The Amiga Museum

Workbench 1.4 was never released to the public, as it slowly became Workbench 2.0 as it and Kickstart 1.4 evolved between 1988 and 1990.

Workbench 1.4 Alpha 15 (internal number 36.993): May 1989

While it looks a lot like Workbench 1.3, it’s also quite different at this point.  This needs the correct Kickstart 1.4 Alpha 15 loaded in order to boot successfully, attempting to load Workbench 1.3 or 2.0 (or any other build of Workbench other than Workbench 1.4 Alpha 15) will not work.

There are now two additional menus (Settings and Tools), and many of the menu options now also show their keyboard shortcut in the menu itself.

The window gadgets have been changed, and along with the ‘window to front’ and ‘window to back’ layer buttons in the top right, there is now an arrow pointing up to the left of these two gadgets.  The arrows for the scrollbars have been altered significantly, and the left and up scroll arrows are no longer at the opposite end of the scrollbar to the down and right arrows, but instead right next to them.

Using the new Settings -> View By submenu, it’s possible to show the contents of a Workbench Window by Icon, or listed by name, date, or size.  Using the new Settings -> Show submenu, it’s possible to show ‘Only Icons’ or ‘All Files’ in a window.

The new Tools menu only offers one menu item, ResetWB.

Instead of all free ram being reported in the title bar as a total, it now shows separately how much ‘graphics mem’ (Chip RAM) and ‘other mem’ (Fast RAM) are free.  Also the disk usage gauge to show how full a disk is is now gone.

Workbench 1.4 Beta 1 (internal number 36.1123): December 1989

To say a lot has changed since the Workbench 1.4 Alpha 15 build feels like an understatement, as this is VERY different indeed.  This requires Kickstart 1.4 Alpha 18 in order to work.  This is much closer to what was finally released as System 2, but still obviously a work-in-progress, as can be seen by the scroll bars and window gadgets.