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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Ranchu on August 09, 2003, 05:54:02 AM
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I'm contemplating building a dedicated Amithlon computer and would like to know what components to use.
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As far as I know most mobo chipsets should be okay. For sound use a Soundblaster 128 or onboard VIA AC97. For graphics the GForce 2 and 3 are supported as well as Voodoo cards. There are kernels for ATI chipsets but I had no luck with my All In Wonder Radeon.
The type of CPU and RAM will depend on the mobo. Case, CD/DVD and hardrives are down to your choice/budget. I don't know which ethernet cards are supported.
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Are the VIA Eden's supported? I'd like to build it into a nice mini ITX case.
What sort of CPU and how much RAM would I need? I've got some bits and pieces here including a GeForce 256 card - would that work OK?
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VIA Edens are supported by an experimental kernel so I would hold on that for the moment.
For CPU a P3/Athlon 1Gig or higher should do nicely. I believe 128 MB RAM is the minimum, but as with most PCs, the more you have the better the experience.
I know nothing about the GeForce 256 so I cannot say.
My setup is a MSI nForce mobo, 1.8GHz Athlon XP, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD, 48x CDRW, 32x CDRW/DVD, ATI All In Wonder, SB128 and 3COM NIC.
This works pretty well with AOS-XL and Amithlon, although under Amithlon I have to use VESA display modes.
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Thanks for that. Just a few more questions:
- is CPU speed important and can you tell the difference between say a ~1ghz one or a 2ghz one in normal use?
- 1gb RAM!!! Can you actually use all that?
- I notice you have a 3com nic - does it work properly in Amithlon i thought only ne2000 ones work?
- the nForce has a built in GF2 MX have you had any luck getting it to work in Amithlon?
- Does the IDE work in bus master mode or PIO 0 or whatever its called?
- Geforce 256 = original Gefore so it should work, right?
Um that's it!
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- is CPU speed important and can you tell the difference between say a ~1ghz one or a 2ghz one in normal use?
I've only used one processor, but the faster your processor the faster the emulated processor is
- 1gb RAM!!! Can you actually use all that?
Well it's available to the system, I've never ran enough applications to completely fill my RAM
- I notice you have a 3com nic - does it work properly in Amithlon i thought only ne2000 ones work?
I haven't set up networking under Amithlon yet
- the nForce has a built in GF2 MX have you had any luck getting it to work in Amithlon?
Only in VESA mode, QNX doesn't seem to like it though
- Does the IDE work in bus master mode or PIO 0 or whatever its called?
Don't know, but it is fast
- Geforce 256 = original Gefore so it should work, right?
Wrong. Bernie didn't build in support for every graphics card ever made.
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Just to add to what's been said already:
VIA Eden is NOT supported. The "experimental kernel" should not have been released to the public and AFAIK the VIA Eden kernels have not been made to work at all yet.
3com network cards are NOT supported. Support for networking is only through RTL8029 based cards (these are 10Mbit) or RTL8139 with OpenPCI (though this seems to have various limitations at the moment). Other NE2000 compatible PCI cards may work, but there's no guarantee.
Best GFX card support is for GeForce (up to 3) and Matrox cards. There is an updated ATi kernel available too, but this is not tested by the author.
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As for GeForce2, be sure to get a real GeForce2 and not like I did, a mega fast gfx card BASED on the GeForce2 chipset, Hercules Prophet II 64 Mb. Didn't work at all, only got one screenmode you get with every gfx card that is not supported. Now I use a real Geforce II MX 400 PCI and it works great !!!
Now I have Amithlon running on a 366 Mhz Celeron and it works fine. I used to have it running to test on a AMD1700+ with extra on board IDE controller, so 4 IDE ports, and it didn't give any problem to access all devices in Amithlon. :)
Tried to access the Net with a RTL8139 but didn't work ... :(
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Ranchu wrote:
Are the VIA Eden's supported? I'd like to build it into a nice mini ITX case.
No. There are fundamental limitations in the VIA processors that prevent Amithlon working on them.
What sort of CPU and how much RAM would I need? I've got some bits and pieces here including a GeForce 256 card - would that work OK?
I'd recommend an AthlonXP with 256Mb. The GF256 should work just fine.
- is CPU speed important and can you tell the difference between say a ~1ghz one or a 2ghz one in normal use?
Oh yes. Amithlon will run well on quite modest processors (I used to run it on an 800MHz Duron an it was fine) but it will happily use every clock cycle you can throw at it.
- 1gb RAM!!! Can you actually use all that?
I seem to recall Amithlon will fail to boot if you have 1GB of ram due to an address space problem. Anything less than that should be okay.
- I notice you have a 3com nic - does it work properly in Amithlon i thought only ne2000 ones work?
A 3Com NIC won't work. Amithlon only has native support for 10M/bit cards based on the RTL8029 chip. The OpenPCI package has a driver for the 100M/bit RTL8139D chip, which works with Amithlon.
- the nForce has a built in GF2 MX have you had any luck getting it to work in Amithlon?
The nForce is a bad choice if you want to run Amithlon as it isn't correctly supported. For example, the NVidia IDE controller will run in PIO0 mode, causing slow downs and sound problems.
- Does the IDE work in bus master mode or PIO 0 or whatever its called?
Depends on the motherboard's chipset. VIA is the way to go if you want fast disk I/O. Amithlon natively supports DMA on the KT133 and KT266 chipsets, and I've made available a beta kernel that supports the KT333 and KT400.
- Geforce 256 = original Gefore so it should work, right?
Yep. All GeForce cards are supported, although you'll need an updated kernel for the GF3 or better.
--
Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville
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@Effy
As for GeForce2, be sure to get a real GeForce2 and not like I did, a mega fast gfx card BASED on the GeForce2 chipset, Hercules Prophet II 64 Mb. Didn't work at all, only got one screenmode you get with every gfx card that is not supported. Now I use a real Geforce II MX 400 PCI and it works great !!!
...eh?
I have a GeForce2 based Hercules Prophet II card and it has always worked perfectly. It's the chipset that matters, not the card manufacturer.
(however, care should be taken that the card is based on a GeForce2 chipset. Hercules also released cards with Kyro chipsets, and those are only supported in VESA mode I think.)
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Gary,
I've got an Athlon XP 1600+ chip lying around but no mobo. What would be your recommendation for a board to match up with CPU that will run Amithlon properly? I definitely DO NOT want to run in PIO-0 mode!
Also what Intel boards/chipsets are good choices in case I decide to go that way? (Had bad experiences with VIA in the past.)
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Would I notice the difference between say:
P3 ~1GHz
Athlon 1600+
P4 3.06GHz?
Sort of wanting to build a box that will last into the future...
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Ranchu wrote:
Gary,
I've got an Athlon XP 1600+ chip lying around but no mobo. What would be your recommendation for a board to match up with CPU that will run Amithlon properly? I definitely DO NOT want to run in PIO-0 mode!
Any KT333 or KT400 board from a good manufacturer will do (not the KT400A or KT600, tho, as those use a new South Bridge chip that isn't fully supported yet).
I mostly use Asus, Chaintech and Soltek boards here.
Also what Intel boards/chipsets are good choices in case I decide to go that way? (Had bad experiences with VIA in the past.)
Any P3-class Intel chipset should work fine. I can't really comment on the P4 stuff as I don't have any -- I'm an AMD fan. The most up-to-date Intel system I have is an old 233MHz Pentium II :-D
Would I notice the difference between say:
P3 ~1GHz
Athlon 1600+
P4 3.06GHz?
Sort of wanting to build a box that will last into the future...
Of those three I'd only consider the Athlon: the P3 is quite slow and the P4 is way, way too expensive for what it delivers.
For Amithlon I'd recommend an Athlon XP 2500+. These have twice the level-2 cache of slower models and really scream running any kind of emulator.
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Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville
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I was the person working on the EDEN kernel. http://www3.telus.net/pkp. But have taken everything offline.
the EDEN boards will *NOT* work with amithlon due to the cpu missing specific cpu flags. The Kernel would have to be complete rehacked, which I do not have the abilities to do..
Once Again EDEN boards will not work. My experimental kernels are all taken offline due to what is stated on my page and bandwidth reasons for the source and such.
Paul
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Here is my computer working perfectly with Amithlon:
AMD Athlon 1700+ (overclocked to 1900+)
784 Mb RAM DDR
GeForce3 TI 200+ (1024*768)
2 HDs (one for AmigaOS formely in a A1200, the other one for Linux and Windows)
DVD Rom + CD Writer (MakeCD)
PS2 mouse and keyboard
TFT Screen
SB128 (SB128 Live works too thanks to OpenPCI and AHI 5.10)
HP Deskjet 840c (TurboPrint)
8029 Ethernet card (for ADSL with MiamiDX)
8139 Ethernet card (sharing connexion with PMac, works thanks to OpenPCI)
Floppy Disk (HD 1,44 readable via PCO:)
With Fat95, you can access Fat32 partition, useful for sharing files
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Welcome to amiga.org, Kal-L, nice Amithlon system you have there! Er, don't let the zealots bother you as Amithlon is On-Topic here (In the appropriate thread).
Aloha!
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Has anyone got a link to a list of supported hardware and kernels?
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I run Amithlon with the following setup(s);
+ ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (nForce 2 class chipset).
+ BIOS: 1004 (05/14/2003)(with support for 400Mhz FSB Athlon XPs).
+ CPU: Athlon XP 2600+(~2.09Ghz) with 333Mhz FSB variant.
+ RAM: Dual channel mode PC2700 512Mb DDR SDRAM, running at 333Mhz.
+ GPU: Leadtek Geforce 4 TI MyVIVO.
+ HD1: 80Gb UDMA133 Seagate 7200 rpm IDE.
+ HD2: 40Gb UDMA133 Seagate 7200 rpm IDE.
+ HD3: 20Gb UDMA33 Seagate 5200 rpm IDE.
+ CD1: UDMA33 LG DVD/CD-RW.
+ Other: 350 Watt power supply.
I haven't set up the network feature under Amithlon at this time (e.g. onboard 3Com/NV-LAN or Realtek 100/10BaseT NICs). Audio is yet to be setup with SB Live cards.
At the moment, I’m currently (carefully) experimenting on 400FSB over clocking…
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+ MSI 6330 V3.6/K7T Turbo-Raid Ltd Ed (VIA KT133A) .
+ BIOS: V3.6
+ CPU: Athlon XP 1800+
+ RAM: 512Mb SDRAM,
+ GPU: Geforce 2 MX/400.
+ SB Live 5.1 DE/ VIA Audio.
+ HD1: 40Gb UDMA133 Seagate 7200 rpm IDE.
+ HD2: 20Gb UDMA133 Seagate 7200 rpm IDE.
+ HD3: 16Gb UDMA33 Seagate 5200 rpm IDE.
+ CD1: UDMA33 Sony CD-RW.
+ Other: 300 Watt power supply.
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Hi,
Apart from older versions of winuae, I've not dabbled much in x86 emulations of the amiga (for one thing this old PC is pretty naff ;-) )
I seem to recall amithlon is no longer available due to some legal wrangle - whats the story there?
I was thinking to purchase it at some point, looks like I missed the boat :-(
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Dr_Bombcrater:
- I seem to recall Amithlon will fail to boot if you have 1GB of ram due to an address space problem. Anything less than that should be okay.
One Gig of RAM is fine, my system boots with no problems.
An additional point I would make for anyone about to set up Amithlon on a FAT partition is that it needs to be FAT and NOT FAT32.
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I use a very old scrap 40 Mb IDE harddisc that I formatted in Windows and this thing boots up Amithlon for me. My config is cheap. It's a Fujitsu Cordant, a Celeron 366 Mhz with 440 Mb Ram, GeForce2 MX 400 64 Mb gfx, SB128 PCO sound but no network yet, 6 Gb hd and 40x cdrom. Thing works like a charm.
Memory. I tested Amithlon first on my main pc with 1,5 Gb of memory. Refused to work, got error message that there was not enough memory avaliable ... :-o
1 Gb seems to be the limit ...
@Bill : I only got one screenmode using my Hercules Prophet II Titanium GeForce2 based card. Don't know what went wrong.
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Booting this PC with Amithlon at 366 Mhz ...
-hit the power button
-Bios : 30 secs
-Amithlon : 30 secs
-OS 3.9 : 15 secs
Which means 1:15 min. to get into workbench with backgrounds and AmiDock loaded and ready to work ... my A1230 used to be a little bit faster ...
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OK, more points on Amithlon:
- 1 GB of RAM is the limit. Trawling through the Amithlon lists would reveal the technical reason for this, but Bernie confirmed that 1 GB is it.
- You can set up Amithlon to boot from [1] a FAT32 partition as well as a FAT partition or any bootable Linux filesystem.
[1] i.e. this means the place where the kernel and image files reside, not the boot partition for AmigaOS itself. AmigaOS should only be installed on Amiga filesystems (FFS, PFS, SFS), otherwise you are asking for major problems.
- Nearly all GeForce2 cards are "GeForce2 based" cards made by other manufacturers. However, the chipset is either GeForce2 series or it isn't. If you use a GeForce2 based card and only get one screen mode, the kernel is falling back to VESA mode for some reason. The chipset is definitely supported however, and should give you full access to screenmodes and 2D hardware acceleration.
- The licensing issue remains. The Amithlon publishers are still selling it by all accounts, but not everyone whose material is being used is being paid the royalties they are due. Those parties consider the product illegal and its continued sale an act of software piracy. Since the matter is unlikely to reach the courts any time soon due to the costs being higher than any possible compensation, the decision of whether to buy or not must reside with each person's individual conscience
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@Effy
Boot times vary considerably with the system configuration. Things like SCSI cards and lots of disks and partitions will increase this, while slimming it down will reduce it.
A system dedicated to Amithlon only and without any unnecessary peripherals will boot pretty sharpish.
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@Bill : I only got one screenmode using my Hercules Prophet II Titanium GeForce2 based card. Don't know what went wrong.
Effy, the most likely problem is that Hercules have changed the PCI ID of the card so that Amithlon's kernel thinks it is something other than a GeForce 2.
Donwload this archive :
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~garycvl/files/ViaPatch_010.LHA
and use the PCISCAN tool contained in it to generate a list of PCI devices in your system. Send me the list by PM (or post it here) and I'll try and work support for the Hercules into my next kernel update.
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Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville
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Ranchu wrote:
Has anyone got a link to a list of supported hardware and kernels?
Try my site:
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~garycvl/amithlon
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Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville
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Gary,
Thanks - that's exactly what I was looking for.
I have some webspace on a USA server you can use for free if you want.
Email me if you are interested: cholmes(at)internode(dot)com(dot)au