AMIX installation made easy...no tape drive!

[Failure]

Well, I'm probably more pleased with myself than I really should be but...I have installed AMIX 2.01 without a tape drive and without leaving the install script.  I used a variation of a method I found in a Usenet post, using dd to copy the install tape "image" to a hard drive.  Here is the short, short version (it's late):

* I made a big cpio archive of all the individual cpio files on the tape
* I dd'd this file using the old 1.1 installation (could have used x86 Linux, or AmigaOS...AmigaOS has dd available?) onto a spare HD
* Modified the 2.03 root floppy install script to skip the tape drive, and un-cpio my kludge instead
* Booted the test A3000 into installation with the pseudo tape drive attached externally...went off without a hitch.
* Rebooted into AMIX 2.01 without having done any crap on the CLI to install the kernel, etc, that I noticed had to be done in all these other kludges people came up with...

I actually installed 2.01 by mistake, I'll redo the big ol' cpio using 2.03 files.  Should work identically.  It's a nasty kludge, what I did, but it works and since most people won't have the A3070 tape drive, it's a nice solution.  Should be able to be done using only AmigaOS to prep for it.

Anyway I'll document more on it in the next day or so, I was just so happy I wanted to post something right away ;-)

Here's some pics just for fun:

The rig, ugly but works...I used the A3070 case to mount the HD inside
My kludge working, I had it echo filenames so I could tell if it hung
Installation completed, time to reboot!
And here it is, with a shot of some of the post-install config

[angrybrit]

Can you take a picture with the X Window server booted? :-)

I wish they still made these Amiga 3000UX.  For some unknown reason, I want one. :-(

[Matt_H]

Now there's a nice coincidence!

I've been looking for simple information on how to install AMIX all night. I'd nearly given up, when I said to myself, "Well, let me just check in at Amiga.org and see if there's anything new." Lo and behold, there is!

I'd be extremely grateful if you could post a detailed guide. There's nothing of the sort out there right now. Yours actually looks to be the easiest method out there since it doesn't require access to 3+ different OSes. :-)

I've found the AMIX patches on the Gateway CD (v.2). The documentation is mediocre, but present. There are some patches for older Zorro2 RTG boards (PicassoII, most notably, with blitter support!), Ariadne, and GVP SCSI. The catch is that they're written for AMIX 2.1c, so getting them working in a 2.03 environment could be tough/impossible. I'll double check the distribution guidelines tomorrow and then hopefully upload them a bit later.

[Crusher]

Yes, please do a real tutorial on how to install AMIX. :-)

[Failure]

I was planning on doing a guide on getting AMIX installed via this method, I want to clean up one or two things in the script first and get 2.03 installed.  Mostly I want to get rid of a couple error messages that might be alarming to new users, since they are unimportant with the new installation method.

I've been going through the 2.03 archives and, unfortunately, a number of the cpio files are corrupt :-(  These are the sysadm package, emacs, X extras, and all the source code except the Amiga-specific.  I plan on using the 2.01 versions of all of these, since there should only be minor changes and the source code (except Amiga-specific!) is likely of dubious importance anyway since it's really, really old.  Everything else seems to be good.

I can't find 2.1 media anywhere; 2.1c is, I believe, the last release of AMIX ever (obtained by installing base 2.1, followed by the patch disk to 2.1c).  I have come across references of people downloading it off the internet, but I certainly can't find it now.

2.01 is already way way better than 1.1.  For example, "w" works properly :-)

[Matt_H]

What are you using to extract the 2.03 archives? I got variable results depending on what I used. DOpus4.16 chokes on them, but OS3.9's Unarc seemed to do a better job. I have no way of actual testing, but DOpus often extracted a file of 0 bytes from a 7K archive, while Unarc actually found some data.

[Crusher]

@Failure: Sounds great, keep up the good work. :-)

[Failure]

Hmm.  I'm not sure what you mean.  I'm using unzip on Linux to uncompress the archive, AMIX203.ZIP, which contains a bunch of cpio files (i_01.cpio.gz - i_27.cpio.gz) and several of these are bad when I attempt to extract them with cpio.  After uncompressing them of course.

Do you maybe have a different archive, with maybe files that work?  :-D

*edit* the files I have are the ones from the mmhart.com site

[Failure]

I fixed the error messages in the install script, and installed 2.03 last night, so I wrote up how to do it:

AMIX installation instructions

The only thing I wasn't sure of was how to write the cpio file to the drive in AmigaOS, hopefully someone here can help with that.  From reading the install script, it seems that AMIX can also run on a machine with 1.3 ROMs and 2620/2630 card.

Best of luck to those that try this!

As a side note, when the 3000UX with the large HD failed to boot (described in the instructions) it came up with a weird boot screen, it said "Version 1.4 Beta, do not distribute" with the animated floppy drive.  I had never seen that before.

[adolescent]

Failure wrote:
From reading the install script, it seems that AMIX can also run on a machine with 1.3 ROMs and 2620/2630 card.

Yep, on the A2500UX.

[Matt_H]

@ Failure

Ah. If the archives are failing under Linux, then they're probably corrupt. I was having trouble getting them extracted on the Amiga side, which I thought could have been due to differences/bugs in the Amiga implementation of cpio/zip/gz/etc.

Thanks for writing that install guide!

EDIT: As for the 1.4 Kickstart screen, it seems like you've got a very early version of the A3000 boot ROMs! You might want to save a image of that kickstart :-)
Mine are strange - They come up as 36.016 by default, but sometimes as 36.143 after a failed boot. They always say "2.0 ROMs," though.

[Crusher]

@Failure: Found some files, maybe you´re interested in them. Sent you an e-mail. :-)

[LocalH]

As a side note, when the 3000UX with the large HD failed to boot (described in the instructions) it came up with a weird boot screen, it said "Version 1.4 Beta, do not distribute" with the animated floppy drive. I had never seen that before.

That's the one Kickstart image I've been trying to find for quite a long time, incidentally. I've acquired a copy of several other 1.4 and 2.0 betas, but this particular build has window gadgets that I haven't seen in any other build, and I'm curious what else is different. Perhaps you should try to get a copy of the ROM dumped (would a standard Kick grabber work? I don't know if this particular 1.4 build included the bonus code or not). I'm not asking you for a copy of the ROM image here, since that's technically illegal. If nothing else, it should be dumped for preservation, even if it's not distributed, since several A3000's have hardware 2.0 ROMs or later (such as mine).

This ROM is also accessible on the earlier A3000s that came with both 1.3 and 2.0 - if you fudge around where a close gadget would be on the OS selection screen, it should eventually boot to the 1.4 hardware ROM.

[Dalamar]

Just out of curiousity will AMIX boot with 3.0 or 3.1 ROMs?

[Failure]

I've been busy :-)

I made a new version of the install disk that allows you to select the SCSI ID and partition to get the install media from.  Now it is possible to install using only one drive!  I haven't updated the documentation yet, but it's pretty easy, basically make a partition (I recommend at the front of the drive) as FFS but do not format it.  AMIX ignores AmigaOS partitions, so it won't get zapped.  dd the cpio archive to the partition, reboot using the AMIX floppies, and tell the installer where you put it...and off it goes.  When the install finishes, you can wipe out that partition and install AmigaOS on it if you like, or use it for UNIX.  I also had the script copy cpio to the hard disk and use that for extraction, as constantly going back to the floppy for it slows the install down.

I stuck 3.1 ROMs in the 3000UX and AMIX still booted fine, so that works.  The 3000 the ROMs came out of is apart for soldering...

And LocalH (pack up the cats!) is right, the window gadgets were...weird for that 1.4 beta.  I dumped a ROM image for posterity.

Finally, I did locate dd for AmigaOS on Aminet, as dd.lzh.  So it should definitely be possible now to install AMIX using only AmigaOS to prep for it.

I'll update the docs time permitting.  I'd love to hear about someone doing this with just AmigaOS.