15.Dec.2025
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System information: xSysInfo 0.2a
xSysInfo is a comprehensive system information utility for AmigaOS. It provides detailed insights into the hardware and software configuration of the Amiga system as well as benchmarking capabilities. We reported on the first version last Friday and have now taken advantage of this major update to ask author Stefan Reinauer – we reported on the replica of the Fast SCSI2 controller A4091, among other things – about his motivation for rewriting the well-known system information programme SysInfo, the last stable version of which was released almost exactly five years ago.
As the author tells us, for him, the "retro idea" consists of keeping the good old days alive on the one hand, and on the other hand, preserving knowledge about hardware and how computers work. Working together with others in a community and creating something that is better than what an individual can achieve is an additional attraction for him.
In the case of SysInfo, the programme had essentially not been maintained for five years, which is why he sat down "and rewrote the whole thing from scratch". He deliberately tried to improve a few things – for example, so that RTG systems start directly in a window, or how MIPS and MFlops are calculated.
SysInfo also has an overflow bug when measuring disk speed. Half the time, you don't get the actual speed value, but simply 6,553,600 bytes/second (i.e. 6.5MB).
Just when he and Chris Hooper had recreated the A4091 (see above), it was very annoying. Hooper then wrote devtest, but that was intended more for developers and was a little too complicated for the average user. Stefan Reinauer continues: "So the goal (and I'm still working on this) is to be able to perform very accurate measurements on different SCSI controllers using a convenient graphical tool that can then correlate other things such as memory throughput and CPU speed.
I plan to incorporate a few more tests and present the results on a new hardware screen: (Re)SDMAC version, SCSI controller version, etc. This will provide a simple one-stop shop where you can check whether the system is running optimally."
The author requests that benchmark results obtained on actual hardware (Pistorms/Z3660/...) be sent to him. To do this, run the SPEED benchmark on the main page and either take a photo of it or send the numbers. He also asks that you specify your Amiga configuration, which turbo card, how much RAM and what type of RAM. It should ultimately look something like this:
- Amiga Config: YYYYYYYY
- Dhrystones: XXXX
- Mips: XXXX
- MFlops: XXXX
- CHIP SPEED: XXXX MB/s
- FAST SPEED: XXXX MB/s
- ROM SPEEED: XXXX MB/s
(dr)
[News message: 15. Dec. 2025, 20:56] [Comments: 0]
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