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The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Amiga Emulation => Topic started by: EDanaII on December 28, 2006, 01:04:51 AM

Title: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on December 28, 2006, 01:04:51 AM
OK, so I'm goofin' around and attempting to get AmiKit to run on AMIthlon and I'm so, so, close, but... I got these little itsy bitsy problems.

For starts, my startup-sequence complains "LoadMonDrvs: file is not executable." Which is annoying as all hell, 'cause, I know the file is executable. At least, when I boot under another amithlon configuration and execute the exact same file, it runs.

Furthermore, AmiKit boots up into a four color Workbench. When I run screenmode, it appears and I have all my available builtin display functions. They even appear properly when I test them, but, alas, the Workbench remains in four colors when I use or save.

Anyone got any clues here? I needs 'em. I know at least one user here has been able to get AmiKit running on his Amithlon box. Amiga-Fan I think is his "handle."

Help me, Amiga-Fan Kenobi! You're -- or anyone else who has a clue ;-) -- my only hope!

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on December 28, 2006, 03:21:31 AM
OK, curiouserer and curiouserer...

Thinking, maybe, I should reinstall the Picasso drivers, I did so, only to have the screen go black on boot up. OK, nearly black, more like the brightness is getting turned down to, maybe, 10% of what it should be.

Going through my startup-sequence and commenting shtuff out until the problem goes away, I find that the culprit is... wait for it! ... LoadMonDrvs! You know, the thing that is "not executable..."

Grrrr... So, my Picasso drivers didn't install correctly? ...I'm still not sure how to fix this, clues still welcome. :-)

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: stefcep on December 28, 2006, 04:42:37 AM
I am not all that familiar with Picasso 96(P96), as I use Cybergraphx on a real amiga but  would remove ie delete all p96 monitor drivers in devs, and any other files(look in libs, startup-sequence) p96 installs. Sometimes its not enought to just delete the p96 monitor file in devs/monitors. I would then boot into a 4-color ecs workbench screen and reinstall uaeP96
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: motorollin on December 28, 2006, 10:11:27 AM
Why not comment out loadmondrvs and add a line in its place to manually load the monitor driver? Like this:

...
;C:LoadMonDrvs
DEVS:Monitors/Picasso96
...


I have no idea what the monitor driver name is for P96 under Amithlon so you would have to change the line to the correct name. If you're using 3.9 then you could put "WBRun" before the "DEVS:Monitors....." line to make it act as though you had double-clicked it.

--
moto
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on December 28, 2006, 04:51:13 PM
That was a great clue, Motorollin. Thanks. I can now boot into a full color Workbench. However, I got problems still. Is anyone surprised? :-)

As the desktop boots, I get a series of Recoverable Alerts, all numbered: 0100 000C, the mouse pointer is corrupted and if I click on an icon the desktop freezes.

I can find Guru Meds on-line, but I'm not sure what 0100 000C means. Any clues here?

Thanks,
Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on December 28, 2006, 06:43:59 PM
Just a follow up... The problem definately appears to be Picasso related. If I remove the driver, I get a lovely four color workbench and everything seems to be stable. If I boot using the Amithlon supplied PowerFB device... it's a mess. Since this is clearly an Amithlon issue, I've taken it over to the Amithlon groups at Yahoo, but if, once again, anyone else has got ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on December 28, 2006, 09:54:11 PM
In the words of Hiro Nakamura, "I did it!"  :-D

AmiKit is now working on my Amithlon system, and, man, it looks nice!

It appears to be stable, but I'm sure I have a few more surprises waiting for me.

And, just for any who are interested, my final problem was solved by taking my my PowerFB device and setting all the tooltypes, except the boardtype parameter, to match the original UAEGFX device.

Suhweet! :-)

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: AmiBiL0 on December 29, 2006, 10:38:10 AM
That's a good news.
Are you going to post something somewhere? like a guide or a package that we can use?

Let us know how its done
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: AmiKit on December 29, 2006, 11:01:15 AM
good point AmiBiL0!

Ed, I'd be very happy if you write a short guide on how to run AmiKit under Amithlon, many other Amithlon users would benefit. We can put it to Tricks&Tips (http://amikit.amiga.sk/tips-tricks.htm) page. ;-)
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: motorollin on December 29, 2006, 12:34:34 PM
Nice one! I bet it's quick?

--
moto
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on December 29, 2006, 05:31:45 PM
It's definitely "snappy," Moto, which is the main reason why I did it. Under UAE, it's a little slow on my 2 ghz XP box. But running on my 1 ghz Amithlon box, it's very "responsive." :-)


@ AmiKit:

I'll make you a deal, Jan, as payment for my services, including my JBoing demo, how about you, I dunno... give me a copy of AmiKit for free!

Can I negotiate, or can I negotiate? ;-)


@ All

As to compiling a list, I can do that, but as I'm still fine tuning things, I've got a ways to go. I'll make you guys a deal, I'll post what I've done so far, you guys can give me some feed back, and we'll all refine it from there. Sound like a plan? :-)

And, now, for the standard proviso: I ain't responsible for any damages to your system if you attempt this. You, and only you, are. So, don't forget to do step one, or ya gots no one to whine to but yerself. ;-)

The story, so far:
1. Create a new or backup your old Amithlon System partition.
2. Either rename that partition to, or assign it, the name "AmiKit."
3. Be sure to preserve Amithlon specific files, such as C:AmithlonC directory, any files in the S: directory, any files in the DEVS: directory. (More to be added if found).
4. Copy the AmiKit files to the new AmiKit partition.

Tip 1: AmiKit contains a boat-load of files labeled "_UAEFSDB.___" and stored in every directory you got just to support UAE. Amithlon has no use for them and they take up space in the tens of megabytes. You might want to delete them before you copy.

5. Restore the Amithlon specific files, but be careful to preserve their AmiKit counterparts.
6. Create a new startup-sequence using a combination of the Amithlon and Amikit counterparts. Here is what my startup-sequence (http://EdwardGDanaII.info:7762/Programs/AmiKit/Startup-Sequence) looks like.

Tip 2: DOpus5 requires, for some reason, that LoadWB be renamed LoadWB_Old. I did so, and then created an alias for LoadWB. Might be a better way to do this, though...

Tip 3: Remember to save BOTH your Amithlon AND AmiKit "User-Startup" files. I modified my Amithlon User Startup to include, first, a call to the AmiKit User Startup file.

7. Remove from the WBStartup directory, the following icons, as best I can tell, they're not needed or won't run under Amithlon: glmatrix68k_exe, winuaeclip, MMKeyboardServer.
8. Reboot!

If you end up with a 4 color, low-res Workbench, like I did, then:
9 In DEVS:Monitors, modify the PowerFB ToolTypes to match the UAEGFX ToolTypes EXCEPT for the BoardType parameter. Leave it equal to "PowerFB."

If that doesn't work, try reinstalling your Picasso96 drivers. Honestly, I did this the other way around, reinstalled and then modified the PowerFB device, but the reinstall may not have been necessary.

Tip 5: if you do something wrong and the system will not get to a point where you can edit the startup-sequence, or any other file, for that matter. Reboot and hold both mouse buttons down to bring up the boot menu. Select "boot with no startup-sequence." That will get you to a point where you can then "ed s:startup-sequence" and fix things.

The story, yet to come:
System is not 100% stable, but it is usable. If, for example, I open a bunch of windows, and then close them, the system will reboot. I suspect this may have yet to do with the PowerFB settings and is why I suspect copying the UAEGFX ToolTypes may not be exactly the right solution.

AHI does not work, but I'm not certain that it ever did on my box. Obviously, I need to spend more time figuring this one out.

Networking is not completely functional. I assume because AmiKit is configured to use the bsdsocket.library. Amithlon, if memory serves, uses the powerne2k.device. I'm not sure yet, what, if anything, I need to do to get the two working together. What I can do is start Miami, ping other boxes in my network and even "samba" over to another box. What I can't do is surf using any of the supplied browsers, including the ones from my original Amithlon configuration.

AmiStart is only partially functional. It displays, I can raise and lower windows, I can navigate to various programs but I cannot activate them. Not sure how to approach this one just yet. Those same programs, some of them, appear to function fine when I activate them directly.

And, I'm sure there's more, but this is all I've discovered so far.

As always, if you guys have any thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Just give me a clue, I'm always in need of one. ;-)

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: AmiKit on December 29, 2006, 07:53:51 PM
@Ed

Quote
I'll make you a deal, Jan, as payment for my services, including my JBoing demo, how about you, I dunno... give me a copy of AmiKit for free!

Well, we have a deal then! Check this (http://www.amikit.amiga.sk/AmiKit-CD.jpg) out. :-) Heh, heh.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on December 30, 2006, 03:21:34 PM
AmiKit EddyZone? Well, that's real nice naming it after me, but that's not really necessary. A free copy of AmiKit is good enough for me. ;-) Yea, yea, I know, it's probably the Czech word (or is it Italian?) for "edition" buy my name is Eddy and I do live in Arizona, so... I couldn't resist. :-D

Looks nice, Jan. AmiKit marches on! :-)


@ All

OK, I can't blame AmiKit for my network issues. It seems that my original Amithlon configuration has the exact same network problems. It's been a while since I used it, so...

Replacing the AmiKit version of AmiStart with a non-AmiKit version doesn't seem to fix it, so... Looks like I got more tinkering to do there.

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: AmiKit on January 02, 2007, 12:54:27 AM
Quote
AmiKit EddyZone? Well, that's real nice naming it after me, but that's not really necessary.

:laughing:
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on January 03, 2007, 04:42:34 PM
All right. Continuing my adventures...

I managed to fix the problem with AmiStart not executing applications. It seems that I need load BOTH the Workbench using the LoadWB command AND Directory Opus using the LoadDB command. This, of course, uses extra memory and seems wasteful, but at least AmiStart is functional now.

Using only LoadDB with the AmiStart tooltype USEWBSTART doesn't seem to work.

As always, thoughts, suggestions and comments welcome. :-)

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on January 04, 2007, 05:57:28 PM
AmiKit's Log, Amithlon-date 070104.49:

Yesterday, I discovered that my problems with opening a lot of windows and then closing them, as well as, selecting "Show As -> View All" from the floating system menu -- both of which caused a system reboot -- were solved by simply not loading DOpus.

Now I load Workbench, will also allows AmiStart to function, but I lose a lot of the nice functionality that Opus brought. The trade-off for all of this is that whenever I use Unarc, the system resets.

I can live with this trade-off, it's obnoxious but tolerable. When I use Unarc, I simply load DOpus and unarchive stuff there.

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: jmbattle on January 05, 2007, 02:31:21 AM
Not wishing to shift the topic too greatly, however you could always use an alternative archiving client, such as one of the interfaces for the XAD libraries, or my favourite, WizARC.
 (http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/5761/wizarcym1.png)

Cheers,
James
x
Title: Amithlon fiddling tweeks
Post by: weirdami on January 05, 2007, 05:18:31 AM
Was your Amithlon all tweeked and modified before you put AmiKit on it? I wonder how you would have fared if you had started from scratch with a blank hard drive, installed Amithlon, then installed AmiKit.
Title: Re: Amithlon fiddling tweeks
Post by: EDanaII on January 05, 2007, 04:11:53 PM
The answer to your question, weirdami, is "yes" and "no." :-) I had fiddled with it, but not everything was working fully. Sound, it seems, was at one time functional, but I'm not sure when I lost it. Graphics were mostly functional, the only time it wasn't was on video play-back, which is in black and white. Everything else was up-to-date with the latest and greatest.

I considered a clean install, but then remembered all the tweaking I had to do to get it to its current state. So, instead, I duplicated my current system, keeping the original as a reference point for debugging.

To answer your final question, I suspect doing a clean install would have been much more work.

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on January 05, 2007, 04:25:48 PM
@ jmbattle:

Thanks for the tip on alternate archivers, James. I'll definitely look into it, but for right now, my goal is to get this system as near to 100% stable as I can.


@ All

I restored MMKeyBoard functionality by replacing the AmiKit version with the most recent Aminet one. The AmiKit version was modified for UAE, which, of course, Amithlon is not. So, replacing it with the appropriate version fixed the problem, as expected.

With one curious side-effect, the program works nice and I can use it to override my keyboard commands, the keyboard works great, except... when I try and enter text into the prefs editor for MMKeyboard, the "Name" gadget doesn't accept any keystrokes. None of the keyboards I've tried so far work. Everything else works otherwise.

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: AMIGA-FAN on January 10, 2007, 04:33:13 PM
Hi all. I have a fully functional and features rich Amithlon setup running on my P4 2.4Ghz, with a GeForce 2 MX400 graphic card.. I'll tell you what I did with Amikit. As my Amithlon environment is very stable (have sound, networking and USB stack handling all my USB devices) and did not want to go all over again through all the hassle of reinstalling/reconfiguring everything (something which tooks several weeks/months of hard work) in a new environment (Amikit under Amithlon), I actually proceeded the other way around: that is, instead of trying to get Amikit to run under Amithlon I used my original setup and added some extra features of Amikit (ShowAmiga96, AmiStart and various other apps) and
installed/configured them in my Amithlon environment, making some adjustments where necessary to reflect my current Amithlon system. I obviously left DOpus out as my Amithlon system is currently setup to use PNG icons (through PowerIcons by Elena Novaretti) and, as you know, DOpus can't handle PNG icons.
So my current Amikit system is actually a combination of my original Amithlon system and Amikit. In such a way, I can't really say that I have a full Amikit system running under Amithlon but I have a system that resembles the Amikit
environment that I have under WinUAE (including sound, networking and USB drivers) without actually being a TRUE Amikit system. This because I wanted to have everything I had under my original Amithlon working the same in my new
Amikit environment.

 :-)
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on January 11, 2007, 04:21:24 PM
I considered doing it the way you did, AMIGA-FAN, but since I did it when I had some time, I decided to put it on the fast-track.

So, what kind of issues did you have? Did you attempt to use Opus? Were there stability issues? How about AmiStart or any of the other issues I mentioned?

Inquiring minds wanna know. :)

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: AMIGA-FAN on January 11, 2007, 08:36:48 PM
Not many issues really, as far as I remember. I had some minor problems with datatypes, those I had under Amithlon were not all identical to those in Amikit. Some were up to date, some not. I have not tried to use DOpus as I think that PNG icons are faster at rendering and want to keep them on my WB. But I'm planning to experiment a new attempt. Will create a new partition and cross-port all Amikit files (from a second machine, over the network) onto the newly created partition. Will then make the necessary modifications (especially regarding Picasso drivers) in order to have a (full) working Amikit under Amithlon. Once I have achieved that, will eventually try to re-install (what a hassle) everything I need for sound, networking (MiamiDX, AmiTCP, AmiSSL, Samba etc.) and USB stack.
If I succeed in that (time permitting) will also use this platform on top of my current Amithlon system.
What I instead miss from Amikit is DOpus, DopusFTP (which, by the way, can be solved by using other FTP clients) and LiveUpdate.

I proceeded that way considering the fact that Amithlon is a lot more complicated to configure: considering that over the years I have achieved a very stable machine, I prefered to use this stable system and limit my effort at porting some extra-features from Amikit (only those I was interested in). Proceeding the other way around would have required a fresh new re-installation/re-configuring of all the above (sound, networking, USB etc.).

Regards.

Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: Amigamia on January 20, 2007, 02:07:32 AM
I have done this in the past and with the same CD and bigger Hard Drive but now it is giving a problem I can't figure out how to bypass it. Here is the scenario:

I have a PC with 2 HDD (First: 13Gig, Second: 8Gig) AOpen AX6BC motherboard, 64 MB, Pentium 2 350Mhz, Sound Blaster Live, 3Com Network card, Nvidia FX Video Card.

I created two partitions on the first (13Gig) HDD, one of 10MB formatted as FAT16 made it bootable and copied over Amithlon files and all is fine. If I reboot, Amithlon will start just fine from the first partition.

The problem starts when I create on the rest of the disk, a new partition and change the type to 118 (Amithlon_vhd). If I reboot, amithlon will start like before but it shows a message on the left hand corner of the screen, before going into workbench: "Not a DOS disk in device dh0:" and "Cancel" or "Retry" won't do anything.

I tried to boot from the Amithlon CD, I thought I would bypass the whole setup, and to my surprise I get the same message.

If I delete the second partition which I changed to be type 118 (decimal, Amithlon_vhd) everything boots fine, CD and first partition with amithlong files on it.

I have done the same steps in the past with another machine and it worked like a charm.

I don't understand. Anyone can shed some light here???

Thanks in advance
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: Unit21 on February 27, 2007, 07:45:28 AM
@Amigamia

Can't you just choose a different boot-device in the early startup menu?!
Most likely your new amithlon_vhd is mistaken for the first bootdevice. Just hold down both mousebuttons and choose hdh0 as your boot device. This should take you to the regular Amithlon workbench....

@All

Following the descriptions in this thread I now have Amikit on top of Amithlon inside my spiffy little Compaq n410 laptop.
Everything except my WLAN-card works.... ;-)
But it is a PRISM-based thingy, so all hope is not lost yet.

Also, due to a bug in the hardware on the laptop, Mp3s and sound in general plays too fast.
Does anyone know of a workaround for this on Amithlon??
I actually have to "work around it" in Windows too, but Linux seems to have better control on this laptop....

Apart from the little sound-issue my laptop boots from BIOS to working Amiga in less than 30 seconds, including bouncing balls and everything!!  :-D
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: EDanaII on October 28, 2007, 09:12:59 PM
AmiKit's Log, Amithlon-date 071028.58:

I finally got AmiKit 1.4.0 working on my Amithlon box today, after a several weeks of balancing it with other responsibilites.

The main issue I had to overcome was an apparent conflict between these commands:
C:SetPatch QUIET from my Amithlon Startup

AND

C:morelibspace
C:LoadModule L:Ram-Handler L:Shell-Seg LIBS:icon.library LIBS:workbench.library LIBS:mathieeesingbas.library DEVS:console.device REVERSE NOREBOOT     ;makes the modules resident (similar to SetPatch)

Used only the setpatch and commented out the AmiKit stuff, amithlon would boot fine but I'd lose the nice new PNG icons. When I used setpatch without the latter, I'd get the Icons but my system would lock rather than rebooting.

I modified my startup-sequence to include two startup files, one called Startup-Amithlon, which executes first, and one called Startup-Amikit, which follows. Moving the loadmodule command just before the setpatch command in the Amithlon startup script seems to fix the problem, except for the fact that my system locks if I try a reboot.

Still more to do to get 1.4.0 to work. My mouse cursor is black. Not sure how to fix that. ClickToFront works only a couple of times and then locks the system.

Any thoughts welcome.

Ed.
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: Seiya on September 10, 2008, 02:23:40 AM
of corse did you have  installed the amithlon-update?
Title: Re: AmiKit on Amithlon.
Post by: foody on April 11, 2009, 05:08:24 AM
Excuse me. If you managed to get the AmiKit working 100% in Amithlon could you take your entire setting and turn it into .ISO so that I can simply install it as is into my Amithlon setup and bang done, I have AmiKit into my Amithlon? Thanks in advance.