Amiga support and maintenance software
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Amiga support and maintenance software
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Support and maintenance software is a term that refers to programs that perform service utilities on a computer. The functions of this software can include formatting media for a specific filesystem, diagnosing failures that occur on media that has been formatted, recovery of data after media failure and installation of new software[citation needed]. This type of software is vital for the optimal running any operating system.
The Amiga company has produced software that is a key example of "support and maintenance software" and the programs can be analysed in relation to the manner in which they have been applied to the Amiga line of computers.
Original Amiga Feature Utilities
Amiga featured a number of utility programs embedded into the OS. Many of these were original features, which were adopted into other systems:
- Installer was a tool for the installation of Amiga software. It featured a LISP interpreter to facilitate the installation procedure. It was not widely adopted because installation of software required copying a single executable to the floppy or the hard disk where the AmigaOS was installed. Ease of installation made the utility unnecessary. Amiga Installer didn't support dependencies or track where the installed files were delivered; it simply copied them onto the target filesystem(s).[1]
- AmigaGuide was a hypertext markup scheme and a browser for writing and reading web page-like documents. The AmigaGuide files are text files in a simple markup language, which facilitates editing and localization in any ASCII text editor. Commodore came up with the AmigaGuide format before the World Wide Web was widely known. Consumers who bought Amiga computers in a store did not receive documentation on how to write AmigaGuide documents.
Utility Features borrowed from other systems
- Update tools:
- AmiUpdate was provided (since AmigaOS 4.0) to keep the system files and the installed programs up to date.
- MorphUP, an equivalent to AmiUpdate, was provided with MorphOS, an AmigaOS-like operating system.
Neither update system was widely used by the Amiga community, because updating the AmigaOS required that only a single file be copied into one of the AmigaOS system directories, replacing the previous version. This was a very simple procedure and any user with a minimum of experience could perform it easily without danger of harming the system.
Commodities and utilities
Amiga features two standard directories in which the System Utilities are stored:
- The Utilities directory contains programs like IconEdit.
- The Commodities directory (volume SYS:Tools/Commodities/ or SYS:Utilities/Commodities under AmigaOS4) contains executable applet-like utilities which enhance system usability, like for example the ScreenBlanker, the default screen saver shipped with AmigaOS. "Commodities" are usually loaded at system startup. They require no interaction, and do not feature any GUI interfaces.
- A system utility called Exchange allowed the user to control, stop, reload, and tune "Commodities."
Hard disk partitioning
AmigaOS features a standard centralized utility to partition and format hard disks, called HDToolBox.
MorphOS uses an updated version of the SCSIConfig utility (since version MorphOS 2 HDConfig) implemented by third party vendor, Phase5. In spite of the name, "SCSIConfig" possessed a unique feature at the time, which was providing a consistent mechanism to manage all types of disk interfaces, including IDE, irrespective of which interface the disk(s) in question used.
Diagnostic tools
AmigaOS diagnostic tools are usually programs which display the current state of Exec and AmigaDOS activities.
- Active process explorer: Scout, Ranger
- System calls and messages: SnoopDOS, Snoopium
- Memory management: CyberGuard, Enforcer, MemMungWall, TLSFMem by Chris Hodges
- Virtual memory: GigaMem, VMM
- Benchmark Utilities AmiBench, AIBB
Degrading tools: Degrader
- These programs "degrade" modern Amiga systems to performance and hardware equivalents of legacy Amiga models.
Promoting tools
Promoter, ForceMonitor utilities which allow the user to control the resolution of Intuition screens of Amiga programs.
Game loaders
WHDLoad is a utility to install legacy Amiga games on a hard disk and load them from Workbench desktop instead of floppies, on which they were often delivered.
jst is an older utility which the developer abandoned in order to concentrate efforts on WHDLoad. Old jstloaders can be read with WHDLoad, and jst itself has some early level of WHDLoad compatibility.
Disk copiers
During the 8 bit and 16/32 bit era copying software was not considered illegal in many countries, and the piracy was not even perceived as being a crime (as it is nowadays) by the large audience of users of home computers that were usually always young people and teenagers. Commodore C64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum software were copied by using normal audio cassettes and PC, Atari and Amiga software were copied by using special programs called Disk Copiers that were engineered to copy any floppy disk surface byte by byte, even often using special, efficient and advanced techniques of programming and "Disk Track driving" for maintain Floppy Disk read/write head alignment.
In the early days of the Amiga platform there were many disk copiers created in a little amount of time (1985/1989) which enabled copying Amiga floppy disks. There were about 16 disk copier programs: Nibbler, QuickNibble, ZCopier, XCopy/Cachet, FastCopier, Disk Avenger, Tetra Copier (which enabled the user to play Tetris while copying disks), Cyclone, Maverick, D-Copy, Safe II, PowerCopier, Quick Copier, Marauder II (named "Marauder][" with the parenthesis symbol), Rattle Copy, BurstNibble, etcetera. Almost all of these utilities were used to pirate games.
Many of these disc copiers were perfectly legal in many countries, until the phenomenon of piracy was condemned and became illegal worldwide and these programs (like for example Marauder, X-Copy and Nibbler) were sold in normal packages complete with instructions, warranty and EULA as any normal productivity software.
There also were floppy disks with LED track indicators to show if the disks were hacked by the original programmers to support up to track 82 of the disk, and copyimg solutions that included both hardware and software like Super Card Ami II, or Syncro Express I/II/III.
DFC5 could only copy standard AmigaOS formatted disks for backup purposes, however, it multitasked inside of the Amiga Workbench GUI.
X-COPY III and later the final version, X-COPY Pro was the most popular Amiga copy program, which was used to copy floppy disks. It was capable of bit-by-bit copying, also called "nibbling". Although incapable of true multitasking, the program was capable of taking advantage of Amiga configurations with multiple floppy drives; for instance, on Amiga systems with four floppy drives, X-COPY was capable of copying from a source drive to three other floppy drives at the same time. Coupled with excellent bit-by-bit replication capabilities, these features made X-COPY the defacto standard for copying floppy disks on the Amiga, especially on the software piracy scene.
Another popular copying program was D-COPY,[2] by a Swedish group "D-Mob", which, in spite of some innovative features and better/faster copying routines, failed to gain dominance.
Backup and recovery tools
In the first AmigaOS releases Commodore included a standard floppy disk recover utility stored in the directory of AmigaDOS commands and called DiskDoctor. Its purpose was to recover files from mangled floppy disks. Unfortunately this utility worked only with AmigaOS standard disks, and as major faults it did not saved the recovered data on different disks than original one and dangerously performed its operations directly on the original damaged disks. Also DiskDoctor wrote upon original disks and destroyed Amiga autoboot-non standard AmigaOS disks (mainly autobooting games), by overwriting their bootblock. DiskDoctor also renamed recovered disks with standard name "Lazarus" (for the resurrected man in the New Testament). As these features of DiskDoctor were undocumented, this fact led up an Amiga urban legend that there was a computer virus spreading all around nicknamed Lazarus Virus,[3] which final purpose was to make disks unreadable and renaming it with that name. With 2.0 it came the more useful DiskSalv utility, which was more often used just to validate Amiga filesystems in hard disks partitions.
Here follows a list of known Amiga repair tools:
- First generation (only floppies): Disk Mechanic, Disk Repair, Dr.Ami
- Second generation (floppies + HD) : Ami-Back Tools, Ami-Filesafe Pro, Quarterback Tools, Amiga Tools DeLuxe, Diavolo Backup
- Third generation (modern filesystems): The suite for recovering SFS: SFS Recover Tool, SFSDoctor, SFSCheck 2, SFSResize 1.0
Archives and compression utilities
The archivers most used on the AmigaOS and considered a defacto standard are LHA and LZX. Programs to archive ZIP, Gzip, Bzip2, and RAR files are available but seldom used, and many of them also have an Amiga counterpart, such as 7-Zip. There are also utilities for reading and writing archive formats such as ARC, ARJ (unarchive only), the CAB files common in Windows installation, StuffIt SIT archives from Macintosh, Uuencode which is used for encoding binary attachments of e-mail messages, TAR common on UNIX and GNU/Linux, RPM from Red Hat and more.
An interesting phenomenon of the Amiga scene was the support for Amiga "packed" or "crunched" (meaning lightly or heavily compressed) executables, which were common in the age of floppy disks, when space and memory conservation was critical. These were executable binary files which had a decompress routine attached to them, and which would automatically unpack or decrunch (decompress) the binary executable upon loading into memory. An interesting concept originated on Commodore 64 pirate scene, called "level depacking", and implemented on the Amiga by a utility called "Titanics Cruncher" enabled a binary executable to be decrunched as it was being loaded, requiring a very small amount of memory to do so. In general, packing and crunching executables was a technology directly taken from the Commodore 64 cracking scene, so much so, that some crunchers, such as the Time Cruncher, were directly ported to the Amiga platform from Commodore 64. This went so far as to even display the same visual effects during decrunching as they would be displayed on the Commodore 64. As the CPU in the Amiga was completely different than the one in the Commodore 64, these were complete implementations from scratch.
Noteworthy of mention in this category were TurboImploder and PowerPacker, which were the most used utilities for "crunching" files, as they were easy to use, with very well designed GUI interfaces. Other popular crunchers were the DefjamPacker, TetraPack, DoubleAction, Relokit, StoneCracker, Titanics and CrunchMania crunchers. In the contemporary age, there are libraries such as explode.library to decrunch entire files and directories on the fly. The ability to compress and decompress single files and directories on the fly has been present on the AmigaOS since at least 1994.
A similar feature has been implemented relatively recently as a property in the ZFS filesystem, enabling ZFS filesystems (and thus individual files inside of them) to be compressed and decompressed on the fly, by setting the "zfs set compression=on /dataset/..." property. It is even possible to choose between the LZJB and Gzip compression algorithms, just as it was possible to choose the crunch algorithm on the AmigaOS.
The packers and cruncher libraries on AmigaOS are actually centralized by using the XPK system of AmigaDOS device drives and pseudo devices (which talk to the various XPK libraries). The XPK system consists of a master library and several (de)packer sublibraries. Application programs only use the master library directly: the master library takes care of loading and using the sublibraries. Each sublibrary implements one type of (de)compression. There are different libraries for different types of data. When unpacking/decrunching, the applications do not need to know which library was used to pack or crunch the data. XPK is a wrapper for crunchers, to decrunch non-XPK packed formats requires XFD.
Another important invention on the Amiga platform was the creation of ADF format for creating images of Amiga floppy disks, either AmigaDOS Standard floppies, or NDOS ones, for use in Amiga emulators, such as WinUAE. Not only Amiga emulators, but also AmigaOS can use these files as they were implemented as virtual floppy disks. Unlimited virtual floppies could be created on modern Amigas, although WinUAE on a real PC can handle only four of them at same time, which happens to be the maximum that the Amiga hardware could have connected at any one time.
Currently, all the popular Amiga compression implementations and archive files are centralized and implemented by a single system library called XAD, which has a front end GUI program named Voodoo-X. It is included in AmigaOS 3.9 and up with UnArc. This library is modular and can handle more than 80 compression formats.
Command line interfaces and text-based shells
The original Amiga CLI (Command Line Interface) had some basic editing capabilities, command template, and other features such as ANSI compatibility and color selection. In AmigaOS 1.3, it soon evolved into a complete text-based shell called AmigaShell.
Third-party developers created more improved shells because implementing a new command line interface into Amiga only required replacing the original Console-Handler standard command line device driver (or "handler" in Amiga technical language). This was the program that controlled text-based interfaces into Amiga. The most famous Amiga replacement for the original Console-Handler was KingCON (also known with its "virtual device" name added with semicolon "KingCON:").
Due to these third-party developed shells, some well known shells from other platforms were ported to Amiga. These included Bash (Bourne Again SHell), CSH (C-Shell), and ZSH (Z-Shell). These shells taken from Unix and Linux were adapted into Amiga and improved with its peculiar capabilities and functions.
The MorphOS Shell is an example of Z-Shell mixed with the KingCON console handler. It originated as a Unix-like shell, and is provided with all the features expected from such a component: AmigaDOS commands (more than 100 commands, most of which are Unix-like), local and global variables, command substitution, command redirection, named and unnamed pipes, history, programmable menus, multiple shells in a window, ANSI compatibility, color selection, and so on. It also includes all the necessary commands for scripting.
Amiga WIMP GUI interfaces
Starting from the original Amiga WIMP standard GUI called Workbench, Amiga interfaces were enhanced by third-party developers. Amiga users are free to replace the original Workbench interface with these: Scalos and Directory Opus. The standard GUI toolkit, called Intuition, was enhanced in OS2.x with the introduction of GadTools and third parties created their own toolkits such as Magic User Interface (MUI), which is the standard one on MorphOS systems, and ClassAct, which then evolved into ReAction GUI which is the standard GUI on AmigaOS 4.0.
Amiga Advanced Graphics Systems
Most users added advanced graphics drivers to their Amiga. This let the AmigaOS handle high resolution graphics, enhanced with millions of colors, complete with Alpha Channel. Standard GUI interfaces with this capability are CyberGraphX, EGS and Picasso96.
Graphical engines
Some graphical engines are available on the Amiga. Several of these are:
- Warp3D original 3D graphic engine for Amiga;
- StormMESA which was a 3D library almost all OpenGL compatible and was based on the latest MESA implementation (MESA V2.5). StormMESA is now obsolete.
- TinyGL and MiniGL engines let Amiga use some capabiities of OpenGL graphic engine from Linux world.
- X11 engine it is also available through Amiga version of Cygnix.
- Cairo Vector Library it is available on AmigaOS 4.0 and so it is Anti-Grain Geometry library. On Amiga it is also being developed a GTK_MUI wrapper, to map any existing graphical feature of GTK with standard Amiga MUI graphic user interface system.
All Amiga modern systems widely support also SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) cross-platform, multimedia, free software library written in C that creates an abstraction over various platforms' graphics, sound, and input APIs, allowing a developer to write a computer game or other multimedia application once and run it on many operating systems.
PostScript
Amiga supports PostScript through Ghostscript and AmigaTeX. Ghostview is the foremost used graphical GUI for ghostscript in Amiga.
Since AmigaOS 2.1, in the Prefs (Preferences) system directory there is the printer preferences program called PrinterPS which pilots PostScript printers on Amiga.
TrueType fonts, color and anim fonts
Original Amiga outline fonts a.k.a. vector fonts were Agfa Compugraphic fonts available since AmigaOS 2.1 with the standard utility Fountain from Commodore, then the subsystem of outline fonts was replaced by using most widely used TrueType fonts, using various libraries, such as TrueType Library I and II, and LibFreeType library.
The standard diskfont.library also supported bitmap multicolour fonts (ColorFonts), such as those professional-looking Kara Fonts, or even animated fonts also created in origin from developer Kara Computer Graphics.
Font designer software
Personal Fonts Maker was the most widely used Amiga software to create bitmap fonts, while TypeSmith v.2.5b was de de-facto standard utility to create outline fonts.
Filesystems
Amiga can use various filesystems. Historical standard filesystems are Amiga Filesystem, afterwards named Amiga Old Filesystem. This was good for floppy disks but wasted space when used in Hard disks, and is considered obsolete. Amiga FFS (Fast File System) can handle long filenames up to 108 characters, has international settings (it can use filenames with accented letters) and could also be cached, if the users chose to format the partition with the cache option. Modern filesystem for Amiga are the SFS (Smart Filesystem), journaled filesystem, or PFS (Professional Filesystem) that can use metadata, and defragments itself on the fly. The FFS filesystem evolved intp FFS2. The new standard Filesystems in AmigaOS 4.0 (and more recent versions) are FFS2 and JXFS, while in MorphOS we find SFS used most frequently, and an ICE Filesystem has been developed.
MuFS (MultiUser File System) is a filesystem on Amiga that supports multiple users. Using MuFS the owner of the system could grant various privileges on files by creating privileges for groups and users. It was first available with Amiga ARIADNE multi ethernet card, and later as a standalone. Professional Filesystem suite owns a utility to let PFS to be patched to support MuFS and MuFS features. latest version is 1.8, released in 2001.
CrossDOS is an Amiga standard utility to read MS-DOS formatted floppy disks in FAT12 and FAT16 filesystem, either 720KB Double Density Floppy format or High Density Floppy at 1440KB (on connected floppy drives that can read 1440 MS-DOS disks).
The FAT95 library recognizes partitions of various filetypes common in other systems such as Fat16 and Fat32. It also reads MS-DOS Floppies, or even USB Pen-Drives formatted with Fat16 or Fat32.
Filesystems like ext2 for Linux or the well known NTFS from Microsoft, and more are supported by third party developers.
MorphOS 2.4 and 2.5 support natively Fat16 and 32, NTFS, MacOS HFS, HFS+ and Linux Ext2 filesystems.
Datatypes
The Datatype system of AmigaOS is a centralized expandable modular system describing any kind of file (text, music, image files, videos), and each one has a standard load/save module of its own.
Any experienced programmer, using the Amiga Datatype programming guidelines, could create new standard datatype modules for each kind of file needing to be loaded or saved. The module could be left visible to the whole Amiga System (thus to all Amiga programs) by copying the datatype into the system directory SYS:Classes/DataTypes/, and the descriptor (used to identify files) into DEVS:DataTypes/.
This allows Amiga programs to load and save any files for which the correspondent datatypes exist (IFF. Datatype, Jpeg. Datatype, MP3.Datatype, AIFF.Datatype, etc.). File descriptors did not need to be embedded in the binary. An independent system of loaders was not needed for new productivity software. Amiga productivity software tools therefore have a smaller size and a more clean design than similar programs running into other operating systems.
Here is a list of some supported Amiga datatypes:
- AIFF
- JPEG
- PNG
- TIFF
- IFF ANIM
- CDXL
- BMP
- GIFAnim
- JNG
- HTML
- 8SVX
- HyperGuide
- ILBM
- MPEGAudio
- MPEGVideo
- PBM
- Microsoft Word
- Photo-CDs
- Protracker
- RGBx
- Wav
- Word Perfect
- WordStar
- XBM
MultiView
MultiView is the standard Amiga universal viewer. It can load and display any file for which a correspondent datatype exists.
MIME types
Modern Amiga-like operating systems such as AmigaOS 4.0 and MorphOS can handle also MIME types. Any kind of file, due to its peculiar characteristics (thanks to filename extensions), or data embedded into file itself (for example into file header) could be associated with a program capable to handle it, and this feature improves and completes the capabilities of Amiga to recognize and deal with any kind of files.
USB stacks
The only known historical USB stack for the Amiga is the one created for Draco Macrosystem Amiga clone. It supported only USB 1.0 and ceased with the demise of that platform.
Modern USB support drivers for Amiga are:
- ANAIIS (Another Native Amiga IO Interface Stack) from Gilles Pelletier
- Poseidon USB stack by Chris Hodges and available for AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS
- Sirion USB stack of AmigaOS 4.0. Poseidon has a modular approach to USB and various hardware devices are supported by a certain number of HID devices.
FireWire stacks (IEEE 1394)
The only known historical Amiga support for FireWire IEEE 1394 was built for the DraCo Amiga clone by Macrosystem.
Only one FireWire interface exists for Amiga. It is named Fireworks and it was created for the MorphOS system by programmer Pavel Fedin. It is still in an early stage of development, and is freely downloadable.
Printer drivers
Print Manager program TurboPrint, by German firm IrseeSoft, is the de-facto standard for advanced printing with Amiga. It is a modular program with many drivers which support many modern printers. PrintStudio Professional I and II are another well known printer driver system for the Amiga.
PrintManager v39 By Stephan Rupprecht, available at Aminet repository, is a print spooler for the AmigaOS 3.x and 4.0.
Video digitizers
Good software for digitizing videos exists, for example DigiView frame by frame digitizer, FrameMachine Zorro II (Amiga 16bit card standard bus connector) expansion card for A2000, 3000, 4000, Impact Vision IV24 from GVP, VidiAmiga real time digitizer, and the Paloma module which could be purchased with Picasso IV Amiga compatible graphic card.
Graphic Tablets
In the 1980s, SummaGraphics Tablets were common. Summagraphics directly supported Amiga with its drivers.
In 1994 GTDriver (Graphic Tablet Driver) was the most common used driver for serial port tablets, like Summagraphics MM, Summagraphics Bitpadone, CalComp 2000, Cherry, TekTronix 4967 and Wacom. It could also sometimes be used as a mouse driver.
The graphic tablets now are mainly USB devices, and are automatically recognized by Amiga USB stacks. However, there are not many drivers for them. The most widely used driver for graphic tablets is FormAldiHyd. FormAldiHyd can be used with Aiptek, Aldi, Tevion and Wacom IV (Graphire, ArtPad, A3, A4, A5 and PenPartner) graphic tablets.
Scanner drivers
Amiga programs often have Scanner drivers embedded in their interface, and are limited to some ancient scanner models. One exampe is "Art Department Professional."
In recent times scanner management is not contained in individual programs. Rather, the hardware interface is USB and managed by the Amiga Poseidon USB Stack. Poseidon detects scanners from their signature, and loads the corresponding HIDD scanner module. The graphical interface is managed by programs like ScanTrax and ScanQuix.
Genlocks, Chroma-Key, signal video inverters
Amiga has special circuitry to support Genlock signal, and Chroma-Key. In the past there were many programs and hardware interfaces for Genlocks. Most famous were Genlocks from GVP (Great Valley Productions), an American hardware manufacturer, and Hama, Electronic Design, and Sirius Genlocks from Germany.
InfraRed Devices and remote controls
The IRCom class, a driver for the IRCom standard, is available for USB Poseidon Stack. It has an interface called IRCom Remote to learn and assign commands and functions to any infrared device.
Pegasos Amiga Clone computers have an internal IrDA port connector ready to pilot infrared devices, but there is no support for it in MorphOS. The Internal IrDA port can be used by installing any Linux flavours supported on that computer model and using Linux IrDA drivers.
WiFi and Bluetooth devices
Amiga can use WiFi external routers connected physically through ethernet cable and talk with remote WiFi devices. There are drivers available for Prism2 internal Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) WiFi expansion cards, but no drivers for Bluetooth standard devices like mobile phones, Bluetooth handsets, keyboards or mice.
A USB class exists for Poseidon Stack to use "Wireless PC Lock" USB device by Sitecom Europe BV and engage its security functions. It is called simply Wireless PC Lock.
Special devices
In the past, special drivers and hardware cards were available to drive the Polaroid Freeze Frame Digital Camera System Polaroid Digital Palette CI-3000 and Digital Palette CI 5000, with software created by Polaroid itself.
Many professional drivers for step-by-step video recorders are available to allow users to save on tape the 3D animations created by Amiga (Digital piloted Ampex, Betacam, and TBC devices (Time Base Correctors devices, a family of devices correcting timing errors). These drivers adjust Amiga TV output signal to many broadcast video devices and link the signal to professional Betacam videorecorders, signal converters to change NTSC American TV system to PAL European TV system, and professional blue-screens used in broadcast productions. One of these products was Personal TBC series of programs.
Amiga helped to create and launch digital recorders, now widely available on the market, coupled with an internal hard disk and a DVD device, in order to transfer the recorded file. One of these products was Broadcaster Elite, one of the first digital videorecorders, based on a SCSI system and a Zorro II Amiga expansion card.
There were also programs for digital oscilloscopes and expansion cards to transform Amiga into an oscilloscope/vectorscope changing the video interface and adapting it to a new GUI every time the measurement system was changed. The emulated device could be either an oscilloscope or a vectorscope.
Amiga Phonepak card from GVP Amiga Phonepak was an expansion card to transform Amiga into a complete professional integrated telephone switchboard, fax system, and answering machine for SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) market.
Amiga was also used as a videotitler system in the High Definition TV standard for experimental broadcasting. A battery of three Amigas was used as videotitlers on Analog HDTV experiments on HDTV NTSC 1125 lines standard, by channels like ESPN, ABC, NBC.
See also
- Amiga productivity software
- Amiga music software
- Amiga programming languages
- Amiga Internet and communications software
References
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