
AmigaOS 3.1.4 released - erickhill
http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php/where-to-buy/direct-downloads/188-amigaos-314
======
snvzz
Already bought and tried in an emulator.

I find it annoying the rom doesn't include workbench.library, and the provided
one in LIBS: isn't romable.

It'd only be proper to provide a 1MB rom image with it, or a limited
functionality version.

~~~
obarthel
ROM space is very tight for this release on account of the much larger mass
storage drivers (SCSI, IDE) and the integrated OCS/ECS/AGA graphics.library.

Commodore was already pushing the limits for the 1994 Kickstart 3.1 in the
Amiga 1200 ROM, and it only got worse. The Amiga 4000T ROM would no longer
contain workbench.library either (in 1994) because the graphics.library and
the SCSI driver took up so much room.

There is no room for workbench.library and icon.library in the 512 KB 3.1.4
ROM. Going back to a previous set of workbench.library/icon.library versions
is not an option because these do not fit either.

1 MB ROMs are not viable solution at this point. Only a select few models
support these, and the point was to make the 3.1.4 update available to all
desktop systems.

Besides, a 1 MB ROM would require retooling of the build process for the
operating system, which we did not attempt. The last 1 MB ROMs were built in
1994 (for the CD32) and very little documentation survives on how this is
done, and how the ROM images need to be prepared.

We were already quite busy with the desktop systems and chose not to spend the
time on research and QA work necessary for the 1 MB ROM build.

~~~
snvzz
>There is no room for workbench.library and icon.library in the 512 KB 3.1.4
ROM.

Unfortunately. Understandable.

>Only a select few models support these, and the point was to make the 3.1.4
update available to all desktop systems.

Nobody is telling you to ditch the 512k rom. It's just it sucks not to have
workbench.library and icon.library, when using a system that does maprom with
1mb support.

>The Amiga 4000T ROM would no longer contain workbench.library either (in
1994) because the graphics.library and the SCSI driver took up so much room.

And roms with workbench inside were proudly released recently. Meaning both
there's interest, and that you understand this interest.

>We were already quite busy with the desktop systems and chose not to spend
the time on research and QA work necessary for the 1 MB ROM build.

It's good if there was at least consideration.

Maybe try and release romable versions of workbench and icon library? The
community will take over from there, with tools.

~~~
obarthel
> Nobody is telling you to ditch the 512k rom. It's just it sucks not to have
> workbench.library and icon.library, when using a system that does maprom
> with 1mb support.

The next best thing is to load both the workbench.library and icon.library
using the LoadModule command (which is part of the AmigaOS 3.1.4 update, if I
remember correctly) and reboot your machine. Both libraries will then remain
in memory as if they had been in the ROM. They will survive subsequent warm
reboots, but they will consume RAM.

Loading the libraries in this manner can be handled by the Startup-Sequence,
for example.

> Maybe try and release romable versions of workbench and icon library?

Both libraries are technically "fit" to go into ROM, if there were enough
space available for them to fit ;-) They are "romable".

~~~
snvzz
>They will survive subsequent warm reboots, but they will consume RAM.

As long as it's fast ram, it's pretty good for a next best thing. I wasn't
aware.

>Both libraries are technically "fit" to go into ROM, if there were enough
space available for them to fit ;-) They are "romable".

That's great news. I'm not sure where I heard they weren't. I'm hopeful tools
to do that will pop up on Aminet :)

~~~
obarthel
> As long as it's fast ram, it's pretty good for a next best thing. I wasn't
> aware.

The ROM changes which shipped with the AmigaOS 3.5/3.9 updates all exercised
the same mechanism by which operating system modules loaded into RAM whose
contents would survive a warm reset would supersede the contents of the ROM
image.

If I remember correctly, the same tool (LoadModule) had been used then.

Documentation for these technical aspects has always been somewhat lacking I'm
afraid... Not everyone wants to trawl the Amiga forums for hints on what is
possible and how.

This time, however, there is an official FAQ on the web site of the company
which sells the product and further pointers to more information on Amiga
forums which cover the AmigaOS 3.1.4 update.

> That's great news. I'm not sure where I heard they weren't. I'm hopeful
> tools to do that will pop up on Aminet :)

You might want to have a look at Christian Vogelgsang's
[https://github.com/cnvogelg/amitools](https://github.com/cnvogelg/amitools)
collection.

~~~
snvzz
> You might want to have a look at Christian Vogelgsang's
> [https://github.com/cnvogelg/amitools](https://github.com/cnvogelg/amitools)
> collection.

Good stuff.

>AmigaOS 3.5/3.9

Never been a fan of these. I'm glad 3.1.4 took a different direction.

>LoadModule

Was not aware they could load workbench/icon.library, that is all :-)

>This time, however, there is an official FAQ

I read the one in the downloadable archive whole. It's still quite early and
i'm sure there'll be much more info everywhere soon :)

------
rbanffy
How is it delivered? How would I install it on my 500 or 600?

~~~
snvzz
There's going to be a physical version at some point, but summary:

1\. Buy A500/A600 download version, or A1200 if you've got a Vampire
accelboard.

2\. Get adf into Amiga floppies by whatever means (serial cable, pcmcia nic
adapter, flashfloppy-enabled floppy drive emulator)

3\. Boot workbench disk or installer disk. ROM patches will be loaded by
loadmodule @ startup-sequence.

4\. (Optional) Flash into (E/EE)PROM chip or (more sane) into A500Flash1M or
similar such rom switcher solution with a flashrom in it.

Note you'll want at least 2MB RAM total for this, at least 1MB of which being
CHIP RAM. If you don't have this much, don't even bother.

~~~
Annatar
And where could one get a compatible ROM flasher and WORM chips?

~~~
gbin
If you are looking for an affordable solution you can use this:
[https://gglabs.us/node/2038](https://gglabs.us/node/2038)

------
Annatar
"Remember "Diskdoctor"? It earned its PhD and is now ready to reliably rescue
data from your floppies or hard disks."

Remember the cool old "AGA - time to upgrade - AGA" slogan in some of the
demos? Now it's

ZFS - time to upgrade - ZFS

...it's the 21st century, and AmigaOS doesn't even have software RAID, let
alone ZFS yet. We still have to check filesystems for metadata corruption, and
checking them for data corruption is still science fiction. And nobody bats an
eyelash, like it's the most normal thing in the world. Meanwhile, the
capacitors are leaking like crazy, modern PC-bucket power supplies don't
deliver steady 5V, the clock crystal loses or gains up to 5 seconds per day,
even the newest accelerator hardware doesn't support ECC memory... what could
possibly go wrong with one's data?

~~~
snvzz
You could use OFS (Original File System, before FFS) which has checksums in
every block!

Note blocks are <512byte because of that (ouch) and everything else about OFS
sucks.

~~~
obarthel
Smaller than 512 bytes? I beg to differ. The file system data structure layout
requires a minimum of 512 bytes per block.

The Amiga OFS/FFS, etc. file system data structures scale with the block size
(block sizes of 512, 1024, .., 65536 bytes are possible).

At 256 bytes per block, for example, the directory hash table size would
shrink so much that you'd have so many hash collisions that it would be
morbidly funny...

Anyway, the data blocks in OFS have to account for the checksum and some
metadata which aids in recovery. So you are correct that the payload (488
bytes for a 512 byte block) is smaller than the raw block size.

~~~
snvzz
On a separate note, as I understand there's e.g. library updates, are you
releasing a NDK and/or documentation for 3.1.4 development?

~~~
obarthel
The focus of AmigaOS 3.1.4 development work was on fixing bugs, integrating
code which so far had been separate (e.g. the mass storage drivers last
updated in AmigaOS 3.9) and generally making it easier for Amiga hardware
developers to make use of the operating system (e.g. adapt the operating
system rather than force the developers to twist their designs).

The AmigaOS 3.9 NDK ("native development kit") is still relevant for the
AmigaOS 3.1.4 update.

The 3.1.4 update added new API functionality, but these changes are few and
could (= will) be covered separately.

~~~
snvzz
I'm looking forward to that. Never been too fond of 3.9 as a target :).

------
zmix
Why 3.1.4 and not 3.9.1 ?

~~~
obarthel
The AmigaOS 3.9 code was largely unavailable for development work. What
remained and was availabie is material which was licensed for inclusion in
AmigaOS4.

What we got here is a mix of the AmigaOS 3.1 code (bug fixes galore, plus
enhancements), the 3.5 update, the 3.9 update plus completely new software
such as Disk Doctor V2.134 (written from scratch to support large storage
devices and all Amiga file system flavours descended from the 1986 default
file system; this is not your father's Disk Doctor any more).

The other reason why it's 3.1.4 is that we realized early on that we could not
continue development of the 3.x line anyway, so we joked it would have to be
an irrational version number instead, perhaps one digit at a time.

~~~
WorldMaker
Good old "PiVer", the TeX approach to versioning:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning#TeX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning#TeX)

