Quitting the blog permanently

I think most of you have figured it out already, but I thought I should make it official anyway. I am quitting this blog permanently. The reasons are twofold.

First, I got two sons now and they take up a lot of my time.

Second, my interests have shifted and I no longer use MorphOS much.

I will keep everything I’ve written as it were in the hopes that it’s still useful to someone.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

 / Johannes Genberg

Taking a break

I’m taking an official break from my blogging. The reason is that my son is now a year old and is taking up a lot of my time. I simply don’t have time anymore for all the work that goes into writing a blog post. It’s more work than one might think.

First I need to come up something to write about. Then I need to do some research about it (which I’m pretty bad at), take necessary screen shots and then try to write comprehensively about it. It usually takes several hours with shorter posts and better part of a day with longer ones from start to finish.

Up until now this wasn’t really a problem as MorphOS is my main hobby. But now I only have enough time to play around for an hour or two. It’s not that I think it’s a bad thing really as I like spending time with my son, but I also feel bad as time goes by not writing about anything. I feel obligated to do so, so instead of not writing anything and feel bad about it I decided to just go on a break.

Note that I do plan to return one day when I get more free time again. When, I don’t know.

Until then I will stop worrying and just enjoy my favourite OS.

I want to thank Epsilon whose blog inspired me to start my own, jPV for always correcting my mistakes and offer better solutions than I do and of course all my readers who gave me kind words and encouragements.

See you all in Amigaland!

Mirrorcopy

[Edit 20160224] Thanks to jPV I was able to correct some errors. You can read the manual with “more” and you shouldn’t use NOSOFT when copying system files.

If you remember my last post I wrote about some viruses I got and took care of. But it got me thinking about doing something I have been putting off for years: backing up and organizing everything. When you have a couple of terrabytes of stuff counting to hundreds of thousands of individual files then you can guess what I’ve been doing these last two months.

First I got myself a used PC with an external 5 TB hard drive. This serves as my backup unit and is connected via network. It’s not a NAS, as I don’t want the process to be automatic. I got several other external hard drives and USB sticks that also serves as backups in one way or another.

I have two 1 TB hard drives (FAT32 formatted) where one is connected to my Mac Mini and the other serves as a backup. This 1 TB hard drive contains all my pictures, documents, mp3:s etc. Everything except my videos, except for a few that I really don’t want to lose.

Then I also have my 3 TB hard drive where all my movies goes. Because movies can sometimes be larger than 4 GB (which is the limit for FAT32 formatted drives) this drive is NTFS formatted. This hard drive is connected to my media player and is also reachable via network. My 5 TB hard drive serves as a backup for everything on my second computer (also NTFS formatted).

One of the main problems with backups is replacing old files with new files. The easiest way is to just overwriting everything from Disk A to Disk B, but when you have hundreds of gigabytes of data this will take forever to overwrite. Especially if you do it via the slower USB 2.0, which is actually all I got on all my computers. There are backup programs that can do this, but the problem with those is that they will probably save in such a way that you can’t easily access the files, which is something I want to do.

With Windows I recommend Synchredible. It’s free for personal use and mirrors drives and/or folders from one place to another. That is, it only copies new and changed files (but it has plenty of options). There is also actually a pretty good program for doing the same in MorphOS. It’s called Mirrorcopy.

Mirrorcopy does what it sounds like: it looks at Disk A and Disk B and add new files to Disk B plus overwrite old files with new ones (just like Synchredible). You can download it here.

Unpack it to RAM: and look into the folder:

In the folder c you will find the program Mirrorcopy:

Copy it to C:

Don’t bother reading the mirrorcopy.readme in docs as it’s not really helpful at all:

[Edit] There is an error in the text file making MorphOS not recognise it properly. Use the “more” tool in Shell to view the documentation.

This is actually the biggest drawback with Mirrorcopy: it got terrible documentation. Start a Shell and type mirrorcopy ? and you will get this:

I can’t say I get much of it. I can guess what some of it does but I don’t feel secure enough to do anything on my own. Geit was nice enough to tell us what parametres we should use at Morphzone, which I’m going to reproduce here.

As the process of mirrorcopying stuff from one drive to another is identical for everything, I’ve decided to demonstrate it by backing up my System and Work drive to a freshly FAT32 formatted USB stick (because that is the likely format if you buy it new). Because I want to use it as a MorphOS backup I rather use MorphOS own file system SFS rather than Windows FAT32. So we have to reformat it.

I start by inserting the USB. It shows up in Ambient:

Next I go to System:Tools:

I click on HDConfig:

There seems to be something wrong with this disk (the yellow at the bottom). No matter, as we will format it anyway. I click on Repair and let it do it’s thing (clicking Yes until it’s done).

I press Save in the red area (I click OK when asked if it’s OK that it will lose all it’s data):

Now I right click on the grey which says Free: 29.45 GB FAT32L. Chose remove partition and click Yes. Now we have no file system at all on the disk:

Right click on the grey area as above and we will get this menu:

We change MBR to MAC (I guess because I use a Mac Mini) and accept the loss of data. Then we left click on the grey area again. It asks me in Swedish how many partitions I want to format it as:

I press One (29.45 GB). Now you can see that the drive uses the SFS file system.

Next I left click on the grey area yet again and get this:

I rename the device from DH0 to Mos_Backup_2 (I already have a drive called Mos_Backup):

I press OK and then Save once again in the red area (and accept once again data loss). Next we quit HDConfig and go to System:Tools again and start Format:

I click on the Mos_Backup_2 part:

I rename it to Mos_Backup_2 and press Quick Format:

It will now show up in Ambient:

We open it and create one folder called System and one called Work:

Next we start a Shell and type this:

MirrorCopy ALL CNT NOSOFT NOHARD FROM SYS: TO Mos_Backup_2:System

It starts by scanning the System folder:

[Edit] You shouldn’t use the NOSOFT option if you are copying system files.

Then it scans Mos_Backup_2:, but since it’s empty it’s over instantly and moves on to analysing what needs to be copied or changed:

After a while it’s done and starts to apply the changes:

Now there isn’t much to do but drinking coffee or something as copying some 140.000 files is going to take a while. This session took about 40 minutes but was finished without any problems:

Then I do the same for Work: by typing:

MirrorCopy ALL CNT NOSOFT NOHARD FROM Work: TO Mos_Backup_2:Work

The process is the same as with System: so I don’t have to show it here.

And now we have a perfect backup (or more precisely a mirrored version of the system disk). The first time one does this it will take it’s sweet time if you got plenty of stuff to copy. But let’s see what happens if I mirrorcopy the system drive again:

Yep, it’s much much quicker. And now I know that what I got in the original place I also got in the new place. This of course means that things I delete from the original place also gets deleted in the new place so you need to keep that in mind. There is an option called NODEL (no delete) which I guess don’t delete anything in the destination place but I haven’t tried it.

Backing up everything was a very good move it turned out. A couple of weeks after I got my backups in order my USB hub started to glitch. When adding some new files it started to unplug and replug itself during a copy session which corrupted a bunch of files. By having them all backed up and neatly organized it was easy to replace the damaged files. Thinking about how many unreplaceable files I could have lost there makes my feet crawl …

Viruses

[Edit 151206] Added the authors homepage and some less important information. Thanks jPV!

One of the downsides of MorphOS’s compatibility with the classic Amiga is that a lot of it’s viruses are also compatible. The other day I got reminded of this and decided to check my system for viruses.

There isn’t a native virus checker, but for the same reason you can get Amiga viruses, you can also use some Amiga virus checkers. The one that is most up to date is from 2004 and is called VirusZ.

To get it to work, you need to download these files: VirusZ, xvs.library, xfdmaster and DisLib. When you have downloaded them, unpack them to RAM:.

Let’s start with DisLib. Go to the drawer.

Copy this library to Libs: (don’t copy it to Mossys:Libs as it’s reserved for system libraries).

Next, go to the xfd_User drawer. There will be an installer there. Double click on it.

Click Continue.

Just click Continue when you get this message.

Next, go to the xvs drawer and double click on it’s installer.

Click Continue.

A Quick Install is just fine. Click Continue. It will soon be done and you can quit the installer.

Next we go to the VirusZ drawer and click on it’s installer.

Click Continue.

Here you can decide where you want the program to be installed. A directory named VirusZ will be created automatically. I chose Applications/Programs.

Since we have already installed the necessary libraries VirusZ will tell us everything is fine.

Next we get this message. I chose to let the program send a message to Georg Höermann. But it doesn’t tell us if it works or not.

Here I chose No because I’m pretty certain that the page is gone by now.

[Edit] It turns out it’s still there, and still somewhat active. so go to their homepage and show them some support. Killing viruses is maybe not as sexy as making games, but it sure is an important endeavour.

Now it’s all installed and we can start using the program. Go to the drawer.

Double click on the VirusZ icon.

You will get this message. But since I’m pretty sure it’s because Amiga and MorphOS uses different kinds of file systems I decide to click Cancel. You will get this message every time you start the program. Then the program itself start as a small bar at the top.

Right click on the bar (you may have to move it slightly to make it respond, for some reason): Project –> Check Files…

Type sys: at the top white field and press Enter (or click on Volumes and chose sys: there).

Press the All button.

Press Ok.

Now let it check your various files.

After a while I get these Errors: messages. I guess there are files in MorphOS VirusZ simply can’t read. Maybe it’s intentional. Then it starts to find some viruses.

It turns out to be the HappyNewYear 96 virus (you can read about it here) that has been a pain in the neck for me since my Amiga days in the 90’s. To think that it has survived somehow and has now infected my MorphOS machine. Luckily it’s not that dangerous, but it’s still something I really don’t want.

Then after a little while (faster than I thought it would be) the entire Sys: drawer is checked.

At the bottom you see two buttons. Disinfect and One. I click on Disinfect.

Like magic, the virus is gone!

Next I mark the top file and change the One button at the bottom to All. Then I press Disinfect again.

Now all infected files are cured. Just to make sure I quit this window and let VirusZ check sys: again. This time it doesn’t find any viruses.

There are also settings if you right click on the program bar –> Preferences –> File check. This is the default setting.

As I understand it it only checks uncompressed files, so I decided to test checking all but the top two boxes and check for viruses again.

But this time when I check sys:, it crashes after a while. Trying the same thing again have the same results. The same goes for when I check work: as well. Eventually, I find a setting that works for work: but not for sys:. For sys:, you should use the default setting.

With this I was able to look into more files, even though the CPU had to work hard for it. I did run into a weird glitch. When I tried this on my USB HDD I did find the same virus in my backup folder (which was to be expected), as well as the Happy New Year 97 virus; a similar and also mostly harmless virus. But when I deleted the viruses, the HDD looked like it has been partly erased. All the icons was gone, most of the folders and all of my files. Naturally, I panicked, but after checking it in Windows it was all still there. And after a reboot in MorphOS everything was back to normal. That sure was a scare.

Note that there are a lot of more options but I haven’t tested them. Also, if the system crashes, use different settings. Only the default setting seems to work on everything.

[Edit] Also, if other virus checkers use the same xvs.library they will all be just as up to date as VirusZ. So you don’t need to use this program in order to be sure you have the latest virus list, but it does seem to be the most popular one nevertheless.

Well, now hopefully my (and your) system is virus free and stays that way. Don’t forget to run VirusZ from time to time just to be safe. Viruses have a nasty habit of returning in one form or another.

Connecting MorphOS to a network

File: Smart SMBFS

[Edit 151117] jPV was nice and gave me a new, better script. See bottom.

One of the few things I never bothered to learn anything about is how networks work. Mostly because it used to be such a complicated matter when I was young and into computers, and later in life when I started to actually need it it had already become a simple task. Just insert a LAN cable and let Windows do the job for you. So my knowledge about networking is pretty much zero.

At home we have several devices hooked up in a shared network. Some directly into a socket in the wall and some via a router (so more computers can access the internet). The other day, when looking for some files in my media centre I accidentally pressed the wrong button and found myself looking at a screen where the device asked me for my user name and password to connect to my PC. Until now I did not see a need to connect my PC and media centre via our home network, but once I accidentally saw that is was possible and easy I could no longer imagine not doing it. Just like so many times before this  new “need” came to me by accident.

I of course started to wonder if I could do the same with MorphOS. Or rather, if it was uncomplicated enough for someone like me to try it.

After asking around in the MorphOS IRC channel I got help from the MorphOS developer “bigfoot” who guided me to make this work. And it was not as hard as I thought it would be. There are several ways to do it, but this is the way I found to be easiest (though I did not look at them all, eager to just getting this to work).

First, go to Aminet and download Smart SMBFS. It’s a script that helps mount networks by using the in MorphOS built in SMBFS (don’t ask me what it stands for). Unpack it.

Click on the drawer.

Right click on Smart_SMBFS and chose Edit.

This is what the script looks like. Now it’s up to us to check out what our network is called. I’m using Windows 7 so I click on Network. There I see my media centre (called Mediacenter) and my computer (called Yasupc). Knowing this is not enough though. I need to know the name of some directories I need to access. In the media centres case it’s two hard drives called Douga and Momo. They are not password protected. In my PC:s case I decide to right click on some drawers –> Properties –> Sharing –> Share. Then I clicked on the listing –> chose Everyone –> clicked on Add –> pressed Share. Two got Permission level Read and one (“Shared”) Read/Write. The PC is also password protected. I add the information in the script above.

RUN >NIL: smbfs //mediacenter/douga workgroup foo volume Douga devicename smb0
RUN >NIL: smbfs //mediacenter/momo workgroup foo volume Momo devicename smb1
RUN >NIL: smbfs //yasupc/download workgroup foo volume A1_Download devicename smb2 username Yasu password xxx
RUN >NIL: smbfs //yasupc/video workgroup foo volume A1_Video devicename smb3 username Yasu password xxx
RUN >NIL: smbfs //yasupc/shared workgroup foo volume A1_Shared devicename smb4 username Yasu password xxx

RUN >NIL: is used so that the program runs in the background (not giving me any data I don’t need to see anyway). Then we start the program SMBFS. Then we add the paths. After that we write workgroup foo for some reason. Then we give the device a name which will be shown under MorphOS. And then we give it a proper name so the system can tell them apart. In the case of my PC we also add my user name and password (not really xxx) which is the same you use when you log in to Windows.

Note that the lines that starts with “;” will not be executed.

If everything is correct then you just need to save and double click on the icon. Now this is what we see on my desktop.

Now when we click on Douga we see the correct folders. We can also move files between the systems if we want (since my media centre isn’t read/write protected), or play movies through the network. My PC has got the folder Shared (“A1_Shared”) so I can move files between the systems. Even though MorphOS is 32 bit and my Windows is 64 bit this works pretty well. I get problem only sometimes with copying files, but I suspect is has something to do with the file names. What is good and not good to use is different between the systems. Renaming the files usually solves the problem.

This was easy enough. Now, how do we shut it down?

Start Shell and write “status”. You will see a list of processes. Look for one of your shared networks and type “Break <process number>”. For example “Break 5”. Now this process should be gone when you type “status” again, as well as not showing on the desktop any more. In this case, “Break 5” killed Douga.

This is easy enough, but it would be better if you could quit all of them at once. No problem! Go to the Smart_SMBFS drawer and create a text file there. Type these lines.

RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//mediacenter/douga'”`
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//mediacenter/momo'”`
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//yasupc/download'”`
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//yasupc/video'”`
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//yasupc/shared'”`

Save it as Quit_Smart_SMBFS and copy the icon from Smart_SMBFS so it turns into an executable script. Right click on the new icon and make sure it looks like this.

If it does, then all the networked drives will quit when the icon is clicked on. Now your drawer should look like this (I’ve added an icon for my text about how to quit manually, in case I forget). Sometimes after quitting it doesn’t start again on the first try. Try again, it usually works the second time.

The good thing about this approach, besides being simple, is that it doesn’t matter if the PC or media centre or both isn’t on. SMBFS will only start those that it sees and ignore the rest. So if only your PC is on, it will access only your PC. If only your media centre is on, it will only access that. If nothing is on, nothing happens. And you can put these icons in a panel or on your desktop for easy access.

Note that I have not been able to access my MorphOS machine in Windows. This is probably because MorphOS runs a file system Windows doesn’t support.

[Edit] Here is a new script that will do the same as above (thanks jPV!). But instead of two script you can use this one to both start and stop SMBFS. We are using the same shares as above in this example.

IF NOT EXISTS env:smbrem
RUN >NIL: smbfs //mediacenter/douga workgroup foo volume Douga devicename smb0
RUN >NIL: smbfs //mediacenter/momo workgroup foo volume Momo devicename smb1
RUN >NIL: smbfs //yasupc/download workgroup foo volume A1_Download devicename smb2 username Yasu password xxx
RUN >NIL: smbfs //yasupc/video workgroup foo volume A1_Video devicename smb3 username Yasu password xxx
RUN >NIL: smbfs //yasupc/shared workgroup foo volume A1_Shared devicename smb4 username Yasu password xxx
SetEnv smbrem 1
ELSE
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//wdtvlive/douga'”`
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//wdtvlive/momo'”`
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//aresone/download'”`
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//aresone/video'”`
RUN >NIL: break `status com “smbfs ‘//aresone/shared'”`
Unsetenv smbrem
ENDIF

Just use the same procedure as I did when making the Quit_Smart_SMBFS script and you will have an icon to start and quit this script.

Wings Remastered Demo

Download demo (MorphOS).
Preorder game (download links for AmigaOS 4 and AROS x86.

As you may have read 2 blog posts ago Daniel Müßener was working on a port of Wings Remastered. Well, now a demo version has been released, and you can also pre-order the game for $54.95 (see link above). For that price you will get a boxed hard cover.

I have of course tried out the demo version for you. First you need to download it (see link above) and unpack it to whereever you want. Open the drawer and double click on the icon.

First you will see who is responsible for this port.

And then the whole game.

Which transfer itself back in time …

War may be fun in games, but people actually die there, or worse.

Remember, only 11 years before the first world war did humanity fly for the first time.

Then the title screen.

This is the main menu.

We will start by clicking the Options button.

The Sound option even has an option to switch to the old Amiga soundtrack from 1990. There is also a Voice Acting option, but it doesn’t work in this demo version.

Depending on your hardware you might want to switch off Shadows and Weather Effects. Even though nothing is optimised in this version the game runs well on my Mac Mini 1.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM and 64 MB VRAM in 1024×768. The CPU is at 100% usage all the time though. I have this game in window mode only so I can grab pictures easier. Full Screen Mode works really well.

Gameplay has the usual, self explanatory settings.

By pressing Set Controls you can change the keyboard settings.

Here you can select saved games to load or delete (by pressing the trash can that appears).

Next we have Language settings.

We go back to the Main menu and click on Memorial. Here you will see your fallen players. Chances are hight that you will die. A lot. But you can still play by adding another player and play the game from where your last flying ace died. I havn’t died yet though.

We go back to Main menu again and click on Credits. There you will see this before the usual credits. Kenneth Melville was not only an original member of Cinemaware, Wings Remastered was the last game he oversaw.

We go back to Main menu and press Play.

Since we have no players, we press Add Pilot and start by naming your pilot and press Ok.

Next you need to decide in what areas you want to be better at. Even when I played the original Wings I never really noticed a difference when playing with the settings. But I guess there is a point with it. For maybe obvious reasons I go for being a better sharpshooter. Then we press Ok.

Normally, you need to train your pilot before going out on real missions. But not in this demo. Click Training and chose your pilot. Now he/she will be trained (you get your “wings” on the right of the name). Then click Join Squadron and on your pilot.

Now you will see some current statistics. Since you are new here, you are naturally at the very bottom.

Next you will be greeted by Col. Farrah. He speaks in the final version, but not in the demo.

Since you got the job of keeping the squadron journal, you will be able to write down your thought on it.

It’s time to shoot at stuff. You get ready for your dangerous mission.

The message above may be a bug because it really doesn’t make any sense here.

I keep shooting at crates and barrels with no enemies in sight. OK, it’s maybe not too exciting but this is a demo remember. The point is that it works well and looks pretty good. We can expect that it will look even better later. But you don’t get to play for long before you get this screen.

Yep, this is a teaser demo. Every mission ends with this message. You can’t win. But the game does continue after that.

Patrolling is a routine job. But no one never knows what can happen during a war.

A sitting duck! You blast it with all your might. But in this demo you can’t shoot it down nor crash into it. But just like the mission above you get to see a glimpse of what the final game will be like. It runs really smooth on my, by todays standard, low spec machine.

Because I can’t win the fight, and you get the pre-order reminder at some point, you will have failed two missions in a row. Col. Farrah isn’t pleased.

You write your thoughts in the journal (I’m not sure if the content is the correct one. Maybe another bug? Not that it matters much at all).

Next we have a bombing mission. Which makes this thought bubble a little weird.

This is the final type of mission, bombing. Three different types in total. Just like the previous, it’s not perfected but shows of the potential.

Well, that was a quick look at the Wings Remastered Demo. There is nothing else to show than the Quit button at the Main menu. Which is a perfect metaphore for you to quit reading this blog, download the demo, get impressed and then pre-order the game! Unless Cinemaware get enough pre-orders the port will be cancelled.

FPSE – Playstation emulator and BSzili’s multibutton pad plugin

[Edit 151030] Corrected some facts about memory card saving and digital/analog switch button. Added FPSE homepage at the bottom.

Files: FPSE, joypad plugin

[Edit] You can read a Spanish translation of the blog post here.

As I’ve written earlier, even if Commodore and the Amiga CD32 had survived in 1994 they would have been no match against the Sony Playstation. To be fair, it would have been left in the dust by the SEGA Saturn and Nintendo 64 as well; two game consoles that are actually technically not far from the Playstation, and in the case of the Saturn even a lot better in many ways.

But for whatever reason the Playstation came out as the winner, with over 100 million units sold worldwide (compare to the Amigas total sale of some 5.5 million worldwide) and with a library of some 8000 titles. Nintendo 64 sold less than 33 million units and the Saturn not even 10 million.

The Playstation was also the first gaming console I bought, around 1998, after have being Amiga exclusive for a number of years. This console does not only have a nice library of very good games, it also has this charm you only find in consoles where hardware limitations force the developers to be creative. Even after almost 20 years a lot of these games – while technically inferior to their modern counterparts – are still really nice to look at. As well as play. But I got rid of it some years ago as it was just collecting dust in the closet.

FPSE
One day I got this urge to play some Playstation games and I found out that there is one for MorphOS: the Free Playstation Emulator, or FPSE. Naturally I had to try it out. You can download it here.

Start with extracting the file to where ever you want.

Double click on the FPSE icon.

Settings
Here you will find more settings than you can eat. I will not bother to explain what all the settings do. There is the manual for that. I’m gonna concentrate on how to get it to work properly.

CPU
Keep the CPU settings like this.

BIOS
Keep the settings like the picture below. If you look at File you will see that it links to a file. It doesn’t exist. It’s the original Playstation BIOS and is of course not provided since it’s proprietary. This is not needed to play games though, but having it makes for a better experience. You can either extract it yourself from your Playstation machine, or do the unethical/lazy thing and download it from our friend the Internet. The file scph1001.bin is the recommended one. Get it and insert it in the FPSE/bios drawer (or where ever you like).

CD
The only one you need to bother with here is changing the Locale to fit your game (Europe, Japan or USA). But even this doesn’t seem to be picky as I’ve got several American games working just fine on Europe setting. But if your game doesn’t work, having the wrong locale can be the reason.

MCD
You don’t have to bother with these two. Even if you delete them FPSE will just make new ones if needed. It’s a memory card slot emulation of sorts. However, they don’t work at all. But don’t worry, there is a way of saving which we will come to.

[Edit] Saving to memory cards work if you have the Emulation switched off in BIOS. There is still an alternative way of saving which we will come to.

Misc
Keep Anti blanker on if you use screen blankers.

Plugin
Here we have a bunch of relevant settings. Use the same plugins as I do.

GPU
The most relevant settings here are FullScreen (or or off) and Resolution.

SPU
Keep the settings like this.

JOY0
As the Playstation has a lot more buttons to play with than the Amiga supports, the solution so far has been to either use the keyboard or mix the keyboard and a joypad.

I got an XBox 360 controller that is fully supported by MorphOS (not the wireless one though), so it should be an excellent standin for a Playstation controller. But it wasn’t supported by FPSE. So I asked the guy behind the emulatior if he could fix it. He hasn’t worked on FPSE for years, but he did have a new lowlevel.library that should enable the controller to work. Sadly, it didn’t. So I asked Szilárd “BSzili” Biró if he thought there was a way to fix it. He said if he could get the hand of the SDK (Software Development Kit) for the plugin he could probably make it work. So I asked the original author again and he agreed to upload the SDK on his homepage. After that, BSzili started working and after a couple of days, with me acting as a beta tester, he got it all working.

You can download his plugin here. It will make your XBox 360 controller work with Playstation games (if it doesn’t, see below), and also in theory other similar MorphOS supported controllers as well. Since it comes with a lot of pictures is can be a good idea to have them all in their own drawer, like I have done. After you have done that, chose the plugin and press Configure.

This is what the plugin looks configured. To configure it, press Change and follow the instructions. The only button you don’t have to care about is the Analog button as it doesn’t do anything.

[Edit] According to BSzili this button is used for some games where you have to chose between digital and analog stick, like Quake 2. For most games the game will work with both simultaneously.

Press OK when you are done.

JOY1
Here you can add the settings for player 2. I have no idea if two controllers can work together (I don’t own two), but you can let the second player use the keyboard. Here is an example of how the keyboard layout can look like.

If you plan to play alone it’s better to use the joyll.dll plugin instead as it act as a dummy controller. You can also chose the joymous.dll plugin if you want to play a game that has mouse support.

CD
Here you should be able to get ingame CD music (that is, on CD tracks) to work but I havn’t had any success yet.

PAR
This emulates a parallel port. This plugin is a dummy standin, which is the reason for this text.

ABOUT
Some basic information.

Getting the controller to work
The problem with the XBox 360 controller is that it’s not full plug and play (or Autoconfig in Amiga language). When you plug it in, nothing happens. The controller will just blink. To get it to work you need to right click on your mouse button in Ambient and go to Settings –> System Settings.

Press USB.

Go to Classes.

Click on Dir Scan and look at the bottom.

Your controller should have stoppen blinking now and only the top right light at the X button should be on. Press Save. Now this controller should work every time you reboot your computer.

That’s it. Now everything should work.

Playing some games
Next step of course is to have some games to play. You can either find them on CD at any place that sells used retro games, or you can download them from the Internet. Here is a few I’ve gotten my hands on these last few days.

(note: all game pictures are shamelessly stolen from various sites as my screen grabbing tool didn’t want to work properly)

Adventures of Lomax
Remember Lemmings? If you have ever used an Amiga the answer is: of course you do! This is a platform spinoff that has zero to do with the original game, besides it being populated by the familiar lemmings. Simple gameplay and really nice graphics makes this a must try.

“Let’s Go!”

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
The nobleman Kain is ambushed and killed by a band of bandits. A being known as Mortanius offers to turn him into a vampire so he can escape death and get revenge. Kain accepts, is reborn a vampire and slay his murderers. But only then does he realize the cost of his decision,

This is a top down hack-n-slash RPG type adventure, and a really good one too. I remember sitting at my friend Lelle’s house for days watching him play this atmospheric game.

Kain is trying to get a drink, but the bartender refuse because it’s getting dark.

Kain is killed by bandits.

Kain accepts being turned into a vampire.

Reborn with a thirst for blood.

Kain can actually suck someone dry from a distance. Which we used to do to these poor prisoners.

Command and Conquer
A meteorite crash near the river Tiber in Italy, bringing a highly toxic and sponge like self replicating mineral to our planet. But this mineral is also extremely valuable as it traps precious metals within itself. Quick to see it’s potential is the ancient cult Brotherhood of Nod who quickly develops the technology to extract these minerals and soon owns half of the fields in the world. They have their eyes set on world domination, which forces the United Nations Security Council to form Global Defence Initiative with the mission to face NOD advances by force.

C&C was a game changer when it came in 1995, and spawned a whole bunch of C&C clones over the next decade. Including the Amiga game Napalm by ClickBOOM in 1999. Your job is mostly to build and manage bases, gathering and allocating resources in order to buy new building and technology. This will give you stronger and more able weapons to destroy your enemies.

While the game itself is fun and well made, it doesn’t really work with a joypad. Which is bad since it lacks mouse support.

Remember the days when real people acted in the video clips?

A GDI barrack with some soldiers and vehicles defending it.

“Let’s attack that stinking NOD base!”

NOD really likes architecture.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert
In 1946 Albert Einstein manage to travel back in time to 1924 and assassinate Hitler in order to stop the second world war and the holocaust. But with Hitler gone, Soviet Union rise up as an even more powerful and aggressive threat to the world.

Red Alert is simply put C&C but much much better. It also have mouse support, which makes this game as good as the PC version!

Hitler meets Albert Einstein, seconds before his death.

The Allies plans an attack against the reds.

“Better dead than red!”

“Be a hero of the workers and invade stuff!”

What happens when the 5 year plan doesn’t work.

Gundam Battle Assault 1 & 2
Who doesn’t like a good beat-em-up? How about a good beet-em-up in mecha suits (huge, humanoid tanks)?

“Better red than dead!”

Unfair play?

That’s a huge gun. Overcompensating for something?

The green mechas always got their ass kicked in Gundam. Wanna change that?

Klonoa – Door to Phantomile
While playing outside, the cat like kid Klonoa one day finds a ring. Inside the ring is a small, blue creature named Hewpoe who befriends Klonia. One night, Klonoa dreams of a crash on top of the mountain, and the very same thing happens for real the next day. Klonoa and Hewpoe travels to investigate.

This game belongs to a genre that is more or less dead now: the 2.5D platformer. That is, the world is in 3D but the perspective is classic 2D platformer style. While this game never got that famous, it should have been for the Playstation what Mario Bros is for the NES.

“What’s this ring doing here?”

“Hi! Let’s be friends!”

“Oh, that was a scary dream!”

“Get inside the ring. I’m gonna need your help.”

Flying green things are a common sight here.

You can use the ring to shoot out Hewpoe. This will trap the enemy, which you can use as a projectile.

Slide.

Like any good platformer, you need boss fights.

MediEvil
Despite being the material of legends and songs, Sir Daniel Fortesque was a failure as a knight. He died in the battlefield as the very first casualty and now he can’t ascend to the Hall of Heroes because of this. Then the evil Zarok awakens the dead for his army, accidently reanimate Dan in the process. Though now mostly bones, he still uses this opportunity to defeat Zarok and finally find peace.

There are plenty of horrible looking 3D Playstation games. This isn’t one of them. Though the graphics is indeed dated, it’s still a very charming 3D hack-and-slash game.

My, what an impressive tomb I have.

The graveyard is … not creepy at all …

“Fighting zombies is what I do best!”

“Yes, I’m coming for you!”

Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee
RaptureFarms is the biggest and most evil meat processing plant in all of Oddworld. Abe and his fellow Mudokons are slaves in the factory, producing a bunch of meaty treats that are quickly going extinct. So the owners decides to make the Mudokons the next big product. Overhearing this, Abe flees and tries to bring his kind with him.

This is a puzzle platformer, where you have to use your environment to your advantage. And also your ability to telepathically control other creatures. This game is just as earily creepy as it is subliminally funny.

“You gonna do what with my rump?!”

The scenery is dark but gorgeous.

The outside doubly so.

There is no shortage of things that wants to kill you.

Pocket Fighter
This is Street Fighter characters turned into cute figures fighting each other Street Fighter style. Plus upgrades in the form of gems. While aiming at being funny and cute, it’s also a pretty good one-on-one fighting game.

“Remember us?”

You got balls with special powers in them. At the bottom are the special moves power bars which gets stronger with gems.

You can find goodies in drawers.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
This is a tile matching one-on-one puzzle fighter, based on the same characters as Pocket Fighter. While there are numerous similar games out there, few are as fun to play as this one.

Some familiar faces.

Gameplay is easy: stack as many of the same color as possible. Use balls to break them. Broken gems are transfered to your enemy as extra, for five turns unusuable gems.

“OK, stop it. It’s not funny anymore!”

“I’ll be back”

Resident Evil 2
Two months after the initial outbreak of the T-virus bio-weapon, the whole of Raccoon City is overrunned by zombie like infected. Leon S. Kennedy is a rookie cop arriving at the town for his first day at work. Claire Redfield has also just arrived as she is looking for her brother. Overwhelmed by the zombies, they team up and tries to escape by car, but crashes and end up having to survive the horror by themselves.

This is maybe the most famous Playstation title out there. While the gameplay, voice acting and camera angles feels pretty stale this third person shooter makes it up with beautiful surroundings and hours of zombie killing. The story is good too. And you can also use the analog stick with FPSE.

“Don’t come any closer!”

“Well, that car ride didn’t go as planned …”

The gun store keeper is naturally a little jumpy.

Creepy crawling zombies.

Have you ever seen a police station that looks like this?

The police are not doing too good either.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
24 hours before the events in Resident Evil 2, S.T.A.R.S. special forces member Jill Valentine tries to escape Racoon City as the zombies are devouring the still living population. Both the police and paramilitary forces tries to stop the infected, but end up being overrunned. Jill doesn’t only have to survive the zombies, but also a 3 meter tall monster that for some reason is out to get S.T.A.R.S. members.

Before the Resident Evil series became pure zombie killing, this gem in the series was released. While the problems of the previous game hasn’t been dealt with (especially the voice acting), the good parts are still just as good. Including the analog stick.

“Kill ’em! Kill ’em all!”

Jill Valentine and some zombie.

Too bad for him, but at least he left a present.

Someone really should clean the streets up.

It’s not paranoia if someone really is out to get you.

Tekken 3
One of the best 3D one-on-one fighting games out there for the Playstation.

“Round one. Fight!”

“Winners don’t take drugs.”

Some characters are more strange than others.

The weirdest fighting mode ever.

Worms
This was an Amiga original in 1995, but thanks to it’s huge success it was later ported to other systems (including the Playstation). This is a turn based artillery game. Two teams or more take turns in guessing the projectile of their weapons and try to inflict damage on their opponents before time runs out. This version looks very much like the Amiga original and it works perfectly well with a joypad.

Nothing says “the beach” like soft drinks, croissants and … armed worms?

Saving games

As you probably remember, I mentioned that the saving function doesn’t work in FPSE. But there is something better. By pressing F2 and F3 you can go up and down between slot 0 to 9. Chose one and press F4. Now, if you go to that slot and press F1, the game will load exactly where you pressed F4. No need to save manually in a meny or go to a save spot. Just press F1. But remember, the game has to be loaded for it to work. As the slots doesn’t say which game is saved you probably should take notes. Sadly though you only got 10 slots so use them carefully.

Problems
Though FPSE will give you a whole bunch of new games to play with and hours of fun, it’s not in any way perfect. First, it’s not that easy to find games that works. There are several different ways to save the games digitally and not all of them work. I’ve found that games saved in .BIN/.CUE format has the highest chance of working (unless the CD based music is saved as .BIN files. I can’t get them to work). Some .CCD/.IMG/.SUB combinations works, but mostly not .ECM files does not work at all. So it will probably take some trial and errors before you find a version that works. A lot of games are also a little quirky.

The sound in movies are out of sync, and it progressively gets worse. Furthermore, some games just glitches out. Like Metal Slug X where the buttons refuse to work. Or Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver which has timing issues and is prone to crash.

But remember that if some games refuse to start, you can sometimes get them to work by turning Emulation in BIOS off.

Quitting
Just press ESC.

Some final words
If you like this plugin and want to support more development for MorphOS, give BSzili a donation with Paypal via his homepage.

You can visit the authors web page here (you can download FPSE for 68k Amigas, AmigaOS 4 and AROS too).

Amiga30 at Neuss and Commodore Fan Club Japan

[Edit 151029] Changed some factual errors about the reason Wings Battlefield got made. Added the names of the MorphOS Team members.

[Edit] You can now read a French translation of this blog post here (with some additional information).

I have been away for over a month meeting my inlaws in Japan. Even though I did bring my Powerbook with me I ended up having very little time playing with MorphOS. But I did get the opportunity to visit a Commodore Fan Club meeting in Okubo (Tokyo) the 20th of September. If you read my old blog post about Japan you know Amiga was never big there, but apparently it had more love than I originally thought. Big enough for a meeting.

The meeting was inside this building (Kantou IT Software Kenpo Kaikan, 関東ITソフトウェア健保会館):

Beyond the glas door I was greated by this:

I followed the sign to this door:

Inside was a couple of Japanese people, plus one Italian living in Japan showing off his A1200:

While me and the Italian chatted about things Amiga the other Japanese where chatting with each other:

It turns out that most of them are ex Commodore employees. High up ones even. And they had even met Jay Miner in the States before he died in 1994. Naturally they are still die hard Commodore fans.

The meeting started, and everyones attention turned to the A1200 which started to show off some games and demos running via WHDLoad:

After that I got a chance to show off my Powerbook running MorphOS (sorry, no pictures). For the Japanese this was the first time they saw it running on real hardware and they where really impressed. They seemed most impressed by the fact that it runned natively (not in emulation) and that it could execute 68k based programs. They all said they would get their own PPC Macs to run MorphOS on it. I hope they will.

After that we was shown a program that was meant to enable Amigas to run Japanese native texts (hiragana, katakana and kanji). They run it in emulation on a laptop but couldn’t get pass the installation. It broke down somewhere. But we still got a laugh as the installation program played an upbeat song when started, something I’ve never seen (heard) being done before with an Amiga program:

After that we got an demonstration of the C64 Direct to TV. A fun gimmic but the included games where mostly crap:

It was a nice meeting indeed which lasted for about an hour. After that we went to a local Chinese restaurant and kept talking about Amiga, computers and everyday life stuff. It was nice meeting the guys and getting some more knowledge about how Commodore was in Japan:

Amiga30 in Neuss, Germany

A couple of days after getting back from Japan it was time to go abroad again. This time to Germany to attend the Amiga30 event in Neuss. I was going there as an exhibitor, showing off our magazine Amiga Forum:

As you can see I also brought my Mac Mini with me, showing off some MorphOS demos. Even though my table recieved very little attention and interest it didn’t matter. I was away looking at the other tables and talking to people as much as I could anyway. It was a pretty big event, and this was the view from my table:

As you can see there was a couple of nice A4000T and A1200T (right) and to the left was the cancelled Walker prototype. This was Petro Tyschtschenkos table and he was busy writing autographs and chatting with people. He is after all part of the Amiga fame. R.J. Mical and Dave Haynie was also there but I never got a chance to even say hello to them. Here is the Walker:

While a lot of people call the Walker a design disaster, I’ve always liked it. With the right specs (it’s specs weren’t good sadly), advertisement and timing it could have predated the much praised iMac. Of course it didn’t happen as Escom went bankrupt before that. There was also a glass framed piece of the first A1200 motherboard that came out of Escom. It was broken from the start, but it was still the first Amiga made after Commodore went bust:

Right next to me sat Daniel Müßener of Cherry Darling/Golden Code. He was showing off his numerous games but also a small demo for an upcoming port of Wings Remastered. As you might know, Wings RM was a Kickstarter game that was bringing the classic Amiga game up to modern standards. After several tries they managed to get it funded and one reached stretch goal was NG Amiga ports (by third party). However, since Wings RM was based on Unity such a port would be pretty much impossible.

This prompted Daniel to make his own Wings clone called Wings Battlefield just to show them. After some time Danile was contacted by the developer who asked him to make the port. Though he can reuse some of his own code for the game the 3D engine has to be for the most part a complete rewrite. Talk about ambitious!

[Edit] See comment below by Daytona675x for corrections about the reason he made Wings Battlefield.

Here is his table (games being played is Battle Squadron and Wings Battlefield):

AmiKit was also there demonstrating their Amiga emulator AmiKit 10 (this one showing AmigaOS 4.1 FE Classic):

You could also buy music CD:s based on Amiga classics:

… some new, original games:

… new cool cases for your Nemo motherboard:

… huge passive cooling for the same motherboard:

… a MIST FPGA computer (hardware emulated Amiga):

… or a bunch of old Phase5 prototype motherboards:

Because I was an exhibitor I didn’t have enough time to look and ask around every table. And when I had time, there was usually already a lot of people there talking to the people in charge, not giving me much change to talk to them myself. The fair was pretty packed:

The highlight of the event has to have been the upcoming X5000 computer. Sadly, A-Eon didn’t let the viewers try AmigaOS 4 on it but instead showed off some demos and movies running simultaneously:

ACube also showed off their new motherboard, codename Tabor. I didn’t get a chance to see it myself though.

In the afternoon, when things was a little less hectic I got a visit from Mark “bigfoot” Olsen, one of the core MorphOS developers (and a terribly nice guy) and we ended up having a long conversation about MorphOS, problems, future plans and whatnot:

The MorphOS table showed off some computers running MorphOS. Here is a maxed out Powerbook 1.67 Ghz and a classic Amiga 4000 running MorphOS 3.8. The last supported MorphOS for classic Amigas is 1.4.5, but the Team has been able to get the latest version to work too. But according to them it’s not a painless process to get it to work which is why it’s not released to the public. To the far right is an iBook:

There was also an ACube SAM 460 running MorphOS on it. The SAM 460 is the first currently selling motherboard that is supported by MorphOS (since version 3.8) in almost a decade:

MorphOS is also working on a port to the above mentioned X5000, which people where allowed to try out:

I also got a chance of course to talk to the other members of MorphOS Team and it was such a nice thing to be able to meet them face to face. In fact, this was the highlight for me since there was so much to talk about. They also showed off a working copy of an upcoming MorphOS port of Pagestream, MIDI support and of course MorphOS 3.10 beta. Plus a bunch of other software in the works.

I wish I had taken notes and more pictures, but there was simple too much to see, do and people to talk to. I had a great time and it was nice to see that MorphOS and the Team are doing such a great job. I hope I will have a chance to do something like this again.

MorphOS Team members (left to right): Antoine Debourg, Guido Mersmann, Nicholai Benalal, Karoly Balogh, Jacek Piszczek, Ilkka Lehtoranda, Pawel Stefanski (squatting), Frank Mariak, Andre Siegel and Mark Olsen.

New game: Tower 57

There is right now a kickstarter for a neo-retro style “Chaos Engine” clone out there called Tower 57. I liked the style from the start and pledged myself an “early bird”. But then the developer dropped a very unexpected hint: he wanted to port the game (if the kickstarter is successful) to AmigaOS 4. Not to make any real money out of it (there isn’t any), but just because he grew up with the Amiga and was happy to hear that development was still ongoing.

Naturally, I pointed out about MorphOS and AROS. He hadn’t heard about them but was open for porting to those too. I told him I knew a guy who programmed NG Amiga games (Daniel Müssener of Cherry Darling fame) and they started to exchange e-mails. Since the game is mostly done in C++ a good port is very much possible. Today I got an e-mail confirming that an AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS port is a streach goal for the game, that Daniel will be the NG programmer (which by now is a confirmed seal of quality) and that the stretch goal is a mere 1000 euro extra, because they really want to make these versions a reality.

But there is only about two weeks left and they have only reached roughly half way. Log into Kickstarter (or join. All you need is a paypal account) and pledge now so we can make this a reality! New games with such a big budget for MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 only happens once every red moon. Click on the teaser picture below to get to the kickstarter.

Sorting stuff with MorphOS

A couple of months ago I purchased a 1 TB 2.5″ external USB HDD in order to sort all of my stuff from my various computers into one single, well organised place. The idea is that every computer will eventually have the exact same system. So when I add new stuff (pictures, videos, backups etc) all I need to do is dragging the folder to the HDD and it will add the new stuff.

I stop here to add something which might be of interest to you. Since MorphOS doesn’t handle NTFS 100% (the default Windows HDD file system) I chose to repartition the HDD to FAT32 instead. FAT32 is pretty much supported by everything. It handles up to 4 TB partitions, though it can’t handle files bigger than 4 GB. Unless you work with heavy video editing this won’t be much of a problem. I do have a couple of movies that are bigger than that, but I can’t play them in MorphOS anyway (too CPU heavy) so I will save them somewhere else.

However, Windows 7 doesn’t format FAT32 for some petty reason. So I had to find a third party program, preferbly gratis, somewhere else. After some trial and error I found EasyUS Partition Master Free that does this. It was also a very helpful tool in enlarging one partition and merging two in Windows, since Windows own tools refused to do that.

Back to topic.

Organizing my videos, programs and pictures was pretty easy. What ended up taking the better part of two weeks (!) was all the MP3:s I had all over the place.

I got my first Windows PC back in 2000, after selling my last Amiga. Up until then I hadn’t care much for MP3:s, but now I started to collect them like crazy. Since I never runned out of space the number of songs just kept piling up. I also got my first MP3-player at the time, but it could only handle 32 MB so it was pretty easy to keep track on what songs to add.

Then in 2004 I finally got a MP3-player with 1 GB storage (I still have it, but I have lost the cables and software). This was a huge improvement but it also force me to face a challange: I had some 6 GB of music. Only 1/6th of that could be stored in the player. I solved this by creating a separate MP3-player drawer with 1 GB music, for easy transfer and organizing. The result was that I for ten or so years kept adding and deleting songs in that drawer. Eventually, I had deleted a lot of songs I liked and added songs I grew tired with. So I started over again with a new drawer, adding old and new songs but still had to prioritize due to limited space. It’s not until now I have a MP3 player large enough to include every MP3 I got. So when I decided to merge all these different drawers into one organized system it meant I had to go through tens of tousands of songs in order to delete duplicates, poor versions of songs I like and songs I just had for some reason but don’t listen to.

A tedious job to say the least!

But I soon found out that it was a pretty easy to do in MorphOS:

As you can see I have three drawers. The top one is for songs and albums I don’t listen too but decided to keep anyway. The one to the bottom left is one of my old MP3 drawers and the one to the bottom right is the new organizing system, on my external HDD (top right. I named it Osaka. If you like anime, you know what it means 🙂 ). I also started MPlayer and added the drawer(s) that I was currently checking in order to more easily listenand switch between songs. I also used the very handy search function in MorphOS (which is a button above the folders). This helped me make sure I had already copied the songs to it’s final destination, or confirmed if the song in question is the same as the saved one.

Unlike Windows, you have to write “*” before and after the file name if you want it to look for any file with the written words in it. Without the “*”, it will search for that exact file and that exact file only. So unless you have a file called “eat world” (as in our example in the picture above) it won’t find it. Also, if you use “*” only in the beginning of the word it will look for any file that ends with “eat world”, and if you use “*” in the end it will look for file names that begins with “eat world”. This allows for a flexibility that doesn’t exist in Windows, even though I usually end up using “*” at the beginning and at the end anyway.

I also have OWB iconized for quick access when I’m unsure where to put a song or a band. I’m no musician so for me a lot of genres sounds the same, or almost the same to me. In the end, I even had to invent some genres. I can’t tell the difference between house and trance for example so I made three genres besides computer music, electric rock and goa: electronica vocal (where people sing), electronica non vocal (where people say maybe one word or one sentence) and electronica pure (no speach whatsoever). It turned out to be a good choice (at least for me) since these three kinds of genres are easily distinguable. After much work, this is how it turned out:

I also created sub catalogues for languages, albums and sometimes sub categories (like audio books, lectures and so on in Speach).

After working like this day in and day out it felt good that MorphOS was as good as it was for this task. I do think Windows could do it pretty much as easily, but Windows is, unlike MorphOS, a very sluggish, non responsive and slow system. It felt much better to start MorphOS and be ready to work in about a minute, unlike Windows 10 or so (remember, just because Windows have started it doesn’t mean that all the background programs have finished loading, which really adds to it’s sluggish response time).

The only real disadvantage was that sometime MorphOS freezes when transfering a lot of files, or a few really big files. It happens at random (sometimes not at all) so I pretty much had to copy individual folders just to be on the safe side. When copying freezes the file will be corrupt and you have to redo the copying process. If you don’t really know which file has been damaged, the only thing left is to start over in order to be sure no files are corrupt. But if you copy one folder at the time you will at least don’t have to copy too much of the same files. Since MorphOS reboots quickly you will be at it again within a minute.

This sounds annoying, and it was at the beginning, but after I started copying individual folders I quickly got used to it, and the freezing became much less frequent as well.

One advantage on the other hand was that when I tried copying in Windows instead it had a lot of problems. Several files had characters it didn’t like and simply refused to copy it. Other files was buried within a large number of subfolders with long folder names and Windows refused to copy those too. Where Windows just refuse to do anything, MorphOS copies correctly without a fuzz.

Also, I have several files that have Japanese names in it. MorphOS can’t read Japanese so it shows as complete jibberish. However, when I copied the distorted file names in MorphOS and then checked them out in Windows the file names was shown correctly. This was an unexpected and welcomed surprise indeed. I expected the file names to be corrupted in the process, but there was no such thing.

To summarize: while MorphOS has problems with occational freezes and not being able to read Japanese file names, Windows is sluggish to boot up and it have it’s own problems which results in files not being copied at all. In the end, I prefered using MorphOS instead for this huge task. This shows that even with tousands of full time paid developers you might actually do something less well than a handful of hobby programmers working out of love.