Not Happy with new SAM

[cehofer]

I don't know if this is the correct thread to give reasons why I am not happy with the new SAM but I will give a short synopsis.  First, and this has been my experience with the building with the X5040 and the SAM460LE if you do not buy complete system from Acube or Amedia, you will get zero technical support.  The only place to turn to is Forums and it seems that I rarely get any answers from this forum about 4.1FE 2.  The dealers will say they cannot guaranty the experience if it isn't thoroughly tested by them with their components.  I think this is total bunk.  I cannot even get them to recommend components so I go off their build if I bought a complete system from them.

So it seems the "Systems" being sold X5040 or SAM have a Radeon RX550, 240GB Crucial BX500, and Kingston RAM.  The SAM you need a SATA controller.

So I started with an original AmigaoneXE board.  I did get a lot of good advise on making that stable from this forum but it would still crash and CPU choke.  Candy killed it and could hardly run it.  Everyone said you need to get an X5000 or SAM.  I was an "Early Adopter" since Jan 2020.  May of 2022, I gave up on the A1222 and started looking for a new machine.  I found Amedia was the only one offering the X5040.  Then Acube annouced they were offering the SAM in Sept which wound up being January 2023.  So I ordered both.  The X5040 arrived in Aug-Sept 2022.  It still crashes from time to time for no apparent reason, can't browse Facebook or Youtube or any graphically intensive site.  Wait.  Isn't that pretty much ALL media sites now?  I figured a 4 core PPC should have no problem running anything but OS4.1FE only supports 1 core??  Ugg!  I hope they have changed this on the A1222 but doubtful!

So I got and built the SAM in Jan 2023 with all the components from above.  First, the Radeon RX550 recommended and shipped with complete systems does not support the kickstart boot screen or get this HDMI.  So no mention of this anywhere, I thought I had a bad MB or bad RX550.  I built my X5040 with a Sapphire R9 280X 3GB.  So I swapped cards between them and I now had  kickstart screen but no HDMI only vga.  Now I may be wrong about the RX550 that HDMI works on the SAM but it definitely does not have Kickstart boot.  Then trying to get someone to tell you what Warp/Radeon driver you needed for what card was just totally aggravating as well!

So with either Radeon card, the SAM totally chokes on intense graphics.  Candy kills the CPU and it seems to have a very bad lag.  If somebody wants to work with me and get it fine tuned, I would be more than happy to get it working properly.  It has been collecting dust for months!  I have almost $1700 US in that system.

You may ask why I dont buy a complete system.  I live in the US and it is easier to ship me a mother board safely than a complete tower system.  If the tower gets damaged in shipping, it is a total nightmare of shipping back and forth.  At least that is my logic. 

Sam 460LE
Sapphire R9 280X 3GB
PNY 500GB SSD  - maybe an issue since it seems Crucial BX500 240Gb are being shipped in systems.
2GB - OWC6400DDR2S
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX SB1570 PCIe 5.1 Sound Card
4 Port SATA RAID to PCI Card Adapter Converter Silicon Image Sil3114 Chipset

[F0LLETT]

For the record, You should get support regardless if its a complete system or just motherboard.

[cehofer]

You would think.  It is like they dont want to be held liable.  I have been building PCs, Windoze and Linux for 30 plus years.  If you tell me, we build systems with these components but cannot guarantee your experience with the same components unless tested, I get that.  But give me a place to start at least.

It would be nice if Aeon, since they own the Radeon drivers would have an FAQ of what each driver handles.  It took me forever to get mini GL working on the RX550.  You would think that the "Boing Ball" of all screen savers would work!  You would also think they would have it on amisphere at the time but I had to wait a couple months to get a cd from Amigakit.

But then again they create a special website especially for A1222 plus and NEVER update it.  They would rather use Facebook which to my knowledge and experience does not work on any Amiga Browser.

[nbache]

You would think that the "Boing Ball" of all screen savers would work!

To be fair, this blanker module was written in 2009-2010, before even the X1000 was released, and not by anyone related to A-EON.

Best regards,

Niels

[cehofer]

Well, the "boing blanker" is just one example of miniGL not working.  My kids like to use Celestia which uses it and didnt work as well.  An FAQ or chart would be nice of compatibility of the different driver features.  The only AOS4.1 compatibility chart is on Acubes site.  They have all the latest Radeon cards...I think. 

Mind you for what ever reason the X5020 went from $1800 US for a complete system in 2018-19 to $2700US in 2022 for the X5040 motherboard only.  If they had these boards stockpiled from 2015, why the jump?  Im sure they will blame covid.  I assumed the X5040 would be a complete Bad A$$ but completely falls on its face.  You know what they say when you "assume" something?   

It may sound like I am bashing and I dont mean to be.  I have been an Amigan since 1988 with a 2000HD -> 4000D -> 4000T. 

Maybe the OS isn't what and where it should be because it was written in Python instead of C.  Then that might have been part of this 20 year legal battle. 

What is truly aggravating is that I have a $3000 Amiga that cant do what a $200 Chromebook can, surf the Internet and watch youtube.  I can barely shop ebay and amazon. 

[cehofer]

I dusted off the SAM and tried to boot it with HDMI connected to the Sapphire R9 280X 3GB.  I could see the SAM kickstart, it would load 4.1FE kick start but never show AmigaOS4.1 and stall in a black screen.  If I disconnect the HDMI and use VGA, it boots just fine.

[redfox]

@cehofer

Sorry to see you are having such difficulties.  Way back in 2004 I purchased a MicroAmigaOne motherboard from a dealer in Eastern Canada.  It came bundled with a pre-release version of OS4.0.  Like you, I sourced the other parts locally and put my system together myself.

The dealer (Justin) helped me out alot when I was first starting.  At the time, I was probably the only customer who was not a betatester or developer.  And some really helpful guys in the forums also helped me.

Sorry I can't help with SAM or  X5040 because I never purchased those systems.

I hope you find some help.  Some of the experts hang out on Amigans.net.  Amiga.org and Amigaworld.net have become ghost-towns for OS4 related stuff.  A few old timers like me still hang around all three websites.

---
redfox
 

[cehofer]

Here is what I suggest to both Acube and AAA.  When 3.1.4 was released, Richter started a thread to report issues and fixes.   I suggest a SAM and a AAA for owners have a place to get help.  It can be on any of the boards. 

[SACC-guy]

You should get support.

But, nature of the OS-4 beast. You only get a limited Radeon HD driver with the OS.
That's why you get Enhancer, for a better Radeon HD and RX driver.

But it needs to be installed correctly before use. or as you discovered (chicken or egg)

Which is why dealers want to do the setup?

BTW, Amigans is a better site for help...

but the Hyperion site also has the basic anwsers!

keep asking

[Pyromania]

Best of luck getting your NG Amiga systems working, sorry to hear that you're having problems. My X5000 works really well but I don't use it for web browsing. Also, I got it as a complete system. I would like a way to dual boot MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.1 seamlessly. I use the Vampire V4 SA more lately but am interested in knowing the best apps for the X5000 that make it worthwhile to use more. The 5040 X5000 system is suppose to be better than my 5020.

[cehofer]

What is the recommended file system for 4.1FE.  SFS/00 or SFS/02 or does it matter.  Also, is there a disk utility to scan the HD for errors or corruption?   I haven't seen one yet.

[Jeff]

@cehofer

My X5000 uses filesystem NGF\00 as setup by Amedia-Computer. Next Generation File System I think.

[nbache]

@cehofer

My X5000 uses filesystem NGF\00 as setup by Amedia-Computer. Next Generation File System I think.

Yeah, but NGFS has so far only been released for X5000s. When (if) it is released for other models, it will be as NGF\01, which is not (directly) compatible with NGF\00.

So SFS is the best available choice. The two variants only have the differences that SFS\00 has a max. partition size (124 GB, or something, IIRC; I think there's also a max. file size), but has some sort of repair/rescue tool working on it, while SFS\02 works with larger partitions/files, but has good and frequent backups as the only chance of recovery in case of trouble.

Best regards,

Niels

[cehofer]

So are you saying that SFS/00 is self healing?  I have another post if anyone knows if there is a HD/SSD utility to check integrity of the FS/HD

I got this from Amigans and I have no disk errors.

To check SFS\0 partitions you can use SFSCheck from http://os4depot.net/?function=showcon ... driver/filesystem/sfs.lha
PartitionWizard (Enhancer Software) can copy data from a corrupted SFS\0 partition to another one, but it can't repair broken partitions. It can repair FFS (DOS\0-DOS\7) partitions.

There are no tools for SFS\2.

Your X5000 should include NGFS which should be the best file system available for AmigaOS 4.1.

The only differences between SFS\0 and SFS\2 are the limits for the file size (SFS\0: 4 GB - 2 bytes) and partition size (SFS\0: 128 GB).

[cehofer]

You should get support.

But, nature of the OS-4 beast. You only get a limited Radeon HD driver with the OS.
That's why you get Enhancer, for a better Radeon HD and RX driver.

But it needs to be installed correctly before use. or as you discovered (chicken or egg)

Which is why dealers want to do the setup?

BTW, Amigans is a better site for help...

but the Hyperion site also has the basic anwsers!

keep asking

Is there some "Secret Decoder Ring" / Procedure of how to install these drivers?  Installing The Enhancer addons is pretty straight forward and simple.  It must be bad scripting on their part to make sure the old Radeon file gets written over and the new proper one gets put in its place.