@Haywirepc
**updated enough for now, will get back to it later**
Sorry, I was in a little rush when I wrote the initial reply about installing amithlon and I probably didnt explain things too well.
I'll write this stuff in detail, both in the form of "how" and also "why". It's actually not as complicated as it might sound and once a person goes through it, it all makes sense, but as with anything can sound a bit daunting without hands-ons use.
Maybe this post could be pointed to in the future or copied and pasted elsewhere?
Anyway, it goes a little something like:
Well firstly amithlon is a little different to most emulators. To simplify things a little its more a way to run amiga os3.x on pc hardware rather than something like uae which emulates an entire amiga utilising many host os features.
Harddrives:
Amiga OS uses rdb. Both a "real" amiga and a harddisk image in winuae do and so does amithlon. In short its what amiga drives use. Unfortunately pcs dont cant boot from this, but instead use mbr. Both cannot co-exist in "normal" circumstances.
Because of this a mbr must be used to actually boot an os. This is why a fat partition needs to be created. To copy the bootloader, etc. to. From there the amiga os drive is "initiated". This (the amiga drive) can be a physical drive or an amithlonvirtualdisk "partition" (or other storage media if a person has a mind to). If you have more than 1 physical hardrive and its practical installing the bootloader to the non AmigaOS drive has an advantage or two, but really way either is fine.
Both methods have pros and cons. A dedicated amigaos only/rdb disk can be swapped back and forward between an amiga and winuae more easily, but using a small fat partition on the same drive doesnt rely on external media, or another harddrive to boot.
Right now Im just using 1 drive, but I have does it other ways too.
Installing to harddrive:
Now to setup with 1 drive I first created a "boot" partition. I just used a win98boot disk, used fdisk, created a 50meg partition and did a system format on that partition (format c:/s). A FreeDos cd should also be fine.
Once that was done I copied the entire isolinux directory from the amithlon cd. This was done by simply used "md c:\isolinux", then going into the isolinux directory on the cd and doing a "copy *.* c:\isolinux".
Ok then, amithlon files copied across and we're nearly ready to boot however we've not yet set up a harddrive for amiga os yet. There's plenty of ways to do this, but personally I like to have an aros nightly disc on hand as it can be handy for dealing with amiga os harddrives. To set up the amiga drive with aros load up aros hdtoolbox and create a new partition with type amithlonvirtualhardisk (type76 I believe). Save the changes and youre good to go.
Reboot the computer, but this time with the amithlon cd and let it boot into the minimal amiga os setup it provides. Once youve done that load up hdtoolbox. Select your harddrive and you should see the "harddisk" we created with aros hdtoolbox. You'll see both the actual physical harddrive and the virtual disk we created here. Make sure you dont select the physical disk or you'll undo the work we already did. Select and partition to your liking. Make sure to set the partition you want to boot with (check the boot box).
Once youve done that format the unitialized partitions that appear on the desktop (a quick format will suffice). Youre then ready to install amiga os, which is in the amigaos3.9 directory on the amithlon cd.
Remove the cd and do a ctrl+amiga+amiga and AmigaOS3.9 should boot from harddrive.
We're not quite done yet though. If you recall we booted from cd here, and there's just one more step before it'll boot from harddrive. Boot back to your fat dos/freedos partition and create an autoexec.bat file. This just needs to contain "cd c:\isolinux" and one the next line, "loadlin @amithlon".
Autoexec.bat I guess is something like amiga oses startup sequence and the above simply tells the computer to change to the bootloader directory (isolinux) and use it with the script named "amithlon" (which selects kernel and applies a few properties).
All being right in the world and you should be good to go.
Common problems at this point:
Problem: I only get a 640x480x8bit screenmode.
Why: One fo 2 things. Youve either not installed the Amithlon updates or your hardware isnt supported by the kernel youre using. No OS will work without the drivers setup. Why should Amithlon/OS3.9 be different?
Solution: Install the amithlonupdate archive found on aminet. If this doesnt fix things update the kernel (see Updating Kernel section(to be added shortly)).
Problem: Screen image is a garbled mess. Somethings happening, but I cant see what.
Why. This is usually just the kickstart3.1 screen. The movement you see is the disc inserting. It usually occurs either when the OS isnt yet installed, not boot partition is selected for amigaos, or hardware wasnt initialised properly, which goes back to a problem with your "boot" partition. Usuaully a kernel or script problem in this case.
Solution: Either install AmigaOS, set the boot tab on the partition you want to boot from, or double check everything in your fat "boot" partition".
Problem: Screen image is garbled, but it looks like the image is AmigaOS in some form (very grey with black lines).
Why: most common cause of this is that an Amiga drive has been partitioned, and a boot tab selected, but no OS installed.
Solution: hold both mouse buttons down and boot from hdh0: then unselect boot tab, install amigaos, and reselect boot tab. If no hdh0: is available then an AROS live booting disc + aros hdtoolbox can be used to unselect the boot tab on the amiga drive.
Updating The Kernel:
Seeing as the Amithlon kernel is located on a fat partition we need to access this somehow. If a person has installed the Amithlonupdate archive they can simply bring up a shell and type "setconfig dosmount "
" and reboot. This will mount the fat partition on the Workbench. Of course you dont need to do it through amigaos, it all depends on how your computer is setup. DOS, Windows, whatever, its all fine. Once you have access to your isolinux directory on the fat partition simply copy the kernel your updating over and we're halfway there. Once that's done you need to edit the files called "amithlon", which is simply a script that decides the kernel and a few properties.
Change it so it reads:
kernel4 init=/linuxrc console_level=0 root=/dev/ram0 initrd=smallird.gz vga=769 ramdisk_size+2410 leavepages=5400
Its actually pretty close to how it originally is. Ive simply changed the 1st word (the kernel filename) and added a little to ramdisk_size and leavepages.
Either back-up original script under a different name 1st or save this changed script under a different name though, if only incase of typos. If you change the new scripts name though make sure you change you autoexec.bat file to make loadlin use the new script. At the moment it should be loadlin @amithlon.
n.b. Still in process of updating........
