Amithlon Setup Guide

[Charlie]

I never got a 'dual-head' set up to work under Amithlon. I suspect it's not possible (cloned, spanned, or dual) because you have to select the output you intend to use via the start-up params.

Hmmm, the above may not be true with cards using dual VGA rather than VGA+DVI. Possibly you may get a cloned WB, maybe.

To my knowledge old dual-head Matrox cards are supported in Amithlon so you could have multi-monitor support that way - I've never owned such a card.

Can anyone give a better answer?

[blitter1]

Charlie, from what I am guessing vga=769 is used to enable the normal vga out?

What about dvi out? what command must be used to enable it?

[alpyre]

If only DVI is connected, the screen shows up on DVI monitor. If only VGA is connected, screen shows up on the VGA monitor. But when both are connected, there is only video on the VGA monitor... This is what happens on my TI4200...

[Charlie]

Like alpyre said...

VGA=769 chooses the default VESA mode for Amithlon:
-The resolution the boot-screen uses
-The default WB resolution if you've not already changed it.

If all is supported properly Amithlon auto-selects the output, but you can (possibly) force output with command-line switches...
...examples of some of the more common ones can be found in the example MENU.LST file in my archive.

To my knowledge only old dual-head Matrox cards directly support two monitors under Amithlon/AmigaOS.

Having said that:
-Amithlon is such a funny beast there may be 'unexpected' hardware combinations that will work.
-I can imagine (never tried it) that one could run a second PCI GFX card that has an AmigaOS driver rather than the Amithlon driver. I believe one can use cybergfx in combination with, I think, old Pernidia cards under UAE/Amithlon. If that gets you further is another matter of course.

Best of luck.

[milanca]

Very much true, regarding graphics. On my machine i have 8800GT which i can use in VESA mode and PCI Matrox card that works with accelerated graphics. On my dedicated amithlon, which is small mini-itx board, i plan to install low-profile PCI FX5200. Still many of them could be purchased. MX4000, FX5200, 5700, some ATI cards also and all in PCI variant. In my opinion that would be the best option to get accelerated graphics with modern motherboards that come with pci-express slots.

PCI-E cards, they can work in VESA mode only. It depends on the manufacturer how compatible is even the vesa mode. Amithlon lost its support just then, when cards from nvidia 6 and 7 series came out. I am not sure if serie 6xxx was released in PCI-E, maybe, but the latest open source drivers used in amithlon kernel, and available in open source, are for 5xxx. Nothing newer ever since. I wanted to add some newer cards to my kernel (added all we had before up to 5700) but nothing newer than that, yet.

[alpyre]

I've (at damn last) been able to try Milanca's Kernel on a MultipleCoreCPU.

The system Configuration is as follows:
MB: ASUS P5KPL-SE (the cheapest m/b with 1600Mhz FSB)
CPU : Intel Core2Duo E6550 (@2.8Ghz)
RAM: 2 GB DDR2 Ram
HD: Seagate Baracuda 7200rpm SATAII 512MB
VGA : nVidia GeForce 7300 GS
AUDIO : 2x M-Audio 1010LT (not supported)

The only hardware that is not supported is the 7300GS GPU. The Display is dead black, Very probably because of the incompatibe Vesa drivers of the card...

However, system boots into Workbench succesfully... I can understand that from the HD activity, and when I do a soft reset (CTRL-LA-RA) same HD activity occurs each time proving that I am on WB...

Great Job Milanca, hope to see you implement latest graphics drivers, when they get released...

[arti]

Maybe nouveau project could be used for Amithlon?

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FrontPage#Status

[milanca]

Hello guys,

This is an update to kernel4, so it comes this time as a final kernel4 release for amithlon, full and complete with all the previous patches included. Hope you like it. Of course thanks to all of you (and the guys over at amithlonopen group) for all the tests with beta versions. Thanks to alper for many tests on his, and many other amithlon boxes.

Short Info:
Kernel is stable, first of all. Brings support for many chipset controllers, most of the newest SATA controllers mainly. This is the main purpose of this kernel. Tested with Core2Quad Q6600 on Intel's ICH9/9R, sata2 hdd and sata dvd-drive work natively (HDD installed OS3.9 only). Graphics drivers are included but recent PCI-X cards on modern boards work in VESA mode without graphic acceleration. Nevertheless, kernel4 extends hardware support, that's why i am very proud of this kernel, to the most recent motherboards. Now, when sata drives are the standard, we can natively use them and with PCI graphic card like FX5200, we can build a dedicated fully capable amithlon system with hardware accelerated graphical support. RAM still should be kept up to 1GB (or 2GB in one dimm). Only thing that we lost is live version support, option to boot the bigird, due to conflict with ramfs (i am pretty sure it is the cause) which i couldn't fix.

For developers
Linux source is included. If you want to start working on the kernel, add new drivers or just compile your own kernel, optimized for your hardware only (my optimized kernel boots in 5 secs.), linux source is here. GCC required to compile this (the latest 2.4 kernel) should be kept up to 3.3.x. (gcc 3.4 also has problems to cleanly compile it). I recommend using gcc 3.2.3 for perfectly clean compiling (2.95.3 is also fine). If you have problems setting up build environment (i used ubuntu 9.10) you can send me an email and i will try make a howto set it all up, build older gcc on newer ubuntu distro.

Files:

Kernel4

Drivers

amithlon linux-2.4.37.9 source patch

.. for lazy ones here is entire kernel tree

amithlon linux-2.4.37.9 kernel tree

Regards,
milanca

[cosmicfrog]

wow

+ Extra Ribbits

[milanca]

@cosmicfrog, Thank you! ;-)

Users with fully working amithlon boxes don't have to update their kernel, of course they can if they want to. This is a newer one but it doesn't mean that it is drastically faster or better. Anyways, giving it a go would be nice, if nothing else then just to test it and post your experience.

Amithlon is and will be a strange beast. It is painful, yes, when it comes to installing it. So new users should refer to Charlie's guide on the first page of this topic to get familiar with installing amithlon. Guide is great and covers pretty much everything. If you want to install it on newer motherboard, with pci-express and sata drive, you should refer to this guide. For example, kernel310 boots fine on my comp. as well, but only bigird. It doesn't support newer southbridges so you can't see your internal hdd (amithlon virtual hdd partition) and you can't copy the content from internal amithlon_hd to virtual partition on your sata drives. If that is the case and you need help, feel free to ask for it and i will try to make a howto.

Regards!

[Ratte]

Regarding ATI-Support
Alex Deucher from AMD/ATI is your man ... he is the man behind the radeon(allready opensource)driver!
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kerne...eads/drm-fixes

And best of all .. since R7xx ATI is using a so called ATOM-BIOS for the graphics-card.
The newer cards will allways support functions from older cards by own subroutins in their ATOM-BIOS.
If you build a kernel with radeonfb r100-r600 and ATOM, then you will never need to touch the ATI-driver again.
PCI,AGP,PCI-E ...

Give it a go ...

[prowler]

Thanks for your work on this kernel update, milanca!

[KillaByte]

Nice one - thanks for following through with this. How about a git repo for the Amithlon kernel?

[Dunny]

Hi guys -

I'm currently having fun learning linux (installed Slackware64 13.1 dual booting with Win7) and have discovered that I have a spare amount of HDD space (20GB). So why not triple boot Amithlon?

Charlie's guide was not helpful to me, as I don't have any FDD to boot from. Instead I booted into linux, used GParted to set up an ext2 partition (20MB) and allocated the rest of the spare space as $76, as per the docs. After wresling with LILO, I've got the necessary files in /boot/ - emubox.gz and smallird.gz.

Set up the boot sector with EasyBCD, and it works!

Kind of.

I get LILO, it boots emubox, which unpacks smallird, which then hangs on a black screen. Gets no further.

Any suggestions? The hardware specs are:

Samsung R60+ Laptop -
Intel Core2Duo 1.6ghz
2GB RAM
ATI x1250 256mb integrated GFX.

Obviously, I have little control over the hardware with it being a laptop. Should I just give up now and install AROS instead? or can this work? I've never tried Amithlon before, and don't have a bootable CD image - the image I have contains the amithlon files, but doesn't boot.

Cheers,

D.

[milanca]

@Ratte, thanks, i took a look. I will see what can be done. What's required is to modifiy dri driver for fbcon, framebuffer console driver that amithlon needs; and to backport it to 2.4 kernel. Huge work. Functions in 2.6 kernel are different so we have to see if it can be adopted for 2.4.

@KillaByte,

Yes, great idea to have it all in a git and to work there. I'm on it already. I will keep you posted.

@Danny,

I think you have already done more than half the job. Booting seems to be your problem, but the kernel you used, emubox.gz, comes from Amithlon CD and it is initial, first original kernel. You should replace it and both bigird and smallird. From Charlie's guide you can download AmithlonSys.rar, extract it and take kern310, bigird and smallird from it. There is MENU.LST in Grub folder so take a look and copy kernel argument lines for both internal hdd and installos3.9 to use them in lilo. You should start with bigird, internal amithlon hdd. You have 2Gb of Ram so remove 1 gig and boot with one only. Change memory amount to mem=768 and try booting with kernel310. In this line all the files are in folder /amithlon so if your folder is different you should change it accordingly.

kernel /amithlon/kern310 console_level=4 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=8200 cachesize=65536

initrd /amithlon/bigird.gz

After booting you should reach the workbench. As you already have 76 partition you should have it on the dekstop and format it (quickly). In tools, HDToolBox, check devices to see if the system finds your drives, hdd, cd/dvd-rom. If there is no other drives than internal_hdd then system can't mount your virtual (&76) partition due to unsupported chipset controller. Proceed to phase 2 ;-)

Once in linux (i already explained these steps before but here it is again) you should have AmithlonSys.rar somewhere on the desktop (or extracted). We need bigird.gz. Console is our primary tool.

bzip2 -d bigird.gz
(and you have bigird extracted)
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/bigird
sudo mount -t ext2 bigird /mnt/bigird -o loop
(and its mounted in /mnt/bigird)

With file explorer go there and find diskfile_haage (that's amithlon internal hd) and copy it somewhere you have access from Windows (on fat32 partition). You can also copy shape.rom to use it in WinUAE. If you don't have any fat32 partitions copy it to USB flash drive or just email the files to yourself :-)

Now in Windows, setup WinUAE. If you already have OS3.9 installed it's great, if not, you just need Worbench adf, floppy image to boot with. Add one more hard drive and that would be your &76 partition. It will appear in the list beginning with [PART]. Also add hard file and that is diskfile_haage. Boot with Workbench disk. The point is to use WinUAE to copy internal_hd content to &76 (virtual partition). Use HDToolBox to format the partitions (add additional partitions), make it bootable, etc.

copy amithlon_hd: name~of~your~partition: all

That's it. If you followed Charlie's guide you can here change FileSystem type, etc.

Now you should boot with grub/lilo and with smallird.gz. It doesn't contain internal amithlon hd but it looks for amithlon's partition on actual hard drive to boot from. If with kernel310 system didn't find your &76 partition on first boot, you can't boot with it now either. Use my kernel4 instead. You should copy kern310, kernel4 with the rest of the files to boot folder so when grub/lilo starts you can change the boot options on the fly.

kernel /amithlon/kernel4 console_level=0 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=5200 cachesize=65536

initrd /amithlon/smallird.gz

Hope it helps.

[Dunny]

Thanks for the advice, milanca, but it's still no go

I downloaded Amithlonsys.rar, extracted bigird.gz, smallird.gz but left kernel310 - My only HDD is a SATA drive, so I went straight for kernel 4.

My lilo.conf is as follows:

boot=/dev/sda5
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
#default=linux

image=boot/emubox.gz
  initrd=boot/bigird.gz 
  label=Amithlon
  root=/dev/ram0
  vga=769
  append="kernel /boot/kernel4 console_level=4 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=8200 cachesize=65536"

image=boot/emubox.gz
  initrd=boot/smallird.gz 
  label=Amithlon_Small
  root=/dev/ram0
  vga=769
  append="kernel /boot/kernel4 console_level=4 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=8200 cachesize=65536"

And having written that out, I then reboot. I get the lilo menu, and choose either Amithlon or Amithlon_small, and it starts booting - "starting <Amithlon[_small]>" and then goes to a black screen with no further activity. Basically, exactly the same as before

Any suggestions? What am I doing wrong?

Edit: I can't remove 1GB of RAM - it's a laptop.

D.

[milanca]

@Danny,

Ahh sorry, yes it is a laptop, forgot about it. Blank black screen looks like to a memory issue. Also lilo.conf doesn't look right to me, so let's try with this first. Do you have installed OS3.9 on &76 partition, or just the copied content as i described ? If not, then don't boot with smallird.gz (lilo.conf is also wrong) just try booting Internal amithlon hdd. Try with kern310 so you can see if it can work, if amithlon can boot internal image with your 2gb of ram (i suspect though). Sata isn't the problem here cause kern310 doesn't have to boot from your hdd, it will boot from internal amithlon hdd image (diskfile_haage) which will be in the memory copied from initrd. So just try with it, if it boots fine then 2Gb is not the issue and you can continue with the the process i described (its painful i know but that's an amithlon) and you can copy everything to &76 partition and switch to kernel4 to use your sata drive. If it doesn't boot at all then amithlon can't work on your laptop due to memory issue.

your lilo config should be like this:

boot=/dev/sda5
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
#default=linux

image=boot/kern310 console_level=4 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=8200 cachesize=65536
  initrd=boot/bigird.gz 
  label=Internal Amithlon HDD Image

image=boot/kern310 console_level=0 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=5200 cachesize=65536
  initrd=boot/smallird.gz 
  label=HDD-Installed AmigaOS 3.9

Regards

[Dunny]

I currently have done nothing with my &76 partition - I would like to get Amithlon to boot into workbench so that I can use HDToolbox to set it up. I'll give kernel310 and your suggested lilo config a go.

Thanks!

Edit:
Hmm, that lilo configuration doesn't work - it complains about "console_level" and "init". I'll try and fix it.


D.

[milanca]

I see, then this should be a winning combination ;-)

boot=/dev/sda5
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
#default=linux

image=boot/kern310
  initrd=boot/bigird.gz 
  label=Internal Amithlon HDD Image
  append="console_level=4 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=8200 cachesize=65536"

image=boot/kern310
  initrd=boot/smallird.gz 
  label=HDD-Installed AmigaOS 3.9
  append="console_level=0 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=5200 cachesize=65536"

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by milanca

I see, then this should be a winning combination ;-)

boot=/dev/sda5
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
#default=linux

image=boot/kern310
  initrd=boot/bigird.gz 
  label=Internal Amithlon HDD Image
  append="console_level=4 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=8200 cachesize=65536"

image=boot/kern310
  initrd=boot/smallird.gz 
  label=HDD-Installed AmigaOS 3.9
  append="console_level=0 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=5200 cachesize=65536"

I had to move the "vga=769" item out and into a separate line (lilo complains if it's in "append") and make the names smaller, but it still fails to boot either. I get as far as the "BIOS Check Successful" message, and then a black screen

Complete lock-up, no keys respond and numlock light fails to switch off when I use the NumLock key, so it looks like it's pretty dead.

D.