AMIX installation made easy...no tape drive!

[Failure]

It might be useful to note that AMIX doesn't depend on ROM 1.4, but works fine even on 3.1 ROMs.  Not that I'm trying to say getting 1.4 working in WinUAE is pointless, just that it isn't necessary for AMIX.

I played around a little with the UAE MMU patch, but wasn't able to do anything with it.  But I am a really poor programmer so I am pretty sure the hacks I was doing to get the MMU to "work" on 68020 were completely bogus.  IIRC, the MMU in that patch is for 68040 which is simpler than the MMU in the 68030 although I do not know the specifics of it.  There is a thread I started around here somewhere on that topic.

Back to my gcc 2.95.3 problems, GNU binutils won't compile since there is no m68k-cbm-sysv4 target for ld or gas.  So I gave up on that.  Further Usenet searching reveals that the problem really might just be memory, like I originally thought, so I'm gonna put the partially compiled sources online and hopefully Dalamar (with perhaps more than 30MB swap) will have better luck.

I am still having a good time but I wish they made a 300MHz 68030 :-)

[Trev]

@LocalH

Yes, I think some hacking of UAE's expansion interface will be necessary to provide support for all the hardware Amix expects to see. The downside is that UAE provides device driver emulation for most of its hardware. This definitely isn't a small project.

[Failure]

After a bit of futzing around, I am rewarded with this:

# ./xgcc -v
Using builtin specs.
gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)

Still not done compiling all the other stuff, 25MHz is slooooow for all this code.  One of the unfortunate aspects of working with AMIX is these lengthy compiles...I start the compilation in a screen session, log out, come back some hours later and it has errored out on something.  On the bright side, I replaced the HD in the machine when I reinstalled, so I have 100MB swap and everything is faster since the HD is a better one.  In particular, multitasking was helped.  It used to take several seconds to get a login via telnet if the machine was compiling, now it is very fast.

This compile is using m68k-cbm-sysv4 as a target and at least for gcc, it works fine.

Hey I know what I need!  distcc!  :-)

[Coder]

Hi,

I was reading this thread and I thought "COOL!" Just to read about this makes you want to go out and buy the stuff it needs to get it done. I found a site on the internet about this too. Check:

http://www.mmhart.com/AMIX.htm

I have no idea if this guy is here on Amiga.org
If not maybe we should drop him a note. There is some info on that site which might interest some people.

Coder

[Failure]

I have just finished a rewrite of the installation documentation incorporating the new information re: installing using AmigaOS to prepare (thanks to Matt and Dal), along with installation using a single HD and more detailed information regarding pitfalls in the installation process.

I am really tired so I probably made some mistakes or weird statements, it's a wiki so feel free to fix them!

http://amix.failsure.net/tiki-index.php?page=dd+Install

Enjoy and as usual, best of luck to anybody who gives this a shot.

Brief status update on gcc.  My AMIX box has been compiling for about 5 straight days.  gcc-2.95.3 is going to take more work, so I am jumping from version to version up from 2.4.5 until it breaks.  I am compiling 2.7.2.3 now, 2.5.8 and 2.6.3 compiled fine as well.