So, I get home, play Resident Evil 4 & chill out after work. I stroll my way to my computer completely unaware what is going on. Boot up, check e-mails, play some music then head to AW.net.

OH WOW! It's here NOW?

In an instant I decided to note down what happens, what I notice & what I test out first. This is by no means the definitive review, this is a first impressions kind of thing, like a diary? Maybe? Feel free to add & expand on this:


Naturally, I began heading to the Hyperion site to download the ISO. Burnt it to a CD using the instructions that Hyperion have kindly written to burn the disc with MakeCD. I then copied my entire SYS: partition in 2 places. One in SYS:BACKUP (Yes, on the same HD) & another in Files:BACKUP. Being the kind to 'try' things out, I decided to attempt an install straight after, no reboot.

Installed first time! All the files copied across to SYS: & I gave her a soft reboot (No time to waste) but when I saw a 4 colour screen, I decided to do a hard reboot. Picasso96 kicked in with no troubles (Radeon 8500, I think, I forget).

What do you try out first? That's always a hard decision. I aimed straight for the menu bar. Why? To drag the screen of course. Within a couple of seconds the memories came flooding back. I even remembered doing something as a kid. Dragging the screen right down, letting go of the mouse button but still moving the mouse downwards. It drags the screen down & the mouse then pushes it back up. I know I'm mad. Then I try holding down each of the 'qualifier' keys until I find the one that allows the dragging of screens in any direction. Right-Shift done it. HOW smooth & slick is this? 3 hours later, I move on... [Hehe, I jest].

The next thing I clock is the working mouse wheel. The mouse wheel, what an invention. It's like having one of those executive toys that you can fiddle with. That is, until it has a function. Clicking around some directories & I start my annoying habit only to have the Workbench windows roll up & down with my finger. I never expected that.

After a little look through some directories, I decided to grab my Prefs settings from my backed up system, copied my fonts back over & began to bring over some PNG icons (After installing the latest Powericons). Here is where I got my first (And only so far) Grim Reaper. Only once, but it happened. And it's happened before. Occasionally, dragging a PNG icon into RAWBInfo to replace an icon, a Reaper kicks in. A swift click of Continue on the new layout Reaper & all was good. The Reaper didn't happen again.

When cleaning up my icons I noticed the new shortcuts for the menu option, "Icons/Clean up by". Right-Amiga+6, 7, 8 & 9 clean up by Name, Date, Size & Type respectively. Thanks guys.

After this, I decided to do a Soft Reboot before heading into the actual Prefs programs to look for new options. Another surprise hit me here. The soft reboot now does not have the 2-3 second wait before the screen goes black & begins the reboot. As soon as you press the reset keyboard combination, the system reboots. 3/4 seconds later & she's back up. Even faster now that pause is gone? Swish!

A couple of highlights in the Prefs programs are:

- Input: The mouse speed now has more a larger range. Standard speed s now known as 1:1. Tap the speed up a notch & it becomes 3:2, then 2:1, then 3:1 & 4:1. Very handy for lower resolution meeces that are a little slow. It also now goes the other way. 2:3, 1:2, 1:3 & 1:4. Right down to a quarter of the speed. There should be a setting for everyone here now.

- Screen Blanker: At first it just didn't click that I was looking at a ScreenBlanker Prefs icon. Until I clicked on it. I thought I was going to see the usual ScreenBlanker window. Until I saw this new window...

A very nice touch too is. A new module based screen blanker. Click on 'Module Preferences', as you'd expect, you get a preferences window pop up. Another nicey is that it pops up to the right of the preview view that you see & the changes you make to the preferences are reflected in real time in the preview window. Meaning you don't HAVE to click the 'Test Fullscreen' button to see how your changes look. Another nice touch though, if you DO want to test the fullscreen blanker, you don't have to close the preferences window. Just click from here.

It doesn't stop here. Not everyone likes screen blankers & the Hyperion team have thought of you too. Click this image now, you'll see...

See that? Built in DPMS support. Niiiiice. It works too. Sadly I cannot test the Stand-By & Power Off options, but the Suspend worked prefect. There's even an option to ignore the mouse when you're on Stand by to save any unwanted accidental mouse knocks bringing your screen back up.

There's also customisable Hot Keys for each function with a "Learn" button for your shortcuts. All we want now are some Screen Blanker wizards out there to build us more modules.

Heading back to other directories. One particular special was when I popped into Tools/Commodities. In here is a VERY welcome friend in the form of a CrossDos icon. Welcome home I haven't used it yet, but I thought some of you might like to hear that.


Ok, this isn't a review per se so I'll test out some 68k apps & see what all the fuss is about Petunia.

I'll begin with: O-M-G!

This beast is FAST. It's that simple, complete with a Compatability Prefs program allowing the addition of problem programs, Petunia is one comprehensive Interpreter/Emulator.

First up in my tests was Photogenics 5. A very processor intensive graphics program that made the fastest classic Amiga break into more than a sweat. If you've seen this in person you'll understand. Now Grab a 1024x768 image & fill a layer with the highest setting (29.5) Gaussian Blur. Go for a coffee & come back in a bit. Not so with Petunia. Fill the layer & in less than 15 seconds, you're done. You can even slide the settings up & down, give it a few seconds & see the changes almost in real time. Quality!

Needless to say, most of the other effects are less processor intensive & as a result most of them are near enough real time whether you apply a full layer or paint a layer yourself.

Next test, HD-Rec: I'm really waiting for a fully featured sequencer for OS4. BnP has a lot going for it, but I think this is a dark horse. Previously, HD-Rec really struggled on OS4. The 68k interpreter in Update 3 & before simply didn't cut it. HD-Rec would ALWAYS report a 100% CPU usage. Even when nothing was going on. Add 2 effects to a track & it'd grind to a halt. You simply could not add real time (68k) effects.

This grab shows 6 (Count em) real time effects on the go. Look up the top right of the screen. Go on. And again. Take a second look... Now a third!!!

That's not bloody right is it! 0% CPU usage. 6 effects & they aren't even denting the CPU. The only time the CPU usage bobbed up was when I was sliding sliders back & forth & actually changing the effect myself WHILE the audio was playing. Even then, the highest I saw was aroung 34% & when I had found the setting I wanted, down the CPU usage went again.

I even got a message from HD-Rec saying I could not add any more effects. Time to extend that limit me thinks.

BTW: This really IS a fantastic piece of software. If anyone out there is even slightly interested in making music on the Amiga. My vote is here.

Last up, Cinema4D: This had troubles in Update 3 so I was very interested to see what update 4 delivered in terms of Cinema4D stability. Some of you may well have seen my PackMan render from Cinema4D. It's going back a while but I find it a nice scene to test renders with.

Well, here's another scene on the same theme. The original took my A1200, Blizzars 1260/50Mhz, 1:30:15 to render. I'd disappear & play a game.

Click the image & check out the rendering time at the bottom right of the grab.

15 minutes. This is with the Depth of Field filter (Focusing) & 8x8 Anti-aliasing on Edges&Colour. In technical terms, that's quite a lot of anti-aliasing. As a matter of interest, I tried the render out without anti-aliasing as this adds more to the rendering time than anything else & we managed to render at the same resolution (1024x768) in just under 2 minutes. That very scene there. 4 light sources. 2 of which casting a hard shadow, 1 casting a soft shadow. A little reflection just to test it out & again, the depth field. 2 minutes.

Remember, these tests are under emulation on an 800Mhz G4.

@Rachy

What an awesome job you & the team have done on this. Excellent work... Really!


That'll do me for now I think. This is just the tip of the iceberg & I'm sure there's users out there that have more to add.

Right, I'm off to drag some screens around.

Biiiiiig up to all the Hyperion team & testers. I can't say anymore.

FuZion.

@FuZion

It's great.

I've for the first time managed to get Firefox to run on OS4 with Update 4.
Never got it going with Update 3.









































With TwinVNC

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@FuZion

That's a great review. I can't wait to try it also (currently I'm having some trouble downloading the update, but Rogue is on the case. Hopefully that will be solved by tonight).

Jerry

_________________
- AOS has been ported to ex-86 ! It's called AROS and WinUAE... Or E-UAE on Linux !

- A1XE-G4 up and runing with:
512MB Ram / 200GB and 80GB HardDisks on Sii0680.
AOS4 Final Update / AmiZilla 0.1 Alpha

@FuZion

Awesome review, dude - we expect to see more!!! MORE!!! MORE!!!!!!!

(Sorry - I'm losing the plot. Help!)

_________________

@FuZion

Sent you a PM, get back to me with your thoughts

_________________
SAM 460 with 2GB or RAM, 1000GB HD, 4 port SATA, DVDRW drive and Radeon HD 4650 GFX card.

@FuZion

Thanks for the review FuZion. It looks very cool.

_________________
Sam

@FuZion

very pleasing to see such a comprehensive report particularly as release 4 was hot off the press - roll on the next MAG meeting.

I did a clean install last night and there are a few glitches to mull over.

1. after installation I then copied all the system files onto another partition. For some strange reason the Workbench icon has disappeared !! (obviously it can't be hidden).

2. initially I did an upgrade install but my Radeon did not like the settings. The Hyperion advice is a clean install and I agree.

3. Internet connectivity - that might just involve running the wizards.

So after my recent posting regarding booting problems and memory reporting I'm chuffed the Amiga One and OS4 is A1 - roll on the final release and let's hope for good news on the hardware front so non Amiga One owners can join us and reward Hyperion for all their efforts to keep this great OS alive and kicking.






Quote:

FuZion wrote: So, I get home, play Resident Evil 4 & chill out after work. I stroll my way to my computer completely unaware what is going on. Boot up, check e-mails, play some music then head to AW.net. OH WOW! It's here NOW? In an instant I decided to note down what happens, what I notice & what I test out first. This is by no means the definitive review, this is a first impressions kind of thing, like a diary? Maybe? Feel free to add & expand on this: Naturally, I began heading to the Hyperion site to download the ISO. Burnt it to a CD using the instructions that Hyperion have kindly written to burn the disc with MakeCD. I then copied my entire SYS: partition in 2 places. One in SYS:BACKUP (Yes, on the same HD) & another in Files:BACKUP. Being the kind to 'try' things out, I decided to attempt an install straight after, no reboot. Installed first time! All the files copied across to SYS: & I gave her a soft reboot (No time to waste) but when I saw a 4 colour screen, I decided to do a hard reboot. Picasso96 kicked in with no troubles (Radeon 8500, I think, I forget). What do you try out first? That's always a hard decision. I aimed straight for the menu bar. Why? To drag the screen of course. Within a couple of seconds the memories came flooding back. I even remembered doing something as a kid. Dragging the screen right down, letting go of the mouse button but still moving the mouse downwards. It drags the screen down & the mouse then pushes it back up. I know I'm mad. Then I try holding down each of the 'qualifier' keys until I find the one that allows the dragging of screens in any direction. Right-Shift done it. HOW smooth & slick is this? 3 hours later, I move on... [Hehe, I jest]. The next thing I clock is the working mouse wheel. The mouse wheel, what an invention. It's like having one of those executive toys that you can fiddle with. That is, until it has a function. Clicking around some directories & I start my annoying habit only to have the Workbench windows roll up & down with my finger. I never expected that. After a little look through some directories, I decided to grab my Prefs settings from my backed up system, copied my fonts back over & began to bring over some PNG icons (After installing the latest Powericons). Here is where I got my first (And only so far) Grim Reaper. Only once, but it happened. And it's happened before. Occasionally, dragging a PNG icon into RAWBInfo to replace an icon, a Reaper kicks in. A swift click of Continue on the new layout Reaper & all was good. The Reaper didn't happen again. When cleaning up my icons I noticed the new shortcuts for the menu option, "Icons/Clean up by". Right-Amiga+6, 7, 8 & 9 clean up by Name, Date, Size & Type respectively. Thanks guys. After this, I decided to do a Soft Reboot before heading into the actual Prefs programs to look for new options. Another surprise hit me here. The soft reboot now does not have the 2-3 second wait before the screen goes black & begins the reboot. As soon as you press the reset keyboard combination, the system reboots. 3/4 seconds later & she's back up. Even faster now that pause is gone? Swish! A couple of highlights in the Prefs programs are: - Input: The mouse speed now has more a larger range. Standard speed s now known as 1:1. Tap the speed up a notch & it becomes 3:2, then 2:1, then 3:1 & 4:1. Very handy for lower resolution meeces that are a little slow. It also now goes the other way. 2:3, 1:2, 1:3 & 1:4. Right down to a quarter of the speed. There should be a setting for everyone here now. - Screen Blanker: At first it just didn't click that I was looking at a ScreenBlanker Prefs icon. Until I clicked on it. I thought I was going to see the usual ScreenBlanker window. Until I saw this new window... A very nice touch too is. A new module based screen blanker. Click on 'Module Preferences', as you'd expect, you get a preferences window pop up. Another nicey is that it pops up to the right of the preview view that you see & the changes you make to the preferences are reflected in real time in the preview window. Meaning you don't HAVE to click the 'Test Fullscreen' button to see how your changes look. Another nice touch though, if you DO want to test the fullscreen blanker, you don't have to close the preferences window. Just click from here. It doesn't stop here. Not everyone likes screen blankers & the Hyperion team have thought of you too. Click this image now, you'll see... See that? Built in DPMS support. Niiiiice. It works too. Sadly I cannot test the Stand-By & Power Off options, but the Suspend worked prefect. There's even an option to ignore the mouse when you're on Stand by to save any unwanted accidental mouse knocks bringing your screen back up. There's also customisable Hot Keys for each function with a "Learn" button for your shortcuts. All we want now are some Screen Blanker wizards out there to build us more modules. Heading back to other directories. One particular special was when I popped into Tools/Commodities. In here is a VERY welcome friend in the form of a CrossDos icon. Welcome home I haven't used it yet, but I thought some of you might like to hear that. Ok, this isn't a review per se so I'll test out some 68k apps & see what all the fuss is about Petunia. I'll begin with: O-M-G! This beast is FAST. It's that simple, complete with a Compatability Prefs program allowing the addition of problem programs, Petunia is one comprehensive Interpreter/Emulator. First up in my tests was Photogenics 5. A very processor intensive graphics program that made the fastest classic Amiga break into more than a sweat. If you've seen this in person you'll understand. Now Grab a 1024x768 image & fill a layer with the highest setting (29.5) Gaussian Blur. Go for a coffee & come back in a bit. Not so with Petunia. Fill the layer & in less than 15 seconds, you're done. You can even slide the settings up & down, give it a few seconds & see the changes almost in real time. Quality! Needless to say, most of the other effects are less processor intensive & as a result most of them are near enough real time whether you apply a full layer or paint a layer yourself. Next test, HD-Rec: I'm really waiting for a fully featured sequencer for OS4. BnP has a lot going for it, but I think this is a dark horse. Previously, HD-Rec really struggled on OS4. The 68k interpreter in Update 3 & before simply didn't cut it. HD-Rec would ALWAYS report a 100% CPU usage. Even when nothing was going on. Add 2 effects to a track & it'd grind to a halt. You simply could not add real time (68k) effects. This grab shows 6 (Count em) real time effects on the go. Look up the top right of the screen. Go on. And again. Take a second look... Now a third!!! That's not bloody right is it! 0% CPU usage. 6 effects & they aren't even denting the CPU. The only time the CPU usage bobbed up was when I was sliding sliders back & forth & actually changing the effect myself WHILE the audio was playing. Even then, the highest I saw was aroung 34% & when I had found the setting I wanted, down the CPU usage went again. I even got a message from HD-Rec saying I could not add any more effects. Time to extend that limit me thinks. BTW: This really IS a fantastic piece of software. If anyone out there is even slightly interested in making music on the Amiga. My vote is here. Last up, Cinema4D: This had troubles in Update 3 so I was very interested to see what update 4 delivered in terms of Cinema4D stability. Some of you may well have seen my PackMan render from Cinema4D. It's going back a while but I find it a nice scene to test renders with. Well, here's another scene on the same theme. The original took my A1200, Blizzars 1260/50Mhz, 1:30:15 to render. I'd disappear & play a game. Click the image & check out the rendering time at the bottom right of the grab. 15 minutes. This is with the Depth of Field filter (Focusing) & 8x8 Anti-aliasing on Edges&Colour. In technical terms, that's quite a lot of anti-aliasing. As a matter of interest, I tried the render out without anti-aliasing as this adds more to the rendering time than anything else & we managed to render at the same resolution (1024x768) in just under 2 minutes. That very scene there. 4 light sources. 2 of which casting a hard shadow, 1 casting a soft shadow. A little reflection just to test it out & again, the depth field. 2 minutes. Remember, these tests are under emulation on an 800Mhz G4. @Rachy What an awesome job you & the team have done on this. Excellent work... Really! That'll do me for now I think. This is just the tip of the iceberg & I'm sure there's users out there that have more to add. Right, I'm off to drag some screens around. Biiiiiig up to all the Hyperion team & testers. I can't say anymore. FuZion.

Last edited by IanO on 09-Feb-2006 at 10:48 AM.

_________________
Member of Midland Amiga Group (MAG)

@FuZion

Great review.

But has anybody tested SCSI and OpenSSL respectively AmiSSL3 with Aweb or iBrowse?

Thx.

_________________
A computerworld without MS products and Windows!
Connect your Amigas ...
...The Red ONE-A1XE G4 - A3000T- A3000 - A4000 - A2500- A1000 - A600 - CDTV - CD32...
and your PDAs and laptops ...
Psion 5mx Pro - Psion NetBook - Apple iPhone - MacBook Pro

Hi,

>But has anybody tested SCSI and..<

THIS was VERY interresting ......

R-TEAM

_________________
My Hardware Config and GFX-Work on my HomePage



Long Live T H E [|D|A|R|K^><^E|M|P|I|R|E|]

@FuZion

Skim read this, looks like a good write up.
I hope people are knocking on your door asking you to be a staff writer

Rude!

_________________
2017 Camaro 2SS

@FuZion

Thanks for that excellent review and for your speed.
I can almost feel like I have been using the OS4 before with the way you depicted it in
your review.

_________________
You can crack anything with your head, even the head itself.
--------------------------------
...proud AOS user since 1993
--------------------------------

@Rudei

Quote:

I hope people are knocking on your door asking you to be a staff writer

You don't know yet ? FuZion is taking over TotalAmiga !


Jerry

_________________
- AOS has been ported to ex-86 ! It's called AROS and WinUAE... Or E-UAE on Linux !

- A1XE-G4 up and runing with:
512MB Ram / 200GB and 80GB HardDisks on Sii0680.
AOS4 Final Update / AmiZilla 0.1 Alpha

@Jerryuk007

Quote:

You don't know yet ? FuZion is taking over TotalAmiga !

Dunno about taking over but.....

_________________
SAM 460 with 2GB or RAM, 1000GB HD, 4 port SATA, DVDRW drive and Radeon HD 4650 GFX card.

And let me just add my experiences...

I must say, the installation was, well...a pain in the butt. Constant crashes and visits from the Reaper -- if I tried to install on a fresh partition. After about an hour of trying, RTFMing, etc., I decided to do what I always did -- install over an existing installation. (or, "upgrading," if you will.) THAT worked!

Only other "problem," if you can even call it that, was that my Internet connection didn't work for some reason. All I needed to do was open up the connection settings and re-save 'em, and that seemed to do the trick.

Anyhoo...

- D'OH!!!! I totally forgot to try the screen dragging!!!! (I got home late from work and didn't have much time to futz around with the update, and I'm currently using the Linux side of my micro! Yes, Update 4 is infinitely better than prior updates, but there are still a few things that I absolutely need to boot up Linux for.)

- Overall, I noticed a general zippiness in how EVERYTHING runs. And that's in comparison to how zippy I thought the A1 is over my A4000 with an '060!

- Only ONE program so far that I've tried doesn't work with Petunia -- a program called AllKeys, which IIRC helps remap your keyboard. I only had it because of those keyboard issues I was having that I posted about a few months back before I figured out that it was, uhh....a stuck key on my keyboard! Anyway, I figured out that AllKeys wasn't working when OS4 would severely crash if I so much as hit ANY key on my keyboard!

- FinalWriter 97 is instantaneous.

- It takes just a few seconds to crop a 1.8-megabyte picture in ArtEffect...nice!

- SoundFX is lightning with basic operations...loads AIFFs in pretty good time, for example, but processing effects, from what I can tell, isn't any faster.

- DirOpus4 -- I could almost swear the functions happen before I even click, that's how fast that thing goes now.

- MakeCD -- all I can say is that this program has been perfection as long as I've been using it since my A4000/A3640 days, and it was always speedy, so I can't really comment!

- NewsCoaster -- HUGE improvement in speed. My test was basically downloading from a binary group and joining the file. (I'll still boot into Linux, though, and use PAN until a comparable newsreader becomes available for Amiga!)

- Using the scroll wheel on my track ball in YAM, NewsCoaster and other applications was just...unreal. Wow...never thought I'd get to see that on an Amiga!

Haven't gotten to do much else, though...but wow...an incredibly huge improvement in performance; almost like running a completely new OS...in just under 40 megabytes...way to go, Rogue and co.!

_________________
former µA1-C owner
Listen to my podcast, Autobiography of a Schnook (there are worse things you can do!) - schnookpodcast.com

@FuZion

I have not played so much with it but what I really noticed is that everything goes faster. I did have one problem and that is when I compiled some code it just hangs in the AmigaShell. I have had this before a lot and so far only 1 time. I will keep an eye on this.

Coder

_________________
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@FuZion

Good review. I just added a link to here at OSNews.com
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=13613

Last edited by elwood on 09-Feb-2006 at 01:11 PM.

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

FxPaint now loads itself faaast, and shuts down fast. Anyone tried the WOS version ?
HereticII works with MiniGL on uAOne, but only with latest H2 update (Radeon 7k).
Shure, Cinema4D renders fast, but it still crashes when opening the information-window (RAmiga-I)

@sicky

.Quote:

Sent you a PM, get back to me with your thoughts

I think it would make a good article.

_________________
Sam

OK update4 is out, and i'll install my AOne SE for the very first time this weekend.
here's my question :

should i install OS4 update4 directly from scratch or should i better install Update 1 then 3 then 4 ...
I thought it would be better to install update 4 from scratch but with the problems mentioned there i'm wondering about it now.

I have no experience in OS4 installation, i'm a MorphOS user, trying to join the dots

thanks for your advices by advance.

_________________

@SoundSquare

You need to update your firmware first.


Then go straight to installing update 4

_________________
******************************************
I dont suffer from Insanity - I enjoy it

******************************************