hi there,

i´m new to MOS, but from what i´ve seen and tested so far - i like it very much.

But before registering and pay some money, i want to make sure a few things.

So, i want to make sure, that i can get everything (Hard+Software-related) to work propperly and for that, i need your help.

1:

E-UAE - I use the "WIP4-Release" and got it to run some Amiga Stuff - windowed. (i don´t use fullscreen mode, because then i don´t know how to get back on MOS Ambient Desktop or quit E-UAE)

How to swap disks during emulation, if needed?

How to save a game-state?

How to play/save from a hdd, if only .adf-files are given?
(afair, the os-x version of this emu got a gui to convert/install to hd and swap disk and so on...)

FPSE - got it running... so far. But seems, i can´t save a game-state and reload it later.

Any ideas? (I didn´t change something on the MCD tab right now)

I managed to start from .iso (cdimage.dll) - but got some ps1-cd´s around.

When i select cdrom.dll, it always says "Could not initialize cdrom.dll", closes window and another popup "Could not initialize fpse.dll" (something like that).

To configure "cdrom.dll", i must select a device and a unit... what does this mean? I got just on cd-drive in my mac and "unit" says nothing to me...

For "Device" i tested "CD0:" and the "cd-itself", both with "unit0, unit1" - again "Could not initialize cdrom.dll"....

What name gives MOS to a "CD-Device"? I read somewhere, the used driver-name must be typed in, like "ata.device" or something like that. Any solutions for this?

1.1 Is there any N64 emulator, running on MOS ?
- Solved

2:

When i should use the MOS-Installer to install a programm?

For now, i only saw some "installer-packed" tool (powerSDL), that had a self-installer....

I what "kinds" could applications be delivered? (binary, installer, self-compile)?

-solved

3:

How can i make the programms "SZOOM" and "SCUBE" autostart?

For example, "Lucy" i just put it into "WBStartup" and it gets always loaded. But for the other programms, it doesn´t work.

4:

How to keep MOS up-to-date? There is no "Auto-Updater" (at least i can´t find one), maybe for a good reason, there seems nothing to be there.

So, where to download and how to install new system-realated stuff?

Or are no "patches/fixes" released between the official versions?

-solved


5:

I´m looking for a "unzip-tool" for .7z and .zip formats.... i´ve found some, but confused how to "install" this stuff.

Can someone help me out?

6:

What tools do i need, to watch some youtube with OWB? (And how to install?)

I saw some video on youtube, where a guy surfing with OWB and click on a youtube-flash.. then there were a popup, from which he chooses "HD" and another programm (guess MPlayer) opened for playing the flash-movie.

-solved


7:

MOS GUI is all about customizing.... but how to install some themes (like glas-window-borders from http://morphos-files.net/categories/system/graphics ?)

-solved

8:

Is there something like a "taskbar", to switch between the windows/applications?

Or something like "Expose" (all windows get minimized in their positions and are shown as textures) -solved

After a while, the desktop get´s full and i can´t find out a way, to manage/navigate thru this or get to the window i want, efficently... (most of the time, i push them out of the desktop, with CTRL+mouse, till i get, where i want).

I found a small button on the window border, with this i can choose, what window shows on top - is this the only solution in mos for managing windows?

Ok, some more questions:

10:

What about the Ramdisk? Does it make sense these days?

Please give me some examples, how you take advantage of it and what are good cases/reasons to use it.

-solved


11:

What´s the difference between a "drawer" and a "folder" (execpt for the icons?) -solved

On every window, i´ve to switch to "Alle Dateien (All Files?)" to see all the content in a folder, because standard is "Piktogramme"... Is there a way to put "All Files") as default (system-wide)?

12:

What applications are worth a try, let´s say for email, burning CD-R, and "all day´s stuff"?

Are some free "must-have-packages" out there?!

I´m looking for something to create/mount different "ISO"-formats with MOS... any suggestions?


13:

Why is the music output so silent? The only thing that helped, was to turn up the "Volume Gain", but then the sound get´s distorted too much... and i can´t remember, where i found this "Volume Gain slider" :(

In all places (Prefs/Audio/Sound/Ambient Title bar) i turn up the sliders to the max... still to silent sound.
Another thing about hardware is, i installed 2GB RAM (OSX recognize it) but MOS only shows 1432 MB RAM.

The hdd i use, got 164GB - MOS shows only 132 GB (my powermac is the last modell, so it can handle more than

1.5GB RAM and more than 128GB Hdd out of the box) - seems MOS can´t?
-solved


Last but not least:

Is there a list of planned features for future versions of MOS?

I´m still looking for a good (maybe german?) documentation, that explains all the stuff i asked

and maybe much more? Did i get some manuals after registering my MOS?
-solved

Ok, that´s it for now (and should be enough, i think) ;)



I will update this post when the questions answered and i managed to get things running



English is not my native language, i hope you get this right and answer my bunch of questions...

Best regards to the MOS community and developers,



Elo





[ Editiert durch Elowan 21.04.2011 - 21:48 ]

1. About UAE
- You can quit it by pressing ctrl + alt + q.
- You swap disks with ctrl + alt + F1/F2 ...
- Save state is another key combo : ctrl + alt + F5 to load, and ctrl + alt + shift + F5 to save

I once ported some N64 emu (Mupen64), but it was too slow. There's also truereality64, that allows playing a bit Mario64, IIRC, but it's far from being complete.

3. Szoom and Scube are triggered by keyboard combinations (again!)
IIRC it's ctrl + wheel for Szoom and ctrl + tab for scube but read the readme to be sure. :)

4. Several archive formats are supported by xadmaster that comes with the system. For the supported formats, you can just double click an archive and browse it as if it was a regular directory.
But for better performance with bigger files, you can use a frontend like voodoo-x (available on aminet). the command xadunfile also allows to extract any archive supported by xadmaster.

About 7zip, there are standalone programs and also a 7zip xadmaster client that should be installed in sys:libs/xad/.

6. About OWB and youtube, there are several things to know, but it's all explained precisely in Sys:Application/OWB/owb.readme in Youtube section.
But basically you either join the HTML5 program from youtube or you use a special userscript that converts Flash to HTML5 on the fly.


Maybe i'll answer more questions later if noone bothered by then. :)

> I what "kinds" could applications be delivered? (binary, installer, self-compile)?

Usually, MorphOS programs are delivered in LHA archives. Decompress them and in case they contain an installer script you can use it, else it's just a copy-where-you-like job.

> How to keep MOS up-to-date? There is no "Auto-Updater" (at least i
> can´t find one), maybe for a good reason, there seems nothing to be there.
> So, where to download and how to install new system-realated stuff?

New MorphOS releases as well as interim updates are announced and to be found on the official MorphOS Website.

> I´m looking for a "unzip-tool" for .7z and .zip formats....

7-Zip: http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/xad_7z (use m68k version)
Zip: decrunch client is integrated into xadmaster.library, so should work from the get-go

> I saw some video on youtube, where a guy surfing with OWB and
> click on a youtube-flash.. then there were a popup, from which he
> chooses "HD" and another programm (guess MPlayer) opened for
> playing the flash-movie.

Not necessary any more. See Fab's reply.

> What about the Ramdisk? Does it make sense these days?
> Please give me some examples, how you take advantage
> of it and what are good cases/reasons to use it.

I use it for decrompressing archives and testing programs, for temporary file downloads and for some older browsers' disk cache. This keeps HDD fragmentation at a minimum.

> What´s the difference between a "drawer" and a "folder" (execpt for the icons?)

It's used synonymously. However, due to our Amiga heritage we're more inclined to call it "drawer".

> i installed 2GB RAM (OSX recognize it) but MOS only shows 1432 MB RAM.
> The hdd i use, got 164GB - MOS shows only 132 GB (my powermac is the
> last modell, so it can handle more than 1.5GB RAM and more than 128GB
> Hdd out of the box) - seems MOS can´t?

About 1.5 GiB RAM is MorphOS' maximum. With my Mac mini I use an internal 250 GB HDD on PATA and an external 500 GB HDD on USB. Both work fine to their full extent.

Quote:

The MorphOS installer doesn't by default create partitions that use all the available HDD space. Use HDConfig (found in System:tools) to create a partition(s) from the remaining HDD space.

I am glad to see some of my questions answered :)

As soon as i get home, i will try things out.

Maybe someone could provide an answer to my
Hardware ( sound issues?)

4. There are usually no patches made available between releases. Each release has an update mode when installing.

7. Just extract them to SYS:Prefs/Skins and they'll appear in Screen settings in System Preferences.

8. There's no Expose, but try right-clicking on the window depth gadget (rightmost one). There are also many hotkeys you might like, defined in IControl in System Preferences.

10. Provided you have enough RAM, ramdisk is useful for testing stuff you don't want installed permanently.

11. Drawer = folder = directory. It' just different naming. To get a default listview I usually start with MyMorphOS (configured to open on a desktop doubleclick in Ambient settings) that's snapshotted (rmb over window border) in list view.

13. Volume control currently does not fully work in some of the Mac builtin cards. A temporary solution is using a SBLive PCI card.

MorphOS can handle HDDs up to 2TB afair. Your limit comes from the fact that the default filesystem cannot handle partitions larger than 127GB. There are other FSes w/o such limit though. You probably just need to add another partition in HDConfig.

~1.5GB is the current memory limit in MorphOS.

Quote:

There isn't a public one. If we decide to announce something it's usually shown on various computer fairs we attend or on http://morphos-team.net

The documentation, sadly, is lacking. You should check the Morphzone Library out though.

Quote:
If you are new to the Amiga, you should learn about its unique screen concept.
By running every (or just some of) major application on its own screen, the "desktop get´s full" issue doesn't exist. And toys like SCube (used to switch between screens, not between windows/applications) become a bit less useless :)

Quote:

If you start "SYS:Tools/UnitControl" program you will see the device(s) type and the unit of the device(s) itself inside your computer.
For Mac you will find: idemacio.device and this is the name you have to write in "Device" when you configure CDROM in FPSE.
Then near idemacio.device you will find the unit number: this is the number to insert in "Unit".
The CDROM you want to select is the "unit" phisically connected to that "device": so, the device is the kind of device (ahi.device, parallel.device, keyboard.device and so on) that controls a unit. In this case , since on an IDE device could be connected two devices (or units), each of them take an identification number (the unit number).
I hope I didn't too much confusion....

EDIT: You could obtain another error when you will try to launch FPSE: it should be sound configuration (a request will appear to explain).
With spuwave.dll it should work fine but remember to configure sound in MOrphOS Preferences / Audio.
In case of doubt, set SPU to spunull.dll to see if FPSE works correctly.
But a SoundBlaster, as Jacadcaps wrote, would enhance sound better...

jacadcaps,
Quote:

There is no Expose like tool in standard MorphOS ISO. To fill the gap for my own usage, I wrote HotCorner that can be used to simulate some features of Expose. It is downloadable from Aminet: HotCorner-1.0.lha.

HotCorner sends hotkey combination when the mouse pointer hits a screen corner. My own HotCorner setup allows to show/hide all windows to get a fast access to the desktop icons for example : have a look at IControl preference ; there is a lot of hotkey combo that can be hooked with HotCorner.

++

Additionally to Tcheko's HotCorner, there is a tool (Commodity, I think) that allows you to arrange windows on funtion key press, so when you hit F10, F11, or F12 then all windows get minimised, resized or shown in a list (that's the base functionality of this tool that I remember). Combined with HotCorner, this may bring you a little closer to Exposé. I do not remember the name of the tool but I hope someone else will do.

hello and thanks for reply :)

I got not much time atm, so i just tried only a few things - but nothing works "the short way"....

It´s still not clear to me, how the "window-management" works / is meant to be used.
I read, that on original Amiga system, a Desktop-screen could be dragged with shift+mouse
, but that´s not working in MOS. I took a quick look at iControl and got no clue, on how
to setup things. How to tell an application to open on a certain screen? I only got one
screen "Ambient - ATI Raedon 8500 1920x1080 24bit" (something like this)...
So, how to click / hotkey / screen-configure it, to avoid "window-overflow"?

In iControl i configured a hotkey-combination, that "hides" all windows an a desktop.
If i use this, all windows get transparent - ok.. but how to pick a specific window?
I only get a bunch of transparent windows - but i´m not able to pick on of them :(

Is there a source, that explains this "screen-concept" for dummy´s ?


FPSE - is 0.10.07 the latest version? I can´t get it to run ps1 games properly.
I tried some bios(es) and configurations (that should normally work) - but they´re don´t.
On the internet i found some higher version numbers - but seems to be only Android or
Windows(!) support.:(


OWB and youtube.
I followed the instructions from owb-read me and clicked on "youtube.com/html5" - but still no
video could be watched. I also tried to download the window-script - but link to a french website
seems brocken - Page not found.. again, no enjoying youtube :(

summa sumarum i´m not further, then on beginning.

maybe i´m just too stupid...

i´ll try some more later on, after easter weekend. I won´t give up on MOS(apps) so soon


thanks for your help, everybody!

[ Editiert durch Elowan 21.04.2011 - 08:45 ]

Quote:

so, "mouse-drivenapplications" can´t autostart, when in wbstartup drawer and always must be startet
after system boot completed?

Henes,
Quote:

how to tell the app to run on a specific screen? i guess, i have to define some screens before?
how does it work?

@Elowan,

All the application / screen magic relies on MUI settings.

Every MUI application can be customised with the help of menu Settings -> MUI...

Got to Screen panel, set Customized public ccreen from MUI screen database and choose a screen in the list. If you have a single screen in the list, just click the new button located at the right of the list. Edit the screen mode to your taste, click Ok and Save.

Tada. The application will now open on very own screen.

++

Ah, ok i give it a try. In case i get it to work, how do i switch between the screens?
Is this like screen dragging on amiga? Is there a key/mouse combo, i have to click?

You switch screens with the standard command+m hotkey, use the screen depth gadget (top right of the screen), you can also right-click on this gadget for a menu.

Quote:

FPSE is the 0.10.2 and in the Amidog website you will find useful
info about working games and configuration. I'm using a bios named "SCPH1001.bin" that work flawless.
Question: the problem is only that no games running or FPSE don't even start (no intro with logo and music)?

Thx for reply.

Fpse starts the iso (cd rom i will test later) and booting.

Wipeout3 for example: intro runs good, sound is ok, fps also.

After skipping the intro, there is a screen (loading screen) and thats it.
Sometimes, the application does not respond any more and sometimes
Mos also.

Soul Reaver tutorial plays to a point, then it freezes, no error is shown.

The mentioned crashes occure at the same point, every time.

I think, it is not possible to tell, whats the matter.

Afair, i downloaded fpse from amidog, but in the about tab of this app, it does not
Show 0.10.2 (i downloaded the mos version). I will download again, just to be sure.


speaking of FPSE and games.... is there a working usb-gamepad (logitec precision, hama, ...) on the market, that works?
Afair i read something, but that was on amiga 4.1 or so...

Is there a way, to get a copy of wipeout 2097 amiga version?
Sold out on the versalia website :(

[ Editiert durch Elowan 21.04.2011 - 10:39 ]

I think it is a bad idea to cross the answered questions out. Fora are there to help each other, not just for those people who write down a question but also for all those people who come by later and have the same or a similar question. You better place a short "13: solved, see #6" behind your number of question than make it hard for later visitors to read what you were asking for.

ok, done!

> I followed the instructions from owb-read me and clicked on
> "youtube.com/html5" - but still no video could be watched.

That's strange as that should work without anything else to do.

> I also tried to download the window-script

All recent scripts come with the recent OWB version. No need for extra downloads. Besides, the basic functionality of Youtube HTML5 shouldn't need any script.

> but link to a french website seems brocken - Page not found..

http://fabportnawak.free.fr/owb/scripts/ works here.

> i downloaded fpse from amidog, but in the about tab of this app,
> it does not Show 0.10.2 (i downloaded the mos version).

Do 'version <path-to-fpse-binary> full' in a shell and you should get:

"FPSE 1.6.1.3 (2008-03-12)"

Answer for #3:

SCube needs its graphic to start correctly. To avoid copying everything in your WBStartup drawer, you need a
"project" icon: so, if you go with mouse pointer on any MorphOS icon and press right mouse a menu will appear.
Select first voice from top (info/about) and a info-window will be showed. Switch the icon type to "Project" and
fill the "Default Tool" form with partition/drawer/program to use (in this case SCube). For example "Sys:Tools/scube/scube".
Of course instead of "Sys:Tools" enter the directory in wich you stored Scube. After you saved changes, put this Icon in your
WBStartup. About SZoom afaik should be enough to put it directly in WBStartup.
If you need a Project Icon download the one I'm using here:
SCube_MOS.info
(Use right mouse and "download selected file" option)

oki, thx a lot for supporting me on my quest for getting things running, like i want them to.
Some issues are solved, but some remain ;)

Screen Management

I tried the steps from Nr. 14 - but i dont get it right i guess...

I got only one screen, named like my graficscard and resolution.
I made a new screen (this one automatically got max. resolution of my monitor and 32 (instead of 24)? bit

ok, now?

suddenly are grey-ish background appeared, with only one application (FPSE in this case) and thats it.

a few moments later, there was a background-picture and icons again... and the application?!
hummm? strange? how to use this?

If someone could please make a little step-by-step tutorial or give an example, how to efficient manage the
window-applications on the desktop (like Nr. 14 did, but a bit more explaination is needed, sry)


Next thing unsolved:

How to get the systems file-viewer to always show all files instead of pictogramms?

Dont remember which posting, but i dont understand this:

"MyMorphOS (configured to open on a desktop doubleclick in ambient settings) thats snapshotted (rmb over window border) in list view"
??

May be my question was not formulated well. Maybe tomorrow, i try to post some screenshots, to explain better.



FPSE:

i got the latest version (unfortunatly in this case, cause its not working right) of this emulator.

still got the crashes, like i described above....

Jambalah,
Quote:

unfortunatly this dont work :(

I took szoom for example, copy it to wbstartup, change it to "project", path was set to the other copy of szomm.

after reboot, the szoom app in wbstartup is not a project any more, it get switched back to "Dienstprogramm"

Did i got it right... the default-tool to opern this app is the app itself?