#2.0 ROM Release Info
22 messages in this thread
The following is a statement from Bill Sydnes, Commodore's VP of
Engineering, regarding the status of the 2.0 release of the Amiga operating
system:
As part of Commodore's ongoing commitment to our customers, I am pleased to
announce completion of Release 2 of the Amiga Operating System.
Today's Amiga Release 2 is very different from the Release 2 first shipped
with the Amiga 3000. Many additional man-years of effort have been
invested to create a polished, stable, compatible, tested release that
Commodore will build on for the future. Several hundred official beta
testers provided feedback, resulting in the best tested, most trouble-free
and reliable operating system for the Amiga ever.
For existing Amiga 3000 owners, Commodore plans to release a five disk
update set. For A500/A2000 owners, Commodore will make available a Release
2 Enhancer Kit, with new ROM, diskettes and full documentation.
Installation will be through an Authorized Commodore Service Center.
Release 2 Enhancer Kits will be available beginning in October. Pricing
will be announced shortly.
Following shipment of Release 2 Enhancer Kits, Commodore will gradually
phase Release 2 into new unit production.
Release 2 is a major step forward in software technology, and is part of
Commodore's commitment to keeping the Amiga competitive, and looking to the
future.
William Sydnes Vice President – Engineering, Commodore International
Limited
Naturally I have some comments on this 🙂
(1) Are they going to release ROMs for A3000 owners, or not? (Or will they
be the same as the A2000 ROMs?) (Whether I actually care about this
depends on how much stuff I still have to use 1.3 for. 2.04 is supposed to
have a lot of work-arounds that aren't in 2.03.)
(2) Wouldn't it be smarter to put the ROMs into new units FIRST?
Jim;
It is likely that ROMs will be released for the A3000 but it is also likely
that it will be a "service center installation" upgrade. The ROMs will
undoubtedly become a "replacement part" also, so one should be able to
order the part and make the replacement.
The ROMs will probably be put into new units soon.
I am not personally sure that there is much to be gained by putting the ROM
into a 3000. After all, the cold boot time for a 3000 is already pretty
quick. The money would probably be better invested in read/write memory.
Developers, OTOH, will likely want the ROM but only because that is what
will actually be installed in new machines (at some future data).
Usual Disclaimer applies. My guesses on this stuff is no better than
anyone elses and probably not as good as the opinion of some.
An Amiga message processed by Whap!,
bill
In the statement it is said that the A3000 owners (i.e. me for example)
will receive the upgrade on diskettes. Last time I was talking to a
commodore tech (2 months ago) he said that currently the A3000 does not
have the 2.0 ROMS in it. If this is going to be a ROM release, am I going
to get ROMS for my A3000 or just diskettes?
Tony
Tony,
2.04 (version 37.175) is currently available on disk for the A3000
and it is the same version that will be put into ROM.
Don
Tony;
The ROM upgrade for the A3000 has not been released. A Commodore New
Release (nwrl.03.0991) states that the A3000 ROM's (with new manual) will
be available in November for $45 as product AS314.
-bill/ARS KB7LX
thanks for the info.
Tony
Actually, it is to your advantage to continue to boot the Kickstart from
the hard drive. While putting the kickstart in rom will eliminate the 3
second delay in booting and does give you back the extra 1/2 meg of ram,
you loose a bit of performance and more importantly the ability to boot any
newer versions of 2.x that will come to pass. The Roms that are in the
3000 are actually a version of an early 2.0 alpha that has some special
boot code in it. With the final release, this ability is no longer there.
John A. Toebes, VIII – via Whap!
You know what would be nice? If they would put a start-up routine that
copied the ROMs into RAM at boot time. This way you would get the best of
both worlds.
Tony.
Tony–
SetCPU will copy the ROMs into RAM, if
* You have a MMU in your machine
* You give it the correct command parameters
Been doing this under 1.3 for a short while.
Jonathan
Jonathan – from Albany, NY, via whap!
thanks, do you know if the 2.0 ROMs are avail for the 3000 yet?
tony
Tony–
As far as I know, nope. I've had a 3000 since the August before last, and
I've yet to hear from my dealer (who has been holding a P.O. for them for
some months now). Expect they'll arrive this year….:)
Jonathan
Jonathan – from Albany, NY, via whap!
Let me know when you hear something.
Also see my note called 2.04 upgrade and tell me what you know.
You can use the CPU command to do this if you are on an MMU equipped
machine.
andy
You can use CPU if it is a non-68040 MMU equipped machine. -Greg
You're right. And, if setcpu hasn't been updated to 040 yet, well, the
source is available, and so could be modified.
andy
Actually, I have a working FASTROM program for the Progressive A3000 68040
accelerator . It is only marginally faster than stock with the 32 bit roms
I have. Turn caches off and it is 30% faster.
To anyone who has an 040: If you send me the type of machine, where your 32
bit ram is relocated, I can easily modify my MMU tables to support your
board. I plan on uploading it within the week.
-Greg
Greg –
I'm a hardware junkie, but not a hardware guru; that is, I really like new
hardware and what it can do, but I do not always understand all of the
ramifications.
> I have a working FASTROM program for the Progressive A3000 68040
> accelerator . It is only marginally faster than stock with the 32 bit
> roms I have. Turn caches off and it is 30% faster.
It is possible to explain simply WHY it is faster with the caches turned
off? I thought that they were there to speed up processing!
. . . . . JimDoc
I'm talking relative. With the caches off, the fastrom program retains much
of the speed of the machine because the roms are in 32 bit ram. Thus
relatively, you see 25 to 30 percent increase over the speed of the machine
with the caches off.The machine overall is still slower than when the
caches are enabled. (Clear as Mud, right?)
When the caches are turned on, the 68040 executes much of the ROM code from
the caches and thus there is little performance gained (1 – 2 %) by putting
the rom code in 32 bit RAM, but it is still a gain. Giving up 512K may seem
a lot for 1 – 2 percent inprovement (A2000s running from 16 bit rom will
see more – I'm talking relative to my A3000 with 150 nsec 32 bit ROMs
running the minimum number of wait states).
With Progressive's default MMU setup because it uses Copyback Cache mode
for all RAM above 16Mb, there is the distinct possibility that ZorroIII
space will not work for I/O devices. Only a properly written program which
uses address translation tables will allow ZorroIII cards to work in all
situations.
BTW, Turn Copyback cache mode off and RAM: and RAD: Diskspeeds improve
dramatically on the 040! (Either Diskspeed or the drivers for RAD: and RAM:
are worst case optimized for the 040 copyback caching mechanism).
-Greg
– via Whap!
I think that MKS went to some trouble to make diskspeed independent of
processor cache. You might want to pull out the old disk speed testing
program that we used in the dawn of history (whose name escapes me at the
moment).
andy
The A3000/030 gets 30% better results than the 040, and write through mode
of the 040 is faster than copyback mode. I wasn't knocking diskspeed, I
think it is a great program, just that I hadn't spent the time trying to
see what is the culprit.
BTW are you sure you are not talking about buffers for the device carefully
not cached or actually processor caches? I guess you would want both to
minimize CPU influencing the results.
-Greg
The 040 has additional wait states than the 030, but the fact that write
through mode is faster than copyback mode baffles me: the CPU and CPU/ram
speed is a constant.
thanks,
tony