@Seiya

Going OT a bit from the Leading Operating system topic, however the Grolier encyclopedia seems to me use an engine called Multimedia Toolbook, that was well optimized for interactive applications while the Amiga one might be either made with canDo or with a appositely made program, since one of shortcomings of Amiga at the time was not to have almost no adequate toolkits to rapidly create this kind of applications beside Scala. I know because i did struggle to create slideshows and presentations on Amiga while was very easy on Mac and PC to use either toolbook or Director.

And btw Hollywood came much later.

Last edited by saimon69 on 24-Jun-2015 at 01:04 AM.

_________________
Scarabocchi Binari - Italian AROS Blog
Binary Doodles - English language AROS Blog

@saimon69: the usual problem of porting applications...

@clebin

Quote:

clebin wrote: @cdimauro cdimauro wrote: @Massi Quote: But the it's also a FACT that the o.s. crystallized over its defects, and it's basically the same after 30 years, whereas other o.ses greatly evolved and became MUCH more solid and secure. MacOS didn't particularly though, did it? Chris

MacOS was very similar to the Amiga o.s., and very fragile indeed (system "bombs" were common, like our Guru Meditations). It also lacked multitasking for a lot of time (I don't remember when it was introduced cooperative multitasking, but it was very late). I don't know if the o.s. publicly exposed its internal structures, like the Amiga o.s. did.

Only with MacOS X (2001!) it become rock solid, because the new o.s. (which was totally new) was based on MACH microkernel + FreeBSD kernel.

@Hillbillylitre

Quote:

Hillbillylitre wrote: Turrican 2 came out for PC in 1995 while the original Amiga Turrican II came out in 1991. The Amiga was far ahead of the average PC regarding side scrollers with parallaxing graphics, long into the nineties.

Making games with scrolling screens wasn't a problem for PCs starting with the EGA, because the graphic card had more gfx memory than the required for displaying the screen and hardware support for scrolling (yes, hardware scrolling on PC!). VGA has this ability also, but you need the so called unchained/Mode-X, and it was discovered only in 1991.

What PC completely lacked was the Amiga's so called dual playfield, which allowed to have two screens which can scroll independently each other. It means that games like Shadow of the Beasts were not possible using the normal hardware scrolling abilities of the PC, but it need to be completely emulated. So, the PC had to draw all the screen every frame, and it required a lot of resources. Fortunately, it had such resources, so it was "just" a question to have good coders that implemented it (even with more than two playfields).
Quote:

The Amiga had some features and advantages from the beginning the average PC did never have, and that was PAL/NTSC. It made it suitable for lots of stuff the average PC couldn't do. Not only for many video games but also video titling and multimedia, and for a reasonable Price. Just look at Scala MM400 and InfoChannel for instance.

Sure, and it allowed also to connect the Amiga to a TV, saving the money for the monitor. I did it with my Amiga 1200, and it was one of the reason why I bought: low budget, compared to a PC.

@Hillbillylitre

Quote:

Hillbillylitre wrote: That stupid annoying PC pointer that jumped around the screen because it didn't have real sprites.

The hardware cursor was introduced with accelerated graphic cards on PCs. But it was only one.

However Amiga had few sprites, very limited, and scrolling at least one was "stolen" by the display logic (no bandwidth for fetching its data). And using AGA + 64-bit display fetch + scrolling stole almost all sprites, leaving just one of 4 colors available, if I remember correctly.

@cdimauro

>. It also lacked multitasking for a lot of time (I don't remember when it was introduced cooperative multitasking, but it was very late)

Yes. In the end it got co-operative multitasking.

From the screenshot and some old memories, it seems MacOS also had some kind of non-dynamic memory allocation for applications. So it was set what amount of RAM is allocated per application. A little bit like it was possible with ImageFX. But with ImageFX it was optional thing to set up.

(I could set ImageFX to use only 8Mb of fast RAM and virtual memory for the rest of it's need, leaving the rest of the RAM for my near-realtime-needs)

I would have liked similar feature in Quake for Amiga. It was not nice that Quake reserved all of my 16Mb of RAM after a while, handicaped the multitasking of other applications.
(one of the reasons why I think I never played beyond level1 of quake / bought my own copy)

Last edited by KimmoK on 24-Jun-2015 at 07:44 AM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@Seiya

Thank you for the video production!
Was it done via emulators on x86 box?

((I think I have one 486 laptop with VGA display stored somewhere ... I should get it polished for DOS retro playground))

@Hillbillylitre

>Turrican 2 came out for PC in 1995 while the original Amiga Turrican II came out in 1991

So, It seems VGA+goodAudiocard was better than OCS.
And in 4 years they managed to redraw most the graphics.

>That stupid annoying PC pointer that jumped around the screen because it didn't have real sprites

Only Amigans seem to value such features (smooth system behaviour).
(I still almost puke when mouse pointer jitters ... on any OS ... too bad it happens now with all modern or half modern OS that I use )

(similarly, I find that my Android, Windows and Linux system often fail to keep up with the speed I type on keyboard ((perhaps I need another 8Ghz?)). I think that kind of things almost never happened on classic HW. If that kind of phenomenom happens on AOS like system, you know it's "high time" to save + reboot.)

Last edited by KimmoK on 24-Jun-2015 at 08:32 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 24-Jun-2015 at 08:27 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 24-Jun-2015 at 08:06 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 24-Jun-2015 at 08:05 AM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@cdimauro

Quote:

Only with MacOS X (2001!) it become rock solid, because the new o.s. (which was totally new) was based on MACH microkernel + FreeBSD kernel.

A Unix kernel, you call it "totally new" ...
Amiga was new and innovative when it came out, that was a real innovation in computing from a tech point of view.

What is the sense to make comparisons with big firms like Apple which has thousands of engineers as opposed to our niche world?

We all should more focus on thread.

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SAM440EP-FLEX @ 733 Mhz, AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1

@Massi

>We all should more focus on thread.

I rather lock this thread.
Or at least rename or move to free for all.

Because it seems silly to try to discuss on " How to make Amiga OS a leading operating system?"
as it is not possible with current resources, during our lifetime, no matter what is done.

Especially when people consider "leading" as being as capable as Windows desktop systems.

It is realistic to lead on some niche.
(AmigaOS4 is already ONE OF THE leading operating systems on Amiga niche. (I say it's on the top 2, like MorphOS.))

But "what is the leading operating system on our niche" is not as important matter as:
-avoid the shrinking of our niche
-try to improve things
-have fun
-be friends (not always easy, my personal stress levels are so high that I should stay away from forums + home)

Last edited by KimmoK on 24-Jun-2015 at 09:34 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 24-Jun-2015 at 08:41 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 24-Jun-2015 at 08:40 AM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Quote:

Only Amigans seem to value such features (smooth system behaviour).

Only REAL Amigans I would say

Quote:

(similarly, I find that my Android, Windows and Linux system often fail to keep up with the speed I type on keyboard ((perhaps I need another 8Ghz?)).

I know that feeling ... it is what the market wants.

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SAM440EP-FLEX @ 733 Mhz, AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1

@KimmoK

I 100% agree

Our spirit should be exactly what you said.

Ciao

_________________
SAM440EP-FLEX @ 733 Mhz, AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1

@cdimauro

Quote:

MacOS was very similar to the Amiga o.s., and very fragile indeed (system "bombs" were common, like our Guru Meditations). It also lacked multitasking for a lot of time (I don't remember when it was introduced cooperative multitasking, but it was very late). I don't know if the o.s. publicly exposed its internal structures, like the Amiga o.s. did. Only with MacOS X (2001!) it become rock solid, because the new o.s. (which was totally new) was based on MACH microkernel + FreeBSD kernel.

Exactly. I remember the classic MacOS being described as a house of cards waiting to fall. As well as the frequent system bombs, often when a Mac application crashed it would freeze the mouse pointer or refuse to give up focus. The preemptive multitasking in AmigaOS was often useful when something went wrong because at least you could switch application and save your stuff.

Even then plenty of die-hards complained when OS X came out. "My OS 9 system is rock-solid. You're obviously running a dodgy extension" and "Being able to manually allocate memory to an application gives me more control". Where are those people now I wonder?

Chris

Modern killer feature: semihard reboot button

-when OS (or GUI) starts to hang, it sometimes is difficult to signal the running apps to save the data and exit
-with this new button or function, one could signal the system to save & exit in controlled way, then reboot
-if controlled shutdown/reboot is not possible, then it should try to dump RAM image for later inspection or restart attempt in QEMU

For example when my x86 Linux starts to jam (for example web browser is consuming memory + all of the swap), I sometimes am able to switch to command line (ctrl+alt+f1) but linux is so jammed that logging in takes 15 minutes, then entering a command and executing takes another 5 minutes.
(None of those things my wife is willing to do when he is on computer, more burden on me.)

It would be cool if one could just push button and have the system to sort itself out.

(in some cases this thing might be usefull on all OSs)

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: @Massi >We all should more focus on thread. I rather lock this thread. Or at least rename or move to free for all.

Is it law that whenever a thread on AmigaWorld gets over 10 pages, someone calls for it to be locked? Let people talk about what they want to talk about. I think it's a silly discussion too, but the alternative is tumbleweed.

Quote:

But what is the leading operating system on our niche is not as important matter as: -avoid the shrinking of our niche -try to improve things -have fun -be friends (not always easy, my personal stress levels are so high that I should stay away from forums + home)

True, but that was never AmigaWorld's strong point. EAB happily bobs along discussing a new Individual Computers product or how to make an Amiga port of Gryzor without all the existential angst, overblown ideas and people offering to PHONE HYPERION NOW TO MAKE IT BETTER THAN WINDOW$ 10!!!!

Chris

@clebin

>Is it law that whenever a thread on AmigaWorld gets over 10 pages, someone calls for it to be locked?

No.
But all embarassing and GRAZY topics should not be on front page for months.

I do not want everybody to see our mental/medical state with first look at Amiga's world dot net.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

yes, emulation, but this video don't want to show fps performances, but mainly differences in animated backdrop, missin objects in some games.
you see in Star Trek OS more objects on screen and transparent windows, in SF2T there are animated backgrounds and more frame.

however in the future i made some videos for dos in emulation, but try to emulate real speed, so you can compare with real x86 hardware.
So i hope to show real performances of 286 6/8/10/12/16/20/25 Mhz e so on, 386 and 486.

however many of these games i played on my 486SX33 and then DX2, many years ago and with my A500 and A1200.

_________________

@KimmoK

I don't think sweeping the loonies under the carpet helps anything. This site is what it is. It's not even problem unless we presume that AmigaWorld is at the centre of the Amiga scene - which it isn't.

Classic Amiga websites are buzzing with posts. Amibay is so busy that it's almost impossible to get in first on any hardware that's remotely interesting. That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of classic Amiga users buying stuff on eBay and tinkering away.

I'm pretty sure most 'newcomers' start from a retro viewpoint and have a specific question which they Google. That will usually take them to a site like EAB and there they will find a lot of people having fun without all the hangups you see round here.

So along with giving up the idea of 'making AmigaOS a leading operating system' we can also give up the idea of NG sites like this being a showcase for the Amiga. It seems to me that they're out in the margins.

Chris

@cdimauro

MacOS didn't expose as much as Amiga OS but there were still a lot of exposed things.

VGA is a superset of EGA so scrolling etc. were implemented the same way, the reason one had to use unchained modes were because of the limited memory addressable in the "standard" 256 color mode. At least that's how I remember it - that one could do chained 256 color modes with scrolling if one reduced the visible pixels.

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: @Hillbillylitre Quote: Hillbillylitre wrote: Turrican 2 came out for PC in 1995 while the original Amiga Turrican II came out in 1991. The Amiga was far ahead of the average PC regarding side scrollers with parallaxing graphics, long into the nineties. Making games with scrolling screens wasn't a problem for PCs starting with the EGA, because the graphic card had more gfx memory than the required for displaying the screen and hardware support for scrolling (yes, hardware scrolling on PC!). VGA has this ability also, but you need the so called unchained/Mode-X, and it was discovered only in 1991. What PC completely lacked was the Amiga's so called dual playfield, which allowed to have two screens which can scroll independently each other. It means that games like Shadow of the Beasts were not possible using the normal hardware scrolling abilities of the PC, but it need to be completely emulated. So, the PC had to draw all the screen every frame, and it required a lot of resources. Fortunately, it had such resources, so it was "just" a question to have good coders that implemented it (even with more than two playfields). Quote: The Amiga had some features and advantages from the beginning the average PC did never have, and that was PAL/NTSC. It made it suitable for lots of stuff the average PC couldn't do. Not only for many video games but also video titling and multimedia, and for a reasonable Price. Just look at Scala MM400 and InfoChannel for instance. Sure, and it allowed also to connect the Amiga to a TV, saving the money for the monitor. I did it with my Amiga 1200, and it was one of the reason why I bought: low budget, compared to a PC. @Hillbillylitre Quote: Hillbillylitre wrote: That stupid annoying PC pointer that jumped around the screen because it didn't have real sprites. The hardware cursor was introduced with accelerated graphic cards on PCs. But it was only one. However Amiga had few sprites, very limited, and scrolling at least one was "stolen" by the display logic (no bandwidth for fetching its data). And using AGA + 64-bit display fetch + scrolling stole almost all sprites, leaving just one of 4 colors available, if I remember correctly.

EGA had graphics like a C64/128 withour sprites on small green monocrome PC screens instead of large colorful TV screens...

I can not remember i saw smooth scrolling on a PC until way into the ninties or probably after year 2000. The PC didn't get intresting for gaming untill Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and System Shock came out using chunky pixel graphics.


According to Wiki it says EGA supports:
640×350 w/16 colors (from a 6 bit palette of 64 colors), pixel aspect ratio of 1:1.37.
640×350 w/2 colors, pixel aspect ratio of 1:1.37.
640×200 w/16 colors, pixel aspect ratio of 1:2.4.
320×200 w/16 colors, pixel aspect ratio of 1:1.2.


With OCS/ECS the Amiga could do much better than that with it's 32 colors/5 bitplanes from a palette of 4096 excluding HAM6 mode, and you could use the copper to put in many more colors not restricted by the planar colors.

_________________
Using: One Commodore C64 - One Commodore Amiga 500 - One Commodore Amiga 1200 with BVision and Blizzard 68060 with PPC coprocessor running Amiga DOS - One Hellbillylitre Amigatwox86x64x6000x running Windows7

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: >That stupid annoying PC pointer that jumped around the screen because it didn't have real sprites Only Amigans seem to value such features (smooth system behaviour). (I still almost puke when mouse pointer jitters ... on any OS ... too bad it happens now with all modern or half modern OS that I use ) (similarly, I find that my Android, Windows and Linux system often fail to keep up with the speed I type on keyboard ((perhaps I need another 8Ghz?)). I think that kind of things almost never happened on classic HW. If that kind of phenomenom happens on AOS like system, you know it's "high time" to save + reboot.)

Nowadays its more the mouse's DPI and MRR VS screen resolution causing bad pointer movements, so a good adjustable mouse is important. And yes it actually uses some CPU timing too but nowadays with fast multicore CPUs its almost not noticeable.

I'm not quite sure how it moves on that AmigaOne/SAM x1000/O$4/PC without sprites nor Hz nor multicores, though...

_________________
Using: One Commodore C64 - One Commodore Amiga 500 - One Commodore Amiga 1200 with BVision and Blizzard 68060 with PPC coprocessor running Amiga DOS - One Hellbillylitre Amigatwox86x64x6000x running Windows7

@cdimauro

Quote:

Anyway, Microsoft introduced the memory protection starting from Windows 3 (it required a 286; with 3.1 it supported 386 also): well before Commodore bankrupt.

However, another years were needed for basic features like preemtive multitasking or decent desktop.

Quote:

And Windows NT, which introduced full virtualization (and a rock-solid system), pre-empted multitasking, ACL, and an advanced filesystem (NTFS), was introduced in 1993. Again: is it good example or not?

Both branches Win3.x/9x and NT joined much later (Windows 2000/XP), until then NT was used outside home, school or small business markets. Commodore had its Unix derivate for workstation market (not much successful of course).

AmigaOS developement was at halt in 1993-1998 (except some minor improvements like Installer or FFS). Resumed developement after 1998 continued at much slower pace. You may fairly compare AmigaOS 3.1 to Windows 3.x, MacOS 7.5, MultiTOS or RiscOS 3.5.

Why not choose for comparison OSs in similar situation as AmigaOS? Look at MiNT or RiscOS and then judge speed of AmigaOS developement.