So many things, so little time but hopefully I'll try and post more stuff from now on.
All this time I'm tinkering my lovely Vampire and my beloved ClassicWB 3.9 system.
I made many changes so I might not remember all but here are some highlights:
Updated a lot of libs, utilities and programs to latest versions
Changed whole iconset from MagicWB to Ken's Icons (OMG only that alone is TONZ of work)
Added "Theme Support". This includes the following options:
<None>
VisualPrefs (with a new OS4.0 theme edited by myself)
AfA OS (it still doesn't work since it requires FPU but if you mount the system to WinUAE and add FPU then it works just fine). Also it's ready for when FPU implementation is done on the Vampire.
Updated a lot my Startup-Sequence cleverly so I can mount my CF card both on Amiga and my PC (via WinUAE) using the same system without any changes. IT ROX so much having the same environment without having to change monitor, screenmode, settings etc, and what's best... either in real A600 or WinUAE every change is saved in each environment!
Changed many options on ToolPrefs menu adding stuff like:
Converting images to icons (thumbnails)
Replacing backdrops on the fly either on windows or workbench screen
Replaced ToolsManager Dock with WBDock by Thomas Rapp
Added many utilities and tools. Some I remember are:
SwazInfo that replaced RawWBInfo (I like it more)
PowerWindows (for moving windows wherever I want on the screen)
ReqAttack for changing all requesters
Changed all my assigns from all places to be managed by MCP
Installed Clould Handlers (after also registering them just for the support)
Made a lot of new backdrops with Vampire theme (lol) which I will put at the end of the post for anyone that wants to grab any :)
You can check the video bellow that shows some of these features live. I suggest to open it on YouTube where you can also view it up to HD (1080p) quality.
After my latest video (thanks for the nice comments btw), I decided to try more stuff to my system.
First of all and just for FUN purposes I decided to convert AmigaSYS 4 AGA to ECS :P
I really think that AmigaSYS is a nice compilation which has it's follower although, I'm not of them.
Sorry folks, ClassicWB all teh way! So... WHO said that AmigaSYS can't run on ECS machines? :D
This is what my custom AmigaSYS 4 AGA for my ECS environment looks like (it is also upgraded to latest version and ofc OS3.9).
This is the custom BootPic that I created @ 640x512 resolution, which was remapped to the standard 8 colors MagicWB palette via ImageStudio and saved as IFF-ILBM format, that replaced the original AGA ones for A1200/4000.
...and this is the custom environment that works just fine under ECS. Wallpapers, titlebar, along with some changes on TinyMeter and MCP occured and as always system runs on a custom Kickstart 3.9 with all recent modules.
Despite I'm not gonna keep the AmigaSYS environment as I really LOVE ClassicWB 3.9, I thought about implementing some things that I liked like the Boot Picture+Sound plus the custom titlebar via MCP.
So... I installed Play16 and PicBoot, I created a custom 640x512 image like the one I did on AmigaSYS and made the required changes to the startup files :)
Also I installed MCP which I never actually used, using only some of it's patches and hacks so my systems is acting just fine and it's responsive and stable as before.
Here you can see the PicBoot image that I created...
...and this is what the Workbench screen looks like with the new titlebar info :)
A lot nicer than the standard look (Workbench, Chip RAM, Fast RAM). You can also notice a nice custom icon for ToolsManager made for HippoPlayer hehe.
As always, I wanted to make the new options fully customizable so I can Enable/Disable them whenever I wanted, so I used the awesome Bloodwych menus and settings based on BMX (ButtonMenu).
Here you can see the custom mouse menu that leads to Settings ---> Components and from there to MCP and PicBoot settings. Pressing one of the buttons, gives a new Enable/Disable option like the other settings from Bloodwych :)
You can't imagine how much I'm enjoying my A600 with all these beefed optiond. Fun times for sure.
EDIT: Some days ago I thought of shooting a video about a fellow Amigan (Retrofan from EAB) to show him how MAS-Player can stream Internet Radio via AmigaAMP. As you can see from the follow video bellow it does that nicely :)
I've been tinkering a lot my A600's environment all this time plus making some efforts for my GREX 4000 but that will come in a different article in the following weeks.
So... hardware-wise I ordered an full ceramic MC68030@50MHz CPU from Amibay having the latest mask in order to replace my ACA's plastic MC68030@33MHz.
Not a big deal but I had to try :)
I removed the old CPU, putted the new one and this is how it looked without the heatsink on.
I used the 80MHz oscillator that I had, in case I managed to use it @ 40MHz and system booted just fine.
I also made some nice benchmarks etc... but after 3-4 minutes system crashed so I can say with certainty that on my accelerator 40MHz overclocking is not an option.
I changed the oscillator to an 72MHz one (thanks to Fitzsteve who send me one spare of his) and it worked like a charm! After hours of keeping my A600 on... I NEVER had a single crash or Guru!!! \o/
Not bad having an 15% speed increase by all means :)
If in the future I manage to find an 75MHz oscillator I will try that as well in case it works and that's it.
Btw... EVEN after many hours... the original heatsink (that I re-attached with a new thermal pad) gets only a bit warm. With the previous CPU even @ 30MHz the heatsink was very hot alas I had put a fan for safety. Now @ 36MHz hot is not an issue and ofc I removed the fan as it had no meaning :)
Some of the new stuff I tinkered on my Workbench installation was to install PeterK's 46.4.279 icon.library which give a nice 15-20% speed increase from what I can tell. Really shows nicely when I open PNG etc icons but I will let you be the judge of that :)
I also made some changes in the VisualPrefs skins and settings plus I also installed X-bEnCH and made some nice changes in scripts/startup-scripts and custom BMenu entries to support it.
To conclude this article...this is a new video that I put today on YouTube that has a small revision of what my system boots and acts like. I hope you like it :)
(I suggest you to see it on YouTube's website and change the resolution to 720p as I uploaded it in HD for better viewing).
After spending some time fiddling around with my A600's custom ClassicWB that it took quite an effort to make it good for my needs, I couldn't help it by wanting to even more beef my beloved Amiga.
All may know that my most beloved OS is OS3.9 but sadly, all my previous efforts into installing OS3.9 to my 030 A600 wasn't so nice for my taste.
It works, and it works well, but GlowIcons plus 16 colors WB (even in 640x512) isn't as responsive as I would like. That was the reason for sticking with ClassicWB Full in the first place anyway :)
So... I thought about giving one more try to ClassicWB 3.9 but customizing as much as I could to make it more responsive for my taste.
Ok... this is what ClassicWB 3.9 looks like when you install it to an ECS system with 16 colors at a resolution of 640x512 (PAL Hi-Res Laced).
And this is when you change it 8 colors... Yeah I know it sux a bit, but just wait a bit more :)
That's more like it! Changing screenmode to SuperPlus (800x600) with some nice backdrop, changed via ImageStudio to MWB palette.
This is the default GlowIcons iconset before doing anything...
And this is the same, but this time using PeterK's icon.library that supports except from ALL icons even on WB3.0 systems, fast decoding even on PNG icons with it's embedded decoder! (not datatype related!)
It's not such a huge difference, but you can see some shadow differences if you compare it side by side.
Last but not least... AND THIS WAS THE HARDEST PART, was to replace WHOLE iconset of OS3.9 to the one that I made for my previous custom environment based on MagicWB icons!!!
Seems a bit weird at first seeing MWB icons and an 8 colors palette for an OS3.9 system but who cares?
Check also on the following screenshots the replacement of Amidock with the more lightweight and looking AWESOME for small icons ToolManager.
You can see in the following screenshot, some version checks from my custom Kickstart 3.9 that loads via ACA's MapROM feature.
Just to praize a bit of PeterK's work, I thought of doing one more screenshot checking out some DualPNG, and OS4.1 MasonIcons, as well as some older NewIcons and GlowIcons through his AWESOME library.
Don't want to sound too excited, but the system was responsive as a rocket! Boots just fine and rebootless due to custom kickstart, and it blazingly fast, giving the expresion that you might have an 040 underneath (LOL). Icon loading is superb and overall I'm TOO excited about this system which is from now on my ONLY system that I use on this A600.
I'm attaching a really quick teaser video just to understand where all my excitement comes from :)
More updates and info will come in the future as atm I'm still fiddling around with what more stuff to put in this OS :)
Apart from that, despite owning one of the few ACA630@30MHz and 64MB of RAM, I couldn't help wanting to beef a bit more the CPU clockage but not to extreme levels as I know that it would push the memory beyond specc.
So this is my beasty ACA with it's default 60MHz oscillator giving 30MHz speed to my Amiga. It's a small square oscillator but Jens putted both square and rectangle oscillator support to the PCB layout as you can see bellow.
It just needs a bit of careful unsoldering...
And mounting the socket carefully into place :)
And that's about it \o/ On the following example I used for fun despite knowing that it probably won't work... an 80MHz oscillator sent to me by Zetr0.
System booted just fine... and Workbench loaded!!! I was WTF? time to fire up some SysInfo for benchmarking... and Whoa!!!
I was about to cry from joy and when I realized that system crashed a bit after getting back to Workbench :(
I tried a restart but then system refused to boot.
I waited some minutes and system booted just fine again, but after 2 mins it crashed once more... Ok I expected that tbh, so I didn't try it more. It was definitely going beyond specc and I couldn't do anything about it.
Then came Stachu100 to the rescue with a free 66MHz oscillator that he sent me as a gift :)
Once putting the oscillator on... I had a feeling he was a keeper!
System booted just fine, and SysInfo was fired up once more... This time with a bit worse results as normal, but better than the stock 30MHz one.
I left the Amiga playing modules via EaglePlayer for about 1.5 hour without a single glitch!!! Yey!
After that I run my MMU support script and voila some new results (lower than before but this is typical as it was the same in my previous 3.1 ClassicWB setup)
Still awesome though, now that MMU was working I could also fire up WhichAmiga for some leet infos :)
Since MMU is on (on request) I can also run my ShapeShifter setup with Indy support that works just fine but will show on another time on a full video presentation.
Busy weeks those have been but I was around the usual forums checking around and testing new stuff.
The previous weeks were exciting cause Symplex (Lutz D.) created an pseudo RTG driver that uses Indivision ECS via Picasso96 RTG system for our beloved Amigas!
What started as a joke on 1st of April evolved pretty quickly into something really nice with great potential :)
As we exchange PMs with Symplex on a1k.org, I was testing thoroughly the driver and it's update versions supplying photos and videos along with info to try help him out understand what was going on with my system.
The initial versions didn't work on my system, but after some updates... yesterday the newest driver worked on my System as well \o/
I made a quick video to share with other people over Amibay/EAB and A1K.org which you can check as well bellow
After some requests from Amibay, I thought of trying this driver under my heavy modified ClassicWB 3.1 Full installation. I was certain that the system would be really slow cause ClassicWB is by default more heavy than a stock 3.1 installation due to many patches and Scalos. I had to try though :)
You can check from the video below a test of mine using my own installation to a clone CF.
As I thought, speed isn't that great, but it's not as bad as I'd thought it would be! Really impressive stuff tbh :)
To be able to understand the difference between speeds between this beta driver and my current stable 800x600@8 installation using Ratte's SuperPlus driver you can check the video below
Awesome work Symplex mate. I hope this driver will get more advanced and more quick overtime \o/
Free time on weekends to tinker my lovely Amigas is just priceless :)
This week there was a thread on EAB where we discussed about commodities while some fellow Amigans showed the need to use a Dock instead of plain icons "left out" on their Workbench screen.
Well I was one of them as well, since Workbench 3.1 doesn't have an AmiDock equivalent utility and every utility that I tried in the past wasn't nice for my taste.
Then it hit me that my old A2000 days I have used the ToolManager utility which worked like a charm. After so many years and trying to use it again, I found out that it was kind weird into setting it up. In some minutes I remembered how to set it up correctly and since some fellow Amigans asked if it would be possible for me to write a guide... I thought "Oh well... Lets do this"!
You can download the Guide that I wrote by clicking here.
An example of how my ClassicWB Full is now configured using ToolManager can been seen bellow.
The nice part is that apart of being pretty neat and nice, is that it's really configurable and most important... Blazingly fast!
---------------------------
Some time ago I contacted Peter Keunecke (PeterK) asking him if there was a way to be able to use his awesome icon.library successfully on ClassicWB.
You see... before contacting him, I made all the necessary tests to my ClassicWB installation and for some reason loading PeterK's icon.library... messed with my palette and icons weren't showing at all!
After a lot of searching around I finally realized that it was the LoadWB that was causing the problems!
Scalos that all ClassicWB 3.1 packs use, uses it's own LoadWB command that internally uses the original LoadWB command (that is renamed to LoadWB.orig).
If I use the original WB3.1 LoadWB library then the icons using the new icon.library display just fine but I have no Scalos working.
If I use Scalos's LoadWB command then Scalos works just fine but I don't see the icons using the new icon.library.
After some fiddling around, PeterK sent me an archive with some file replacements on my ClassicWB installation that involved some new Classes/Datatypes/Libs/Prefs etc files and that way his icon.library worked just fine!!!
You can check it out along with a video from my previous article that I wrote some weeks ago here.
Seeing that it worthed the effort, Peter created a thread over EAB which explained everything you need to know.
Some days ago, he made a final revision of his archive which involved lotsa stuff. In the thread there is lot of details about what features his version had so whoever needs to make some reading... you can check it there :)
Since I have a really heavy modified ClassicWB installation I had to do my tests carefully so I decided that today was a nice day to do so.
Well after some time tinkering my installation around... IT WORKED LIKE A CHARM!!!
These are some screenshots from AllIconsOnWB3.1 archive by PeterK showing OS4 icons and DualPNG Ken's Icons.
...and the new Icon information module from Scalos! How awesome is that!
Since my system is rather heavily modified with Custom Kickstart ROM... I made some minor alterations to PeterK's Startup-Sequence script:
I commented PatchRAM from the patches since I already have an "Ram-Handler 42.24" inside my Custom ROM.
I commented the LoadModule declarations for both Icon.library and SCSI.device as I have them in my Custom ROM.
I removed the PatchWB from my WBStartup folder since now it's in C and run from Startup-Sequence
Hey peepz just thought of sharing my latest updates since lately I've been tinkering my A600 a lot softwarewise :)
It's going really stable all this time, and I'm enjoying it very much.
Listening to music while I chat, or making custom Kickstarts is so enjoyable, and I run it on daily basis without a single crash.
Latest updates were:
Attaching a silent 40x40x10 Scythe/Kaze fan on ACA630 (just for safety)
Upgrading an NetGear MA401 PCMCIA Wi-Fi NIC (firmware+station) in order to be able to support WPA2 encryption that my home network uses! No delay at all :) There is an awesome guide by a guy Hiddenevil (over A.org) on his blog here.
Tinkering my OS as much as possible. Also with the help of PeterK (author of the newest Icon.library) I managed to be able displaying all possible icons under WB3.1 like GlowIcons, NewIcons, OS4 icons and even DualPNG Ken's Icons. Ofc colors aren't that great (since my WB only uses 8color palette) but still quite impressive. The thread concerning changes of some ClassicWB files can be found over EAB here.
I also made a quick video last night to see how my system is going on :)
I converted it to 480p (from FullHD) this time in case it looks a bit better so probably it's nicer than the previous ones (better use full screen, or change to the native YouTube page that has more options on resolutions).
Some days ago, I saw with surprise Ratte's post over A.org about a new Beta firmware from Jens for Indivision ECS and his new version of SuperPlus driver that didn't have the alert box!
I immediately downloaded the appropriate files and after flashing my Indivision ECS with the new version 1.10 and copying the SuperPlus driver over my Devs:Monitors/ drawer it was time to test teh beast :)
Well the results were more than outstanding!!!
I just couldn't believe how awesome it is to have an ECS mode filling the entire screen of my LCD Monitor without the need of overscan stuff!!!
Only problem is that the 800x600 mode with 16 colors on ECS system having an ClassicWB 3.9 installation... despite my numerous of optimizations, wasn't so much enjoyfull.
Whatever I have tried, the ECS chipset is really slow comparing to AGA :(
That was time for desperate measures then... Hopefully Bloodwych's new ClassicWB packs versions gave me the morale boost I needed to start installing everything from scratch! LOL
This time I decided NOT only to not use OS3.9 as a base but only 3.1, but ALSO to not install the latest and more heavy ClassicWB 3.1 versions like AdvSp and Adv.
Instead I decided to go with the ClassicWB 3.1 Full version which has the MagicWB look and feel.
Ofc that installation needed a lot of alterations which were done after spending a lot of time with it. Those were the following:
Reduce the number of colors to 8, based on MagicWB colors on Scalos
Install fonts and reconfigure Workbench and DOpus based on these fonts.
Convert some demo Backdrops to 640x512 and 800x600 to 8 color format based on MagicWB palette
Change ALL the iconset of ClassicWB Full since it's based on SmallMagic
iconset made for 640x256 PAL resolutions that seem really streched on
Hi-Laced or 800x600 ones. That was ONE HECK of a painful procedure since it was made One-By-One!... not for the faint hearted for sure. :S
Custom recolored and altered SilverBlue skin by Rebel (check white titlebar) in order to match better with the 3.1 look and the MagicWB colors.
and finally, a system of mine couldn't be called a system, without some custom Kickstart magic loaded via ACAtune. It contains modules from Kickstart 3.9 along with some other stuff like HRTMon, and newer SCSI.device 44.2 from Doobrey to be able to support my 16GB CF card and big Work (10GB) partition :)
Here you can see a screenshot from the main Workbench screen once system is booting.
This is the primary partition OS3.1 along with it's contents
This is the Programs drawer which you can see every single change of icons that I made!
And last but not least, same procedure also in Prefs as well :)
Just for getting a better view, I'm attaching a YouTube video of my A600 booting so you can check the response time and quickness :)
I really love my A600 now... Many stuff to setup yet like Subway, MAS-Player etc... but I'm not in a hurry.
