Booting from install CD fails.

[jschultz]

Hi

As a newly minted owner here in december of an X1000 I am of course playing around with assorted boot options and adding extra hardware etc. The system I received from Amigakit as such works without a glitch. But I have run into a problem when booting from the installation CD.

I have installed a Compact Flash card and have used it to boot the amigaboot.of part. No problem there...

I have unconnected the original harddisk connected to sata port 0 and replaced it with an SSD. The DVD drive is on port 2. Port 1 and 3 are in use by other devices that do work as expected though they are of course not used in a boot context.

I have modified the CFG menu with an option to boot assorted Amiga OS'es manually (os4_bootdevice "auto"). If I set up a couple of bootable partitions on the SSD with contents copied from the original harddisk's 'system' partition, I can select these partitions from the menu displaying boot options and they work. No problem here either.

But if I select to boot from the installation CD the system loads the first part (CFG) and the second part (kickstart - showing the red progress bar). Then at the end - nothing. The Amiga OS never appears... at least not for the next five minutes.

The intention was to install a clean system on the SSD from the CD, pretending there was a new system with an unformatted harddisk (the SSD). It was only later, when I failed to boot from the CD, that I created partitions and transferred content from the original harddisk to make sure the SSD was not the culprit.

The original harddisk setup runs SP6 (I updated it earlier). The CD installs SP5.

I can start the installation procedure manually from the CD after booting from the harddisk or the SSD. But it tells me to reboot using the CD so as to make sure all files come from the CD. So that is a dead end.

Can someone guide me, please - am I just missing a 'trick', or is my installation CD misbehaving? It should be able to boot all the way I presume no matter what other hardware is present or not present....

regards
Jesper

[Severin]

It could be an out of date RadeaonHD.chip on the install CD. check the versions of everything in your working kickstart against those on the CD. Use something like this in a shell:

version sys:kickstart/#? >ram:output.txt
sort ram:output.txt ram:syskickstart.txt
version cd0:system/kickstart/#? >ram:output.txt
sort ram:output.txt ram:cdkickstart.txt

Then compare the two #?kickstart files.

[trevordick]

Hi

As a newly minted owner here in december of an X1000 I am of course playing around with assorted boot options and adding extra hardware etc. The system I received from Amigakit as such works without a glitch. But I have run into a problem when booting from the installation CD.

I have installed a Compact Flash card and have used it to boot the amigaboot.of part. No problem there...

I have unconnected the original harddisk connected to sata port 0 and replaced it with an SSD. The DVD drive is on port 2. Port 1 and 3 are in use by other devices that do work as expected though they are of course not used in a boot context.

I have modified the CFG menu with an option to boot assorted Amiga OS'es manually (os4_bootdevice "auto"). If I set up a couple of bootable partitions on the SSD with contents copied from the original harddisk's 'system' partition, I can select these partitions from the menu displaying boot options and they work. No problem here either.

But if I select to boot from the installation CD the system loads the first part (CFG) and the second part (kickstart - showing the red progress bar). Then at the end - nothing. The Amiga OS never appears... at least not for the next five minutes.

The intention was to install a clean system on the SSD from the CD, pretending there was a new system with an unformatted harddisk (the SSD). It was only later, when I failed to boot from the CD, that I created partitions and transferred content from the original harddisk to make sure the SSD was not the culprit.

The original harddisk setup runs SP6 (I updated it earlier). The CD installs SP5.

I can start the installation procedure manually from the CD after booting from the harddisk or the SSD. But it tells me to reboot using the CD so as to make sure all files come from the CD. So that is a dead end.

Can someone guide me, please - am I just missing a 'trick', or is my installation CD misbehaving? It should be able to boot all the way I presume no matter what other hardware is present or not present....

regards
Jesper

Jesper,

What graphic card is installed in your AmigaOne X1000? IIRC the the pressed AmigaOS4.1 Update 5 installation CD supports the original "First Contact" systems which were supplied with RadeonHD 4650. It is possible/probable that you have a RadeonHD card from one of the higher series. To get around this issue when using RadeonHD 5, 6 & 7 series cards I created a new iso by copying the original CD contents to a directory and adding the new RadeonHD, PCI graphics, and other officially released post update 5 files (i.e. IDE device drivers etc). I then used AmiDVD to create a new Update 6 Installation CD.

Trevor

[mechanic]

I just tried booting from the First Contact CD (First batch I believe) and it worked just fine. I have a Radeon 6850 installed and the only difference is the highest screenmode is 1024x768.

Network maybe?

[Christopher Follett]

Have you burnt the recovery.iso from the workbench? That will allow you to boot an as new clean install.
It also contains your updated radeon driver that trevor pointed out as the possible problem.

[nbache]

Another thing to check out is boot priorities. Have you set the boot priorities on the SSD drive's partitions? Any of them by any chance higher than the CD's (which IIRC is 5)?

If so, try lowering them.

Best regards,

Niels

[jschultz]

Hi all

It seems to be a case of graphics drivers. I created a disk from the recovery.iso, and while it does nothave contents to do a clean installation, it will boot, which means I now have a plan B if I manage to mess up the machine

The graphics card is a Sapphire HD 6570. I will now proceed to copy the install CD content to a drive, update it with current drivers, create an image and burn it to CD.

With the new AmiUpdate I guess the drivers not related to graphics will take care of themselves and be updated automatically once update 6 is installed on a new update5 image created with the modified installtion CD. So as I see it I have to get current drivers for RadeonHD and PCIGraphics. Should I look for any particular entry in the kicklayout file?

Thanks for your help and Merry Christmas to all

Jesper

[Christopher Follett]

No need for all that, boot recovery, format dh0:, then copy contents of recovery.iso to it.
If you use the install cd, you will be missing the extra stuff we add.

[jschultz]

Hi

Thanks for that last advice about the recovery.iso. I was too fast though...

I copied all the file across from the original installation CD to a disk drive, copied all the content of the kickstart folder from the harddisk delivered with the machine and includes update 6 stuff. This updated about 15 files to newer versions. Then I created an image from it all and burned a new disk, and I was back in business. Now I'll install the Extras, make sure I have the latest driver for the Radeon card and install update 6 and proceed to let the AmiUpdate program do its thing.

Are there some utilities or something I can transfer from the recovery CD, that will not otherwise be present if I follow the usual upgrade procedures?

PS. One thing i just noticed when installing the Extras stuff is everything can be installed from the boot CD i created except Mui 3.9 Extras. It seems the path to the original installation CD is hardcoded. It asks for that CD to be inserted, and when it is done, installs the software.

Anyway, things are working and life is good.

regards
Jesper

[Christopher Follett]

Hi

Thanks for that last advice about the recovery.iso. I was too fast though...

I copied all the file across from the original installation CD to a disk drive, copied all the content of the kickstart folder from the harddisk delivered with the machine and includes update 6 stuff. This updated about 15 files to newer versions. Then I created an image from it all and burned a new disk, and I was back in business. Now I'll install the Extras, make sure I have the latest driver for the Radeon card and install update 6 and proceed to let the AmiUpdate program do its thing.

Are there some utilities or something I can transfer from the recovery CD, that will not otherwise be present if I follow the usual upgrade procedures?

PS. One thing i just noticed when installing the Extras stuff is everything can be installed from the boot CD i created except Mui 3.9 Extras. It seems the path to the original installation CD is hardcoded. It asks for that CD to be inserted, and when it is done, installs the software.

Anyway, things are working and life is good.

regards
Jesper

I cant remember everything we add, but that recovery image has been tweaked since the original iso release to help make stuff easier.