Short: Review of AmigaOS 3.9 (March 2001) Author: Joe Reviewer (currently between e-mail addresses) This review of OS3.9 took place on my Amiga CD32 with SX32 expansion module. This is to see how well 3.9 performs on a slightly different Amiga system (built-in CD-Drive, no GFX Card, wimpy processor :) This review is for every CD32 + SX32/SX-1 owner with a hard drive! It was written on-and-off over three months. I've never reviewed anything before, so if it turns out to be a pile of drivel, don't be too hard on me :P Hardware: (don't laugh) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Amiga CD32 - the cutest Amiga made 2 Meg Chip A4000 keyboard Standard AGA on a 15Khz Scart TV SX32 68030 @ 33Mhz (about 5 Mips) 8 Meg Fast (my 32 meg SIMM has recently bit the dust :( 6 Gig IBM HD OS3.5 already installed CycleToMenu and ClickToFront running in WBStartup Installation: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Easy. Start the installer, select a few options then make a cup of tea. I have only used the Update 3.5 option, though, so other installations will probably be more complicated. However the installation script isn't very advanced. It misses setpatch, an updated FastFileSystem and one or two other things. You should consult the on-line FAQ for details on the missing files. No backdrops will be installed (I guess it assumes you installed them along with OS3.5) except for a couple of 3.9 specifics. Pre-Review Comments: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I am not going to write much about the included programs, since most of them are written by third parties and are not really part of the OS itself, just the distribution. Plus, at the time of writing there are legal wranglings with the version of the Genesis TCP/IP stack included, so I am not going to talk about these things, just concentrate on the core OS and Workbench. I use Miami anyway... Also I'd just like to say I hate hate hate ReAction. It looks shite, it's slower and IMO unnecessary. MUI looks gorge compared to ReAction. However I am going to overlook the fact the user interface stinks of rotten manure because it's an issue for the UI experts to discuss, and winging about the GUI isn't the point of this review, I just want to make my views and position clear: ReAction sucks visually. You should take the time to go through ReAction's preferences because you can get it looking better than the default settings. What has changed? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Workbench has not changed that much visually. The GlowIcons still look lovely. There are a few more preference programs for the extra features. A new clock program, a movie player, a CD Player and an updated shell (based on VinceEd) are all installed for you. Icon Information has grown into a ReAction based requester. A lot more def_ icons seem to inhabit env: which is good for the DefIcon functionality which is enbabled automatically. AHI is installed in Prefs:, as is WarpOS for those of you with PPC cards. I don't know what has changed under the bonnet, but 3.9 is definatly more stable. Just don't run dangerous hacks or badly written Blitz programs and don't run out of Chip Ram :) At time of writing, H&P still havn't released the changelogs. Loves: ~~~~~~ The new clock program, WBClock. It's based on a third party clock and it's really quite good ASL Prefs and the enhancements to ASL. IMO, ASL is one of the really good things about the AmigaOS. As a shared library, almost every modern Amiga program uses it. When it is updated, all programs that link to the shared library take on the new functionality. I love it! Deficons - an interesting variation on the Windows icon system, that file types have an icon given to it specified by the system. But with Windows, you have to hack the registry to change an icon, with Deficons, you can just change the def_icon in env:. It's like a mixture of the Amiga one-icon-per-file and the Windows one-icon-for-all-files. I know it's originally a third party program, but this really makes Workbench more flexible. Definitely a plus to 3.9, and it's easy to disable by just moving it out of WBStartup and rebooting if you don't want it. You can also run Deficons again to remove it's functionality without re-booting. It achieves it's functionality through documented hooks in Workbench, so it isn't classed as a hack, but how hard would it be to add this functionality to the Workbench core? This is staying in my WBStartup. The prefs program included lets you configure and add new filetypes quite easily. The IControl prefs has grown a 1x1 pixel ratio option. This really should have been in 3.5 since it is was crying out to be run in a 1x1 pixel ratio screen mode, unlike earlier versions of the OS. It looks much better now. All Intuition scroll bars are now the proper width in a 1x1 pixel ratio screen mode. The cool thing is, when in a 2x1 ratio screenmode, the gadgets become 2x1 again! No it's attention to detail like that that makes a good piece of software. Too bad they didn't update the Gadtools library to make frames 1x1 as well, though this is understandable as we're all supposed to be using ReAction. The new unarchiving program. It's fast, and simple. OK, so it doesn'thave all the drag 'n' drop whizz bang functionality of Winzip, but it worked fine out the box. There's room for improvement, but it's a worthy addition nontheless, especially when used with Deficons. Hates: ~~~~~~ PlayCD - Takes up too much screen real-estate, it's slow to load and is generally crap. I tried to get it working on the CD32 four times then gave up, repulsed at the interface. The Prefs program for the new clock program. The design is awful, ReAction notwithstanding. The Save, Use, Test and Quit options are wrong. Where's Cancel? Prefs programs never have a Quit option, what's wrong with Save, Use and Cancel in that order? Or at even Save, Use, Test and Cancel. I'm sure there's an Amiga Style Guide violation there somewhere....:) Quit actually quits the prefs and the clock. Amplifier - takes *far* too long to load, and it wouldn't play my MP3's from go. A stupid splash-come-loading status bar pops up at the start. If you don't mind I'll stick with SongPlayer. The Find program. IMO it's in the wrong menu. It should be in Tools, surely? Or maybe even the Workbench menu, since it doesn't act upon the currently selected window like everything else in the Window menu. I think the prefs programs could be made to look a *lot* nicer by the simple adjustment of moving the thick border on the right-hand-side of the window to the bottom of the window. Compare it to SongPlayer and you'll see what I mean. The HTML documentation is as poor as ever. At least, it looks terrible in IBrowse, it may look better in InternetExplorer :) Bugs: ~~~~~ Bugs I have found and havn't been mentioned anywhere else AFAIK. When EditPad is minimised, dragging and dropping a project icon onto the minimised EditPad icon causes a lockup. The computer doesn't guru or reset, it locks completely. When copying a file from the CD32's CD-ROM drive to any other volume with Workbench drag 'n' Drop, a 'Packet Type Unknown' error occours. This also happened in OS3.5, but not in 3.1 or 3.0. This is one reason I specifically bought the 3.9 'upgrade', and I am very annoyed it hadn't been fixed. This does not happen with the CLI 'copy' command or when the Installer is retrieving files from the CD-ROM drive. Since the CD32 has a built-in CD-ROM drive and cd.device in ROM, this has to be a fault of OS3.9. I tried it with and without the included CacheCDFDS software and got the same errors. I have no reports of this error happening on any other Amiga. EditPad doesn't appear to have been updated. I could think of a few really easy to implement features that would make it a much better program. Plus, I've found more bugs in the text-field gadget they used, disappearing cursors, malformed text, that sort of thing. Perhaps even more so under 3.9 as it seems to be happening more regularly. Being very picky, all the filenames on the 3.9 CD are UPPERCASE. I mean why? It looks ugly and unprofessional. If there's an Appicon left out on Workbench and you want to change the screenmode, a bug from OS3.1 rears it's head, where it shows the 'Intuition as attempting to reset the Workbench screen' message then closes and opens everything several times. This has really been here since 3.1, though happened less in 3.5. The Unarchivng applet has an interesting feature. When unarchiving, any files with a space in their names are renamed, with the spaced filled in with an underscore character. This was noticed by someone (sorry, I can't remember your name :) who was installing MUI and the installed bombed out asking for a file that had been remaned by the applet. Since AmigaDOS allows spaced in filenames, it seems odd that an OS application should have this behaviour. Bug or design decision? You can confirm this by archiving your Devs: directory. Upon unarchiving with the applet, Amiga OS ROM Update will be renamed Amiga_OS_ROM_Update. On the CD32, booting with the ROM update, sometimes the CD drive is not recognised by the system, or the system halts the boot process. I think this may be due to bugs in the 3.0+ ROMS as my A1200 sometimes hats booting after using the early startup control screen. The odd thing is that sometimes it is fine, sometimes it halts, and sometimes it needs a reboot to recognise the CD drive, but only when the ROM patch is used. Bugs from 3.5 + BB1 Fixed: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ OS3.5 introduced some bugs. BB1 cleared up a few but not all. These are the bugs I have found to be fixed in OS3.9 The Workbench Icon/Copy command has been fixed. With 3.5, I found that when I had no Fast Mem left (thanks to the aformentioned 32meg SIMM), the Workbench Icon/Copy command didn't work, it just created icons and empty files. One annoying bug that has been fixed! Multiview has had at least one bugfix that I notice with a CD32. Opening a document from a CD will case Multiview to fail and do into a continuous loop sucking all the CPU and never ending. Nothing ever appears on the screen. In 3,9, Multiview will display an 'Unknown Packet' requester then exit cleanly. It's nice to see they've added this to Multiview but what about the underlying cause, eh? Corrupted graphics in the prefs programs. Under 3.5, the flag graphics in the Locale and IControl programs would be corrupted. This has been fixed. Perhaps it was a datatypes problem? File created with EditPad now load in EditPad. I mean, EditPad now assigns its files with a proper icon with the default tool set :) Datatypes - are they now using FastMem? I'm not sure, but I managed to load some large pictures in Multiview without running out of ChipMem. I cannot verify this change from 3.5->3.9, but I'm sure I'd run out of ChipMem under 3.1! Incompatibilities ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wordworth 6 adds some extra gadgets to the bottom of the window border. In the 1x1 pixel aspect ratio mode, the height of the bottom of the window is higher than the size Wordworth draws it's gadgets. This is not a problem of 3.9, more an oversight of Wordworth not making it's gadgets completely scalable. If you re-install Wordworth, you may need to change the 'Start From' in the Icon information back to Workbench. CrossDos still doesn't recognise Win95 filenames. Annoying that this hasn't been added in the, oh, 7 or so years since Win95 came out but you can get round this by zipping your files. OctaMedPlayer version 3 looks terrible, though this is due to Teijo not writing it properly and assuming a Topaz 8 Workbench. A lot of Blitz programs and incorrectly written software may look bad as well with the new 1x1 pixel ratio. Pagestream splash screen pictures are corrupted. Maybe a Datatypes problem, I`m not sure. I have not had time to investigate, but the pictures display fine on the 3.0 A1200. --end