guess one needs to decide if the OS should use more modern features, or stick with the old-fashioned, bolt-on-what-you-want philosophy...

[commodorejohn]

Well, waste depends on your perspective. Most of the features are a little more advanced than OS3.9, and so take up more RAM. On top of that, it's all rewritten in C, which is bigger and less efficient, but means easier development. How much RAM does a 3.9 machine with USB, TCP/IP, and all the patches that would bring it to similar functionality use?

I didn't mean to imply that OS4 does or doesn't make justifiable use of 64MB; I haven't used it, so I'll refrain from comment. I just object to the philosophy of "what the hell, we've got RAM to burn" on principle. Code from that perspective, and pretty soon you're going to have a bunch of irritated users wondering where all their memory has gone.

I guess one needs to decide if the OS should use more modern features, or stick with the old-fashioned, bolt-on-what-you-want philosophy...

I don't think those are at all mutually exclusive, if there's a suitably well-defined framework for bolting on or taking off. (Unless you mean OS4 specifically, I dunno whether it has a good framework or not.)

[Daedalus]

@commodorejohn

I get what you're saying. OS4 is quite easily stripped out - as simple as commenting lines in a text file if you wanted to boot without things like USB or CD-ROM support. I don't condone bloating at all, which is one of the reasons I like Amiga-ish systems. I just think that an OS which is written for bloody expensive machines, can probably expect to have a reasonable minimum amount of RAM thrown at it too...

As a check, my OS4 machine uses about 100MB at boot, but includes lots of things at startup like SAMBA, SMBFS mounts, a dozen or more commodities, lots of disk caches, and a 1600x1200x32 composited Workbench.

[djrikki]

http://www.hd-zone.com/2011/09/amigaos-4-1-hardware-compatibility-list/

Also good place to check hardware compatibility.

[freqmax]

FreeBSD does more, and can boot within 32 MB using X11. I have even booted it with 4 MB provided there's lot's of swap.

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, but then you're stuck with X11 ;P

[freqmax]

Just shows that 100 MB is bloat..

[slayer]

Call me biased these days but I wouldn't run AOS4.1.x on anything less than a 733Mhz SAM Flex with 1 gig memory and a 9250 Radeon...

But just remember I used to be happy with that machine in the last line of my signature for quite a few years! So, been there, done that! Guess I never run it on anything less that that though!

Of course I'm using something a bit more serious in recent months! Whatever you choose good luck with that! :-)