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92-619: Commodore's AmigaOS was formed of both the Kickstart firmware and a software component provided on disk (with the software portion often termed as Workbench ). For most AmigaOS updates the Kickstart version number was matched to the Workbench version number. Confusingly, Commodore also used internal revision numbers for Kickstart chips. For example, there were several Kickstart revisions designated as version 2.0. The first Amiga model,

184-557: A magic number . The native Amiga windowing system is called Intuition , which handles input from the keyboard and mouse and rendering of screens, windows and widgets . Prior to AmigaOS 2.0, there was no standardized look and feel , application developers had to write their own non-standard widgets. Commodore added the GadTools library and BOOPSI in AmigaOS 2.0, both of which provided standardized widgets. Commodore also published

276-492: A "snapshot" of icons and windows so the icons will remain on the desktop at coordinates chosen by user and windows will open at the desired size. Power-on self-test A power-on self-test ( POST ) is a process performed by firmware or software routines immediately after a computer or other digital electronic device is powered on. POST processes may set the initial state of the device from firmware and detect if any hardware components are non-functional. The results of

368-483: A big contribution it makes to the elegant design of system software. The Amiga has an excellent multitasking system, and I think it will have twice the product life of the Macintosh because of it. Exec is the multi-tasking kernel of AmigaOS. Exec provides functionality for multi-tasking, memory allocation, interrupt handling and handling of dynamic shared libraries . It acts as a scheduler for tasks running on

460-456: A blank disk by use of the install command. Some games and demos on floppy disk used custom bootblocks, which allowed them to take over the boot sequence and manage the Amiga's hardware without AmigaOS. The bootblock became an obvious target for virus writers. Some games or demos that used a custom bootblock would not work if infected with a bootblock virus, as the code of the virus replaced

552-662: A board may become meaningless, since some OSes, e.g. Linux , use port 0x80 for I/O timing operations. The actual numeric codes for the possible stages and error conditions differ from one BIOS supplier to another. Codes for different BIOS versions from a single supplier may also vary, although many codes remain unchanged in different versions. Later BIOSes used a sequence of beeps from the motherboard-attached PC speaker (if present and working) to signal error codes. Some vendors developed proprietary variants or enhancements, such as MSI's D-Bracket . POST beep codes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Information on numeric and beep codes

644-622: A code fetch request to the BIOS located on the system flash memory . For a warm boot , the BIOS will be located in the proper place in RAM and the northbridge will direct the reset vector call to the RAM. In earlier PC systems, before chipsets were standard, the BIOS ROM would be located at an address range that included the reset vector, and BIOS ran directly out of ROM. This is why the motherboard BIOS ROM

736-483: A concern now than in the 1980s, the 30- to 60-second memory test adds undesirable delay for a benefit of confidence that is not perceived to be worth that cost by most users. Most clone PC BIOSes allowed the user to skip the POST RAM check by pressing a key, and more modern machines often performed no RAM test at all unless it was enabled via the BIOS setup. In addition, modern DRAM is significantly more reliable than DRAM

828-489: A fatal hardware error, they display the same screen as seen when holding ⌘ Command + ⌥ Option + O + F at startup but with the error message instead of the "0 >" prompt. In the event of a fatal hardware error, they give these beeps: The beep codes were revised in October 1999. In addition, on some models, the power LED will flash in cadence. With the introduction of Intel-based Macs with EFI -based firmware,

920-496: A floppy, the system reads the first two sectors of the disk (the bootblock ), and executes any boot instructions stored there. Normally this code passes control back to the OS (invoking AmigaDOS and the GUI) and using the disk as the system boot volume. Any such disk, regardless of the other contents of the disk, was referred to as a "boot disk" or "bootable disk". A bootblock could be added to

1012-481: A handler has been written, a possibility that has been exploited by programs like CrossDOS and by a few "alternative" file systems to the standard OFS and FFS . These file systems allow one to add new features like journaling or file privileges , which are not found in the standard operating system. Handlers typically expose a device name to the DOS , which can be used to access the peripheral (if any) associated with

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1104-416: A manufacturers logo during POST and hide the classic text screens unless an error occurs. The text screen can often be enabled in the BIOS settings by disabling the "Quiet Boot" option. The original IBM BIOS made POST diagnostic information available by outputting a number to I/O port 0x80 (a screen display was not possible with some failure modes). Both progress indication and error codes were generated; in

1196-592: A partition specifically named WB_1.3 or WB_2.x, respectively, and put in DEVS:kickstart, an absolute system location from where the A3000 system will find it at bootstrap and copy its image into RAM. This early A3000 supported both ROM based Kickstarts and disk-based Kickstarts, although not simultaneously. An A3000 configured to use disk-based Kickstart images had the benefit of being able to boot various versions of AmigaOS without additional tools, simply by selecting

1288-420: A separate physical organization. Standard assigns that are generally present in an AmigaOS system include: AmigaOS 4 introduced new system for allocating RAM and defragmenting it "on the fly" during system inactivities. It is based on slab allocation method and there is also present a memory pager that arbitrates paging memory and allows the swapping of large portions of physical RAM on mass storage devices as

1380-431: A short color on screen at power-on which can be the last background color. Keep in mind that bad activity on the databus that should not be there can have effect on other chips on the bus. The keyboard LED uses blink codes that come from the keyboard controller chip where: In general, to run a specific Workbench version, it is generally required to run a Kickstart with a corresponding or greater version number. It

1472-500: A short program that can produce a color on the screen corresponding with a fault. If everything works correctly, the following screen color sequence will be displayed on older Kickstarts: The following colors indicate a problem: However, if an Amiga give a colorcode, it does not always mean that the error comes from a hardware fault, red can also happen if a ROM is mapped to fastmem or by ROM-patches from software. For yellow it can be unstable software in memory. Some Amigas can give

1564-554: A single hexadecimal string and a Sad Mac icon on the screen, if working. Macs made after 1987 but prior to 1998, upon failing the POST, will immediately halt with a " death chime ", which is a sound that varies by model; it can be a simple beep, a car crash sound, the sound of shattering glass, a short musical tone, or more. On the screen, if working, will be the Sad Mac icon, along with two hexadecimal strings, which can be used to identify

1656-481: A single motherboard socket with some mechanism to switch between them. These became popular with users who had problems with later Kickstart versions causing incompatibility with earlier software titles. An MMU -enabled Amiga is able to "shadow" Kickstart from the embedded ROM chip (or from file) into RAM and pass control to it at start-up. This is often preferable as RAM access times are significantly faster than ROM, particularly on expanded systems. At subsequent resets

1748-471: A sort of virtual memory . Co-operative paging was finally implemented in AmigaOS 4.1 . Since the introduction of AmigaOS in 1985 there have been four major versions and several minor revisions. Up until release 3.1 of the Amiga's operating system, Commodore used Workbench to refer to the entire Amiga operating system. As a consequence Workbench was commonly used to refer to both the operating system and

1840-726: A standard RAM disk but can maintain its contents on soft restart. It is commonly called the RAD disk after its default device name, and it can be used as a boot disk (with boot sector). Previously, a recoverable RAM disk, commonly called the ASDG RRD or VD0 , was introduced in 1987; at first, it was locked to ASDG expansion memory products. Later, the ASDG RRD was added to the Fred Fish series of freeware, shareware, and public domain software (disks 58 and 241 ). The AmigaOS has support for

1932-406: A user-selected audio device, standardized functionality for audio recording and efficient software mixing routines for combining multiple sound channels, thus overcoming the four-channel hardware limit of the original Amiga chipset. AHI can be installed separately on AmigaOS v2.0 and later. AmigaOS itself did not support MIDI until version 3.1, when Roger Dannenberg's camd.library was adapted as

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2024-808: Is a single-user operating system based on a preemptive multitasking kernel , called Exec . It includes an abstraction of the Amiga's hardware, a disk operating system called AmigaDOS , a windowing system API called Intuition , and a desktop environment and file manager called Workbench . The Amiga intellectual property is fragmented between Amiga Inc. , Cloanto, and Hyperion Entertainment . The copyrights for works created up to 1993 are owned by Cloanto. In 2001, Amiga Inc. contracted AmigaOS 4 development to Hyperion Entertainment, and in 2009 they granted Hyperion an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to AmigaOS 3.1 in order to develop and market AmigaOS 4 and subsequent versions. MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are modern implementations of

2116-498: Is a negative offset to the library base pointer. That way, every library function can be patched or hooked at run-time, even if the library is stored in ROM. The core library of AmigaOS is the exec.library ( Exec ), which provides an interface to functions of the Amiga's microkernel . Device drivers are also libraries, but they implement a standardized interface. Applications do not usually call devices directly as libraries, but use

2208-467: Is also integrated into the system, though it also is entirely window-based. The CLI and Workbench components share the same privileges. Notably, AmigaOS lacks any built-in memory protection . AmigaOS is formed from two parts, namely, a firmware component called Kickstart and a software portion usually referred to as Workbench . Up until AmigaOS 3.1, matching versions of Kickstart and Workbench were typically released together. However, since AmigaOS 3.5,

2300-563: Is available from manufacturers of BIOSes and motherboards. There are websites which collect codes for many BIOSes. These POST beep codes are covered specifically on the CompTIA A+ Exam : Apple 's Macintosh computers also perform a POST after a cold boot . In the event of a fatal error, the Mac will not make its startup chime . Macs made prior to 1987, upon failing the POST, crashed silently without playing any sound and freeze, with

2392-419: Is in segment F000 in the conventional memory map. During the POST flow of a contemporary BIOS, one of the first things a BIOS should do is determine the reason it is executing. For a cold boot, for example, it may need to execute all of its functionality. If, however, the system supports power saving or quick boot methods, the BIOS may be able to circumvent the standard POST device discovery, and simply program

2484-581: Is not generally possible to boot directly into the Workbench windowing environment from Kickstart alone. Though much of the functionality required for Workbench is contained in Kickstart, as some disk-based components are needed to launch it. From release 2.0 onwards it is possible to enter a boot menu by holding down both mouse buttons at power on or reset. This allows the user to choose a boot device, set parameters for backwards compatibility and examine Autoconfig hardware. With third-party software , it

2576-457: Is possible to use an alternate Kickstart to the version stored in the embedded ROM chip. Such software allows a Kickstart version to be loaded from file into RAM  – for example Kickstart 1.3 may be loaded in order to run old software incompatible with Kickstart 2.0 or later. Several third-party vendors produced hardware Kickstart switchers ( dual-boot systems) in the form of socket doublers in order to allow two ROM chips to plug into

2668-539: Is the native graphical file manager and desktop environment of AmigaOS. Though the term Workbench was originally used to refer to the entire operating system, with the release of AmigaOS 3.1 the operating system was renamed AmigaOS and subsequently Workbench refers to the desktop manager only. As the name suggests, the metaphor of a workbench is used, rather than that of a desktop; directories are depicted as drawers , executable files are tools , data files are projects and GUI widgets are gadgets . In many other aspects

2760-540: Is the use of multiple screens shown on the same display. Each screen may have a different video resolution or color depth. AmigaOS 2.0 added support for public screens , allowing applications to open windows on other applications' screens. Prior to AmigaOS 2.0, only the Workbench screen was shared. A widget in the top-right corner of every screen allows screens to be cycled through. Screens can be overlaid by dragging each up or down by their title bars. AmigaOS 4 introduced screens that are draggable in any direction. Workbench

2852-493: The A1000 , required that Kickstart 1.x be loaded from floppy disk into a 256  KB section of RAM called the writable control store (WCS). Some A1000 software titles (notably Dragon's Lair ) provided an alternative code-base in order to use the extra 256 KB for data. Later Amiga models had Kickstart embedded in a ROM chip, thus improving boot times. Many Amiga 1000 computers were modified to take these chips. Kickstart

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2944-506: The Amiga User Interface Style Guide , which explained how applications should be laid out for consistency. Stefan Stuntz created a popular third-party widget library, based on BOOPSI, called Magic User Interface , or MUI. MorphOS uses MUI as its official toolkit, while AROS uses a MUI clone called Zune . AmigaOS 3.5 added another widget set, ReAction , also based on BOOPSI. An unusual feature of AmigaOS

3036-554: The Low-Level Bootloader (LLB), similar to that of the firmware found in the iPhone and iPad . Like Intel-based Macs with a T2 security chip, the startup tones are absent. In the event of an error that is not a fatal hardware error, an exclamation mark will be displayed on the screen or the device will go into Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode. In the event of a fatal hardware error, nothing will be displayed on screen with no sound being heard. In addition, on some models,

3128-559: The Python language is included with the operating system. John C. Dvorak stated in 1996: The AmigaOS "remains one of the great operating systems of the past 20 years, incorporating a small kernel and tremendous multitasking capabilities the likes of which have only recently been developed in OS/2 and Windows NT . The biggest difference is that the AmigaOS could operate fully and multitask in as little as 250 K of address space. Even today,

3220-642: The Rexx language, called ARexx (short for "Amiga Rexx"), and is a script language which allows for full OS scripting, similar to AppleScript ; intra-application scripting, similar to VBA in Microsoft Office ; as well as inter-program communication. Having a single scripting language for any application on the operating system is beneficial to users, instead of having to learn a new language for each application. Programs can listen on an "ARexx port" for string messages. These messages can then be interpreted by

3312-572: The bootstrap loader code is invoked to load an operating system . In IBM PC compatible computers, the main duties of POST are handled by the BIOS or UEFI . In IBM PC compatible computers, the main duties of POST are handled by the BIOS or UEFI, which may hand some of these duties to other programs designed to initialize very specific peripheral devices , notably for video and SCSI initialization. These other duty-specific programs are generally known collectively as option ROMs or individually as

3404-458: The disk operating system portion of the AmigaOS. This includes file systems , file and directory manipulation, the command-line interface , file redirection, console windows, and so on. Its interfaces offer facilities such as command redirection , piping , scripting with structured programming primitives, and a system of global and local variables . In AmigaOS 1.x, the AmigaDOS portion

3496-501: The exec.library I/O functions to indirectly access them. Like libraries, devices are either files on disk (with the " .device " extension), or stored in the Kickstart ROM. The higher-level part of device and resource management is controlled by handlers , which are not libraries, but tasks , and communicate by passing messages. One type of handler is a filesystem handler. The AmigaOS can make use of any filesystem for which

3588-459: The iMac in 1998, it was a radical departure from other Macs of the time. The iMac began the production of New World Macs , as they are called; New World Macs, such as the iMac G3 , Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White) , Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics) , PowerBook G3 (bronze keyboard) , and PowerBook G3 (FireWire) , load the Mac OS ROM from the hard drive. In the event of an error that is not

3680-479: The narrator.device' s phonemes, Francesco Devitt developed an unofficial version with multilingual speech synthesis. This made use of an enhanced version of the translator.library which could translate a number of languages into phonemes, given a set of rules for each language. The AmigaOS has a dynamically sized RAM disk , which resizes itself automatically to accommodate its contents. Starting with AmigaOS 2.x, operating system configuration files were loaded into

3772-493: The native Amiga graphics chipset , via graphics.library , which provides an API for geometric primitives , raster graphic operations and handling of sprites. As this API could be bypassed, some developers chose to avoid OS functionality for rendering and directly program the underlying hardware for gains in efficiency. Third-party graphics cards were initially supported via proprietary unofficial solutions. A later solution where AmigaOS could directly support any graphics system,

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3864-533: The phonemes used in American English , translator.library , which translates English text to American English phonemes using a set of rules, and a high-level SPEAK: handler, which allows command-line users to redirect text output to speech. A utility called Say was included with the OS, which allowed text-to-speech synthesis with some control of voice and speech parameters. A demo was also included with AmigaBASIC programming examples. Speech synthesis

3956-452: The video BIOS , SCSI BIOS, etc. In earlier BIOSes, up to around the turn of the millennium, the POST would perform a thorough test of all devices, including a complete memory test. This design by IBM was modeled after their larger mainframe systems, which would perform a complete hardware test as part of their cold-start process. As the PC platform evolved into more of a commodity consumer device,

4048-506: The Amiga chipset and some core OS components. It will then check for connected boot devices and attempt to boot from the one with the highest boot priority. If no boot device is present a screen will be displayed asking the user to insert a boot disk – typically a floppy disk. Insertion of such a bootable disk (other than workbench-like disk) will result in: a) a command line interface ("CLI") prompt to operate with ROM-internal and disks commands (including programs, scripts) (if

4140-401: The Amiga chipset and some core OS components. It will then examine connected boot devices and attempt to boot from the one with the highest boot priority. If no boot device is present a screen will be displayed asking the user to insert a boot disk, typically a floppy disk. At start-up Kickstart attempts to boot from a bootable device (typically, a floppy disk or hard disk drive). In the case of

4232-477: The Amiga clone Draco from the German firm Macrosystem. Modern PCI bus TV expansion cards and their capture interfaces are supported through tv.library by Elbox Computer and tvcard.library by Guido Mersmann. Following modern trends in evolution of graphical interfaces, AmigaOS 4.1 uses the 3D hardware-accelerated Porter-Duff image composition engine. Prior to version 3.5, AmigaOS only officially supported

4324-459: The Amiga is well known for its ability to easily genlock with video, it has no built-in video capture interface. The Amiga supported a vast number of third-party interfaces for video capture from American and European manufacturers. There were internal and external hardware solutions, called frame-grabbers, for capturing individual or sequences of video frames, including: Newtronic Videon, Newtek DigiView, Graffiti external 24-bit framebuffer ,

4416-427: The Amiga's native sound chip , via audio.device . This facilitates playback of sound samples on four DMA -driven 8-bit PCM sound channels. The only supported hardware sample format is signed linear 8-bit two's complement . Support for third-party audio cards was vendor-dependent, until the creation and adoption of AHI as a de facto standard. AHI offers improved functionality, such as seamless audio playback from

4508-399: The Amiga's operating system, such as Exec , Intuition , the core of AmigaDOS and functionality to initialize Autoconfig -compliant expansion hardware. Later versions of the Kickstart contained drivers for IDE and SCSI controllers, PC card ports and other built-in hardware. Upon start-up or reset the Kickstart performs a number of diagnostic and system checks and then initializes

4600-496: The BCPL utilities and interfaces. ARP also provided one of the first standardized file requesters for the Amiga, and introduced the use of more friendly UNIX-style wildcard ( globbing ) functions in command-line parameters. Other innovations were an improvement in the range of date formats accepted by commands and the facility to make a command resident, so that it only needs to be loaded into memory once and remains in memory to reduce

4692-647: The Digilab, the Videocruncher, Firecracker 24, Vidi Amiga 12, Vidi Amiga 24-bit and 24RT (Real Time), Newtek Video Toaster , GVP Impact Vision IV24, MacroSystem VLab Motion and VLab PAR, DPS PAR (Personal Animation Recorder), VHI (Video Hardware Interface) by IOSPIRIT GmbH, DVE-10, etc. Some solutions were hardware plug-ins for Amiga graphics cards like the Merlin XCalibur module, or the DV module built for

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4784-401: The OS is only about 1 MB in size. And to this day, there is very little a memory-hogging CD-ROM-loading OS can do the Amiga can't. Tight code — there's nothing like it. I've had an Amiga for maybe a decade. It's the single most reliable piece of equipment I've ever owned. It's amazing! You can easily understand why so many fanatics are out there wondering why they are alone in their love of

4876-415: The POST may be displayed on a panel that is part of the device, output to an external device, or stored for future retrieval by a diagnostic tool. In some computers, an indicator lamp or a speaker may be provided to show error codes as a sequence of flashes or beeps in the event that a computer display malfunctions. POST routines are part of a computer's pre-boot sequence . If they complete successfully,

4968-419: The RAM disk on boot, greatly speeding operating system usage. Other files could be copied to the RAM disk like any standard device for quick modification and retrieval. Also beginning in AmigaOS 2.x, the RAM disk supported file-change notification, which was mostly used to monitor configuration files for changes. Starting with AmigaOS 1.3, there is also a fixed-capacity recoverable RAM disk, which functions as

5060-469: The amount of equipped memory, the computer's 4.77 MHz 8088 required between 5 seconds and 1.5 minutes to complete the POST and there was no way to skip it. Beginning with the IBM XT , a memory count was displayed during POST instead of a blank screen. A modern PC with a bus rate of around 1 GHz and a 32-bit bus might be 2000x or even 5000x faster, but might have many more GB's of memory. With boot times more of

5152-731: The appropriate Kickstart image at boot time. The Commodore CDTV featured additional firmware ROMs which are not technically part of the Amiga Kickstart. The CDTV's original firmware ROMs must be upgraded in order to install a Kickstart version later than 1.3. AmigaOS 2.1 was a pure software update and did not require matching Kickstart ROM chips. Workbench 2.1 ran on all Kickstart ROMs of the 2.0x family. Later releases of AmigaOS (3.5 and 3.9) were also software only and did not include matching ROM upgrades instead requiring Kickstart 3.1, with ROM-file based Kickstart components replacing those in ROM. Kickstart modules of AmigaOS 4 are stored on

5244-424: The boot disk partition. Up to Kickstart v2.0 (V36) only 512-byte blocks were supported. Motorola 68040 uses write caches that requires the use of the functions CacheClearU() and CacheControl() to flush cache when program code has been modified. These functions are only available in Kickstart 2.0 or better. Upon start-up or reset the Kickstart performs a number of diagnostic and system checks and then initializes

5336-410: The case of a failure which did not generate a code, the code of the last successful operation was available to aid in diagnosing the problem. Using a logic analyzer or a dedicated POST card ‍—‌an interface card that shows port 0x80 output on a small display‍—‌a technician could determine the origin of the problem. Once an operating system is running on the computer the code displayed by such

5428-457: The code needed to boot standard Amiga hardware and many of the core components of AmigaOS. The function of Kickstart is comparable to the BIOS plus the main operating system kernel in IBM PC compatibles . However, Kickstart provides more functionality available at boot time than would typically be expected on PC, for example, the full windowing environment. Kickstart contains many core parts of

5520-468: The copy of Kickstart is re-used, reducing boot time and allowing faster access and execution of Kickstart functionality. Similar shadowing functions were also developed for some devices without MMU hardware. AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with

5612-400: The core components of the Amiga's operating system , such as: Kickstart 1.3 is the first version to support booting from a hard disk drive . From AmigaOS release 2.0 onwards Kickstart also contained device drivers to boot from devices on IDE controllers, support for PC Card ports and various other hardware built into Amiga models. At power-on self-test will run from the ROM, this is

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5704-457: The cost of loading in subsequent uses. In AmigaOS 4.0 , the DOS abandoned the BCPL legacy completely and, starting from AmigaOS 4.1 , it has been rewritten with full 64-bit support. File extensions are often used in AmigaOS, but they are not mandatory and they are not handled specially by the DOS, being instead just a conventional part of the file names. Executable programs are recognized using

5796-480: The devices from a preloaded system device table. As part of the starting sequence the POST routines may display a prompt to the user for a key press to access built-in setup functions of the BIOS. This allows the user to set various options particular to the motherboard before the operating system is loaded. If no key is pressed, the POST will proceed on to the boot sequence required to load the installed operating system. Many modern BIOS and UEFI implementations show

5888-540: The disk is non-workbench, or empty), or b) a (basic) point and click UI named "Workbench" if the disk contains at least "loadwb" in the "startup-sequence" script residing inside the "s"-folder on this disk. c) the disk booting into a customized workbench or an application, keeping the OS "alive" in the background. d) a game or other application directly starting up, taking over all the hardware resources of this computer by avoiding to establish core Exec multitasking, driver initialization etc. The Kickstart contains many of

5980-456: The disk with name "Work" in drive DF0: , one could write " DF0:Foo/Bar " or " Work:Foo/Bar ". However, these are not completely equivalent, since when the latter form is used, the system knows that the wanted volume is "Work" and not just any volume in DF0: . Therefore, whenever a requested file on "Work" is being accessed without volume "Work" being present in any drive, it will say something to

6072-406: The effect of: Please insert volume Work in any drive . Programs often need to access files without knowing their physical location (either the drive or the volume): they only know the "logical path" of the file, i.e. whether the file is a library, a documentation file, a translation of the program's messages, and so on. This is solved in AmigaOS by the use of assigns . An assign follows, again,

6164-512: The file manager component. For end users Workbench was often synonymous with AmigaOS. From version 3.5 the OS was renamed "AmigaOS" and pre-3.5 versions were also retroactively referred to as "AmigaOS" (rather than Workbench). Subsequently, "Workbench" refers to the native graphical file manager only. From its inception, Workbench offered a highly customizable interface. The user could change the aspect of program icons replacing it with newer ones with different color combinations. Users could also take

6256-496: The first release after Commodore's demise, only the software component has been updated and the role of Kickstart has been diminished somewhat. Firmware updates may still be applied by patching at system boot. That was until 2018 when Hyperion Entertainment (license holder to AmigaOS 3.1) released AmigaOS 3.1.4 with an updated Kickstart ROM to go with it. Kickstart is the bootstrap firmware, usually stored in ROM . Kickstart contains

6348-462: The handler. As an example of these concepts is the SPEAK: handler which could have text redirected to spoken speech, through the speech synthesis system. Device names are case insensitive (uppercase by convention) strings followed by a colon . After the colon a specifier can be added, which gives the handler additional information about what is being accessed and how . In the case of filesystem,

6440-414: The interface resembles Mac OS , with the main desktop showing icons of inserted disks and hard drive partitions, and a single menu bar at the top of every screen. Unlike the Macintosh mouse available at the time, the standard Amiga mouse has two buttons – the right mouse button operates the pull-down menus, with a "release to select" mechanism. Until the release of version 3, AmigaOS only natively supported

6532-466: The launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000 , in 1985. Early versions of AmigaOS required the Motorola 68000 series of 16-bit and 32-bit microprocessors. Later versions, after Commodore's demise, were developed by Haage & Partner (AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9) and then Hyperion Entertainment (AmigaOS 4.0-4.1). A PowerPC microprocessor is required for the most recent release, AmigaOS 4 . AmigaOS

6624-509: The mainframe and minicomputer-inspired high-reliability features such as parity memory and the thorough memory test in every POST were dropped from most models. The exponential growth of PC memory sizes, driven by the equally exponential drop in memory prices, was also a factor in this, as the duration of a memory test using a given CPU is directly proportional to the memory size. The original IBM PC could be equipped with as little as 16 KB of RAM and typically had between 64 and 640 KB; depending on

6716-407: The original AmigaOS that are compatible with it. AmigaOS is a single-user operating system based on a preemptive multitasking kernel , called Exec . AmigaOS provides an abstraction of the Amiga's hardware, a disk operating system called AmigaDOS, a windowing system API called Intuition and a desktop file manager called Workbench . A command-line interface (CLI), called AmigaShell,

6808-662: The original. The first such virus was the SCA virus . Anti-virus attempts included custom bootblocks. These amended bootblock advertised the presence of the virus checker while checking the system for tell-tale signs of memory-resident viruses and then passed control back to the system. Unfortunately these could not be used on disks that already relied on a custom bootblock, but did alert users to potential trouble. Several of them also replicated themselves across other disks, becoming little more than viruses in their own right. The Macintosh should have had multitasking. I can't stress enough what

6900-400: The power LED will flash in cadence. Amiga historical line of computers, from A1000 to 4000 present an interesting POST sequence that prompts the user with a sequence of flashing screens of different colors (rather than audible beeps as in other systems) to show if various hardware POST tests were correct or else if they failed: The Amiga system performs the following steps at boot: If

6992-433: The problem. Some Macs made around this time do not use a death chime like Macs made prior to 1987, but retained the same format as those that used the death chimes, such as the presence of the Sad Mac icon and two hexadecimal strings on screen. Later Old World Macs based on PCI architecture prior to 1998 don’t display a Sad Mac icon nor the hexadecimal strings on screen and only plays the death chime. When Apple introduced

7084-453: The program in a similar fashion to a user pushing buttons. For example, an ARexx script run in an e-mail program could save the currently displayed email, invoke an external program which could extract and process information, and then invoke a viewer program. This allows applications to control other applications by sending data back and forth directly with memory handles, instead of saving files to disk and then reloading them. Since AmigaOS 4,

7176-546: The same syntax as a device name; however, it already points to a directory inside the filesystem. The place an assign points to can be changed at any time by the user (this behavior is similar to, but nevertheless distinct from, the subst command in MS-DOS , for example). Assigns were also convenient because one logical assign could point to more than one different physical location at the same time, thereby allowing an assign ′s contents to expand logically, while still maintaining

7268-455: The specifier usually consists of a path to a file in the filesystem; for other handlers, specifiers usually set characteristics of the desired input/output channel (for the SER: serial port driver, for example, the specifier will contain bit rate , start and stop bits , etc.). Filesystems expose drive names as their device names. For example, DF0: by default refers to the first floppy drive in

7360-528: The standard MIDI API. Commodore's version of camd.library also included a built-in driver for the serial port. The later open source version of camd.library by Kjetil Matheussen did not provide a built-in driver for the serial port, but provided an external driver instead. AmigaOS was one of the first operating systems to feature speech synthesis with software developed by SoftVoice, Inc., which allowed text-to-speech conversion of American English . This had three main components: narrator.device , which modulates

7452-521: The startup tones were changed again. These are not present in Intel-based Macs equipped with a T2 security chip , as its POST process is different from those without a T2 security chip. The Mac transition to Apple silicon marked a radical change in the POST process in Macs. Unlike most Intel-based Macs that use EFI-based firmware, these Apple silicon -based Macs uses a boot ROM that loads

7544-550: The system fails the ROM test, the screen display turns red and the system halts. Almost all Amiga models present the same color sequence when turned on: black screen, dark gray, light gray color screens filling all monitor screen in a rapid sequence (Amigas usually take between 2 and 3 seconds to turn on and boot). A4000 presents just a light gray screen during its boot time (it just occurs in 2 or max 3 seconds) The keyboards of historical Amiga models are not proprietary as it happened in early computer ages, but more pragmatically it

7636-433: The system, providing pre-emptive multitasking with prioritized round-robin scheduling . Exec also provides access to other libraries and high-level inter-process communication via message passing . Other comparable microkernels have had performance problems because of the need to copy messages between address spaces. Since the Amiga has only one address space, Exec message passing is quite efficient. AmigaDOS provides

7728-430: The system. On many systems DH0: is used to refer to the first hard drive. Filesystems also expose volume names , following the same syntax as device names: these identify the specific medium in the file system-managed drive. If DF0: contains a disk named "Workbench", then Workbench: will be a volume name that can be used to access files in DF0: . If one wanted to access a file named "Bar" located in directory "Foo" of

7820-477: The thing. The Amiga continues to inspire a vibrant — albeit cultlike — community, not unlike that which you have with Linux, the Unix clone." AmigaOS provides a modular set of system functions through dynamically loaded shared libraries , either stored as a file on disk with a " .library " filename extension, or stored in the Kickstart firmware. All library functions are accessed via an indirect jump table , which

7912-514: The very first. In later BIOS versions, POST will also: In early BIOSes, POST did not organize or select boot devices, it simply identified floppy or hard disks, which the system would always try to boot in that order. The BIOS begins its POST when the CPU is reset. The first memory location the CPU tries to execute is known as the reset vector . In the case of a hard reboot , the northbridge will direct

8004-472: Was based on TRIPOS , which is written in BCPL . Interfacing with it from other languages proved a difficult and error-prone task, and the port of TRIPOS was not very efficient. From AmigaOS 2.x onwards, AmigaDOS was rewritten in C and Assembler , retaining 1.x BCPL program compatibility, and it incorporated parts of the third-party AmigaDOS Resource Project , which had already written replacements for many of

8096-435: Was in the 1980s. During the POST, the BIOS must integrate multiple competing, changing, and even mutually exclusive standards and initiatives for the matrix of hardware and operating systems the PC is expected to support, although at most only simple memory tests and the setup screen are displayed. The principal duties of the main BIOS during POST include: The functions above are served by the POST in all BIOS versions back to

8188-619: Was launched at a time when there was little support for 3D graphics libraries to enhance desktop GUIs and computer rendering capabilities. However, the Amiga became one of the first widespread 3D development platforms. VideoScape 3D was one of the earliest 3D rendering and animation systems, and Silver/ TurboSilver was one of the first ray-tracing 3D programs. Then Amiga boasted many influential applications in 3D software, such as Imagine , maxon's Cinema 4D , Realsoft 3D , VistaPro , Aladdin 4D and NewTek's Lightwave (used to render movies and television shows like Babylon 5 ). Likewise, while

8280-499: Was occasionally used in third-party programs, particularly educational software. For example, the word processors Prowrite and Excellence! could read out documents using the synthesizer. These speech synthesis components remained largely unchanged in later OS releases and Commodore eventually removed speech synthesis support from AmigaOS 2.1 onward because of licensing restrictions. Despite the American English limitation of

8372-517: Was stored in 256 KB ROM chips for releases prior to AmigaOS 2.0. Later releases used 512 KB ROM chips containing additional and improved functionality. The Amiga CD32 featured a 1 MB ROM (Kickstart 3.1) with additional firmware and an integrated file system for CD-ROM . Early A3000 models were, like the A1000, also shipped with Kickstart on floppy disk, and used a 1.4 BETA ROM as bootstrap. Either Kickstart 1.3 or 2.0 could be extracted to

8464-849: Was termed retargetable graphics (RTG). With AmigaOS 3.5, some RTG systems were bundled with the OS, allowing the use of common hardware cards other than the native Amiga chipsets. The main RTG systems are CyberGraphX , Picasso 96 and EGS . Some vector graphic libraries, like Cairo and Anti-Grain Geometry , are also available. Modern systems can use cross-platform SDL (simple DirectMedia Layer) engine for games and other multimedia programs. The Amiga did not have any inbuilt 3D graphics capability, and so had no standard 3D graphics API . Later, graphics card manufacturers and third-party developers provided their own standards, which included MiniGL , Warp3D , Storm Mesa ( agl.library ) and CyberGL. The Amiga

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