Test reports

6. AmigaOS 3.9: First Impressions (by Gernod Schomberg)

Of course I ordered the CD with the new operating system as soon as possible, and I received it promptly, on December 12.

After a quick full backup of my SYS: partition, which just for this reason is limited to 100 MBytes, I created the emergency disk on a ZIP disk and installed the new OS version 3.9.

My computer: A4000T, 2 MBytes ChipRAM and 16 MBytes FastRAM, AGA-Chipset, 3 GBytes IDE harddisk, CD drive, 2 disk drives, MultifaceIII, Buddha Flash IDE-Controller, external ZIP drive, screenmode Hires on an Amiga MI1438S monitor.

The emergency disk pulled the same trick as OS3.5: it does not mount the CD drive when booting. On my harddisk I use AmiCDFS, this should not be a problem with the diskette installing CacheCDFS. The change was easy. (Just for information: I am registered user of IDEFix.)

The restart of the computer went smoothly and without difficulties, so I needed my backup ZIP only to fetch back the def_icons (see next section).

On the WB of my computer only the toolbar with the newly installed programs attracted attention.

The next problem was well known to me from OS3.5, and that is, that in Prefs/Env-Archive/Sys glowicons were installed as def_Icons, which, especially the def_tool.info, def_project.info and def_drawer.info, are 2500 to 3000 bytes in size. When opening a drawer each hidden file gets an icon, which needs its amount of Chip RAM, of which after booting I unfortunately have only a little bit more than 1.5 MBytes. Critical on my system especially are the directories C: and Libs:. In my C: there are nearly 300 files, in Libs: approx. 350 files and drawers. I figured this would chew about 1 megabyte, actually it is clearly more, presumably because only full blocks are used. Anyhow, my computer demands I free memory when I open the Libs: drawer before it will continue working. The memory displayed in the WB headline drops to a few kilobytes, only a reset helps. If I open the C: drawer, the computer keeps working, but when a larger block of chip memory is needed an error occurs.

I changed the three mentioned def_icons back to the WB3.1 types. The others are not needed frequently, so I left them as they were.

Here I must mention that in the FAQs3.5 somewhere in the documentation on the CD is a note that this problem can be solved by the use of FBlit. I'm not sold on FBlit because it won't let me grab brushes in two classic, but in my view still excellent, paint programs: DPaint and PPaint. I haven't found a setting of FBlit to correct this behaviour. I have FXPaint, too, but I haven't had a play with that yet.

Unfortunately I could not find a complete list of what else is new, possibly it still is hidden on the CD. Therefore I only can describe my first impressions, and for this I'll use the list printed upon the CD-cover.

Multimedia programs: MP3-Player, AVI & QT-Player and new CD-Player.

Most people have some of these on their Amigas, according to their interests. For my money, all three were better quality than what I had installed. I am not a fan of the skin-mania spawned by the PC: on my screen a player must not look like something that I might have bought for my living room a few years ago. I still use the older brother of the CD player with a quite simple screen outfit. Maybe I'll find similar styles for the other programs.

Internet programs: Is there anybody without Internet access and the necessary programs? I work with MiamiDX, YAM and have the latest versions of Voyager and AWeb registered and IBrowse as SE. I installed Genesis, because I only had an ancient version of it, so's I could try it out.

Here the makers of AMIGA should have made a move in direction of Holger Kruse, who possibly because of dissensions with OS3.5 has broken off contact with the Amiga and its users. Even if this was not the reason, a man like him should not be lost to us!

AmiDOCK: Here, too, there is scarcely an Amiga user who does not use something similar. I was miffed that I could not limit the AmiDOCK display to characters. Call me a purist (see my opinion about "skins" above), but this is the way I like it.

I mainly use "Hotbar", a program that pops up a menu when both mouse buttons are pressed, which can easily be programmed to launch the applications you want to use often. In conjunction, I have extended the "Tools menu" of the WB with "MoreTools" quite a bit. For some other not so often used programs I have "ToolManager" running.

WarpOS: No concern of mine with my system.

IomegaTools (für ZIP and JAZ): I have a ZIP drive, usage is so simple that I do not need a special program for it.

New powerful Shell: Because until now I worked only with the original Amiga Shell, the VinceED-Shell is an improvement for me. Of the little I have got to know of it so far, I am very happy with it.

Automatic Datatype recognition: Unfortunately I did not find a description of this. Possibly "DefIcons" is meant, which I've never liked.

Integrated unpacker: Well, as long as I have owned an Amiga, I have used "GuiArc" by Patrick van Beem, which not only packs and unpacks archives but which I can configure to any packing method. I did not have to wait for OS3.9!

Fast search: Have had for a long time a search program in the Tools menu (Searcher). With this I am able to limit the search range in a file requester. The OS3.9 "Find" program must be stored in SYS:System to be called by the item "Find..." in the WB menu "Window", where it does not belong but cannot be removed. I first have to click on the drawer to be searched if I don't need a whole partition. The only advantage of "Find" is that it can check file contents. I renamed "Find" and copied "Searcher" to SYS:System!

New picture datatype (PPC optimized): I don't have PPC. :-(

Many new tools:

Not mentioned in the list, but installed anyway, was a new version of the program "AnimatedIcon". In my opinion it is more or less a gag program - I built pictures of my grand-daughter into it, which I can look at, if I want.

"Can" only because I had to copy back the old program which was released with the BoingBag. The new version opens exactly one pixel on the WB, which I could find only with lots of luck! There is no example file with it, therefore I am at a loss to explain the reason for this behaviour.

Several more files were copied to C:, Libs: and L: - I only can hope they behave better than "AnimatedIcon"!!!

There are numerous additional programs and files on the CD, which I cannot check in detail, because I haven't had the time for it. For tests there are mp3 and AVI files. To fill the CD a music title is added, which starts after 50 seconds silence. I was close to pulling my amplifier apart...

And another whinge: the addiction to HTML document files. We have the excellent AmigaGuide format, which is easy to read and in which (with an Aminet-Program) you can search for expressions.

At least now this HTML documentation is split into single files, so that hundreds of kilobytes don't have to be loaded and formatted as with OS3.5.

Net result:

If you factor in an estimate of reasonable shareware fees for the additional programs, you might conclude the price of the CD "AMIGA OS3.9" is reasonable. But what is not correct is the version number. I believe even OS3.5.5 would be pitched too high. The addition of a few programs, when similar quality variations can be acquired from the Aminet, does in no way justify such a leap in version. And I was not able to find out which system files were updated (searching in the documentation with "Find" was not successful!). If an OS4.0 appears, I'll certainly not be among the first buyers!

Gernod Schomberg <g.schomberg@t-online.de>