Amithlon Computer

[Ranchu]

I'm contemplating building a dedicated Amithlon computer and would like to know what components to use.

[pha_q]

As far as I know most mobo chipsets should be okay. For sound use a Soundblaster 128 or onboard VIA AC97. For graphics the GForce 2 and 3 are supported as well as Voodoo cards. There are kernels for ATI chipsets but I had no luck with my All In Wonder Radeon.

The type of CPU and RAM will depend on the mobo. Case, CD/DVD and hardrives are down to your choice/budget. I don't know which ethernet cards are supported.

[Ranchu]

Are the VIA Eden's supported? I'd like to build it into a nice mini ITX case.

What sort of CPU and how much RAM would I need? I've got some bits and pieces here including a GeForce 256 card - would that work OK?

[pha_q]

VIA Edens are supported by an experimental kernel so I would hold on that for the moment.

For CPU a P3/Athlon 1Gig or higher should do nicely. I believe 128 MB RAM is the minimum, but as with most PCs, the more you have the better the experience.

I know nothing about the GeForce 256 so I cannot say.

My setup is a MSI nForce mobo, 1.8GHz Athlon XP, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD, 48x CDRW, 32x CDRW/DVD, ATI All In Wonder, SB128 and 3COM NIC.

This works pretty well with AOS-XL and Amithlon, although under Amithlon I have to use VESA display modes.

[Ranchu]

Thanks for that. Just a few more questions:

- is CPU speed important and can you tell the difference between say a ~1ghz one or a 2ghz one in normal use?

- 1gb RAM!!! Can you actually use all that?
- I notice you have a 3com nic - does it work properly in Amithlon i thought only ne2000 ones work?
- the nForce has a built in GF2 MX have you had any luck getting it to work in Amithlon?
- Does the IDE work in bus master mode or PIO 0 or whatever its called?
- Geforce 256 = original Gefore so it should work, right?

Um that's it!

[pha_q]

- is CPU speed important and can you tell the difference between say a ~1ghz one or a 2ghz one in normal use?

I've only used one processor, but the faster your processor the faster the emulated processor is

- 1gb RAM!!! Can you actually use all that?

Well it's available to the system, I've never ran enough applications to completely fill my RAM

- I notice you have a 3com nic - does it work properly in Amithlon i thought only ne2000 ones work?

I haven't set up networking under Amithlon yet

- the nForce has a built in GF2 MX have you had any luck getting it to work in Amithlon?

Only in VESA mode, QNX doesn't seem to like it though

- Does the IDE work in bus master mode or PIO 0 or whatever its called?

Don't know, but it is fast

- Geforce 256 = original Gefore so it should work, right?

Wrong. Bernie didn't build in support for every graphics card ever made.

[bhoggett]

Just to add to what's been said already:

VIA Eden is NOT supported. The "experimental kernel" should not have been released to the public and AFAIK the VIA Eden kernels have not been made to work at all yet.

3com network cards are NOT supported. Support for networking is only through RTL8029 based cards (these are 10Mbit) or RTL8139 with OpenPCI (though this seems to have  various limitations at the moment). Other NE2000 compatible PCI cards may work, but there's no guarantee.

Best GFX card support is for GeForce (up to 3) and Matrox cards. There is an updated ATi kernel available too, but this is not tested by the author.

[Effy]

As for GeForce2, be sure to get a real GeForce2 and not like I did, a mega fast gfx card BASED on the GeForce2 chipset, Hercules Prophet II 64 Mb. Didn't work at all, only got one screenmode you get with every gfx card that is not supported. Now I use a real Geforce II MX 400 PCI and it works great !!!
Now I have Amithlon running on a 366 Mhz Celeron and it works fine. I used to have it running to test on a AMD1700+ with extra on board IDE controller, so 4 IDE ports, and it didn't give any problem to access all devices in Amithlon.  
Tried to access the Net with a RTL8139 but didn't work ...

[Dr_Bombcrater]

Ranchu wrote:
Are the VIA Eden's supported? I'd like to build it into a nice mini ITX case.

No. There are fundamental limitations in the VIA processors that prevent Amithlon working on them.

What sort of CPU and how much RAM would I need? I've got some bits and pieces here including a GeForce 256 card - would that work OK?

I'd recommend an AthlonXP with 256Mb. The GF256 should work just fine.

- is CPU speed important and can you tell the difference between say a ~1ghz one or a 2ghz one in normal use?

Oh yes. Amithlon will run well on quite modest processors (I used to run it on an 800MHz Duron an it was fine) but it will happily use every clock cycle you can throw at it.

- 1gb RAM!!! Can you actually use all that?

I seem to recall Amithlon will fail to boot if you have 1GB of ram due to an address space problem. Anything less than that should be okay.

- I notice you have a 3com nic - does it work properly in Amithlon i thought only ne2000 ones work?

A 3Com NIC won't work. Amithlon only has native support for 10M/bit cards based on the RTL8029 chip. The OpenPCI package has a driver for the 100M/bit RTL8139D chip, which works with Amithlon.

- the nForce has a built in GF2 MX have you had any luck getting it to work in Amithlon?

The nForce is a bad choice if you want to run Amithlon as it isn't correctly supported. For example, the NVidia IDE controller will run in PIO0 mode, causing slow downs and sound problems.

- Does the IDE work in bus master mode or PIO 0 or whatever its called?

Depends on the motherboard's chipset. VIA is the way to go if you want fast disk I/O. Amithlon natively supports DMA on the KT133 and KT266 chipsets, and I've made available a beta kernel that supports the KT333 and KT400.

- Geforce 256 = original Gefore so it should work, right?

Yep. All GeForce cards are supported, although you'll need an updated kernel for the GF3 or better.

--
Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville

[bhoggett]

@Effy

As for GeForce2, be sure to get a real GeForce2 and not like I did, a mega fast gfx card BASED on the GeForce2 chipset, Hercules Prophet II 64 Mb. Didn't work at all, only got one screenmode you get with every gfx card that is not supported. Now I use a real Geforce II MX 400 PCI and it works great !!!

...eh?

I have a GeForce2 based Hercules Prophet II card and it has always worked perfectly. It's the chipset that matters, not the card manufacturer.

(however, care should be taken that the card is based on a GeForce2 chipset. Hercules also released cards with Kyro chipsets, and those are only supported in VESA mode I think.)

[Ranchu]

Gary,

I've got an Athlon XP 1600+ chip lying around but no mobo. What would be your recommendation for a board to match up with CPU that will run Amithlon properly? I definitely DO NOT want to run in PIO-0 mode!

Also what Intel boards/chipsets are good choices in case I decide to go that way? (Had bad experiences with VIA in the past.)

[Ranchu]

Would I notice the difference between say:

P3 ~1GHz
Athlon 1600+
P4 3.06GHz?

Sort of wanting to build a box that will last into the future...

[Dr_Bombcrater]

Ranchu wrote:
Gary,

I've got an Athlon XP 1600+ chip lying around but no mobo. What would be your recommendation for a board to match up with CPU that will run Amithlon properly? I definitely DO NOT want to run in PIO-0 mode!

Any KT333 or KT400 board from a good manufacturer will do (not the KT400A or KT600, tho, as those use a new South Bridge chip that isn't fully supported yet).

I mostly use Asus, Chaintech and Soltek boards here.

Also what Intel boards/chipsets are good choices in case I decide to go that way? (Had bad experiences with VIA in the past.)

Any P3-class Intel chipset should work fine. I can't really comment on the P4 stuff as I don't have any -- I'm an AMD fan. The most up-to-date Intel system I have is an old 233MHz Pentium II   :-D

Would I notice the difference between say:

P3 ~1GHz
Athlon 1600+
P4 3.06GHz?

Sort of wanting to build a box that will last into the future...

Of those three I'd only consider the Athlon: the P3 is quite slow and the P4 is way, way too expensive for what it delivers.

For Amithlon I'd recommend an Athlon XP 2500+. These have twice the level-2 cache of slower models and really scream running any kind of emulator.

--
Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville

[pkp]

I was the person working on the EDEN kernel. http://www3.telus.net/pkp. But have taken everything offline.

the EDEN boards will *NOT* work with amithlon due to the cpu missing specific cpu flags. The Kernel would have to be complete rehacked, which I do not have the abilities to do..

Once Again EDEN boards will not work. My experimental kernels are all taken offline due to what is stated on my page and bandwidth reasons for the source and such.

Paul

[Kal-L]

Here is my computer working perfectly with Amithlon:

AMD Athlon 1700+ (overclocked to 1900+)
784 Mb RAM DDR
GeForce3 TI 200+ (1024*768)
2 HDs (one for AmigaOS formely in a A1200, the other one for Linux and Windows)
DVD Rom + CD Writer (MakeCD)
PS2 mouse and keyboard
TFT Screen
SB128 (SB128 Live works too thanks to OpenPCI and AHI 5.10)
HP Deskjet 840c (TurboPrint)
8029 Ethernet card (for ADSL with MiamiDX)
8139 Ethernet card (sharing connexion with PMac, works thanks to OpenPCI)
Floppy Disk (HD 1,44 readable via PCO:)
With Fat95, you can access Fat32 partition, useful for sharing files