NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/programmer/526

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 9.3 KB

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From: Ian Parkinson <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: amiga questions.  -  riscami.txt [1/1]
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 1996 20:02:02 -0800
Organization: Organisation??? :-)
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References: <4cr622$[e-mail]>
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In article <4cr622$[e-mail]> NEW COLLEGE wrote:
>      If they port the OS to other systems it could be disastrous
> for the amiga in general, because although the OS is undoubtedly
> the best I have ever used if it is ported it will lose some of
> it's best features, most importantly because it could not longer
> be sure that each platform had the same base config, any extra
> features would have to be emulated in software, thus packing out
> and slowing down the kernal extremely i.e. the new RISC amiga
> may have a superfast 24-bit blitter (I hope! :-) but how many
> powerMacs have you seen with one, any portable os would have to
> emulate one which would be slow.

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).

> This also raises another
> important question, if the os has to use drivers to provide
> emulations of some features which will be slow, any software
> which hopes to be portable will not be able to use many of the
> RISC amiga's feature because it would crawl like a snail with
> arthritis on any other machine so we will end up with large
> podgy, slow apps.
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.

> Also if the OS is to be portable it will
> immediately wipe out one of the key features of the amiga,
> hardware bashing, if each platform is different (as it will be)
> then the program cannot use things such a the copper or blitter
> directly because it cannot be sure it is there, instead it will
> have to go  through the OS which will slow it down tremendously,
> for example if you feel like a challenge program a game like
> stardust without using the blitter or copper and only using OS
> calls, hard isn't it?
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.'

> 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.
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.

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.

> 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}
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.

> 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...


> 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!

> 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!

>                         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!