Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

AmigaOne X1000 platform specific issues.
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Epsilon
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Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by Epsilon »

Hi All,

I am trying to setup the X1000 to use three graphics cards under AmigaOS4.1.6. specifically, the first contact Radeon 4XXX PCI-e, Radeon 5450 PCI-e, and a Radeon 9250 PCI.

I know under AmigaOS4.1.6 you can run dual graphics cards and I already do this using the dual display procedure from a-eon provided way back in 2012 - I can run 2xPCI-e cards together under AmigaOS4.1.6, or 1 pci-e and 1 pci under AmigaOS4.1.6. But the system won't boot into AmigaOS4.1.6 with 3 cards installed. The X1000 boot process gets as far as the A-eon boot screen, the progress bar gets to the end and then it freezes at that point and boots no further.

Basically I want to use the dual HD radeons for everyday use in AmigaOS4.1, and be able to switch to the radeon 9250 to run warp3d stuff.

Is it possible, and how do I go about doing it if it is? Thanks in advance for your help.

Catcha,
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Hans
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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by Hans »

Epsilon wrote:Is it possible, and how do I go about doing it if it is? Thanks in advance for your help.
In theory it should be possible, although I haven't tried it myself. On the AmigaOS side, you'd create a copy of your PCIGraphics monitor in DEVS:Monitors/. You'd call this PCIGraphics2, but leave all of its tool-types the same.

However, it sounds like you're not even getting to the second level booter (where you choose the kicklayout), in which case AmigaOS isn't even started. Are you sure that it isn't continuing the boot process on one of the other monitors? With Sam motherboards, using dual graphics cards used to make it boot on the card that UBoot didn't use. That caused confusion.

Do you have the most recent version of the A1-X1000's firmware installed?

Hans
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by Epsilon »

Hans wrote: In theory it should be possible, although I haven't tried it myself. On the AmigaOS side, you'd create a copy of your PCIGraphics monitor in DEVS:Monitors/. You'd call this PCIGraphics2, but leave all of its tool-types the same.

However, it sounds like you're not even getting to the second level booter (where you choose the kicklayout), in which case AmigaOS isn't even started. Are you sure that it isn't continuing the boot process on one of the other monitors? With Sam motherboards, using dual graphics cards used to make it boot on the card that UBoot didn't use. That caused confusion.

Do you have the most recent version of the A1-X1000's firmware installed?

Hans
Interesting, regarding the pcigraphics2 monitor - I will try that when I finish work today. I had three monitors connected, one for each gfx card when trying this out last night.

As you say, it isn't getting to the second level booter, so I suspect the problem is cfe based. The cfe firmware is upgraded - it was the version released at the time the dual display functionality was released back in July 2012. Is there a newer version of cfe than that available on a-eon.com? I checked the site but there is no version number or date listed for the cfe file to know if it is newer or not....

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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by Hans »

Epsilon wrote:As you say, it isn't getting to the second level booter, so I suspect the problem is cfe based. The cfe firmware is upgraded - it was the version released at the time the dual display functionality was released back in July 2012. Is there a newer version of cfe than that available on a-eon.com? I checked the site but there is no version number or date listed for the cfe file to know if it is newer or not....
AFAIK, the July 2012 update is the most recent one.

Hans
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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

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Hans wrote:
Epsilon wrote:As you say, it isn't getting to the second level booter, so I suspect the problem is cfe based. The cfe firmware is upgraded - it was the version released at the time the dual display functionality was released back in July 2012. Is there a newer version of cfe than that available on a-eon.com? I checked the site but there is no version number or date listed for the cfe file to know if it is newer or not....
AFAIK, the July 2012 update is the most recent one.

Hans
I tried this evening creating the additional PCIGraphics2 monitor driver in DEVS:Monitors under AmigaOS4.1.6 (i did modify the length field because it is now 12 instead of 11 for PCIGraphics), but still the same result, it freezes when the progress bar completes on the x1000 boot screen with the three cards installed.
two pci-e card displays and 1 pci card display - x1000 boot screen freezes when progress bar reaches end. 9250 pci card never displays anything during boot up.
two pci-e card displays and 1 pci card display - x1000 boot screen freezes when progress bar reaches end. 9250 pci card never displays anything during boot up.
Interestingly I also got a 9250 PCI card from Amigakit for my A4000T today and decided to try it out as well in place of my regular 9250 pci in the x1000 (with the two other pci-e cards installed). On boot up I don't get the X1000 boot screen AT ALL - I get a screen with a yellow cursor (normal) and a screen with a blue cursor (which I have never seen before). Only differences between the two 9250 pci cards is the normal x1000 one is half height pci, the amigakit is full size, and that the amigakit supplied one support both voltage pci type connectors. Strange.
Yellow and Blue cursors in the pci-e card displays with 9250 pci from amigakit installed in the x1000 on boot up.
Yellow and Blue cursors in the pci-e card displays with 9250 pci from amigakit installed in the x1000 on boot up.
As a side note, I tried to boot ubuntu remix linux on the x1000 with only the two pci-e cards installed and got a kernel panic on boot...a topic for the linux forum i know, but I thought it worth mentioning rather than creating another thread about it.
Linux kernel panic booting ubuntu remix with two pci-e cards installed in x1000
Linux kernel panic booting ubuntu remix with two pci-e cards installed in x1000
Is there any other suggestions on how I can get this 3 graphics card setup to work under AmigaOS4.1.6 on the X1000? Thanks in advance.

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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by nbache »

Epsilon wrote:I tried this evening creating the additional PCIGraphics2 monitor driver in DEVS:Monitors under AmigaOS4.1.6 (i did modify the length field because it is now 12 instead of 11 for PCIGraphics)
So you now have one called PCIGraphics and another one called PCIGraphics2? I think you might need to rename the first one to PCIGraphics1 and increase the length tool type to 12 for that one as well, otherwise it will match both names.

But whether that is your problem, I don't know.

Best regards,

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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by Hans »

nbache wrote:
Epsilon wrote:I tried this evening creating the additional PCIGraphics2 monitor driver in DEVS:Monitors under AmigaOS4.1.6 (i did modify the length field because it is now 12 instead of 11 for PCIGraphics)
So you now have one called PCIGraphics and another one called PCIGraphics2? I think you might need to rename the first one to PCIGraphics1 and increase the length tool type to 12 for that one as well, otherwise it will match both names.
I specifically said to leave all tool-types alone because you *want* both files to load PCIGraphics.card!

Picasso96's boot process is rather weird. The primary graphics card's settings are loaded from the monitor file that matches it by name (NOTE: BOARDNAME must match the filename, and CMPLENGTH should be the right length). With Radeon/RadeonHD cards you can actually get away with a "Radeon" monitor file (BOARDNAME=Radeon, CMPLENGTH=6). With secondary cards, things work differently. Here, it tries to load a *.card driver that matches the first CMPLENGTH characters in BOARDNAME. Therefore, if BOARDNAME=PCIGraphics.card, then PCIGraphics.card will be loaded. Each time PCIGraphics.card is loaded, it will attempt to start up the next uninitialised graphics card in the system. Hence, for three monitors, you want to load PCIGraphics.card twice. PCIGraphics1/2.card doesn't exist.

@Epsilon
Not that it makes any difference until you can get the OS to start booting with three cards connected, but you need to set CMPLENGTH back to the original value. If you changed BOARDNAME, then revert that too.
nbache wrote:But whether that is your problem, I don't know.
His problem is that OS4 never even starts booting. So, the monitor files in DEVS:Monitors/ are irrelevant, for now.

Hans
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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by Hans »

Epsilon wrote: I tried this evening creating the additional PCIGraphics2 monitor driver in DEVS:Monitors under AmigaOS4.1.6 (i did modify the length field because it is now 12 instead of 11 for PCIGraphics), but still the same result, it freezes when the progress bar completes on the x1000 boot screen with the three cards installed.
IMG_4472.JPG
Okay, this looks a little different than I thought. I was under the impression that AmigaOS 4's kickstart modules weren't even beginning to load, but that progress bar along the bottom suggests otherwise. I personally never see that progress bar on my system, because I have a more complicated boot process. After that boot logo (and a menu), it drops down to a plain text screen that asks me which kicklayout I want to boot.

If it's stopping right after loading the kickstart modules, then the graphics card isn't even being initialised. The primary graphics card's screen should be shut down (at least, if a Radeon HD card is the primary card). Are you able to connect the serial port to another computer, and enable serial debugging?

Maybe changing your CFE settings might allow it to boot. However, you'll have to talk to someone who has played with those settings more than me. The only thing that I did was to set up a boot menu to choose between booting with and without serial debugging enabled. That was a long time ago.

Hans
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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by Epsilon »

Hans wrote: Okay, this looks a little different than I thought. I was under the impression that AmigaOS 4's kickstart modules weren't even beginning to load, but that progress bar along the bottom suggests otherwise. I personally never see that progress bar on my system, because I have a more complicated boot process. After that boot logo (and a menu), it drops down to a plain text screen that asks me which kicklayout I want to boot.

If it's stopping right after loading the kickstart modules, then the graphics card isn't even being initialised. The primary graphics card's screen should be shut down (at least, if a Radeon HD card is the primary card). Are you able to connect the serial port to another computer, and enable serial debugging?

Maybe changing your CFE settings might allow it to boot. However, you'll have to talk to someone who has played with those settings more than me. The only thing that I did was to set up a boot menu to choose between booting with and without serial debugging enabled. That was a long time ago.
Hans
Hi Hans,

Thanks for the explanation about the PCIGraphics driver - I wasn't aware of this. Following your advice I changed the PCIGraphics2 driver to revert to the same tooltypes as the original PCIGraphics, but I still get the same result on bootup. I booted into CFE and did a show vga command to show the three cards are recognised as present by CFE - not sure if this helps but maybe it does - not sure why one device has a * next to it? is it relevant?
output of show vga command in cfe showing the two pci-e cards and one 9250 pci
output of show vga command in cfe showing the two pci-e cards and one 9250 pci
Higher up it says "VGA (10/0/0): ISA memory space mapped to f80000000000" and then "No vga bios on this adapter"....I assume it is the 9250. It works fine when installed with one pci-e card, but not with 2 pci-e cards as well as itself...what is happening?

Also did a show pci in CFE in case this helps at all, showing the devices connected. Note that at this point I had the 9250 PCI connected to a PCI-e to PCI adapter, as I hadn't tried that configuration as yet. It didn't work either, stops at the same point.
output of show pci command in cfe showing the three gfx cards.
output of show pci command in cfe showing the three gfx cards.
Still hopeful of a solution to this...

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Re: Three Graphics cards on X1000 possible?

Post by Hans »

Epsilon wrote:I booted into CFE and did a show vga command to show the three cards are recognised as present by CFE - not sure if this helps but maybe it does - not sure why one device has a * next to it? is it relevant?
I'm guessing that the * means that the card wasn't initialised properly. That * is next to the card with the error message that you described below.
Epsilon wrote:Higher up it says "VGA (10/0/0): ISA memory space mapped to f80000000000" and then "No vga bios on this adapter"....I assume it is the 9250. It works fine when installed with one pci-e card, but not with 2 pci-e cards as well as itself...what is happening?
That may be what's stopping it from booting. It hasn't managed to get the card's ROM, and therefore can't initialise it. If it was a Radeon HD card, then the driver might be able to still use it (the driver does an ASICInit, although the BIOS not doing initialisation could still cause trouble). However, the card that isn't initialised is the Radeon 9250, and I'm pretty sure that it's driver expects that card to be initialised properly by the BIOS (a.k.a., CFE).

If you have a null modem serial cable and another PC, then we might be able to get more info about how far it gets through booting.

Hans
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
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