You are getting OT right now. Nevermind. Yes, I have used OS3.9 for so many years now, if I call it "tiredness" it might mean a lot of things, but right now I want OS4.0 its that simple. OS3.9 still fullfills most needs (except a nice browser). OS4 will eventually have native support for one or more avanced browsers, which OS3.9 wont get.
You are just bored with what you got and want something new knowing that there is something new ;) Having in mind that there is something prepared and might be available you are eagerly waiting for it and subconsiously don't want what you have now. If there were no hope for OS4 at all, no new hardware and so on, so you had to stick with OS 3.9 and "classic line" of Amiga you wouldn't say you are tired of it ;)
But let's end this OT. I just wanted to point out that "tired" was not the best word because it may bring rather negative impressions of what you do and what you have right now.
An upgrade from an existing installation is not planned. Too many factors would make that process overly complicated.
One thing is that OS 4 requires a file system that supports long filenames, since some of the language files have rather long names. You will need FFS2 (DOS/7) for the boot disk (or SFS) since it will need to be bootable under OS 3.x as well.
Booting AmigaOS 4 on the classic currently works via a 68k program called "BootLoader". This must boot under Kickstart 3.x though.
Seriously, if you do want to contact me write me a mail. You're more likely to get a reply then.
Rogue, can you tell us some details how Mediator support was implemented? Did you write a new pci.library or can the old one from Elbox still be used?
The PCI support for Mediator and Prometheus is implemented like on the AmigaOne, i.e. an extra interface to expansion.library.
The original Elbox PCI library works in emulation, and in theory you can still use it but you must make sure that you don't use any of the OS 4 specific drivers that use PCI then. I would certainly not recommend it.
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How did you solve the DMA problem? If I remember correctly, Elbox hacked the DMA or it wasnt a real DMA, so it might be difficult to support. I hope that Elbox were helpful with the documentation nonetheless.
DMA is not supported. We were not ready to add any such hacks to our drivers so that you would set aside a bounce buffer on a graphics car (for starters, you don't necessarily have a graphics card in the PCI). We'll try to provide as many functional drivers as possible, but there are limits of course.
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Do you think the speed will be much improved on a Voodoo with Mediator compared to an old BlizzardVision?
Actually, that is a difficult question. There is an inherent problem, namely that PCI access to the Mediator might cause an exception because the hit is outside the current sliding window. If you have e.g. a Warp3D game, then there will be a lot of there (texture uploads go into a different apperature than registers, causing constant switching and hence loads of exceptions).
We're looking into possible solutions for that, maybe there is one (the Voodoo has automatic "hole counting" that might make access to the register apperature unneeded and hence reduce the switching).
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I think it's a good idea to support Mediator, because it is much more common than the GRex, which is not supported anymore.
Well, for starters we don't have any documentation on the GREX, so there is little we can do.
Seriously, if you do want to contact me write me a mail. You're more likely to get a reply then.
So, to run OS4 on classic (where I have OS 3.x installed) you need to have empty partition and installer will format it as FFS2 (or SFS)? Then it would be possible to do the rest of installation process. Did I get it right?
I would not give up on Amiga if OS4 wasnt released for CA.. If it wont be released I will sell my BPPC card and try to get a NG amiga (of some sort)
I can assure you that AmigaOS 4.0 will be released for the classic. It would be pretty pointless for me to work (fulltime currently) on it if we didn't intent to release it, now would it?
Seriously, if you do want to contact me write me a mail. You're more likely to get a reply then.
DMA is not supported. We were not ready to add any such hacks to our drivers so that you would set aside a bounce buffer on a graphics car (for starters, you don't necessarily have a graphics card in the PCI). We'll try to provide as many functional drivers as possible, but there are limits of course.
What problems you may encounter (if any) without support for DMA?
It means that drivers for cards that require DMA will work on AmigaOne (or any future OS4 hardware), but not on classic. Drivers for cards that don't require DMA will work everywhere that OS4 runs.
If you want to use a card that requires DMA, and there is a driver for elbox's pci.library, you can use that instead.
Note, though, that you can't mix and match OS4 and pci.library drivers. You either have to use OS4 drivers *OR* pci.library drivers for your PCI cards.
Not really. If you want to use the 100Mbit realtek network card, or an SB128 or SB Live! you'll just have to use Elbox's 68k drivers with pci.library. It still works great.
If you can manage with a 10Mbit network card and no sound card (or a zorro soundcard, or a soundcard that doesn't need DMA), you can use OS4 native drivers. (You don't actually get 100MBit/sec anyway so its not a huge loss for the network side of things).
Its a question of weighing up the pros and cons. Using OS4 native drivers, you might have slightly faster graphics (native gfx card driver), but you have more restrictions on what other cards you can use.
TV cards might work in either case; they DMA to graphics card memory by design.
TV cards might work in either case; they DMA to graphics card memory by design.
It's pretty unlikely they'll work. TV Cards are busmastering cards that DMA directly to the graphics card memory, but you'll still need to call StartDMA() from AmigaOS, which I imagine will just return an error code when it's running on the Mediator.
I don't know enough about Busmastering and DMA devices to say for sure, but.... well, you can always give it a try and see what happens, I suppose. But don't hold your breath. :)
Without overlay support, though, definitely no joy. A TV card without DMA is just filling a PCI slot needlessly.
As a matter of interest for people with TV cards, though, I do fully intend to allow AmiTV to work on classics - my PPC-equipped A4000 has a Prometheus in it - but I need to wait for a fully DMA enabled Prometheus firmware before I can work on it.
AFAIK, the OS4 kernel doesn't explicitly stop PCI cards on mediator from doing DMA, its just that you can't DMA direct from a card to fastmem. Its just that OS4 doesn't allow you to reserve some gfx card memory as a temporary DMA buffer if you use its native video card driver.
Also AFAIK, the OS4 voodoo driver supports overlay.
xeron wrote: @Spirantho AFAIK, the OS4 kernel doesn't explicitly stop PCI cards on mediator from doing DMA, its just that you can't DMA direct from a card to fastmem. Its just that OS4 doesn't allow you to reserve some gfx card memory as a temporary DMA buffer if you use its native video card driver.
No, the kernel won't stop it exactly.... but the API will probably catch the call to StartDMA() and say that that's impossible on the Mediator, unless Rogue specifically allows DMAing into graphics card memory and Bus-Mastering works properly on the Mediator. As you need to call StartDMA to get the proper address to DMA into (even if it's in the graphics card RAM) you still need to go via OS4 - if OS4 can't grok Mediator DMA then that means no Bus-Mastering.
In other words, it's possible, but Rogue'll have to put in a special case to allow DMAing if the target address is on the graphics card, which sounds like a lot of work for little return so I don't expect to see it.
The installer will give you the option of running Media Toolbox (the partitioning software) and/or format the drive. It will not force you to it, and you are free to try any other combination, but believe me that most other combinations will mean shooting yourself in the foot
Seriously, if you do want to contact me write me a mail. You're more likely to get a reply then.
When I want to install OS4, I need to access the CD-drive. Will you ship OS4 with a disk that mount the CD-rom (unit x) f.i. idefix or similar? Or do I need a clean 3.1 installation with a software that mounts my extended drives and cd-rom!? (please remember I am still one of the few endusers left)
The definite goal is to make it possible to install OS 4 even if no prior operating system is installed, i.e. you will not need to go through a 3.1 install first.
The most likely scenario is that we'll include a floppy disk with the CD-Rom that does the relevant setup. I already made something like that to boot an install CD on the classic without any prior setup.
I would certainly want to avoid anything that asks you to look for your old 3.1 install disks
Seriously, if you do want to contact me write me a mail. You're more likely to get a reply then.
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