Amithlon Setup Guide

[Charlie]

Quick update while other things have got me tearing my remianing hair out:

Most intersting!

I'll have a play & add this to the list of aditions to the guide when I get round to it.

[AMIGAZ]

Working Warp3D??? I must be dreaming

I guess I'm going to get 599fps in GLQuake with my Geforce FX 5950 then

[Zetr0]

remember AMIGAZ

if there are no pics..... it didn't happen!

I wanna see pics!

[AMIGAZ]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

remember AMIGAZ

if there are no pics..... it didn't happen!

I wanna see pics!

Sure thing, brotha'

My plan is to fiddle with this when I get home from work

If it works and I provide you with pics you must give me all of your CPU's

[Roman]

Hi,
I just have a question:
I've installed Amithlon, but when I install AmigaOs 3.9 from the Amithlon CD,
my PC freezes and the screen is displayed in other colors. Everything hangs.
Could it be because of my graphics card(Ati Rage pro), or does anybody had the same problem?
Greets Ro

[AMIGAZ]

Originally Posted by Roman

Hi,
I just have a question:
I've installed Amithlon, but when I install AmigaOs 3.9 from the Amithlon CD,
my PC freezes and the screen is displayed in other colors. Everything hangs.
Could it be because of my graphics card(Ati Rage pro), or does anybody had the same problem?
Greets Ro

Most likely

http://www.garycvl.f2s.com/gfxcards.html

Better get a compatible gfx card, the Ati Rage Pro sucks anyway if you don't wanna play ancient Windows games or DOS games

[Roman]

That was quick...


Thx and have a nice time!

Ro

I have been spending more time messing around with Amithlon; this time on a system with a Celeron 2000, Matrox G4 450, SB Live!, and an RTL8139 ethernet adapter. Amithlon works very well on this configuration.

One weakness of Charlie's guide/package are the OpenPCI drivers; they're out of date. There are newer versions of OpenPCI, the 8139 driver, and powerpci library (the latter wasn't included in the archive). I was having semi-random crashing with the RTL8139 card until I upgraded.

I would also like to report success with the AmigaSYS3 package for Amithlon. It quickly gets you to the point where you can fire up AmigaAMP to test your AHI configuration and ample opportunities to crash your system with IBrowse/networking

My next goal is to sort out a 1600x1200 screenmode (and dig into the Picasso 96 drivers in Charlie's archives).

[Charlie]

Hi dreadwin - glad you've been enjoying yourself.

Yes, you're quite right quite a few of the drivers are out of date. I've been meaning to do an update of both those & the guide for a while but stuff keeps getting in the way.

There's lots of cool new stuff I ought to get round to:
-How to install AOS e-uae to point back to your own Amithlon WB install so you have 'kind-of' transparent chipset emulation.
-Working Warp3D without having a Voodoo3 & hacking the drivers (naughty!)
-Yes, how to get P96 to do BIG WB screens without issues - I've been running mine 1680x1050

It needs a lot of tidying for the next version (eventually) but did you enjoy the sneaky(tm) way I wrote the guide..?
There's a few deliberate fibs scattered through it in an effort to lead the 'follower' round-the-houses a little.
Why?
It's easy to follow a guide & end up with a functional system, but you probably won't have the first idea how to mod it to your requirements...
...hopefully after going 'Doh!' near the end & cursing me for not getting to the point sooner a 'follower' will have a good idea of Amithlon's workings so they can play with it more easily.

Regards

PS
@Roman: Another convert!
and Welcome to the EAB, I hope you enjoy your stay.

@AMIGAZ: thanks for keeping a closer eye on this thread than I've managed to.
(spending too much time boosting my post count - possibly)

[Roman]

Thanx for your friendly welcome!

I've been using the amiga since 1988, done a lot of work with it,
mainly graphics, animation and fractals.(As seen on my avatar)
Would like to use my old programs and formulas again!(Like Mathvision, Mandelmountains and Z-Plot.

It seems,that Amithlon is a great opportunity for that,
in a much faster way, processing fractals was kind of boring sometimes....

I am installing Amithlon on a machine only, no dual booting stuff.

So, I solved the gfx , changed card, happily installed OS 3.9,a little grub error 17 when I try to boot from HD, so I booted from CD.???

Can you tell me, which updates I should install now and where I can find them to have an optimal system?
BTW, I am completely new to amithlon, please speak slowly....

I am appreciating this very much, nostalgia, kind of practical interest,
also installed MacOsX 10.5 Leopard on my PC with external HD lately, running smoothly...

Thanx a lot and have a nice time!

Roman.

[AMIGAZ]

Originally Posted by Charlie

Hi dreadwin - glad you've been enjoying yourself.

Yes, you're quite right quite a few of the drivers are out of date. I've been meaning to do an update of both those & the guide for a while but stuff keeps getting in the way.

There's lots of cool new stuff I ought to get round to:
-How to install AOS e-uae to point back to your own Amithlon WB install so you have 'kind-of' transparent chipset emulation.
-Working Warp3D without having a Voodoo3 & hacking the drivers (naughty!)
-Yes, how to get P96 to do BIG WB screens without issues - I've been running mine 1680x1050

It needs a lot of tidying for the next version (eventually) but did you enjoy the sneaky(tm) way I wrote the guide..?
There's a few deliberate fibs scattered through it in an effort to lead the 'follower' round-the-houses a little.
Why?
It's easy to follow a guide & end up with a functional system, but you probably won't have the first idea how to mod it to your requirements...
...hopefully after going 'Doh!' near the end & cursing me for not getting to the point sooner a 'follower' will have a good idea of Amithlon's workings so they can play with it more easily.

Regards

PS
@Roman: Another convert!
and Welcome to the EAB, I hope you enjoy your stay.

@AMIGAZ: thanks for keeping a closer eye on this thread than I've managed to.
(spending too much time boosting my post count - possibly)

np, your guide + work really needs attention because it because it's so good even I was helped by it...and I can really suck sometimes when it becomes to technical..I'm a simple user

This reminds me I must fix my Amithlon box, I bought some uber-fast 500mhz DDR ram sticks which my system now doesn't want to boot fully with

[Roman]

Have installed Amithlon the other way, as described in Charlie's guide,
which is very nice written,
but now I'm getting the message after install of 3.9 and reboot:

This is not a bootable disk.Please insert a bootable floppy and press any key...

I made the amiga system partition bootable.

It's only possible to boot with the cd.

???

Roman.

[Charlie]

Most odd!

Questions:
-Which Guide are you using? Mine (long) or the other one(.pdf, pretty, included as an alternate if people didn't like my method)
-Your hardware? Probably of no great importance - if you can boot off the CD it's unlikely to be a hardware issue.
-How are you partitions set up?

-The error:
Is this what your PC says? Most likely Grub isn't functioning correctly (assuming you are using my guide). Are you sure you made a grub-boot floppy to set grub up and had the commands point at the correct partition and MBR for your system..?
Or is it after the PC boots & an error from Amithlon..?

[Roman]

Hi Charlie,
I was using the pretty and shorter one...maybe too short to function?
As you said, I am able to boot from CD, so I also think its NOT a hardware issue.
I set the partitions up as described in the short manual-using xfdisk,
one XP Partition 1,5 G, One Amthlon Partition 24MB Fat 32, one Amiga Partition 512 MB type 76 ,another partition amiga type 76.

My PC says: This is not a bootable disk...bla bla

No, I didn't make a grub boot floppy...

Maybe I should go through the long version of your guide...?

I also had the problem, that my PC doesn't recognize, when I hold both mouse buttons to get to the bootmanager, so I made the amiga partition bootable after install of OS 3.9.

One Problem is also, that I can't get a higher gfx resolution...(Nvidia 4200 TI)
Where and how can it be adjusted?

I have to boot from HD first anyway, so that comes later....

So, a lot by now, thx for your answers,

Have a nice time

Roman.

[Charlie]

Hi Roman,
Sorry to hear of your troubles. I'll get the unhelpful bit out of the way first:
The pretty guide was written by someone else. I included it as an alternate to mine because:
-It assumes a PC wholly given over to Amithlon, while mine assumes a dual-boot scenario. (flexible though)
-It's a straight-to-the-point guide vs my round-the-houses style.
Different guides for differing needs...
...trouble is I read that guide to make sure it worked, but as I didn't write it can't here-and-now remember its method well enough to be helpful.

If you're using that guide my waffling on about grub is a red-herring - ignore me!

Suggestions:
-You will need to HD install to get bigger displays to work reliably (like mine) as you'll need to be running an updated version of Amithlon + WB + P96 + RTG.lib from the latest stable WinUAE. Then you'll need to roll a new monitor definition file as P96 never came with one for such monitors. (Mine may do for you at least as a start - differing refresh-rates & all that) A GF4200ti should be quite capable of such modes - my 4600ti was (before I gave it away - bah!).

-Your problem sounds like the boot-manager you are using isn't installed into the MBR (master boot record) of your primary HDD (usually IDE 0,0) In case you don't know when a PC first boots it looks for a small chunk of code @ the start of the boot-HDD that tells it where to look for starting the OS. It's somewhat akin to the RDB system Amiga drives use...
...watch out! If your AmigaOS drive / partition has an MBR written to it that will overwrite the RDB making your AmigaOS files unreadable. (Why I suggest using an &76 partition further up the primary drive's partition table as a virtual Amiga RDB HDD to avoid this possibility)

-Yes, I'd suggest you try my guide instead - but then I would say that!

Best of luck.

[Roman]

Hi Charlie,

hoped to get along....

did everything described in YOUR guide,

when grub is loading and I try to access "Internal Amithlon HDD Image",

it says: "Error 28 Selected item cannot fit into memory"

do you have a clue?...

Regards

Roman.

[Roman]

...Botting now, changed memory settins...reports later...

[Charlie]

D*am, you read quick!

Hmmm, I'll need to give that some thought...
...this is a Grub error, I presume..? (after the boot-selection screen, but before Amithlon starts)

PM me with:
Mobo, CPU, memory, gfx-card, attached drives(and how they are attached)
A run-down of how your HDD(s) is/are partitioned.
Contents of your AmithlonSYS partition (general layout will do, not an exhaustive list)
Menu.lst file you are using (and which entry you select)

If you're continuing to struggle & I'll see if I can track the problem down.

Keep at it. The first Amithlon install can be a swine to get working, but once you do...
...ClassicOS running @ modern speeds! Hey, isn't AmigaOS still bloody good when running on contemporary hardware?

[Roman]

Got it working so far...

Installing 3.9 now...

[Roman]

Installed 3.9 success!

can boot from HD!

Thanx a lot, your guide is the right one!

(Haven n't installed all updates so far, in which order should it be done?

BB2?

BB3? where can I get it?

How can I adjust screen mode properly now? To have better resolution ?

Thx a lot for your support!