Thanks to all the people that tested Poseidon in the latest days, Chris Hodges fixed many issues encountered during the AROS port and now our USB stack should be enough stable for most configurations. Anyway, today Poseidon entered its official test week and, if everything is fine, it will be released under the terms of the AROS Public License. On our mirror there is a NEW ISO from July 25th, 2009. Please download it and follow our instructions to enter this important beta-testing phase. You can boot it as like as any AROS nightly build, but you'll find some difference from them:

- Icaros Desktop look & feel (but no AmiStart)
- pciusb.device compiled with debug level 5 enabled
- more programs inside (but minus than in Icaros Desktop Live!)
- all you need to communicate over the Internet, including OWB, SimpleMail and WookieChat
- some debug logs created at startup

Please remember this version of AROS is intended for bug report and mantainance only. You can install it onto your hard drive if you wish, but don't expect it to be a good Icaros Desktop replacement.

ICAROS USERS WARNING! This isn't a Icaros update disc, but a standalone gadget. Do NOT use this release with LiveUpdater, or you'll mess up your current Icaros 1.1.x installation! Icaros users that already got the Poseidon Test update 1 should just download pciusb.device and unzip it into SYS:Devs/USBhardware.

DOWNLOAD

> Download Poseidon Test build ISO #3 from Mirror 1 (100 MB, 7z file format)
if you have problems downloading this, try with right click -> save target as...

> Download 7-zip for your operating system


HOW IT WORKS

1. At startup you'll find a shell. Please press enter and, when you'll notice it has apparently frozen, just minimize it and forget about it. You'll need it later.

2. Connect something to your computer. Trident will be already in execution and you'll see some popups regarding them. Connect whatever you like, but please try to remember what you have connnected.

3. When you're finished testing, activate the initial shell and press Ctrl+C

4. Open your RAM Drive icon, you'll notice a DEBUG drawer with a pair of files into it. If you find only one, you've done something wrong in point 1 or 3.

5. Open Trident in Prefs and save all messages (Errors.log) in RAM:DEBUG as well.

6. Open a shell and give these commands. They will help us understand what devices are attached to your system.

cd RAM:DEBUG
PsdDevLister >psddevlist.txt

7. Open OWB and connect to AROS-EXEC. Look for this thread and reply.

8. Write in your exact configuration: computer model, motherboard used, USB controller name. This last information can be found using AROS' PCI Tool. Tell us what kind of device you have tested.

9. Copy and past the contents of the 4 files. Please use the [quote] [/quote] tag for each of them, in order to have them visually separed and to avoid confusion.

NOTE: since the sashimi log might be REALLY HUGE (many megabytes), you need to follow the alternate method, if you can, to submit it. Read further.

10. If you have more than a single issue, please make a different report for each of them.


ALTERNATE METHOD

If you can access a USB mass storage device, please copy the DEBUG drawer onto it. It will take much time: due to actual issues in fat.handler, writing to a FAT device might require from 30 to 60 minutes to complete! You can speed up time this way

a1. Open a shell

a2. Type in:

cd RAM:
tar cvfz usbtest.tgz DEBUG

a3. Choose CANCEL when prompted for PROC: drive.

a4. copy the usbtest.tgz file to the USB device, or maybe send it on some free-space file sharing services on the web, like wikifortio or megaupload.


PLEASE NOTICE

If you have installed this custom build of AROS on the hard drive, remember you have the same file sharing capabilities of Icaros Desktop. So you can move all files to pub: and use a ftp client from any other machine to get them from tour AROS computer. In order to read correctly the files on Windows, you must open them with the Wordpad. Notepad won't work for you and you'll mess up all line breaks.

After so long talking about new Icaros updates, new features, new USB stak, new everything, let me talk about something really old. Since from Icaros Desktop 1.1.2 we've got also DosBox (which is not fully working, however, due to some issues with international keyboards makeing it crash hard pressing special characters keys), I just asked myself if it was usable for something better than gaming. Since I read at Aros-Exec that fishy_fis (the coder that ported DosBox to AROS) ran Windows 3.1 on it, I decided to try it too. I took my old Win 3.1 diskettes and, luckily, I could read them and copy all installation files to a single directory called "W31". Then I moved it into Extras:Emu/DosBox/diskC, I launched DosBox and gave these commands:

C:\> cd W31
C:\W31> setup

et voilà...

Icaros is a funny thing for an old computer geek like me. When I was younger, I spent (too) much of my spare time trying to get things working like I wanted, and then I transformed this old passion in a job. The lucky thing about this, is that now I have easy access to hardware, and I can even test Icaros on different configurations, looking how it works with different devices. Yesterday I released a little update to Icaros 1.1.2 that includes a test build of Poseidon, and this morning I decided to contribute to its "alpha testing" connecting different USB devices to my MSI K9AGM2 AMD 690 motherboard, and see how Poseidon would react.

Initially, I got the problem that almost everything I plugged in freezed AROS. Moreover, I couldn't mount any USB 2 device, because they were totally ignored by the system. So, I decided to peek the BIOS settings and I've spotted two meaning options:

USB Controller (enabled)
USB Legacy Support (enabled)

Since I remember that Legacy Support may be annoying for USB drivers, I disabled it and I could go further. The USB universal card reader connected to my mobo came to life and I could at least mount compact flash cards formatted by my digital camera (now I need a good .orf reader for AROS...), while SD cards are still a issue. I could even connect USB 2.0 pendrives, although AROS couldn't mount them because - for some reasons - it doesn't support FAT32 properly. Thinier USB pendrives of 128 MB or so worked, however. But the most incredible oddity I could find with this release was the "locked" support for 1.1 devices: I couldn't use anything slower, from mice to keyboards, just because they weren't even recognized, due to some not better specified "eletric problems" that intercurred between the devices, the SB600 southbridge and Poseidon. This problem continued until I connected a Microsoft Xbox360 Controller for Windows, the PC version of the Xbox 360 gamepad. This time, Poseidon reacted in a different way finding a "controller" and, after that, I could connect ANY USB device that it would be at least correctly recognized.

So, for now, when I need to test a USB device I do like this: I turn on my computer, plug in the Microsoft Xbox 360 controller for Windows, unplug it, and then I can connect anything I want. I wouldn't ever imagined that a gamepad from Bill Gates would be the key to respawn all my USB devices. And no, I won't sell or give my precious Xbox controller to anyone. ;-)

Please, help us with beta testing if you can, because the more Poseidon will be tested by users, the faster it will be perfectly functional for everyone!

Since AROS people is really interested in trying Poseidon, I'd like to make all the bravest Icaros users happy with a "unofficial" test update to Icaros Desktop with Poseidon enabled. Please notice that this is not a mainstream update to our distribution, it won't change your version number and it is meant only to test the new amazing AROS USB stack. The meaning of this little update is only to help you testing Poseidon and write reports to AROS developers. It is NOT warranteed that Poseidon will actually work on your computer. If it doesn't, well, you have big chances to help Chris Hodges and other AROS developers to spot the issue and fix it. Here's what you can do:

1. download this ISO file with OWB under Icaros, or with any other OS browser you prefer

> Download Poseidon Test ISO #1 (16 MB, zip file format)

please download to pub: to follow these instructions in a easier way.

2. unzip it. You can do that on AROS directly opening a shell (rAros+W) and typing in:

cd pub:
unzip poseidon-test01.zip

3. if you have extracted it on another operating system/computer, please burn the resulting aros-pc-i386 ISO file to a blank CD-R or CD-RW

4. launch LiveUpdater and choose either to upgrade using the extracted ISO file, or the burned CD-R.

5. remove the media and reboot with a hard-reset

from now on, you should be able to connect USB devices to your Icaros Desktop machine and they should get at least recognized. In order to mount USB pendrives and other mass storage devices, you need to open a shell and cast the info command.



Here is how you can actively help developers spotting bugs.

1. Please reboot your machine choosing any resolution, but press E in the initial grub boot menu. Go to the end of the last line and add these words:

debug=memory

then press Ctrl+X to continue booting.

2. open the SYS:Tools/Debug drawer with wanderer, keep it selected and press rAros+W to open a new shell. You should be prompted directly inside the AROS:Tools/Debug directory

3. launch the debugging tool Bifteck and redirect its output to a file in pub:, for istance biflog.txt

[XX.AROS:Tools/Debug>] Bifteck >pub:biflog.txt

4. Launch Trident from Prefs and add any device you like

5. When you're finished testing, save on disk your Trident messages. Save the Errors.log file in pub: as well, so you'll find them with ease

6. Connect to the AROS bugtracker, or to AROS-EXEC in the Poseidon specific thread, and copy/paste the contents of the two files

7. Don't forget to report your current system configuration, being as precise as you can about your USB controllers. You can get all informations using the PCItool program in the Tools drawer.

Thank you and good luck!

If you want to get back to old USB handling, just open the S:icaros-sequence file and change

; execute s:usb-startup
execute s:poseidon-startup

to

execute s:usb-startup
; execute s:poseidon-startup

We have to gratefully say "thank you" to Aros-Exec's user Hybrid512 and his company Lézard-Visuel.com, for providing us a fast and reliable mirror site for Icaros files. If you run a company too, and you're interested in some IT services, please have a look to their nice website (you need to speak French, though).

"Happy birthday to you... happy birthday to you... happy birthday Paolone, happy birthday to youuuuu": yes, tomorrow I will be 36, but this is not the most important news of the day (anyway, if you'd like to make a present for my birthday, the "Donate" button is always there...): there is a brand new update for your Icaros Desktop installation which will address many bugs of the previous ones and will add some new programs and features. And, before you ask for it: no, there isn't Poseidon. I share with you all the excitement for AROS' brand new USB stack, Chris Hodges is doing a really wonderful job and I've tested it for a while. I am impressed, but Poseidon port to AROS is still too young and needs some more testing and ironing out, before it can be included in a user-oriented distribution. Skilled people should download a nightly build and try it on their computers, but for now Icaros will keep its limited USB support. Poseidon, anyway, will be added as soon as it will correctly work on the widest range of PC configurations.



But let's stop talking about what there isn't in Icaros, and let me talk about the new features. First of all, this release fixes most of the bugs addressed for Icaros 1.1 and 1.1.1. Here is a little list: TB303 now works, muibuilder now works, alarmclock should work, ghost UAE entries have been removed, Themes prefs panel has been fixed and so on. Then, I have added some nice new applications like Protrekkr, which brings to AROS the 3rd tracker application available after HivelyTracker and MilkyTracker, DOSBOX, which should come in handy to launch old MS/DOS software, and TinySID, a simple music player for .sid files. Many old applications had been updated and some of Icaros' own features have been extended: our old updater has been replaced by LiveUpdater, which is able to download official Icaros updates and install them without the need of a CD burner, while AmiBridge has been updated to support AmigaForever 2006, 2008 and the brand new 2009 edition. AmiStart is now fairly better and should be appreciated by people who asked for a prettier dock application. Well, there are many many things you can discover about Icaros Desktop 1.1.2, so don't miss the new manual included in the distribution.



INSTALLATION

To install this update, please download LiveUpdater 1.5.1 first. This update can be installed with the default Updater tool in Icaros Desktop 1.1.1, but needs manual fixing at the end of the procedure. LiveUpdater 1.5.1 allows to download the update directly from the Internet.

> Download LiveUpdater 1.5.1

Users of the old Updater should download the update CD manually, burn it on a CD-ROM and launch Updater. Then fix the installation with the following command line:
echo "1.001002" >envarc:CURRENT_INSTALL

DOWNLOAD
> Download the Icaros Desktop 1.1.2 update CD
from main Icaros site (244 MB, 7z file format)
> Download the Icaros Desktop 1.1.2 update CD
from Lezard-visuel mirror (244 MB, 7z file format)

> Download Icaros Desktop Live! 1.1.2 full DVD (460 MB, 7z file format)

DOWNLOAD 7-ZIP
> Download 7-Zip for your operating system to extract files from .7z archives.

New from Icaros Desktop 1.1.1

- Updated AmiBridge
+ direct 68K executables support
+ autoprobe for AmigaForever editions 2006-2009
+ import of files from custom paths
- Added LiveUpdater
+ burning a CD no more needed
+ updates from ISO files
+ downloads and install updates from the Icaros website
- Added ProTrekkr
- Added DosBox
- Updated PortablE
- Updated NoWinED
- updated MUIbuilder
- Updated OWB to version 0.9.8
+ It now allows bookmarks!
- Updated AmiStart
+ better and lightier look
+ fixed conflicts with DirectoryOpus
+ enhanced dock section
+ AmiStart doesn't jump on other screens anymore
- Updated system files
- Added direct support for T64/D64 image files
- Fixed issue with ArosPDF not opening files directly

Icaros Desktop LIVE! is a complete distribution of the AROS desktop operating system. Icaros Desktop LIVE! comes on a bootable live DVD-ROM which runs directly on your hardware (it must be already supported by AROS). It can be installed on the hard drive and can coexist with Microsoft Windows XP, in a dedicated partition. A quick reference guide and some AROS PDF manuals are included. This version comes also with a Qemu-based virtual machine which allows Windows users to test the distribution in a safer (but slower) environment.

SUPPORT ICAROS DESKTOP!
After downloading, please consider donating. Every release of Icaros Desktop requires a lot of time and work, for a hobbyst project. Donations will be spent to enhance Icaros Desktop and to contribute to AROS bounties.