AmigaOS 3.1.4 released

You really want a heavy weight like ZFS (which is a total memory hog, btw., I use it in my server) on Amiga hardware from 1992?

You should be happy, that there is such an update to AmigaOS at all !

I understand the enthusiasm. I used an A4000/Cyberstorm060/CyberGfx64 exclusively till 2001. I did not care, that each reboot would take 6 minutes (with starting all the background stuff) and that my system was runtime memory patched into oblivion, and no memory protection in the system. That it crashed 10 times a day (multiply this with boot times, HO HO!). But one day a day has come and one needs to realize: Reality!

I did upgrade: 128 MB FAST RAM, 64-bit MC68080 @ ~234 MHz with AMMX SIMD instructions, 16 GB industry grade CF and 8 GB microSDHC. OS 3.9 @ 1300 x 768 x 32-bit color HDMI.

"You really want a heavy weight like ZFS (which is a total memory hog, btw., I use it in my server) on Amiga hardware from 1992?"

Yes, I do, because as a Solaris engineer, I understand that ZFS will release memory due to memory pressure from applications, and can in fact run in memory constrained systems. Should be able to run on an Amiga with a Vampire accelerator and 129 MB of RAM. ZIL is auto tuned. Just don't use features like de-duplication and it'll be fine.

(My reboots take about three seconds, with or without the Vampire accelerator, and that's even with OS 3.9.)

The Amiga OFS/FFS, etc. file system data structures scale with the block size (block sizes of 512, 1024, .., 65536 bytes are possible).

At 256 bytes per block, for example, the directory hash table size would shrink so much that you'd have so many hash collisions that it would be morbidly funny...

Anyway, the data blocks in OFS have to account for the checksum and some metadata which aids in recovery. So you are correct that the payload (488 bytes for a 512 byte block) is smaller than the raw block size.

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.

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.