Chapter 9

Scalos

install_scalos.sh writes the files, the menu, the Backdrop, and the palette.

Why any of this

The Amiga 1200 was the last great Amiga Commodore made, and the desktop people built on it is the one worth having back: Kickstart 3.1, AGA, a hard disk, a graphics card for a screen bigger than the chipset could draw, MUI for modern windows, color icons, and WHDLoad so every game lives on the disk instead of in a box of floppies. An emulator or a MiSTer puts that machine back on your desk. Getting to that finished desktop is the work.

You cannot download it ready-made. Workbench and Kickstart still belong to someone, so the disks and the ROM have to be yours, and Commodore’s own installer has to copy them. Everything after that is a recipe of Proceed buttons, the Green Amiga Alien guide, which people have followed by hand for twenty years. These notes turn that recipe into scripts, so someone new to Amiga emulation gets the upgraded A1200 in an afternoon, from disks they own.

The end of the road is a build nobody babysits. AmiPilot can sit inside the running Amiga, click what is left of the installers, and take a picture of the screen, so an AI agent can check that the desktop came up, that the icons are in color, that a game launches, and fix the script when they are not. Every page here is one step toward that.

Scalos replaces Workbench with a desktop that has more in it: better menus, pattern backgrounds, and icons that behave. Its preferences need MUI, so chapter 6 is not optional if you are on this page.

Automated
Before
The guide stops you here until MUI is installed.
install_scalos.sh refuses to run until MUI:Libs/muimaster.library is on the volume. Scalos preferences need it.
Automated
a
Copy Scalos-V1.2b.lha into Programs.
Pass the archive on the command line. Aminet has it as util/wb/Scalos.lha, version 1.2b.
Eliminated
Launch
Reload WinUAE and start.
Eliminated. Boot the core.
Automated
Extract
Shell, extract, endcli.
The script unpacks the archive on the host.
Automated
1–14
Scalos-Install, the system partition, languages, MUI selected, then the copy confirmations.
English, the MUI modules, and the plugins. The program lands in SYS:Expansion/Scalos, the preference programs in SYS:Prefs, and C:LoadWB is renamed to C:LoadWB.orig. The Scalos starter takes its place. S:User-Startup assigns Scalos:. An existing NewIcons newicon.library is left alone; the copy in this archive is older.
Once
15
Reset.
Reset in the OSD. If the screen does not come back, boot the spare hardfile from before this chapter.
Automated
18–21
Open the menu preferences, load Menu.pre from the Scalos drawer, and save.
Menu.pre is written to ENVARC:Scalos/Menu.prefs. That is the file Scalos reads on the next boot.
Automated
16
Resize the new window until it fills the screen.
Scalos 1.2b reads ENVARC:Sys/wbconfig.prefs at start. The Backdrop toggle never writes it, so the script does: version 1, flag 0x10000, and the root window opens as the full-screen Backdrop on the first boot. No drag, no snapshot.
Automated
Palette
Not in the guide.
Scalos colors its screen from ENVARC:Scalos/Palette.prefs, and IPrefs’ palette.prefs only reaches pens 0–3 on a deep screen. The script writes both with the MagicWB colors so icons drawn on pens 4–7 come out grey, tan and salmon instead of blue and cyan. The story is Eight pens.

Step numbers follow Chapter 9 in the Green Amiga Alien guide. The words are ours.