Original Amiga developer's comments about Workbench 1.4 Alpha 15:

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:

• OpenWorkbench/CloseWorkbench calls don't function correctly.
• ResetWB MENU option the Workbench window doesn't work correctly.
• 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.
• NEWCON: windows do not yet properly refresh themselves.
• CON: windows do not refresh themselves correctly when scrolling, and part of the window is obscured.
• Open and closing an intuition screen eats about 5K of memory.
• Diskcopy does not currently work.
• Under certain circumstances, "View By..." can cause a Software Error/Task Held.
• Too many clicks in the Workbench window (as opposed to a drawer window) can cause the system to crash.
• 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 1.4 Alpha 15 and older Kickstart versions:

• First of all, 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.
• 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 it's coloured in a soft green.
• Workbench 1.4 requires a 'workbench.library' from disk like the A4000T. If you're running LoadWB in "-debug" mode you'll get the "debug" menu, on Workbench 1.3 this menu was nameless.
• All disks now have nicely-coloured disk icons. The normal RAM disk is called "RAM DISK" in uppercase letters.
• In Workbench 1.4 you can use the selecting frame. There's also a new "Arrow up" gadget in the drawer windows, but it's always disabled. Perhaps it should become the "Zoom" gadget.
• Workbench 1.4 comes with a pre-version of IPrefs, called IP. There are also 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.
• There are some commodities on the 1.4 Alpha 15 support disk—but no commodities.library. The commodities.library V0.5 from Workbench 1.4 Alpha 18 is not working on Alpha 15. But the commodities are even running on Kick 3.1!

Here are some problems which could occur while working with Workbench 1.4. Used system was an Amiga 1000 with 512K of RAM and additional drive DF1:

• 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 Workbench window too often and then click on an icon the system will crash.
• The Workbench Format menu item only works on pre-formatted disks. The file system 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 file systems as OFS/FFS Intl and DCFS is a problem for itself. You'll always get interrupted by a requester "Not a DOS disk 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 Workbench you won't even get a disk icon. The only way to format is by using the CLI command... and all six seconds your typing's interrupted by this annoying requester.
• Diskcopy DF0: to DF1: doesn't work neither from Workbench nor from CLI. Workbench diskcopy displays the 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 Workbench and CLI follows the message "Error on SOURCE disk—Cannot open AmigaDOS device".
• 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. They're actually two files, "wbscreen.prefs" and "oscan.prefs". With type you can display the contents.