NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/programmer/755

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 9.9 KB

Path: alpha.isc.rit.edu!MJP3783
From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: amiga questions.  -  riscami.txt [1/1]
Date: 10 Jan 1996 23:54:07 GMT
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Message-ID: <4d1jiv$[e-mail]>
References: <4cr622$[e-mail]>,<[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
NNTP-Posting-Host: alpha.isc.rit.edu

In article <[e-mail]>, Ian Parkinson <[e-mail]> writes:

>One of the features of the OS which really makes it stick out from the
>competition is, IMHO, the fact that the latest version works fine on the
>oldest hardware. Just about any combination of custom chips from older
>machines can be combined together and the OS will happily sort it all out,
>and only offer programs features available on the current system. Also,
>base config is largely unimportant as it will merrily work on very little
>memory, or from a floppy drive, or on a TV screen rather than a monitor
>and so on. Hopefully, AT, when writing any portable OS, will extend this
>flexibility to be used on other machines - i.e. in the case of the
>blitter, it will try to find a blitter when the system kickstarts and
>then, when a blitter function is called, either use it if it can find it,
>or emulate it (perhaps using other hardware specific to the machine it is
>running on).

I agree - the new OS must continue to detect and use hardware that is present.

>All other modern computer systems are capable of operating WIMP-based user
>interfaces - hopefully such an OS will just(!) select the best way of
>achieving the desired result. We may see the Blit calls become obsolete,
>and replaced by some more general routines, but I don't think that there
>will be a problem here.

Agreed. BBM and family should have all been more specific, anyway -
BBMCookieCut, BBMCCopy, BBMFast.

[bit about having to go through the OS to write games removed]

>This should only affect games- and demo-programmers, both camps are quite
>used to either rewriting their products for different hardware or saying
>'sod it if it doesn't work on somebody else's machine.'

True, although a low-level library that gives basic access to screens, audio,
copy graphics functions (that use the blitter if available, otherwise optimized
mem-copy routines), etc would help with that.

>> Finally for this section the amiga OS gets a lot
>>  of its speed from the fact that most of intuiton`s buttons etc. are
>> stored in rom along with most of the major OS code, if the OS became
>>  portable all of this would have to be loaded from  disk, slowing down
>>  screen redraws ect. or it would all have to be loaded into ram, giving
>> lightening fast redraws (faster than from rom) but would swallow large
>>  chunks of memory.

(what about leaving it in a rom that is specific to each machine?)


>Yes, this could be a problem. How big are our kickstart ROMs these days? I
>*think* they are 2Meg - even if a portable OS took up twice as much source
>memory adding an extra 4Meg to the basic system is conceivable (PC people
>wanting Windows '95 have all had to do this), but this does come into
>conflict with the fact that the Amiga OS has always been designed to run
>on low-end systems.

2.04 roms were 512k, and I think the 3.0 ones are too.

>OR... would this be technically possible? Putting the OS on some sort of
>SIMM-compatible ROM? Or even on a PCMCIA card? For that matter, I'm sure
>it wouldn't be too hard to stick the ROM on a bog standard PC card. I'm a
>programmer, not an electrictian (Jim) so I'd be pleased to be contradicted
>here.

You could put the OS on anything that is mapped to the right address so that
autostartup would occur. PCMCIA requires a dirver, though. A PC board would
(again) have to be mappable to restart areas, so that would be a security risk
in that a card could easily take over on bootup. What is wrong with a ROM, like
we have now?
>
>> At present AT seem to be trying to form some
>>  kind of wierd amalgam of windows, system 7 and workbench (Maybe
>>  they should call it Windows system workbench?), if they were to
>>  release the OS as a software package, as they seem to want to do
>> it has a big chance of failing {snip}

It might. It might not. It would *NEED* a reason to succeed. C= had the bright
concept that just because a product is superior, it will succeed. Getting
dozens of products ported and ready to release with the ported OS would do it.
In the same way EA's DPaint I helped to sell tons of Amiga 1000's, Pagestream
3.1 PC version that will run in 4 meg (where PageMaker can't come close) would
sell tons of copies of the OS.

>Yup.
>From the present breed of computers, it is only the PC and possibly the
>Acorn that would provide a decent market for any portable OS, Mac owners
>already having a darned fine OS. PC owners won't buy anything that doesn't
>have 'Microsoft' emblazoned in huge letters all over the box, so this is a
>serious concern. However, AT are looking eventually to produce set-top
>boxes to handle interactive TV. It is my guess that any OS they develop is
>bound to lean towards this goal - and if the boxes come in several
>different configurations (to suit several different wallets) this type of
>OS might be useful. We can look to other companies to produce similar
>hardware, and maybe AT will try to get the Amiga's OS onto these other
>machines.
>
>
>>    With regard to the statement that they are dropping the AAA
>> chipset and farming out the new chipset designs to a new company WHY!!!,
>{snip}
>> Apparently for the new RISC amiga AT will farm out the design of
>> the chipset to a outside company. This is not a bad idea if the outside
>> company are any good but a far more sensible idea would be to give them
>the
>> designs for the AAA chipset and tell them to modify them to suit AT`s
>needs.
>> This is sensible because when Commodore died the AAA chipset prototype
>> was 96% complete (figures from the deathbed vigil video), dropping a
>chipset
>>
>> this close to completion is like shooting yourself in the foot,
>{snip}
>
>Quite agree. I would hope they have seriously considered the AAA chipset
>before dropping it - but then again, the original designs must be
>beginning to age by now.

An ex-C= engineer said that the AAA chips were about SVGA standards.

>
>> Almost finished now, just a couple more things.
>> If they are serious about porting the OS I hope that the process of
>writing
>> the code will not take up so much time that they will not be able to
>> significantly rewrite the OS, because it is beginning to look a little
>> dated against Win95.
>The Amiga OS has always been at the forefront of home computer UI
>technology. BUT! For some reason, it has just never looked pretty. When
>OS2.0 came out, complete with bas-relief pseudo-3d graphics, we all
>thought it looked fantastic. Looking at it now, though, didn't C= take it
>just a bit too far? EVERYTHING is either raised or lowered, and it all
>just looks... grey! Things like MagicWB go some way to making it look a
>little nicer, but lets hope AT get some interior designers in...

I *LIKE* the way 2.0/3.0 looks. But, that aside, don't forget that they made
everything to work in 4 colors because that is the most reasonable tradeoff of
speed vs looks. Win95 uses 16 minimum, right?

>
>
>> Finally if the new amiga uses PCI slots this would enable cheap PC
>expansion
>> cards to be used, but this raises a major problem, all amiga cards have
>a
>> small rom chip in them to say what they are, so that the autoconfig
>system
>> can work but PC cards do not have this so the autoconfig will not work
>for
>> them, this means that in the startup sequence a software system will
>have
>> to be used to recognise and mount such cards, this will be aukward and
>> slow (just look at the bodge Win95's software autoconfig does of some
>> things).
>
>Agreed again. Some earlier boards were not autoconfig and required some
>sort of manual (or startup-sequence) launching, if necessary a similar
>system could be employed. I hope it is avoided, though!

Well, the PCI standard includes for autoconfiguration. The only thing is (and
this is from Be, Inc.'s Web site) that all of the ROM's in the PCI cards are
written for 80x86 machines. That means that we either emulate the 8088 for that
code, or trash the auto config info and start over. Lose/lose situation.


>
>> So, that's it, all of the above may seem like paranoia to some people
>but
>> I feel that most people will want to ask at least one of these questions
>> at some point so it would be easier to ask them all now.
>>
>Naah, not paranoia. I seem to have disagreed with just about every point
>you have made, but this is due to my playing devil's advocate!

All important points to bring up - and I hope that AT is listening to the
things that are important to us. Even if they disagree with us, they need to
think about what we are thinking about.

>
>>                         Jon R.
>>
>>
>> P.S. If AT release a new interim amiga (or an updated 1200) , some sort
>of
>> version of the present software pack but aimed at programmers would be
>> a great sell I'm sure, because a lot of people who buy an amiga want to
>> program it but at present are put off by all the different choices and
>> the expense of the software (I'm only just learning myself). The pack
>could
>> contain things like:
>>
>>
>> A1200/Interim Amiga
>> 250mb+ Hard Drive as an option
>> A69K + A tutorial
>> A C/C++ compiler like DICE, the new Storm Compiler or
>> otherwise something like Amiga E.
>> Includes, Autodocs and A tutorial for the above.
>> Paint Package.
>> A Gui construction system such as E's EasyGUI.
>> A version of the RKM's fo the new machine.
>>
>> If this were released next year at around the same price I think AT
>would
>> have a moneyspinner on their hands (I Know I'd buy it).
>
>YES! DO IT, AT! (but, for a programmer, Hard drive only optional? :-)
>
>Ian
>
>PS Sorry, everybody, for this excessively long reply!