[obarthel]

ROM space is very tight for this release on account of the much larger mass storage drivers (SCSI, IDE) and the integrated OCS/ECS/AGA graphics.library.

Commodore was already pushing the limits for the 1994 Kickstart 3.1 in the Amiga 1200 ROM, and it only got worse. The Amiga 4000T ROM would no longer contain workbench.library either (in 1994) because the graphics.library and the SCSI driver took up so much room.

There is no room for workbench.library and icon.library in the 512 KB 3.1.4 ROM. Going back to a previous set of workbench.library/icon.library versions is not an option because these do not fit either.

1 MB ROMs are not viable solution at this point. Only a select few models support these, and the point was to make the 3.1.4 update available to all desktop systems.

Besides, a 1 MB ROM would require retooling of the build process for the operating system, which we did not attempt. The last 1 MB ROMs were built in 1994 (for the CD32) and very little documentation survives on how this is done, and how the ROM images need to be prepared.

We were already quite busy with the desktop systems and chose not to spend the time on research and QA work necessary for the 1 MB ROM build.

[snvzz]

>There is no room for workbench.library and icon.library in the 512 KB 3.1.4 ROM.

Unfortunately. Understandable.

>Only a select few models support these, and the point was to make the 3.1.4 update available to all desktop systems.

Nobody is telling you to ditch the 512k rom. It's just it sucks not to have workbench.library and icon.library, when using a system that does maprom with 1mb support.

>The Amiga 4000T ROM would no longer contain workbench.library either (in 1994) because the graphics.library and the SCSI driver took up so much room.

And roms with workbench inside were proudly released recently. Meaning both there's interest, and that you understand this interest.

>We were already quite busy with the desktop systems and chose not to spend the time on research and QA work necessary for the 1 MB ROM build.

It's good if there was at least consideration.

Maybe try and release romable versions of workbench and icon library? The community will take over from there, with tools.

[obarthel]

> Nobody is telling you to ditch the 512k rom. It's just it sucks not to have workbench.library and icon.library, when using a system that does maprom with 1mb support.

The next best thing is to load both the workbench.library and icon.library using the LoadModule command (which is part of the AmigaOS 3.1.4 update, if I remember correctly) and reboot your machine. Both libraries will then remain in memory as if they had been in the ROM. They will survive subsequent warm reboots, but they will consume RAM.

Loading the libraries in this manner can be handled by the Startup-Sequence, for example.

> Maybe try and release romable versions of workbench and icon library?

Both libraries are technically "fit" to go into ROM, if there were enough space available for them to fit ;-) They are "romable".

[snvzz]

>They will survive subsequent warm reboots, but they will consume RAM.

As long as it's fast ram, it's pretty good for a next best thing. I wasn't aware.

>Both libraries are technically "fit" to go into ROM, if there were enough space available for them to fit ;-) They are "romable".

That's great news. I'm not sure where I heard they weren't. I'm hopeful tools to do that will pop up on Aminet :)

[obarthel]

> As long as it's fast ram, it's pretty good for a next best thing. I wasn't aware.

The ROM changes which shipped with the AmigaOS 3.5/3.9 updates all exercised the same mechanism by which operating system modules loaded into RAM whose contents would survive a warm reset would supersede the contents of the ROM image.

If I remember correctly, the same tool (LoadModule) had been used then.

Documentation for these technical aspects has always been somewhat lacking I'm afraid... Not everyone wants to trawl the Amiga forums for hints on what is possible and how.

This time, however, there is an official FAQ on the web site of the company which sells the product and further pointers to more information on Amiga forums which cover the AmigaOS 3.1.4 update.

> That's great news. I'm not sure where I heard they weren't. I'm hopeful tools to do that will pop up on Aminet :)

You might want to have a look at Christian Vogelgsang's https://github.com/cnvogelg/amitools collection.

[snvzz]

> You might want to have a look at Christian Vogelgsang's https://github.com/cnvogelg/amitools collection.

Good stuff.

>AmigaOS 3.5/3.9

Never been a fan of these. I'm glad 3.1.4 took a different direction.

>LoadModule

Was not aware they could load workbench/icon.library, that is all :-)

>This time, however, there is an official FAQ

I read the one in the downloadable archive whole. It's still quite early and i'm sure there'll be much more info everywhere soon :)