@TCD
Hyperion will *never* release OS4 for PS3, because it (graphics) will be far too slow. For that you can blame Sony keeping full control of the PS3 hardware under their lock & key.

Sam440 is the only available hardware to run OS4 for the foreseeable future. Whether it meets your needs, I cannot say, but it is the only choice for OS4, and most people seem happy with it.

A rather minor bug: Sam440's ethernet driver does not work with a 10Mbit connection. (This was on a VERY old hub.)

But it worked fine with OS4.1 on an AmigaOne (just ask Mikey C).

@TiredOfLife & Swoop
Thanks for the info, I had not installed all the required files.

However, I can now confirm Freddix's report that installing the new dvdvcd.plugin file causes DvPlayer to crash upon opening any DVD (on my Sam440 with the latest registered DvPlayer).

Without that plugin it just hangs & eventually reports the Menu error that Freddix mentions above, on non-R0 discs.

edit: I have a Lite-On LH-20A1L dvd-rw drive.

(Obviously I am somewhat disappointed, as I was under the impression that I'd be able to watch most DVDs.)

@joerg Quote:
Yes, it is Payback. I did pester the author a long long time ago to fix this "optimisation", but he never did

@freddix
DvPlayer (registered) works for me, at least with Region 0 discs. I haven't yet been able to play any Region 1/2 discs, even though my drive is region free (it gets stuck saying it is opening the Menu) - not sure what to do about that.

@TiredOfLife
I think that I read (on AW.net) there are some problems with this on Sam440, although that I could be wrong.

@Atheist Quote:

Actually, this isn't at all obvious. Think about it for a moment from a programmer/implementation perspective:

You split the file into lines, with each line ending in a CR. Then you sort the lines, before finally outputting them into the new file. But the line at the end of a file may not end with a CR, yet it should still be counted as the end of a line. What happens when you move this line (without a CR) before other lines? Should it still lack a CR? No, of course not! Therefore you add a CR, increasing the file size by 1 character as observed.

You *could* argue that Sort should have special-case handling that strips the new file's final CR, if the original was missing it too. But then Sort is actually deleting a character that was previously present at the end of a line, so no doubt someone ELSE might claim *that* is a bug!


The only reason I can think for choosing one implementation over the other is that the file generated by Sort my be used as the input to some other automated processing, and the presence/lack of a final CR *might* conceivably cause problems if it differed for the original. But it certainly isn't "obvious".

@Chris
Ah, that book would be the one where a rewrite was finished & it was going to be published (by Guru Meditations?), and they cancelled it at the last moment because of one new torrent to the OLD book (which IMHO seemed like an excuse to not publish, since torrents for everything are on Pirate Bay, and punishing everyone for one persons actions doesn't make sense).

@samwel
I don't know much, but my understanding is that (a) it isn't documented very well (dunno about OS4...), and (b) the way filing-systems are supported is a bit of mess due to poor design inherited from early AmigaOS days.

@niceguy1979 Quote:
With the announcement of OS4.1 for the SAM440, I think it would be very wise to ensure that any Amiga get-together at least allowed people to see a demo of such a system - if not actually buy one themselves!

We've been waiting so long for new OS4 hardware that it would seem stupid not to use this major major reason for attracting people to it.


Personally speaking, I'd also like to see the up-and-coming Pandora (and perhaps the Wiz too) for sale at such a get-together. Sure, it's not strictly Amiga-related, but many Amiga fans are also Retro fans, and the Pandora seems likely to have a huge Retro attraction. However, since the Pandora may not be available in large quantities until 2009, that may or may not be possible. The GP2X (it's predecessor) sold well at the previous Big Bash.

@MamePPCA1
Now that you know it works, you can buy it new from here...

@Atheist
If you're having that much trouble with such a simple program, one wonders if you wouldn't be better-off using a documented but non-BASIC language with proper error reporting, like Pascal or AmigaE!

(And yeah, I remember you dislike needing brackets around parameters & essentially anything different from BASIC, but given the pain you seem to be going through...)

(Typed while my text adventure engine recompiled in PortablE:)

@Chris
Nice to see this post

Just to let you know that the second Beta of PortablE has been released on the AmigaE mailing list. The biggest changes are:


* Most bugs have been fixed, as PortablE is now able to correctly compile all 50,000 lines of itself to both C++ & AmigaE code. So I now use PortablE instead of AmigaE

* An AmigaOS 4 PPC native version is now supplied (3x faster than 68k version).

* Now supports all v45/v52 modules for Devices, Diskfont, Dos, Exec, Graphics, Intuition, Resources, Utility, and part of Other.

* Improved AmigaE compatibility mode, by totally disabling the type checking.

* The generated C++ code now compiles without any warnings.

* You can use assignments/etc within ELSE IF expressions. (By popular demand!)

* FastNew() & FastDispose() are implemented like AmigaE did, so they are very fast, and this means NEW, END, NewString() & DisposeString() are also very fast.

* You no-longer need any [square brackets] after END array, and in fact giving the size of an array is now disallowed (although an empty [] is fine).

* Added PrintFlush(), which when combined with Print() is better than the problematic mixing of PrintF() & WriteF().

* You no-longer need to use pointer arithmetic with StrCopy() or StrAdd(), thanks to the optional position parameter that has been added.

* The word "static" is no-longer used in a potentially confusing way. Thanks to Leif Salomonsson for pointing this out.

* Some warnings & errors now offer practical guidance, thus reducing the need to refer to the manual.

* Reduced memory usage, and many more small improvements!

* You must use a stack of 100KB, now that PortablE is compiled with GCC.

You can find the complete list of changes in the History chapter at the end of manual.

@agafaster Quote:
A small correction: You should have said Technician not Engineer. Engineers design & build things, while Technicians just fix & install them. Unfortunately this is a common mistake in England, and it devalues the perceived importance of real engineers

@Atheist
Depends on whether you want 68k or PPC compatibility: If the answer is no, then porting OS4 is very easy/cheap. Otherwise it is going to be a *lot* more expensive & harder.

@joerg
Are you sure? You might need to increase the block size to get larger partitions....

@Antique
Yes & no: Yes the X-box 360 is PPC based, but not it does not use the CELL. Instead it uses a traditional multi-core approach (albeit PPC), which is instantly familiar to anyone using a PC. So using PPC just means you have to recompile (and take care of any endian issues).

Where-as, the CELL is one main CPU (i.e. 1 core) plus a load of less powerful ones (called SPUs). This is much harder to code for, because you can't just off-load any old CPU-heavy task to an SPU, because it would likely be too much for the less powerful SPU. The only way to really take advantage of the weaker (but more numerous) SPUs is to find CPU-heavy tasks that can be split into smaller jobs = harder & more coding work.

@derfs
I read a few reviews, and it seems that the PS3 version has a low frame rate in a *few* places (mainly nowhere critical), but some Frame-Per-Second junkies have blown it out of all proportion (mainly based on preview versions that were a lot worse).

But it seems that a lot of PS3 games suffer from lower frame rates, when compared to X-box 360 versions of the same games. I guess this is down to the fact that it's far harder to write for the PS3's CELL processor, when coders are used to writing for multi-core processors on the PC & X-box 360 (which is basically a PC in disguise). Not to mention that porting games to the PS3 is even harder, since such games were not designed with the CELL in mind.

@Antique
I don't have a PS3, but The Orange Box was released for both it & the X-box 360 a week or two ago - and if it is anything like the PC version then it is VERY good. (And if you've never played Half-Life 2 before, then you are getting a fantastic deal - 5 games, totalling a nearly uncountable amount of playing time).

edit: Ignoring replay value & the excellent multi-player-only Team Fortress 2 game, you're getting something like 5.5+6.5+20+3 = 35 hours game time (just to complete it once).