@Mr_Byte

And if you want a menu item for it...

You can run an arexx script like this one (e.g. from wbstartup)

Quote:

/* Add new keys to WB 3.5+ */ ADDRESS workbench MENU ADD NAME PowerOff TITLE '"Shut down..."' CMD '"address command '"'C:pegoff'"'"'

There are probably unnecessary quotes in it, but it works this way, even with spaces. :)

Result will be an entry named "Shut down..." in the "Tools" menu on the right.

CU,
Mario

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@thread

The power on/off control for the ATX connector was never implemented on the old A1 SEs or XEs, AFAIK, so you can't turn off an A1 SE/XE by software (more's the pity). Dunno about the µA1 or Sams.

It'd be cool if we could. It'd make a nice "moon" icon on the AmiDock. Of course, you'd need a "Sun" icon also, to turn it back on

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@tonyw

Hi,

well, he uses a peg2, so he does not have to live with "our§ limitations...


Quote:

tonyw wrote: @thread Of course, you'd need a "Sun" icon also, to turn it back on

For the blink of an eye I thought "man, he's right"...

CU,
Mario

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@tonyw
Quote:

The power on/off control for the ATX connector was never implemented on the old A1 SEs or XEs, AFAIK...

I have seen this said, but I am still curious if an authoritative source can verify if the hardware is just not connected at all/correctly to even try. Seems like a good question to ask now about the X1000 "rev2" hardware.

The whole software shutdown/powerdown question comes up periodically.

(Nov 2009)SW shutdown, is it planned? when?
(Jan 2010)Shut Down Command on OS 4.1

@Mr_Byte

Quote:

Now i must go under the table and hold the on/off button 3sec to turn it off.

Just pull the plug from the wall outlet and you''re ABSOLUTELY sure that the computer is off. That way not even some standby current is flowing anymore, saving the earth further from global warming issues.

OldFart

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@tonyw

I hope that you're wrong for those who would like a software "off" switch, but if you're right, there's always Plan B:

Hooking up an X10 cm11a controller and appliance module to the A1. That way the A1 can send an "off" command to the cm11a via the serial port to turn itself off.

The downside is the A1 obviously can't turn itself back on, even if you manually press the soft power button on the case, toggling the main switch on the PSU or using an X10 remote would work however.

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Hi,

my SAM (case) only has one (non sticking) power button. So I have brided/jumpered the power supply and connected the power switch to the reset jumper, so I can have a hard reset (USB just goes down too easy ).
SAM is now connected to a RF-power-socket and I have a mini remote controll to turn it on and of.Think that's quite cool.

CU,
Mario

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@Mr_Byte

OT

I was so relieved when I read this thread. At first I thought it was going to be one of those wet-dream ("She's got an a$$ that will not quit!" == "OS4 cannot quit!") kind of threads.

Thanks for proving me wrong

/OT

I'm surprised that the pegoff command isn't integrated into the system menus by default. Are there plans to get this integrated, or is it a deliberate design decision by the OS4.x team to not include it?

Whilst I personally prefer the 'instant-off' feel of an OS which doesn't need to spend 5 minutes dismounting the filesystem, there are programs (such as P2P, dnetc) which are background shell tasks acccessing the disk intermittently. Consequently, I feel it is worthwhile to have a command which saves me reaching round for the power button and ensures all these tasks are ended/not accessing disk resources at shutdown.
Yes, i could manually close each shell app, but that would be tedious...

Also, how does OS4.x handle disk caches? I would assume they have to be either instantly flushed or not used, so as not to risk losing the cache contents at shutdown?

Last edited by Boot_WB on 02-Aug-2010 at 10:29 AM.

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@ Thread

I prefer the way it is now with AOS.

But if they did incorporate the shut down sequence in Amiga OS4.x or OS5, then they MUST make sure to have the OPTION to turn it OFF, or for an Amigan who DOES not WANT it or NEED it to be able to have the option available to him / her to tick a tick box in the system prefs, allowing the user to have the old school turn off system, like a TV, instantly in 1 second garrison.

Both options working together may be a possibility too.

NOW, what I mean by this is, unlike many here, I have my system at arms reach, right next to me, so it is convenient for me to just push the off button, and makes me feel happier to turn the system on, its just me and the way I am, get over it.

Yes I understand there can be advantages of a shutdown sequence, but for myself, I havent needed it, I simply close all my programs and save my work before pressing the off switch.

If there is a power strike, well, I usually press RAmiga and S at regular intervals, that I may have only lost 2 minutes work, but the ODDS of a power strike for us where I live, is very, VERY low, people get eaten by sharks more then a power grid failure over here in my suburb.

Anyway,

Just thought Id make my statement how it should be an option if they ever did put that into the OS.

cheers

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Quote:

But if they did incorporate the shut down sequence in Amiga OS4.x or OS5, then they MUST make sure to have the OPTION to turn it OFF, or for an Amigan who DOES not WANT it or NEED it to be able to have the option available to him / her to tick a tick box in the system prefs, allowing the user to have the old school turn off system, like a TV, instantly in 1 second garrison.

Your TV doesn't have a harddrive. The original Amiga came with no harddisk and only a simple disk drive which rarely had to write to disk. shutting it down was easy. Today numerous applications (including the OS itself) are constantly writing stuff to disk: various caches, your emailer getting your latest emails, your youtube video being streamed to disk,... not to mention you're likely to have numerous applications with "auto save" feature turned on,...

What you were applying 25 years ago with the Amiga simply doesn't work today. And the Amiga is no different than other OS: it needs some kind of shutdown procedure to keep your data integrity... This isn't your task (to close your email, to be sure your data has been saved, to exit your browser,... ) this is the OS' job.

Btw: I liked the way I could quickly turn my Amiga off but it just isn't possible today.

Last edited by Leo on 02-Aug-2010 at 01:42 PM.
Last edited by Leo on 02-Aug-2010 at 01:41 PM.

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Remember, it's not only about "not having to reach for a power switch", you could also f.ex. write a script that will turn off the system when long rendering session is finished etc.

@Jupp3

If Amiga (still?) had a working IR device it could be done with my power sockets. I already have an IR/RF converter up for my Logitech Harmony to controll lights and stuff.
So the Amiga could cut his power on demand by IR - well, at least in theory.

CU,
Mario

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Maybe we should look at the Amiga shutdown procedure the saame way we look at its high speed boot possibility?

That is, when the power switch is pressed, teh lines start to go down. Many systems use this fall in power as a notification for safety procedures etc.

So, can AOS be updated, modified to run with particular capacitor stacked PSUs, hardware collections, so when you physically pull the power, the various programs have little enough critical cached data that they can be flushed to drive buffer, for capacitance backed power to save them to a flush buffer on teh drive in the time available.

You may possibly look at a system powering OFF instantly, that is milliseconds. with hard drives of 30 Meg a second, thats only a meg or so.. but if you watch thelights glow, they can take several seconds, on par with boot up times.

Mind you, noticed how long the ATX PSU takes to boot and power up before the power button even becomes availalbe? Anyone compared the boot times of Amiga using linear, switch mode, and ATX supplies, and subtract it from total boot?

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@Mr_Byte

as many poeple already said, this is only to quit the Workbench application, which is hardly very useful.

I think this legacy function should be removed or changed. While Workbench is from the AmigaOS perspective "just another app", it is a very special to the user and should therefore have special functionality, such as shutting down or resetting the machine.

While shutdown is physically borked on the A1s it should still be there and act as a soft reboot (which disconnects the net and stuff) and then try to switch off the hardware. Switching off would work on PegII, Sam and X1000 (I sincerely hope!) but on an A1 just display some corny message like Win95 used to do.

I agree that reaching down the floor or whatever is cumbersome.

No matter what, it should of course still be instant

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@Boot_WB

The problem whit software shutdown is that applications need quit in the correct order or else you end up whit a crashing on reboot or shutdown.

The OS need to keep track of what program depends on what program.
Etch program need to save or ask the user to save the work.

If the program does not respond to quit then ban the application from writing new files to disk, after asking use if he or she likes to wait some more.

Then the shutdown will need to check the if there is any disk caches that need to be flushed, and then turn on write protect on disk.

wait until all partitions are write protected and reboot or shutdown.

And yes it has to work whit CTRL+L.ALT+R.ALT or CTRL+L.AMIGA+R.AMIGA.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 02-Aug-2010 at 05:22 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @Boot_WB The problem whit software shutdown is that applications need quit in the correct order or else you end up whit a crashing on reboot or shutdown. The OS need to keep track of what program depends on what program. Etch program need to save or ask the user to save the work. If the program does not respond to quit then ban the application from writing new files to disk, after asking use if he or she likes to wait some more. Then the shutdown will need to check the if there is any disk caches that need to be flushed, and then turn on write protect on disk. wait until all partitions are write protected and reboot or shutdown. And yes it has to work whit CTRL+L.ALT+R.ALT or CTRL+L.AMIGA+R.AMIGA.

Understood, although I think it's simpler than that with current apps. Initially all it would have to do would ensure that no program had access to disk i/o resources, then flush caches (essentially, this scenario would be no different from hardware-switched shutdown, except for ensuring no abortive disk-access, and no risk of lost cached data).

Once it's established, an API hook could - in future - be offered to application programmers (eg an 'unsaved data' flag in the window message box or such-like), with the shutdown command attempting to close all applications, but that would be for application programmers to adopt ifthey so desired (save data routine would also have to reset the flag). Easy enough for the OS to allow the user to switch on/off this feature in preferences also.

I suppose I'm more thinking of the risk of cumulative damage to the hard-drive in case of shutdown whilst the head is in contact with the disk, rather than with lost data or a corrupted filesystem (filesystem write operations have been pretty safe in this regard since SFS came about afaik).
Not that I'd expect it to happen all the time, more that shutting the hard drive down during a read/write operation is something I'd rather avoid. The other benefits in terms of unsaved application data etc would be almost incidental.

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@Leo

Quote:

What you were applying 25 years ago with the Amiga simply doesn't work today. And the Amiga is no different than other OS: it needs some kind of shutdown procedure to keep your data integrity...

Why?
Don't your programs tell you when they have finished writing, ie a progress bar.
AmigaOS is different, it doesn't keep writing all the registry c**p that windows does.
What the OS is doing is open to the user, windows isn't.
The only reason for a shut down procedure in AmigaOS, is personal taste, it is not "needed" unless you have some badly writtten programs.
I can't think of anything that the OS writes to the harddisk that would nessitate such a procedure.

Quote:

Btw: I liked the way I could quickly turn my Amiga off but it just isn't possible today.

I like the way I can quickly turn off my Amiga, and it's possible every day, and sometimes more than once everyday.

The Original question was about the messages received when trying to close workbench.
Shutting down the Amiga, and closing workbench are two different things.
There are times when a programmer/gamer might want to run without workbench, and the option should be there for them, but dont't confuse closing workbench with turning off your Amiga.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

Just take short look at the power led to see if there is any activity, then press the power button and you be fine

Hmmm, thinking about that, it'd be quite trivial to make a "smart" power button that when pressed would wait until there was no disk activity before switching OFF. An overide could easily be incorporated by holding the power button to force a switch off or something like that.

This could all be easily accomplished with basic logic.

AH.

Last edited by Apple_hammer on 02-Aug-2010 at 08:16 PM.

@Leo Quote:

What you were applying 25 years ago with the Amiga simply doesn't work today. And the Amiga is no different than other OS: it needs some kind of shutdown procedure to keep your data integrity... This isn't your task (to close your email, to be sure your data has been saved, to exit your browser,... ) this is the OS' job. Btw: I liked the way I could quickly turn my Amiga off but it just isn't possible today.

Dunno which OS you've been using, but shutdown by pressing the Off button works fine on my Sam... Really, it isn't rock science: Save your documents, preferably quit your apps (if you want to ensure prefs are saved), double-check the HD light is off, and then tap the power off button.

But if something stupid happens to be writing in the background without your consent (which almost never happens on AmigaOS unless you bizarrely use it as a server) then it is most probably unimportant anyway. And even then SFS & JXFS will ensure the disk isn't corrupted.

P.S. Not sure why anyone is having to hold the power button down for 3 seconds to turn things off. I just tap mine.

@Apple_hammer
It would make more sense for AmigaOS machines to have software-based power switches, like modern PCs. Pressing the "power" button causes a signal to be sent to the OS, which then does it's thing. On Windows it goes through a shutdown procedure. On Amiga it should treat it like a soft-reset, where it flushes the disk caches before allowing it to reset/switch-off.

Last edited by ChrisH on 02-Aug-2010 at 08:20 PM.
Last edited by ChrisH on 02-Aug-2010 at 08:18 PM.

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@Leo
Quote:

What you were applying 25 years ago with the Amiga simply doesn't work today. And the Amiga is no different than other OS: it needs some kind of shutdown procedure to keep your data integrity... This isn't your task (to close your email, to be sure your data has been saved, to exit your browser,... ) this is the OS' job.

No, it's not. It's the user's job to ensure all their data is saved and apps are quit before the computer is powered off.

I will concede that it is the OS' job to ensure all caches are written to disk, this is usually handled already by a reset-handler (although I don't think there is one installed by default in OS4, but there are 68k ones available for OS3, so easily rectified I think). There's no reason why a software shutdown couldn't also invoke the reset-handler.

Quitting all apps and waiting a few seconds to ensure the HD LED is off usually suffices.

@Deniil715
Quote:

as many poeple already said, this is only to quit the Workbench application, which is hardly very useful. I think this legacy function should be removed or changed. While Workbench is from the AmigaOS perspective "just another app", it is a very special to the user and should therefore have special functionality, such as shutting down or resetting the machine

Agreed. The "Quit" option should (a) be renamed and (b) bring up a requester giving the options Quit|Power Off|Reboot|Cancel (Maybe Reboot warm and cold opts)

I don't see the need to actually remove the Quit option, it's possible that somebody somewhere needs it and it isn't any hassle to leave it in. It could even be extended to send REMOVE and QUIT messages to all commodities.library and application.library supporting apps, and maybe Ctrl-C to everything else. Power Off/Reboot could do this too (as well as calling any reset-handler), before invoking the power off command.

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