AmigaOS 3.1.4 For Classic Amigas Released

Mike Bouma shares the announcement from Hyperior Entertainment, which holds exclusive rights to AmigaOS: The new, cleaned-up, polished Amiga operating system for your 68K machine fixes all the small annoyances that have piled up over the years. Originally intended as a bug-fix release, it also modernizes many system components previously upgraded in OS 3.9. Contrary to its modest revision number, AmigaOS 3.1.4 is arguably as large an upgrade as OS 3.9 was, and surpasses it in stability and robustness. Over 320K of release notes cover almost every aspect of your favorite classic AmigaOS -- from bootmenu to datatypes. Some of the highlights mentioned include: Over 20 Kickstart ROM modules and many more disk-based core OS components were fixed, updated, or added; Support for large hard disks; A modernized Workbench; and A colorful, professionally designed icon set is included, along with the traditional four-color icons.

No links?

[HouseOfMisterE]

Nice, but at the time of publication the slashdot article has no hyperlinks to downloads or release notes (or even to a goatse).

That's because the...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the submission was sent via snail mail. You must order a floppy disk for $29.99, with a 6-8 week shipping time.

Re:That's because the...

[Darinbob]

You can pick up the floppies at HT Electronics for $2 each.

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

The old joke still holds true. Anyone can be replaced with a simple Perl script.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Surely you meant "a simple ARexx script"?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, but at the time of publication the slashdot article has no hyperlinks to downloads or release notes (or even to a goatse).

Quick overview...

https://www.generationamiga.com/2018/10/02/amigaos-3-1-4-released-the-biggest-upgrade-for-commodore-amiga-computers-since-2000/

Buy it here...

http://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/where-to-buy/direct-downloads/188-amigaos-314

Read about and download BestWB here...

http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/BestWB.htm

Link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/where-to-buy/direct-downloads/188-amigaos-314

Re:

[arth1]

No support for A1000 (kickstart floppy) it seems.
Nor for the CDTV model.

Re:

[arth1]

Well, we all heard the dummy phrase "512 KB ought to be enough for anyone", but today is 2018 not 1985. ...

This is true, and compilers today should be much better at generating compact code, making the existing code smaller, allowing you to add extras within the same space.

0.6 MB just to boot + 0.5 MB for loading ROM modules + 0.9 MB for free memory. ...

That's just obnoxious. Did they change handcoded assembly and BCPL to C++ or something?

At any rate, that makes it a "no thanks". Good luck selling this.

About the only reason why people would want to run an Amiga these days is nostalgia. That means they don't want to change out hardware and run modern bloatware. Bug fixes and optimizations

Matt Dillion

[Billly Gates]

Will he make cool patches or focus on DragonFly and occasional FreeBSd patches instead

Codename Pi?

[barakn]

I'm that nerdy.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy cow people. I swear to god, Amiga people are a thousand times worse than Apple people.

Amiga died...a long, long time ago. Let it lie in peace. Itâ(TM)s long past time to move on. Start dating again...find a new girl. No, she wonâ(TM)t be the same as the one you loved, but at least she will put out.

Says the Apple guy with all his â(TM)s and â(TM)t's.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story, incel.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Amiga folks are not really that bad. Now, the Atari ST guys -- those people are freaks! :D

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh that's nothing. Some religious folk keep pretending their messiah is alive after 2000 years of his death!

Re:3.1.4 3.9 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it as an update to 3.1, not as a new entry in the 3.x line.

This is based on the AmigaOS 3.1 codebase and doesn't use code from 3.5 or 3.9. Also 3.5 and 3.9 had higher system requirements, but this version will run on any amiga.

Calling it 3.10 or 3.14 would have been just as confusing because then people would have assumed that it was based on 3.9 and had the corresponding system requirements. It's a bit of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation because either way somebody is going to b

Re:

[nogginthenog]

You've had 30 years to upgrade your A500. 3.1.4 requirements are almost identical to 3.1

Re:

[nogginthenog]

3.1.4 is 3.1 with bug fixes. The extra memory is to patch the 3.1 modules with updated versions.

If you use a 3.1.4 ROM the patches are not needed. The release contains a 3.1.4 ROM image for you to burn to an EPROM or real ROMs will be available at a later date.
3.x & 0.5mb is only usable if you are running from floppy. Even in the 90s anyone using an Amiga for non-games had a HD.

Some history is needed here for context 3.9 vs 3.1

[Seven Spirals]

Haage & Partner released AmigaOS 3.9 in the 90's which definitely was an upgrade to 3.1. It had a much better version of the formatting and partitioning tools. It also had a few updates to the user interface and the text to speech voice phonemes were updated. So, it sounded different when you told it to say "This is Amiga speaking." Now, this update is from Hyperion. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm highly suspicious (but nonetheless curious). They have a fairly shady and shaky claim to rights to AmigaOS and Kickstart. However, they are very *loud* about those claims. Notice even in the announcement they want you to know they are the *sole* IP holder. I'm not a lawyer, but Hyperion has always seemed like a jumped up small-game company grabbing for lost Amiga glory. It's rumored that they bought the IP for Kickstart for $1 between a couple of friends. There are several other IP holders such as Cloanto in Italy and a few ex-licensees (or so they claim) in the USA too. One more colorful guy was an ex-trucker who wanted to resurrect the Amiga as a PC (the horror! and no 68k - blasphemer!). Who knows what lost legal deals ESCOM and Gateway did when they owned, the IP, too. The Amiga historical landscape is littered with people claiming to own the various critical trademarks such as AmigaOS, Amiga, Kickstart, and so forth. Nobody will know for sure until there is a knock down drag-out lawsuit and somebody goes home crying. The problem is, there is so few bucks left to make it's not worth the hassle. The Vampire Amiga folks are doing amazing things with their FPGA Apollo 68080 core. I run one in an Amiga 500 and it takes all comers. Not everything is perfect or stable, but it gives you RTG, upgraded sound, HDMI output, half a gig of RAM (a lot for Amiga apps), wifi, MicroSD storage, IDE, and a smoking fast processor that will eat the 68060 alive many times over. Highly recommended.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

I was there when Hyperion signed the contract to gain perpetual rights to develop Amiga OS "Classic" and distribute it, including Kickstart. They were the only ones interested in doing it at the time, and Amiga Inc. had no money to pay someone and they were more focused on their stupid Java game platform and other "next generation Amiga" nonsense.

The guys, two brothers, doing most of the coding know what they are doing with Amiga OS. They had developed a fair bit of other stuff for the platform... It's a wh

AmigaOS needs braver pirates. YarrrrOS needs birth

[Seven Spirals]

AROS is a failure. There are like two guys working in the wilderness on it. MorphOS and AmigaOS v4.x both did a bunch of un-Amiga things like adopt Unix-like programming APIs. Now, don't get me wrong. I *love* Unixy stuff. However, it's just not appropriate for the Amiga. It was always meant to be a lean and mean close to the metal programming platform. The custom chips allow you to take control of the hardware in surprisingly straightforward ways. If you have some cop following you around everywhere policing all your memory usage, it's great for stability, but blows for performance. Newer hardware using the PPC is utter trash and total blasphemy against the 68k CISC ISA, too. The PPC sucked for ASM coders and MOS + AOS4 both embraced the new school "let's wrap everything in bubble wrap" philosophy. Yes, it makes them more stable and easier to port things like web browsers over to. However, it also takes away from their microcomputer appeal and hardware hackability. All the newschool Amigas feel sterile and neutered. There isn't anything really cool about them as they just look like low-powered PCs with commodity hardware. To some, that's exactly what they wanted. To others, it sucks balls. What we really need is for a braver group of coders to do a clean room implementation of AmigaOS 3.1 which was leaked years ago. Just ignore Hyperion (they are in .nl anyway). Let them threaten to sue and freak out. They've come with too little WAY too late. AmigaOS doesn't need to morph into Ubuntu, it needs to embrace the 3.x roots that made the Amiga "a console with a keyboard" not "just another PC". I have tried to re-write parts of the OS myself, but it's a HUGE job and I get stuck on the BCPL linker crap every time.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Why bother re-writing the OS at all? If you want to treat it like a console, hit the metal directly, you don't need the OS.

Make libraries for self-booting games and enough of a Kickstart to run the bootblock from floppy. Throw in some debugging tools to help cross-compile and download from another machine.

I've been wanting to get back in to Amiga coding for ages. I hear that WinUAE makes a good development environment now... Not least because you can do stuff that was impossible on real hardware, like exami

Title link are unavailable in mobile view mode

[aglider]

http://www.hyperion-entertainm... [hyperion-e...inment.com]

Is there anyone who knows enough to fix this?

MenuetOS

[aglider]

Is IMHO the nearest thing o AmigaOS you can have today .

Re:

[nogginthenog]

All Amiga's are 'old'. 3.1.4 has almost the same requirements as 3.1, assuming you buy an updated ROM (else it patches the existing ROM, which needs RAM).

AmigaOS 3.1.4 for classic Amigas released

[Mike Bouma]

BestWB is an unofficial new workbench pack: "much like BetterWB. It aims to be much like an enhancement, an updated extension to AmigaOS 3.1.4, without all those hardware penalties typically associated with these kind of packs."

http://lilliput.amiga-projects... [amiga-projects.net]

Re:

[nogginthenog]

Amiga is DEAD, only necrophiles love the amiga.

LINUX DESKTOP IS DEAD . When you comepare linux desktop from year 2000 to current linux desktop, surprise surprise : they look almost the same. COmparing modern OS line windows10 with modern linux desktop is like comparing any modern car with a car from year 1980 !!!

I see a common theme here.