Amithlon Setup Guide

[Vipersan]

Many thanx buddy..
I shall watch with interest..and who knows..
If my board is still VIAble (see what I did there) then a small form factor Amithlon is a nice use of this all but redundant tech.
I'll be checking it over this weekend.
cheers.
mine has video and audio out ..

[milanca]

Right. What I meant by video out is there were models with composite video output besides the regular VGA. It makes no difference, those are just the variants as they all share the same chipset. All of them, in EPIA series, are covered by the kernel. If I manage to get the graphics working under the kernel it will work on many models supported by the driver VIA released. So this board of yours will be supported as well.
The GeForce cards, and the Matrox, have the best support and all of the accelerated methods are supported. If I remember correctly reading the docs and looking at the sources, VIA doesn't have all of them (functions that can be used for amithlon acceleration) but somewhere like 80% of what geforce can provide. No cursor hardware acceleration and something like that but still all of the major methods are there, rect copy, fill, etc. which can make VIA nicely supported under amithlon.

[Vipersan]

Gave the pcb and Hush case a clean out and powered it up for the first time in many years.
Looking good so far..and I was surprised to find that I could get a 32bit right angled pci riser from China for a couple of ££s..so thats on order.
Tight for space in the Hush case ..and will be using that small fan for cooling..
Pity I never found a passive cooling system for the Hush...as there certainly is provision for clamping heat pipes to the bulky aluminium side fins.
I guess a case top in perspex with holes drilled above the fan is the best I can do.
If I remember correctly ..the lack of top cover was an attempt at cooling when the Epia/Hush case was an HTPC

[milanca]

Hush is a great looking mini-itx case! It can really be a nice project.

https://silentpcreview.com/review-hush-mini-itx-pc/

The pipes you mentioned, you can see them mounted here.

[Vipersan]

Yes indeed..I have sadly never seen the cooling kit for sale or I would have bought it.
I bought my case as used..so if it ever _was_ kitted out with the cooling system it had been removed long before I got it.
Cheers..

[Vipersan]

Had to try the Epia..
It did boot ok from the CD...but crashes the emulator when using an installation via hard drive..
This is of course with the integrated VGA..and Kern310.
I may try with Kernel 4 ...but does indeed look like the integrated vga is not compatible.
As said I have a right angled pci riser on order...but only one slot available and with limited space.
any suggestions Milanca regarding compatible graphics cards with a small footprint..?
The smaller the better.

[Vipersan]

Hmm..
Interesting...
It would appear that I can use kernel4 with the integrated vga..
The problem is of course that I cannot get to HD tools (amithlon) with kern310 to build the amithlon OS.
..unless I build it up to pre patching on a different PC entirely.
Then transfer the partially prepared hard drive into the Epia mini ITX machine the edit @small to accept kernel4 replacing kern310.
That appears to work..
So kernel4 is just fine with the mini ITX but I need to get as far as formatting the drives using kern 310 ...before I edit @small to kernel4.
I dont see any way round that hurdle other than to use 2 PCs ?
suggestions welcome

[milanca]

The problem is of course that I cannot get to HD tools (amithlon) with kern310 to build the amithlon OS.

Can you please explain this to me? You are booting from the cd with kern310 on it and `hd tools` isn't working? Or there is original kernel on the booting CD, is it actually booting with original Amithlon CD, unmodified?

[Vipersan]

I'll try without confusing myself or you..lol
No hard drive installed at all..
insert the amithlon cd..and boot...
boot completes ..and we are in.
This of course was just a compatibility test.
Insert a hard drive..and run through the standard setup..freedos..etc
The hard drive is prepared at least at dos level..2 paritions prepared mode 76.
kernel310 is edited into small and amithlon.
loadlin @amithlon..
the emulator crashes..so no chance to format those type 76 partitions.
edit small again to run kernel4 ..but still doesnt run amithlon..but no crash..just pretty garbage on screen.
edit @amithlon to run kernel4 also..
same result..pretty coloured lines garbage on screen..but no crash.
Obviously I still cannot access HD tools to prepare the scsi partitions.
If I then remove the hard drive and run in another PC which will accept kern310 without crashing I can then format the scsi partitions...then return the drive to the EPIA ..edit to use kernel4 ..then run @small ...
boot completes without crashing...and so long as I dont run anything that is edited to use Kern310...good to go.
Hope that made sense.
It looks like EPIA is totally incompatible with kern310...but is fine with kernel4
rgds

what I haven't tried..and has only just occurred is partition and formatting the drive type76 free space directly from the CD ..assuming that is do-able which as I said doesn't cause a crash.
Please remember this is the first time I've used kernel4 ...and I obviously need to avoid kern310 in the Epia

[milanca]

When you boot off the kernel4 can you please make sure at the boot arguments to use ram1 instead of ram0, then let me know please how it went.

[Vipersan]

Indeed I will...
Did my ramblings make sense to you ?

[milanca]

Did my ramblings make sense to you ?

Yes it did. Only this part:

If I then remove the hard drive and run in another PC which will accept kern310 without crashing I can then format the scsi partitions...then return the drive to the EPIA ..edit to use kernel4 ..then run @small ...
boot completes without crashing...and so long as I dont run anything that is edited to use Kern310...good to go.

When you return the drive, you said `good to go`, can you actually boot off the hard drive and get into the workbench ?

[Vipersan]

So...what I have in the EPIA atm ..is an 80gb ide drive prepared on another PC ..with the first 3 patches and OS installed..so no AHI no USB ...and no drivers or other patches installed.
..and is booting to workbench on the epia...
Small and Amithlon edited

kernel4 init=linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram1 mem=512M initrd=smallird.gz vga=769 ramdisk_size=2310 cachesize=65536 leavepages=7400 video=dovesa

and also edited amithlon but dont think is neccessary at this point...as needing Amithlon is no longer required for access.

kernel4 init=/linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram1 mem=512M initrd=bigird.gz vga=769 ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=7400 video=dovesa

As I said the hard drive was not prepared on the mini ITX ...but boots to workbench using the integrated VGA.
I will be introducing more patches and features later..but for now ..the sun is shining and my garden needs watering..
lol

[milanca]

Glad to hear that! You sorted it all out.
I know Epia has to work, many of the tests and some dev parts were done on similar board, it has to work.

Vesa mode isn't particularly interesting to work with and adding a pci card such as matrox or pci geforce 5200fx and it will be a totally different story.

All the best using your another amithlon machine!

[Vipersan]

Thanks Milanca..though I have yet to get audio and usb working..
..and of course the EPIA has only 1 pci slot available..so no chance to add extra cards if the onboard hardware doesn't work..
I hope to be able to confirm these things later.
cheers.

[milanca]

You're welcome mate. Could you do something for me please, from a shell can you do:

xcat/proc/version

[Vipersan]

Well I guess it was all going too smoothly..
Got my first (incompatibility) error.
Just installed drivers4 pack..using the same method as previously for the earlier version..0.9 I think.
I didn't bother with these this time around going straight for drivers4.
This was apparent when setting the stack and running pciinsmod to check what if anything was recognised.
>>>

[Vipersan]

xcat/proc/version
..retrurned unknown command

[milanca]

Yes. But it's still telling you that the drivers are for 2.4.19-pre4 and you're running the kernel 2.4.37.9, so there is a mismatch. There is a location (in the output) where they are loaded from. Just download the right drivers and replace the current ones.

xcat/proc/version
..retrurned unknown command

I believe some of the amithlon updates have to be installed which will install xcat and some other tools.

[Vipersan]

Originally Posted by milanca

Yes. But it's still telling you that the drivers are for 2.4.19-pre4 and you're running the kernel 2.4.37.9, so there is a mismatch. There is a location (in the output) where they are loaded from. Just download the right drivers and replace the current ones.

I figured as much..
But these were the drivers I downloaded from snkbitten..
Any idea where I might find the right drivers ?