!! THIS IS A BETA !!
"What the hell is this?" I hear you shout...
Imagine booting your PC with a floppy boot disk... and the PC boots into AmigaOS!!!
Was that a nice little dream?
Dream no longer.
The AROS Team have coded from scratch an AmigaOS compatable operating system. The idea was to build an OS identical in structure to AmigaOS, although AROS is heavily object oriented, it is identical
in functionality to AmigaOS. This is not finished but is amazing to see.
This archive contains a single disk image;
This disk image is a standard AMIGA FFS formated floppy disk, slightly altered to fit a 1.4Mb disk (PC's only read 1.4Mb disks). Because the disk is High Density an Amiga can't read it. Also the PC f
loppy drive can't read normal Amiga disks, due to a flaw (or maybe several) in the PC floppy drive controler chip design.
We then use the boot loader GRUB to load the AROS kernel into memory and boot from it.
When you boot your PC the boot loader loads the AROS Operating system into the PC's memory, and then boots the disk just like AmigaOS would. If you have an AROS partition on your hard drive then AROS
will boot it too, AROS is hard drive installable if you know how to use GRUB (more details to come).
You will now be in a standard AmigaOS environment
In the AmigaDOS window enter the command <list df0:> this will list the files on the boot disk.
Read the instructions below and Enjoy.
INSTALATION & EXECUTION
This is how to install AROS onto a floppy disk using Windows95+
If you use Linux then skip part 1 and just write the Image to a blank disk, using dd, and jump to part 2 of this file.
Format one HD floppy disk.
----Part 1
Startup rawrite2.exe.
Put the first disk in Drive A.
Enter the name of the Disk image (aros.ffs) press return.
Enter drive name (usualy A) press return
Wait for the disk light to go out.
Do not remove this disk from the drive.
----Part 2
Restart your PC, in the normal way (but with the floppy still in the drive)
The PC will now boot into AROS, it works exactly as AmigaDOS does so just play around and have fun.
If you want to reset AROS, then press the Ctrl key and the Left and right Windows keys (Amiga Reset Style), and AROS will reboot, without using BIOS. This means that you do not need to reboot the Ker
nel, it will still be in RAM and will boot the machine. You PC is a modern machine :-)
Pressing the reset button on the front panel of your machine will flush the kernel out of the memory, so you can run Windoze again.
Interestingly if you have a USB mouse and/or keyboard then switch on USB support in your BIOS and AROS will use them. Although no USB drivers have been built for AROS yet.
Also the graphics driver is very simple, so don't expect it to run at full speed of your graphics card yet. We are working on getting accelerated gfx card specific drivers ready soon.
Regular updates will appear on my website: http://www.bloodline.freeserve.co.uk/aros/index.html
I don't have time to keep the Aminet updated at the moment...
This is free open source software and the full source code is available from: http://www.aros.org
How legal is this software?
---------------------------
Although we have broken no laws, this operating system was coded from scratch without any access to the original AmigaOS source code, it is possible that Amiga Inc. would want to close down AROS due
perhaps, in part, to the fact that when run on an Amiga, AROS is be able to replace AmigaOS totaly.
Recently, however, parts of AROS have been (openly) used within AmigaOS 3.9. It would be nice to think that AROS could be addopted by Amiga Inc., for use as the official AmigaOS, but at this moment i
n time AROS is simply another open source operating system.
These things are very complex.
For up-to-date information, please contact Aaron Digulla (digulla@aros.org)
Best wishes
Matt P.
HOW DO I REPORT BUGS ?
----------------------
There are these EMail addresses where you can send bug reports to:
aros-bugs@aros.org
aros-linux-bugs@aros.org
aros-amiga-bugs@aros.org
Legal Disclaimer:
This software is subject to the "AROS PUBLIC LICENSE" which can be found
in this archive as license.txt. The license is derived from the Mozilla
Public License. The biggest difference is that the word "Mozilla" has
been replaced by "AROS" everywhere in the text.
If you like it and use it regularly please send a message to the
following address:
Aaron "Optimizer" Digulla
Haldenweg 5
78464 Konstanz
Germany
EMail: digulla@aros.org
I would like to build up a database of all the people that use
AROS and where they use it, so I can actively provide support.
This information will be used only so that I can set up an
official support site, if I get enough feedback.
If you wish to be included then drop me a line to:
Matt "Crazy" Parsons,
16 Conway Street,
London,
W1T 6BE
England
EMail: matt@bloodline.freeserve.co.uk
Amiga and AmigaOS are trademarks of Amiga Inc.
Windows95 is a trademark of Microsoft.
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