New 3000
22 messages in this thread
To All,
I have just gotten my 3000 with the 1950 monitor. Wow!
What an experience after five years with stock 68000 machines (1000 and
2000's)and standard monitors. Right now I'm just playing with it to get a
feel for the operating system.
Has anybody gotten Word Perfect to work on 2.0? Very flakey. Fragmented
characters all over the screen. Unpredictable responses to the function
keys. And more. Is this a problem with 2.0 or WP or both? WP customer
support will not even comment on a OS 2.0 version.
I know that OS 1.3 is loaded onto the hard drive, but where is it? Can't
find it with info or dir. Are there hidden files as in MSDOS?
The 2.0 C directory has far fewer files than in 1.3. There is no 'run'
command yet 'run' works. Anybody know where 'run' is? In Kickstart?
Therefore 'internal?'
Drive Work: has 73 buffers, drive System2.0: has 51 buffers. There are no
addbuffers commands in startup-sequence for these drives. Where does this
take place? The manuals are silent on these kinds of things. Will the
'final release' ROM version of 2.0 handle things differently?
I'm sure there are lots of other operational changes which are not yet firm
and therefore not fully documented. Just curious if anyone is familiar with
these things.
What a great machine! I can look at the screen for hours without getting
eye irritation!
8) Rich
I don't have Word Perfect but I can help you on the other questions.
The partion for 1.3 is hidden by the beta os, to select the os you want to
use for you session push both mouse buttons at bootup. After that (if you
selected in 2.0) pushing both mouse buttons when you reset will allow you
to select which drive the computer will boot from and what devices are
available.
When I list the files in the 2.0 C directory I get more than what in the
1.3 C directory, I don't mean to be condesent but did you type your DIR
correctly? "DIR C:"?
When you boot up beta 2.0 loads preforms its own internal start-up sequence
where it loads up things that should be in rom, it may also be adding
buffers to the hard drive according to size or from some hidden
autoconfigurating of the hard drive (I'm just guessing).
BTW: how do you find out many buffers a drive has?
Salomon Farin (73737,2421) Miami Beach, FL
run, and some other commands are internal to the shell now, like alias
was/is under 1.3.
OOOPS, sorry, my mistake. I just checked, and your right.
Salomon Farin (73737,2421) Miami Beach, FL
Salomon,
My 2.0 C directory has far fewer commands than its 1.3 counterpart. As you
have said, some commands are 'interna'l now.
The addbuffers command now gives the number of buffers assigned to a drive.
Typing
Adbuffers System2.0:
results in the message
System2.0 has 1 buffers
Work: comes up with 28 buffers. The manual suggests more than 1 buffer for
any drive. I have usually used 100 on my seagate 251-1 in my 2000. I wonder
why they didn't assign more than 1 buffer as a default? I can't really see
a performance difference by adding buffers (yet).
Rich
You must hold down the mouse button on power up, not just bootup. BTW, the
system remembers 1.3 or 2.0 when rebooted. HarryM
Harry,
Everyone misunderstood my complaint that I could not 'find' the 1.3 OS on
the 3000's hard drive. I meant that I could not access it via 'dir' or
'list' or 'info' or any other command used to display the contents of the
disk. It's a 'hidden set of files.
Rich
Yep, there internal I forgot about all those programs I added to the c:
directory, sorry.
I've heard that adding buffers slows down hard drives, but the quantum
drives inside the a3000 are MUCH faster than the seagate I own.
Salomon Farin (73737,2421) Miami Beach, FL
Salomon,
The Quantum/3000 controller is indeed a fast combo. Much faster than the
Seagate 251-1/2090A controller combination in my 2000.
Adding buffers to the hard drive should not slow down anything – unless you
are low on memory in the first place and the memory allocated to the drives
is starving otherwise needed ram.
Rich
Rich,
I don't have a 3000, so I'm basing some of this on "reliable hearsay",
some on my knowledge from working with 2.0 (as a developer), and some on
speculation. The 3000 (currently) gives you the option of booting either
1.3 or 2.0, but only when both mouse buttons are held down at COLD BOOT
time (this doesn't work from a warm boot). Whichever OS you decide to
boot, the _other_ OS partition is not mounted/visible.
The 2.0 system does have some things built into it that were formerly
separate commands. I know that "path" is one of them. Don't recall if
"run" is or not (I'm not running 2.0 right now, so I can't easily check).
As to where the buffer counts are coming from, I suspect that they are
specified in the RigidDiskBlock on your hard disk, which is a special area
of the hard disk (prior to any "partitioned" data) in which the "mountlist"
equivalent information is stored (it is stored there to allow the
partitions to be visible during the auto-boot process). These parameters
should be available to you via the HDToolbox utility (I think that's what
it's called – I don't have a C= HD controller, so my setup is different).
Just be a little careful with that utility, 'cause it could cause you to
lose your HD data if you blunder badly (although I suspect this is rather
difficult to do). I'm pretty sure there's documentation for the HD support
utilities in the 3000's manual.
Hope this helps…
…BobR
White Wolf Productions
Bob,
Thanks. Yes I know about the boot options. Please see my reply to Harry.
There's a lot to 2.0 that is not explained in the manual (what else is
new?) I know that everything is not finalized until the ROMS are released.
I hope that then there will be a concise explanation of the new
environment.
Rich
I have wordperfect running under 2.0. The catch is that you must make
all the font selections 8 point non-proportional fonts, i.e. topaz 8. If
you do that and it still doesn't work, what I think it is is that I didn't
get the bug fix that WP released a few months ago. Someone else reset all
the fonts to topaz 8 and still had problems. I guess I'm just lucky!
To get 1.3, you have to hold down both mouse buttons while turning the
computer on (not on a warm boot). You can select there. That should be in
the A3000 manual, but not in the System manual.
— Ethan
Ethan,
All my font selections are Topaz 8. WP still doesn't work. I have called WP
customer support and they insist that there is no version later than Sept.,
1989. They admit that WP does not run under 2.0 and that there is no
official word on a version that will run on 2.0.
Frankly I am disgusted with WP. The present release still has significant
bugs. It is now 10 months old and no attempt has been made to correct the
problems. They keep saying that they are working on it, but it really does
appear that WP has abandoned Amiga. I could go on for pages here with
flames about WP cheating those of us who have paid for their product, all
their complaining about losing money on Amiga not-with-standing. But I
won't. For now!
Rich
Word Perfect should've made a public statement that they are working on
2.0 compatibility. They've also had quite a while to do it. I have the
next-to-most-recent-version and apparently that makes the difference!
— Ethan
Ethan,
I talked to WP customer support again today. The fellow identified himself
as Roger. He gave me much more information than I had ever been able to get
from them re WP for 2.0.
WP _is_ working on a 2.0 version (no real surprise). They, of course cannot
announce anything or finalize anything because 2.0 is _still_ beta and the
final version is not ready and apparently is taking longer than expected to
reach ROM form (what else is new?).
One thing that has really hurt the Amiga version of WP is the fact that WP
views the typical (read overwhelming majority) of Amiga users as owners of
machines with only 512K RAM. CBM's decision to sell A500's with 1M will
help, but WP strongly believes that the Amiga market will not support a
program that requires more than 512K. This is very unfortunate. WP limited
to 512K can't do many of the things that are found in the 5.x versions (and
even in 4.2) on MSDOS versions. In 512K there is not enough memory to allow
WP to use RAM for its 'virtuals.' This means a very slow running program
that makes productivity in a business environment impossible or a
nightmare.
As an example, I typically produce 'long' documents – 40 pages or more. WP
in its present form is good for letters, memos, term papers and the like of
just a few pages. If I find a mistake on pages 41, 48, 55, 63 of a 75 page
document (not an unusual situation for me or for _many_ office
environments), and want to reprint those pages with the errors corrected,
Amiga WP does the following: Slooowly and laboriously climb through the
document to page 41, to find all the formatting codes, then print page 41.
Then go ALL THE WAY BACK to page 1, slooowly and laboriously climb through
the document, reading all the codes to page 48. Print page 48. Then go ALL
THE WAY BACK to page 1. Slooowly and laboriously climb through the document
to page 55, reading all the codes. Print page 55. Go ALL THE WAY BACK to
page 1 . . . well you get the idea.
Try to put up with this just once. It will drive you nuts. Try to get some
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work out the door and you will throw the damn program out the window. It's
terrible.
WP 5.0 on MSDOS seems to instantly go to each page and reprint them as it
should. It has the information it needs in memory in the form of indexes
and lists and whatever other data formats are necessary.
And this doesn't even begin to address the need for a program more
graphically sophisticated than the awfully obselete 4.1/4.2 version that we
have.
I suggested to Roger that WP give us a program that could be set up to run
in more than 512K, user selectable – sort of a 'professional' option. Or
just acknowlege that less than 1M on this machine is a silly limitation
applicable to a game player mentality and be done with it. While _he_
agreed with me, he repeated that WP does not view its market in the same
way.
BTW, he also said that there is _no_ release of WP that will work on 2.0 at
the present time. The latest version which he still insists is Sept., 1989
cannot address the '030 properly for a multitude of functions. If you have
gotten a program that _does_ work on 2.0, it is an unofficial release that
WP will not even acknowlege exists. Roger said that he cannot even get a
release for himself to run on the 3000 which he has available to him.
Rich
It won't address the '030? Strange, since my GVP board works just great
with it. Must be something in the 3000.
Doug,
The 'problem' is 2.0.
WP runs well on the 3000 under 1.3
Rich
On the contrary! I am currently running Amiga WordPerfect 4.1.9 dated
8/10/88 and it runs FINE under 2.0. I simply decided it wasn't worth
spending the $10 upgrade for something I don't use very extensively. I also
work at a lab filled with tons of IBM clones running WordPerfect 5.1 and
equipped with laser printers. However I do assure you that it works fine.
Perhaps I should give Roger a call and let him know. Everything is 100%
usable. The only things that are off are that the popup menus look slightly
off, but there is no clipping of letters at all.
On to the subject of 512K limitations: what per cent of their sales have
been to 512K owners? That is the stupidest excuse I've ever heard of.
First, at least in the U.S., most A500 owners have expanded to 1MB or will
soon do so. It is a very cheap upgrade. Most people who only have 512K in
their machines are teenagers who primarily play games and pirate software.
I'd bet that no more than 15% of 512K A500 owners actually buy software,
let alone something expensive like WordPerfect. Most will probably buy
PenPal or ProWrite if anything. They are essentially insisting upon not
leaving a market which doesn't exist. I guess I'll have to tell Roger about
this too.
— Ethan
P.S. The statements about piracy are realism. I don't expect to get into
any debates one way or the other about piracy. That wasn't the intention.
Piracy is something that happens regularly among school age computer
owners.
Rich,
I envy your A3000/1950. I have read of your problems/concerns about
WordPerfect. I don't know the specifics of your word processor needs but
you might like to know that "excellence!" has been GREATLY improved. The
speed is very fast even for a custom screen. I've heard reports on the
Amiga fora and from MSS saying that excellence! works with AmigaDOS 2.0.
The people at MSS told me that WordPerfect "broke a lot of rules" which is
why (they say) WP doesn't work well on the new machine. Hope this helps
you out. I envy your A3000/1950!
Leslie,
Well, I guess the 3000 is something to envy. It really is a nice piece of
equipment. Hope you get one.
I have been using Pro Write since WP doesn't work. I have the 2.5 version.
Have to send for the 3.0 upgrade. It's a very nice program. But still does
not have the power of WP that is needed in an office environment.
I hadn't heard that excellence! (sic) had been improved. I have the
original release and hate it. I'd rather not give any more money to MSS. My
experience with their products has left a very sour taste.
Rich
I understand. I was one of the first owners of excellence! and I
wasn't too happy with it either. Version 2.0 really IS a LOT faster and
excellence! has a lot of WordPerfect's formatting abilities. It may not
hurt to give them a call.