Help me build an amithlon machine? Please?

[haywirepc]

For a long time now I have wanted to build an amithlon machine. I suppose because I have a dedicated emulated amiga booting straight to os3.x on a spare pc I have never gotten around to it.(This setup replaced my real amigas some time ago) For most things, the dedicated emulated amiga does everything I want, but I'm really interested in seeing the difference with amithlon, from all I heard is sounds really great, and I'm really excited to get an amithlon machine working.
 
Some time ago I got a supported video and soundcard on ebay. At least I think these are supported, I believe someone here made some suggestions, and from those suggestions, I got these :
 
AOPEN NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440-SE
Sound Blaster PCI 128 Sound Card CT4750
 
Whats left is that I need an amithlon supported network card for internet. Can someone who has an amithlon machine working with networking working for internet PLEASE tell me what network card you
are using and what steps you need to take once amithlon is booting to
have internet working?
 
 
I have a couple of spare pc's that are 2ghz or so. I'd like to get amithlon going on one of them and if it works out, I will get a faster pc to use for this... One of my friends has a few 3.4ghz dells that would be great for this I think, but funds are tight so I want to try it first on the stuff I already have around.
 
Also, for those of you who already have amithlon working well, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. From what I've seen, its not
so simple to get amithlon installed and running from anything other than the cd boot.
 
Also, I have some general questions :
 
I think several people mentioned that usb does not work or is not fully supported on amithlon, so I was wondering what you do for a joystick?
Are joysticks supported, and if so, can you suggest one that works easily with amithlon? I guess you can use the keyboard, but thats kind of lame.I'd really like to be able to play games with a joystick.
 
What about USB pen drives? I use these on all my other systems for transferring data around. No go?
 
How about dvd drives and playing dvds on your machine with amithlon?
Cd/dvd burning?
 
Does Octamed sound studio work well and can you use 16 bit samples and mixdown to 16 bit masters?
 
What about dual or triple booting linux/windowsxp/aros?
 
Anyone using one of these amigakit keyboards/mice? :
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=985
Is it better to go ps2 or usb for amithlon? Same for mice they have with boingball?
 
I'm hoping an amithlon machine can replace my current setup, which is just a dedicated pc running amigaforever but with windows shell removed so it just boots up straight to os3.x. Like I said, this seems to work okay for most things, and I like being able to run all applications that bang the hardware, I play alot of games on this box, and I also have it set up next to my main pc running demos alot. Its 2ghz but some of the more demanding aga games and demos lag and don't play very well on it.
 
Any help or advice from people already running an amithlon machine would be very much appreciated. I will update this thread as I go so maybe others can benefit from my experiences here and the advice I'm hoping to get along the way.
 
Thanks,
 
Steven

[fishy_fiz]

I'll answer in no particular order here  

1stly, custom chipset software......

This requires some form of UAE, although with the help of a great little bit of software called EUAL-Load this can be done in a nice simple, "double click icon to run" type way for installed to harddrive software, and a simple def icon definition can deal with launching adfs/etc. This is the one thing that has made me upgrade my amithlon box to the degree I did. 68k uae doesnt use the hosts cpu, so effectively you have an x86 cpu emulating a 68k cpu emulating a full amiga (including cpu). Despite this though it's more than usable on my core2duo@3.86ghz. Performance is akin to my 40mhz '040 for ocs/ecs and maybe 2/3rd of that for AGA software. In short dont expect Winuae type speeds for custom chipset software, but its enough that Im seldom left wanting. The vast majority of software that needs more grunt can be run on RTG anyway, and amithlon absolutely flies in these conditions.
These speeds are based on euae-0.8.29-wip4 as well. Some of the older UAE's are a lot faster (albiet with thier own cons). Im actually trying to get a x86 amithlon native EUAE build working at the moment too, so expect a good 50 or more % additional speed there too.

For sound, amithlon is AHI based (no paula), but you can use Nuldehpah (probably misnamed, cant recall exactly, but it comes with amithlon OS3.9) to reroute what normally would be paula sound through ahi.
Octamed Sound Studio coincidently Ive just been experimenting with on Amithlon and was pleasantly surprised to find it works without issue.

In reagrds to watching DVDs, in theory yes, but there's no software to do the job yet
There is a 68k mplayer build, and ffplay, not to mention trusy ol' froggerng and moovid, so watching videos is possible, but DVDs themselves, unfortunately not yet.
Burning discs: Sure, but again youre restricted to what software is available for 68k amigas. Fryingpan, makecd, etc.

For USB, while I dont use it myself (I have no key) poseidon should hopefully do the trick here and cover whatever USB functionality it provides. Without it USB mice and keyboards still work though (or perhaps more accurately "can" work, they do for me, but Ive heard of people that have had problems).

One thing to remember, is that with amithlon youre at the "mercy" of AmigaOS. You can only do what you can do on AmigaOS. There's no host OS supplimenting functionailty that normally you need to get through amiga os (as is the case with winuae). While it can mean it requires a bit more effort, I personally prefer things this way.

As for NICs easy answer: realtek rtl8029 or 8139 (via open pci driver). Long answer, whatevers available through kernel side driver pack, which is quite a few

[Tension]

won't somebody please think of the children?

[fishy_fiz]

Ah, I just noticed I didnt answer your question in regards to networking with Amithlon. Once you have your supported nic it's just a matter of setting up a 68k tcp/up stack inside amiga os. Ive always just used Genesis, mostly because it's what comes with OS3.9 (which is part of the amithlon cd).

Everything is done from within AmigaOS with amithlon (apart from initial install of kernel and bootloader).

[rdolores]

I've been using Amithlon for over 5 years now and it is great. My sysem is a PIII-1000 with 768 MB RAM and 49 GB of Hard Drive Space (1-40 GB IDE and 1-9 GB SCSI). It has a 3COM (3C905C-TX) NIC and a SoundBlaster 128 sound card. It has a 32 MB NVidia TNT2 video card and can do resolutions up to 1280x1024 at 16.7 million colors. I even have a working CD-Writer on it (using MakeCD software).

I have it hooked up to my home network running at 100Mb/Full. I use AWeb 3.5.08 for browsing.

I have gotton AHI working on my sound card and can play both MOD's (HippoPlayer) and MP3's (AMPlifier).

I have it on my Windows network so it can access my file server and use my network printer.(with SAMBA).

I use the Genesis TCP/IP stack that came with Amithlon's OS3.9 system.  I never got DHCP to work, so I configured it with a static IP.  Works fine.

An old PIII-1000 should be plentiful and cheap (even free). And 8/9 year old hardware should be supported by the available kernals.  Using some of the newer kernals, you should be able to install on P4 and new x86 machines.  But even with the PIII, its a speed demon compared to the classic Amigas and even some of the NG Amigas.

[nicholas]

I'll answer in no particular order here  

1stly, custom chipset software......

This requires some form of UAE, although with the help of a great little bit of software called EUAL-Load this can be done in a nice simple, "double click icon to run" type way for installed to harddrive software, and a simple def icon definition can deal with launching adfs/etc. This is the one thing that has made me upgrade my amithlon box to the degree I did. 68k uae doesnt use the hosts cpu, so effectively you have an x86 cpu emulating a 68k cpu emulating a full amiga (including cpu). Despite this though it's more than usable on my core2duo@3.86ghz. Performance is akin to my 40mhz '040 for ocs/ecs and maybe 2/3rd of that for AGA software. In short dont expect Winuae type speeds for custom chipset software, but its enough that Im seldom left wanting. The vast majority of software that needs more grunt can be run on RTG anyway, and amithlon absolutely flies in these conditions.
These speeds are based on euae-0.8.29-wip4 as well. Some of the older UAE's are a lot faster (albiet with thier own cons). Im actually trying to get a x86 amithlon native EUAE build working at the moment too, so expect a good 50 or more % additional speed there too.

For sound, amithlon is AHI based (no paula), but you can use Nuldehpah (probably misnamed, cant recall exactly, but it comes with amithlon OS3.9) to reroute what normally would be paula sound through ahi.
Octamed Sound Studio coincidently Ive just been experimenting with on Amithlon and was pleasantly surprised to find it works without issue.

In reagrds to watching DVDs, in theory yes, but there's no software to do the job yet
There is a 68k mplayer build, and ffplay, not to mention trusy ol' froggerng and moovid, so watching videos is possible, but DVDs themselves, unfortunately not yet.
Burning discs: Sure, but again youre restricted to what software is available for 68k amigas. Fryingpan, makecd, etc.

For USB, while I dont use it myself (I have no key) poseidon should hopefully do the trick here and cover whatever USB functionality it provides. Without it USB mice and keyboards still work though (or perhaps more accurately "can" work, they do for me, but Ive heard of people that have had problems).

One thing to remember, is that with amithlon youre at the "mercy" of AmigaOS. You can only do what you can do on AmigaOS. There's no host OS supplimenting functionailty that normally you need to get through amiga os (as is the case with winuae). While it can mean it requires a bit more effort, I personally prefer things this way.

As for NICs easy answer: realtek rtl8029 or 8139 (via open pci driver). Long answer, whatevers available through kernel side driver pack, which is quite a few

Do you use Kernel 4?

[fishy_fiz]

Nope, Im still using Kernel3.10.
I have used kernel4 before, but I changed motherboards in my amithlon machine a little while ago and set things up from scratch. For no reason in particular I initially set it up using kernel310 and it all behaved perfectly so never bothered changing it.
To be brutally honest kernel3.10 using a p45 based board seems a better experience than kernel4 did with a g31 based board. Both give me a core2duo amithlon machine and kernel4 gave me no particular problems, but it just "feels" a little better and more stable with what Im using now (kernel3.10/p45 chipset mobo).
May well be more hardware related than the kernels themselves, but as they say, "if it aint broke, dont fix it"  

[haywirepc]

Fishy, I sent you a pm with two network cards I found on ebay. Let me know which you think would be best to buy... I'll buy them both if necessary...
 
Once I get the network card, I will have all the parts I need to give an installation a go...
 
Thanks for everyones help so far!

Steven

[haywirepc]

I have ordered a realtek 8129 network card. Once that arrives I should have everything I need to complete the build. Does anyone have links to any guides for installing amithlon to the hard drive?

Steven

[XDelusion]

Here's what I've been using for hardware.

EMachine *t6528 (built in NVIDIA video support)

Dell dimension 3000 (needs gfx card)

Of course sound and nic cards are needed.

USB untested.

[haywirepc]

Thanks does anyone have a link to an amithlon install guide? Other than booting from the cd I have no idea...
Steven

[fishy_fiz]

Depends on how youre setup. Are you using one or 2 drives. Two drives gives the advantage of being able to dedicated a drive to rdb. One drive means you need to use a bootloader and make an AmithlonVirtualHarddisk device (essentially just a partition).

There's plenty of way to do the above, but personally I just used an AROS nightly disc, live booted, and created the partition with aros hdtoolbox.

Anyway the process goes a little something like this (assuming 1 drive):

Use either FDOS or a Win98 boot disc/cd and create a small fat partition (10 meg should be more than enough, but I used 50). System format that partition (format c:/s). Copy over the isolinux directory to the fat partition.

Boot amithlon cd to minimal Workbench setup. Use hdtoolbox to prepare amithlonvirtualdisk partition how you'd like it.
Install OS3.9 with the os3.9 installer.
Reboot computer to fat partition (which is should do by default).
Create autoexec.bat file that contains:
cd c:\isolinux
loadllin @kernelscriptname

Reboot, and so long as youve applied the "boot" tag to an amiga os partition amithlon should now boot into os3.9.

The default "kernelscriptname" is either "small" or "amithlon", but personally Ive editted them and just renamed to "test". The editting is essential for updating to a later kernel and mostly just required removing "emubox.gz" (name of old kernel) with the name of the new kernel ("kern310" in my case).

[XDelusion]

I really need to make a video explaining all that I've learned, just been too busy or tired as of late.

[haywirepc]

Yeah seems kind of complicated getting amithlon installed. Would be alot more amithlon users around if this wasn't so involved.

Steven

[bbond007]

fishy_fiz,

I have two potential systems I could try amithlon on. One is a  Alienware box sporting a Tyan MPX (S2466) AMD-760 motherboard and 2 Athlon MP 2400+ CPUs and some sort of Nvidia Quadro video board. I think it is a AGP based video.

The other is a dual core  (not core2) P4 3.0ghz with intel 945 based motherboard.

Which of these clunkers do you think would be best?

thanks

_nate