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Author Topic: Amithlon on Sony Vaio  (Read 3785 times)

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Offline McSquirrel

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #14 on: December 24, 2007, 12:26:20 AM »
I wonder how you could boot a img floppy image from USB stick without destroying all its former contents ;)

However, as Zac67 wrote, you can just burn the img file as a bootable CD-ROM. Within Nero, choose "CD-ROM (Boot)" and select the img file as well as something like "Floppy Emulation 1.44 MB" at the expert settings. This definitely WILL work (just don't know if this virtual floppy will be writable, but I think it won't need to be).
 

Offline zhulien

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #15 on: December 24, 2007, 12:36:26 AM »
Quote

AmiKit wrote:
I would recommend to use WinUAE instead of Amithlon. The installation is very easy and it's more compatible than Amithlon. The speed of emulation on Vaio laptop is more than 10 times faster than 060.


How do you install WinUAE on a computer without an OS?
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #16 on: December 24, 2007, 10:06:46 PM »
McSquirrel can you tell me what version of nero you were using? I finally found my nero and got it installed and couldnt find the explicit bootable option, but I made a cd anyway and it didnt work of course :).. Can you give me some specific details on exactly how to do it (ie, load nero->select cd->whatever?) - it would be much appreciated.
 

Offline McSquirrel

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #17 on: December 25, 2007, 06:52:43 PM »
Hi amiface,

I have been using Nero - Burning Rom 5.5.10.48 as it was bundled with my Fujitsu Siemens notebook.

Load Nero, then the new compilation window pops up (do not use the wizard). There are several CD types you can choose from (I have CD-ROM (ISO), Audio-CD, Mixed Mode CD, CD EXTRA, CD Copy, Video-CD, Super Video CD, CD-ROM (Boot), CD-ROM (Hybrid), CD-ROM (UDF) and CD-ROM (UDF/ISO)).

I chose "CD-ROM (Boot)" from the list. After selection, there are different tabs to the right of the list: Info, Boot, ISO, Label, Dates, Misc, Burn. The tab "Boot" is open by default.

Within the "Boot" tab there is a field "Source of boot image data" where you can select "Bootable logical drive" or "Image file". Choose the latter and select your img file.

Below that field, I can tick "Enable expert settings" and choose a "Kind of emulation", e.g. "Floppy Emulation 1.44MB".

The window should now look something like this:



(By the way, I use WindowsXP with the free "UXTheme Multi-Patcher" and the "qlassic" theme.)
 
Finally click the "New" button. There is now a window "ISO1" where you can add some files, but you do not need to. Just burn it and it should be bootable.

Hope this helps.
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #18 on: December 25, 2007, 09:40:57 PM »
Ok, well I made a big post and I lost it as stupid bloody vista crashed so i`ll make this snappy. First thanks alot for the help i much appreciate it and I find this forum extremely helpful compared to almost every other one Ive seen.

So this is whats happened,

Got the boot cd working (thanks mcsquirrel!!!) and managed to successfully install the new boot system, rebooted and got the new boot menu. My original XP OS was top of the list, and all the new amiga ones underneath.. so I selected XP to boot.

However the Sony Vaio thinks its got a damaged XP install somehow, and the only option its offering is the Vaio recovery utility which promises to "restore the hd to its factory state". So, now I cant boot up my XP os... and im a confused as to what to do next, as I dont want to factory reset the HD. So, why does the vaio think it needs to be recovered like this, why doesnt it just boot as normal?? Anyone got any clues, my laptop is basically not able to do anything really now, I have not tried any of the amithlon boot options as the last thing i saw from the pdf guide was DONT try any of the amithlon options yet..

Advice would be much appreciated, right now im installing a new instance of Winblows on it to try and get access to the files etc.
 

Offline McSquirrel

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #19 on: December 26, 2007, 12:47:50 AM »
I believe computers will give us lots of work during the next decade... Nevertheless, I'm happy you got the Boot-CD working.

MAYBE your Vaio has some kind of virus protection which raises an alarm if the boot sector of the HD has been changed. If so, this might be deactivated within your Vaio's BIOS settings. But I wonder why it won't let you boot up your XP as usual.

Does your "damaged XP" give you any other messages than the Vaio one? And how does it look? Is it grey console text on black screen, or grey Courier text on blue screen, or something completely different? Is there any message of Windows, or is it your Vaio giving an error message (like "No operating system found")?

Do you know that XP comes with its own boot manager "NTLDR" on drive C: ? The settings are stored in C:\boot.ini and by default it silently runs XP. If the order of your HD partitions changes (esp. if there are new partitions prior to the XP boot partition) your XP may become unbootable. So one thing you could try is creating an XP boot disk and altering its hidden boot.ini system file. However, you need a PC with a floppy drive to do so. The way is described here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595

Or you could try to use the commands FIXBOOT and FIXMBR from the Windows XP recovery console which comes with your XP Setup CD (no floppy drive needed):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

Just some ideas.
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #20 on: December 27, 2007, 12:22:14 AM »
Hey, thanks for the tips on that. I have now managed to get XP reinstalled, and now the vaio doesnt know what it is anymore and the recovery partition is dead (doh) meaning this time windows did boot!.. I edited the menu.lst as described and tried to boot amithlon....

Unfortunately every single option boots to a point but then stops with "PCI: Device 00:1f.1 not available because of resource collisions"...

Now im thinking, hang on, pci? laptop? was it ever gonna work? Im also pretty sure its a SATA drive and not an IDE!! :-(

(spec)
http://www.microanvika.com/product.asp?TXT=INFO&PNO=SON14921

Please tell me there is a way to proceed, ive come so far, for a second there I was stupid enough to get excited about it actually working!!


PS. i did not set the virtualHDD to "type &76" I have Acronis but I cannot really see a way to do it, is this related?
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #21 on: December 27, 2007, 02:04:28 AM »
lol, I just bought Amiga forever, it seemed like such a nice solution when i realised this was just not going to happen!! it has some nice looking linuxey boot type stuff now so it may serve my needs. I take back my earlier hatred of other emulations :-)

long live amiga.

thanks for all the help guys, hope xmas is treating you well. What I got was a LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit, and the Java Api to go with it, very geeky, very enjoyable, very amiga :)
 

Offline Trev

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #22 on: December 27, 2007, 04:10:30 AM »
Quote
luck is certainly what you need, what a nasty process fraught with errors.. now im trying to get the img floppy image to somehow boot up from my usb stick..... really someone needs to make a proper installer for this amithlon so it works :(..


I suppose someone could, but Amithlon isn't considered legal by the powers that be. (Yet another example of how the Amiga community gets screwed over by corporate greed and personal grudges, despite the talent of the programmers behind the product.)

That said, the lower layer is just a Linux kernel with some custom (and proprietary) goodness. Surely someone has investigated rolling their own.

Trev
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #23 on: December 27, 2007, 10:33:29 AM »
Yeh you would think so, but then it again boils down talented people wanting the cash they deserve, and the amiga cannot support them. Its a wonder they have any talent left to work on the likes of Amithlon and Umilator (which Id kill a pack of wolves for btw).

I have been holding out for years for someone to make a complete JVM for AmigaOS, and Im still waiting.. At times I do think about getting my coding hat on for it but then I think, no, the pay just wont be there :-/

Im wondering how fast this kxlinux version of amiga forever will be, but I will have to apease my gfs need to shop til she drops and do it tonight! :pissed:
 

Offline McSquirrel

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #24 on: December 27, 2007, 10:54:53 AM »
PCI 00:1f.1 seems to be the IDE interface, yes...

If you are running your SATA HD in SATA mode, Amithlon is probably lacking a driver for this. However, there is a BIOS setting which allows SATA drives to run in a compatibility mode. According to some forums, you have to "disable AHCI" or set the SATA Controller Mode to "ATA" or "Compatible". I think this just means that your HD will be treated like an IDE drive thereafter (correct me if I'm wrong).

To your "type &76" question: Is this a hexadecimal number? So you may have to enter it somewhere as 0x76 or 0076h or something alike within Acronis.

If nothing of these will work, have fun with Amiga Forever.
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #25 on: December 28, 2007, 08:40:35 PM »
Well unfortunately the vaios bios is as frugal as hell with no options like that :-( I have basically decided to give up and focus on amiga forever and see if it can do what I want.. weirdly though I bought the online edition because it kept going on about kxlight and now I come to actually install it and I cannot see any mention of it at all.... having said that running on windows on this vaio seems way faster than my last and without the problems.. but im still going to need atleast 2 or 3 weeks of proper usage tosee if its right for me. One of my main problems is the mouse is too slow even on full speed! I can speed it up with acceleration but then its just confusing, Im guessing there will be some WBhack for this.

Running WB at MASSIVE resolutions is doable in 8 bit (not higher) but its sweet, more news soon..
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #26 on: December 29, 2007, 12:40:46 AM »
Ok folks, maybe this should go in a new thread??

Ive finally got amiga forever working, and exactly as it was 2 years ago when I tried it, it just wont save some preferences. Other Amiga users have suggested that its more of an executive toy than a serious tool, but I find that hard to believe.

Here is what doesnt work for me, a quick example, FKEY, whenever I define a key, save and reboot, all evidence of what Ive saved has vanished.

What could possibly cause this??

AmiFace.
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #27 on: December 29, 2007, 11:46:05 AM »
Oh well not I remember why amiga forever pisses me off severely!! Ive been using it 4 hours and its already slowly grinding to a halt!! has it got some sort of memory leak?? I have to keep halfing the resolution to keep the speed up, before long i`ll be down to 320*256.. would the kxlight boot option avoid this? Im sick and tired of trying to get the amigaos running...makes me wonder why i bother, but when i go back to windows i soon remember.. it was lightning fast at the start!
 

Offline McSquirrel

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #28 on: January 01, 2008, 12:54:23 PM »
I am sorry I cannot reproduce your WinUAE problems.

Have you copied FKey to your Sys:WBStartup folder and do you run it from there? Once running, you open the FKey config window using Ctrl+Alt+F (or using the Exchange commodity). The settings will be saved within the FKey icon (i.e. Sys:WBStartup/FKey.info). The icon file must not be write protected.

My FKey properties within the icon file read like this:
«Alt F1» RUN muchmore
«Alt F2» RUN fastview >NIL: INFO
DONOTWAIT
CX_POPUP=NO
CX_POPKEY=ctrl alt f
CX_PRIORITY=0

As to your memory leak assumption... I used WinUAE for that long (i.e. several hours) only back in January 2003 when I made a backup of my Amiga HD, sorted my files and exchanged several icons. As far as I remember, WinUAE did not slow down during usage. You may try out different versions of WinUAE, just download it from www.winuae.net and use your Amiga Forever ROMs and OS files. Maybe the problems have vanished i a newer version.

I used v0.8.14 for Workbench 2.1 uses, and v0.8.8R8 for gaming on my Pentium III 500MHz as the following versions were slightly slower. However, the 0.8.8R8 version was still incompatible with some games like Worms, but another emulator called WinFellow 0.4.3b1 did a good job then.

As KXLight uses a development branch of UAE which is different from WinUAE, you cannot compare the UAE/WinUAE version numbers and there may be different problems.

Have a Happy New Year 2008!
 

Offline amifaceTopic starter

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Re: Amithlon on Sony Vaio
« Reply #29 from previous page: January 03, 2008, 07:21:11 PM »
Hi mate, Thanks alot for your help. Amiga Forever seems to be running alot better now, ive plateaued out at 800*600 at 8 bit which is basically running about the same speed as my old 060 based amiga ran, and sometimes faster/slower. Overall Im actually pretty damn impressed after ironing out the problems, it seems i was wrong about the memory leak.

Remaining issues that Id love to solve:

fkey still wont save (the icon information saves fine, but not the actual fkey prefs - where are they actually saved???? is there any way to "pipe" them in from a script at boot time? or is there an fkey replacement?)

the palette messes up when i flip to workbench from windows - this means all the icons, mui colours and especially web browsing looks terrible.

someone has seen fit to make "page down" jump to some very odd amiga style bluescreen of death - i dont know what the hell it is or how to quit it without rebooting! This is rather annoying as I hit it sometimes when im trying to press enter.


On a another note, i think running it on windows is now essential as I had completely forgotten how incomatible amiga browsers are, I need to be able to flip to windows for a few things so infact i think this is a relatively good solution, even if it no doubt runs alot slower with windows churning away in the background.

Happy new year to you too, I was at the edinburgh street party which was fun!