Hey all,

I was wondering if anyone ever came up with the often mentioned software power down, as in the same feature found on every modern OS - SHUTDOWN. I remember someone mentioned it in a past forum, and that it might even be part of future Amiga 4.1 updates, but haven't seen a thing since. Can someone enlighten me please? Thanks.

Ed

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@edponpon

This is a disadvantage of so called modern OSes in that you have to tell the machine that you'd like to switch the computer rather than just switching it off! Just wait for disk activity to finish and switch the machine off with the power button. This is the Amiga way. The Mac 'countdown to switch off' dialogue box is one of its most annoying features of Mac OS X. When I select shutdown, guess what? I actually want it to shutdown rather than ask me if that is what I intended Luckily a 4-key keyboard shortcut is available to shutdown my Mac in one go but surely that is stupid when I'm using 4-keys to do the job of one hardware button. You think this is progress?

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@edponpon

Firstly, there has to be some hardware that the software can control. That hardware only exists in the X-1000s. It consists of a register in the Southbridge that the CPU can address to turn power off.

AFAIK there is no such thing in the Sam 440 or 460 CPUs, and there is definitely nothing in the A1s or µA1s with their old VIA southbridge.

So there is a software shutdown available for the X-1000, but not for the others.

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@tonyw

Quote:

tonyw wrote: @edponpon Firstly, there has to be some hardware that the software can control. That hardware only exists in the X-1000s. It consists of a register in the Southbridge that the CPU can address to turn power off. AFAIK there is no such thing in the Sam 440 or 460 CPUs, and there is definitely nothing in the A1s or µA1s with their old VIA southbridge. So there is a software shutdown available for the X-1000, but not for the others.

I'd be very surprised if shutdown under linux on these machines requires pressing the power button.

Last edited by Boot_WB on 22-May-2013 at 12:02 AM.
Last edited by Boot_WB on 22-May-2013 at 12:02 AM.

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@BigD

Quote:

This is a disadvantage of so called modern OSes in that you have to tell the machine that you'd like to switch the computer rather than just switching it off! Just wait for disk activity to finish and switch the machine off with the power button. This is the Amiga way. The Mac 'countdown to switch off' dialogue box is one of its most annoying features of Mac OS X. When I select shutdown, guess what? I actually want it to shutdown rather than ask me if that is what I intended

Well, if anyone will ever give us a laptop, it will be a needed part of power managment. Maybe I want the thing to shut down after 20 minutes of not doing anything so the battery doesn't run out doing nothing. In this context, yes, it is progress.

While I agree that having to ask the computer permission to turn it off when you want to is a bit annoying, there are now some very good reasons for it. While we don't seem to have a laptop sort of thing at the moment, it's something I very much want, and want done well.

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@tonyw

Pegasos 2 definitely has support for software shutdown.

http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=utility/shell/pegoff.lha

@Boot_WB

When you shutdown Debian on the AmigaONE it closed down the system and then told you it was safe to hit the power button.

@Rob

Quote:

Pegasos 2 definitely has support for software shutdown. http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=utility/shell/pegoff.lha

Yep, and it works very well. I just call it from shell and its almost insta-off. Soon as you hit return its off!

This is a must for many users (like myself) who dont have easy access to the power button all the time.

Morphos has had built in shutdown since "1.5"

Last edited by realize on 22-May-2013 at 02:59 AM.

@realize

Yes. I found out that it's a lot faster to do SW shutdown than power button shutdown on MacMini.


As said many times, the SW shutdown must be something that the user can tune to work as they want it to work. To me it's something like: signal apps that they must quicksave unsaved work, 0.5s later signal the apps to kill themself, 0,5s later cache cleanup & power off. So... in about one second my Amiga shuts down.

Next... I want it to fully boot up in about 3 seconds.

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@realize
To be fair, MorphOS has software shutdown for end users since 2.0, which was released in 2008 (five years ago).

@all:
For software shutdown to work, you also need the hardware to support it. For example, software shutdown on MorphOS doesn't work on Pegasos 1, because of the missing firmware support (the system simply reboots there). Everywhere else it shuts the system down, and it's instant. (Means less than 1 seconds usually.)

On OS4, I think only X1000, Pegasos 2 and maybe Sam460(?) supports it, but I'm not sure about the later, on other systems there's no software shutdown. Even Linux just reboots the hardware. But contrary to popular belief, it's not because whatever component on those boards can't support it, it's because these systems were designed the way they don't support it. (Same VIA chipset which is on old A1s just works fine on PC boards with SW shutdown.)

I find it ironic (and a bit sad), that in 2013 some amigans still stuck at the problem that software shutdown is necessary or not. In fact ,software shutdown is just the first, but required step towards giving the OS more control over the hardware and the hardware's power management. The next steps would be sleep mode, hibernation, and all those advanced features any serious system will need in the future (actually, the future is now...), and I think no one would argue about they're necessary or not.

Still disagree? Well, think about going mobile or running from a battery and reconsider...

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The VIA 82C686B in the A1 definitely supports software shutdown. Chipsets supported that for long before that chipset.

You can find the Mechanical Off register on the 82C686B on page 119 of the datasheet.

@realize

Quote:

Yep, and it works very well. I just call it from shell and its almost insta-off. Soon as you hit return its off! This is a must for many users (like myself) who dont have easy access to the power button all the time.

and what command do you issue to start the computer again?

@Chain-Q

Quote:

The next steps would be sleep mode, hibernation, and all those advanced features any serious system will need in the future (actually, the future is now...

those so called modern features are mostly needed because the so called modern computers need ages to boot (or even to shoot down while what they may handg on something). i dont see much point in this with genuine amiga instant on/off. the only thing one could need is save state of the system to recover on the next session, but this is another story.

Last edited by wawa on 22-May-2013 at 10:45 AM.

Quote:

Just wait for disk activity to finish and switch the machine off with the power button. This is the Amiga way.

Oh really ? What if an application got some stuff cached into memory ? You loose it. What if an application decides to start writing stuff to disk the moment you press the power button ? You lose it. Not to mention you may damage your disk as well. What if an OS update is running in background and you forget about it ? What if your favorite email client is just downloading a new email ? Well, you loose everything.

Yes, this was the Amiga way, but this was when we were using floppy disks, and hardly had multiple applications writing to disk once you asked for it. Today most apps running in the background write stuff to disk. Your editor that will auto save, your browser that will have some cache, your video that's being encoded,...

You simply cannot "way for disk activity to finish" because you don't know when it will be, and if it won't start again.

And btw, you shouldn't have to worry about anything before powering down your computer: and that's what this shutdown software is there for.

The Amiga way is a bad way today. Lots of "Amiga way" things have no sense today. And this should be changed/fixed.

Last edited by Leo on 22-May-2013 at 11:17 AM.

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@wawa
Quote:

i dont see much point in this with genuine amiga instant on/off. the only thing one could need is save state of the system to recover on the next session, but this is another story.

No, it's not another story. Don't forget all the applications that have to start up, open the documents/projects, etc. It is much more efficient to just dump the whole state of the computer to disk, which is basically what hibernation is doing.

@Leo

Quote:

Oh really ? What if an application got some stuff cached into memory ? You loose it. What if an application decides to start writing stuff to disk the moment you press the power button ? You lose it. Not to mention you may damage your disk as well.

on amiga an application wouldnt decide to randomly start writing stuff to disk. this was an advantage of the system and it should be kept like that. there are enough systems doing it this way to choose from. we dont need to mindlessly copy the solutions "because we need it too". as they say, try to "think different".

also im doing a lot of power button action testing stuff, mostly aros, on my amiga hardware, reconecting different disks, hard and soft reboots. i cant remember to have lost data or drive like that, and im doing it pretty hardcore. i must say i never missed a software shutdown option. in fact aros implements it already, of course it will not turn off the amiga, just exit the system, i dont care.

on the other hand standby mode is quite handy on pc, but it never works fully reliable. where it actually is reliable is my ubuntu setup in vmware. and as i said boot and shutdown procedures of windows introduce more trouble than advantage. i hate them! i prefer the amiga way any day.

@wawa

Write-behind caching is quite common on Amiga systems too. I was using it back in the '90s when I was running Dynamicache. Very important on some slower devices like Zip drives, where access time is of the essence.
The Catweasel driver also uses caching a lot (it has to).

All this is beside the point, though. The point is that it's useful. For instance:

CD Burning apps can shut down the machine when the CD has finished burning (not so much a problem for CDs, but burning large DVDs can take some time).
If we ever get Dropbox, you can make it switch off when it's finished syncing.
Add the power-off to the makefile of a large project like MAME, so that when it's finished compiling (which takes most of a day), it turns off automatically.
Have it power off automatically if it's left unused for too long (because you got sidetracked doing something else :) Obviously this can be disabled!).

There are loads of good, handy uses for software power off - much more than just a replacement for the power switch (which will, after all, still work).

@Leo

Quote:

The Amiga way is a bad way today. Lots of "Amiga way" things have no sense today. And this should be changed/fixed.

I disagree, windows and mac users are lazier and have worse memories today. they don't have to remember to save documents and quit programs etc... lets take some of your examples...

Quote:

An application with stuff cached in memory and you lose it...

You wouldn't if you had saved and shut down the program. if it's a browser it doesn't matter as it's only webpage data and the sessions history/cookies etc. very minor loses.

Quote:

What if an application decides to start writing stuff to disk the moment you press the power button ?

Erm. the application you saved your data in and then quit before shutting down?
Quote:

Not to mention you may damage your disk as well.

Would not happen accidentally if you were shutting down properly. If you use SFS or JXFS all you would lose is the new file, an old copy would still be there. There would be no damage to the disk. FFS would make you wait a month while it validates whch will give you plenty of time to think about shutting down properly next time

Quote:

What if an OS update is running in background and you forget about it ?

Yes it's easy to forget the big AmiUpdate windows right in front of you asking about istalling new stuff.

Quote:

What if your favorite email client is just downloading a new email ?

If it's finished downloading it then it's on your harddrive, if it hasn't then it won't have been deleted from the server. No problem at all.

Quote:

You simply cannot "way for disk activity to finish" because you don't know when it will be, and if it won't start again.

Yes you can if you have quit all your apps. This is AmigaOS, not an OS that keeps thousands of temporary files monitoring everything you do that don't get deleted when you shutdown improperly, which then either sit on the disk hogging space or screw up the program next time you run it.

Quote:

And btw, you shouldn't have to worry about anything before powering down your computer: and that's what this shutdown software is there for.

You should ALWAYS make sure your data is saved. stop being an average lazy PC user. YOU also need to remember that shutdown software on AmigaOS is THE SAME as hitting the power button (instant on mos, 4 or 10 second delay allowing cancellation on X1000 depending on the program used).

My advice is to switch to decaff and close all programs you've been using before shutting down any computer. just because windows/mac/linux does it autoimatically doesn't mean they can't mess it up and lose data.

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@Severin

I think there's a bit of confusion here, though.

No-one is suggesting (as far as I know :) ) that you should have to use the soft power-off function in place of the power switch - however, it would be a nice option.
I also really like the fact you can just turn the machine off with the power switch - much better that way. However, there are times when it'd be nice to be able to script a shut-down.

@Spirantho

Quote:

You can find the Mechanical Off register on the 82C686B on page 119 of the datasheet.

Hey, I'd forgotten that after all these years. But is it connected to the power latch on the A1 mobo?

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@BigD

What's the problem with having it as an option? Add it to the Workbench menu and have the facility there, but don't penalise you for just hitting the power button (unless you're writing to a file of course). I think it's a good idea, and if it was in place I'd probably use it to save myself from reaching down under my desk

BTW, my Mac shuts down with two button presses, though it helps that it's a laptop and therefore the power button is on the keyboard. I just press power then enter. My old PowerMac with OS8 could be shut down with just two keys too back in the day...

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