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On Saturday, the 31st of March 2001, the time had come. The fair in St. Louis opened its doors and the first important news was bound to follow: BoingBag1 for AmigaOS3.9 is finally available. I will tell you my first impressions and experiences in this report.
The (5MBytes large) update can - as always - only be downloaded from the Amiga homepage (exact source: see end of text). While downloading, you can dig out your AmigaOS3.9-CD-ROM, cos you will need it during the installation.
The installation didn't pose any major problems on my system. Still it is always advisable to backup important data before you update.
Now that the archive is finally stored on your hard disk and is unpacked, you should take the time to read the short Amigaguide document which describes the most important new functions of the update. Then it's time to start the installation.
The installer opens a new screen with the well known color gradient and asks, after the standard questions, where the update should be installed. In most cases, this will be the boot partition. But you can choose any other partition as well, provided that AmigaOs3.9 is already installed there. Important: Just out of curiosity, I tried to install the BoingBag on a partition with Workbench3.1. The BB1 installer didn't seem to care and started to install. While I didn't try it, I really doubt that this "OS-Mix" would be usable.
After selecting the partition, the installer warns the user that important data will be overwritten and asks if he really wants to continue with the installation. Anxious persons can now still abort and discard the BB1. Real Amiga users aren't intimidated and continue the installation. (Real "freaks" don't even make a backup ;).
Then you can choose from 19 different languages. I myself prefer German and selected only this language. If you speak more than one language, you can of course choose several languages simultaneously.
Now the OS3.9-CD-ROM is checked and the installer starts to copy the update on the system partition.
When the update is successfully completed, you have to restart the Amiga manually. If the computer boots up without any problems, the update should be installed properly. On my system, a small problem occurred. Because I had "WBStartup++" installed for testing purposes, the updates of RAWBInfo, DefIcons and AsyncWB weren't copied to the "Enabled" drawer. So I had to move these 3 files to the correct directory to make them start with the next bootup.
Now Boingbag is installed. So what's new? The first and surely most important new feature is ASyncWB. This program allows the user to work on while the Workbench copies, deletes or renames files or empties the Trashcan. Also when a Shell command is executed via the Workbench (Menu "Workbench/Execute...") or a new drawer is created, you can work on without problems. The obligatory break, just because the Workbench is copying some files, is now past once and for ever.
Some important tools and utilities have been updated. UnArc, for example can now selectively unpack single files.
You can add additional paths to the search requester with Drag&Drop or via the new screen menu. The position of the Find window is now saved along with the preferences.
In RAWBInfo, you can now enable and disable ToolTypes by clicking on them with the Shift-key pressed. Other programs that have been fixed or reworked are HDToolBox, ViNCEd, BenchTrash and AnimatedIcon. Shell users will find a new command: WBRun simulates a Workbench start when running a program from the Shell. Programs like this have been available for years in Aminet (even for AmigaDOS1.3 ;), now finally this function has officially been added to AmigaOS. The command SetENV has the new argument "SAVE". When using this argument, the environment variable is saved to "ENV:" and "ENVARC" as well. PowerPC boards are accessed with the new Version 5.1 of WarpUp. The "Fontcache" is now enabled by default and important parts of the GUI system ReAction have been completely rewritten. You'll find some useful tools and additional icons in the Contribution drawer. It contains (among others) the SmartFileSystem in the latest version 1.84, a patch to make the well-known ToolsDaemon compatible with OS3.9, an MP3-encoder (whose legal state is questionable, by the way) and some other nice gimmicks. The directory "Manuals" contains the well-known OS3.5/3.9 FAQ by Greg Donner in several translations. The Amigaguide document provided with the BoingBag has a detailed listing of new features and additional packages, so I won't go into further details here.
So everything's great? Unfortunately not. The OS update brings along some little bugs. Something that seems only to happen on my system is a problem with HDToolBox. If I start HDToolBox with the "ASKDEVICE=TRUE" ToolType, the selected device driver is not displayed inverted. You have to target quite precisely with the mouse to hit the correct entry in the list.
But as I said before: This problem seems only to occur on my system. I have no clue (yet) what is causing it and how to fix it. Another problem: the ARexx script which is meant to integrate Amplifier in a web browser (to enable streaming). First of all, the script "Stream-Amplifier.rexx" isn't installed in "Rexx:", as the manual says, but in "S:" instead. Furthermore, I couldn't make the browser Voyager work with this script. If a reader knows a solution, I'd be glad to hear from you.
The final result for BB1 is "almost perfect". Neither stability nor usability have suffered from the reworks and fixes - to the contrary. ASyncWB is a feature I've missed for a long time and the overall speed seems to be slightly better. The little bugs aren't really a problem and let the AmigaOS3.9 user hope for a BoingBag2 ;).
And last but not least a appeal to all users who have installed the OS3.9-BoingBag and are using it. I'm interested in your experiences with the BoingBag. If you found bugs or know a solution for a problem, then please mail me. I will then make an addendum to this article.
Sources:Christian Aichinger <christian@aakt.de>
