04 November 2000
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Welcome to AmigaOS 3.5 !
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Introduction :
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I'm really surprised nobody wrote a review about the new OS3.5. Perhaps all amigans are busy playing with their newly installed operating system.
So for all people who have not yet installed this new AmigaOS release, here are a few hints for a nice installation.
As my Workbench is heavily patched (MCP, MagicMenu....), I decided to install OS3.5 on a blank partition. This was to be sure that my system would be a stable one. (And I must confess a friend of mine tried to install OS3.5 on top of its Workbench and its Amiga crashed...)
A few days ago, the first update - BoingBag 1 - has been released by Amiga.
Get it now: boingbag1.lzx
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How to install ?
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I noticed the installation process uses the CDROM device and filesystem you have installed in your system instead of using its own. That means that if you have an old third party CDROM filesystem you won't be able to take advantage of the new features (long filenames for example).
To avoid this you must run the installation without your CDROM mounted. So you have to copy the directories OS-Version3.1 and OS-Version3.5 from the OS3.5 CD to your harddrive (37.5 Mb free space is needed).
Then you will have to run the installation from this location.
You will surely want to install OS3.5 on top of your OS3.1. That means on the same partition. But you probably installed OS3.1 on a small partition because you know that the AmigaOS doesn't require thousands of megabytes like other systems. That was my case, my Wb partition was 15 Mb only. As OS3.5 offers new enhancements, it needs a really big partition.
In fact that's what I thought but 17 Mb is enough. Yes, only 17 Mb !!! And I have a lot of third party libraries and a lot of useless files !
To know how much space OS3.5 needed, I installed it on UAE0.8.8R8 and guess what: it works !
But I couldn't install OS3.1 from the OS3.5 CD because Winblows can't read correctly my CD. It says the Dosdrivers/AUX file has a size of 20 Mb ! The file is read correctly on the Amiga of course. OS3.5 has some kind of Winblows protection :)
But you can install it by hand: just copy everything except the AUX dosdriver file.
So back on the Amiga, before resizing my SYS partition I did a backup of it to another partition called TMP: (in a directory called Wb) then I used HDtoolbox to resize SYS and the partition next to the first one. If you don't know how to do it, ask a friend. Then I rebooted to be sure that no patch were still alive. I arrived in an shell window where I typed the following commands to reformat my SYS partition:
(replace TMP: by the partition where you put the directories from the OS3.5 CDROM)
TMP:os-version3.1/workbench3.1
c/assign c: c
assign env: ram:
assign t: ram:
assign libs: libs
assign sys: ""
loadwb
A Workbench loaded, I could "quick format" my SYS partition (only a quick format because the OS3.1 format command often hangs the system). And I went on installing OS3.1 using the installation icon (don't forget to change the destination directory).
Once OS3.1 was loaded, I started the OS3.5 PRE installation.
 
When it says "Read the licence...", there is no displayed licence (a bug in the install script ?). But don't panic, you will be able to read it in the main installation (just click "Accept" for now). And again don't forget to change the destination...
When this PRE installation process is finished, it asks to reboot. If you have a 68060 don't do it or your Amiga will reboot in an endless loop. Just swap the screens and on the shell window copy your 68040 and 68060 libraries into the LIBS directory of your newly installed system:
copy TMP:Wb/libs/680#?.library hd0:libs
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Final stage
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Now you can reboot your Amiga and pay attention to the Power led: it flashes once ? Yes, that's where OS3.5 comes in !
The setpatch command installs some of the new patches in memory (scsi device, new filesystem....) Now on, you are using the long awaited OS3.5 !
But if you open your Workbench, you won't have the nice looking icons of OS3.5. So let's do the final stage of the whole process:
turn the sound on (yes it's needed...) and run the MAIN 3.5 installation.
It will ask you if you want to copy some extras backdrops. I suggest you to answer "No" and install afterwards just the ones that match your screen resolution (available are 640x480, 640x512, 800x600, 1024x768) so you don't spread disk space with unused files.
Now reboot and ... Waoouuu ... what a nice coloured Workbench !
OS3.5 is very nice looking but what is inside ? I won't tell you about all new features because you all know what's new (Wb gauge, new icon edit program, copy has now a progress bar and a Stop button...).
I'll just focus on what is not shown on the screen grabs released by Amiga. And I'll tell you what you can do to make it better and how goes the compatibility with some well known commodities.
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Faster or not faster ?
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First of all, I noticed that when I opened the Wb directory, all icons didn't fit into the window. This is because I have a screen in 640x256 and the OS3.5 icons are made for 4:3 screens (or close to this resolutions) 640x480, 640x512, 800x600... I can't use an interlaced screen because it will go very slow with the AGA chipset so it's maybe time to buy a GFX card. Another solution is to resize all icons or maybe a 640x256 icons set will be available on Aminet.
But it seems that some things go faster than with OS3.1: opening and closing windows for example. To be sure about that I just ran Sysinfo and the result is (on a 68060 Amiga):
OS3.1 OS3.5
MIPS 26.47 38.71
MFLOPS NA 27.81
Yes, it seems that 3.5 is a little faster !!!
So I thought disk access could be faster too. Sysinfo says:
OS3.1 OS3.5 OS3.5 BoingBag
Mbs/sec 2.137 1.180 1.614
It seems that the new scsi.device is a little slower but I didn't find this disturbing. Hopefully the BoingBag release makes it a bit faster.
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What ? Bugs ? Where ?
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As I told you, I used the new scsi.device to mount my CDROM drive instead of my old atapi.device. But even if the CDROM drive is well recognised by HDtoolbox, I must confess it doesn't seem to work fine (it is the same with a friend of mine). So I had to get back to atapi as the device used in the CD0 dosdriver. But using CacheCDFS released with OS3.5 gives me access to the long filenames, at last !
But with the BoingBag, this is corrected. Now I use the scsi.device for everything.
In the new pointer preference program, if you click on the "Test" button, it is like you have clicked on "Use" instead. Your new pointer is set, the program exits and you can't start it again (?). But guess what ? It is corrected with the BoingBag !
Now when I click on the "Test" button, sometimes the program resets the Workbench (?).
I noticed that some demos and games I used to run with the "Setchiprev" or "Killaga" program don't work anymore. But I'm sure there will be another way to run those programs. Perhaps using the arguments of the new Setpatch command.
The online documentation is pretty nice even if it is not complete. Yes the description of Setpatch correspond to the OS3.1 version :(
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Will it work with my turbo-patched-all-in-one-maxi Wb ?
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As I have MCP the "do everything" commodity, I knew I would find a few problems with the new features of OS3.5.
Let's have a look at the problems I found with MCP.
Obviously, you have to switch off the WBGauge option or you'll have two gauges in your directory windows and "Dos-Wildstar" must be off too because it is now included in the OS.
On my system, the Exchange commodity crashed because of the "New Tooltypes" option so I had to switch it off.
And you can switch off the following MCP features because they don't work with OS3.5: "WBabout", "Library search".
All other commodities I have in my system work perfectly with OS3.5:
StringReq, MagicMenu, PowerWB (you have to define again the shortcuts)...
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Why 3.5 is so nice ?
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Now an icon can be selected using the Tab key many times or pressing the first letter of its name. A lot of icons can be selected without pressing the Shift key. And they can be dragged still without Shift. Finally my Workbench stopped being stupid :)
You can use Ctrl to unselect one or more icons.
Many times in the past I felt the need to open a shell window in the directory I opened using the mouse. Now it is possible ! Just be sure the window of the directory is selected, use the "Execute command" of the "Workbench" menu and type "cli"...
All prefs program are coded with Reaction so you can change a lot of GUI parameters. You can display a picture in the window background of each program and you can iconify all windows (even HDtoolbox). When a program is iconified, the icon created on the Workbench is the icon of the program itself. There are a lot of nice things like this in the OS3.5.
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Workbench goes Arexx !
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There are a lot of new features in this OS but the enhancement that surely needed the longer work is the Arexx interface of the Workbench. Yes now you can select icons, open and close (and even resize or move) windows. You can even invoke menu items or create your own menu entries in the Tools menu !
Can you do this in Winblows ?
And as always a lot of Arexx scripts for OS 3.5 can be found on Aminet...
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So what ?
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I think every Amigan wants to have new reasons to convince PC people that the AmigaOS is better than any other. OS3.1 was old and was lacking all good stuff that make an operating system nice to use.
All right this OS update is not bug free (even with the BoingBag update) but it is the best program you can buy to feed your angry Amiga. It has internet software, PPC support, an online documentation in HTML.
3.5 is a good thing while we wait the update of the ROM chips. When the ROM 4.0 will be available it will work even better and faster.
There are 2 things that were long awaited by people: the new Starwars movie and OS3.5. You went to see the Phantom Menace now buy OS3.5 !
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Elwood
Jay Miner Society
Phoenix Platform Consortium
Design by Malibu ;) the PC wizard :(
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