@LyleHaze

You're welcome!
I know the feeling, too many projects, too little time, and real life/work on top of it all :-/

I was also very eager to play with Xena but work got in the way and other projects too. Now I just realized that it's been 14 years already since I got my X1000?! That's scary, and I still haven't done anything useful with Xena.

@Hans

My hands-on experience with modern AI is limited to objects recognition, running DeepSeek locally on RPi5, and it works quite well in that narrow predictable context, so it may also be possible to generate an LLM from your own code archive on some powerful-enough local machine, or short-live online compute instance and then use that LLM on a less powerful machine.
Still, I wouldn't trust AI when it comes to decision-making. It may be helpful to suggest the seemingly most appropriate options, but lacks any actual understanding of anything.
With code though, since it is something so mechanical with rigid rules, it seems like it can be a useful tool once it knows all the rules.

@joerg

Thanks Joerg for your insights!

Even though I wish it was otherwise, I do believe that the web browser has become the most important program any OS must have, at least to fully benefit from the mainstream web, but catching up with current web technologies is such a massive undertaking that for one or a few coders it's not possible to update what we have fast enough, let alone writing a new browser from scratch.

For that reason I think it makes sense to use what has already been written and keeps getting updated, by porting it, be it Chromium or FF, but even that is a daunting task, unless at least a hundred of us join forces (and we do have more than a hundred coders).

With or without AI, I think it's the most worthwhile undertaking to keep the platform relevant as a daily driver, and if we want at least a remote chance of getting new users (as long as the browser works most people don't care what's under the hood) and one huge benefit of being on an exotic platform is that none of the exploits and zero day attacks work on our architecture/OS making it quite safe to open any attachment without worries.

@NinjaCyborg

Not directly, but it shows that it's feasible.
Just get a nice sequence of boing balls to have the full rotation and apply the animation technique shown with the checkered arrow on the busy pointer instead, if you only want the busy pointer to show a rotating boing ball.

@Tuvok

If you define new menu entries for Workbench using ARexx, you can specify the shortcuts and they will appear next to the item name.
I'm not sure if all combos can be displayed as I only use Amiga+letter shortcuts.

A long time ago I released AddMenu: http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/AddMenu which shows how to add custom menus with ARexx, maybe it's helpful.

@NinjaCyborg

Have a look at these:

http://aminet.net/package/util/mouse/AnimaPoint
http://aminet.net/package/game/gag/PingBoing

@LyleHaze

Hi Lyle,

> Unfortunately I loaned out the Xorro board and it was never returned, so you'll have to take my word for it.

I did buy two when they came out, and haven't used them yet. If you want I can send you one as I really only need one, if I ever get around to using it.

@ldg72

It's quite impressive that AI was able to help, considering that it's very biased when it comes to code, assuming most of the data used by the LLMs comes from linux, some from windows, and presumably not a lot of source code comes from OS4 projects.
I took a quick look at the client source code and there's a lot of platform-dependent code in there. I'd replace the calls to malloc() with calls to AllocVecTags() but I don't know if that's necessary or more of a principle when porting code.

It begs the question whether AI would be helpful with porting FireFox, as the main obstacle is the broad array of libraries that need to be ported and endian conversions needed all over the place.

@Hans

This is a complex subject.

On one hand it makes sense to follow the path of least resistance, which would be to take advantage of cheap and powerful hardware, and just skip the heavy lifting altogether. That's also fine for newcomers who couldn't care less what the underlying hardware is.

On the other hand, for the existing and mostly original user base, there's a strong preference for native hardware, just because that's how it's always been, change being difficult to embrace for many, which also explains why people still want new Classic HW, 20 years after NG hardware has become available.

When considering cost alone, the first approach is definitely preferable, but there is a middle ground which can benefit everyone including people outside of the Amiga universe, and that would be open source hardware. That approach is working very well in the MCU/IoT world. It allows people with talent to design useful hardware and drivers, while people with enough funds can get the hardware mass-produced, and is typically done with some royalty scheme as it's important to keep the designers/coders on-board to continue improving/expending the product. It works quite well for companies like Sparkfun, Olimex, AdaFruit, and SeeedStudio to name a few.

Maybe that's how Amiga hardware will be produced in the future, I don't know, but I like the idea.

@white

I don't know if what follows is applicable to your observation but I thought I'd mention it in case it does.

The Amiga RDB can be located anywhere within the first few KB of a drive, can't remember if it's 4k, 32k or more, but when you configure the RDB in MediaToolbox you can choose where the RDB should be written (start block and size), and is automatically found, wherever it is, by kickstart or cfe/uboot.

So if your RDB start at block 2, and has an SFS partition listed in it, it wouldn't matter what you do in Parted, the RDB would still be there until you overwrite the RDB, presumably with data written to the first partition starting at block 2.
I doubt linux would scan the entire disk and find the SFS partition, but rather finds and parses the RDB.

I use this feature extensively on external drives as it allows to share the same drive between x86 and Amiga by having an MBR on the first block, followed by the RDB, keeping the partitions hidden from each other.

That approach requires remembering not to create/start the first MBR partition before the end of the RDB blocks, and keeping track of which block is the border between the x86 and Amiga partitions to prevent overlapping partitions.

Technically you could even specify the otherwise invisible partitions of the other OS in both the MBR and RDB, but it's too easy to make a destructive mistake, not worth the risk on a backup drive.

I also use netfs between my Amigas without trouble.

To keep it simple I only configured the XE as the server and use netmount on the X1000.

On the XE I Roadshow prefs under services I have amiganetfs set to port 2500 using tcp.
Under Servers I have added amiganetfs type Stream, Program: MY:Path/to/netfs-server, no arguments, Active, No wait, No socket I/O.

On the X1000 I do have the assign:path/file AmiTCP:L/netfs-handler, I'm not sure it's required, perhaps putting the handler in L: would work too, but that path is hard-coded in the NetMount command.

Hope it helps

On my XE it runs well except for a crash on exit but it's quite handy that it can use the same add-ons as the PC like noscript to keep it fast and flashgot to download flash videos.

Kas1e,

What is the value defined for the STACK_DEFAULT constant?
Maybe it's just a stack issue?

What does the crash log look like?

At first I thought it wasa good idea as it then matches the os version it's depending on, but Chris' example made me change my mind. It better to start with v 1.0 (even though it should be 1.1 )

@Sicky

It may be that you haven't disabled the clock in Commander prefs, without the clock it shouldn't open a screen so pressing Esc should quit Aquario normally.


And here's how you can make Commander's "Unblank command" cause Aquario (or any other Hollywood application) to exit as if you had pressed the Esc key:

Download SetSignal from:
http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/SetSignal

Set the Unblank command to:
SetSignal Acuario 12

Now anytime you press a key or move the mouse it will close Acuario but that means you won't be able to change any of its settings with F1..F10 while it's running :-/

Better yet, if you use DPMS to turn the monitor off in the Timing tab of ScreenBlankers prefs, e.g. "Stand-By delay", then a better approach would be to put the SetSignal command in the "StandBy Command" field of Commander Prefs, that way as long as the aquarium is visible you can control it with Esc/F1..F10, and once the screen goes to sleep it will quit Acuario as there's no point in keeping it running in the background so when you return from StandBy the Workbench will be visible right away.

I compiled a test version which also accepts his subvendor ID but it's only going to work if it has the same codec chip as the 5.1 card, otherwise I'll need to know what codec that card has and if it's another amk4xxx codec it should be easy enough to add support for it.

@klapdeur

I'll compile a new mixer with that device ID and send it to you for testing.

If it works I'll release it.

[Edit]
Actually there's nothing I can do for the Envy 24HT at this time, the reason why Davy didn't provide support for in previous versions of mixer was that this chipset doesn't have an internal volume mixer to be controlled via software IIRC.
...
Hmm, actually it might just be the Juli@ card because the revolution does have volume control.

Alex

@salass00

These ASCII string are from error messages to be printed out by printf() or similar.

They better not get stripped

@JosDushIt

A while back I needed a way to time how long some commands took and wrote http://os4depot.net/share/utility/shell/timer.lha

It tries to be as accurate as possible and consequently it doesn't report the result in Ticks but you could make that happen by modifying the source code a bit.

As their name implies, Pixies must be magic sprites of sorts.

As with anything wrapped in magic we don't know what it does nor how it does it, unless it does absolutely nothing, but it's really tempting to find out so maybe I'll give it a quick try to put my curiosity at ease and solve that mystery at long last




[edit]
Meh, no luck, I tried and gcc returned:

error: 'struct GraphicsIFace' has no member named 'NewPixieField'

and then a quick scan of the ASCII strings inside graphics.library revealed that none of the pixie functions are implemented (yet?).

/me puts his magician costume back in some old wooden chest.