Amikit style blob/OS for Atari?

[leech]

Has anyone (outside of EasyMiNT which always seemed 'almost there') made an integrated OS with applications blob for the Atari ST family?

I know the typical ST is pretty much limited to 4MB of RAM, but some of the higher end ones can get much higher. Installing MiNT by hand isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world, and it seems if you happen to mix it with some other things you can make it crash so easily.

Since EasyMiNT is no longer being developed, and I know when I installed it on my Falcon, there were still quite a few things I had to tweak for it to work right, I was just wondering if anyone else has attempted to make a full desktop. Maybe include some of the abandoned things like Atari Works, CAB, NVDI, etc.

Maybe even do some with hardware variants. Not sure how you could do some auto-detection of hardware, like VME boards and such, but that'd be cool.

Reason I bring this up, is because I've been trying to use Hatari to build up a setup for my TT030 with MiNT or Jinnee or various things (never have gotten MagiC working on anything). I keep getting random crashes, or various other conflicts, auto folder sorting, etc.

I tried VanillaMiNT, but it seems to be targeted toward standard ST(e) systems.

[joska]

ST is the only (almost) platform VanillaMiNT *isn't* targeted towards. It's made primarily for Falcons and TT's.

What are you missing in VanillaMiNT? And what is an "integrated OS with applications blobs"?

[leech]

ST is the only (almost) platform VanillaMiNT *isn't* targeted towards. It's made primarily for Falcons and TT's.

What are you missing in VanillaMiNT? And what is an "integrated OS with applications blobs"?

Actually when I attempted VanillaMiNT on my TT it just crashed on start up. Or maybe I was trying it in Hatari first.

What I meant with application blobs is to have a workable system right out of the gate, like a Linux distro usually is. Internet, office Suite, etc. If it fits on like a 2GB SD card, just dd the image over and have a workable system with multitasking, etc.

[Eero Tamminen]

Actually when I attempted VanillaMiNT on my TT it just crashed on start up. Or maybe I was trying it in Hatari first.

MiNT will crash with Hatari TT emulation. To use MiNT with Hatari TT emulation, you need one-liner patch to disable bus errors from accessing SCC regs which aren't yet implemented by Hatari (MiNT console setup pokes all serial HW devices, but doesn't handle them not actually existing).

Easier is just to use MiNT with Hatari Falcon emulation, set CPU speed to 32MHz and disable DSP emulation.

[leech]

Actually when I attempted VanillaMiNT on my TT it just crashed on start up. Or maybe I was trying it in Hatari first.

MiNT will crash with Hatari TT emulation. To use MiNT with Hatari TT emulation, you need one-liner patch to disable bus errors from accessing SCC regs which aren't yet implemented by Hatari (MiNT console setup pokes all serial HW devices, but doesn't handle them not actually existing).

Easier is just to use MiNT with Hatari Falcon emulation, set CPU speed to 32MHz and disable DSP emulation.

Well that explains that! So what I used to do all the time with the Amiga (when I was playing around with that more), I would hook the hard drive up via USB to WinUAE, then set up the emulator to be as close as possible to the real hardware, then attach the drive and set everything up from my desktop system. Was really easy to get everything ready then plug it into the Amiga (sometimes this worked great, other times, not so much). Was hoping I could do the same with Hatari and SD cards.

I thought MiNT was crashing on the real hardware too, I'll have to try it again.

But yeah, Amikit setup is similar I guess to the Aranym setups that are floating around. I may attempt to set up something myself when I get some time.

[joska]

Actually when I attempted VanillaMiNT on my TT it just crashed on start up. Or maybe I was trying it in Hatari first.

VanillaMiNT is not set up for (or tested with) emulators, only real hardware.

What I meant with application blobs is to have a workable system right out of the gate, like a Linux distro usually is. Internet, office Suite, etc. If it fits on like a 2GB SD card, just dd the image over and have a workable system with multitasking, etc.

Ok, so something like the "distro" shipped with the Firebee, with the addition of some pirated/copyrighted software. You are welcome to create something like this based on VanillaMiNT, as long as you clearly state that it's a derivate and not something created by me.

[leech]

Actually when I attempted VanillaMiNT on my TT it just crashed on start up. Or maybe I was trying it in Hatari first.

VanillaMiNT is not set up for (or tested with) emulators, only real hardware.

What I meant with application blobs is to have a workable system right out of the gate, like a Linux distro usually is. Internet, office Suite, etc. If it fits on like a 2GB SD card, just dd the image over and have a workable system with multitasking, etc.

Ok, so something like the "distro" shipped with the Firebee, with the addition of some pirated/copyrighted software.

You make it seem so dirty! I was thinking something like Geneva/NeoDesk4 (since they've been freed) and whatever other ones that have been put that way. There is a thread around here that lists tons of 'we don't care if you distribute this' software that would do well in a bundle.

But otherwise yes. Though there are definitely some open sourced equivalents.

Let's say we had Geneva/NeoDesk, NeoChrome (freed?), AtariWorks (Not sure what people think of copying this), and ST-Guide. Just some ideas. Not sure if any of the MIDI packages out there are freed, but then again they're kind of niche. But a decent word processor and art package could be useful to anyone.

For what it's worth, Amikit doesn't include any copyrighted software, it actually requires a workbench disk to install.

[wongck]

Installing MiNT by hand isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world

beg to differ.... I think it is easy. Easier than to install Windows by hand i.e. without the installer.

Mint, you just copy some stuff over from the archive to HDD and change a couple of lines in your mint config file.
Networking is just copy some files over and add 2 lines into your mint config file.
If you mean sparemint (or Unix-like OS extension), then you need some more stuff.

I used Mint back in 90s, after life caught up and no spare time for around may be 5 years, I finally came back to Atari and.... bomb, I can still setup Mint easily.... because Mint is easy.... trick here... if you have Mint config, you can reuse it for your updated versions, just change the path mentioned in the file to the correct one.
You can also have versions 1.17, 1.18, 1.19 all at once in your Falcon... just rename each of them to different filename like mint117.prg, ,mint118.prg etc.... I even have these version for my 030 and 060 in my AUTO folder for the later versions as the xaloader will load correct architecture. Sure it mess up your AUTO folders, so I removed some older versions as I do not use them anyway.

You can make different Mint config by having sourcing different part using the Include command.

[leech]

Installing MiNT by hand isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world

beg to differ.... I think it is easy. Easier than to install Windows by hand i.e. without the installer.

Mint, you just copy some stuff over from the archive to HDD and change a couple of lines in your mint config file.
Networking is just copy some files over and add 2 lines into your mint config file.
If you mean sparemint (or Unix-like OS extension), then you need some more stuff.

I used Mint back in 90s, after life caught up and no spare time for around may be 5 years, I finally came back to Atari and.... bomb, I can still setup Mint easily.... because Mint is easy.... trick here... if you have Mint config, you can reuse it for your updated versions, just change the path mentioned in the file to the correct one.
You can also have versions 1.17, 1.18, 1.19 all at once in your Falcon... just rename each of them to different filename like mint117.prg, ,mint118.prg etc.... I even have these version for my 030 and 060 in my AUTO folder for the later versions as the xaloader will load correct architecture. Sure it mess up your AUTO folders, so I removed some older versions as I do not use them anyway.

You can make different Mint config by having sourcing different part using the Include command.

Fair! I should have said configuring Mint instead of installing, since installing it is as easy as extracting folders. Would be nice to include at least a text editor within that archive. Though I think the latest one did include qed (or am I thinking of VanillaMint).
What I ended up doing with EasyMint on my falcon was completely mangling through the config to get everything working correctly (still never figured out why the disk checks stopped working for ext3 partitions), and I really like the Falcon setup. When trying to do something similar by hand on the TT030, it was giving me issues, but that might be mostly due to trying to set it up via emulation.

[wongck]

What I ended up doing with EasyMint on my falcon was completely mangling through the config to get everything working correctly (still never figured out why the disk checks stopped working for ext3 partitions), and I really like the Falcon setup. When trying to do something similar by hand on the TT030, it was giving me issues, but that might be mostly due to trying to set it up via emulation.

Disk check stops working will spit out an error message, find that to see what's the problem.

All I can say is to look at my web page for configuring Mint by hand. Not everything is included but at least some.

I must say that when I setup MINT on my TT, I just copy over the Mint installation from my Falcon (I got my falcon first) and.... it is done, exact replica, even the Teradesk desktop icon position is the same and no missing icons are there. All programs there as well.

Setting up TOS desktop was, for minute, not working because it was using Falcon desktop information & wrong icons RSC, but that fixed easily.

[leech]

Ha, did I anger the Atari gods? My UltraSatan just decided to stop working. Or it's the ACSI cable. It powers on, but neither the TT030 nor my 1040STe detected anything there.

I actually used your site previously when setting some things up, and also the Xaaes page, which seems to have moved, couldn't find it last time I was looking for it, managed to find the other one this time though.

[jury]

Ha, did I anger the Atari gods? My UltraSatan just decided to stop working.

You are using the device called "Satan" and you are surprised that gods got angry with you?

[shoggoth]

Come on. This is Atari. We’re warriors, not nail fashion specialists. We don’t need Ami-blobs.

[christos]

I'd prefer a repository. Something like synaptic where you can find various software to install. It shouldn't be too hard too implement.

[Knezzen]

Porting yum and using it to manage rpm's through a repository would be wonderful. And setup a build bot that builds rpm's for a centralized repository. And when that's in place, make a GUI front end for yum. I'm working on something like this (except for the GUI), but it's going slow when there's houses to renovate and kids to cater to etc

[leech]

I'd prefer a repository. Something like synaptic where you can find various software to install. It shouldn't be too hard too implement.

I mentioned in another thread the possibility of a Debian/MiNT distro, which I think would be fantastic!

[joska]

Come on. This is Atari. We’re warriors, not nail fashion specialists. We don’t need Ami-blobs.

I tend to agree. What happened with "unpack - run"? Stuff like yum and rpm is totally overkill for GEM applications. Who will create, test and maintain the packages?

[leech]

Come on. This is Atari. We’re warriors, not nail fashion specialists. We don’t need Ami-blobs.

I tend to agree. What happened with "unpack - run"? Stuff like yum and rpm is totally overkill for GEM applications. Who will create, test and maintain the packages?

Ha, that is a separate thing from the amiblobs and is more toward those who want to use Mint kernel with a Linux userland, I would think. Not sure how it would run on anything less than a 060 though. Would be nice to have some modern versions of ftp, ssh, etc though.

Sparemint was rpm based, but no one has updated that in many years.

[ThorstenOtto]

Not that i want to say anything bad about Hatari, but if you plan to use a MiNT based system, ARAnyM will be a much better choice. On MiNT, you mostly will be using clean GEM programs anyway, and Aranym+JIT will be much faster in this case. And it has better support for using some features of the host.

That does not solve your initial problem though of getting up-to-date RPMs or something like that The Sparemint packages are still available, but they are rather outdated. I've recompiled newer versions of some of them, available at http://tho-otto.de/crossmint.php, though there are only tar-archives that you have to install yourself, no RPMs yet.

[wongck]

Come on. This is Atari. We’re warriors, not nail fashion specialists. We don’t need Ami-blobs.

I tend to agree. What happened with "unpack - run"? Stuff like yum and rpm is totally overkill for GEM applications. Who will create, test and maintain the packages?

Totally agree with Joska & Shoggoth.
Love that you can just unpack and use it right away.
Wished that all other modern OS programs are just as easy.

[leech]

Come on. This is Atari. We’re warriors, not nail fashion specialists. We don’t need Ami-blobs.

I tend to agree. What happened with "unpack - run"? Stuff like yum and rpm is totally overkill for GEM applications. Who will create, test and maintain the packages?

Totally agree with Joska & Shoggoth.
Love that you can just unpack and use it right away.
Wished that all other modern OS programs are just as easy.

There are the random ones that have installers that are meant to only be ran from floppy drives.

These are the ones that annoy me, because then I have to actually take my USB Floppy drive and copy over to a DD disk so that my Atari's can read them. This is why I was trying to use Hatari to set up the SD Card.

Now I need to figure out why my UltraSatan stopped working...
As noted earlier, I actually think now that the filesystem check is trying to run on the Falcon though, it's been sitting there for a day.. Ha!

[ctirad]

You can get the drive contents from https://aranym.github.io/afros.html and replace and modify to your needs.

[christos]

I'd prefer a repository. Something like synaptic where you can find various software to install. It shouldn't be too hard too implement.

I mentioned in another thread the possibility of a Debian/MiNT distro, which I think would be fantastic!

I wasn't thinking something so extreme. I guess something like the Software center or the Microsoft store would be more like what I wanted.

Anyway something that you can use to find and install software with just a few clicks.

[wongck]

There are the random ones that have installers that are meant to only be ran from floppy drives.

The most popular one will probably NVDI 5 installer.
But I do not use the installer.... well may be the very 1st time, after it files been unpacked, I just copy it over to my other Atari and use it right away.

[wongck]

Now I need to figure out why my UltraSatan stopped working...
As noted earlier, I actually think now that the filesystem check is trying to run on the Falcon though, it's been sitting there for a day.. Ha!

fsck have been known to trick even the most cleverest of the Mint users
It probably a combination of different configuration that created the problem.
I hope someone will take my simple suggestion for it.