Amithlon Setup Guide

[dr.zeissler]

Sorry, I always use real machines, so I can't help you with any kind of virtualisation settings.

In terms of gpu compatibilty the G550 has issues on getting a sharp and stable image on lowres 320x240 screens. I never get that straight, but mga-mystique is fine here. I am not a big fan of Nvidia cards, but my SN45Gv2 Nforce2 PC has an GF3-ti200 with kernel 2x (silver bouncing ball ) and it works good. Soundquality is worse than on SB128 though.

Still hoping that milanca get's RageII /RageLTpro/i810(815e) working...that would be a big thing in terms of compatible retro-machines with onboard-gpu.

Doc

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by jdog320

@snkbitten
Here's amithlon working on the latest build of VirtualBox as of this writing. Almost everything works except for networking once again. I tried Nat, NatNetwork and Bridged but it doesn't work. Also tried MiamiDX and Genesis and no dice. It gets the DNS Servers from my router, but that's about it.

Use an older version of Virtualbox if you want networking. 6.0.22 works with networking, I had a working Amithlon setup and upgraded to 7.x Virtualbox and all networking stopped. I uninstalled the 7.x version and reinstalled 6.0.22 and I had networking again in my Amithlon/VB setup.

[dr.zeissler]

I am checking another machine (FSC E600) because I put a catweasel mk4plus with 3,5"+5,25" Floppys and a SB128 in that machine I am not able to have a CD-Drive in that machine. So no slot free, no bay and no tray.

If I activate legacy-mode in the bios the external usb-cd is bootable. Amithlon boots but then I get "emulator-crash".
I have to find another solution or another PC that still has IDE-cdrom.

[dr.zeissler]

OK=> https://amithlonblog.snkbitten.com/amithlonfaq/

Lists ATAPI+SCSI....so I will put out my SB128PCI and will install a SCSI Controller. Hopefully the external SCSI-CDROM will be found. Kernel 310 will hopefully support my AC97 codec of the P4/i865 chipset.

[dr.zeissler]

Can confirm PCI 2940UW working with amithlon

[dr.zeissler]

Originally Posted by dr.zeissler

Kernel 310 will hopefully support my AC97 codec of the P4/i865 chipset.

Seems so, but sound is muted or routed wrong. Same issue in plain Dos with SBEMU or DOSSOUND...currently investigating.

Beside that on that machine (E600/D1534) amithlon is freezing right on boot with every kernel if the Bios is set on "top of the base memory", it's working with the setting "Expansion ROM Area" this directly effects OS/2 Warp4 on WINOS/2 window not working, so either no amithlon or winos2/window...because os2 offers winos2 fullscreen that's not a big deal to lose winos2window.

But the muted AC97 is a problem.

Main machine:
FSC E600 D1534
P4 2.26AGhz 533Mhz
512MB RAM
80GB IDE-HDD
3,5" 1,44MB
5,25 360KB
PCI1 2940UW (external SCSI-CDROM)
PCI2 CWMK4Plus (for both floppys)
AGP Matrox G550/32MB

Multiboot:
- OS/2 WARP
- AMIGA (and MSDOS)
- WIN2K
- LINUX

*edit: the FSC engineers seem to have concepted this case for the SCSI-Controller...this is indeed a PERFECT fit

[Deremon]

Sorry for the very very, very late response

Originally Posted by dr.zeissler

Very fast and mordern machines you have.

Have you limited your RAM to 1GB ? Takeout everything that is more than that.

On AGP matrox cards you don't need "video=matrox and video= vesa" that is only needed on the very early Mystique/Millenium PCI cards. G550 was supported directly in the newkernel and that is best used with 131. I only have the G550 AGP and it works good. The later and therefore unsupported chipsets will most likly only use pio mode on HDD access but that does not care because the machines are so fast.

I see no real benefit in playing whdload-games in amithlon, but if this is your goal then go for it. My main focus is native amiga software that does not need the custom-chipset and runs direct on amithlon...though there is not so much stuff for this niche, but for everything else I can game on that thing... [ Show youtube player ]

The suggestion using 1G of RAM worked!!
WHDLoad games works very very well using double lines with 640x480 resolution with G550


Also I discovered that, no matter what processor I'm using (I've recovered two athlon64 3200+/3500+ and a core 2 Quad Q9550), if I'm not using the Matrox G550 card WHDLoad games slow down a lot and audio stutters, the other video card is the nvdia FX5700 PCI as I said in the other post.

I don't know if this was already discussed here, these processor ranges from 2000+ (athlon64 3200+) to 3000+ (core2quad) sysinfo scores, even with the fastest, WHDLoad games performs terrible with nvidia... I think is related to the p96 acceleration...

Originally Posted by vk3heg

I have a working PCIe G550 in my machine. My loadlin command line:

kernel4 init=/linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram1 inittrd=smallird.gz ramdisk_size=2310 leavepages=7460 video=matrox:dfp,vesa:0x12

I then have my amiga screen set to "Matrox: 1024x768 16bit"

Thanks! Matrox: 1024x768 16bit works very well!