Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Amiga Emulation => Topic started by: amiface on December 12, 2007, 01:57:22 PM
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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.
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Your hardware won't work with the original kernel I'm afraid
Try THIS (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=31613&highlight=amthlon+guide) guide which let's you use a newer kernel which has a better chance to work with your hardware
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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!!
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I used Acronis Disk Creator
One of my fave programs :-)
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Thanks very much for the prompt response! That is exactly what I was preying for, I`ll try that program now, cheers.
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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..
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You can burn the floppy image to a CD-R(W) with the 'emulation mode' boot option. Works fine usually.
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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..
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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)
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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 :(..
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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).
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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?
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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.
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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:
(http://mitglied.lycos.de/McSquirrel/img/neroboot.gif)
(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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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 :)
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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
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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:
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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.
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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..
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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!
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whoops submitted twice.
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Hey amiface,
I just found some time after a week of University and will now try to answer.
What do you mean by "fkey prefs"? They actually *should* save within the FKey icon file as so-called tool tips. When FKey is run, it just takes the settings/preferences from there. Remember that you need to run it from Workbench (or put it in the SYS:WBStartup drawer for automatic startup), as running it from within a script (like Startup-Sequence) or CLI/Shell won't make use of the icon's tool tips (unless you use WBRun from Aminet).
You say the palette changes when switching WinUAE > MS Windows > WinUAE? So it seems to be a WinUAE rather than a Workbench error. What screen mode / color depth do you use for MS Windows? Have you tried windowed mode, or tried to activate the "Fullscreen RTG" and use WinUAE's Picasso96 driver (came with WinUAE 0.8.8R8 as uaegfx.card and seems to be replaced by rtg.library now) for a 16bit screen mode?
For an easy setup and a really great Workbench experience, you should give "Amiga in a Box" (AIAB) or "AmiKit" a try. I have been running AIAB at 1024x768 at 16 bit color on my PIII/500MHz using WinUAE 0.8.8R8 without any speed issues, just to show some guys how nice an Amiga setup could be.
http://aiab.amiga.sk
http://amikit.amiga.sk
(Workbench and ROM files needed)
I wonder if one day there may be a hybrid WinUAE so WB windows could just appear on the MS Windows screen (or the other way round). I think it would be big fun to have WinUAE/WB as Windows desktop replacement.
Thanks, I have been sharing New Year's Eve with my parents and some neighbors at my home village. Letter-shaped salt sticks can be funny!