The Amiga. A platform with a history. Today, we are reviewing Amiga Forever, which was kindly provided by Cloanto, its manufacturer. The question I tried to answer during the usage of Amiga Forever was: does it have anything to offer to OS enthousiasts today? Of course Amiga Forever offers great functionality for Amiga fans, but what about the rest of us? Can Amiga Forever cater to more people than just Amiga fans?
To help me answer this question, Cloanto provided OSNews with a copy of the Amiga Forever Premium Edition. The premium edition contains 1 CD with the actual Amiga emulator and the various AmigaOS ROMs. You can boot into this emulator in two ways: you can launch it from Windows, or use it as a live CD. The latter uses KX Light (a modified version of Debian/Knoppix) to boot the Linux version of UAE, running AmigaOS 3.x. However, I could not test this feature, because my USB mouse/keyboard did not work. KX Light booted fine into AmigaOS 3.x, but I could not use it.
This disk also includes the Amiga Explorer, which enables you to access files on an Amiga computer (AmigaOS 1.2-4.0, MorphOS) via a null-modem serial cable, TCP/IP or a Bluetooth serial adapter. Included also are a number of classic Amiga games, which can be launched directly from Windows.
The premium edition also includes two DVDs packed with videos and pictures about anything Amiga related. It features interviews, product launches, speeches, and more.
The CD and DVDs come bundled in a nice DVD case with a proper description of what’s inside, screenshots, and system requirements. Also included in the box is a ‘boing’ decal, which makes it clear to anyone who is interested in operating systems that this computer can run AmigaOS.
Installation
Installing Amiga Forever is not a necessity, but recommended. You can run the emulator software straight from CD, but of course it will perform better if you install it onto your harddrive. Installation is also recommended because it allows you to save settings inside AmigaOS. It requires about 30MB of disk space, and it installs the emulators, the AmigaOS Kickstart ROMs, the games, and an update utility, with which you can update the emulators to their latest versions.
After installation, you can use the Amiga Forever Launcher to get going. The launcher lets you, well, launch the various aspects of Amiga Forever. You can load AmigaOS 3.x, 1.3, the configuration utilities for the emulators (WinUAE and WinFellow), the games and the videos.
Usage: AmigaOS 3.x
After clicking on the AmigaOS 3.x entry in the Launcher, WinUAE is launched with AmigaOS 3.x. Throughout the entire product, Cloanto refers to their version of AmigaOS 3 as ‘3.x’, for the reasons described here (quite complicated). In summation:
“In consideration of the ongoing litigation between different parties involved in the release of the product known as ‘Amiga OS 3.9’, Cloanto also considered it prudent to avoid altogether the use of the ‘Amiga OS 3.9’ label in the context of Amiga Forever. Therefore, although duly licensed by multiple parties to include the latest version 45 system files, Amiga Forever continues to refer to this set of files using the generic ‘3.X’ description, which Cloanto has been using ever since the release of Amiga Forever 1.0.”
As a result, I will do the same.
Anyway, AmigaOS 3.x loads in about 10 seconds to a fully functional desktop. The resolution is set to 800×600 at 8bit by default, so the first thing I did was change it. This offered my first challenge; this was my first ever encounter with AmigaOS, so it took a bit of searching before I found the proper tool to do it. Oddly enough, I can only use 8bit colour depth; 16 or 32bit doesn’t work. So I had to settle at 1280x1024x8bit.
All hardware was configured and working properly. I was a bit weary of that, since my mouse and keyboard are both USB; however, they worked fine, including the mousewheel so I could scroll easily. The network was also up and running; I was on the web with AWeb without ever touching a configuration panel.
The Amiga UI (the Workbench, even though strictly speaking only the file manager is called Workbench) looks quite similar to a MacOS desktop. Drive icons are located on the desktop (including CD drives and my Windows HD), there is a global menubar on top, and a row of icons on the bottom with which you can launch applications and configuration utilities.
The global menubar in Workbench works differently than the one in the MacOS, because the Amiga had a two-button mouse. This means that in order to access the pull-down menus in the global menubar, you first need to right-click and hold inside or the application window, or the menubar itself. This is confusing, and personally, I do not like it at all. However, one should not forget that I have been using the ‘normal’ way of accessing menus all my life, so it may just be a problem of ‘getting used to’.
Terminology in AmigaOS also differs from what we Windows/KDE/GNOME/OSX/etc. users are used to. AmigaOS uses a ‘workbench’ rather than a ‘desktop’ metaphor; this means that instead of folders, you have drawers; data files are called projects; and widgets are gadgets. So, instead of a ‘File’ menu, you have a ‘Project’ menu.
I have played with AmigaOS 3.x using Amiga Forever for a few weeks now, and I must say, the lack of protected memory really shows. Without any clear reasons, out of the blue, the OS breaks, and a reboot is required (‘press left mouse button to continue’). This is a major problem, and extremely annoying.
All in all, the AmigaOS 3.x part of Amiga Forever is well-built; the emulation works without a hitch, no configuration is required, and all the hardware is properly detected. The frequent crashes I experienced are due to the technical limitations of AmigaOS, and have nothing to do with the actual Amiga Forever package.
Usage: AmigaOS 1.3
AmigaOS 1.3 literally made my jaw drop. Even though the OS is of course horribly outdated, and it looks just as bad, the functionality of this operating system from the mid-80s is just stunning. For instance, the OS could convert any written word into speech, using different speeds, different voices, and different intonations (expressive, monotone). The second impressive aspect are the various demos: one of them shows a juggler juggling around metal balls– all in 3D. Take a look at the screenshot.
Another really cool feature is the ‘dragging’ of workspaces. The AmigaOS can have multiple workspaces (even at different resolutions) and you can then drag one workspace down to reveal the one behind it. To get an idea, take a look at the screenshot. Here you can see how I dragged the Robocity demo, which has its own workspace, halfway down, to reveal the primary workspace. Really cool, and definitely something I’d like to see in other operating systems.
The one major bug I encountered was that the colours randomly changed; you can see that the characteristic blue/orange colour scheme has vanished in the workspace-dragging screenshot. This happened numerous times, resulting in different colour schemes each time it happened.
In conclusion, AmigaOS 1.3 is, no surprise, rather useless, but impressive nonetheless. Cloanto has done its job rather well again; using AmigaOS 1.3 required no configuration whatsoever.
Conclusion
It is kind of difficult to draw a conclusion. As I already said, for Amiga fans Amiga Forever is a must-have, there is no denying that. It is probably the next best thing to using a real Amiga, and it requires no effort at all.
However, what about the original point of this review? Does it have anything to offer to OS enthousiasts today? I have to answer this question with ‘yes’. The premium edition which I used for this review might be a bit too expensive for non-Amiga fans ($59.95; EUR 53.41), but the download edition (which lacks the videos, the packaging, Amiga Explorer, and KX Light) is definitely worth buying ($29.95; EUR 26.68), even if it’s just to gain just a little more knowledge and understanding about this at-the-time revolutionary operating system.
–Thom Holwerda
Test system:
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Not much of a review, rather a quick fiddle about and a few words cobbled together.
Interesting that you were surfing with ABrowse when it’s AWeb that comes with Amiga Forever
There is no ABrowse *waving hand*. IBrowse and Aweb 🙂
Not a particularly thorough review though. The video materials would require as much space to cover properly by themselves – let alone several versions of an operating system.
Interesting that you were surfing with ABrowse when it’s AWeb that comes with Amiga Forever
Err, yeah. I guess I was reading a Syllable story or something just before I wrote that passage. consider it fixed, and please accept my humble apologies
.
Not a particularly thorough review though.
I was reviewing Amiga Forever, not AmigaOS.
The video materials would require as much space to cover properly by themselves
No. Take a good look at the central question/conclusion of the article. Then, you’ll realize the videos aren’t of importance in *this* article.
The OS is buggy, horribly ugly and doesn’t even have protected memory and yet it’s still worth 30 euros?
I value my money more than that.
Thom: I have some used bubble gum I will sell you for $1 per piece.
AOS4 actually have memore protection. It’s just not turned on by default due to backwards compatibility. Turn it on, and you’ve got it – but then forget about backwards compatibility.
@ dylansmrjones
> AOS4 actually have memore protection. It’s just not
> turned on by default due to backwards compatibility.
> Turn it on, and you’ve got it – but then forget about
> backwards compatibility.
Some limited memory protection is enabled in OS4 by default though. Also one important difference with regard to system stability and debugging abilities compared to AmigaOS3.x is the Grim Reaper.
@ Thom Holwerda
Also emulating OS3.x is IMO by far less stable than using the OS on classic Amiga systems, so IMO a lot of crashes while emulating are not solely due to the classic OS.
I didn’t know a limited mp was turned as default. The Grim Reaper however I did now about
And it plays along on the tradition in AmigaOS (Guru Meditation).
Considering what you get 30$ isn’t a high price. But you have to be interested in OS’es to want it, or be an Amiga lover.
If you just want a machine to play games on, buying it would be stupid.
IMHO, most people who buy AF want to find back a computer they loved some time ago, to play Shadow of the Beast or Battle Squadron and to use DOpus or DPaint again, just for the fun… and it is much less expensive than a real Amiga 1200 (at least in my country) though of course a real Amiga is better… Not to use it for daily tasks. So that AOS is “ugly” (which is a personal point of view… I find OS3 to be a very beautiful OS for its time and there are many tools to enhance it) and that it doesn’t have memory protection is not important at all… After all, Guru Meditation is part of the legend :p
Beside, AmigaForever is not only AOS. It is a fully configured WinUAE with a quite polished Workbench… Although it has made tremendous progress, WinUAE is still a pretty difficult emulator to use and setting up a Workbench like in AF requires time and knowledge of the OS… Few people have both these ressources…
Of course there are free emulation packs, but most of them do not include the Kickstart and the Workbench ADFs required to fully use the system.
Finally, buying AF is supporting Amiga Inc, for Cloanto only has a licence for AOS…
“This means that in order to access the pull-down menus in the global menubar, you first need to right-click and hold inside or the application window, or the menubar itself.”
It’s been a while since I bootet my A1200 for the last time, but the way I remember it, you hold the right button anywhere to get to the menu. Anyway, almost every Amiga user installs MagicMenu anyway, which turns the menu bar into a popup menu – that’s how menus really should be, no need for a menu bar at all.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that the usability and discoverability aspect of it is good. It’s just that way from the beginning because some engineer thought he would do it that way without making some proper research.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that the usability and discoverability aspect of it is good. It’s just that way from the beginning because some engineer thought he would do it that way without making some proper research.
I haven’t used AmigaOS in awhile, but I remember that I liked the right-click single menubar and the MagicMenus add on.
I recognize that you are more of a usability expert than I am, but I think either pop-up menus or single menubar is a much better solution than menubar per window. Mainly for screen real estate purposes and for Fitt’s Law.
Now as for discoverability, I realize especially with pop-up menus it isn’t immediately obvious. But AmigaOS had a consistency where the left mouse button was the “Select” button and the right mouse button was the “Menu” button. Much like we have in Windows nowadays.
I think as long as you instruct a person how the mouse works, this consistency is a very good thing. Then the only things that have discoverability issues are the things that are inconsistent with the UI guidelines.
I don’t know if they did usability studies; I think they were trying to imitate the Mac way of doing things while differentiating their own product.
Nobody said anything about the menubar on a single bar. I was discussing the fact that you have to RIGHT CLICK to get it. This is a major discoverability and usability-speed hole.
This is a major discoverability and usability-speed hole.
It might be, but how often do you need to discover it? Remember back then, there was no Windows and MacOS was not accessible to everyone (expensive macs) in 1985-90. Those that got Amigas back then learned quickly to use them, not just because they had a simple UI, but because the underlying system was extremely simple.
I agree that MacOS of the same time period had a better GUI, but the internals and the flexibility of AmigaOS completely wiped the floor with MacOS and continued to do so up until MacOSX came along.
AmigaOS had a finely tuned, 32-bit multitasking kernel straight from day one, which is amazing by todays standard and the kernel itself didn’t change that much in OS2.0 and OS3.x.
The simple design allowed you to easily fix things yourself if it was broken.
Edited 2005-12-12 21:37
>It might be, but how often do you need to discover it?
A big hole like this is enough to drive new customers away.
As for the rest of us who know about it, there is the usability thing. It unesessarily requires TWO clicks instead of one to get to a menu item.
>It might be, but how often do you need to discover it?
A big hole like this is enough to drive new customers away.
As for the rest of us who know about it, there is the usability thing. It unesessarily requires TWO clicks instead of one to get to a menu item.
I was wondering what you meant about the usability speed. You actually don’t need two clicks. You hold the right mousebutton and drag to your menu item, then release to choose.
In the original implementation, I don’t think the two-click method works. I think you can install an extension to do that.
In the MagicMenu pop-up menu implementation, I think it works either way, like Windows does now.
You hold the right mousebutton and drag to your menu item, then release to choose.
THAT is even WORSE than what Eugenia wrongly said (namely two clicks): you have to keep the muscles in your arm/hand/shoulder tightened for a relatively long period; the few times you need to do this in modern operating systems (dragging/dropping) don’t really matter. But, when you have to do it every time to get to a menu item, muscles will start to hurt.
I have a slightly pivoted right shoulderblade, causing severe tension when using computers (or when doing anything in the same position, such as writing). AmigaOS’ way of click + hold is a nightmare for me.
Poor dear, you must have muscles like knots in string.
I like the Amiga Right Mouse Button, more that the Windows one, press and hold down the rmb swing it up to the top of the screen and it’s there. With Windows press rmb, wait, swing down and right somewhere and press the other button again.
It’s a personal thing of course, but I never use Magic Menu on the Amiga, (it’s built into AOS4 btw) but it depends what you’re use to I suppose.
For me the Amiga menu is faster and easy to use.
And it is possible to toggle several triggers without reopening the menu.
Just hold RMB and click LMB.
Menus in the most recent AmigaOS (version 4.0) are configurable now.
http://wookiechat.amigarevolution.com/pics/amigaos4menus.png
They can be accessed with the right mouse button in pop up mode only, or from the menu bar at the top of the screen, or from either depending on the mouse pointer position.
Secondly, they can use the old amiga style where you hold down the right mouse button and let go when on top of the menu item to select.. or you can have “sticky panels”, where you right click and let go to bring up the menu.. with no holding down of buttons required to keep it open.
I’m sure there are small patches (such as magic menu) that offer the same functionality for AmigaOS 3.x, but they arent standard of course.
I’ve been reading this thread with quite some interest.
From it I think it is very clear that both Eugenia and Thom have never ever used or maybe even seen an Amiga before. They simply fail to notice the aspect that there are more roads then one to achieve a goal. When one is used to something by daily routine, one gets so used to it that the eye-to-hand coordination is mainly performed by the spinal cord instead of the brains. The moment one is confronted with a slight different approach, the spinal cord hands it back to the brains and makes you ‘aware’of it: your first reaction is ‘that’s a clumsy way of doin’ i’!’. Which it isn’t at all.
In my daily life I use three computers:
— Amiga A1200 running OS3.9
— Amiga A1 running OS4.0 pre #3
— WinAMD-box running XP-home
Yes, the Windows-box sports that clumsy(!), always visible menu bar, eating up your precious screen space, adding to the letterbox appearence. It needs TWO clicks with the LEFT HAND button to activate an item.
The A1/OS4-combo sports the other version. The menu strip is NOT visible all time , but only when I press the RIGHT HAND button. Bumping the pointer to the screen’s top edge provides a horizontally arranged menu strip, while when the pointer is some where on the screen it is presented in a vertical way. Oh, yes and it’s of the ‘non-sticky’ variant. That’s the term we use for it. Sticky menus or non-sticky. I prefer them non-sticky, so I have to keep the button pressed until I find the item I want.
The A1200/OS3.9-combo sports the MagicMenu add-on. And they used to be set to ‘Use sticky menus’. Since June 2005 no longer so, as I had come to use (and love) the original non-sticky way again. Much, much faster. For me, that is.
Talking about nightmares: having to use the spacebar every time you use a single or double quote, but then only when the next character is a vowel or a space or a c and maybe some other characters. All the other ones can do without. And *I* have to remember when to use which, poor me…
How was that done when we did our jobs using typewriters? Rest assured that the Amiga’s approach is rather simmilar! The Micorsoft approach will undoubtly be copie by Linux and Apple (I have NO experience with these two systems), but it does *NOT* mean that it is userfriendly. Quite the contrary. How it works on the Amiga? Perfectly! Which way is for me to know and for you to find out.
Foreign characters? Little problem on the Amiga. Like the French c-cedilla (ç). On the Windows machine I have to press the single quote followed by the c. The Amiga uses Alt + c. And in this way the Greek sign for micro needs an Alt + u combo on the Amiga. On the Windows machine I still have to find out after all these years. Single quote followed by the u gives me ú, which is not what I want. A total mess. Or should I stick to the old MS-DOS way of typing in some figure ranging from 0 to 255? That was maybe perfectly suitable for the seventies and maybe eighties, but from July 24, 1985, the birthday of the Amiga (IIRC), this is horribly, to the extent of laughingly, outdated.
Tjitte ÓldFart’de Wolff (horrible deployment of quotes
demonstrated!)
A big hole like this is enough to drive new customers away.
I think that’s overdoing it. This is one single operation that takes a few seconds to figure out. Did you ever try using it in the AmigaOS 1.x – 3.x systems? It’s very easy: You can right-click *anywhere* on the screen, and the top text changes. You can see it already there that something is going on. It disappears again when you release the button. Ah! The beginner now realizes this text only appears when you hold the button down. You move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen and try the pull-down menus. It’s no worse than that.
As for the rest of us who know about it, there is the usability thing. It unesessarily requires TWO clicks instead of one to get to a menu item.
This is plain wrong. You hold down the right mouse button anywhere on the screen or move it to the top of the screen, click-and-hold and then select the needed item. That’s it.
> You hold down the right mouse button anywhere on the screen or move it to the top of the screen, click-and-hold and then select the needed item. That’s it.
Sorry, but no one is getting it. It is WRONG to not have the menu visible at all times. It’s not that you display vital information instead of the menu items anyway (only geeks care for memory and cpu info at all times on their desktop — normal people don’t).
You see, with all other OSes, you first LOOK at he menu and THEN you click to it directly over the menu — you know where to click immediately. With the Amiga way, you have to first right click ANYWHERE in the menu bar, then look and find where you have to click exactly after you have located the menu item of your choice. This requires MORE time than the other OSes way. It is *annoying*. It is bad usability.
Edited 2005-12-12 22:01
Sorry, but no one is getting it. It is WRONG to not have the menu visible at all times.
With your philosophy, context menus should also always be visible on the screen all the time, otherwise you’ll have quite a lot of application features hidden from view. This is an application design problem, but one that inherently exists, because we have context menus.
Also what if a user encounters a Windows machine where the taskbar is automatically hidden?
The pragmatic reason of why it’s done this way is to make more screen real estate. AmigaOS was originally designed to run on a TV set at a resolution of 640×200. Every pixel counts in that situation. Also again: Back then, we did not have Windows to tell everyone else how to do menus.
Granted, this isn’t really true anymore, but it would be stupid to change this feature, just because everyone else does it.
You see, with all other OSes, you first LOOK at he menu and THEN you click to it directly over the menu
You are looking quite a lot at the aspect at something that needs to be learned once. Once you “get” it, it’s no longer a problem.
Compare this with MacOSX: Would a complete beginner know how to activate Exposé? No, because it’s hidden. But he’ll learn how to do this and he’ll overcome.
MacOSX also has a bajillion hidden features and shortcuts that take a long time to find out and learn. Many more than AmigaOS.
— you know where to click immediately.
The location of the menu in AmigaOS doesn’t move. It’s always situated in the top left of the screen.
>Sorry, but no one is getting it. It is WRONG to not have the menu visible at all times.
The Amiga was used in Video work, using overlays with a genlock. Having a permanent menu bar displayed over your video work would have been WRONG, and just plain stupid! For its time it was second to none, and extremely well thought out in layout and function.
>You see, with all other OSes, you…..
Hmm… “ALL other OSes….” how many decades have you been in the IT industry, and what OS’es have you used?
Cheers..
They run and mangle OS News, thus they are obviously more qualified than any readers, regardless of the evidence that at least some of them weren’t even in diapers before mice on commonly available microcomputers were around.
Heaven forbid they would do an article on an Apple 2c emulator, or an (GASP!) Apple 3, which didn’t come with a mouse, and there’s absolutely *no* menu to display on the screen by default, and no online help command at all!
Never mind the reality that Apple 3 SOS (poorly chosen acronym, considering the commercial flop of the Apple 3, though “Sophisticated Operating System” was accurate enough) was far more powerful than PC/MS-DOS ever really became, in many ways, even back in 1981. Ah, those were the good old days: when a 5 MB hard drive was a lot of storage space! But, any Apple 2 or 3 was clearly flawed by their reasoning, based on their great depth and wealth of experience, based on their above arguments, because they didn’t do things like every other system
Sorry, but no one is getting it. It is WRONG to not have the menu visible at all times.
Now that was a blanket statement, if I ever saw one. Sure, I agree that there may be issues with this way of hiding/revealing the menu, and it sure is a matter of taste, but to say that “it is WRONG” is really pushing it.
I guess the rationale behind the AmigaOS way was that the menubar also doubled as a dragbar for the screen. 2 problems arose:
-The menu must not obstruct the grabbing and dragging of the screen (iTunes for Windows does this…)
-The menu must still be positioned at the top left (call it Fitt’s law, call it common sense, either way it’s a good thing).
Solution: Hide the menu and make it visible in an easily aquired context, which can’t collide with the screendrag context.
I do agree that there is a slight discoverability problem, and if someone has a real problem with holding down the right mouse button for a while, I’m not in a position to argue with that (this problem is easily solved with settings/add-ins, though).
However, being someone who used to tout the genius of the MacOS (pre OS-X) interface to Amiga fans (I worked for an Amiga magazine, while mainly using a Mac…. ) I now find it interesting to see that the number one rule of UI design – consistency – is better handled by AmigaOS than by MacOS.
I do agree that there is a slight discoverability problem, and if someone has a real problem with holding down the right mouse button for a while, I’m not in a position to argue with that (this problem is easily solved with settings/add-ins, though).
There is one definite advantage to this method:
You can perform multiple operations inside the menu without having to reselect it. If a menu has 5-6 check-options, you can, while holding the right mouse button down, left click to select/unselect one or more different options without needing to leave the menu.
> It is WRONG to not have the menu visible at all times.
Who says that?
Who says that?
Eugenia, the idiotic usability expert, says that.
It requires less time if that’s the way you’re used to doing it, I found other systems confusing when I first moved away from it, and I still prefer the amiga way.
It unesessarily requires TWO clicks instead of one to get to a menu item.
No, just one. Push right button, navigate to menu item, release right button. And at the time the Amiga was desinged and mostly sold, it were in fact only geeks who had computers. And when you had only 1MB RAM, stats about free mem did matter.
“A big hole like this is enough to drive new customers away. “
And you are backing this claim up by what?
It’s important to distinguish between the criteria for good usability of something like a shopping website (you have lots of alternatives, you expect websites to work a certain way, you don’t use a website for particularly long), and an operating system (you invest time in it, it’s the basis for your computing, you use it for many, many hours).
Having something be less than completely apparent for a new user on an operating system is fine, if it in turn offers a good workflow when people learn it.
And come one; How long do you think it would take until a completely new user would click the right button and discover the menu?
Actually the user just need to hold the RMB down while navigating within the menu and release the button over the menu entry.
This is just ONE click =)
“A big hole like this is enough to drive new customers away.”
In Windows most users needs AT LEAST TWO clicks to select the menu entry. As far as i have seen they are simply do not know what it is possible to work with menu with hold and release method like on Amiga.
How does right clicking to reach a menu mean anything speed-wise? In fact the Amiga solution is usability-wise far superior to e.g. the Windows solution of embedded menus (you always have to look for where the menus you really want are located inside the MDI-structure). On AmigaOS (and the old MacOS) you *always* know that by pressing the right mouse button and hammering to the top of the screen you find the menu. That’s the way usability experts have been touting for years – and one of the things that have been critizised in OS X since the application menu changes in size and it’s harder to immediately guess how far to the right you need to go.
MagicMenu is a nice add-on if you prefer to have context-like menus (and context menus are one of the best things Windows has added to the computing world), but when it comes to raw speed it takes about the same time to pick the item you want in MagicMenu as it does to go to the top of the screen and find it (because it’s easier to predict the exact location of it).
Edges and corners are your best friends when it comes to speed and usability.
“Edges and corners are your best friends when it comes to speed and usability.”
Not quite. Pie menus are far quicker to select from than edges and screen corners.
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/62
On AmigaOS (and the old MacOS) you *always* know that by pressing the right mouse button and hammering to the top of the screen you find the menu.
AmigaOS takes great advantage of Fitt’s law: In the top of the screen, you have the menus, the dragbar and the screen change button. Using Fitt’s law on menus coupled with this:
MagicMenu is a nice add-on if you prefer to have context-like menus (and context menus are one of the best things Windows has added to the computing world).
means that AmigaOS by standard doesn’t use context menus at all. They are always at the top of the screen, or in the Magic Menu case, right at the mouse cursor.
Alternative GUI systems for AmigaOS have added actual context menus though, but this is not standardized and will actually collide with the normal functionality of for example Magic Menu.
Another thing that adheres to Fitt’s law in OS1.0 – 3.9 (can be optionally turned off in OS4) is that windows can’t leave the edge of the screen. They are always inside the desktop space. If you hammer a window to the far right side of the screen, it’ll stop when hitting its right edge, instead of going partially invisible.
This makes it way easier to resize windows that fit between screen edges, using ordinary resizing and moving, rather than having special maximize buttons to do that. You can’t accidentally move windows off screen.
One of the things I really miss since I no longer use AmigaOS is RIGHT CLICK – then the ability to select more then one item in the menu with Left click. Ingenious.
All hardware was configured and working properly. I was a bit weary of that, since my mouse and keyboard are both USB
it doesn’t detect the hardware it runs on top of a windows based emulator
it doesn’t detect the hardware it runs on top of a windows based emulator
Yeah. So the emulator properly detected my hardware and made it function properly within AmigaOS.
As I said…
No Windows detected your hardware Winuae simply utilised the Windows API
For me the pinnacle of AmigaOS where things were done entirely right, when you don’t look at unimplemented features, but purely on how clean the OS was with its features, is AmigaOS3.1. With 3.5 and 3.9, there was no access to modifying the kernel on user machines since it was in ROM and additions were unfortunately a little clumsily done. All of this is rectified in OS4, though.
Installing a clean OS3.1 in WinUAE is really funny. For example:
1. The entire OS (five 880 kB floppies) takes about 5-10 minutes to install from ADF floppy images. There is one reboot.
2. Booting OS3.1 from a cold boot takes roughly 10 seconds.
2. Rebooting AmigaOS3.1 takes roughly 3 to 3.5 seconds.
3. Attempting to get into the early startup menu where you can change boot device, check peripherals and such (a bit like the PC BIOS) failed sometimes, because I couldn’t move my hands from the reset keys on the keyboard to the mouse where you need to press both mouse buttons, fast enough. It had already gone through basic checks and had a full desktop ready when ever I was wondering when the boot menu would come up. Hilarious.
4. You can boot straight into an empty command line environment, though still with the windowing environment active (not the desktop) from the boot menu. This takes, I think, about 0.5 seconds. Boom. Remember this is a full multitasking environment with all basic GUI elements stored in ROM (the kickstart file).
5. All languages are installed (you can switch them on the fly), all drivers are installed.
6. You can build a complete installation of OS3.1 inside AmigaOS (works on all versions) by just copying all files to a different hardfile, partition or directory on your drive and boot AmigaOS from that. This can be done with normal file handling operations in Workbench. This way you can multi-boot with different setups, for gaming, office, development, etc. No need for Ghost or other complex tools.
7. Is your AmigaOS gone dead? Just boot from the Workbench floppy. It contains the entire desktop environment.
OTOH, there is no TCP/IP stack (OS3.1 was done in 1993) and no retargetable graphics standard in OS3.1, so it quickly gets a little boring, but the amazing speed of the OS is just dazzling.
OTOH, there is no TCP/IP stack (OS3.1 was done in 1993) and no retargetable graphics standard in OS3.1, so it quickly gets a little boring, but the amazing speed of the OS is just dazzling.
Yes, there was TCP/IP stack made by 3rd party. AmiTCP – and it was available in 1993 or even earlier. However I haven’t been using it, because there was never adaptation of stack – Miami. It was much more user friendly and AFAIR in Deluxe version introduced simple firewall. About gfx standard – there were 2 standards (3rd party
that played main role on the market – picasso97 and cybergraphix. The first one is being used in winuae i suppose.
I’m sorry eugenia but on this issue about the amiga’s top menu bar you’re plain wrong.
The menu bar serves as both the dragging bar and a status bar when you’re not using the right button to select a menu option, and if this is not enough to convince you that it is a dammned good idea, while holding down the right button, you can move from menu to menu and select multiple choices on one go.
But bear in mind that if you use RTG and not the native chipset video modes you loose some of those abilities.
It is a usability issue because you’re just too used to bloody operating systems that copies the mac os desktop metaphores again and again and again.
Browser: BlackBerry7730/4.0.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1
I hate not been able to move windows off screen, it’s not like the Classic amiga is good at 1600x whatever screen resoultions.
AOS4 has a great feature where you can go off screen, but you can (if you want) set a resistance so you have to force it off. Hard to explaing why that would be good in words, but I love it! Not seen that feature on any other OS, but no doubt you lot can tell me who had it first.
Anyway, back to Amiga Forever, can’t but help feel there was a lack of polish in the last version relative to the one before.
I also think it could Really do with Amikit or Amiga in a Box, state of the Art freeware Amiga OS.
And I’d love to have the 2.04 Extras disc for the A500+ oldé times feel! But that is just me.
I have high sensitivity towards stress. For example I am unable to use a PS2 dual shock controller for more than half an hour before my hands start cramping up.
I have no problems using AmigaOS menus, however. While moving to the top of the screen I press the right mouse button, a second or two later I have released the button again and chosen the menu item that I wanted. Well, when I didn’t just use the keyboard shortcut instead that is. It is much faster than having to click twice and locating menus in relatively unintuitive and non-consistent places.
The Amiga people and their projects bring a smile to the face. They’re a nice lot, enthusiastic to the point of eccentricity without being fanatical. We’re all better off for them being around. Long life to them I say. Amiga Forever!
And I’ve never even seen one working….
Nawh, they’re just as bad as the Linux/MS/Mac/OS2 nutters, it’s just there’s so few of the swivel eyed loonies they’re not quite so frightening. Just till they’ve got more users than Linux THEN WE’LL SEE WHO’S IN CHARGE!!!
It’s those Boing balls for eyes…. Creepy!
Edited 2005-12-12 23:03
Ths change of colours you spoke of when dragging the workspaces down is not a bug. It is a limitation of the hardware colour palette.
You must remember that the Amiga did not have a full true-colour mode but instead had a 4096 colour hold and modify (HAM) mode. Most of the time the machine ran in 256 colour palette mode. Changing the workspace required reloading a new palette into the video hardware. Sure, it was annoying sometimes but most of the time nobody ever noticed because how often do you really drag down the workspaces?
Ths change of colours you spoke of when dragging the workspaces down is not a bug. It is a limitation of the hardware colour palette.
I thought that one of the amazing things with the Amiga chipset back in the day was the way that the palette could be changed on the fly – you can drag a screen of a completely different resolution and with different colours over another one, and the copper (part of Angus/Alice – not that that means much to most people!) would ensure that everything was displayed correctly.
Colour change bug
By Anonymous
You must remember that the Amiga did not have a full true-colour mode but instead had a 4096 colour hold and modify (HAM) mode. Most of the time the machine ran in 256 colour palette mode. Changing the workspace required reloading a new palette into the video hardware.
This is not quite true – the OCS and ECS (original chip set and Enhanced chip set) had only 64 Colours in non HAM mode.
Amiga OCS (A1000, A500, A2000, A3000):
Resolution: 320×200, 320×512, 640×256, 640×512
Colors: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 colors, HAM (special) mode – 4096 colors
Memory: 0.5Mb CHIP (A1000 has 256kb)
CPU: Motorola 68000, 7.15 MHz
Graphics chip: Agnus
Sound chip: Paula
Sound: 4 voices stereo, 8-bit sampling
OS: Kickstart 1.2 – 1.3 (A1000 has Kickstart 1.0-1.2)
Amiga ECS (A500+ A2000 A600)
Amiga AGA (A1200, A4000, CD32)
Enhanced Amigas released in 1992, with new AGA graphic chipset (256 colors, 256000 colors in HAM8 mode), 2MB chip RAM. CD32 is game console released in 1994.
Resolution: 320 x 256 x 256 colors, 640 x 512 x 256 colors, 24 bit palette
Memory: 2Mb CHIP
CPU: 680EC020 (A4000 has 68EC040)
Sound chip: Paula
Sound: 4 voices stereo, 8-bit sampling
You forget overscan…
The classic Amigas were capable of doing many nice tricks (copper chips, etc). For instance Lion Heart (any Amiga with 1 MB) was mostly drawn with using just 32 colors, but with rasters and other software tricks there are often thousands of different colours on screen at once:
http://hol.abime.net/894/screenshot
http://alexh.umcus.org/games/lionheart/lionheart.html
> Sound: 4 voices stereo, 8-bit sampling
With a trick the old 1985 Paula chip (standard in any classic Amiga) is able to output 14-bit sound quality with up to 48kHz. Very useful for playing music such as MP3 files.
I seem to remember that the 64colour mode was a hack too, known as halfbrite, infact I think it was an ECS thing (Kickstart2.0+ machines usually)
OCS allowed for 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 4096(HAM) colour screens at 320*256. When you started to increase the resolution you had less colours. (This is exactly the same on older PCs too because of memory limitations. You open a 32bit screen in 1600*1200 on a PC and you are using WAY more graphics memory than opening a 32colour 320*256screen) So if you ran Workbench in 640*256 mode the maximum number of colours you can have on screen is 16 (4bit)
ECS added the 64 colour mode
AGA added 256(8bit), and 65536(HAM) colour modes, may have been more. It also allowed higher resolutions with more colours. You could run Workbench in 640*256 in 256colours.
Of course, this is only true for the native chipsets. Running WinUAE with RTG enabled and Piccasso97 will allow the Amiga to utilise the PC graphic card and will allow workbench to run in 32bit 1600*1200 res….
Its not possible to compare the current generation of operating systems to past Amiga operating systems, If you compare Workbench1.3 to Apple System 1 (Early MacOS) and Windows 1 you will clearly see which one is better.
Stevil2k
To clear up things:
OCS allowed to 2,4,8,16,32,64 (HalfBright – it modified second 32 colours to half of brightness so it makes 64), 4096(HAM- Hold and Modify – each following pixel was dependend on previous). So palette was fixed max on 32 colours choosen from 4096 (12bits).
Resolutions: LowRes(320×256), HighRes(640×256). Each one could be in Interlace mode (320×512 and 640×512) but it made terrible “flicking” on screen. (In NTSC version resolution was 200 and 400 pix accordingly)
ECS – introduced in A500+, A600 and A3000 added new resolutions – SuperHiRes 1280×256 (with interlaced 1280×512).
AGA – A1200 and A4000 – changed palette to 24 bits, added modes up to native 256 colours, added HAM8 mode mensioned in other post. It added many new resolutions, but most of them had strange frequencies of display so the best was to use Multiscan monitor with Amiga – typical VGA was rather usless.
Each chip was of course compatible with earlier. And each mode could be set in Overscan mode – it added some pixels to each side of screen, so it made strange bigger resolutions, but it was eliminating borders. It was one of reasons that Amiga was used in TV studios.
Amiga internal gfx system was based on bitplanes, that’s why it wasn’t very fast(but memory friendly), and there were many people saying it will be impossible to write a 3D game to Amiga. They were wrong 🙂 But Amiga gfx cards, like PC cards, are working in chunky pixel mode, and it’s a completely different story…
> but it made terrible “flicking” on screen
For this Amigans used Flicker Fixers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fixer
All hardware was configured and working properly. I was a bit weary of that, since my mouse and keyboard are both USB
I’m getting weary of the misuse of words in articles by so-called “journalists” which makes me wary of how seriously they take their self-appointed tasks, when above and beyond the weakness of the overall contents of the review, the correctness of the wording of the review is itself lousy. You guys really need to get a competent copyeditor if you are going to presume the guise of being journalistic professionals, though I must admit, I see a horrible lack of writing quality in online news articles posted on the likes of Yahoo or MSNBC, etc. that seem slap-dashed together with no checking, either.
Surely OS News “editors” can actually “Edit” what they write so it’s all right, and prove that they’re sufficient word wrights, instead of reading the language last rites???
One thing worth noting is that Amigas originally came with a floppy showing you how to navigate the operating system, use menus, copy files, use the command prompt and so on. Nothing you wouldn’t figure out yourself after a couple of minutes’ worth of use of course, but still good for absolute newcomers to computers (graphical interfaces were still new back then). These days any seasoned computer user would figure out how the menu system works within seconds (possibly a full minute if the person in question is a bit slow on the uptake
).
That’s really not quite new… Enlightenment does it since 1998.
Overall, the amiga OS looks … old. Well that’s what it is, nothing really surprising. Remember it was supposed to run on machines that were really less powered at that time, it surely boot fast on today’s machines.
And honestly, “will it provide a good OS experience”? Isn’t the all answer to this topic already obvious? I would have like to see a bit about the good old Amiga games in this review, this is what justified the price for the all stuff IMHO, not the OS, and nothing is said about that. And the pleasure to play them for hours: Afterburner, Defender Of The Crown, Speedball…
“That’s really not quite new… Enlightenment does it since 1998.”
Yeah. AmigaOS does it since 1985. Pay attention.
“Overall, the amiga OS looks … old. Well that’s what it is, nothing really surprising. Remember it was supposed to run on machines that were really less powered at that time, it surely boot fast on today’s machines.”
Of course it looks old. AmigaOS 1.3 was released 1987 and the newest version included in Amiga Forever, version 3.1 was released in 1993. Do you have a point or are you just good at stating the obvious?
Enlightenment author is an ex-amiga user
No, screen dragging is really not quite new. Amiga did it since Amiga 1000.
And yes, AmigaOS (especially in Amiga Forever’s version) looks old. It’s far from the default look of AmigaOS 3.9 and closer to a 3.1 + MagicWB/NewIcons look.
It’s quite relaxing for the eyes at least, but no, it doesn’t scream modern.
As for boot times… the time it takes to boot on a modern PC is about the same as on real Amiga hardware. A freshly installed AmigaOS 3.1 will boot in one or two seconds – on accelerated Amigas even faster. In fact I literally once missed a reboot because I blinked.
I have Amiga Forever 6.0 and I found it was very horrible in the usability dept. WinUAE is very hard to use. Reminds me of IBM software.
I suppose you think Windows is more user-friendly because
it asks you to verify that you really want to delete a
file via a dialog box BEFORE it sends it to the trashcan/recycle bin where you can recover it if you do make a mistake. What’s the use of having a trashcan feature if users have to be molly-coddled so much by the
OS? Talk about wasting mouse clicks! There’s a lot of
software that uses Windows that is always questioning
my actions. Just who are these idiots that the software is designed for? Certainly not I. Programs can also be
written to remember the last directory that you used, (at least the programs that I write for the Amiga do!), so why does most Windows software always dump you back to the My Documents directory? Why do all of the text editors in Windows limit the cursor movement speed to an annoyingly slow pace? This is just scratching the surface of all the ways that Windows wastes my time. I find that it’s easier to do my editing on my Amiga & then send it to the Windows PC for printing or whatever. Counting mouse clicks by itself cannot even begin to measure the use-ability of an OS.
The winuae settings can be used to change the hardware you are emulating, thus making more videomodes available inside the OS..
And Cloanto should have provided an option to boot with a bit nicer overall look of the OS installed. Very few people prefer the “retro” look of it. Some PNG icons would also be nice
>And Cloanto should have provided an option to boot
>with a bit nicer overall look of the OS installed.
>Very few people prefer the “retro” look of it.
I totally agree. It was the most disappointing thing about Amiga Forever and put me off using it.
That’s why you’d install Amikit.
http://amikit.amiga.sk/screenshots.htm
Of course don’t forget guys that AmigaForever comprises of WinUAE an Amiga Emulator. There’s plenty of abandonware games that can be downloaded if you’re feeling nostaligic here http://www.back2roots.org.
Enjoy,
Big Ben the Aussie
Another “pre-tweaked” Amiga system is AmigaSYS, which will get it’s 3rd incarnation released in a few days (hopefully).
http://amigasys.fw.hu/
In addition to looking a lot better, these kits also provide a lot of freeware software pre-installed, so you can easily play your mp3s and watch flash animations on the emulator.
Whoa! It has Dopus Magellan included! And so so so much more, I’ll be stuck for some hours now
Thank you very much!
And thanks to anonymous for the AmiSYS info, looks cool as well.
Personally I would recommend the full edition to any hardcore OS enthusiast. IMO especially the Launch of the Amiga video will be an eyeopener to anyone unfamiliar with the platform. A full multi-color, stereo sound supporting, pre-emptive multitasking multimedia platform at a time when beeping MSDOS PCs and monochromo soundless Macs were the standard!
I agree that the default look is pretty retro though, but can be customized heavily (both in terms of looks and usability/features) to better match modern standards.
Some customized AmigaOS3.1 screenshots with alternative icon sets and OS4 inspired GUI theme:
http://webring.amigaworld.net/AIABr10.5.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/Ken1.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/Ken2.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/Ken3.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/Ken4.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/Mason.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/Tony.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/Virgola.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/Misc.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/dAMIr1.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/dAMIr2.png
http://webring.amigaworld.net/dAMIr3.png
AmigaOS4 (a lot more advanced) screenshot with alternative GUI theme (bonus pack) and newer icons created by Mason:
http://www.hyperion-entertainment.biz:8080/images/intuibonus/Zami_t…
@ Thom_Holwerda
> Another really cool feature is the ‘dragging’ of
> workspaces. The AmigaOS can have multiple workspaces
> (even at different resolutions) and you can then drag
> one workspace down to reveal the one behind it. To get
> an idea, take a look at the screenshot. Here you can
> see how I dragged the Robocity demo, which has its own
> workspace, halfway down, to reveal the primary
> workspace. Really cool, and definitely something I’d
> like to see in other operating systems.
Agreed fully, in AmigaOS4-beta this feature has been expanded with actual darg&drop functionality between screens.
An older OS4-beta video demonstrating screen dragging:
http://uniweb.free.fr/os4videos/os4intuition.avi
But IMO to really get the feel of screen dragging of the classic systems you need to use the OS on classic hardware (faster, more transparent).
This is wrong, there is no drag&drop across screens on this video.
This is just an icon drop on an appicon available on the workbench.
This appicon is controled by an application running on another screen and it happens to open a requester there… but that’s it.
Just a trick…
: This is wrong, there is no drag&drop across screens on this video.
The video demonstrates screen dragging as Mike pointed out. Drag and drop support was added to the beta after the video was done.
> The video demonstrates screen dragging as Mike
> pointed out. Drag and drop support was added to the
> beta after the video was done.
Correct. Pianeta 2005 show report (5-Sep-2005):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2556
“The screen dragging feature was shown on my A1XE together with all the latest beta stuff. For the first time in Amiga History was shown a new useful feature: drag & drop of Icons between differents screens (thanks to Massimo Tantignone for implementing this feature!).”
(Screen dragging demo video by beta-tester Crisot was from August)
The reason the Amiga forced you to right-click and drag for the menus is that the original Amiga chipset supported full overscan video. If the menus had been active all of the time they would have only been partially visible. The right mouse button forced the Amiga to scroll the screen down and to the right just far enough that the menus were fully visible on the screen.
As for the high- and true-color support, that comes with external patches such as Picasso96: a driver set which supports several different graphics cards such as the UAEgfx driver used by Amiga Forever.
Aah the memories. Weighing in on the big menu debate : as a user of Windows, Mac OS X and the old Amiga Workbench 2 I can say I prefer the Amiga way to Windows but my favorite is the mac. The Amiga way was particularly annoying if you had a wonky mouse, like I had at one time, causing you to select menu entries without meaning to.
Also to the people discussing how users are supposed to know how to use the OS, that’s easy read the manual. No, I’m not kidding. The Amiga came with a well written 200 page manual covering everything from basic GUI usage (chapter 1 page 9: using menu’s (-: ) to MEmacs and the cli (AmigaDOS)
I miss those days. Nowadays noone wants to include manuals (and admit it might actually take some learned skill to operate a computer or software) and when users don’t get it they are told to buy a book for ‘dummies’.
The Amiga way was particularly annoying if you had a wonky mouse, like I had at one time, causing you to select menu entries without meaning to.
Another feature of AmigaOS crops up here, in case you have a wonky mouse or no mouse at all (it’s saved me a few times): Pressing left-Alt and left-Amiga will do a left click and right-Alt and right-Amiga will do a right click.
If you hold down left-Alt and left-Amiga and use the cursor keys or the cursor keys on the numeric pad, the mouse cursor will move. Press and hold shift to move it faster.
Further tricks: Holding left-Amiga down and left-clicking on the screen anywhere, will allow you to drag the screen down.
I saw someone mention the fact that Enlightenment has draggable screens, and thought I should point out that Rasterman (Enlightenments author) used to be an Amiga user. There’s another window manager out there called WindowLab which old Amiga users may enjoy as it’s obviously been influenced by the Amigas look and feel.
http://www.nickgravgaard.com/windowlab/
From your link “When I switched to linux two years ago, this is what I imagined it would be like: fast and clean.”
Well, that one made me laugh! I think for that line alone, I’ll give it a try!
This package is mostly meant for people to be able to use old softare/games without the need for a real amiga which there is plenty off.. This is not an OS replacement or anything, it is just a emulator for running your belowed classic games or software and it works great for that.
It does not compare to having a real amiga though, and you cannot fully judge the stability of AmigaOS by this emulator.
But yeah, amigaforever seems mostly aimed at old amiga users who wants to run their classic games or other people who just want access to thousands of titles of classic games.
Um, the point is not the OS… This is an emulator for running classic amiga software and games and just happen to also include the OS.. The point of this package is to be able to play/run the tens of thousands of software/game titles using your pc instead of the real thing.
The OS included has not been updated since the early 90s, so what do you expect?? If you are interested in AmigaOS, then you should rather look at the newer AmigaOS4.
Will your pc be able to run all those games that were released for the Amiga?? Also even if there was a pc version of those games, the amiga was usually superior, since the PC’s back then had ega graphics and pc speakers while the amiga had 8bits stereo sound, graphic chip capable of showing thousands of colours.
Amigaforever is not about the OS, it is about being able to emulate a enviroment for running old amiga software/games without the need for a real Amiga.
It aint new.. As it has barely seen any updates since the early 90ish. But there is a new OS4, which has had alot of updates added… It puzzles me that both the reviewer and the comments are talking about the OS, when amigaforever is mostly aimed at people wanting to run classic amiga software/games on their pc.
But anyways, here is a link for the new OS4..
http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz/
On the subject of Menu placement:
Workbench 1.3 was my FIRST GUI-type operating system back in late 1988. When I saw how Macs did this, with Menu Headings constantly visible — I thought that THIS was rather crude, but a limitation caused by the use of a SINGLE-button mouse.
But Windows uses a TWO (or more) Button mouse?!? Windows (and KDE desktops) are slower to navigate because of their less-logical Menu placement.
I used AmigaOS from 1988 to 2002, when Debian/GNU Linux (PPC) became my main workhorse. PRESENTLY, I use Debian-KDE, AmigaOS4-Pre, and MacOSX4.1 (Tiger) . . . where I find AmigaOS4 the EASIEST to use . . .
and by that I mean that it is the OS that obstructs your operations the least!