AmigaOS 4.0 development update
by Ben Hermans

We first of all want to thank all of you who attended the various events around the globe where Amiga OS 4.0 was shown running on the AmigaOne. Needless to say that these events would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of the respective organisers whom we also owe a debt of gratitude.

Those that attended will have noticed that OS 4 on the AmigaOne has advanced in leaps and bounds over these past weeks. Much of this progress has not even be shown to the public yet as the organisers usually only have access to older, tried and tested versions to avoid any nasty surprises.

As most of you will most likely already know, we decided to reward the Early Bird owners of AmigaOne hardware with a beta version of OS 4 in the weeks to come. The Early Bird offer was targeted towards developers and we therefore hope that this will spark a wave of OS 4 related development activity around the New Year.

OS 4 can now easily be booted from harddisk and CD without the need for a compressed U-Boot image.

The initial experimental IDE driver was replaced with a fully featured and much faster IDE driver which now also works with Media Toolbox.

In the process the AmigaOne's firmware was bumped to version 1.0 and further firmware enhancements were introduced.

Graphics.library is now to a large extent PPC native and work on the integration with Picasso 96 is set to begin. Picasso 96 has been "residentable" which means you can now see the Early Start-Up menu on a RTG screen, even on the classic machines.

Since Warp3D is now fully PPC native, conversion of Hyperion game titles for OS 4.0 is already underway.

Last but not least, OS 4 is now booting and running on the BlizzardPPC hardware.

If you want to get your hands on a copy of OS 4 as soon as possible, our only advice is to contact your dealer and order an Early Bird AmigaOne!

- OS 4 development team