Amithlon Setup Guide

[XDelusion]

Alright, go my sound working.

Now if only there was a guide for setting up OpenGL and USB...

Milanca, my previously mentioned Asus motherboard had to be re-dedicated to the daily home computer. Thus I need to get something new for my Amithlon experimentation. I was considering the Gigabyte GA-P45T-ES3G. It has the following features: northbridge = P45. southbridge = ICH10. up to 1600mhz FSB. DDR3 Ram up to 1600mhz. great pci setup, a couple of pci-e but 5 standard pci slots! SATAx6. PATA. Realtek ALC892 audio. Realtek 8111D Ethernet. PS2 keys. PS2 mouse. Serial. Parallel. USBx6.

It has been a while since I have been close to kernel4. I am trying to ascertain if this motherboard is a good candidate. Any opinions? As far as audio I will use SB Live!. As far as video I have no idea yet.

Thanks in advance!

Rodomoc

[fishyfish]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Does this install on Core2Duo CPUs yet? I now have an unused laptop that would make a great "Amiga"

D.

Ive been using Amithlon on a core2duo off and on for about 3 years, so it definately does Whether or not it works on your particular laptop or not may be another thing though The type of CPU is pretty much inconsequential (Ive run amithlon on an i5 even). The rest of the hardware seems to be he bigger issue.

edit: only one core will be active, however this also means that the active core inherrits entire l2/l3 cache assuming the cpu uses a shared cache architecture (which a c2d does).

Originally Posted by XDelusion

Alright, go my sound working.

Now if only there was a guide for setting up OpenGL and USB...

OpenGL is only available via wazp3d (ie. software rendered). Given enough grunt though and its quite useable. I run payback for example at 800x600 at good framerates with lots of eye candy enabled (antialiasing, texture filtering, gl coloring, fog, etc.). Quake however I had to drop back to 640x512 using wazp3d/mesa and even then I only get about 55fps.

Granted I am running a core2duo that is just shy of 4ghz, but even something like an old p4 or athlon64 copes fine if you drop the resolution back a little. Software rendering is much faster (I get about 180 fps in quake @640x512 using normal s/w renderer vs. about 55 using wazp3d).

P96mode (in prefs) is very handy when using a soley rtg based OS3.x system. Not only can you make lower resolution screenmodes for when your system doesnt quite cope, but its very handy for making screenmodes for using uae, mame, etc.

As for USB, poseidon is the way to go. I personally have no need for it, but that's how it'd be done (along with arrackattack (or however its spelled)). Hopefully someone with an inclination may recompile it (now that its open source under APL).

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by milanca

@Methanoid,

To be honest, i haven't even tried highmem support. I wanted to test the functionality first, to see if it works as the previous kernels with all the same settings. Memory allocating is a bit different so i had to slightly change and adopt it to make it work first. Absolutely i will try enabling it. Now it's still for <1gb.

I suppose, at least the few of us with working amithlon boxes, have it running on ide drives. So please test it only on ide, not sata drives.

Hi

I never read your reply carefully and I dont think you read my question either

Amithlon wont even BOOT on machines with 4Gb (even with MEM=512) with older kernels. What I want is a kernel that WILL boot when the machine has 4/8Gb Ram (but can limit the Ram to Amithlon to 512/1gb correctly). I don't need Amithlon to have loads of Ram but if I run Windows on the same machine I do need loads of Ram!

Does Kernel4 work in that respect? is SATA ok now? I want Amithlon on my quad core i5!

regards
Meth

[Methanoid]

Anyone compared VGA performance in Amithlon

eg

Is an accelerated (but slow) Geforce FX5200 faster than a an unaccelerated VESA-toting but mega fast Radeon HD5750 or whatever.

The modern card would be many times faster in say Windoze but with VESA slowing it down would it STILL outpace the FX5200 in Amithlon usage?

[milanca]

Yes, it could be possible to gain good performance from vesa on new and ultra fast video cards. As a software renderer it will add some more load to the cpu but it won't affect much the overall performance i am sure. It is better of course to have the gpu do all the staff. If such the card in vesa mode can outperform hw accelerated card, i am not sure about that but could be also possible. FX5200 ain't much of a card, for amithlon it is great but in general 'old and slow'. You can make some tests after all using p96speed test and compare fx5200 or any other hw accelerated card and some fast card in vesa mode.

I did some tests on my new amithlon laptop using p96 and i'm attaching it. Not bad. I wasnt;t that active myself and didn't have a dedicated amithlon computer. Recently got myself an older acer aspire with 1.5ghz pentium M and ati mobility radeon 9700. Oh yes, almost to forget, got that card working with hardware acceleration with modified kernel 4. I will share it of course soon just to add something more so that pci-x 5300 can be tested at the same time. Mobility Radeon 9700 is working beautifully, no side effects (garbage on the screen or chunks) for this time i have been testing it.

[fishyfish]

A fast card running in vesa mode vs. an older fully supported card is a mixed bag, but overall I'd go for the supported card. Using my matrox g550 (supported) is overall a noticably nicer experience than the gf 9600gt (vesa) I did tests with.

As for the PCX 5300, I almost wish Id not given mine away now, especially if its potentially supported in amithlon (was limited to vesa when I bought it much to my disappointment, which is why I gave it away)

[milanca]

Hi,

I have released the latest kernel 4 with newer hardware added. As i said before there is ati mobility radeon 9600/9700 (with partial hw acceleration, fill_rect and copy_rect) as well as pcx5300, pcx5750 and pcx5900. Pci-e cards are not tested yet but i expect full hardware acceleration on these video cards. Feedback is required. There are some potential cards i wish to include in later kernel versions. I am asking for donation so i can buy a few of them. These are pretty cheap cards and working blindly on hw acceleration without testing on actual hardware is not an option so small donations for kernel 4 is highly required to support future development. Thank you guys.

Place as usual:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amithlon/files/

There are 3 versions, just smaller in size. If you have ide drives and no sata you can use kernel with ide controllers. There is a version with both ide and sata controllers and a kernel with ide, sata and additional third party scsi controllers. Also linux side amithlon drivers included for sound, ethernet and serial.

Enjoy!

[NMI]

Great work!

Had to dust of my Amithlon test system and try it with my PCX5300 card.
Unfortunately the new kernel does not work with the PCX5300, it shows half a boingball together with some garbage and hangs.

I will try and set console_level=4 and see if it prints anything usefull. Anything else I can do to help debug the issue?

[milanca]

Hello,

Thanks a lot for testing pcx5300 on kernel 4. We are going to switch over to PM/email to try to do some tests and bring support for these cards hopefully.

We are going to inform the community with the results later of course as we will need to exchange several posts here before we actually have something.

Best regards!

[XDelusion]

I am trying to boot the Amithlon CD on a newer system, same hardware as Fish is using in fact.

The problem I am facing though is that after the initial start up screen, everything goes black right before you go to the bouncing boing ball screen.

My question is this. I know that I would have to use Kernal 3 or 4 in order to run Amithlon on this hardware (GeForce 5200), but do I need to inject them into the original Amithlon ISO and tell the SMALL to use one of them instead of the EMU*.gz file?

How do you guys get your CD to boot on unsupported systems in the first place?

I prepared my hard drive and edited SMALL to use Kernel 3 and later 4, but when the CD boots, it seems as if it ignores all that.

[arti]

Which PCI (not PCI-e) card with DVI will be the best for amithlon ?

What about VooDoo 3, will it work with 3d acceleration ?

[NMI]

I can confirm that the GeForce FX5600 PCI works with Amithlon, Full HW acceleration and DVI-port. It is absolutely one of the best graphic cards for Amithlon currently.

My only grief is that it has a fan. Since Amithlon only support 2D acceleration a GF3 card is almost as fast as a Geforce FX. So my pick for best PCI+DVI card for Amithlon would probably be a fanless FX5200!

[arti]

Found, but it's quite expensive.

What about Radeon 7000? It's 3 times cheaper on ebay.

[milanca]

Radeon cards (all of them currently supported) have partial hw. acceleration. If you are picking a card for amithlon, I would go with Geforce. As NMI said, 5200 or 5700. You can buy fx5500 on dealextreme for 30eur, 256MB 128bit card. I am personally looking for pci fx5200 but low profile, for my mini-itx board. Haven't find it yet.

Best regards!

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by milanca

Radeon cards (all of them currently supported) have partial hw. acceleration. If you are picking a card for amithlon, I would go with Geforce. As NMI said, 5200 or 5700. You can buy fx5500 on dealextreme for 30eur, 256MB 128bit card. I am personally looking for pci fx5200 but low profile, for my mini-itx board. Haven't find it yet.

Best regards!

Milanca

I was feeling helpful since you've done so much for Amithlon users....

One here

And one here

Not cheap but they are both PCI and Low Profile (if you change the bracket yourself)

[arti]

Alright, got gfx working with fx 5200, now I only miss sound...
I have got Sound Blaster Audigy.
When loading module ice1724 I get unresolved symbols ...

[milanca]

Originally Posted by arti

Alright, got gfx working with fx 5200, now I only miss sound...
I have got Sound Blaster Audigy.
When loading module ice1724 I get unresolved symbols ...

Is the system auto-loading that modules for your card? ice1724 is for cards for example based on envy24x chip. What is the vendor and device id of your card?

[arti]

Originally Posted by milanca

Is the system auto-loading that modules for your card? ice1724 is for cards for example based on envy24x chip. What is the vendor and device id of your card?

No it isn't.
PCI Vendor:

1102 0007

Do I need pci_vendors.txt to be in S: ?
Where can I get newest?

Edit: Clarify pci vendor.

[milanca]

Hi arti,

No, you don't need vendors.txt, all you need is is pci_modules. But in this case you don't need it either. Well i don;t know why you decided to use ice1724, not required for this sound card, maybe you thought it will work with it but never mind now. That card should work natively in amithlon, at least devices with ids (vendor 1102, 002 and 004) do. If you take a look in pci_modules you can find it commented out, because there is internal support for them ( in amithlon's core itself). Did you try it without modules to see if it can work natively? If it doesn;t that device with id 007 is not supported internally. You can try to add 1102 0007 above 1102 004, uncomment all the other lines to see if emu10k can make it work.

best reards

[arti]

Hi milanca,

Thanks for answer.
I can't load emu10k1 driver because of wrong kernel version.

best regards

[Methanoid]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Milanca

I was feeling helpful since you've done so much for Amithlon users....

One here

And one here

Not cheap but they are both PCI and Low Profile (if you change the bracket yourself)

You're welcome Milanca I thought at least I'd have got a thank you!!

So, is there any real info about the max amount of memory that can be present on a mobo and still allow Amithlon to work?

My previous experience was that more than 1Gb gave issues but on my D945GCLF2 Atom with a single 2Gb DIMM it did work.

Wondering if a 2x2Gb system (Ion) would work or not. Any ideas Milanca

[Methanoid]

REQUEST: Any Grub2 users out there

Please let me have your Grub script entry - thats the file that Grub uses before you execute "update-grub" - that contains your Amithlon entries. I'm struggling to get Amithlon working again after 2 years or more away!!!

EDIT:

Originally Posted by alpyre

Hi Methanoid... you can find details in my QuadBoot document...
Anyway, the entry I use is as follows...

menuentry "AmigaOS 3.9" {
linux16 /boot/kern310 console_level=0 init=/linuxrc root=/dev/ram0 mem=768M vga=769 ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=5200 cachesize=65536 
initrd16 /boot/smallird.gz
}

This sort of works.. I get the Boing ball but nothing else happens.

Tried replacing kern310 with emubox.gz and smallird.gz with bigird.gz but no joy

Do I need a "root (0,5)" inserted?

Worth mentioning I have USB Mouse and KB

[milanca]

Hi Methanoid,

Yes, on some motherboards, like yours, 2gb of ram works just fine in one slot. Thats great board then allowing you to use 2gb. If i am right it has one pci slot so you could hook it up with some supported pci video card. 2x2gb definitely will not work, period. Its not because of the kernel only, the core of the amithlon is done that way.
Regarding the grub, yes, its very important to tell it your amithlon partition. Do not edit the cfg manually, use template config files and create your new entry upon one of the templates then add and update it. Here is a great tutorial, http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html

Regards

Looking at a supermicro motherboard. C2SEE. Seems fairly decent and has more pci slots than my Asus p5KPL-cm. That and my ps2 ports on the asus board are breaking their solder connections. So to hell with it, I am looking at the LGA775 based supermicro boards now. Here are some C2SEE details. It seems like G43 and ICH10 covered by Kernel 4? Am assuming audio and ethernet would be covered in kernel 4 as well? In the event not, there are 4 pci slots that can be filled with working stuff. Not sure about the GMA4500 video in kernel 4 yet. I am looking at the 775 based cpu boards because I have a really nice Xeon 3100 dual core 3gz I will peel out of asus board and re-use. Any comments most appreciated.

FSB1333/1066/800, DDR3 ram
Intel G43, Intel ICH10
Realtek8111C Ethernet
6 x sata
pcie2x16 = 1
pciex16 = 1
pc1x1 = 1
pci = 4
Realtek ALC888 Audio
12xUSB2
Intel GMA4500 onboard video
ps2 mouse, ps2 keys

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Do I need a "root (0,5)" inserted?

It can't hurt.

I think the correct line should be: set root "hd0,5"

I know grub is: root (hd0,5)

[Methanoid]

All sorted while the board was down... I've got a quintuple boot D945GCLF2

OSX Snow Leopard
Windows 7
Linux Mint 12
Amithlon
AROS (Icaros)

Now if I had a clue how to get an Amiga online or networked I'd be able to copy files from my network to the Amiga side.

I'll do a full post detailing it all for anyones interest and for my future reference. This is the 2nd time I've rebuilt it for fun and I always forget the key steps that make all the difference!!!

I had my netbook booting the same 5 OS's with a pretty bootloader (Burg) too so might try that again!

[Methanoid]

Stage 1 – W7

I think in my case I used an MBR hack to get it installed with MBR but GPT/GUID is also fine. Assuming GPT follow this to get W7 installed and then OSX
https://sites.google.com/site/nozycz...-and-windows-7

Stage 2 – OSX

https://sites.google.com/site/nozycz...gclf2-atom-330

Stage 3 – Linux

I installed Mint 12 64bit (Atom 330 is 64bit) but any Linux pretty much will do. I suggest not creating a swap partition but you probably can (just makes it more confusing with even more partitions). Make sure you install the Grub2 bootloader to the Linux partition NOT the bootblock or you’ll kill the nice Chameleon bootloader that OSX uses

Stage 4 – Amithlon

Important to note that Amithlon WONT work if you don’t change the SATA to Legacy mode (ie IDE emulation). I used Acronis Disk Director to partition my Amithlon partition as &076 (Amiga) so Amithlon could use it. Copied the Amithlon files (kernels & IRD files) to a directory on Linux partition called Ami in root directory. Customised Grub2 to load Amithlon (details shortly)

Stage 5 – Icaros (AROS)

http://vmwaros.blogspot.co.uk/

Likewise AROS won’t allow AHCI so you need to be in Legacy mode (but W7 and OSX will work still thank god!). Copy the AROS kernels to the Ami directory. Install AROS using LiveDVD or USB stick following manual but do NOT install Bootloader. Then boot into Linux and customise Grub2 to load AROS (details shortly).

Stage 6 – Tidy up bootloaders


Need to edit a Plist file in OSX to hide some partitions and rename others, set a default OS etc. (details shortly)

Finished/End Result

Pretty Chameleon boot shows OSX, W7 and Linux. Select Linux to get Grub2 and then either boot Linux or Amithlon or AROS.

Later

I’ll have a play later with BURG and a pretty bootloader for every OS.

[amigoun]

Milanca: Theres an openChrome project which would probably allow VIA/S3 accelerated graphics in Amithlon Kernel, that would be perfect for many older notebooks, which use that chipset. What do you think?

@Milanca:

Is it possible to add support to usb wifi chipsets (eg. Zydas 1211b) ?
which is the best method: linux side amithlon drivers or amithlon native drivers ?

Also my graphics card is Nvidia Geforce 315. Do you think it's supported in amithlon (eg. at least 2D accelaration) ?

Thanks!

[amigoun]

On one Amithlon setup I am forced to use Amithlon Linux side Audio Drivers. Now I realized when wanted to play CD Audio, that AC97 Mixer doesnt support Linux Side Audio. Is there a way to get CD audio with Linux Side Amithlon AHI driver?

[fishyfish]

re: RAM.

Something people seem to have neglected to mention (or perhaps didnt realise) is that using the Mem=XXXX arguement will mean a significant reduction in performance as it will drop the system back to single channel mode for ram access. The same is of course also true for just using 1 stick of ram in an effort to gain more memory.

[Methanoid]

ISTR the performance difference between single and dual channel Ram in a PC is around 2-3% isnt it?

[fishyfish]

No, not at all. The difference at times is huge. 20-30%, or even higher in the right situations. This of course depends on the software and hardware being used, but additional ram bandwidth is often handy.

My core2duo@3.86ghz amithlon box loses about %25 in terms of framerates using software rendered Quake2. Using software rendered Wazp3d is significantly bigger an hit.

There's a reason triple and quad channel ram was introduced over the last few years, even with the advent of 2ghz+ ddr3 ram

[Ratte]

Lenovo Thinkpad T41 Notebook
Pentium M 1,7GHz
2 x 512MB PC333
RV250 (FireGL 9000)
Intel 855PM chipset

- kernelpanic - (with 1Gb and 512Mb "only")
any ideas?

a1k-thread:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?p=571284

screenshot:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment....4&d=1352594278

[HeZoR]

I got a similar setup I can try it also.
Lenovo Thinkpad T42 Notebook
Pentium M 1.7Ghz
2 x 1Gb PC333
Ati Rage Mobility

Originally Posted by Ratte

Lenovo Thinkpad T41 Notebook
Pentium M 1,7GHz
2 x 512MB PC333
RV250 (FireGL 9000)
Intel 855PM chipset

- kernelpanic - (with 1Gb and 512Mb "only")
any ideas?

a1k-thread:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?p=571284

screenshot:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/attachment....4&d=1352594278

[amigoun]

Originally Posted by Ratte

Lenovo Thinkpad T41 Notebook

- kernelpanic - (with 1Gb and 512Mb "only")
any ideas?

Same results for MaxData Pro 8100X with practically sillmilar specs.
Probably unsupported i855PM chipset in linux kernel.

For me, the best laptop that can run Amithlon is Latitude C610 and probably C640 also. It provides partly accelerated ATI graphics with linux-side sound & net.

[milanca]

Hello,

Intel i855 and many other from the series are supported by the kernel. Intel chipsets are the ones of best supported. Some laptops have so called 'bios bug', in some cases being unable to map PCI space. I did some research on the subject and found that agp cards may have problems when run off i855 chipset at various regular linux distros. It should be investigated some more to see if it any override can be done.

Regards

[_lm473_]

@Milanca:

Is it possible for you to inject zd1211rw linux wifi driver in the kernel ?

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/zd1211rw

[lukassid]

Can somebody recommend mini itx low power consumption board that would be easy to install amithlon on? Thanks

Edit: I can afford one of those 2 with CPU on board.
http://www.premone.net/catalog/product/view/id/138100/
Intel or Amd
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0089GN9BO
?