Amithlon Setup Guide

[SnkBitten]

I haven't created any documentation on running it in Virtualbox. It's exactly like setting it up on real hardware, you just need to configure your VM to be like the hardware you would normally be installing on.

Virtual machine:
Dos machine, 512 MB ram (more later, can be tricky so start at 512M), ICH-AC97 sound, USB 1.1, IDE HD and CD drives and video ram up to 128MB.

Earlier threads have some details on what I've done.

[pcotter]

Does anyone tried the latest Boing bags on Amithlon?
http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/bbag4.htm

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by pcotter

Does anyone tried the latest Boing bags on Amithlon?
http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/bbag4.htm

I've done them but it's been a while so things have changed. I remember there being some issues though I don't recall what, or if it was just some visual changes/apps I didn't care for. Like I said, it's been a while.

I decided to stick with the Official BB1 & BB2 for my documentation and haven't moved beyond that.

I wonder what it would take to rip out everything from ClassicWB 3.9 and apply it to an Amithlon installation. That's always been my favorite Amiga look and feel.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by esc

I wonder what it would take to rip out everything from ClassicWB 3.9 and apply it to an Amithlon installation. That's always been my favorite Amiga look and feel.

Most likely taking the time to pull apart all the changes/addons/etc. that ClassicWB 3.9 has in it and applying the compatible ones under Amithlon. You'd also be starting from an installed OS 3.9 Amithlon system, patched with updates and drivers for your hardware before applying the additions ClassicWB has so it could be time consuming. I may do a ClassicWB install under WinUAE to have a look at it when I get some spare time.

After lot of work (im newbie) my amithlon work all ok, sound, video, usb and net. But i installe e-uae whit e-uae loader,whdload and all games run extremely slow. the pc is amd athlon xp 2400+ whit 1Gb ram and nvidia gforce 2 64mb.
What can be the problem?. I see in forum other machines working full whit same or less specs.

Thanks for all and sorry for my bad english.

[SnkBitten]

I haven't configured e-uae or whdload yet so I can't offer any advice. I had experimented with e-uae on an older Amithlon setup I had, but it ran almost as fast as an A600. I need to spend some time and work on this, it just hasn't been a high priority for me. Maybe I'll try the e-uaeload route instead of an Amiga workbench setup.
http://aminet.net/package/util/batch/E-UAELoad_v1.31

[SnkBitten]

A little comparison of ShapeShifter on my A4000T (WarpEngine4040 @ 40Mhz) and it on my Amithlon system.

Benchmark run was Speedometer 4.06. System is Mac OS 8.1

Left is Amiga 4000T - Right is Amithlon

[Marlon_]

I'm so saddened that this project never got further than it did. It would have been a much more sensible approach to move over to x86 rather than PPC and have the compatibility layer for m68k. :/

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by Marlon_

I'm so saddened that this project never got further than it did. It would have been a much more sensible approach to move over to x86 rather than PPC and have the compatibility layer for m68k. :/

Agreed. I think Bernie had the right idea with his approach, wrapping up an emulator on top of x86 with pieces being handled directly by x86 instructions....until you can move the rest of the system to x86.

Even with it as abandoned as it was....it's still a very capable system for running system friendly Amiga software.

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by SnkBitten

Agreed. I think Bernie had the right idea with his approach, wrapping up an emulator on top of x86 with pieces being handled directly by x86 instructions....until you can move the rest of the system to x86.

Even with it as abandoned as it was....it's still a very capable system for running system friendly Amiga software.

Something I'm a bit curious about is, as far as I've read, that you can run x86 compiled binaries on Amithlon.
* How does that work?
* Do you have to make a linux host binary that bridges the instructions?
* Since AROS is API-compatible, would it be possible to run AROS compiled software on Amithlon?

[SnkBitten]

I wish I could answer that, but I have no experience on this.

You can download and have a look at this..
http://aminet.net/package/dev/gcc/x86-ami-bin

and this..
http://aminet.net/package/dev/gcc/x86-ami-gcc

To see if you can tell what would be needed to compile/re-compile applications to the Amithlon x86 base.

This looks awesome - I'd really like to have a go at building a machine with this on - I have an old Dell c610 that would suit this.

I know its been a while since the original distro, but is there anywhere I can get a copy of the Amithlon CD from?

[ptyerman]

The torrent was still around last time I looked, although that was a while ago. Search hard enough and you will find it.

[Marlon_]

Google it, I found it easier that way than any torrent site.

Thanks.

Have been looking at the nice install guide at the start of the thread and the Grub 0.97 install appears to need a floppy drive to run from, but the old laptop I was considering using doesn't have one.

Is there a way to get this onto a boot CD? Don't think you can write a .img taken from a floppy back onto a CD as this has embedded FAT and track information. Thanks.

[SnkBitten]

My guides have the instructions to install from CD everything.....though it is designed for a single system config (no dual booting). I've done a few laptops that were CD only, no floppy drive.

Originally Posted by SnkBitten

My guides have the instructions to install from CD everything.....though it is designed for a single system config (no dual booting). I've done a few laptops that were CD only, no floppy drive.

Perfect - I'll take a look and thanks for replying.

[SnkBitten]

I'm curious if anyone has been able to use Lightwave3D on their Amithlon system.

I can get LightWave3D 5.2 to run, load scenes, etc...generally play with the interface but as soon as I try to render it reboots Amithlon. Even selecting "none" for render display and "save rgb images" crashes immediately after pressing "render", choosing the frame (or series of frames) and clicking ok.

I'm sure the lack of native screenmodes isn't helping.

[SnkBitten]

Okay, a little ModePro promotion and I have Lightwave running a little better. I can render to "none" and select save rgb images as 24bit IFF files and then view those with a picture viewer. Trying to render out a Ham6 anim file now...but the render info screens are not functioning so just waiting for the Layout screen to return.