My MorphOS and PegasosII experience

[AmiDelf]

Sorry for bad English, but if someone here wants to correct it. Youre all welcome to do so offcourse,...


THE START:
After some long, long decisions. I made my decision to get myself PegasosII G4 1GHz. I ordered it for about 3 weeks ago from pegasos homepage and on Tuesday I got it.

Since I thought it would take longer time to get my PegasosII, I also ordered a G3 600MHz version from GGSdata.

For him, it took 5 days to send me the board.

So on Tuesday I've got it. I filmed the whole thing. When I packed it up, how I installed it all and more. For those wich is interested in watching that film. Well, it will be done by next weekend.


LETS INSTALL MORPHOS:
Well, after installing PegasosII into my Chieftec tower (now, I am not an hardware expert, but it went all okay), I plugged my monitor to my old, old Voodoo 3 3000 card. Wich I've been using inside my Amiga 4000.

I started it all up and went thru the manual for PegasosII.

Here my first problem came up. As I am not used to Linux commands. How should I know what the commands should be? I remember ls and such and I followed the manual, but it was a bit wrong. The manual wich I've got for both PegasosII motherboards, is for v0.1b of the Open Firmware.

And my Firmware is v1.1 wich have new commands.

Like f.example:
boot /pci/ide/cd0 boot.img <- does not work!

but the new command for reading CD is 'cdrom' now.

That should be:
boot /pci/ide/cdrom boot.img <- and it should work,

but for me, it didn't. For some strange reason. My PegasosII G3 600MHz motherboard don't like any Slave devices on the same IDE cable.

I thought that I was connecting those switches at the back of my HD at wrong positions. So to find out if it was me or board fault that it didn't want to take any Slave drives.

I took my PegasosII motherboard over to my friend, wich is good at hardware and programming stuff (wich also got a PegasosII himself). And it prooved right.

My PegasosII G3 600MHz dosen't like Slave drives. This might be that PegasosII dosen't like Samsung HD's. I don't really know.

So the sollution to all this, was to connect my HD to the first IDE connector as Master. Then I had to plug my CD-ROM as Master on the second IDE controller.

A bit tricky, but it worked. There could be some bugs with my G3 motherboard offcourse. Since my friends PegasosII dosen't have these problems.

Well, after everything is right, this is how you boot PegasosII:

Write: boot /pci/ide/cdrom boot.img
Then: MorphOS boots up from CD-ROM
Done: MorphOS screen shows up with MorphOS boot icon



Now?: Click on the MorphOS boot icon
Then: Click on the Tools icon



Here you have tools for setting up your HD. Click on the UnitControl icon to see if the devices is recognized by ide.device.

If everything is oki, now click on the SCSIconfig icon. Then this window should come up:



Here you also see my devices. Click on the Config Drive button and then on Optimal Geometry. This program have some bugs, but just ignore them. Click on Optimal Geometry then OK and back to the menu of SCSIconfig.

Now click on the Partition button (to the left side), then everything changes to this:



Here I've allready made my partitions. If there is a QDH0 partition there. Delete it. Now click on add and later on. You have to doubleclick on your partition.

But remember this!:

Your boot.img partition must be in FFS format. Thats boot0 and you dont need to make this partition higher than between 50mb and 100mb big.

Click on the Mount area, but not Boot. Your boot partition can be choosen offcourse. But for nice reasons. Choose HD0 as your boot partition. And remember that only one of your partitions can be the boot partition. So do only click at the boot box in your HD0 partition.

Also remember that all of the partitions. Either if they are FFS or SFS (recommended for all of the partitions. Not boot0 partition!) must have this MASK:

0xfffffffe

The Buffers value should be 600

Also! SCSIconfig program have bugs when showing the size of partitions. Just ignore this. Just add the wanted size in the Mbytes section.

Also Ignore the error when saying wrong Mask etc.

When this is all done. Click OK, Save the changes and it will reboot.

Now, once again, type:

boot /pci/ide/cdrom boot.img

and Ambient screen comes up again. Now its time to format the drives.

Click on Format and desired name of each partitions.

Here is example:
boot0 could be named as MorphOS
HD0 could be named as System or Workbench etc...
HD1 could be named as Wozly or Work etc..

Its all up to you. If you have choosen SFS on HD0 and HD1 do not click on Case Sensitive. People have reported that this is a bad thing to do.

Now when you have formated it all, then click the Format window away and Install MorphOS from its CD by clicking on the install icon.

First it asks where to install boot.img
- Put this one into your boot0 partition.

Then it asks where to install MorphOS
- Put this one into HD0 for example.

When its done. This goes really fast Then, when its done. Then you should remoove your MorphOS CD and it will reboot in 3, 2, 1...

Now your PegasosII should be ready to run MorphOS from HD. Try typing

boot /pci/ide/disk@0,0:0 boot.img

Now your PegasosII should boot. Now you can start having fun with configurating MorphOS. This is a beutifull OS. With MUI intergrated. You have so many possibilities.

If you later on, wants MorphOS to boot automaticly. You have to restart from the Ambient menu, and write:

setenv boot-file boot.img ramdebug
setenv boot-device /pci/ide/disk@0,0:0 boot.img
setenv auto-boot-timeout 3000
setenv auto-boot? true

Now when you press the restart button, your PegasosII should boot up MorphOS.

After this, you will be blown away. Even on a 600MHz G3 PPC. It boots in 4-5 seconds. Thats amazing fast. Now you can have fun and enjoy the next true experience.

Conclusion:
+ Very nice OS
+ This must be the fastest OS in the world at the moment!
+ Super compatibility with older programs. Also supports your old AmigaHD with no problems
+ MUI makes this OS looks amazing!
+ 32bit icon support!
+ Got USB stack into it all! Found my N-Gage even.

- bad manual
- open firmware is a bit complicated for beginners, but you learn it fast
- bugs with Slave drives
- SCSIconfig program got few bugs

All in all:
Get this and support it. Its amazing good. Its lot more stable than AmigaOS v3.9 and this is PPC. Have fun watching DivX and other cool things on a AmigaOS alike enviroment.

This is AmigaOS for me. This is the most fantastic OS ever made, for everyone. With a better manual or even a easier Open Firmware. This thing can really start to fly or if companies does all of the installation for you. Then this system is just perfect.

Here is some shots of it:





I hope you liked this review/installation guide. I wish that people could get along and be nicer to each other. The community needs to get tougether again. Companies cannot just take away the spirit. end, Michal

Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
 

[Karlos]

So, does this mean you've cancelled the A6000 project?

[AmiDelf]

No. I haven't, but its on hold. At the moment I am focusing on the Opera project indeed.

Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org

[cecilia]

For some strange reason. My PegasosII G3 600MHz motherboard don't like any Slave devices on the same IDE cable.

let me get this right: you can't add another HD because it doesn't accept a 2nd device as slave?

in other words, I have a pre-april peg with one HD and one CD drive. are you saying i can't add another HD?

what's up wid that?
 :-o

[JKD]

Non-cooperation of a Master drive on an IDE bus is typically the fault of the drive's firmware in my experience. (Speaking as someone who QA and integration tested an awful lot of different manufacturers drives.)

That said, there is/was a bug in the Peg firmware, very similar to the 'reset race condition' on the regular Amiga...symptom is that it will not boot from a hard reset (cold boot) but will from a soft boot. Did firmware 1.1 fix this bug.....have no idea, will find out once I receive my PegII!

Unless his friends machine has the exact same hardrive (or one from the same family) as he does then it's not comparable.

Given that you have a pre-april pegasos, I would stay with as few devices as possible...adding more would increase the probability of seeing a problem.

Steve

[cecilia]

Given that you have a pre-april pegasos, I would stay with as few devices as possible...adding more would increase the probability of seeing a problem.

darn!  :-(
I was hoping to be able to have linux on this peg. (the preseant HD doesn't have enough room for another OS).

well, as they say in politics, "explicative deleted".

[Spidey]

Hi AmiDelf,

Strange you've got problems with the drives.
I've heard it before.

I've got my 1GHz Peg2 now and I've connected two harddrives (unit 0 and 1) and a CD-ReWriter and a DVD-ROM (unit 2 and 3).
All's working fine.
Also using MakeCD with images isn't a problem.

One question, how did you get pictures in your post? :-)
(really nice pics, bytheway)

Bye,

Spidey

[AmiDelf]

Well, it might be that my PegasosII motherboard, dosen't like Samsung HD. Wich might be the case.

For getting your pics into this forum area, with Ibrowse v2.3?

Well, I have a on-line diary, so I've learned a bit from that. To post pictures here, you have to type:



Now have fun adding pics. So if you have any nice MorphOS screenshot. Please come with it.

Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org

[itix]

Seems to happen with specific configurations. Here I can use HD and CDROM as a slave without problems. My default configuration:

80GB MorphOS HD: ide.device / 0 (master in channel 1)
HP CDRW: ide.device / 3 (slave in channel 2)

I have 2 AmigaOS HDs (from my ex-A1200) which I can attach to any free IDE slot (channel 1 slave or channel 2 master).

(Btw when installing HD from Amiga make sure you have boot priorities right or you may get wrong OS there.)

[PAINter]

 

AmiDelf wrote:
Sorry for bad English, but if someone here wants to correct it. Youre all welcome to do so offcourse,...


THE START:
After some long, long decisions. I made my decision to get myself PegasosII G4 1GHz. I ordered it for about 3 weeks ago from pegasos homepage and on Tuesday I got it.

Since I thought it would take longer time to get my PegasosII, I also ordered a G3 600MHz version from GGSdata.

For him, it took 5 days to send me the board.

So on Tuesday I've got it. I filmed the whole thing. When I packed it up, how I installed it all and more. For those wich is interested in watching that film. Well, it will be done by next weekend.

Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
 

It is a tough choice that's for sure.

What software do you run on your machine and
will you be doing screen shots?

Are all the ports supported USB etc?

What happens to Pegasos and MorphOS when AOS4 is
released?

PAINter

[Spidey]

Hello PAINter,

Are all the ports supported USB etc?

What do you mean with this question? :-)

I can say that mass storage devices work with the 3 working USB-ports (USB sticks, photo camera's and such).
Also got my printer working today through USB port (HPDeskjet920C).

What happens to Pegasos and MorphOS when AOS4 is
released?

I personally hope we get more developers working for AOS4 and MorpHOS making all kinds of programs :-D

Bye,

Spidey

[AmiDelf]

oki, here you get your screenshots.

I am a person which changes the style often and MUI is something really special. Customize it all in your own way.

-:-

Here is a shot of my PegasosII 600MHz running 2 DivX movies at the same time.



-:-

Here you see AmIRC running very nice!



-:-

Ibrowse v2.3 looks more beutifull than ever in MorphOS. Customize it as you wish. And support the Ibrowse team by registrating. Support them,...



-:-

And at the end of this gallery round. Here is a shot of how Foundation DC works. Really nice. Its so fast, thats it is fun to play!



Also tried Hyperions QuakeII with MorphOS and it works without any problems at all. Even if you have Voodoo 3, you can also play it in 3D mode also.

Go on and support MorphOS,..


Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org

[Markus_Bieler]

Well, it might be that my PegasosII motherboard, dosen't like Samsung HD. Wich might be the case

Same here. Samsung 40GB HD and I can't connect a CDROM as slave. The hd won't be recognised, but the cdrom.

Markus

[NightShade737]

Stupid question, but are you sure you have the "Master" "Slave" jumpers set up properly on the drives?

[Coder]

Hi,

One thing that Morphos is lacking is a TCP/IP stack. I am not even sure if it will be in the next version. Having to manage with a 30 minute Miama demo is far from great.

Coder