A3000UX up and running AMIX again!

[Matt_H]

I think Commodore used to sell 3000UX packages with a 2065 and 2410 graphics board. I see you've already got a 2065 on the way, but if you could get a 2410, you'd probably have a killer AMIX rig. I've never seen one for sale, though. Ever. :-(

[Matt_H]

Something else I just thought of; from the BBoAHW:
"The A3000UX is fully capable of running AmigaOS in every way the 'normal' A3000 is but was supplied with the special Kickstart 1.4 ROMs that were designed to either boot UNIX or load the real Kickstart from a file."

What version ROMs are in your 3000UX? I've got a standard 3000 with 1.4 ROMs, but there's no option anywhere on the bootmenu for UNIX, even ghosted out. I'd love to get AMIX onto this machine to test it out.

[Matt_H]

Failure wrote:

You'll have to forgive my ignorance of pre-3.1 ROMs here, I can describe what I have but I don't know if it's different than what is standard. Basically, the boot menu has kickstart options to load 1.3 and 2.0 from HD or floppy.

That sounds normal. Although I can't boot 1.3 from the hard drive since I don't have an appropriate A3000 kickstart ROM for 1.3 (have to use SuperKickstart - wish there was a way to extract the 1.3 image from it!).

If I select 2.0 HD, it loads the kickstart from HD, reboots the system and begins loading AmigaOS 2.x (this doesn't complete, as it tries to finish booting from the network...?).

Also sounds normal. As to why the boot fails, if the UNIX side of the machine was once hooked up to a large corporate network, it's probable that the  Amiga side is too. There was once a full port of Novell Netware for the Amiga, maybe it's trying to load that?

If I do not interact with the boot menu, it loads UNIX.  If I do not interact with the boot menu, but I put a bootable WB 2.0 floppy in the drive, it begins to boot AmigaOS but fails (I forget the error).  If I do the 2.0 HD option from the boot menu, with the floppy inserted, it boots WB 2.0 from the floppy.

So it sounds like UNIX is the default, unless overridden. That seems logical since there's no way to manually start it up.
EDIT: But now that I think about it, what will happen on a 3.1 machine? Maybe it just follows boot priority (and can be  manually changed by picking a different boot partition)?

Sorry my description must sound like I'm calling AOL tech support, but I have never used any but 3.1 ROMs!

Don't worry about it ;-)

Regarding the AMIX tapes, I've read the descriptions of all the problems people were having there as well.  But it seems that the people who were trying to make tapes were doing so from another UNIX?  The install script is very simple, so if the cpio files are on the tape in any order it seems like it should work, the problem may be that the Amiga simply can't read the tape written on another system.  It's a stretch but once I get ethernet on the thing, I will try copying the files over and making an install tape from AMIX.  If that works I'd be happy to provide copies.

That'd be a great historical service. I just hope there aren't legal problems.

[Matt_H]

I believe it's looking for icon.library or font.library or something to that effect... I got that once too.  I don't think Kickstart 1.4 has all the necessary libraries and device to actually load Amiga OS

"This disk requires Kickstart 2.0 or later"? That's what I get if I quit out of the boot menu.

I was reading over the 3000 schematics today, and the Shipping parts list actually indicates a Workbench 1.4, Extras 1.4 and Workbench 1.4 Manual were to be packed in. Must be a very early version of the schematics... or Commodore never updated them. I wonder if any 1.4 sets were ever produced/are still around?

[Matt_H]

I actually have the Gateway CDs, although I don't know nearly enough about UNIX to figure out what everything on them is. I *think* I've found the Picasso drivers, but since they seem to be compiled for NetBSD, I don't know how to get them working under AMIX. If there is source code, I haven't found it yet.