Amithlon Setup Guide

[NMI]

I'm using a SoundBlaster Audigy 1.
But I can't remember if it worked or not before I upgraded to the lastest AHI-version from Aminet.

[Michael Sykes]

I think the last supported SB was the SB 128 or maybe a 512. But I can be wrong.
It's been a few years since I used it the last time....
I only had a generic AC97 onboard adapter back in the days.
Regarding to some other forums Kernel3.10 will support it.I say just give it a try.

[alpyre]

My aim was to build a system into a slim horizontal case, which maybe could have a more A4000 like feel. So I needed a low-profile soundcard which would be supported by AHI.

I was thinking about buying an Audigy SE but now I realised that it uses another chipset, other than Emu10k2 (CA-0106 actually).

Hmm... maybe I can go for my trusty SBLive! with a PCI extender ribbon.

Ayways... Thanks for the info NMI and Michael.

[Methanoid]

Arent SB128s low pro? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261461187365 ??

[alpyre]

Yes it is low profile. But still not an EMU10k card.

[croupier]

Need some help.....installed the Kernel4 and when I try to run pciinstmod I receive an error that it cannot communicate with the linux part....am I missing something?

I've installed all the required updates and drivers that should be used with kernel4.....

Anything else to be installed (on the linux side)?

[XDelusion]

AHI 6 for AMithlon is corrupted, ANyone got a working copy?

[milanca]

Hello,

@croupier
Do you have maybe other drivers copied into the system along with kernel4 drivers? This can be one cause of the error you get. If you previously installed kernel 3.10 and its drivers you have to remove all the kernel 3.10 drivers before installing new ones. Conflict comes when your kernel tries to load driver (kernel module) that was not compiled for that kernel version. Make sure that is not the cause.
If I remember correctly pciinsmod is auto-loading all the drivers/modules that it can find for the particular hardware config. What does `pcilist` say? Particular driver can be loaded manually with insmod. Is there actually an existing driver that is about to be loaded, network, sound? pcilist can help a lot. It will list your hardware config along with all device ids in your hardware. You can take a look at file S:/pci_modules to see if there are any matching ids. If there are no ids that match your hardware, your sound card or network controller for example, there is nothing the kernel can load. So it can be another error cause. I have't used amithlon for quite some time so i am a bit rusty, sorry about that.

Best regards,
-milanca

[Methanoid]

Q: does Amithlon support USB mouse & keyboard? Its been so long since I messed with it I forget... Was gonna get a new mobo for it but can't find one I want which has PS2 connectors

[croupier]

Sorry for my late reply to milanca...but was doing all the other things with no time for amithlon......managed to get most of the things runing under 3.1...no time to play with 4 yet....hopefully soon...

As for USB mouse and keyboards...they all work ok if poseidon/usb stack is correctly installed and recognises the present usb ports...

[themamboman]

It's a long shot but back on page 1 of this thread (8 years ago), was this:

Voodoo3 PCI.
From memory:
Open W3D installer & open the Voodo3 specific files in a good hex editor & alter the id-numbers refering to 'kosher' Amiga PCI bus for those reported by PCIList in Amithlon.
-As easy as that!-
-Hyperion won't be happy-

So, anyone know the hex offsets in the Avenger libraries to make these changes? Any guided tutorials?

Would love to have either a voodoo3 or s3virgeDX with hardware 3d acceleration running.

[beezle]

I'm dubious at best.
There's more to hardware initialization than just warp3d.
Still need the actual drivers. And they won't work if the system is expecting a mediator.

There might be some element of truth there, but even if there is I'd expect it needs to be done in tandem with the instructions to fool the system into thinking a mediator PCI slot is present (found in uae-jit docs which are contained in euae archive).

I'd love to be proven wrong though.

[SnkBitten]

I'm having a bit of an issue. I can boot off the Amithlon CD just fine and play around, I can boot from my "boot" FAT hard drive to the environment (Shell, no installed OS). When I try to install OS 3.9, it decompresses the files and as soon as it finishes the system locks. The icons/window borders change colors to an orange/red and they system is completely locked. Wipe everything, partition the drive (100 MB FAT and 79 GB ($76/118) AmithlonVirtual), copy the ISOLINUX directory files to C:, modify the autoexec.bat and at the point of starting the actual install (Clicked Install OS 3.9, watched it uncompress the the files to RAM: ) it locks with the screen icons/window borders turning orange/red.

I've installed it successfully on VirtualBox on my primary PC, though it was extremely crash prone until I replaced emubox.gz with new_emubox.gz. It's been pretty stable since. Just having issues getting it on physical hardware. With the CD booting and running just fine on the hardware I'm attempting the install, it's starting to drive me a bit insane.

Tried following the guide at first but I could never get grub to see my HD portion of grub (find /boot/grub/stage1). That was with multiple attempts using various sizes for the first primary partition on WinXP and the second primary partition being the Fat partition (40 MB, 24 MB, 100 MB....didn't matter) all on the Primary IDE 0 channel.

With the old PC I'm trying to install Amithlon on being the only PC I have with a floppy dirve....it's a bit annoying when I have to get at least a CDRom drive functioning in DOS, burn any needed files to CD and move them over that way...and then create boot floppies, etc...

This will be a single OS system (Amithlon) so I'm trying to avoid the dual boot setup. Any leads towards what to check? I'll make a new Amithlon cd with the updated kernel and see if that makes any difference.

[SnkBitten]

I got it. Graphics driver issue. I was expecting it to be the most likely culprit and I was right

Install went without a hitch....patching and updating kernel now....

[themamboman]

Congrats SnkBitten!

To all with knowledge of Kernel4:

I've been on 3.10 (Colville) kernel forever now. In my user-startup, it calls pciinsmod to find all the hardware, which makes things work.

Going to Kernel4, I get the message that there is no kernel-side matching insmod. Anyone know if this is a problem or if I no longer need the amiga side?

Thanks!

[Ratte]

With OpenGFX v0.9 ist possible to use the permedia2 - p96 driver on openpci-systems.
(also on CVPPC & BVision systems)
Amithlon-support is nearly complete and the driver is designed to support different pci-gfx-cards (already played with 3dfx-code).

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=77164

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=1000360&postcount=4

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by themamboman

Congrats SnkBitten!

To all with knowledge of Kernel4:

I've been on 3.10 (Colville) kernel forever now. In my user-startup, it calls pciinsmod to find all the hardware, which makes things work.

Going to Kernel4, I get the message that there is no kernel-side matching insmod. Anyone know if this is a problem or if I no longer need the amiga side?

Thanks!

I read where the author of kernel 4 said to make sure all the kernel 3.10 drivers were removed as the drivers have to match the kernel. I would get the same issues after upgrading from emubox > new_emubox > kernel3.10 > Kernel4, "linux side driver not found" or such... I've rebuilt my system between 3 different PCs, multiple configurations between those three machines and would always hit that same issue going from 310 to 4. This last time I primarily did manual updates and never installed the driver files for Kernel 3.10. Basically I installed from my updated Amithlon CD that boots kernel 3.10 and after installing the required system patches I switch to kernel 4 and install the drivers4 and drivers4-patch files.. I have a GFX card that is supported with Kernel4 and it recognized it without loading any additional drivers. I'm using OpenPCI drivers for my net.device and it works fine (100/full). Only thing I'm working on now is getting my soundblaster working. AHI sees it but I get no sound and on reboot it emits a very shrill tone that fades out after a minute.

I'm still trying to put together the most compatible Amithlon system I can...luckily I have a bit of old hardware and things I didn't have are extremely cheap if I need them (old AGP/PCI gfx cards, ram, ide HDs, etc..).

I really feel like an updated all-in-one instructional post would be cool. I have 3.10 on my computer and it works so-so, lots of random freezes, non-accelerated graphics, etc., and it would really be cool to have a single post with up to date instructions...that is, if someone is keen to write them

[SnkBitten]

Any valid links or files for Amithlon people are aware of, please post them. I've searched and found many many invalid links (I know...this is an old product..).

Looking for kernel compiling info, primarily.

(posted from my Amithlon system)

Amithlon
1 GB ram
900 Mhz K7
100mb NIC
Geforce PCI FX5500
ASUS K7V motherboard
SB Live (not working..yet)

Interestingly....this setup is decently close in results with SysInfo compared to my i7 3.5 Ghz, 32 GB ram system running WinUAE

SysInfo:
Amithlon - 39.26 x A4000
WinUAE - 48.54 x A4000

*EDIT
Finally have Amithlon running on a newer (still OLD) PC I had. ASUS A8N with 1 GB ram, AMD X64 3800+ and Geforce FX5500 PCI (256meg), and motherboard NIC. I was having issues with either the mouse (PS2) freezing and requiring a full power off/on to bring it back or the keyboard (also PS2) causing a reboot if any key was pressed. I finally moved to kernel 4, which seems to have resolved the issue...so far.

Anyway...SysInfo results..
105.69 x A4000.

More detailed..
(Newer) Old PC build of Amithlon (3800+ AMD X64, 1 GB ram, Geforce FX5500 256 MB)
MIPS - 1,13.02
MFLOPS - 689.93
105.69 times faster than Amiga A4000

[SnkBitten]

Kernel 4 has definitely stabilized my Amithlon system, I've not had the mouse (PS2) stop working or keyboard (PS2) key presses cause a reboot.

Started working with Picasso96Mode and finally have my Amithlon running at 1680x1050x32bit. I started tweaking on 1280x1024 because the "builtin" mode for that worked but the "nvidia-1" did not. Once I had 1280x1024 working after tweaking in Picasso96Mode I moved on to getting my monitors native resolution of 1680x1050 working.

Audio is the next thing to tackle....the onboard chipset audio is not supported so I'll need to look at installing the SBLive from my other (slower) Amithlon system to this one.

SoundBlaster Live moved from my older Amithlon system to my current.....and now I have sound!

Current: Amithlon
Kernel 4
1 GB ram
AMD X2 64 3800+
SoundBlaster Live
Geforce PCI FX5500 (1680x1050x32bit)
ASUS A8N-E motherboard
Onboard Chipset NIC (10/100/1000)