Amithlon Setup Guide

[pixie]

It was about time Cloanto sorted things out with Bernd Meyer

[croupier]

Soooo....If I read correctly the background of the Umilator 2.0 (on the posted pic), the only thing this Demo CD needs to run at 100% is a registration key?

[dr.zeissler]

Originally Posted by SnkBitten

kernel4 init=/linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram1 initrd=smallird.gz ram=1024M vga=773 ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=5000 nosleep

"nosleep" is kernel4 only or what does this do? deactivate bios-sleepsettings? Thx!

[dr.zeissler]

Originally Posted by SnkBitten

...I use a DOS base, 1 GB ram, set for single cpu, acceleration enabled for both options, PIIX3 chipset, PS/2 mouse, Enable I/O APIC and Hardware Clock checked. ...., graphics as VBoxVGA, 2 IDE controllers, ICH AC97 sound, a bridged network adapter to my host physical adapter so I can see my NAS box on my network and USB 2.0 enabled.

acceleration enabled for both options => you mean gfx and sound?
bridged network adapter => can you explain this?

while i815e IGP is nogo even with vesa what would you reccomend for a small and and not so hot getting PCI gfx-card? (my mx4000 pci 64MB 32bit does not work)

Thx!

[LaBodilsen]

Originally Posted by croupier

Soooo....If I read correctly the background of the Umilator 2.0 (on the posted pic), the only thing this Demo CD needs to run at 100% is a registration key?

Maybe, as this was not the final release CD, so no way to know how well this was implemented, and good luck getting a key anywhere :-)

also from the readme on the CD:

  * Moving towards an online distribution where the CD is freely
    distributable, and serves as a demo; With a key, you can unlock
    it and get the full functionality.
     - READ ONLY! By default, Amithlon will now completely and utterly
       refuse to write to a hard disk
     - The scroll text is back (and SysRq-ESC no longer works :)
     - Protection measures to stop Kickstart/AmigaOS being pirated from
       demo include:
       + Native routines... Some exec routines in kickstart have been
         replaced with x86 equivalents; These will make anything but
         Amithlon v2.0 or later crash
       + Instruction aliases... some free slots in the 68k instruction
         table were used as aliases for existing instructions, and kickstart
         was patched to use these instructions. Will crash on anything other
         than Amithlon v2.0 or later
       + Obfuscation... ROM images and amithlon_hd: disk image are stored
         in encrypted form and get decrypted on the fly by the emulation.
         The encryption is admittedly weak, but as an added layer it is
         useful
       + Read only mode... It's almost impossible to write something
         from within the emulation (thus circumventing encryption) without
         a key
       + A stern warning on the Workbench background :)
     - Key evaluation is subtle and spread all through the program.
     - Keys carry lots of information, and a lot of information (and
       also checksums) are never evaluated in Amithlon 2.0; So even if
       someone should succeed in reverse engineering all the checks,
       it would be trivial to add additional checks to the next update.

[croupier]

My reasoning was more on the line of pointing to the fact that the entire code of the Umilator is there on the CD....it is not just a teaser product...with missing parts...

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by dr.zeissler

"nosleep" is kernel4 only or what does this do? deactivate bios-sleepsettings? Thx!

It's an undocumented command option that tells the booting process to not wait (sleep) for the return of a interrupt that is present on physical machines but is not going to be there trying to boot Amithlon on a virtual system.

[SnkBitten]

This was discussing Amithlon running on Oracle's Virtualbox environment on your PC. Hardware acceleration only really relates to graphic cards.

as for bridged adapter, that's another virtualbox setting so that the fake network adapter you configure in the virtual is bound to your computers network card so it sits on the same network your physical card is connecting with. This way I am just getting another IP address of the subnet my Win10 system running Virtualbox is getting...so the fake adapter inside virtualbox is able to see the other devices on my internal network, ie printers, network storage, etc...

For a PCI card, I like the nVidia GeForce 5200 series PCI cards. If you are lucky you can find a 64mb 5200 though most I've seen are 128mb. I was lucky and grabbed a 64mb one off eBay. The 5500 is also nice though those are in the 128mb to 256mb range. Be sure if looking for a PCI card that the seller isn't selling an AGP card and calling it a PCI one.

Kernel 3 info - Gary Colville (2.4.19-pre4)
Support for more GeForce FX models

Kernel 4 info - Milan Milosavljevi? (2.4.37.9)
Nvidia FX series such as the FX5200, 5600, 5700, etc…

Originally Posted by dr.zeissler

acceleration enabled for both options => you mean gfx and sound?
bridged network adapter => can you explain this?

while i815e IGP is nogo even with vesa what would you reccomend for a small and and not so hot getting PCI gfx-card? (my mx4000 pci 64MB 32bit does not work)

Thx!

[dr.zeissler]

Thx, 64MB FX5200 is your favorite? Is it due to be fully supported and 128MB and 256MB have issues?
What about a small NVS280 PCI 64MB do you have tested one of those with the original bios or modded back to fx5200 ?
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...-280-pci.c1455

Thx!

[dr.zeissler]

Have you ever used a parallel-zipdrive with amithlon. I did not have figured out how this can be activated.

The io-tools don't find a device. The device points to "scsi-device", my Zipdrive is parallel.
I have looked within amithlon-folders. There is e.g. a "parallel.device"... I tested different ones but it does not work.

Beside that there is a "zip" dev in amithlon/storage but doubleclicking on that or copying this files to dev's directly or devs/amithlon does not fix this. (where cd0 is located)
any idea how to mount the connected parallel zip-drive would help. otherwise I have to burn cd-roms as I did before, but that is not very handy.
I burned some cdrom's on that some foldres lockup amithlon...it simply takes forever which means it does not read the content of that folder and therefore I have to restart.

Thx
Doc

[DarrenHD]

Has anyone got SysInfo to display properly? It's screen is messed up on my Amithlon system.

Also, DHCP not working with amithlon1_net.device, but is working with the openpci driver for RTL8139. (roadshow)

Wookiechat fails with getbyhostname() timeout, I can't get it to connect to an IRC server. Anyone have success with that?

Thanks!

PS - Would love to see/test Umilator!

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by dr.zeissler

Have you ever used a parallel-zipdrive with amithlon. I did not have figured out how this can be activated.

The io-tools don't find a device. The device points to "scsi-device", my Zipdrive is parallel.
I have looked within amithlon-folders. There is e.g. a "parallel.device"... I tested different ones but it does not work.

Beside that there is a "zip" dev in amithlon/storage but doubleclicking on that or copying this files to dev's directly or devs/amithlon does not fix this. (where cd0 is located)
any idea how to mount the connected parallel zip-drive would help. otherwise I have to burn cd-roms as I did before, but that is not very handy.
I burned some cdrom's on that some foldres lockup amithlon...it simply takes forever which means it does not read the content of that folder and therefore I have to restart.

Thx
Doc

I'm not aware of any parallel ZIP drives working with the Amiga...only the SCSI variant. Not sure about Amithlon but I don't think it will work.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by dr.zeissler

Thx, 64MB FX5200 is your favorite? Is it due to be fully supported and 128MB and 256MB have issues?
What about a small NVS280 PCI 64MB do you have tested one of those with the original bios or modded back to fx5200 ?
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...-280-pci.c1455

Thx!

The nVidia FX PCI/AGP cards have the most hardware acceleration supported features of all the supported cards.

The amount of memory on the card is going to be mapped into Amiga addressable space though only 16mb can be used by P96 and Amithlon. Why map the rest of the 128mb or 256mb into Amiga's memory map that can no longer be used for actual memory if present on the motherboard? It's just taking up what could be usuable space.

I have no idea on the NVS280, I can only speak of what I've tested or had others test and report to me that work.

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

Has anyone got SysInfo to display properly? It's screen is messed up on my Amithlon system.

Also, DHCP not working with amithlon1_net.device, but is working with the openpci driver for RTL8139. (roadshow)

Wookiechat fails with getbyhostname() timeout, I can't get it to connect to an IRC server. Anyone have success with that?

Thanks!

PS - Would love to see/test Umilator!

You'll have to promote Sysinfo's screen to an RTG screen. It's asking for an Amiga screenmode which aren't supported.

[croupier]

Talking of gfx cards under Amithlon....any experience with PCI-E cards? Usable? Hardware acceleration?

[SnkBitten]

Matrox G550 PCIe 32 MB is the only one I've tested and others use with some hardware acceleration. None of the nVidia PCI-E cards have worked, even the ones listed as supported under Kernel4.

[milanca]

@SnkBitten It was never stated that those pci-e variants are fully supported and supposed to work. What's said is that the code is there, ported, but "not tested", so it might or might not work. Yes, we can say that it was just a wild guess. The same way, e.g Matrox in pci-e variant, is found by the kernel, those nvidia cards "should" also be. Its more because of the linux 2.4 kernel itself than any specific amithlon part. Back then I never actually had any (of the supported chips) pci express nvidia card to give it a try. PCI and PCIe buses are so much different but that's not the case here, as matrox cards are recognized on pci-e bus. Maybe its because of something really trivial, like device id or something like that.

[SnkBitten]

Oh not blaming you, I know you were adding what the kernel supported back then and no one has the resources to test every hardware device

I think someone mentioned to me that the nVidia PCI-E cards at that time really just were PCI cards with a bridge to PCI-E which may be creating some of the issues with them not being recognized properly as the video chipset is the same.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

[milanca]

@SnkBitten Of course, I know you are not, never felt like a blamed one. I am just saying, so other "amithlon" lovers could also know. Right, everything that was available by the kernel, its there. Trust me on this, I forgot many of the bits, but I remember it was a tremendous amount of work and effort to put it all in kernel4, hell of a work.

Originally Posted by SnkBitten

I think someone mentioned to me that the nVidia PCI-E cards at that time really just were PCI cards with a bridge to PCI-E which may be creating some of the issues with them not being recognized properly as the video chipset is the same.

Exactly. There are some patches to address pci-e config in the kernel which I didn't know back then, I do now. Not sure if it's actually going to help, it could though.
But if someone has a card like 5500 pcie, or any other of supported chipsets, I'd look first for its device/vendor id and then look into the kernel to make sure its there. Those are the newer cards and it could be that they have a different ID than PCI cards (same chipset). If its missing the kernel won't initialize it.

[milanca]

I took a little closer look at this matter, regarding pcie cards under amithlon as it was asked by some users. In my previous post I mentioned 5500 which actually isn't available in pcie form, my bad, it comes as a regular PCI/AGP card. But actual nvidia cards which are available in pcie form and interesting for us, are:

• 0x00fa NV36 [GeForce PCX 5750]
• 0x00fb NV35 [GeForce PCX 5900]
• 0x00fc NV34 [GeForce PCX 5300 / Quadro FX 330]

There are also NV34 [Quadro FX 330], NV35 [Quadro FX 1300] and older one NV18 [GeForce PCX 4300].
These cards are "not" in the kernel, and can't be expected to work. At this point it doesn't look difficult at all to try to get them to work, it is an easy job actually. I am not sure how available these cards are nowadays, but if someone happens to have any of them, feel free to post and I will be happy to assist and try to get it working. Back then nvidia introduced BR02 chip on these cards, a pcie-agp translation which is doing the job, same driver can be used as for the NV30 series.

Best regards