BEGINNERS NOTES EOU ALPHA 2
ALPHA VERSION 2 RELEASE NOTES: Note that everything in the Alpha 1 notes still applies.
When the actual releases start (possibly including wider betas), these will be merged into one document again.
CHANGES FROM ALPHA 1:
1) The boot floppy image name has been changed to either 63emu.dsk or 68emu.dsk, to better reflect that they are ONLY needed for the emulators to boot properly.
The CocoSDC can boot straight from the hard drive image (63sdc.vhd or 68sdc.vhd)
2) KRNP3 has been added (and optimized a bit for size), which adds “English” versions of error #'s to be printed automatically.
3) Two more games have been added to the games list - Zone Runner and Rogue - and both of these support resizable windows, and can even be run on the same screen at the same time (with each other, or with the GShell mini-apps like the Calculator, etc).
This version of Rogue currently contains two patches (out of several more planned);
A) the cheat mode is enabled (see http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/rogue-cheatmodeinstructions.txt for full instructions on this mode), and
B) it will now use the graphics font on any type / size of a graphics window (the stock version only used the graphics font if you were running on 640x192x2 full screen window).
4) Hell hath frozen over…
Nick Marentes actually contributed to a NitrOS-9 distribution!
He has been kind enough (well, annoying, really) to re-design the trash can icon, and slightly modify the printer icon, to look better.
5) CoWin has been patched to use a different system font for menu bars, that is only 7 pixels high.
This helps preserve the “3D” menu bar look without have text go through the top of the bar.
I believe this font is the same as the OS-9 Level II Version 3.0 upgrade used, for the same purpose/reason.
6) Alpha 2 now has a 6809 distribution as well.
This one is a bit more limited; it only has VDG descriptors for VERM and V1/V2, and window descriptors /W, and /W1 to /W5.
And the RAM disk is removed.
This is due to space trying to load GRFDRV; Bill and Curtis are working on a solution to fix the way it loads to solve this problem, but that has not been completed yet.
7) Shawn Driscolls GUIB 3.0 (Graphical User Interface library for BASIC-09) is installed, and includes a demo program in DEMOS.
8) Allen Huffman's 3D Maze demo v0.05 is installed in DEMOS
9) More commands added to HELP, and more “full” documentation files
10) VIEW 4.4 installed, for viewing graphics images, and a PICTURES folder that has some samples of different types.
I did put VIEW 4.5a (6309 only version, with a speedups, extra options (like animated GIF's)… but it appears that I broke CM3 compatibility when I did it 18 years ago, so I am not recommending it until I get a chance to re-disassemble it (I lost the source years ago) and fix that bug.
RTS
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