A500 keeps restarting with PiStorm when RTG is enabled.

[Calab]

I have a Raspberry Pi 3b+ and a PiStorm installed in my Amiga 500. All was well, until I tried to enable RTG.  When RTG is enabled I get a black screen at boot, I can hear my floppy drive home itself, then the system restarts. I can interrupt the process by holding down both mouse buttons.

My user startup sequence has the following:
- AmiTCP
- KingCON
- AmiSSL
- xfdpatch
- Picasso96

Is anyone aware of anything that might cause this behavior?

P.s.  I think there should be an emulation category on this board as more and more people use emulators instead of the real thing.

[Boing-ball]

Okay. Sounds like you haven’t setup the RTG with Picasso96 (P96) properly. To fix this you need delete the Screenmode.prefs file by booting up without startup-system and using Amiga DOS commands. Preferably copy it first then delete.

Reboot the system and it will bring the workbench back into native Amiga mode Screenmode.

Then try again.

[Calab]

<tl;dr>I started over and got Musashi set up with RTG and all was well. Installed AmiTCP and now the system crashes after loading the workbench.</tl:dr>

So, I decided to start over, and be very methodical.

Using a Pi 3A+ in my A500, which has a 512kb trapdoor addon.

- Used the PiImager to write Bullseye to my SD card. (Can't find Buster online) Enabled SSH and other settings in the process.
- Installed card into the Pistorm and booted up the Amiga. I let it expand the file system and generate keys and reboot.
- Through SSH I logged into the Pi. I followed the instructions to set the Pi up using Musashi from the git pages of Captain Amygdala.
- Using fallocate I created a 2gb HDF file.
- I Created a default.cfg file that pointed to my ROM and 2gb HDF. I also set the CPU as a 68030, enabled A314, RTG and set my memory to 512meg.
- I configured the Pi to the emulator as a service. I started the service.
- I reset the Amiga, and using the Install floppy disk, I partitioned my 2gb HDF. One of the advanced options while partitioning is a checkbox for long filenames. Do NOT check it or else the PiStorm won't use the file.
- I reset the Amiga with the install floppy and formatted the 2gb partition. I did enable long filenames here.
- I installed OS 3.2, then the 3.2.2 update and the 3.2.2.1 update.
- I installed LHA 68020 version to C:
- I copied the relevant files needed on the Amiga to support A314.

At that point the amiga will boot from the HD file and everything seems to work. I can use the "pi" command and mount PI0: I mention "pi" and PI0: as other attempts at setting up a PiStorm would restart if I used "pi" or mounted PI0:

- I created an image of my SD card so I could restore the system quickly.
- I followed the steps in Ferrys guide to set up RTG, choosing to use 1280x720. Everything during this set up went smoothly.

At this point the machine is still working fine. PI works and I can mount PI0:

- I created a new SD card image from the SD card.
- I then followed the Networking instructions in Ferrys guide to set up networking using AmiTCP 3.0b2. All seemed to go smoothly.
- I restarted the Amiga, and now I have issues...

The workbench loads, then the system restarts. It keeps doing this until I hold both mouse buttons and disable the startup sequence, at which point I end up in a shell. I can use ed to modify the user-startup file, but I'm not sure what I should do at this point.

I do not know what is happening during the Networking setup and installation of TCP that could cause the system to restart continuously.

I am going to restore my SD card to the working state that has RTG working. I am going to download a fresh copy of AmiTCP, just in case. I will try to set up AmiTCP again and be even more careful doing so.

My EMU68 installation did not have any issues like this, but it doesn't support networking, so I can't really compare it to Musashi.

[Calab]

So... reimaged my SD card with the working PiStorm install and verified all is well.

I edited the default.cfg file the PiStorm uses to bring me from 512meg to 256meg.

I installed AmiTCP and this time it worked! I bumped the memory back to 512meg in the default.cfg and the restart issue came back.

It seems that there might be a hardware conflict between the RAM space and the I/O space for the networking or RTG devices.

So, the three lessons I learned from setting up the PiStorm are:
- Take an image of your working SD card occasionally
- Don't get RAM greedy... 128meg or 256meg should be more than enough
- When partitioning your Amiga hard drive, do NOT select the advanced option for Long File Names (if it's there)

So, I'm off to start installing some apps on the Amiga.

[Boing-ball]

The A1200 version can comfortably handle upto 2GB FastRAM. But that’s a 32bit system. I’m guessing the A500 and being a 16BIT system has a lower ceiling limit for RAM.

[kolla]

The A1200 version can comfortably handle upto 2GB FastRAM.

The Amiga memory map is full of reserved areas, you can never see 2GB of FastRAM.

But that’s a 32bit system. I’m guessing the A500 and being a 16BIT system has a lower ceiling limit for RAM.

The 68EC020 of the A1200 has exact same address space as 68000, and it is 24bit, which is why the RAM limitations on stock A1200 and stock A500/A600 are exactly the same, 8MB Fast + 1.8MB ranger and 2MB chip (given cool enough agnus on ECS systems).

Anyways, with CPU upgrades, this limit vanishes, though exactly how far you can go will depend on hardware configuration, as I mentioned, Amiga memory map is full of reserved areas for dedicated use. The number 1792MB occurs to me, but I suspect that is the full zorro III address space.