Amithlon on Sony Vaio

[amiface]

Hey folks, So I tried to install Amithlon on my Sony Vaio and what happened was, it booted "isolinux" or something like that, with an amithlon boot screen. An Amiga boing ball appeared and started bouncing around the screen (there was one frame of it left in the top left as well as what looked like a flashing cursor). This is it im afraid, I dont know what was meant to happen but the ball just kept bouncing forever... can anyone help me work out whats going wrong? I really want this to work on my Vaio?? I want to devote a partition to it etc, what do I need to do to set up Amithlon? Can it be installed on a partition without QNX? do I need qnx for amithlon or just amigaos XL? Whats the difference.. All I want is the best performance, lowest hassle option so that I can boot into the amiga and use it. If using QNX means I can integrate them more seemlessly then excellent Id be well up for trying QNX anyway!

Any advice you can give me would be great,

Thanks.

AmiFace.

[Amigaz]

Your hardware won't work with the original kernel I'm afraid

Try THIS guide which let's you use a newer kernel which has a better chance to work with your hardware

[amiface]

Thank you very much I will certainly give it a go. It doesnt look that simple but Im preying it works - I tried Amiga Forever and it was a terrible waste of money. I read so often that you plonk the cd for amithlon in and it works perfectly, what a lie! Also is the QNX/AmigaOSXL combination any good?? What version of QNX do I need (there's neutrino and qnx v4), on their site it appears that you cannt get this for free anymore!

What is the fastest possible way to run amigaos on a pc? Am I right in thinking once I get amithlon set up it will be really brilliant!? :-)

Ironically I have a PPC amiga and want OS4.0 but its starting to cost me a fortune to keep the damn thing running before another part burns out.. it feels like the Delorian from back to the future.

[Amigaz]

It's not as hard as it looks
I'm just a "user" and no real computer geek and it worked for me on the first try

[AmiKit]

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.

[amiface]

emulators than run in windows make me physically ill and completely destroy what im trying to do.. despite that flipping from screen to screen is very annoying and slow and winuae is just plain annoying..it didnt save any of my prefs either - i want something more substantial like amithlon. Also the 10x 060 speed, was not like that for me, it was about the same speed as an 060 often and sometimes slower.

[amiface]

Im wiorking through the amithlon guide, and ive got to:

"3) Add two partitions so you end up with something like:
|||Primary||
AmithlonSys: must be formatted as Fat32 and set as Primary partition.
VirtualHDD: can be formatted to whatever. It is best set as Primary and MUST have the
partition type set to &76. ( This is where you find out if your partition software is any good! )"


What program can I use to set partition type? I have partition magic 8 but iu see no opotion to set the type to "&76".. anyone any ideas? now its xmas I have some time to do this so I want to get it going!!

[Amigaz]

I used Acronis Disk Creator

One of my fave programs  :-)

[amiface]

Thanks very much for the prompt response! That is exactly what   I was preying for, I`ll try that program now, cheers.

[amiface]

Ok more complications,

5) Copy the contents of Grub.rar somewhere ( That may as well be your AmithlonSys:
partition too. ) It should contain one folder called: 'Grub Floppy Image'. This should contain:
diskio.dll, grub-0.97-i386-pc.img, and rawwritewin.exe
6) Stick a writable floppy in your drive and run rawwritewin.exe It should be self
explanatory: You're trying to get rawwritewin.exe to write the floppy image grub-0.97-i386-pc.
img to the floppy drive! ie: (A):

and

Install Grub:
1) Boot PC with new Grub install floppy in the Drive. ( You did remember to set booting
from floppy in your BIOS? )
You'll get:
Grub loading stage2.......

etc..

What if you dont have a floppy drive??? There must be a way on windows to mount a fake foppy drive to write to and boot from etc?

If not the only option I can think of is buying a USB floppy drive which seems a bit extreme..

[Zac67]

You can burn the floppy image to a CD-R(W) with the 'emulation mode' boot option. Works fine usually.

[amiface]

Hey could you tell me where the option is in Acronis? Im using Acronis Disk Director Suite, Ive managed to make a partition fine but I dont see the option to set the type top &76..

[McSquirrel]

You could also try the free "Ranish Partition Manager" v2.43 from www.ranish.com to set the file system:

Create a MS-DOS or Win9x boot disk, copy cwsdpmi.exe (will provide DPMI services needed by the partition manager) and part243.exe (the partition manager itself) to it, boot, run cwsdpmi.exe, then run part243.exe. Select partition with up/down arrow keys, press INSERT key and select the desired file system with up/down arrow keys, confirm with RETURN key. Finally press F2 key to save the partition table and ESC key to exit.

Good luck!


EDIT: The program file was part243.exe (not rpm.exe)

[amiface]

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 ..

[McSquirrel]

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).