AmigaOS versions

This article needs references that appear in reliable third-party publications. Primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources. (September 2010) There have been many different versions of the AmigaOS operating system during its two decades of history. It has been said in error, that the first AmigaOS was nicknamed Workbench from the name of its GUI Interface, due to an error of Commodore Marketing and Sales Department, which labeled the OS disk just with the name "Workbench Disk" and not with the correct name "AmigaOS Disk (Workbench)".citation needed In actual fact, AmigaOS 3.1 was the first version of the Amiga operating system to be officially dubbed AmigaOS by Commodore, prompted by Apple renaming their proprietary OS from "System" to "MacOS". 1 What many consider the first versions of AmigaOS (Workbench 1.0 up to 3.0) are here indicated with the Workbench name of their original disks. Contents 1 Kickstart/Workbench 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 1.1 AmigaBASIC and ABasiC 2 Kickstart/Workbench 1.4 3 Workbench 2.0, 2.04, 2.05, 2.1 4 AmigaOS 3.0, 3.1 5 AmigaOS 3.5, 3.9 6 AmigaOS 4 6.1 Version 4.0 6.2 Version 4.1 7 References Kickstart/Workbench 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 Workbench 1.0 The 1.x series of Workbench defaults to a distinctive blue and orange color scheme, designed to give high contrast on even the worst of television screens (the colors can be changed by the user). Versions 1.1 consists mostly of bug fixes and, like version 1.0, was distributed only for the Amiga 1000. The entire Workbench operating system consists of three floppy disks: Kickstart, Workbench and ABasic by MetaComCo. The Amiga 1000 model needs a Kickstart disk to be inserted into floppy drive to boot up. An image of a simple illustration of a hand on a white screen, holding a blue Kickstart floppy, invited the user to perform this operation. After the kickstart was loaded into a special section of memory called the writable control store (WCS), the image of the hand appeared again, this time inviting the user to insert the Workbench disk. Workbench Version 1.2 was the first to support Kickstart stored in a ROM. Kickstart disk was still necessary for Amiga 1000 models, but it was no longer necessary for Amiga 500 or 2000, but the users of these systems must change the ROMs (which were socketed) to change the kickstart version. Workbench now spanned two floppy disks, and supported installing and booting from hard drive (assuming the Amiga was equipped with one), the name of the main disk was still named "Workbench" (which is also the user interface portion of the operating system). The second disk was the Extras disk. Workbench set of disks was still three disks, due to abolition of Kickstart disk. Users of Amiga 1000 could ask a Commodore dealer to obtain one. The third disk was now AmigaBasic by Microsoft. Kickstart Version 1.2 corrected various flaws and added AutoConfig support. AutoConfig is a protocol similar to and is the predecessor of Plug and Play, in that it can configure expansion boards without user intervention. Kickstart Version 1.3 improved little on its predecessor, the most notable change being auto booting from hard drives. Into Workbench 1.3 floppy disk, on the other hand, users can find several significant improvements to Workbench, including FFS a faster file system for hard disks storage which resolved the problem of old Amiga filesystem which wasted too much hard disk space due to the fact it could store only 488bytes any block of 512bytes keeping 24 bytes for checksums. Many improvements were made to the CLI (command line interface) of Amiga which was now a complete text based Shell, named AmigaShell, and various additional tools and programs. AmigaBASIC and ABasiC Main article: AmigaBASIC Versions 1.1 through 1.3 shipped with AmigaBASIC, a BASIC implementation designed by Microsoft (this was the only software written by Microsoft for the Amiga). AmigaBASIC was discontinued with the launch of Kickstart/Workbench 2.x. Version 1.0 shipped instead with a different BASIC language, called ABasiC, implemented by MetaComCo. Where AmigaBASIC was oriented around creating graphical user interfaces, ABasiC was more similar to the BASIC interpreters shipped with older 8-bit systems, and was geared towards text based applications. AmigaBasic by Microsoft, for the first time could avoid obliged use of numbering lines in programming, and was very advanced for its times, but suffered many flaws. For example it supported only NTSC TV standard used in USA and not PAL TV standard used in Europe. Kickstart/Workbench 1.4 Kickstart/Workbench 1.4 was a beta version of the upcoming 2.0 update and never released, but the Kickstart part was shipped in very small quantities with early Amiga 3000 computers, where it is often referred to as the "Superkickstart ROM". In these machines it is only used to bootstrap the machine and load the Kickstart that will be used to actually boot the system. The appearance of a very early first release of 1.4 was similar to 1.3, but with colors slightly changed. A second version was similar to that of 2.0 and higher, with just minor differences. It is, however, possible to dump out of the OS selection screen by clicking where one would expect to see a close gadget. This will cause the machine to boot Kickstart 1.4 using either the wb_2.x: partition, or from a floppy. Workbench 2.0, 2.04, 2.05, 2.1 Workbench 2.0 Workbench 2.0 improvements introduced a lot of major advances to the GUI of Amiga operating system. The harsh blue and orange colour scheme was replaced with a much easier on the eye grey and light blue with 3D aspect in the border of the windows. The Workbench was no longer tied to the 640×256 (PAL) or 640×200 (NTSC) display modes, and much of the system was improved with an eye to making future expansion easier. For the first time, a standardised "look and feel" was added. This was done by creating the Amiga Style Guide, and including libraries and software which assisted developers in making conformant software. Technologies included the GUI element creation library gadtools, the software installation scripting language Installer, and the AmigaGuide hypertext help system. Workbench 2.04 introduced ARexx, a system-wide scripting language. Programmers could add so-called "ARexx ports" to their programs, which allowed them to be controlled from ARexx scripts. Using ARexx, you could make two completely different programs from different vendors work together seamlessly. For example, you could batch-convert a directory of files to thumbnail images with an ARexx capable image manipulation program, create and index HTML table of the thumbnails linking to the original images, and display it in a web browser, all from one script. ARexx became very popular, and was widely adopted by programmers. The AmigaDOS, previously written in BCPL and very difficult to develop for beyond basic file manipulation, was mostly rewritten in C. Unfortunately, some badly written software – especially games – failed to run with 2.x, and so a lot of people were upset with this update. Most often, the failure occurred because programmers had used directly manipulated private structures maintained by the operating system, rather than using official function calls. Many users circumvented the problem by installing so-called "kickstart switchers", a small circuit board which held both a Kickstart 1.3 and 2.0 chip, with which they could swap between Kickstart versions at the flick of a switch. 2.x shipped with the A500+ (2.04), A600 (2.05), A3000 and A3000T. Workbench 2.1 was the last in this series, and only released as a software update. It included useful features such as CrossDOS, to support working with floppy disks formatted for PCs. Since 2.1 was a software-only release, there was no Kickstart 2.1 ROM. 2.x also introduced PCMCIA card support, for the slot on the A600. Workbench 2.1 introduced also a standard hypertext markup language for easily building guides for the user or help files, or manuals.It was called Amigaguide. Release 2.1 was also the first Workbench release to feature a system-standard localization system, allowing the user to make an ordered list of preferred languages; when a locale-aware application runs, it asks the operating system to find the catalog (a file containing translations of the application's strings) best matching the user's preferences. AmigaOS 3.0, 3.1 Amiga Workbench 3 3.x did not have major changes but many important improvements were included to support new Amiga models. Updates included: A universal data system, known as datatypes, that allowed programs to load pictures, sound and text in formats they didn't understand directly, through the use of standard plugs (see object-oriented operating system) Better colour remapping for high colour display modes and support for new AGA chipset Improved visual appearance for Workbench CD-ROM support as required for Amiga CD32 (3.1) 3.x shipped with the CD32, A1200, A4000 and A4000T. AmigaOS 3.5, 3.9 Workbench 3.9 TCP/IP stacks After the demise of Commodore, the later owners of the Amiga trademark granted a license to a German company called Haage & Partner to update the Amiga's operating system. Whereas all previous OS releases ran on Motorola 68000 new release 3.5 onwards required a 68020 or better, CD-ROM and at least 4 MB RAM. Unlike previous releases 3.5 was released on a CD-ROM. The Kickstart 3.1 was also required as the operating system didn't include new ROM. Updates included: Improved CD filesystem Supplied with TCP/IP stack (unregistered time limited freely MiamiDX demo in 3.5, unrestricted AmiTCP/IP in 3.9), web browser (AWeb), and e-mail client Improved GUI and new toolkit called "ReAction" AVI/MPEG movie player (OS3.9) New partitioning software to support hard disks larger than 4 GB HTML documentation in English and German MP3 and CD audio player (OS3.9) Dock program (OS3.9) Improved Workbench with asynchronous features Find utility (OS3.9) Unarchiving system called XAD (OS3.9) WarpOS PowerPC kernel to support PowerUP accelerator boards AmigaOS 4 Main article: AmigaOS 4 AmigaOS 4.0 GUI: Workbench 4.0[5] A new version of AmigaOS was released on December 24, 2006 after five years of development by Hyperion Entertainment (Belgium) under license from Amiga, Inc. for AmigaOne registered users. During the five years of development, users of AmigaOne machines could download from Hyperion repository Pre-Release Versions of AmigaOS 4.0 as long as these were made available. As witnessed by many users into Amiga discussion forum sites, these versions were stable and reliable, despite the fact that they are technically labeled as "pre-releases". Last stable version of AmigaOS 4.0 for AmigaOne computers is the "July 2007 Update", released for download 18 July 2007 to the registered users of AmigaOne machines.[1] AmigaOS 4 Classic was released commercially for older Amiga computers with CyberstormPPC and BlizzardPPC accelerator cards in November 2007. It had previously been available only to developers and beta-testers. Version 4.0 The new version is PowerPC native, finally abandoning the Motorola 68k processor. AmigaOS 4.0 will run on some PowerPC hardware, which currently only includes A1200, A3000 and A4000 with PowerPC accelerator boards and AmigaOne motherboards. Amiga, Inc.'s distribution policies for AmigaOS 4.0 and any later versions require that for third-party hardware the OS must be bundled with it, with the sole exception of Amigas with Phase 5 PowerPC accelerator boards, for which the OS will be sold separately. AmigaOS 4.0 Final introduced a new memory system based on the slab allocator. Features, among others: Fully skinnable GUI Virtualized memory Integrated viewer for PDF and other document formats Support for PowerPC (native) and 68k (interpreted/JIT) applications New drivers for various hardware New memory allocation system Support for file sizes larger than 2 GB Integrated Picasso 96 2D Graphics API Integrated Warp3D 3D Graphics API Version 4.1 Main article: AmigaOS 4.1 AmigaOS 4.1 GUI: Workbench 4.1 AmigaOS 4.1[5] was presented to public July 11, 2008, and was put on sale for September 2008. This is a new version and not only a simple update as it features, among others: Memory paging [2][3] JXFS filesystem with the support for drives and partitions of multiple terabyte size Hardware compositing engine (Radeon R1xx and R2xx family) Implementation of the Cairo device-independent 2D rendering library New and improved DOS functionality (full 64 bit support, universal notification support, automatic expunge and reload of updated disk resources) Improved 3D hardware accelerated screen-dragging References ^ "AmigaOS 3.1". http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/amigaos31.html. Retrieved 2011-01-01.  ^ AmigaOS First Update Release announcement at Hyperion site. ^ AmigaOS new memory system revisited article on OS4.Hyperion site ^ AmigaOS new system for allocating memory article on OS4.Hyperion site ^ AmigaOS 4.0 image included in this article is intended for fair use. In the past, neither Hyperion VOF (Belgium), nor Amiga Inc. (USA) were opposed to publishing in internet sites of AmigaOS 4.0 screenshots kindly donated by users. Owners of copyrights are free to register and write in the talk page of this article to ask for the removing of this image from article, and to ask also for its deletion. ^ Hyperion Entertainment announces Amiga OS 4.1 v · d · eAmigaOS Amiga technologies AmigaBASIC • AmigaDOS • Amigaguide • ARexx • Blitter object • Exec/WarpOS • Guru Meditation • Hunk • Intuition • Kickstart • RAM disk • Workbench Amiga GUIs Ambient • MUI • ReAction • Scalos • Wanderer • Workbench • Zune File systems CrossDOS • OFS • FFS • PFS • SFS • UDF • JXFS (Amiga OS4.1 only) • IceFS (MorphOS only) OS versions 68k based: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 (beta) • 2.0, 2.04, 2.05, 2.1 • 3.0, 3.1, 3.5, 3.9 PowerPC based: 4.0, 4.1 Software packs Amiga Forever • AmigaSYS • AmiKit Other software Aminet • Amiga Reflections • Demos • Games • Hollywood • Web browsers • ADF • IFF • LHA • WHDLoad • WinUAE • YAM • (AmiZilla) Influenced AfA • AROS • AtheOS • BeOS • DragonFly BSD • MorphOS v · d · eAmiga hardware (history) Amiga models 680x0 based CD32 · CDTV · A500 · A500Plus · A600 · A1000 · A1200 · A1500 · A2000 · A2500 · A3000 · A3000T · A3000UX · A4000 · A4000T PowerPC based A1-SE · A1-XE · Micro-A1 · AmigaOne X1000 Unofficial 68k models Minimig · Natami Unofficial models Pegasos II · Sam440ep · Sam440ep-flex · Sam460ex Amiga prototypes Walker · A5000 Amiga chipsets OCS · ARC · ECS · AGA · AAA · AA+ · Hombre · (Agnus · Alice · Denise · Lisa · Paula · Blitter · Copper · Akiko · others) Other hardware Action Replay · Chip/Fast RAM · Flicker fixer · Kickstart ROM