Setting up BVision PPC & CyberGraphX

[x56h34]

DJBase wrote:

This is a privat release, no Phase5 release. Check readme.

Hmmm...indeed it says a private release. But what does that mean? Did someone from Phase 5 release it after the company closed, or was the firmware upgraded by some individual/amiga user and released as a "private/optional/no guarantee" upgrade? I'm just curious. :-)

[Castellen]

Thanks patrik, if that's what's working for you, I'll do the same.
Will tackle it again tonight after I've psyched myself up a bit :-)

As mentioned by nasty, I'll also try Installer from the CGFX4 CD, I never considered it might be a compatibility thing with the OS3.9 Installer.

Hope to report back with some good news soon!

[ckillerh3]

I've been watching this thread closely.  I'm afraid ! The BVision card sounds like it will be hard to configure. I hope to be taking delivery of one in the next few days and am wondering what I've gotten myself into:

"This is a fine mess you've gotten us into this time, Stanley !"

http://www.laurel-and-hardy.com/

[Karlos]

It seems a matter of varying mileage.

Like Patrik, I have never had the slightest problem with the BVision / CGX v3 or v4 and have used it on OS3.1, 3.5 and 3.9 (CGX3 on OS3.1 / 3.5 and CGX4 on 3.5/3.9).

In fact, the only problems I ever had related to an early grex flash update that, unlike some reports here, didn't stop the card from working in 2D, but basically killed warp3d stone dead.

[djbase]

But what does that mean? Did someone from Phase 5 release it after the company closed, or was the firmware upgraded by some individual/amiga user and released as a "private/optional/no guarantee" upgrade?

It was released by some from Phase5 after the compan died and comes without any warranty.

[Castellen]

OK, here's a bit of a progress update.
I've changed the Blizzard's firmware to the last update from P5, downloaded from patrik's link.
That went well, no problems there.

The BVision card no longer shows up using Scout - Expansions, previously it came up as 6 seperate (unkown??) devices or something.  Probably nothing to worry about.
CyberGFX "showcgfxconfig" shows the BVision board as being installed.


I'm still stuck with trying to install the V4.3 rc5 update.  It does the same thing as before, for every library and executable it tries to patch, an error says "spatch has returned an error, please read the error in the spatch window" (there is no spatch window)
I also tried the suggestion of making it use the version of installer from the GFX4 CD, same deal.

For some reason, the "patch" program simply won't work for reasons unknown.  Earlier CGFX updates, like v4.1 where spatch was used instead of patch, work with no problems at all.
Of course I have tried it manually from CLI as well as using spatch with it's slightly different syntax.  spatch doesn't seem to work with the .pch files provided in the update.

Is it something stupid like patch is a PPC executable and I haven't got the PPC OS running properly?
Other WarpOS test executables seem to run OK, so not sure of that theory.

I also tried completely disabling the Blizzard card and running the V4.3 rc5 update using the 68020, same problem.

Not sure what else I can try short of copying an existing working setup.
As I'm trying to do all this as a favour for someone, I'm on the verge of telling him to look for another solution.  Spending far too much time on it for too fewer results.

As always, any further suggestions welcome!
Thanks for all the help so far.

[Framiga]

just tryed on MOS for PuP (just for curiosity) and i got the same error message as you.

The installer looks for these 3 libs:

cgxbootpic.library

cgxsystem.library

cgxvideo.library

that aren't present in SYS:Libs on MOS (they are elsewhere)

Check to have it in your SYS:Libs before apply the update.

[patrik]

@Castellen:

I just remembered that I had a somewhat similar issue once:

I was about to install CGX v4 on my A2000. At that time it had no CD-ROM, but it had a network card, so I put the CGX v4 CD in my linux box (the cd-drive on the linux box is shared with samba) and mounted it on the A2000 with smbfs. The installation went fine and after a reboot CGX v4 was up and running.

Anyhow, when I tried to install the 4.3 rc5 upgrade, it failed when patching some files for an to me unknown reason - I even tried executing the patch lines manually in a shell without success. For some reason, the patch-utility just didnt want to work normally when accessing the CGX v4 CD as a smbfs networked volume.

It ended up in the A2000 being equipped with a CD-ROM to be able to successfully install the 4.3 rc5 upgrade .

It got me thinking - can it for some wierd reason have anything to do with the CD-ROM driver/device/filesystem?

Just for the record, when installing the upgrade on the A2000 I used a SCSI CD-ROM with the stock WB3.1 L:CDFileSystem and on the A4000 I have used an IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM and the Atapi PNP package.


/Patrik

[PPC]

As far as i know you need the original Cgx v4 cd to be in your cd rom drive to install the updates (copy protection)

[Castellen]

After a bit of a cool down period and finding a bit more spare time, I've had another crack at getting this all working.

Great news, after taking into account everyone's experiences and tips (especially Patrik's) it's all fully working! :-D
Yeah, I'm so stoaked now.  This has to be the most painful software drama I've been through since I last used window$.

I'll list the problems I had and some notes so when the next poor bugger has to endure installing a BVision card with CyberGFX under OS3.9, they know what to do.


The problem of "patch" not working turned out to be something to do with the CDROM drive.  It generally seemed to work OK reading discs and the likes, but after Patrik saying there might be something funny, turns out that was it.  Tried installing CGFX V42r5 using the CyberGraphX disc in a SCSI CDROM instead of the IDE one and it all just magically worked.
I can't explain it either, but I don't care now, it's working.

Last problem to fix was that CGraphX mode (the prog used to edit screenmodes) kept complaining there was no board installed.  It's icon contains a tooltype saying what board you have, e.g. BOARD=CVisionPPC
The CGFX v4.0 install must set it to the CyberVision board as there is no Blizzard specific support.  Since the update to V4.1 then V4.2r5 the tooltype never got updated, even though I had told the installer there was a Blizzard fitted.
I made a guess and changed the tooltype to BOARD=BVisionPPC and it now works.

Another problem to be aware of is that the .info file for the monitor executable (Devs:Monitors/BVisionPPC.info) never seemed to get created.  This causes problems as it contains various tooltypes required for things to work.
I think I copied the .info made for CVisionPPC to get started.  Using the program CyberGraphX - Tooltypes can easily fix things the way they should be when you save.


So some version informations of this working A1200 in case anyone needs them in the future:

OS3.9 with Boing Bag 2
68040.library 46.5
68040new.library 46.5
68040old.library 37.3
68060.library 46.5
blizzppc.library 44.31 (in ROM)
ppc.library 46.37 (Frank Willie's PowerUp emulation lib for WarpOS)
warp.library 4.0

CD file system: CacheCDFS 42.19

Blizzard firmware file used: Flash300399.lha (from Aminet)
(the last official release from Phase5, does not have GRex PCI support)

CyberGraphX installed by:
V4.0 first from CD (use all default ENV and tooltypes)
Install update cgxv42_r1.lha (from Aminet)
Install update cgxv42_rc5.lha (from here)

*** Edit ***
The above link no longer appears to be valid, seems the CGFX support pages are no more??
I've copied the rc5 and rc6 CGFX4 updates to my webserver here.
************

WarpOS
Installed WarpUP_Release4.0.lha
Installed WarpUP_Release4.0_Update.lha
Installed WarpUP_V51Update.lha

Other points to note, the BVision card does NOT show up under Scout - expansions or ShowConfig, but does show up using showcgxconfig as installed by CyberGraphX.

PPC related patches during startup-sequence:
BPPCfix install [040]
ppclibemu_install CLOSE
(read Frank Willie's docs for more information and install details)

Sorry for the lengthy post.  I hope it's useful to someone in the future.


P.S. Looks like it isn't necessary to sacrifice a goat to install CyberGraphX and a BVision card after all :-)
Though it was coming pretty close...