[Oberon] Initial feedback on 31-Dec-2002 Bluebottle release

[Ronald D Smith]

Hi,

Good Job.  I like it!

I downloaded the AOS.ISO.zip file and burned a  cd image.  The CD 
booted without problems.  But during the operation of loading 
Bluebottle onto a partition on my laptop, I discovered the following 
problems:

AosInst.Tool
	Step 3:  OFSTools.Mount  gives error OFSTools.Obx not found
		Remedy: Build Aos.OSFTools.Mod.

	Step 3: ZipTool.ExtractAll  gives error ZipTool.Obx not Found.
		Remedy: Build ZipTool.Mod.

	Step 4. Aos.Par
	Editing: up-arrow and down-arrow keys did not work.  Left-arrow and 
right-arrow did.
		

Once Bluebottle was booted.

1. Arrow keys in both TestEditor viewer and Oberon for Bluebottle 
viewer appeared to work as expected.  This is different behavior from 
the problem above in AosInst.Tool.

2. As in Bluebottle released in May and August, the RTL8139 driver does 
not work for me.  In the previous releases, the driver printed a 
'MegaError' line in the Kernel log.  This time nothing is printed in 
the Kernel log.  I traced this to the send method, where the completed 
OK bit is never set.  I have not yet determined why this doesn't occur.

3. Actually, nothing appears in the Kernel Log, ever.

4.  Need Menu entries for Log and Reboot in the main menu.  I was able 
to find the commands in the old menus.

5. Tried to change Main.XML to include the log and reboot entry.  Store 
this with TestEditor, but when I rebooted, no menu appeared.  I was 
able to recover using the boot disk.

6. As in the May and August releases, the ATI Rage Display driver did 
work, although when the system first booted, a top section of the of 
the screen was full of random colors and probably was not initialized.

7.  When I resized the TestEditor viewer, making the viewer smaller, 
the test shrank in size and  became unreadable.  Closing the viewer and 
relaunching the TestEditor gave me good viewer.

8.  I launched a TestEditor.  Since I wanted to have two text's open at 
once, I tried to launch a second TestEditor, but the second viewer did 
not appear.

Immediate Wish List:

1. Need more menus, specifically Log, Reboot and Shutdown.

2. Need a Kernel Log viewer that displays the Kernel Log.  I need this 
to debug the RTL8139 driver.

3.  Need a description of the new mouse behavior.  It appears to be 
different from previous Oberon and Bluebottle releases.  Specifically, 
how do you move, copy and delete text, etc.

4. Need a description of the new scrolling behavior.  It appears to be 
different from previous Oberon and Bluebottle releases.  Personal note: 
I like Oberon scrolling.

Long term Wish List:

RTL8139 Support

USB support for Wacom Tablet and Mouse.

PC Card support

803.11 ethernet PC Card support.  I have an Apple Airport base station 
running here for my Mac's.

SmartMedia PC Card support.

Power Management support so the laptop can run on the batteries.

FireWire Support

FireWire Support for Disks and CD-RW.

Very long term wish list:

Bluebottle running native on Power PC and Power4 systems from Apple or 
Pegasus.  OK IBM too.


Configuration:  Sony Vaio PCG-FA53 w/Athlon 4 1.3 ghz, Firewire, Floppy 
and PC Cards
Ethernet		RealTek RTL8139C Family PCI NIC
DVD/CD-RW	Matshita UJDA720
HDD			Hitachi_DK23DA-30
Display		ATI Rage Mobility-M1-HGP
Sound		VIA AC'97 (WDM)
Mouse		AMP PS2

Configuration: Clone tower w/ 2 P III 733 mhz, Firewire, Floppy
Ethernet		3Com 90x
DVD/CD-RW	Pioneer
HDD			Fuji and Western Digital IDE drives
Display		?????
Sound		Soundblaster PCI128 (ensoniq chipset ???)
Mouse		PS2 (3 Button)
Note: The May and August releases of Bluebottle ran fine on the tower.

I've not written any device drivers in my 30 years of programming 
computers, but I'm willing to try.  I'll start on the RTL8139.  I am 
fluent in most computer languages: Basic, VB, C, C++, Pascal, Java, and 
several scripting languages.  I've been self-employed for over 20 years 
developing many applications for Accounting and Business.  I create and 
maintain Relational and OLAP databases.  I'm a former BeOS developer.  
I've always been an early-adopter of new computers.

Thanks for Bluebottle.

Ronald D. Smith
R.D.S. Computer Service, Inc.
rdssoftware at voyager.net