#Amigados 2 is great!
25 messages in this thread
John,
I don't understand. I can't imagine that CBM promised all developers
that "1.4 wasn't going to break any existing software". I mean, if they
change the ROM's at all, they're going to move routines and pointers, and
we all know that some existing software does direct calls to routines
instead of the "proper" way. And I heard people making the assumption
months ago that software that broke the rules would break under 1.4. Why
would CBM make such assurances when practically the only way to insure them
would not to make any 1.4 changes at all?
Konfused Karl
Chowdy Karl,
The existing software that makes direct calls is already "breaking the
rules," so when a hardware manufacturer makes the claim that the new
operating system won't break software it means software that played by the
rules in the first place. This has been a problem in "other computer
realms" outside C=, too. Generally the hardware manufacturer gives out
that it warns in advance may not be usable in the next operating system.
It's up to the developers to decide whether they want to use the
information and then reprogram a new version when the new operating system
comes available or just stick with using safe calls that they know will
continue to be supported.
Those who are complaining are those who "followed the rules" and still got
trashed by the new operating system. I dont' know the manufacturers
involved, so obviously I won't comment on their complaints.
Chow, Cheryl P!
Cheryl,
Ah, now I see. I wonder how many of these were inadvertant, and could
therefore be "corrected" in later 2.0 adjustments (before actual deliveries
of 3000's) and how many will still require rewrites by the software
vendors. Pity.
As you say, if they made the choice to take exception to the warnings
(even if they HAD to to get around some bug or DOS limitation), then they
knew what they were getting into and I don't feel sorry for them. But those
that played nice are obviously in for hassle and expense, and that's a
shame.
Karl
Karl,
I don't remember C= promising that NO programs written for the Amiga was
going to break. There were _repeated_ warnings not to cheat.
Victor A. Wagner, Jr.
Vic,
I see. Well, let's hope that CBM and/or the software folks work it out
for us users' sakes. I've got a 3000 demo scheduled for my user-group
meeting in two weeks and, frankly, I don't know what I'm going to demo
other than 2.x itself. PixMate and some game called Pirates are the only
things on my dealer's HD that work. I'm sure that this is even more galling
to the software vendors, but everybody loses if it somehow doesn't get
resolved before 3000's are actually for sale. But you knew that.
Karl
Karl,
For the sake of your upcoming user group meeting, make sure you have a
500/1000/2000 there in addition to the 3000. Our dealer showed the A3000
at our meeting last week, and unfortunatly that was the only machine there.
We managed to run one out of the four games we had, and that only after
playing tricks with the "cpu" command prior to booting 1.3. Also, with
only one floppy drive, it was difficult to even try loading one of the
games. Make sure everyone at the meeting knows it's a beta OS!
Alan
Alan,
Gee, you got FOUR games to run? Amazing! Pirates and Pixmate is all that
I've seen run so far without problems. Perhaps the operating system only
works with programs that start with "P". Nope, I heard ProPage has problems
on exit, so scratch that.
Oh well, most of the activity on the 3000 will be demonstrating what 2.0
looks like, as opposed to doing anything useful with the machine. Since
most of our users don't have really speedy 2000's, it'll still be a gas to
set up the 3000 in 1.3 mode and compare a raytrace on it and a stock 2000
(mine, I guess).
I realize it's a beta OS, and I'm still glad that CBM introduced the
3000, but I gotta wonder how hard a dealer is going to push it to
prospective buyers without being able to demo anything on it. It'll
certainly have to be a better situation when they start selling the 3000.
For all I know, there's a couple of bugs that, when fixed, could allow 75%
of the current programs to work. Can you say "hopeless optimist"?
Karl
Karl,
Nothing says you have to run your games on 2.0
-larry
No, games don't have to be run under v2.0, but what about problems with the
new chips?
Mike,
I don't think there's going to be much problems with games on the new
chips. I could be wrong of course, and if there are enough games that
really depend on specific behaviour of the custom chips, I likely will be
wrong.
I don't run many games, so I can't really tell. Shanghai works just fine.
🙂
-larry
Karl, Actually, we only got one of the four games to actually work on the
3000. I can't remember the title, but the one that worked was billed as
the best game in France recently – graphical adventure with excellent
artwork and digitized pics. We got through the introduction of Nuclear
War, but then it nuked the 3000.
A recent message on Usenet from somebody who took a stack of software to
the dealer showed promising results. He tried about 15-20 programs, and
more than half of them seemed to work pretty well. He called the software
publishers of the ones that didn't work and for the most part got promising
answers about their testing efforts and planned upgrades for 2.0. I can't
remember too many of the titles, unfortunately, but most of them were
productivity packages, with a few games. My favorite "game", SimCity,
worked well. Populous crashed (so much for your "P" theory) and a call to
EA wasn't too promising ("what's 2.0?" or something like that).
Alan
Any game that runs on an accelerated Amiga, i.e: 68010, 68020 or 68030 chip
SHOULD run on the 68030 A3000, unless v2.0 has some incompatibilities.
Populous crashes because it uses the 68000 specific commands. Which is
pretty annoying, it isn't that difficult to write upwardly compatible
software.
I know a developer that upgraded from an A2620 to an A2630. He said that a
lot of his game software that worked on the 68020 broke on the 68030. The
only difference that I can see would be the data cache.
Does anyone know how (if?) the data cache is initialized? Does kickstart
do it or is it AmigaDos? If the non-memory areas (chip registers, 8250s,
etc.) are not set transparent, i.e., no caching, I can easily see how
things would break.
Chris
Alan,
Thanks for the report. It doesn't sound nearly as bleak as what I had
seen at my dealer's; I guess we just didn't try the right things (and,
admittedly, it was hardly an exhaustive test).
Hopefully the person at EA did NOT have current knowledge of in-house info!
Karl
Karl,
Any idea what the problem is that games are having with v2.0? Is it
something that can be overcome? Whether or not games have been written
"right" or not, this could be a big problem.
Mike,
It may not be V2.0 that is the problem. It could also be the 68030. Chris
Whatever the problems with _ANY_ existing software and the beta version of
2.x, they are _beta_ specific things at this time. It is premature to speak
of what doesn't work, and reasons why.
-larry
The reason your games crashed probably had nothing to do with the
operating system or the machine, but rather the 68030 itself. I don't know
the specific examples, though.
— Ethan
Ethan, Yeah, somebody at the meeting knew how to use the "cpu" command to
help get some things going. Since we were booting up with 1.3, it's pretty
definite that they were 68030 compatibility problems, although some more
"cpu" tinkering may have given us more success.
For those of you who haven't seen it, the 2.0 "insert workbench" screen is
rather cute. Definitly NOT your basic boring lo-res hand holding a disk.
Alan
Karl, don't show programs running under 2.0, but rather the changes
in 2.0 itself, beyond just the look but the functionality.
— Ethan
When I get my 3000 (soon I hope), I'll do a list of what works and what
doesn't from my collection of software. It would be premature to say what
files on a 1000.
Harry,
Please release the list when the official 2.0 is out. Programs that do
not run under the 2.0 beta that dealers have are likely to be fixed by the
time the official release out.
Steve
As we say in Minnesota, "You bet!" I could post a pending list in #10
however. It will be interesting to see who "broke the rules". 🙂
Harry M.
That's "Yah, you betcha!".
Wrongo, Buffalo Knees. As recently as Paris dev con, they assured everyone
that 1.4 wasn't going to break existing CORRECTLY written programs. (I am
shooting my mouth off only to the extent that if you asked me which
routines/techniques in particular will die, that I couldn't name them
specifically) I think it stinks that they purposefully held back on the
news that they were going to call it 2.0, and that it would break things.
Sure, I heard rumors about it being called 2.0 and that it would break
things, long ago, and even heard CBM employees calling it "2.0" before the
announcement, "accidentally, did I say that?" kinda things. Then to see it
appear in AmigaWorld, and to call CBM as we did at Syndesis, and to ask
someone at Commodore, and to have them deny it… Makes you feel like
they're playing a joke on you, and that you can't even understand the
nature of the joke.