Shapeshifter: how is PrepareEmul supposed to work?

[Bren McGuire]

i've been trying to get Shapeshifter to run, to no avail. It says it would run on a stock A1200, but I can't get it to work at all. I have fast ram on the system too.

It asks for PrepareEmul to be launched, so I go and execute that from shell, the Amiga reboots , and then it's stuck on a black screen/invisible guru loop.

what exactly am I supposed to be doing here?

[amiman99]

You need to add the prepareemul at the beginning of startup-sequence.

It will reboot the Amiga and then continue as normal.

[Bren McGuire]

oh I see, let me try this.
I swear i searched internet a lot and did not find how i was supposed to do this.

Originally Posted by amiman99

You need to add the prepareemul at the beginning of startup-sequence.

It will reboot the Amiga and then continue as normal.

[Bren McGuire]

that did not work at all mate as i mentioned before, the amiga gets stuck in a invisible guru loop (led blinks, reboots, forever)
i have acatune in there as well, is this not compatible with acatune?

Originally Posted by amiman99

You need to add the prepareemul at the beginning of startup-sequence.

It will reboot the Amiga and then continue as normal.

[Daedalus]

From memory, there's a special argument for PrepareEmul that needs to be used on an A1200. Are you using this?

PrepareEmul A1200

[daxb]

What OS version do you use? With 3.1.4 PrepareEmul isn't necessary. Otherwise there exists alternatives if it fail to work.

[amiman99]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

From memory, there's a special argument for PrepareEmul that needs to be used on an A1200. Are you using this?

PrepareEmul A1200

Correct, I checked mine A1200 and it's that.

Also, there is MuMove4k command that is doing the same.

[Daedalus]

Indeeed, as daxb points out, there could be another OS module or patch interfering with its operation, either trying to do the same thing, or else negating its effect.

[Bren McGuire]

there is no other module or anything, i am running os 3.1, and it's a stock a1200 with extra RAM.
PrepareEmul keeps being stuck in a reboot loop. it errors with blinking LED. No guru screen shown but if frozen in black I have to press left mouse button to have it reboot.

i tried in an a600 with furia, same story

[Daedalus]

Is it a stock 3.1 install, or is it a ClassicWB sort of package? Is PrepareEmul before or after SetPatch? What does the top of your startup-sequence look like?

[amiman99]

Create fresh WB disk (make a copy of clean WB disk), put the prepareemul in C folder, add the command prepareemul A1200 at he the beginning of the startup-sequence, and see it it boots from the disk.

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by amiman99

Create fresh WB disk (make a copy of clean WB disk), put the prepareemul in C folder, add the command prepareemul A1200 at he the beginning of the startup-sequence, and see it it boots from the disk.

This is what I was going to suggest. The most important part is that prepareemul is the very first thing in the startup-sequence, if it's after setpatch it won't work correctly.

[Bren McGuire]

Prepareemul is the first command.
I tried in an A600 with an Furia, it needs Furiatune first. Same result.

i dont use classicwb or any of that nonsense. its a plain setup.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Is it a stock 3.1 install, or is it a ClassicWB sort of package? Is PrepareEmul before or after SetPatch? What does the top of your startup-sequence look like?

[Bren McGuire]

i guess no further help here?
alternatively, anybody managed to run this on an a600 with furia?

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

Prepareemul is the first command.
I tried in an A600 with an Furia, it needs Furiatune first. Same result.

i dont use classicwb or any of that nonsense. its a plain setup.

[amiman99]

It should just work, I'm not sure what else we can do.

[lilwshu]

If you have an ACA accelerator you could softkick the 3.1.4 ROM which renders PrepareEmul unnecessary.

Did you try the boot disk as mentioned above?

[Thomas Richter]

Prepareemul reserves the first 32K for the MacOs globals. Any accelerators installed on the machine? Did you try MuMove4K?

[Not Here Long]

This probably isn't it but for what it's worth I would get a checksum error on the Mac ROM when I put it on a CF card partition through WinUAE unless the partition's max transfer value was 0x1FE00. I also have C:Prepareemul A1200 after C:Setpatch, following some lines I added for a surf squirrel CD-ROM drive.

[daxb]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Prepareemul reserves the first 32K for the MacOs globals.

Are you sure? ShapeShifter guide says something about the first 8K need to be free. I haven't checked what does it in real. However, I'm a bit confused because of different sizes (reported).

MuMove4k: The guide isn't clear to me. Does it free/reserve 4K, 8K or another value?

Here on A1200, Apollo 1240, OS3.1, mmu.library, RemApollo with MAC option the first 16K are reserved. ShowConfig and Scout/XOpa show that chipram starts at $4000 (16K). Looks ok so far. MuScan shows that chipram starts at $1000 (4K) - $1FFFFF. My guessing is that MuScan can't detect the MAC patch by RemApollo. Do you know something about this?

Sorry for offtopic.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by daxb

Are you sure? ShapeShifter guide says something about the first 8K need to be free.

I am sure. MacOs globals are in the first 32K.

Originally Posted by daxb

MuMove4k: The guide isn't clear to me. Does it free/reserve 4K, 8K or another value?

That depends on how you run it. Without arguments, its moving chip/graphics data out of the first 4K. This functionality makes live easier for MuForce and friends as it allows to disable the first page, or allows MuFastZero to remap the first page to fast ram. With the prepareemul command line option, it keeps the first 32K free.

Originally Posted by daxb

Here on A1200, Apollo 1240, OS3.1, mmu.library, RemApollo with MAC option the first 16K are reserved. ShowConfig and Scout/XOpa show that chipram starts at $4000 (16K). Looks ok so far. MuScan shows that chipram starts at $1000 (4K) - $1FFFFF. My guessing is that MuScan can't detect the MAC patch by RemApollo. Do you know something about this?

No. The mmulib will map all memory from 0 up to the end of chip mem as non-cachable, regardless where chip mem starts. MuFastZero maps the first page (with ExecBase and the autovectors in them) to fast RAM, should that be necessary.


16K is *not* sufficient for shapeshifter and MacOs.