- Original Amiga Developer's comments about 1.4alpha15:

As with any Alpha Version of a program as complex as the Amiga operating
system, one or two insignificant (but we'll tell you about them anyway)
problems have been encountered:

   o OpenWorkbench/CloseWorkbench calls don't function correctly

   o ResetWB MENU option the workbench window doesn't work correctly

   o RAD: is not currently recoverable!  If you reboot you will (probably)
     lose the contents of RAD:.  There is a small chance that it will appear
     upon a reboot, but is likely in a bad state.

   o NEWCON: windows do not yet properly refresh themselves

   o CON: do not refresh themselves correctly when scrolling, and part of
     the window is obscured

   o Open and closing an intuition screen eats about 5K of memory

   o Diskcopy does not currently work

   o Under certain circumstances, View By ... can cause a Software Error/
     Task Held.

   o Too many clicks in the "workbench" window (as opposed to a "drawer"
     window) can cause the system to crash

   o Choosing "parent" in a "drawer" window after the parent window has been
     closed can cause problems.


- Here are the things that I found out about 1.4; they illustrate the
  differences between Kick 1.4alpha15 and older kickstart versions:

   o First of all the Kick 1.4 brings the nice animated bootup screen.
     Remember that it's only a 256K ROM. This version has no pre-version
     of the Early Startup Menu like the 512K version from the A3000.
     Kick 1.4 handles OFS and FFS (only DOS0 and DOS1 type). Booting from
     other connected drives is implemented and works fine.

   o The Guru Screen is the newer style "Software failure..." but still
     in Topaz 60 font. After mouse clicking the screen is distorted.
     There's also the "Recoverable Alert" (I only got it once) - but's
     coloured in a soft green.

   o Workbench 1.4 requires a 'workbench.library' from disk like the
     A4000T. If your running loadwb in "-debug" mode you'll get the
     "debug" menu, on WB 1.3 this menu was nameless.

   o All disks now have a nice coloured disk icon. The normal Ram Disk
     is called "RAM DISK" in upper chars.

   o In WB 1.4 you can use the selecting frame. There's also an new
     "Arrow up" gadget in the drawer windows, but it's always disabled.
     Perhaps it should become the "Zoom" gadget.

   o WB 1.4 comes with a pre-version of IPrefs, called IP. There also
     are two monitor drivers, "multiscan" and "a2024" included in the
     WBStartup drawer. There's a new device "PREFS:", a "prefs-handler"
     in the L: directory and two prefs files "wbscreen.prefs" and
     "oscreen.prefs" which must be edited manually. They seem to support
     monitor types, screen size and depth and font name and size.
     For using the monitor drivers you'll probably need the ECS chipset
     or an A2024 grey scale monitor.

   o There are some commodities on the 1.4alpha15 support disk - but no
     commodities.library. The commodities.library V0.5 from WB 1.4alpha18
     is not working on alpha15. But the commodities are even running on
     Kick 3.1!


Here're some problems which could occur while working with WB1.4.
Used system was an Amiga 1000 with 512K of RAM and additional drive Df1:

   o Clicking in the workbench window brings the title bar message
     " "Double-click selects parent icon" disabled". This does not happen
     by clicking on the workbench screen. If you're doing this WB window
     too often and then click on an icon the system will crash.

   o The workbench format option only works on pre-formatted disks. The
     filesystem is OFS (DOS0). If you try to format a DFx:BAD disk you'll
     get the message "ran out of memory. Please free some and try again."
     The pointer changes to sleep mode but you're still able to operate
     with other programs (CLI, Notepad). On the workbench you'll always
     have the sleep pointer and the menus won't work. The format command
     from CLI works fine. Formatting the RAM DISK will bring a message
     "Initialization failed - Cannot find handler". Formatting disks with
     newer filesystems as OFS/FFS Intl and DCFS is a problem for itself.
     You'll always get interrupted by a requester "Not a DOS disk <name>
     in unit 0" - even if the disk was inserted in DF1: This requester
     pops up again and again after a few seconds and won't close. On WB
     you won't even get a disk icon. The only way to format is by using
     the CLI command... and all 6 seconds your typing's interrupted by
     this annoying requestor.

   o Diskcopy DF0: to DF1: doesn't work neither from workbench nor from
     CLI. Workbench diskcopy brings a message "Please insert volume
     DF0[]trackdisk.device in any drive". After this follows a message
     "Error on SOURCE disk - Cannot open AmigaDOS drive". On both WB and
     CLI follows the message "Error on SOURCE disk - Cannot open AmigaDOS
     device".

   o Accessing the new device "PREFS:" directly after breaking the boot
     process by holding CTRL-D you'll get a "Software Error - task held"
     requester. After the boot process you're still finding a device (!)
     called PREFS: which is directed to RAM:Prefs. The're acutally two
     files, "wbscreen.prefs" and "oscan.prefs". With type you can display
     the contents.