Amithlon Setup Guide

[DutchinUSA]

Your machine was nice also Mambo .. I thought about bidding on it but by the time I was ready to bid the price was already too high for me ... totally worth the price it sold for for someone who likes to get a system that's all ready to go and doesn't want to mess around though

[Amicol]

My trouble with 320X240 screen modes is down to the Doublescan tickbox in Picasso96Mode having no affect on the Vertical Frequency.
i.e. 120Hz when unticked, 60Hz when ticked = Monitor says it is receiving 120Hz (regardless)
If I turn on Vesa mode, the 'built in' 320x240 screen outputs correctly at 60Hz. But this means running the card without acceleration.

Is this a problem with the Picasso96 drivers??
I want to get 320x240 working with the NVidia drivers

Originally Posted by esc

RollandCG how did you do...all of those things?

A lot of time and development work!

Originally Posted by themamboman

I've seen that video before (was actually looking for it again the other day). What did you use to make the boot screen and which OS is running underneath OS4.1FE?

Is this running on your Phenom 1090T?

I use graphical boot manager Burg. I needed a lot of time to learn how to use commands on Linux, so I can run OS. I rewrote Windows Vista registry and at that point when Vista is supposed to load, WinUAE starts loading. It runs on Phenom 1090T as well.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by RollandCG

I use graphical boot manager Burg. I needed a lot of time to learn how to use commands on Linux, so I can run OS. I rewrote Windows Vista registry and at that point when Vista is supposed to load, WinUAE starts loading. It runs on Phenom 1090T as well.

How much RAM do you have on your system to handle Vista/WinUAE and AmigaOS 4.1, especially since you also have an Amithlon boot setup? Very curious how your memory setup looks.

[lolafg]

Originally Posted by RollandCG

A lot of time and development work!




I use graphical boot manager Burg. I needed a lot of time to learn how to use commands on Linux, so I can run OS. I rewrote Windows Vista registry and at that point when Vista is supposed to load, WinUAE starts loading. It runs on Phenom 1090T as well.

Hello , very nice setup !!

I had an old pc wich i transformed in an A1200 xp86 wich is really great too , the pc boots directly in a classic workbench P96. Did this modifying the XP registry.
Now i'd like to know , if you want to give me this info , wich part of Windows vista registry you modified ?
I ask you that because with XP i can only use an old version of winuae , and of course i'd like to use in the future a newer version.

Thanks in advance and again really great setup !!

ps: i'll post a video of my current A1200 xp86 setup this week-end to show you my setup .

[Dunny]

Hmm, got an old laptop here - won't run AROS worth a damn (screen only goes to 1024x768, no wifi) so was wondering if Amithlon might be worth a go.

It's an Acer Aspire 5742, which means core i5-380M, 3GB RAM and Intel HD gfx. It's naff all use for anything else, so what's the chances of getting it to run Amithlon?

D.

[lolafg]

Video , sorry for the bad quality

[ Show youtube player ]

[ptyerman]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Hmm, got an old laptop here - won't run AROS worth a damn (screen only goes to 1024x768, no wifi) so was wondering if Amithlon might be worth a go.

It's an Acer Aspire 5742, which means core i5-380M, 3GB RAM and Intel HD gfx. It's naff all use for anything else, so what's the chances of getting it to run Amithlon?

D.

Not good. It might install and run in a fashion, but the GPU won't be supported, neither will the wi-fi. You would be better off trying KXlite or setting a Windows install to boot straight into WinUAE.
There is also portable Amikit and Amipup that should work.

Additionally I've never gotten Amithlon to work with >1gb RAM, so that Acer Aspire 5742 may be no good.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by esc

Additionally I've never gotten Amithlon to work with >1gb RAM, so that Acer Aspire 5742 may be no good.

I've read of some being lucky and getting 1.5 GB to work though I've never tried on a physical machine. Today I configured my Virtualbox Amithlon setup with 1280 MB and it booted successfully, anything over that and I get a black screen on the kernel load (Kernel 4).

**Just configured it back to 1024 MB, and memory reported in Amithlon is identical to what is reported when Virtualbox is set to 1280 MB.

[ptyerman]

Amithlon is from a different age in hardware though. Back when it came out, 512mb memory was huge, most machines only had 256mb.
The ideal hardware requirements were: A motherboard with Nforce 2 chipset, Nvidia Geforce 2 video card, Soundblaster live sound card and a network card with the Realtek 8139 chipset.
Kernel 4 does extend that a bit but mostly just newer revisions of the same make hardware.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Hmm, got an old laptop here - won't run AROS worth a damn (screen only goes to 1024x768, no wifi) so was wondering if Amithlon might be worth a go.

It's an Acer Aspire 5742, which means core i5-380M, 3GB RAM and Intel HD gfx. It's naff all use for anything else, so what's the chances of getting it to run Amithlon?

D.

It may be fun to try. You'll need to drop the memory to 1 GB and try Kernel 3.10 at the least though you may have more success with Kernel 4. I can't find a 5742 i5-380M but (i3-380M or i5-480M) but if it boots, it would be fast. The graphics may not be supported but you should be able to get 1024x768 @ 32bit, maybe even 1280x1024x32bit as the i3-380M should support that.

Does your laptop have an ethernet port? You may have success with the wired connection as a brief search showed the Acer 5742 i3-380M has a Broadcom NIC which Kernel 4 should support, possibly at 1 Gbp speed.

Your hurdles are going to be SATA drives, unsupported GFX, and audio.

Drop memory to 1 GB, make/use an Amithlon CD that boots off Kernel 3.10 and after installed and patched, update the kernel to Kernel 4. You may also want to check and see if you BIOS allows you to set your SATA controller to "Legacy" or "IDE" mode as that would make it a lot easier to attempt installing.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

Amithlon is from a different age in hardware though. Back when it came out, 512mb memory was huge, most machines only had 256mb.
The ideal hardware requirements were: A motherboard with Nforce 2 chipset, Nvidia Geforce 2 video card, Soundblaster live sound card and a network card with the Realtek 8139 chipset.
Kernel 4 does extend that a bit but mostly just newer revisions of the same make hardware.

Kernel 3.1 and Kernel 4 both added support for a surprising amount of different hardware. Nvidia cards still seem to be the most supported for video but Matrox, ATI (specific models from both) work as well. Some Intel, AMD/ATI motherboard chipsets are now supported and a large variety of network cards.

Laptops are trickier since you can't just slap in a PCI card (network, sound or graphics as needed) but it never hurts to give something you aren't using a go at running Amithlon.

I've got 5 boxes currently running Amithlon, though at different levels of support. Chipset NICs, PCI NICs, SATA, IDE, AGP and PCI and even PCIx (built-in modes) video. Old Dell small form factor PC, HP desktop, a few home built setups and in Virtualbox on my primary Windows 10 PC.

[ptyerman]

Lot easier these days to install KXlite or Amipup. Amithlon has no Amiga chipset support only RTG, the other 2 do. Also they support more modern hardware including laptops, plus the amount of memory isn't a limiting factor.
I still have Amithlon on a old box here and it runs great. I did build it specifically for Amithlon though so it has all the supported hardware.
For anything with newer hardware I install KXlite or Amipup, sometimes X-Amiga if it works with the hardware, although it can be finicky at times.
For laptops, forget Amithlon and try the other flavours, will be a lot less of a pain.

[Dunny]

Yeah, I installed Linux on it instead. Amithlon isn't for me, it seems - neither is AROS, as none of the hardware I have is supported and it's ugly working at 1024x768 on a 1366x768 panel.

Thanks anyway, guys.

D.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by Amicol

My trouble with 320X240 screen modes is down to the Doublescan tickbox in Picasso96Mode having no affect on the Vertical Frequency.
i.e. 120Hz when unticked, 60Hz when ticked = Monitor says it is receiving 120Hz (regardless)
If I turn on Vesa mode, the 'built in' 320x240 screen outputs correctly at 60Hz. But this means running the card without acceleration.

Is this a problem with the Picasso96 drivers??
I want to get 320x240 working with the NVidia drivers

I tried and was never able to get 320x240. I configured 640x480 all the way up to 1680x1050 (my monitors resolution) but 320x240 I could not get. 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1680x1050 with all having 8/16/32 bit modes. (Nvidia FX5500 256 MB PCI)

[SnkBitten]

I plan to start putting together a new Amithlon system tonight. I have ram at (2) 1 GB chips and (2) 512 MB chips to test, either 1 GB (total) or 2 GB. Playing around with my Virtualbox config I got Amithlon booting on a 4 GB system using mem=832M in the boot string for Amithlon (the small config file).

kern310 init=/linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram0 mem=832M inird=smallird.gz vga=769 ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=5200 video=vesa cachesize=65536


Virtualbox is configured as Other Windows (32-bit), Base Memory 4096 MB, Video Memory 128 MB.

I've got both a Nvidia Geforce 5200 (128MB) PCI and a Nvidea Geforce 5500 (256MB) PCI card to test in my physical machine. It'll be built on the Gigabyte Technology GA-MA790FXT-UD5P with the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz processor.

If I can keep upping the ram and using the mem= statement I may be able to build a nice Win7 WinUAE alternative boot system for OS 4.1

*EDIT* Just bumped up the mem= statement to 864 and booted.....a little more ram for Amithlon "778,727,192 other mem"

**EDIT2* The most I can get is mem=880M which gives me "7,423,816 graphics mem and 795,373,400 other mem"

***Last Edit* I changed the base machine (Virtualbox) to "Other Windows 64bit" and bumped ram to 6 GB, Amithlon booted fine with the mem=880M statement. On my real machine I'll try 2 GB and 3 GB (2x 1GB chips + 2x 512MB chips) and if that works I'll probably order 4x 2 GB chips and run with 8 GB for Win 7 x64. Heck, I may just burn a new Amithlon CD tonight and try booting my i7 32 GB PC and see what happens

[SnkBitten]

And that would be a negative on actual hardware. I configured my home PC's Virtualbox configuration as well to have 4 GB of ram and used mem=880M in the amithlon launch config. Worked like a champ and this one on Kernel4. Built a new Amithlon CD with Kernel 3.10 and using the mem=880M and tried booting my i7 32GB machine. It booted and went to a grey screen (something I haven't seen before) and froze. "Ah..I'm using DVI, maybe that's the issue". Switch to my Media Center PC with 5 GB and got the exact same thing, a grey screen (almost looked like workbench before workbench loads).

I just turned off the machine I was building for my sister (it was doing MS updates and was on 2 of 201 updates installing) and used the monitor/keyboard/mouse from it and fired up my my "new" Amithlon system with 3 GB. CD booted to a black screen. Dropped to 2 GB, same. Changed the mem= to 768M, then to 512M and still a black screen. Removed another memory stick and now at 1 GB it boots.

Will continue testing...

[themamboman]

Did you ever share your virtualbox configuration that you use for Amithlon?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by SnkBitten

And that would be a negative on actual hardware. I configured my home PC's Virtualbox configuration as well to have 4 GB of ram and used mem=880M in the amithlon launch config. Worked like a champ and this one on Kernel4. Built a new Amithlon CD with Kernel 3.10 and using the mem=880M and tried booting my i7 32GB machine. It booted and went to a grey screen (something I haven't seen before) and froze. "Ah..I'm using DVI, maybe that's the issue". Switch to my Media Center PC with 5 GB and got the exact same thing, a grey screen (almost looked like workbench before workbench loads).

I just turned off the machine I was building for my sister (it was doing MS updates and was on 2 of 201 updates installing) and used the monitor/keyboard/mouse from it and fired up my my "new" Amithlon system with 3 GB. CD booted to a black screen. Dropped to 2 GB, same. Changed the mem= to 768M, then to 512M and still a black screen. Removed another memory stick and now at 1 GB it boots.

Will continue testing...

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by themamboman

Did you ever share your virtualbox configuration that you use for Amithlon?

Thanks!

Yes, to the ones who asked.

Otherwise the basic setup is as follows:

Virtualbox Settings:

System -
Operating System: Other Windows (32bit or 64bit)
Base Memory: Any works with mem=880M in Amithlon boot string (small or amithlon)
Boot Order: Floppy, Harddisk, Optical
Acceleration: VT-x/AMD-V,Nested Paging, PAE/NX

Display -
Video Memory: 128 MB

Storage:
Controler Floppy
Floppy Device 0:
Controller IDE
IDE Primary Master: Amithlon.vdi
IDE Secondary Master: [Optical Drive]

Audio -
Host Driver: Windows DirecSound
Controller - ICH AC97

Network:
Adapter 1: PCnet-FAST III (NAT Network, 'NatNetwork')


I installed Amithlon by using a DOS floppy boot .img file that included xfdisk allowing me to create a 100 Meg Fat partition for DOS and a 1.8 GB &76 partition to be a virtual drive for Amithlon (Amiga OS to partition). I used another boot floppy with cdrom mounting to have the Amithlon CD mounted in the DOS environment to copy the needed files from the CD to the 100 Meg Fat partition (loadlin.exe, bigird.gz, smallird.gz, kern310, amithlon and small...all from the isolinux directory).

Edit small (you'll need edit on your boot floppy or C: drive)
kern310 init=/linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram0 mem=880M inird=smallird.gz vga=769 ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=5200 video=vesa cachesize=65536

Edit Amithlon
kern310 init=/linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram0 mem=880M inird=bigird.gz vga=771 ramdisk_size=12010 leavepages=8400

First setup is to loadlin @amithlon which provides an Amiga environment to partition out the HD (HDToolBox) and see if Amithlon actually boots. I then install from the CD (insert the cd .img file or physical to Virtualbox so it shows up) and then after install switch to

loadlin @small to boot in to my HD installed AmigsOS.

From there it's making iso files of apps/patches/etc.. you want to install and using those in Virtualbox for AmigaOS to see.