 Questions and Answers for AMIGA Workbench or Coffin |
| 3.1.4 Rom ... What Are the Benefits? | page 1 2 3 4
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Michael AMike
Posts 152
20 May 2020 07:51
| Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
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Both are in my opinion on same level here.
Both maintain abandon ware and both do it for the love to Amiga and not for the money.
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Far away from that - Coffin is a collection of old, existing software combined to an "easy to use" package like a RedHat Distro for Linux - no changes on the 20 year old "core". The new parts are only games or Vampire related. OS3.1.4/3.2 is a further development of 3.1 with the low end machines as target (usable with 7Mhz and 1Mb of RAM) The long term goal is to outperfom the features of 3.9. A szenario what you not prefer because you can't use that as base for coffin - but that's a matter of fact.
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Andy Hearn
Posts 374
20 May 2020 09:29
| Lets keep this civilised please.
3.1.4 fixes a lot of things in "rom" - however that gets applied.
Coffin is a full fat "workbench distribution" with apps and games, that runs on anything with an 020/030 and 4-6meg fast - 040/060/080+RTG for best experience.
now, would i be right in thinking that most workbench distributions - i'd probably class OS3.5 and OS3.9 in there too, software patch things that 3.1.4 fixes?
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Olaf Schoenweiss
Posts 690
20 May 2020 10:56
| You cannot compare Aros and 3.1 easily
Aros is a full platform including Network-Stack, RTG, AHI, USB-Support (Poseidon) and so on
The default desktop is limited but can be replaced. The API is very compatible to 3.1 and can be extended. Also the Roms can be developed. A big advantage to 3.X (and no legal problems).
The speed of development depends on how many developers are interested and user are reporting problems. And of course vampire specific features/optimizations could be added.
Something Thomas R. ruled out already
General there will be a coexistence between both 3.X and Aros on Vampire. On slower hardware Aros makes not much sense anyway.
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Daniel Sevo
Posts 299
20 May 2020 15:10
| @Olaf I said something like this some posts ago in this thread..
OS3.(2) can be the baseline for all Amigas for all those who simply want a more recent version of 3.1 without the bloat and then there are the power users who try to do everything on their Amigas, for them there will never be enough features in OS3.x so it makes sense to to "take the future into their own hands" and go with AROS where development isn't affected or hindered by legal bickering..
And as you said, it also in a lot of cases, happens to reflect the hardware requirements. A500 users without heavy expansion will likely have very little interest in fully featured AROS running at FUll HD desktop..
For Vampire user, AROS make a lot of sense for sure..
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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
20 May 2020 15:31
| Michael AMike wrote:
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Far away from that - Coffin is a collection of old, existing software combined to an "easy to use" package like a RedHat Distro for Linux - no changes on the 20 year old "core". The new parts are only games or Vampire related.
OS3.1.4/3.2 is a further development of 3.1 with the low end machines as target (usable with 7Mhz and 1Mb of RAM) The long term goal is to outperfom the features of 3.9. A szenario what you not prefer because you can't use that as base for coffin - but that's a matter of fact.
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Dear Michael, again OS 3.1.4 is NOT usable on 1MB RAM machine. Please check its requirements.
Beside date stamp, in feature list, one cannot find how OS 3.1.4.1 is advanced to OS 3.9.
In fact, in some legal agreement, only OS 3.1.4 could be used as "legal base" for Coffin, as its only version of m68k developed and on sale in not "old stock". However, there is nothing in OS 3.1.4 that uses Vampire advanced features - and nothing plan to, which is a bad decision. In exploiting m68k market, supporting Vampire would be OS 3.1.4 upper hand. But it did not happen and I see no plans for OS 3.2 to do that. Be it e.g. only inclusion of Vampire related drivers. Also, I find OS 3.9 legality shouting over the top. H&P exited Amiga market, does not support, produce or sell it anymore. Its not even visible on their website they ever did so, or in support forums. Old OS 3.9 webpage can be googled, but when you click support it redirects you to Amiga inc.
See current list of H&P products EXTERNAL LINK
What we see is sadly limited remains of old. In my eyes, abandoned product by company is free to pirate. A lot of abandonware PC websites prove that, and even legal companies exist they dont care. Only in Amiga land 20 years old product quite abandoned involves legal cryouts.
Other way to Coffin legality would be inclusion of AmiKit kind of "insert your own OS" mechanism. And to my joy, AmiKit is in development for Vampire version, which would offer similar to Coffin but fully legal - using same mechanics as regular AmiKit. How could you compare AmiKit vs OS 3.1.4 to a Vampire user?
And outperforming OS 3.9 is nice long stretch goal (nowhere stated) but I see that as fast done as OS 4.2 announced with A1-x1000 (and prepaid by users). Its more likely OS 3.1.4 and OS 3.2 are acknowledgments of vitality of m68k market.
Linux comparison could work only to Coffin advantage - OS 3.1.4 looks like bare stripe Linux with GNOME and Coffin like very advanced and big distro.
Mike Kopack wrote:
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I think you are confusing Hyperion with Cloanto...
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While Cloanto is battling Hyperion over OS 3.1 plus rights, they never tried to legally threaten other companies involved in Amiga market, which Hyperion did on numerous ocassions. Hyperions looks nice from outside but has a very bad track record. And is company made by half lawyars, half coders.
Recommended reading https://sites.google.com/site/amigadocuments/#TOC-Hyperion-Entertainment-and-the-Robbery-of-the-AmigaOS-In the end, AROS seems to best solution, just needs better compatibility.
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Amiga 4Life
Posts 105
20 May 2020 16:23
| Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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Its more likely OS 3.1.4 and OS 3.2 are acknowledgments of vitality of m68k market.
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Agreed...
The 68k market is loaded with various Amiga emulators, clones, replicas, remakes, classic hardware, etc...
...more dual cpu accelerators (Warp),,... Ng systems are not interesting and Hyperion can see this..
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Michael AMike
Posts 152
20 May 2020 18:06
| Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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Dear Michael, again OS 3.1.4 is NOT usable on 1MB RAM machine. Please check its requirements.
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2MB for install - 1MB for usage. You can try it if you don't believe it. Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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Beside date stamp, in feature list, one cannot find how OS 3.1.4.1 is advanced to OS 3.9.
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Please read again what I've written - it's obvouis not same what you compare.
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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
20 May 2020 20:12
| Michael AMike wrote:
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Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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Dear Michael, again OS 3.1.4 is NOT usable on 1MB RAM machine. Please check its requirements.
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2MB for install - 1MB for usage. You can try it if you don't believe it.
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As always, its not only booting the OS, its usability after. I can only remember how restricted I felt with 2MB barebone AGA and plain OS 3.1. I could not even play many games of hard drive, which was 80MB.
OS 3.1.4 Official FAQ
1.3 * Ok, I get it; 512 KB is not enough anymore, but can I get my way
with less than 2 MB of RAM?
This is how we break down memory usage: We have rounded up the numbers
to be on the safe side; besides, this is a round update. ;)
0.6 MB just to boot + 0.5 MB for loading ROM modules + 0.9 MB for free
memory.
Of course, in a system with a physical Kickstart ROM, 3.1.4 will work
nicely with just 1.5 MB of RAM, but as said before, we needed a figure
that will work under all systems, so 2 MB is a good bet to stay on the
safe side.
The most intense, OS-memory hungry process is when you run the 3.1.4
installation; the installer script compilation itself is what
requires the most RAM.
Taking it to the extreme, a system which has been installed using UAE
can be transferred to an Amiga where it could even work with just 1 MB
of RAM, provided the Amiga has a physical Kickstart 3.1.4 ROM chip
installed.
You also need to take into account that FastFileSystem partitions
require about 1 MB of RAM for each gigabyte of space to properly
validate themselves. So the bigger the partition, the more memory it
will need.
Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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Beside date stamp, in feature list, one cannot find how OS 3.1.4.1 is advanced to OS 3.9.
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Please read again what I've written - it's obvouis not same what you compare.
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I dont deny its obvious that is 3.1 with small patches and addons reworked. Its just "too little, too late" and even too expensive I might add on.
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Michael AMike
Posts 152
21 May 2020 20:56
| Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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. Its just "too little, too late" and even too expensive I might add on.
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I think that's your personal opinion which is fine, everyone should use what he wants - the sales speak a different language.
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Roger Andre Lassen
Posts 150
21 May 2020 21:05
| Michael AMike wrote:
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Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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. Its just "too little, too late" and even too expensive I might add on.
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I think that's your personal opinion which is fine, everyone should use what he wants - the sales speak a different language.
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Amen !
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Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
22 May 2020 19:37
| Michael AMike wrote:
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I think that's your personal opinion which is fine, everyone should use what he wants - the sales speak a different language.
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Agreed. However, do not use sales as argument of quality. Amiga market is hungry of anything.
Or if you use them, compare them to OS 3.5 or OS 3.9 sales.
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Michael AMike
Posts 152
22 May 2020 21:59
| Vojin Vidanovic wrote:
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Or if you use them, compare them to OS 3.5 or OS 3.9 sales.
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Compare sales with a time where the user base was much higher than these days? Are you serious? As I wrote - use what you want - but don't try to convince us of your opinion with questionable arguments.
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Nikos Tomatsidis
Posts 66
23 May 2020 00:02
| I had huge believe in AROS as a NG Amiga platform. As things stand today AROS will only live as a 68k OS alternative.
Why did not AROS succeed as a NG AmigaOS platform when you could buy cheap powerful x86 hardware and run it?
This topic have many answers but first of all AmigaOS and alternatives lack functions like Memory protection. It is not possible to implement and therefore almost useless by today standards.
All that is seen on any NG Amiga platform is ports of games and software. There are not any serious dedicated game or software.
Classic Amiga have that and there are still original games, scene productions coming every month. Does any of this run better on OS 3.1.4? Answer is no! People that use AmigaOS classic for other than running demos, games run legacy software that are made for classic OS versions. They run fine there. Sure it is good that you can now install bigger drivers but you can do that with OS 3.1 too. I see 3.1.4 come with FFS. I would never use that. PFS3 is much faster and more reliable.
For a classic Amiga machine I see no problem with OS 3.1. As said get the partitions formated with PFS3 and live happy.
For Vampire and the future of Amiga 68k, AROS is the way forward. As Olaf mention you have a lots included with AROS. Zune as MUI replacement, Network stack, USB stack, Powerfull datatypes and much more. You even have a decent web-browser in Odyssey if you can only update SSL.
If you need classic AmigaOS why not just install OS 3.1 as alternative OS. It must be possible to select OS from Vampire boot menu?
Gunnar is 100% right. AROS will live forever. It is open source. It can always be worked on. If you need to change anything you have it right there in front of you!
Whatever comes with Vampire as software you can be sure will run on AROS. Use your money to support game, software developers instead of Hyperion. The demo scene will never be interested in Vampire but game developers are. Maybe a chance to see a great game developed for Vampire. First time ever in the NG Amiga world. That is what is cool about the Vampire. It is NG but still classic.
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Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6258
23 May 2020 06:25
| I had once a very long discussion with one of the Hyperion CEOs.
Hyperion asked me if we could add a PowerPC CPU to the Vampires.
I wondered why they want this and the answer that I got surprised me a lot.
I thought adding a PowerPC makes technically not much sense and also in my opinion the 68K CPU is main part of Amiga programming experience and Amiga feeling.But Hyperion told me that they see PowerPC as the only future for Amiga. And if we add a PowerPC this would be a win for the users and would motivate Amiga users to switch to PowerPC finally. I asked them if Hyperion could see 68K as a future for Amiga too?
And if we could work together to develop for 68K.
The Hyperion CEO said, he thinks that 68K is dead.
He told me that they not plan to invest into a future for 68K.
He said, that he thinks 68K Amiga is for Hyperion a good market to make money from it now, but that they will only investment into development and future for PowerPC and not in 68k.
He thought 68K is dead and as sooner the people leave 68k as better.
He said that the best would be, if all 68K Amigas die, so that the Amiga users have a reason to buy some PowerPC and move on.
I realized that my vision for future of Amiga is very different.
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Olaf Schoenweiss
Posts 690
23 May 2020 07:53
| the last view is silly
if all existing 68k hardware would die people would use UAE or leave, I doubt that many would be interested to buy PPC@Nikos As you said NG failed for a number of reasons, including Aros on X86. Next to problems like missing drivers the main problem always was NG was "too modern" for the retro crowd but not modern enough users outside. In my view it is simply not possible to satisfy both with the same product. Additional the needs of average users have changed, people expect something to be installed and configured easily, there is lots of competition today including options that are free of charge like Linux. And many users today not even have desktops but use tablets and smartphones. But all current offers are of course desktop related so you would need new toolkits and desktops for the world of 2020.
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Gernt Gerloff
Posts 49
23 May 2020 08:08
| Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
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...
Hyperion told me that they see PowerPC as the only future for Amiga.
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He think 68K is dead and as sooner the people leave 68k as better.
He said that the best would be if all 68K Amigas die, so that the Amiga users have a reason to buy some PowerPC and move on.
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15-20 years before, this would be a valid view to the situation (as reminder Apple left PPC in 2005), but nowadays? PowerPC is as dead as 68k.
The only advantage for PowerPC is that you have faster chips at hand without needing to implement an FPGA, which will be too slow (cheap FPGAs) or too expensive (fast FPGAs) to compete with real PowerPCs.
I'm not really following that demand for PowerPC. And there PowerPC-FPGA implementations available already on the market, if Hyperion really want to have them they can. For me that sounds more like a try to derail and distract the Vampire development away from its goals.
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Olaf Schoenweiss
Posts 690
23 May 2020 08:11
| it is simply unrealistic whoever is interested in PPC already uses one the rest will not use PPC even if all hardware would have died
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Michael AMike
Posts 152
23 May 2020 08:18
| Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
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but that they will only investment into development for PowerPC and not in 68k.
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Who then paid for certain parts of the upcoming OS parts- e.g. Reaction? I'm no friend of Hyperion at all - and I understand your agenda Gunnar. But it is naive to think that the end of Hyperion will solve the right situation. Another parasite will come and continue to milk the brand - just like Colanto and Hyperion are doing today. You will never be free to do what you want. It would be better to take advantage of the existing situation than to hope for something that will never happen. The last thing that happens is that Ben and Michael give up or give away their "rights" and if you think they can't prove their rights (which I also believe) then you have to challenge them in front of a court. Which you also know makes no sense.
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Olaf Schoenweiss
Posts 690
23 May 2020 08:26
| he did not mention it because he has any hopes there he only explained why he finally chose Aros and not 3.X as future main platform for vampire
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Gernt Gerloff
Posts 49
23 May 2020 08:29
| Olaf Schoenweiss wrote:
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he only explained why he finally chose Aros and not 3.X as future main platform for vampire
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Which was a very good choice, in my opinion, not only because it solves the legal problem, but also it gave AROS a push it needed to come out of the stasis before (especially the 68k Version) Now at least it feels like it happens something in AROS.
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