Amiga 600 CF AmigaOS Setup Part 4

Back in Part 2, I setup the 256 Colour Workbench on AmigaOS 3.1 on my Amiga 600. Although it is a bit slow for day to day Workbench use, I found I can use it very well for running 256 colour screens for programs that can use it - like Photogenics 2.

A reminder that you should follow the build blog entries from the beginning as I assume the previous software is installed as we go through the build. Links are here - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

I got Photogenics 2 (which is 6 disks in ADF format) from the EAB file server. I then used DiskImageGUI installed in Part 3 to mount the ADF images to install Photogenics on the Amiga 600:

The Installer asks many questions - I made sure I selected the lower colour gad tools GUI, Non-FPU version of the program and installed all the components:

The installer prompts you to install a more up to date button.gadget too - DON'T DO THIS - Say NO:

Replacing the button.gadget breaks DiskImageGUI which gives me a yellow flashing warning message on boot up. I found out the hard way and had to copy back the original file to fix this problem - so just wanted to warn you not to install the updated button.gadget!

Installation finished:

When I first ran it, Photogenics opened on it's own 16 colour screen at 640x200. I then changed the screen mode in it's settings to use 640x400 interlace mode in 16 Colours. Indivision ECS removes the flicker. Loading an example image shows how terrible 16 colours is for working with images:

I then changed the screen mode to use the new 256 colour 800x600 screen mode I setup in Part 2, changed the default font to the MagicWB Xen font and now things are looking much better, and much higher resolution:

Opening multiple images in Photogenics means I can take full advantage of the additional 800x600 screen resolution space available on the Indivision ECS screen mode, as well as the 256 colours. The results are terrific:

It is now just like running Photogenics on my old Amiga 1200 AGA machine, except in higher resolution!

AmigaKit has now sent me the updated EasyNet program. I wanted to show some of the configuration screens in it. For some reason the grab program refuses to grab the windows in EasyNet and only the contents! Weird, but there it is.

Interface Configuration Screen:

Network Interface Selection Screen - here I select the prism2.device driver, click Settings to scan for my wireless SSID and put in the password (that screen not shown for privacy reasons):

Host Manager screen - Here you can add DNS hostnames and aliases to IP Addresses for computers on your local network - Click Add Host to do this:

This is the Add Host screen - put in the IP Address, DNS hostname of the computer, and the alias name you want to use - having an alias is convenient and saves typing! Any field with a exclamation mark next to it needs to be filled in before you can click OK:

When completed click OK, and then you will see the new entry in your host manager Network Hosts List:

Under the Preferences for EasyNet itself, you can modify its behaviour on launch, whether to use live update, whether EasyNet starts the network automatically on launch, sleep mode (hide as status window as icon on launch - good idea if starting the network on launch as you don't need to use the window in that case):

There is also some more settings around the DEBUG, use of loopback, DNS resolution and so on:

Next, this is the About EasyNet screen, showing the v0.177 which is the latest version, and my registration information (which I have cut from this screen grab):

Next I wanted to try out iBrowse 2.4 on the Amiga 600, available to download as a demo from their website http://www.ibrowse-dev.net.

If you own a previous version of browse you can use that key to activate this version by putting it into the program folder. Unfortunately it is not possible to purchase new keys at this time.

After downloading and extracting to RAM: I get the following install folder:

Typical installer follows when running Install-IBrowse:

Because I have an ACA630 installed I can select 68020 as my CPU, but not the FPU version as it doesn't have it - strangely 68030 is not an option:

I plan to run iBrowse on my 256 colour screen mode I set up back in Part 2 - I could use a 256 colour transfer icon but that wouldn't leave any other colours for web page rendering:

So I select the 5 bit 32 colour option:

Install underway:

All done:

Here is the resulting iBrowse folder, ready to run:

When I run IBrowse for the first time it opens up on the default Workbench screen as below:

 First I went into the Preferences Menu and then selected Settings to modify the Download directory as below under General > Directories > Download:

Settings in IBrowse are comprehensive - you can spend quite a while in here customising things to your taste:

But my initial focus is on using the 256 colour screenmode to run IBrowse 2.4 in. Using the extremely colour restricted Workbench screen (done for performance reasons) is not an option.

Since IBrowse is an MUI application, I need to edit the MUI settings to do this, available under Preferences > MUI in IBrowse. Select the System section on the left to see the screen below:

Click on Call Inspector (in the Public Screen section) to bring up the Public Screen Inspector:

Initially this is empty, so let's create a New screen by clicking on New:

Make sure the new screen is highlighted, then select Edit to get the screen below:

Let's switch to the Display tab to set the screen mode we need. This step assumes you have set up the 256 colour screenmodes using an Indivision ECS I did in part 2 here. If you have done this, then select the indi 640x400 8 bit screen as below:

We then need to modify the Size field from 640x400 to 800x600, and modify the Depth slider from 3 to 8 (256 colours), as below:

I then switch back to the Attributes tab and enter the Public Name (what appears to AmigaOS and MUI), the Screen title (when the screen is open), the default font for the screen (which I set to Xen since I have MagicWB installed), and select the Auto Close flag to close the screen when the last window in the screen is closed. It appears then as below:

Then click OK and go back to the Public Screen Inspector window, which now lists the new IBrowse2.4 screen we just created. Click on Save:

Then the MUI setting window should have the new IBrowse2.4 Public Screen available to select in the IBrowse MUI Public Screen menu preferences as below. Double click to select IBrowse2.4 and click on Save:

With luck (as it did for me), IBrowse then reopens on the 256 colour screen as below:

Exciting stuff - it works!

Next I browsed to some safe Amiga browsing websites for IBrowse (don't expect miracles in it's website support - many websites don't render properly). I started with Aminet:

Looks great - so next I tried out AmigaWorld.net which also works well, and renders nicely on the 256 colour screen on the Amiga 600:

Mainly I want the browser so I can download files directly from the Amiga 600 rather than having to download them on another computer and transfer via USB each time. Job done!

Plenty more still to do on the Amiga 600 build, see you next time!