AmigaOS 3.1.4 FAQ Revision 3.6 (21.06.2019) Copyright 2019 Hyperion-Entertainment Please note: This file contains a list of frequently asked questions along with answers, sorted by topics. Index of topics covered in this FAQ: 1. Installation 1.1 * What are the hardware requirements for AmigaOS 3.1.4? 1.2 * Why won't AmigaOS 3.1.4 boot with 512 KB of RAM? 1.3 * Ok, I get it; 512 KB is not enough anymore, but can I get my way with less than 2 MB of RAM? 1.4 * I get a "Please insert a volume containing workbench.library..." during start-up. What is going on? 1.5 * Why are workbench.library and icon.library no longer in ROM? 1.6 * But why didn't you make the ROM larger then? 1.7 * I purchased the disk-based installation, and installed all the files in the right places, but the OS does not seem to pick them up. Instead, I just get the OS 3.1 Workbench back. What's wrong? 1.8 * Some file permissions on my installation look really weird. Is that normal? 1.9 * Why doesn't Shell or Workbench respect the "h" protection bit and hide the files whose "h" bit is set? 2. Hard Disks and file systems 2.1 * Can I use partitions beyond the 4 GB boundary? 2.2 * How do I setup a new drive with HDToolBox? I do not see the drive in the selection box at all; what is wrong? 2.3 * Long filenames--I was promised long filenames! How do I use them? 2.4 * But Workbench still limits my filenames to 30 characters! 2.5 * I read something about a setting called "Max Transfer", which is a value which I need to manually adjust according to my system. How do I set it up? 2.6 * When mounting the CD file system on an XSurfIDE device, reading large DVDs results in an error -3 being shown. 2.7 * My Amiga now takes about 10 minutes to boot my new 3.1.4 64 GB partition. What is going on? 2.8 * I am trying to format and/or validate my 32 GB drive and I can't; the system gives me an error saying that there is not enough memory, but I have 8 MB of RAM. What is happening? 2.9 * Should I defragment my drives? 2.10 * What is a "SuperFloppy"? 2.11 * How do I mount a SuperFloppy? 2.12 * How do I properly create CrossDOS mountlists? I have no clue. 2.13 * Why is it that HDToolBox does not allow me to use my CF (Compact Flash) card? 3. CPU Support / ROM Modules / SetPatch 3.1 * I manually installed (and now get a warning from) SetPatch on unknown options. 3.2 * Where did the extended functionality of SetPatch go? 3.3 * Does my 68060 work out-of-the-box now or do I still have to hack the ROM? 3.4 * When booting the system, the Startup-Sequence stops and gives me a warning about an incomplete installation. What is missing? 3.5 * Where do I find the CPU libraries, and how do I install them? 3.6 * ...but I lost my original support disk of my turbo board! 3.7 * Where do I find a 68030.library? My board did not come with one. 3.8 * Couldn't you just package the CPU libraries with the OS? 3.9 * Couldn't you just ship the Commodore 68040.library? 3.10 * What about the dummy 68040.library? My old turbo board manual mentions that I have to install it, and rename it. 3.11 * I get a note from the CPU command on CPU errata. What should I do? 3.12 * Why is it that when I use the 68030.library, 68040.library or 68060.library from the MMULibs package some extra megabytes of memory are consumed? 4. Performance and compatibility 4.1 * Pointer preferences render incorrectly on my screen. 4.2 * The Locale preferences renders incorrectly on my screen. 4.3 * Why is SetPatch so slow? 4.4 * OS 3.1.4 is terribly slow! 4.5 * But why doesn't LoadModule load the modules into FastRAM in first place? 4.6 * The system crashes as soon as I play a stereo 8SVX audio file. 4.7 * What about all those widely-used system patches? Can I use them? 4.8 * Can I use the FBlit patch with AmigaOS 3.1.4? 4.9 * I tried to install a demo/game which uses WHDLoad and the Installer warns me that it is outdated! 5. Intuition Library V45 5.1 * What is the V45 intuition.library? 5.2 * Why isn't the V45 intuition.library enabled by default? 5.3 * How do I install the V45 intuition.library? 5.4 * I purchased a ROM upgrade option, but I still need to reboot twice to get the new V45 intuition library. Why is that? 5.5 * How can I load icons into Fast RAM? There's no program or Preference setting for it. 5.6 * I have now 28K less of Chip RAM; where did the RAM go? 5.7 * But I really need the 28K back! 6. Printers 6.1 * Which printer drivers do I need, and which driver supports which printer? 6.2 * I have a printer that is not listed, but was supported with OS 3.1. What should I do? 6.3 * My OS 3.5/OS 3.9 printer drivers refuse to work with OS 3.1.4. Where is the problem? 6.4 * I have an unsupported printer. What can I do? 6.5 * Where is the "print to file" printer driver? 6.6 * Do I still need TurboPrint? 7. CLI/Shell and Tools 7.1 * Where is the PIPE program? I want to use pipes in my Shell. 7.2 * I cannot interrupt pipes from the Shell, or programs continue to run if I interrupt a piped command sequence. 7.3 * The menus of the Ed editor look all white on black. Why didn't you adapt this to the black-on-white style? 7.4 * ShowConfig is missing hardware expansion details and even then, my MMU is not detected. 7.5 * What does the new WBLoad command located in C: actually do? 7.6 * Are there any new command line arguments I should know of? 7.7 * Where are Lacer, MEmacs, HDBackup, Bru and MagTape? 8. OS 3.1.4 and OS 3.9 8.1 * Can I mix OS 3.9 components with OS 3.1.4? 8.2 * I prefer the nice OS 3.9 ReAction GUI, but now my printer ignores the printer graphics settings in the OS 3.9 dialog. 8.3 * WBPattern prefs does not include a "Layout" cycle gadget for Tile, Center, Scale, and Scale Well functions. 8.4 * The new preferences editors ignore my font settings! 8.5 * I'm using the OS 3.9 ReAction GUI for preferences, but the GUI contains unreadable strings. 8.6 * IControl preferences of OS 3.9 had a setting to render window gadgets in 1:1 aspect. Where is it? 8.7 * The background image of my Workbench now uses dithering, even though I'm using a True color screen mode. What's wrong? 8.8 * How do I set/change picture.datatypes settings? 8.9 * Why, when using MultiView and loading a text file, if I go to the Navigation menu all options are greyed out, and not available? 8.10 * How can I make the Euro symbol? 8.11 * Why didn't you base your work on OS 3.9 and instead used OS 3.1 as a basis? 9. Update 3.1.4.1 9.1 * What is this 3.1.4.1 thing? I am getting dizzy with so many numbers. Wasn't the Operating System labeled 3.1.4? 9.2 * How can I check whether I correctly Installed the 3.1.4.1 Update? 9.3 * I copied files from the 3.1.4.1 Update floppy and they appear to be corrupt. Is my system damaged? 9.4 * What new features does the 3.1.4.1 Update bring along? 10. Miscellaneous 10.1 * Why didn't you support feature XYZ ...as in "TAB Expansion", "Magic Menus"... you name it. 10.2 * Why is the "Find..." entry ghosted in the Window item of the Workbench menu? 10.3 * Can I use the modules from the modules disk to build my own custom Kickstart ROM? 10.4 * My PCMCIA network card cannot be detected. How do I fix this? 10.5 * How do I get nicely-coloured GlowIcons installed? 10.6 * How can I create a single bootable floppy disk that containts both the kickstart 3.1.4 updates, and combined Workbench 3.1.4? 10.7 * Can I get the guru back? 10.8 * Speaking of support--where can I get any for this product? 10.9 * Will there be more updates? I'm sick of waiting almost 20 years for OS updates! 10.10 * Are there any Easter Eggs in OS 3.1.4? 10.11 * Is there any other AmigaOS 3.1.4 documentation available? Before trying to contact support, please read through this FAQ to determine whether or not it answers your question(s). 1. Installation _______________ 1.1 * What are the hardware requirements for AmigaOS 3.1.4? 1. Kickstart ROM 3.1.4 (recommended), or an old 3.1 Kickstart ROM. We recommend the former as it will boot faster, require less RAM, and also includes fixes in the hardware configuration process, the latter of which cannot be replaced by code loaded from disk. 2. 2 MB of total memory. Total memory is calculated by adding Chip RAM and Fast RAM. 3. 5 MB of free hard disk space. And of course, an Amiga is needed. We cannot ensure that OS 3.1.4 operates correctly under emulation since we cannot control these environments. We tried our best, however, to keep it as compatible as possible. 1.2 * Why won't AmigaOS 3.1.4 boot with 512 KB of RAM? Well, we all heard the dummy phrase "512 KB ought to be enough for anyone", but this is 2019; not 1985. Along with all the relevant OS core improvements we made--especially to Workbench--it is not a reasonable expectation to run it in such a bare bones system. In other words, more changes require more RAM. It is the price of progress; embrace it! 1.3 * Ok, I get it; 512 KB is not enough anymore, but can I get my way with less than 2 MB of RAM? This is how we break down memory usage: We have rounded up the numbers to be on the safe side; besides, this is a round update. ;) 0.6 MB just to boot + 0.5 MB for loading ROM modules + 0.9 MB for free memory. Of course, in a system with a physical Kickstart ROM, 3.1.4 will work nicely with just 1.5 MB of RAM, but as said before, we needed a figure that will work under all systems, so 2 MB is a good bet to stay on the safe side. The most intense, OS-memory hungry process is when you run the 3.1.4 installation; the installer script compilation itself is what requires the most RAM. Taking it to the extreme, a system which has been installed using UAE can be transferred to an Amiga where it could even work with just 1 MB of RAM, provided the Amiga has a physical Kickstart 3.1.4 ROM chip installed. You also need to take into account that FastFileSystem partitions require about 1 MB of RAM for each gigabyte of space to properly validate themselves. So the bigger the partition, the more memory it will need. 1.4 * I get a "Please insert a volume containing workbench.library..." during start-up. What is going on? You installed manually, right? Just do as requested. The Install3.1.4 disk contains the requested library, so just copy that library to LIBS:. And for next time, please use the Installer. Or at least, copy both workbench.library and icon.library from the Install3.1.4 disk to LIBS:, such as follows: copy df0:libs/workbench.library to LIBS: clone copy df0:libs/icon.library to LIBS: clone 1.5 * Why are workbench.library and icon.library no longer in ROM? These libraries are now much larger than before, and they simply do not fit in the physical ROM chip. So we had to find some other place. The nice file requester you see is the ROM looking for its missing sources. 1.6 * But why didn't you make the ROM larger then? Not all Amiga models support larger ROMs, and even those that do may fail to identify a larger physical ROM chip. As of this writing, we haven't been able to find a better solution, and until one is found, it is just too risky. 1.7 * I purchased the disk-based installation, and installed all the files in the right places, but the OS does not seem to pick them up. Instead, I just get the OS 3.1 Workbench back. What's wrong? You installed manually, right? Well, in that case, chances are that the file permissions are wrong. It is important that the files containing the replacement ROM components have their "p" bit set, which stands for "pure". You can now do the following two things: 1. Copy all the files from the modules disk (specific to your Amiga model) again, making sure that the "p" bit is set this time, for example by using: copy ... TO ... CLONE instead of just "COPY", or, as a workaround, 1. Edit the Startup-Sequence of your installation and replace C:LoadModule ROMUPDATE with C:LoadModule AUTO which will ignore the "p" bit. As a side effect, it may probably pull some modules into RAM that you wouldn't expect. 1.8 * Some file permissions on my installation look really weird. Is that normal? You mean, as in "p-r---"? Yes, that is normal, and intentional for all ROM module replacements. "p" stands for "pure" and is required for LoadModule as it otherwise does not pick up the file. "r" means that the file is readable, because LoadModule needs to read it. The files are intentionally not writable, executable or deletable as removing or altering these files will potentially damage your installation. 1.9 * Why doesn't Shell or Workbench respect the "h" protection bit and hide the files whose "h" bit is set? Because "h" does not stand for "hide", but "hold". An executable file whose "h" bit is set is automatically made resident by the Shell on its first use. So you save all the "Resident" commands in the Startup-Sequence. No, we did not invent this for 3.1.4, just included a compile time option in the shell that was disabled for ROM size limitations before. 2. Hard Disks and file systems ______________________________ 2.1 * Can I use partitions beyond the 4 GB boundary? Typically yes, but... this limitation still applies if you: 1. Did not install a physical 3.1.4 ROM, and use a disk-based upgrade only, booting from an old ROM. 2. Or if you boot from a legacy third-party host-adapter that does not support any 64-bit extension. Note that the file system that comes with OS 3.1.4 is smart enough to detect multiple 64-bit extensions and uses them if available. Hence, the limitation may already be gone for you. In particular, NSDPatch is not required anymore to enable such extensions. In either case, this limitation can be worked around in multiple ways: 1. If you boot from an old ROM: 1. Consider a ROM-upgrade. 2. Or create a small (<1 GB) boot partition, for example OS 3.9, which loads the upgraded operating system. All extended partitions will then become available after the first reboot. 2. If none of the above is feasible, or you boot from a third-party host-adapter that does not support any 64-bit addressing, the following procedure will also allow you to use partitions beyond the barrier described above: 1. Insert the "Install3.1.4" disk into any drive. 2. Double click on the disk icon. 3. Double click on "HDTools". This drawer contains a program named "HDToolbox". 4. If you are using a third-party host-adapter, HDToolBox needs to know the name of the host-adapter. For that, 4.1 Remove the disk again and slide the drive-protection notch to the closed position, enabling writing to the disk. 4.2 Re-insert the disk. 4.3 Left click on the HDToolBox icon ONLY once. 4.4 Right click and select "Information" under the Workbench Icons menu, and release the right mouse button. 4.5 In the Information window, identify the line saying "SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=scsi.device" 4.6 Edit this line according to the host adapter you are using. The information on the correct device name can be found in the documentation that came with your host adapter. 4.7 Save the changes back. 5. Double-click on HDToolBox to start the program. 6. Identify your installation drive, and click on it. 7. Click on "Partition Drive". 8. In the new window, select the first partition, then click on the "Advanced Options" check box. 9. A new check box labeled "Direct SCSI Transfer" appears. Ensure this check box is CHECKED. If not, enable it. 10. Repeat this procedure for all other partitions on the drive. 11. Click on "Add/Update". A list of currently-installed file systems appears on the screen. This list may be empty. 12. If there is already a file system on the list, click on "Update". Accept the default choice and click on "OK". 13. If not, click on "Add New File System", then accept the default choice for the file system, and click on "OK". 13.1. A list of file system options is now shown. Ensure that the version says "46". If not, you did not boot from an OS 3.1.4 disk. 13.2. Accept or modify the file system type accordingly. For most installations, the default type shown as 0x444f5303 is fine. 13.3. Click on "OK" to go back to the list of file systems. 14. Click on "OK" to go back to the partition list. 15. Click on "OK" to go back to the drive list. 16. Click on "Save changes to drive". 17. These changes will not erase any data on your drive, so do not worry about the requester. This will reboot your machine. 18. Open a Shell window. 19. Type "version DH0:" (assuming that your boot drive is DH0:). 20. Verify that the version is 46. If not, go through the procedure above again, carefully verifying that you followed the steps precisely. Please note that some SCSI interfaces like the Commodore A2090, and some old ones from GVP (more information available in the GVP-FAQ.readme) are not able to support Direct SCSI transfers. 2.2 * How do I setup a new drive with HDToolBox? I do not see the drive in the selection box at all; what is wrong? HDToolBox is a little bit old-fashioned, we know. To configure a new drive: 1. Click on "Change Drive Type". 2. A list of known drive types appears. Click on "Define New". 3. Click on "Read Configuration". 4. Click on "Continue". 5. Click on "OK". Now you are ready to partition the drive. 2.3 * Long filenames--I was promised long filenames! How do I use them? Yes, indeed; you can get them, though you need to reformat your hard disk. Select "DOS\7" as the file system. The identifier for this is 0x444f5307 in HDToolBox. Or, just select the button for "long filename support". A similar check mark will also appear in the Format program. This will allow you to use filenames as long as 106 characters; and no, it will not work without re-installation. 2.4 * But Workbench still limits my filenames to 30 characters! Please check Workbench preferences, in SYS:Prefs. You can set a limit there. Of course, in the end, it's the file system that decides whether a file name is shortened. 2.5 * I read something about a setting called "Max Transfer", which is a value which I need to manually adjust according to my system. How do I set it up? You need to change this setting for the built-in scsi.device using HDToolBox (select Partition -> Change), to 1FE00. This will limit block transfers to 255 blocks. In the case of third-party drive interface hardware, please consult the corresponding manual to find out the recommended max transfer setting. That said, please have in mind, we also made publicly available two vendor specific FAQs (GVP-FAQ.readme and PP&S-040-FAQ.readme) which address many more issues. 2.6 * When mounting the CD file system on an XSurfIDE device, reading large DVDs results in an error -3 being shown. Unfortunately, the XSurfIDE neither speaks TD64 nor NSD64, and hence cannot access files beyond the 2 GB barrier without a bit of help. For this little help, open the MountList of the CDFS, and add the following tool type to the CD0 icon: SCSIDirect = 1 Then reboot the machine. This instructs the CD file system to use SCSI commands rather than trackdisk commands to address the disk, and with that, the XSurfIDE can access data beyond the barrier. 2.7 * My Amiga now takes about 10 minutes to boot my new 3.1.4 64 GB partition. What is going on? For media of this size, on a system that is slow, it is generally advisable to use larger block sizes (i.e. not 512 bytes/block which is the default, but at least 4096 bytes per block, i.e. one block is 8 sectors). This not only helps to speed up the process, but it also helps flash media organize memory in larger blocks, in addition to helping modern hard disks which may have physically larger blocks as well, while providing only an emulation of 512 byte blocks to the outside world to keep legacy systems happy. With the 3.1.4.1 Update, HDToolBox now comes with the ability to estimate block size defaults which are more adequate to the size of the drive. 2.8 * I am trying to format and/or validate my 32 GB drive and I can't; the system gives me an error saying that there is not enough memory, but I have 8 MB of RAM. What is happening? The error message says it all: Not enough memory. To validate a 32 GB volume you need around 32 MB of memory. That's not new--it's always been this way, with all flavours of FFS. What's new is that it gives an actual error message instead of just sitting there with a non- validated partition. With an Amiga emulator (e.g. WinUAE) you can see the magic: just add the memory. You don't even need to reformat the partition, it will validate automatically. After that, you can use the card in your Amiga with less memory. But beware of invalidating the partition, in which case you will once again get the same error message. A permanent workaround is to reformat the partition with a larger block size. Unfortunately, this requires copying all data from the affected partition to some other place, tune the block size with HDToolBox, reboot, format the partition, and copy the data back. There is unfortunately no non-destructive mechanism. 2.9 * Should I defragment my drives? If you are using flash media you should not defragment those volumes at all. This applies for example, to Compact Flash cards (CF), Solid State Drives (SSD), Secure Digital cards (SD), and MicroSD cards (TF), etc. This is because flash media have a limited write lifespan due to its nature. In addition, flash storage media uses random access, and this means that it really does not make any difference where data blocks are physically located; they will all take the same time to be accessed, whether they are contiguous or not. On magnetic storage devices like traditional hard disks, defragmenting makes sense, and provides performance improvements, but you have to be careful that the tool you are using is both compatible with the file system and the size of drive you are going to apply that operation. Please carefully read the defragmentation's program manual to understand its limitations in this regard, because otherwise you will risk destroying your precious drive data. In particular, many (dated) programs will not be able to work on partitions that exceed beyond the 4GB limit. 2.10 * What is a "SuperFloppy"? It is a removable medium like a floppy disk; just larger. Examples are the ZIP disk, the Jaz drive and the LS-120 SuperDisk. Like floppies, SuperFloppies do not use partitions, the entire medium stores data. They do not make use of the Rigid Disk Block (RDB). They may also come in variable sizes. And like floppies, the Amiga file systems, when used with the ones we prepared, are smart enough to adapt themselves to the size of the medium. 2.11 * How do I mount a SuperFloppy? You need to use a MountList. In particular, the following entries need to be set: LowCyl = 0 ; there is no RDB Device = Unit = Flags = 0 ; typically, depends on the device SuperFloppy = 1 ; This turns on SuperFloppy support DosType = 0x444f5303 ; for FFS INTL FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem Mount = 1 Activate = 1 The file system will figure out all remaining parameters from the device. 2.12 * How do I properly create CrossDOS mountlists? I have no clue. The following entries need to be present in the mountlist: FileSystem = L:CrossDOSFileSystem DosType = The DosType can be one of the following: DosType = 0x4D534400 This is a "FAT SuperFloppy" (see also below) meaning that there is no partition table on the device, and the entire device is used for the file system. For those of you that use linux, this is equivalent to mounting on top of "/dev/hda" or "/dev/sda" or the like. DosType = 0x4D534800 This is a "FAT partition", meaning that there is a partition table on the device CrossDOS should interpret. It also means that CrossDOS needs some information on "which partition it should use". Here CrossDOS follows a rather unusual convention of using the last letter of the device name, with "C" as last letter indicating the first partition, "D" the second and so on. So if the device has the above DosType, and is named "DH0C", then that is the first partition on the target device. For those of you who know linux, this DosType is equivalent to mounting on top of "/dev/hda1" or "/dev/sda3" or the like. DosType = 0x4D534800 SuperFloppy = 1 This is, by convention, the same as "DosType = 0x4D534400", i.e. disabling the partition interpretation and running CrossDOS on top of the device directly. DosType = 0x46415401 This is a legacy DosType that should not be used, following the (unfortunately broken) convention by FAT95. It indicates a partition mount (same as 0x4D534800) where the last digit of the above code indicates the partition. Why should this not be used? Very simple: It creates 256 different "DosTypes", and hence requires for every partition to pull another copy of CrossDos in memory. Hence, *avoid*. Note: CrossDOS supports long file names, the mount flags "EnableNSD", "DirectSCSI", Fat32, Fat16, Fat12 and Fat8. Additional hints: *) Typical USB sticks ("thumbdrives") are usually shipped with a partition table on it. That is, you need to use DosType = 0x4D534800 SuperFloppy = 0 and a device name that ends with "C" (as there is usually only one partition on it). *) Typical floppies do not have a partition table, hence: DosType = 0x4D534400 However, as MS-DOS floppies also use a different encoding on the hardware level, the "trackdisk.device" will not do. Instead, use the "mfm.device": Device = mfm.device Flags = 1 Surfaces = 2 SectorsPerTrack = 9 SectorSize = 512 Reserved = 1 Interleave = 0 LowCyl = 0 HighCyl = 79 2.13 * Why is it that HDToolBox does not allow me to use my CF (Compact Flash) card? If the HDToolBox tooltypes are properly set, then this is not a matter of HDToolBox. It happens because the host adapter does not report the card as a "random access device". This is the only device type that allows RDBs. So go and get another CF (Compact Flash) adapter that supports it. This feature is sometimes referenced as "True IDE" by some manufacturers. 3. CPU Support / ROM Modules / SetPatch _______________________________________ 3.1 * I manually installed (and now get a warning from) SetPatch on unknown options. The OS 3.9 SetPatch included additional functionality that is no longer present in OS 3.1.4 and has been moved to other programs. The line in the Startup-Sequence calling SetPatch should only read as follows: SetPatch >NIL: You need to correct your Startup-Sequence accordingly. In particular, NOROMUPDATES and NONSDPATCH are no longer options SetPatch supports. 3.2 * Where did the extended functionality of SetPatch go? OS 3.9 SetPatch included a ROM-Updates functionality to install new ROM modules on top of the old ones. This functionality is now implemented by a separate program called "LoadModule". It is included in the C: directory of the Modules disk, or available from Aminet: http://aminet.net/util/boot/LoadModule.lha You will also need this tool to load Intuition V45 (see below). OS 3.9 SetPatch also included "NSDPatch," a feature to patch-in a Commodore-only command set for addressing large devices, while most third-party devices supported the earlier TD64 specification. This extension is no longer necessary; see above. If you want to continue using the NSDPatch approach, you'll find the NSDPatch program in the C: directory of the Install3.1.4 disk. Copy the program to the C: directory of your boot disk, and insert NSDPatch into your Startup-Sequence right after SetPatch. However, as stated above, this step is (typically) no longer necessary. 3.3 * Does my 68060 work out-of-the-box now or do I still have to hack the ROM? You don't have to hack the ROM, but you still need to install a proper CPU library. See below. 3.4 * When booting the system, the Startup-Sequence stops and gives me a warning about an incomplete installation. What is missing? The CPU support library is missing. In particular, 68040- and 68060-based systems need to have the 68040.library or the 68060.library in LIBS: Without them, the system cannot work reliably. Some systems have the 68040.library or 68060.library in their accelerator ROM. On such systems, no installation is necessary, and you will not get any warning then either. For 68030-based systems, we recommend a 68030.library as well, as otherwise the system can deadlock in a couple of situations. This is due to a hardware errata/specification change of Motorola. Installing this library will also allow you to enable the data cache when using bridge boards. 3.5 * Where do I find the CPU libraries, and how do I install them? They should have come with the support disk from your accelerator card vendor. The installation procedure is depending on the vendor, but typically requires you to copy the CPU library from the install disk to LIBS: with a command such as the following: copy df0:libs/680?0.library to LIBS: (Please note that the ? in the filename above, is not a literal value) We also suggest checking your vendor's documentation or FAQ. In particular, we included a FAQ for GVP boards (GVP-FAQ.readme) and another one for the PP&S A2000 68040/28 board (PP&S-FAQ.readme) in the distribution. 3.6 * ...but I lost my original support disk of my turbo board! Oh well. There is a generic replacement in Aminet that works, in general, quite well. You'll find it here: http://aminet.net/util/libs/MMULib.lha Simply install it via the installation script that comes with it. 3.7 * Where do I find a 68030.library? My board did not come with one. See above for where to find one. Boards didn't usually come with one because the errata was only found years after the introduction of the 68030. Some legacy MMU tools also inadvertently prevented the issue. 3.8 * Couldn't you just package the CPU libraries with the OS? We would love to, but the libraries are (in general) vendor specific, and most vendors are no longer in business. While the generic replacement mentioned above works fine in general, it may not work for your particular board. Please note that we do not have CPU libraries for all vendors on file, let alone the permission to redistribute them. However, a web search can often help in locating missing CPU libraries, as well as notable Amiga hardware reference websites. Also check the vendors' or third-party FAQs. 3.9 * Couldn't you just ship the Commodore 68040.library? See above. It may not work for your board, and we don't want to damage your installation. However, for the boards that were originally delivered with it, the generic replacement available from Aminet works fine without any further tweaks. 3.10 * What about the dummy 68040.library? My old turbo board manual mentions that I have to install it, and rename it. Disregard this. OS 3.1.4 does not require any dummy 68040.library. It detects the right CPU library itself and does not require a dummy. In particular, for a 68060 processor, the 68060.library is sufficient (plus, the mmu.library if you use a MuLib-based processor library). 3.11 * I get a note from the CPU command on CPU errata. What should I do? Erratas are known defects in the CPU, typically found after introduction to market. Unfortunately, not all CPU libraries are able to work around all errata. You did install a CPU library, didn't you? For the 68030: Install a 68030.library. This will avoid the "CIIN disabled on write" errata. For the 68060: If you cannot use the generic 68060.library mentioned above, and must use your OEM provided library, add the following command to the Startup-Sequence: CPU DISABLELOADSTOREBUFFERBYPASS 3.12 * Why is it that when I use the 68030.library, 68040.library or 68060.library from the MMULibs package some extra megabytes of memory are consumed? Whether it is 5 MB or some other number that gets used, depends on how much main memory you have. The 5 MB are for the MMU tables the 68040 or 68060 cpu require. The "CPU Checkinstall" in the startup-sequence should actually detect the case when the 68040.library or 68060.library are not loaded. Less memory goes away for the 68030, though. It's MMU has a feature called "early termination page descriptors" that can save quite a bit of memory by avoiding duplicated table descriptors. Unfortunately, Motorola stopped supporting them with the introduction of the 68040. 4. Performance and compatibility ________________________________ 4.1 * Pointer preferences render incorrectly on my screen. Yes, we do test programs before delivering them. What you see here is not a bug in the Pointer preference program, but a bug in CyberGraphX not implementing the "minterms" correctly. The same program works nicely on a native or Picasso96 screen. 4.2 * The Locale preferences renders incorrectly on my screen. See above. This is a known bug in CyberGraphX, so if you depend on this RTG screen format, you'll have to live with it or request a fix to CyberGraphX from its vendor(s). The same program works nicely on a native or Picasso96 screen. 4.3 * Why is SetPatch so slow? Since AmigaOS 3.1.4 SetPatch does many more jobs than ever before. Not only does it load the corresponding CPU libraries and builds MMU tables, but it is also in the 3.1.4.1 Update, capable of loading both the Shell-Seg and audio.device modules. Also, there is an IDE bus scan that is necessary for some hardware to ensure its proper operation. So all these factors result in a perception that the performance has been negatively impacted, whilst in reality we are favouring both reliability and flexibility. 4.4 * OS 3.1.4 is terribly slow! You are using a disk-based installation, right? Well, LoadModule needs to load the updated ROM modules into some reset-resident memory. In a worst-case scenario, this is done via Chip RAM, and yes, access to Chip RAM is slow. However, you can do the following: 1. Buy a physical ROM and install it, thus eliminating the need for replacing ROM modules by RAM modules. Or, in case your system is equipped with an MMU: 2. Install the MMUlib archive from Aminet and add the following command below SetPatch in the S:Startup-Sequence: MuProtectModules ON REMAP This will remap the ROM modules from their current location to the fastest available RAM and give you some extra speed. Bear in mind though, that using this option will use RAM which you won't be able to free. 4.5 * But why doesn't LoadModule load the modules into FastRAM in first place? Because the available Fast RAM may not be reset-resident; i.e. the modules would go away after a reset. LoadModule can only use what is available to the system. What MuProtectModules does is create a mirror of this memory via the MMU, but this mirror disappears after a reset, unlike the original module image. Alternatively, you can try and use the LoadModule command with the NOMEMFKICK switch. But be warned that this only works on some systems. 4.6 * The system crashes as soon as I play a stereo 8SVX audio file. Please check whether or not you have the svx.datatype (yes, really "svx", not "8svx") installed. Unfortunately, this datatype is not compatible with the way 3.1.4 and OS 3.9 sound datatypes handle stereo data. Just remove it. 8svx will play stereo data perfectly fine now. 4.7 * What about all those widely-used system patches? Can I use them? AmigaOS 3.1.4 is a bug-fix update, which means that we focused on fixing the vast majority of known decades-old bugs and even some that were hidden despite our prying eyes. :-) So, at the time of this writing, we are proud to tell you that they are no longer necessary! Among these patches are: RamLibFix, PatchRAM, StackAttack, AmberRAM, PrepareEmul, RsrvWarm, MuMove4K, SwazInfo, RomFixes, etc. Of course, many of these programs also contained hacks to do things the OS was not programmed to do in the first place (Like MCP, SystemPatch, MultiCX, etc). We did not implement most of these hacks, because they do not follow proper Amiga coding rules and do their stuff in a "dirty" way, causing potential harm to the system. You are welcome to try them, but don't complain to us if they end up crashing your machine. And also be extremely careful not to activate a patch for a fix, because most patches don't do proper checking and will probably end up putting your system in an unstable condition. Being cautious and conservative is always a wise choice. 4.8 * Can I use the FBlit patch with AmigaOS 3.1.4? Yes you can; however we don't recommend you use it because it does not follow the Amiga development guidelines, which results in an unstable system. Instead, we suggest you use Picasso96 together with the "Native" driver (both available on Aminet). This will bring the benefits that FBlit provided, but on a clean, AmigaOS-friendly manner. And not only that, but it will also enable you to use applications that only worked with Retargetable Graphic Cards (RTG), despite not having one. 4.9 * I tried to install a demo/game which uses WHDLoad and the Installer warns me that it is outdated! The install scripts depends on new features introduced in the Installer delivered with OS 3.5. While the version delivered with OS 3.1.4 is 45.6, it is derived from OS 3.1 and therefore misses the extensions of the OS 3.5 release. The version of the Installer reported to scripts is 43.xx. You may either ignore this warning (the installation will still work without using the features of the OS 3.5 Installer), or you may get the Installer from OS 3.5 which will work on the OS 3.1.4 system too--though it still includes some bugs we were able to address in 3.1.4. The missing features of the Installer may appear in a future release of the OS. 5. Intuition Library V45 ________________________ 5.1 * What is the V45 intuition.library? It is an update to the system library responsible for the GUI that includes a couple of new features. Among them is a feature to allow you to drag windows out of the screen. 5.2 * Why isn't the V45 intuition.library enabled by default? Because it is incompatible with the cybergraphics.library which depends on the precise layout of undocumented intuition internals. Unfortunately, we do not know the details and we did not want to break existing CyberGraphX installations. If you do not use CyberGraphX, or run Picasso96 instead, then no such incompatibility exists. 5.3 * How do I install the V45 intuition.library? 1. For the ROM-based installation process, you first need to copy the new component to your system. For that, insert any of the modules disks into the first disk drive, then select "Execute command" from the Workbench menu, and enter the following command: copy df0:LIBS/intuition-v45.library to LIBS:intuition.library clone 2. In case you installed from a physical 3.1.4 ROM, LoadModule has to be installed manually. For that, insert the "Modules" disk, and open a CLI/Shell an type: copy df0:c/LoadModule sys:c If you are somehow unable to find your "Modules" disk you can download LoadModule from http://aminet.net/util/boot/LoadModule.lha 3. The Startup-Sequence of your system requires a modification. To perform this installation, select "Execute command" once more from the Workbench menu, and enter the following command: Ed S:Startup-Sequence A window containing the Startup-Sequence of your system will open. The first lines on the screen should read as follows: If Exists C:LoadModule C:Version exec.library version 46 >NIL: If Warn C:LoadModule ROMUPDATE EndIf EndIf Replace them with the following: If Exists C:LoadModule C:Version exec.library version 46 >NIL: If Warn C:LoadModule ROMUPDATE Else C:LoadModule LIBS:intuition.library EndIf EndIf Then save the result back to disk by pressing the Esc key, then the X key, then press Return. Then reboot. 5.4 * I purchased a ROM upgrade option, but I still need to reboot twice to get the new V45 intuition library. Why is that? We decided not to include the V45 intuition.library in ROM because it is not compatible with CyberGraphX. Please try to contact the CyberGraphX authors for a fix so we can (hopefully) include it in ROM in the next release. 5.5 * How can I load icons into Fast RAM? There's no program or Preference setting for it. Because it's not needed. In fact, please do not use WBCtrl anymore. Workbench is smart enough to detect cases where it can put icons into Fast RAM, and it will do so automatically whenever it is able to. 5.6 * I have now 28K less of Chip RAM; where did the RAM go? It's reserved. Actually, the lower 32K is now reserved for Mac emulators. The benefit of this is that you no longer need MuMove4k or PrepareEmul. Just start Mac emulations right away. 5.7 * But I really need the 28K back! In this case, download the following archive from Aminet: http://aminet.net/util/boot/MoveLow.lha This is a program that will, through a second reset, deliver the missing RAM. It's kind of "MoMuve4k backwards". But, seriously--what's 28K among friends? 6. Printers ___________ 6.1 * Which printer drivers do I need, and which driver supports which printer? The following printer drivers are part of 3.1.4: NEC_Pinwriter: NEC P5,P6,P7,P9 and P2200 EpsonX_Old: Epson EX,FX,JX,LX,MX and RX This driver is deprecated. Use only if the regular driver does not work. It is recommended for the old MPS 1230 made by Commodore. EpsonX: Epson EX,FX,JX,LX,MX and RX This is the preferred driver. Try the "old" variant only if this one does not work. EpsonQ: Epson LQ-800,LQ-850,LQ-1000,LQ-1050, LQ-1500 and LQ-2500 Postscript: Any PostScript printer should work with this. HP_LaserJet: HP LaserJet, HP LaserJet+, HP LaserJet II, HP LaserJet 500 and HP LaserJet 2000 This printer driver supports resolutions up 300x300 dpi, in greyscale only. HP_LaserJet_III: HP LaserJet II+ and HP LaserJet III This printer driver also supports resolutions up to 300x300 dpi in greyscale, but enables compression of graphics for faster printing. HP_LaserJet_4: HP LaserJet 4, HP LaserJet 5, HP LaserJet 6, HP LaserJet 1100 and HP LaserJet 3100 This printer driver supports resolutions up to 600x600 dpi in greyscale with compression enabled. HP_LaserJet_2100: HP LaserJet 2100, HP LaserJet 4000, HP LaserJet 5000 and HP LaserJet 8000 This printer driver supports resolutions up to 1200x1200 dpi in greyscale with compression enabled. Newer HP LaserJet printers supporting PCL might work as well. Available at the time of writing is the HP LaserJet Pro M402 series, which prints fine using the HP_LaserJet driver and probably other driver variants as well. You'll need a USB expansion or network card plus lpr.device from Aminet to connect to these modern printers. Make sure to redirect parallel.device to either usbparallel.device or lpr.device. While the printer.device supports printing to other devices, our current preferences program does not allow selecting another target. The OS 3.9 Prefs program does, and the printer.device supports it. Alternatively, use the tool "OpenDevicePatch", see lpr-dev package on Aminet for instructions: http://aminet.net/comm/tcp/lpr-dev.lha HP_DeskJet: HP Deskjet, HP Deskjet+, HP DeskJet 310, HP DeskJet 320, HP_DeskJet_500, HP_DeskJet_510, HP_DeskJet_520 Resolutions up to 300x300 dpi greyscale with compression. HP_DeskJet_340: HP Deskjet 340/340CM/340CBi, HP_DeskJet_550C, and HP_DeskJet_560C Resolutions up to 300x300 dpi in color or greyscale with compression. These printers print with four types of inks (CMYK). HP_DeskJet_400: HP_DeskJet_200C, HP_DeskJet_400, HP_DeskJet_400L, HP_DeskJet_420C, HP_DeskJet_500C, HP DeskJet 540C, HP_DeskJet_550C, HP_DeskJet_560C, HP_DeskJet_670C, HP DeskJet 672C, HP_DeskJet_1200C Resolutions up to 300x300 dpi in color with compression. These printers print with three types of ink and use color ink to mix up black. HP_DeskJet_600: HP Deskjet 600, HP DeskJet 610C/610CL, HP DeskJet 612C, HP_DeskJet_660C, HP DeskJet 680C, HP DeskJet 682C, HP DeskJet 690C, HP DeskJet 692C, HP DeskJet 693C, HP DeskJet 694C, HP_DeskJet_695C, HP DeskJet 697C, HP DeskJet 810C, HP_DeskJet_812C, HP_DeskJet_815C, HP_DeskJet_830C, HP_DeskJet_832C, HP_DeskJet_850C, HP_DeskJet_855C, HP_DeskJet_870C, HP_DeskJet_880C, HP_DeskJet_882C, HP_DeskJet_890C, HP_DeskJet_1600, HP_DeskJet_1600C and HP_DeskJet_1600CM Resolutions up to 600x600 dpi in greyscale and 300x300 dpi in color, with compression. These printers use four ink types. HP_DeskJet_895C: HP_DeskJet_895C, HP_DeskJet_970C, HP_DeskJet_1100C and HP_DeskJet_1120C Resolutions up to 600x600 dpi in color or greyscale. These printers print with four ink types. Generic: An ASCII only, text-only printer without graphics support you may try if everything else fails. 6.2 * I have a printer that is not listed, but was supported with OS 3.1. What should I do? Just copy the printer driver from OS 3.1 to DEVS:Printers, and select it from the Preferences editor. OS 3.1 drivers will continue to work fine with OS 3.1.4. 6.3 * My OS 3.5/OS 3.9 printer drivers refuse to work with OS 3.1.4. Where is the problem? The problem is a common bug in the OS 3.5/3.9 drivers that stops them from working in OS 3.1.4. In particular, the drivers return an incorrect result code from their initialization function, and the 3.9 printer.device never cared about whether initialization succeeded or not. This has been fixed in 3.1.4, with the side effect of OS 3.9 drivers no longer working. Note, however, that all models supported in 3.9 are also supported by native 3.1.4 drivers, so no harm is done. 6.4 * I have an unsupported printer. What can I do? Well. Write a printer driver, for example. (-: Or, at least, try to get a technical description from its vendor, and forward it to us. Unfortunately, most consumer printers today are GDI-printers that use a closed, proprietary protocol to communicate with the operating system of a large US company only, so good luck. And no, we do not have better access to technical manuals either. Note, however, that most printers nowadays fall into four categories: PCL-based printers, mostly from HP. These should work fine with one of the HP printer drivers. PostScript-based printers. These work fine with the PostScript driver. EscP-based printers. They work fine with the Epson or EpsonQ drivers. GDI printers. They don't work on anything but Windows, and their vendors do not care about niche products like AmigaOS anyhow. 6.5 * Where is the "print to file" printer driver? We don't have one, but none is needed either. Just run the "CMD" program which you can find in Sys:Utilities. It will redirect printer output to a file. It will now also give you a file requester as soon as you start printing. 6.6 * Do I still need TurboPrint? No; at least not for the printers supported by 3.1.4. But, if you have it, you can surely use it. With the exception of the bugs 3.1.4 fixed, the printing system did not change. 7. CLI/Shell and Tools ______________________ 7.1 * Where is the PIPE program? I want to use pipes in my Shell. Nowhere. You no longer need it. Shell version 46 natively supports pipes. The | symbol pipes the output of the left program into the input of the right program, || merges the output of two programs together, and ( ) group programs. 7.2 * I cannot interrupt pipes from the Shell, or programs continue to run if I interrupt a piped command sequence. Make sure the OS 3.1.4 Queue-Handler is in L:. Many third-party variants do not operate correctly, or cannot interrupt pipes. The 3.1.4. Shell depends on the features of the 3.1.4 Queue-Handler. 7.3 * The menus of the Ed editor look all white on black. Why didn't you adapt this to the black-on-white style? Essentially, because the console the editor runs in did not set the right flag for that, and Ed just cannot do anything about it. We haven't had the manpower to update the console this time. However, there are alternatives in Aminet that, among other things, will also correct Ed's menu colors. 7.4 * ShowConfig is missing hardware expansion details and even then, my MMU is not detected. ShowConfig shows the basic board config information for troubleshooting efforts. The ever-changing and expanding board and CPU detail is outsourced to third parties like MMULib and BoardsLib. You can get ShowConfig to display them, if you include the publicly available boards.library in your Libs drawer. And speaking of MMU, we did the same as we can detect it with the aid of mmu.library which is also publicly available. Both libraries can be downloaded from Aminet: http://aminet.net/util/libs/MMULib.lha and http://aminet.net/util/libs/BoardsLib.lha 7.5 * What does the new WBLoad command located in C: actually do? It is a sort of replacement for the more known WBRun command. It loads Workbench programs from the CLI/Shell. However, it does not require the Workbench. Hence, it is safe to use in the Startup-Sequence before LoadWB, and it operates synchronously, i.e. it does not return until the started program returns. If this bothers you, place an "&" as the last argument to the program. 7.6 * Are there any new command line arguments I should know of? Yes, there are plenty. What follows is the list, with a brief description of each. This list not complete though, and to some commands, we added features without adding options. ADDDATATYPES LIST This will list all DataTypes descriptors currently in memory by descriptor name. CMD DEVICE The user can now specify a concrete device name. CPU CHECKINSTALL Tests for the presence of a CPU library on affected CPU models. CPU CPUTYPE Prints only the CPU information for scripting purposes. CPU FPUTYPE Prints only the FPU information for scripting purposes. CPU MMUTYPE Prints only the MMU information for scripting purposes if it can. The mmu.library is required for this to work. CPU TO Switch to redirect the output of the CPU command. There are plenty of other switches of the CPU command to fiddle with some of the internals of the CPU. You don't need them, unless we say so. Really. They can only make your system go slower, or less stable. And we don't want this to happen, right? HDTOOLBOX LIMIT_4GBYTE Which can be ON/TRUE or OFF/FALSE. Artificially recreates the 4 GB limit. HDTOOLBOX MIN_SECTOR_SIZE Overrides minimum sector size. Value must be a multiple of 512 bytes, and it must be a power of two. HDTOOLBOX MAX_SECTOR_SIZE Overrides maximum sector size. Value must be a multiple of 512 bytes, and it must be a power of two. HDTOOLBOX MASK Overrides the default values used by the RDB settings written to disk. They must all be in hexadecimal notation, just as you would in a mount file. HDTOOLBOX BUFMEMTYPE Overrides the default values used by the RDB settings written to disk. They must all be in hexadecimal notation, just as you would in a mount file. HDTOOLBOX MAXTRANSFER Overrides the default values used by the RDB settings written to disk. They must all be in hexadecimal notation, just as you would in a mount file. LOADWB LEGACY Allows you to launch older versions of Workbench. LOADWB SIMPLEGELS Uses simpler shapes for dragging icons on the Workbench. LOADWB SKIP Skips starting programs in the WBStartup drawer. MAKEDIR ALL Creates directories recursively. MAKELINK SOFT Creates soft links. MULTIVIEW REPEAT Indicates whether the animation/audio should loop. It defaults to "don't loop". MULTIVIEW IMMEDIATE Indicates whether the animation/audio should immediately begin playing after calling Multiview. Default is to "don't start immediately". MULTIVIEW PRTUNIT Configures the printer.device unit used for printer dumps. MULTIVIEW WINDOWLEFT Defines the horizontal coordinate of MultiView's window. MULTIVIEW WINDOWTOP Defines the vertical coordinate of MultiView's window. MULTIVIEW WINDOWWIDTH Describes the complete width size of the window instead of the inner dimensions (without border). MULTIVIEW WINDOWHEIGHT Describes the complete height size of the window instead of the inner dimensions (without border). MULTIVIEW AUTORESIZE Makes MultiView resize its window when you open a new image. REQUESTCHOICE SET Copies the selected choice into a Shell variable. REQUESTFILE SET Copies the selected file (or files) to a Shell variable. RX SCRIPT=NAME/K Defines the script to be executed. This must be explicitly given if the script name is enclosed in quotes; otherwise RX attempts to interpret the enclosed string as a series of REXX commands to be executed directly. RX CMD Explicitly requests a command (not a script) to be executed. For this option, Shell quoting rules (and not Rexx quoting rules) apply, so "rx cmd" can be used also in shell scripts where the shell (or execute) applies its escape mechanism. That is, a quote must be escaped with an asterisk if the CMD argument is given. RX "..." Defines an ARexx command or ARexx file to be executed. If in double quotes, a direct command is assumed, otherwise a file. This is backwards compatible to the V36 release of RX. In addition, the RX command can also be invoked from the workbench and then accepts the following additional ToolTypes: CONSOLE= or WINDOW= Defines a pathname where output should go to. The default is a console. STARTUP="cmd" Defines an AmigaDOS command to startup the Rexx host in case it is not running. This is by default "RexxMast". SEARCH CASE Case-sensitive searching. Note that this switch is INACTIVE when searching for files. SORT DESCENDING Reverses the sort order. SORT SKIPBLANKS Ignores leading blanks. SORT NUMERIC Sorts numerically, not lexicographically. WAIT FILE Waits for the existence of a given file. There are a couple of hidden features and improvements, such as DIR being able to adjust its output to the size of the console, LIST showing hard- and soft-links and COPY copying them correctly. We will report on them later and will provide examples of use. 7.7 * Where are Lacer, MEmacs, HDBackup, Bru and MagTape? For good reasons we decided to phase them out. Hyperion offers a free of charge download option for registered AmigaOS 3.1.4 customers who feel emotionally attached to these archaic components. However, "these belong in a museum", as Indy would put it. 8. OS 3.1.4 and OS 3.9 ______________________ 8.1 * Can I mix OS 3.9 components with OS 3.1.4? Typically, yes. There are a couple of caveats, though. In particular, if you use the OS 3.9 "Printer preferences" dialog, make sure you delete ENVARC:sys/printergfx.prefs or the printer system will use the preferences from the OS 3.1.4 Preferences editor. You also need to ensure that you use the OS 3.9 "prefs.catalog" instead of the one that comes with OS 3.1.4. But please bear in mind--and this goes for all programs within AmigaOS--3.9 catalogs are somewhat incompatible with both 3.1 and 3.1.4. Mixing components requires careful consideration when using languages other than English, or you will end up with misleading translations. Also, if you decide to use long filenames, beware that RAWBInfo does not properly behave with them, so it's better to remove it from the WBStartup drawer. AmigaOS 3.9 mount files will be overwritten by 3.1.4 default counterparts, so some of them may need to be readjusted to meet your needs. This is clearly the case in CD0: (your CD-ROM device), as AmigaOS 3.1.4 has its own new CD-ROM filesystem, which by the way, won't work with the previous 3.9 CD Prefs program called CacheCDFS. Be warned that if you customized the ToolTypes of some 3.9 programs, when installed, AmigaOS 3.1.4 will overwrite them with its default new settings. Currently, there is a script on Aminet (Updateto314.lha) that attempts to help in integrating/updating both AmigaOS 3.1/3.5/3.9 with AmigaOS 3.1.4. However, it is unofficial, so use it at your own risk. 8.2 * I prefer the nice OS 3.9 ReAction GUI, but now my printer ignores the printer graphics settings in the OS 3.9 dialog. OS 3.9 expects the printer settings in a different location that is not compatible with the OS 3.1.4 location. To work around this problem, open up a Shell and type in the following command: DELETE ENVARC:sys/printergfx.prefs Then, do not use the OS 3.1.4 PrinterGfx preferences anymore. 8.3 * WBPattern prefs does not include a "Layout" cycle gadget for Tile, Center, Scale, and Scale Well functions. This feature is not simple to implement, as it involves enhancing IPrefs. We decided to leave it for a future update as there were more important things to resolve first. Priorities are a must when there is such a big to-do list and limited manpower. In the meantime, users should just resize their desktop wallpaper to the resolution they need using third party programs, which exist even on AmigaOS. Between many others, we can safely recommend dtscale24 by Thomas Rapp: https://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/download.html A pre-scaled background will also decrease loading time a lot and in all cases is the fastest solution. 8.4 * The new preferences editors ignore my font settings! The preference editors are based on the sources of OS 3.1, they use topaz.8 as a fixed font setting. We neither have ReAction at this time, which the OS 3.9 prefs require, nor the source code of the latter. That's also why we had to rewrite the editors for ASL and Workbench preferences from scratch. Font sensitivity will return to the prefs in a later release; don't worry. Just remember that there was little manpower, and much to do. 8.5 * I'm using the OS 3.9 ReAction GUI for preferences, but the GUI contains unreadable strings. Unfortunately, OS 3.9 did not simply extend the OS 3.1 catalogs, but instead populated the catalog in an incompatible way. If you want to continue to use OS 3.9, ensure that the following file comes from an OS 3.9 installation: LOCALE:Catalogs//sys/prefs.catalog Copy the OS 3.9 catalog on top of the OS 3.1.4 catalog to get a working OS 3.9 GUI back. While OS 3.1.4 tries to be compatible with OS 3.1 and extended its catalogs in a backwards-compatible way, OS 3.9 unfortunately selected another route and picked incompatible IDs for its translation. Sorry, but we cannot fix this. 8.6 * IControl preferences of OS 3.9 had a setting to render window gadgets in 1:1 aspect. Where is it? It's currently not available. The code is lost and it was a hack. We haven't figured out how to implement this properly; there are prototypes, but they have compatibility issues with some software. If you have found a working solution without side effects, please contact us! 8.7 * The background image of my Workbench now uses dithering, even though I'm using a True color screen mode. What's wrong? The syntax of the picture.datatype settings have changed, and if you had custom settings there, the new picture datatype will likely misinterpret them to enable dithering for many applications. The easiest remedy is to simply delete the old settings of the picture datatype--see the next point. 8.8 * How do I set/change picture.datatypes settings? AmigaOS 3.9 came with SYS:Prefs/PictDT. With it, you could explicitly set which application supports the V43 mode of the datatype. This mode offers support for screens with more than 256 colors. In addition, you could specify whether pictures should be dithered on high color screens (65,536 colors) or not. Disabling dithering decreases image quality on these screens, but improves the speed of the datatype considerably. In AmigaOS 3.1.4 the env variable "classes/datatypes/picture/ForceV43" contains a list of all programs that should be forced to v43 mode. In particular, this list should contain the string: « IPrefs » ...including the double angle brackets to avoid dithering on the Workbench. If you leave the environment variable empty, it means that there is a list of programs to be promoted, and this list is empty. If the environment variable does not exist however, the known well-working OS components receive full True color images. So it is easiest just to delete ENVARC:classes/datatypes/picture/ForceV43. Dithering of the picture.datatype can be set or unset by the env variable "Classes/DataTypes/picture/DitherHiColour" which can hold either a 0 or 1 value (0 = off and 1 = on). 8.9 * Why, when using MultiView and loading a text file, if I go to the Navigation menu all options are greyed out, and not available? This is because the search options are available through the text.datatype from AmigaOS 3.9, and are not available within the same component in 3.1.4. Instead, we fixed some race conditions and memory leaks that the 3.9 counterpart did not address. 8.10 * How can I make the Euro symbol? Only Helvetica font sizes 13 and 15 contain the Euro sign. The Euro symbol and other non-Latin characters will be properly addressed in a future update. 8.11 * Why didn't you base your work on OS 3.9 and instead used OS 3.1 as a basis? We would have loved to. However, we do not have the sources to rebuild them, nor sufficient rights to redistribute the licensed portions of the OS 3.9 efforts. Many components you get with 3.1.4 are re-implementations of 3.9 components. For example, the printer.device is "all new", but despite its version number, not based on the V44 printer.device from OS 3.9. We did not have anything as backup for the OS 3.9 HDToolBox, so we used the old one and fixed (at least) its most obvious bugs. 9. Update 3.1.4.1 _________________ 9.1 * What is this 3.1.4.1 thing? I am getting dizzy with so many numbers. Wasn't the Operating System labeled 3.1.4? A bug-fix update named "AmigaOS 3.1.4.1" (note the appended ".1" in the version number) has been published for AmigaOS 3.1.4. It just polishes 3.1.4 a little bit, and maybe makes it a bit rounder... ;-) It comes on a single disk and requires that you have AmigaOS 3.1.4 already installed. 9.2 * How can I check whether I correctly Installed the 3.1.4.1 Update? To check if you are running the updated AmigaOS 3.1.4.1, just open a CLI/Shell and type: version shell If the result is 46.11, it means that the 3.1.4.1 Update has NOT been correctly deployed. Another quick and simple method to confirm the update has been deployed, is to see that Workbench titlebar displays the copyright message with the year 2019, instead of 2018, when the Amiga boots. 9.3 * I copied files from the 3.1.4.1 Update floppy and they appear to be corrupt. Is my system damaged? To be able to fit the amount of files we needed to implement in this update, we have resorted to the use of the built-in compression feature the Installer program provides. So please take this into consideration if you intend to manually copy the Update3.1.4.1 disk floppy contents by using other methods than the one we provide there. All compressed files have the appendix ".Z", and the install script checks for this appendix and then decompresses the file and removes the .Z. The compression algorithm is a standard POSIX compliant "compress". This is a variant of LZW, in case you wonder - the Unisys patent on LZW run out years ago, so no worries about IPs. Source code and an executable Amiga version can be found at: http://aminet.net/util/pack/compress-4.0.lzh 9.4 * What new features does the 3.1.4.1 Update bring along? This is a minor bugfix update, however a few small features managed to slip-in: 1. Danish (dansk) and swedish (svenska) AmigaOS catalogs. 2. Setpatch now has the ability to load both an audio.device and a Shell-Seg update by itself. 3. Audio.device can now deal with some bad programming practices many third party developers incurred. 4. HDToolBox now suggests more adequate block sizes for large drives. 5. CrossDOS is now more tolerant to wrongly configured mountlists and foreign character sets. 10. Miscellaneous _________________ 10.1 * Why didn't you support feature XYZ ...as in "TAB Expansion", "Magic Menus"... you name it. Note the revision number. This is a clean-up and bug-fix release of OS 3.1. We had more than enough to do to get all its bugs fixed (and possibly added a couple of new ones, for your entertainment and our embarrassment). 10.2 * Why is the "Find..." entry ghosted in the Window item of the Workbench menu? This is intentional, and only occurs if Workbench doesn't detect a "Find" program in the System folder. So if you put one there, and name it appropriately, that menu item will automatically be enabled. 10.3 * Can I use the modules from the modules disk to build my own custom Kickstart ROM? At this point in time we are only able to support a limited number of Kickstart ROMs (only the ones that are advertised), and this due to the unlimited amount of combinations that custom ROMs may lead to. So yes, sure go ahead, but don't ask us for support if you follow this route. 10.4 * My PCMCIA network card cannot be detected. How do I fix this? Due to a hardware design flaw that specifically affects the Amiga 1200, if you insert a PCMCIA network card, and then boot the machine, there is a chance it might not get detected. There are currently two ways to overcome this: On one hand, you can try to obtain a PCMCIA hardware reset fix some dealers offer. On the other hand, you can get CardReset.lha from Aminet and just add it to your Startup-Sequence, just after the SetPatch line. 10.5 * How do I get nicely-coloured GlowIcons installed? It is a secret. Don't tell anyone! ;-) First, insert your Storage3.1.4 floppy in one of your drives. Then, open a CLI/Shell and type: Copy Storage3.1.4:glowicons/#? SYS: clone buf 10 all After the operation is finished, remove the floppy and reboot your machine. Finally adjust the number of colors using the Screen Mode Prefs program to 16 or more. If you also want borderless icons you can toggle this option by using the Workbench Prefs program. 10.6 * How can I create a single bootable floppy disk that containts both the kickstart 3.1.4 updates, and combined Workbench 3.1.4? The next procedure will help you build a disk that gives the user the basic template to create a bootable and portable double density floppy setting for a particular purpose, such as running scene demos, playing small games, creating pro-tracker style music disks, running diagnostic software, executing benchmarks, facilitating system recovery, aiding in antivirus operations, etc. 1. Make a backup copy of your "Modules" disk, and only modify that backup. Keep the original unaltered, and as a safety precaution, write protect it by sliding the plastic floppy write protection tab, leaving the hole uncovered. 2. Boot from the Amiga that has your AmigaOS 3.1.4 installation deployed, and insert this new unprotected special copy of the Modules disk. 3. Remember to relabel that disk so that you prevent any confusions. 4. Open a CLI/Shell and enter the following lines, one by one, pressing the enter key at the end of each one: Install DF0: copy c:addbuffers df0:c copy c:assign df0:c copy c:binddrivers df0:c copy c:copy df0:c copy c:cpu df0:c copy c:delete df0:c copy c:execute df0:c copy c:iprefs df0:c copy c:list df0:c copy c:loadwb df0:c copy c:makedir df0:c copy c:mount df0:c copy c:setpatch df0:c copy c:version df0:c copy LIBS:version.library df0:libs copy devs:system-configuration df0:devs makedir df0:s 5. From a CLI/Shell enter the following line to edit a text file: ed sys:s/Startup-Sequence 6. With that file opened in the ED text editor, just scroll down to the first character of the line that says: C:AddDataTypes REFRESH QUIET And insert an ";" character (without quotes) as the first character in that line. Do the exact same thing with the nearby line that says: C:ConClip If you have added other lines to the Startup-Sequence follow the exact same procedure with each one of them. Then, right mouse click to select from the pull down menu, Project, Save As..., and enter: df0:s/Startup-Sequence After pressing the OK button you can now quit the text editor by simply closing its window. 7. Now the disk is ready to be tested and used. You will have about 170 KB of free space to put your own programs and other data you might need. You can get about 270 KB free if you remove the optional df0:libs/intution-V45.library Usefull Tips: A) The floppy contents can be further trimmed down depending on your specific needs. This will leave more room for programs and data you wish to store there. B) Further space can be achieved by applying compression techniques. C) Floppies are not swappable between different machine types (e.g. an A600 generated disk will not work in an A4000T and vice versa). This is because many rom modules are Amiga model dependant, and support that specific set of hardware peculiarities. D) If you have updated to 3.1.4.1 also remember to update the files inside this new floppy to accomodate the fixes it includes. E) Please allways keep in mind that the contents of this disk contains copyrighted material. 10.7 * Can I get the guru back? Sure; crash a program. We're certain we left a couple of bugs for you to find. Oh, you mean, instead of "Software Failure"? No, you cannot. See the next point. 10.8 * Speaking of support--where can I get any for this product? Official support will be provided on the forums at: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz 10.9 * Will there be more updates? I'm sick of waiting almost 20 years for OS updates! We hope we have already squashed all bugs found for this release. If however, that ends up not being the case, we will do our best to address whatever it is left. And after that? Tell us about your wishes and preferences concerning an even further updated classic AmigaOS. 10.10 * Are there any Easter Eggs in OS 3.1.4? No, there are no traces of humour in us that we're aware of. No, seriously; no Easter Eggs this time. It's not Easter anyway. 10.11 * Is there any other AmigaOS 3.1.4 documentation available? Yes, you can find the following documentation in Aminet: 1. A compilation of many AmigaOS 3.1.4 notes sorted by OS component (Bugfixes&Changes.readme). 2. A FAQ that covers GVP Accelerators, Disk, and I/O Interfaces with AmigaOS 3.1.4 (GVP-FAQ.readme). 3. A comprehensive AmigaOS 3.1.4 installation guide (Installation.readme). 4. A FAQ that covers PP&S A2000 68040/28 accelerator board (PP&S-040-FAQ.readme).