Amithlon Computer

[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

[Lo]

Welcome to amiga.org, Kal-L, nice Amithlon system you have there!   Er, don't let the zealots bother you as Amithlon is On-Topic here (In the appropriate thread).

Aloha!

[Ranchu]

Has anyone got a link to a list of supported hardware and kernels?

[Hammer]

I run Amithlon with the following setup(s);

+ ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (nForce 2 class chipset).
+ BIOS: 1004 (05/14/2003)(with support for 400Mhz FSB Athlon XPs).
+ CPU: Athlon XP 2600+(~2.09Ghz) with 333Mhz FSB variant.  
+ RAM: Dual channel mode PC2700 512Mb DDR SDRAM, running at 333Mhz.
+ GPU: Leadtek Geforce 4 TI MyVIVO.
+ HD1: 80Gb UDMA133 Seagate 7200 rpm IDE.
+ HD2: 40Gb UDMA133 Seagate 7200 rpm IDE.
+ HD3: 20Gb UDMA33 Seagate 5200 rpm IDE.
+ CD1: UDMA33 LG DVD/CD-RW.
+ Other: 350 Watt power supply.

I haven't set up the network feature under Amithlon at this time (e.g. onboard 3Com/NV-LAN or Realtek 100/10BaseT NICs). Audio is yet to be setup with SB Live cards.

At the moment, I’m currently (carefully) experimenting on 400FSB over clocking…
---
+ MSI 6330 V3.6/K7T Turbo-Raid Ltd Ed (VIA KT133A) .
+ BIOS: V3.6
+ CPU: Athlon XP 1800+
+ RAM: 512Mb SDRAM,
+ GPU: Geforce 2 MX/400.
+ SB Live 5.1 DE/ VIA Audio.
+ HD1: 40Gb UDMA133 Seagate 7200 rpm IDE.
+ HD2: 20Gb UDMA133 Seagate 7200 rpm IDE.
+ HD3: 16Gb UDMA33 Seagate 5200 rpm IDE.
+ CD1: UDMA33 Sony CD-RW.
+ Other: 300 Watt power supply.

[Karlos]

Hi,

Apart from older versions of winuae, I've not dabbled much in x86 emulations of the amiga (for one thing this old PC is pretty naff ;-) )

I seem to recall amithlon is no longer available due to some legal wrangle - whats the story there?

I was thinking to purchase it at some point, looks like I missed the boat :-(

[pha_q]

Dr_Bombcrater:

 - 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.

One Gig of RAM is fine, my system boots with no problems.

An additional point I would make for anyone about to set up Amithlon on a FAT partition is that it needs to be FAT and NOT FAT32.

[Effy]

I use a very old scrap 40 Mb IDE harddisc that I formatted in Windows and this thing boots up Amithlon for me. My config is cheap. It's a Fujitsu Cordant, a Celeron 366 Mhz with 440 Mb Ram, GeForce2 MX 400 64 Mb gfx, SB128 PCO sound but no network yet, 6 Gb hd and 40x cdrom. Thing works like a charm.
Memory. I tested Amithlon first on my main pc with 1,5 Gb of memory. Refused to work, got error message that there was not enough memory avaliable ...  :-o
1 Gb seems to be the limit ...

@Bill : I only got one screenmode using my Hercules Prophet II Titanium GeForce2 based card. Don't know what went wrong.

[Effy]

Booting this PC with Amithlon at 366 Mhz ...
-hit the power button
-Bios : 30 secs
-Amithlon : 30 secs
-OS 3.9 : 15 secs

Which means 1:15 min. to get into workbench with backgrounds and AmiDock loaded and ready to work ... my A1230 used to be a little bit faster ...

[bhoggett]

OK, more points on Amithlon:

- 1 GB of RAM is the limit. Trawling through the Amithlon lists would reveal the technical reason for this, but Bernie confirmed that 1 GB is it.

- You can set up Amithlon to boot from [1] a FAT32 partition as well as a FAT partition or any bootable Linux filesystem.

[1] i.e. this means the place where the kernel and image files reside, not the boot partition for AmigaOS itself. AmigaOS should only be installed on Amiga filesystems (FFS, PFS, SFS), otherwise you are asking for major problems.

- Nearly all GeForce2 cards are "GeForce2 based" cards made by other manufacturers. However, the chipset is either GeForce2 series or it isn't. If you use a GeForce2 based card and only get one screen mode, the kernel is falling back to VESA mode for some reason. The chipset is definitely supported however, and should give you full access to screenmodes and 2D hardware acceleration.

- The licensing issue remains. The Amithlon publishers are still selling it by all accounts, but not everyone whose material is being used is being paid the royalties they are due. Those parties consider the product illegal and its continued sale an act of software piracy.  Since the matter is unlikely to reach the courts any time soon due to the costs being higher than any possible compensation, the decision of whether to buy or not must reside with each person's individual conscience

[bhoggett]

@Effy

Boot times vary considerably with the system configuration. Things like SCSI cards and lots of disks and partitions will increase this, while slimming it down will reduce it.

A system dedicated to Amithlon only and without any unnecessary peripherals will boot pretty sharpish.

[Dr_Bombcrater]

@Bill : I only got one screenmode using my Hercules Prophet II Titanium GeForce2 based card. Don't know what went wrong.

Effy, the most likely problem is that Hercules have changed the PCI ID of the card so that Amithlon's kernel thinks it is something other than a GeForce 2.

Donwload this archive :
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~garycvl/files/ViaPatch_010.LHA

and use the PCISCAN tool contained in it to generate a list of PCI devices in your system. Send me the list by PM (or post it here) and I'll try and work support for the Hercules into my next kernel update.
--
Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville

[Dr_Bombcrater]

Ranchu wrote:
Has anyone got a link to a list of supported hardware and kernels?

Try my site:

http://web.onetel.net.uk/~garycvl/amithlon

--
Gary "Dr Bombcrater" Colville

[Ranchu]

Gary,

Thanks - that's exactly what I was looking for.

I have some webspace on a USA server you can use for free if you want.

Email me if you are interested: cholmes(at)internode(dot)com(dot)au