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Of course you don't need web access, i just thought you might have a LAN already attached

I've been a long-time classic user, always wanting to go NextGen for OS4.x, but couldnt' due to the high cost of hardware. Well, I finally found an A1XE G3 motherboard, so I decided to take the plunge and get it and put it into a standard ATX case with Radeon AGP 9000 pro, soundblaster 128, peripheral card and RadeonHD4650 with pci/pcie adapter (the last ones are for after I get 4.1).

Please, do me a favour and take that card out, so you only have the 9000, soundblaster and peripheral card(?) in
...i got a hunch on this one...

You don't happen to have a serial cable to read out if it's crashing?
If it doesn't show the splash screen it means it's freezing before or right at the gfx card initialization...i'd love to see the serial output

Raziel wrote:

themamboman wrote:peripheral card

What sort of peripheral card is this?

and RadeonHD4650 with pci/pcie adapter

Please, do me a favour and take that card out, so you only have the 9000, soundblaster and peripheral card(?) in
...i got a hunch on this one...

I agree. The RadeonHD card won't be able to display anything without a (fairly recent) RadeonHD kickstart module, which you may not yet have, but the machine might get confused and try to use it anyway, resulting in the black screen.

But I'd also take out that peripheral card (whatever it is), at least until you get the rest working. Then you can always try installing it again.

If it doesn't show the splash screen it means it's freezing before or right at the gfx card initialization...i'd love to see the serial output

It's not necessarily a freeze, it might just try displayng on the wrong card. But even that would most likely be shown in the serial log.

Best regards,

Niels

peripheral card: Syba SD-VIA-1A5E1IR, multiple USB ports, SATA, eSATA and IDE. I'd read somewhere, maybe intuitionbase.com, that it was a good addition. It's been removed since near the start of this thread so it can't be the issue. As far as I can tell, no USB or SATA fixes are on this motherboard.

The Radeon has also been removed since near the beginning of this experiment.

So, right now, the only things in there are: Motherboard, Soundblaster 128PCI, Radeon 9000 pro AGP. Attached are a ps2 keyboard and a USB mouse. A dvd reader and a 32GB IDE harddrive. There is 1 GB RAM (2 512 modules) that came with it. It's a G3 800 cpu card.

I don't have a serial cable here. I can borrow one from work Monday and try. Should it be a null modem cable to my laptop?

Okay, so fast recap, I made an a1ide_conf file with the values 2100. My DVD reader is master and the HDD is the slave (due to lack of jumpers I had to do it this way). I think the 2100 makes this work, correct? Well, doing this prevents the boing ball, but ends with nothing on screen.

I then just tried changing to 1200 for the a1ide_conf. Got the boing ball animation.

Changed back to 2100. This time, I just happened to have the install CD in the drive. Although it loaded from HDD very fast, it went blank, then after a while, I heard the CD spin up and the installer started up again, even though it was set to boot from IDE disk, not CD. Makes me think that it still couldn't find something on the HDD and did a fall back to the next boot device?

There is 1 GB RAM (2 512 modules) that came with it. It's a G3 800 cpu card.

Remove one of the modules, my A1-XE always reads/writes corrupt data from the HDD with a 2nd RAM module.

themamboman wrote:peripheral card: Syba SD-VIA-1A5E1IR, multiple USB ports, SATA, eSATA and IDE. I'd read somewhere, maybe intuitionbase.com, that it was a good addition. It's been removed since near the start of this thread so it can't be the issue. As far as I can tell, no USB or SATA fixes are on this motherboard.

The Radeon has also been removed since near the beginning of this experiment.

So, right now, the only things in there are: Motherboard, Soundblaster 128PCI, Radeon 9000 pro AGP. Attached are a ps2 keyboard and a USB mouse. A dvd reader and a 32GB IDE harddrive. There is 1 GB RAM (2 512 modules) that came with it. It's a G3 800 cpu card.

good

Please do as ZeroG suggests and take one of the RAM modules out aswell

I don't have a serial cable here. I can borrow one from work Monday and try. Should it be a null modem cable to my laptop?

Yes, you also need a terminal program to read it out on your pc
I'm using PuTTY
You may want to read the redirecting serial output atricle by Hans de Ruiter on how to achieve that "easily".

Okay, so fast recap, I made an a1ide_conf file with the values 2100. My DVD reader is master and the HDD is the slave (due to lack of jumpers I had to do it this way). I think the 2100 makes this work, correct? Well, doing this prevents the boing ball, but ends with nothing on screen.

I then just tried changing to 1200 for the a1ide_conf. Got the boing ball animation.

Changed back to 2100. This time, I just happened to have the install CD in the drive. Although it loaded from HDD very fast, it went blank, then after a while, I heard the CD spin up and the installer started up again, even though it was set to boot from IDE disk, not CD. Makes me think that it still couldn't find something on the HDD and did a fall back to the next boot device?

OK, so it's not freezing, Niels was right
Now we need to find out why it's doing nothing for a long time and then access the CD

btw: what happens if you leave the CD in, does it start the installation process and can you "see" it?
Or is it just a guess that it's starting installation again?

Because if the CD can't bring up the screen and you hear it only spin up, there's a good chance that workbench was loaded in the background and now it's simply accessing the CD (that would mean the installed Radeon driver is ... not right):-)

Hum, i wonder if it would help to load in the installation CD workbench and simply copy over the screenmode prefs from CD to HDD...

Okay, thanks again to everyone helping me out here.

I took out one of the extra RAM modules. Also set max in Uboot to 512 now (the amount currently detected). No change.

I had previously tried to copy the screenmode prefs file from the CD's env-archive to the HDD one. No change.

I have to wait until tomorrow night to catch the serial output. I've set up the boot arguments to allow this as mentioned in the RadeonHD website log.

I still think it has something to do with not finding the system files. If I have the CD in the drive, it will eventually try to boot off of that even though it started by booting from the HDD. When it does, it eventually comes up in the CD with installer started just as if I'd booted from the disk in the first place.

I do appreciate the help everyone is willing to give. I had no idea nextgen Amiga would be this hard to get going. I'm hoping to get it working soon. I'd toyed with the idea of getting a system with the OS preinstalled but that's a lot of money to spend. And knowing how much trouble I've had just getting this going makes me worried about my ability to fix a system that may eventually have harddrive issues.

themamboman wrote:I do appreciate the help everyone is willing to give. I had no idea nextgen Amiga would be this hard to get going.

Normally it isn't. There's something unusual going on in your case, or something we just haven't thought of checking yet.

Hmm, speaking of which: You didn't by any chance install a filesystem into your RDB, did you? That's a no-no under OS4. Only the slb should be there.

Best regards,

Niels

Hmm, speaking of which: You didn't by any chance install a filesystem into your RDB, did you? That's a no-no under OS4. Only the slb should be there.

Okay, well, originally, I had used the HDD on an A4000T, so the very first time I installed, I saw my old partitions. I've since repartitioned.

I'm not exactly what you mean about having a filesystem installed into the RDB. Here's what I did:

- Opened MTB,
- Edited RDB, read the configuration, which warned me that it would wipe the drive
- Installed the SLB from the CD:L/ directory (slb_v2)
- then went back and partitioned.
- did many different configs, Right now, there are 2 partitions, DH0 (FFS/Long) at 2GB, and DH1 (FFS/Long) at 30GB. '
- then went back and saved changed to drive, exited MTB, rebooted, then restarted the install.

Before doing the main install, I always open MTB, check to make sure the slb is installed and that DH0 is set to bootable, priority zero, DH1 not bootable, both automount.

Installer puts files onto DH0. Quite a number of file copies later, it asks for screenmode, I've been choosing 800x600 60hz to match the installer since I can see that.

Whenever I reboot now, it will countdown, then show a boot entry that says DH0 AmigaOS4.0 . I choose that, then the kickstart bar loads up quickly, then blanks. (Before I made the a1ide_conf file of 2100 it would show insert floppy, now it is just blank). If I happen to have the installer CD in the drive, it will be blank for 30 seconds or so, then I'll hear the CD spin up and then it goes back into installer start, and everything is loaded off the CD. SYS: is the CD at that point.

Something about the harddrive config is throwing me off.

Once I get this working, I'm going to buy 4.1/4.2 and start porting and developing for Amiga again. If I can't get this working, I may sell the hardware and either get a preinstalled Acube system (hate to spend that much $$$ though) or ...

Thanks again!

themamboman wrote:

Hmm, speaking of which: You didn't by any chance install a filesystem into your RDB, did you? That's a no-no under OS4. Only the slb should be there.

Okay, well, originally, I had used the HDD on an A4000T, so the very first time I installed, I saw my old partitions. I've since repartitioned.

I'm not exactly what you mean about having a filesystem installed into the RDB. Here's what I did:

You can check if you still got a filesystem in the RDB by opening up MediaToolbox
1) Choose your device
2) Choose your HDD
3) Edit Partitions and filesystems
4) Left side, third button from above "Add, remove or edit filesystems"
5) You must *not* have any filesystems in this list, it must be empty
--> If there are any, remove them

Installer puts files onto DH0. Quite a number of file copies later, it asks for screenmode, I've been choosing 800x600 60hz to match the installer since I can see that.

Just for the sake of completeness, did you ever try another screenmode?
1024x768 i.e.?

Whenever I reboot now, it will countdown, then show a boot entry that says DH0 AmigaOS4.0 . I choose that, then the kickstart bar loads

Again, just for completeness, you shouldn't need to choose it, it gets picked once the counter finishes (except you still have the CD in drive which might cause problems afterwards...always boot from HDD *without* the CD in drive

up quickly, then blanks. (Before I made the a1ide_conf file of 2100 it would show insert floppy, now it is just blank). If I happen to have

Leave the UBoot vars alone for now, you got it to boot, that's all that counts right now, we don't want to mess them up again

the installer CD in the drive, it will be blank for 30 seconds or so, then I'll hear the CD spin up and then it goes back into installer start, and everything is loaded off the CD. SYS: is the CD at that point.

Added to my comment above...you will get more than problem if you leave the CD in drive once you have finished installing, please take them out, do a cold reboot (better yet turn the machine off and restart)

Something about the harddrive config is throwing me off.

Once I get this working, I'm going to buy 4.1/4.2 and start porting and developing for Amiga again. If I can't get this working, I may sell the hardware and either get a preinstalled Acube system (hate to spend that much $$$ though) or ...

Nah, just don't give up yet, we'll make this baby walk, promise

PS: You don't happen to have a non HD gfx card lying around?
Radeon9000, 9200, 9800 or something like that?

Okay, checked and nothing was listing under filesystems in RDB.

I did check most of the other screenmodes. Since the screenmode for the installer CD worked, I've been sticking to that one for now.

When the machine starts up it's in the terminal-like environment with white letters. When it does the initial, short countdown, it then shows one option in RED: DHO AmigaOS4. I have to choose that option, because there is no countdown. I'm guessing this is like a grub-like selection with no default countdown?

I'm using an Radeon9000Pro in the AGP for this part. I've long ago removed the RadeonHD card.

--

Okay, maybe another method would be better (until I can get the serial output).

Pretend you just got an A1XE board, with no visible dma or usb fixes.
It has Uboot 1.1.1 loaded, you just went through and reset the uboot settings to factory default.
You have 1 DVD drive on the primary IDE controller, as master, 1 32GB HDD slave drive on the same primary
The only cards installed are the AGP card and a sound card (I can remove that too in case).
The keyboard is ps2 and the mouse is USB (I can change to ps2 mouse too if needed)
The uboot settings have the IDE CD as the boot1 device, there is no *_conf file or *_xfer file

How would you go about setting things up? I can do anything at this point without worry about losing data
The CD is the Amiga4.0 final iso (not the 2007 update though, that would be later)


What I did was to go to the intuitionbase.com article on uboot to follow the page: http://intuitionbase.com/static.php?section=uboot

(I had looked at the quickstart guide but it was for linux. I didn't want to bother with debian and just wanted to go for the real Amiga OS, should I have done differently?

the uboot instructions on that website have these commands:

] setenv preboot
] setenv bootdelay
] setenv menuboot_delay 5
] setenv bootcmd "menu; run menuboot_cmd"
] saveenv

I also added the setting: autostart=on, and after reading on the forums, I created a file called a1ide_conf with the value 2100.

What would you have done differently?

Thanks so much to everyone. I so hope I can get this working soon.