Problems booting a new Sam460LE

Hello everyone.

I am trying to set up my Sam460LE but it is a painful experience. There seems to be no documentation delivered with it, so each step has to be figured out the hard way.

I have an RX560 so I connected the serial port and in the terminal on my PC I get this:

U-Boot 2015.b (Dec 23 2022 - 13:11:28)

CPU: AMCC PowerPC 460EX Rev. B at 1140 MHz (PLB=228 OPB=114 EBC=114)
No Security/Kasumi support
Bootstrap Option H - Boot ROM Location I2C (Addr 0x52)
Internal PCI arbiter enabled
32 kB I-Cache 32 kB D-Cache
Board: Sam460, PCIe 4x + PCIe 1x
I2C: ready
DRAM: 2 GiB (ECC not enabled, 456 MHz, CL4)
PCI: Bus Dev VenId DevId Class Int
PCIE0: link is not up.
PCIE1: successfully set as root-complex
02 00 1002 67ff 0300 ff
Net: ppc_4xx_eth0
FPGA: Revision 03 (2010-10-07)
SM502: not found
PERMD2:not found
VGA: 1
VESA: OK

So far so good. But then it just hangs after displaying VESA: OK and I cannot proceed any further. This is regardless of whether I put the OS4 SD card that was delivered with the system in the SD card slot or not.

I understand that eventually, I will have to add the RX560 drivers to the SD card in order to boot with the Radeon, but that won't help if Uboot gets stuck before I can select a boot medium! Anyone have any suggestions on how I can move forward here?

Answering myself. Without the card inserted, I get the following output from Uboot:

VGA: NO CARDS
Model: Sam460cr/le, PCIe 4x + PCIe 1x
USB: EHCI 1.00
scanning bus for devices... 3 USB Device(s) found
scanning usb for storage devices... 1 Storage Device(s) found
Press SPACE for menu, ESC or Q for prompt, Enter for boot source
Countdown.. 0
FLB: no SLB found in any of the designated boot sources; returning to u-boot.
Press any key to continue

So it seems that it is hanging while trying to initialise the video card. Uboot detects it as a VESA card, tries to emulate its x86 BIOS code (I believe this is how PPC Uboot works) and this doesn't work.

So even though I read loads of forum posts and selected my graphics card very carefully, I've got one that doesn't work. *sigh*

And the fan on the CPU is so loud it feels like my head is going to explode. I'm really not impressed with this €1000 lemon. No documentation, no website, no support, only a half implemented Uboot... Oh and the PCI slot is too close to the PCI-express slot, so the SATA card I bought with the system bumps up against the graphics card. Did it not occur to the designers that graphics cards are pretty big these days and perhaps it's better to swap the positions of these two slots?

Ok, I tried booting with the supplied SD card but that just results in Uboot crashing with a machine check exception and going into a reboot loop.

Quality-wise, this is very disappointing.

@Hitman

You won't be able to boot with an RX560 since no driver for this card is provided by ACube (actually no RX driver is present on the bare AmigaOS 4.1 install CD or SD Card). And U-Boot doesn't display anything with RX cards.

You will have to boot with a supported graphic card by AmigaOS 4.1 from scratch (an agreement allows AmigaOS 4.1 to use a special version of the Radeon HD driver).

You'll have to install your Sam460 with a Radeon 4650 for example. Then you'll have to purchase and install the Enhancer Software v2.2 to in order to have the RX driver installed.

Then you'll be able to switch your graphic card to the RX560 and everything should work correctly.

PS : I prefer buying a whole prepared system instead of loosing lots of time trying to get everything working by myself.

Hmm, interesting.

From the research I did before buying the card, I was under the impression that I could edit the OS4 installer SD card to add the RX drivers to it, and then I could boot and install using the RX560. Is this not correct?

Also, you say "And U-Boot doesn't display anything with RX cards."

Could you explain exactly what that means, please? thanks for the information!

@Hitman

If it is anywhere near the situation in an X1000 (CFE), you won't be able to see or change anything on UBoot level, once the RX card is in place, since UBoot doesn't support the RX cards on firmware level (neither does CFE).
You'll need a serial connection for that, then.

Once the RX driver was loaded and WB comes up you'll have your display back...though, i was under the impression that ACube adapted their UBoot to work with RX cards (maybe i'm mixing things up again, though)

@Hitman

The AmigaOS install iso doesn't come with any RadeonRX driver. Only with a lite version of RadeonHD driver. So you'll need Enhancer for RadeonRX support.

Just adding the RadeonRX driver from Enhancer to your kickstart drawer is not enough.

You need to do the following:
1. Add RadeonRX.chip driver the "System/Kickstart" drawer.
2. Add "MODULE Kickstart/RadeonRX.chip" to both "Kickstart/kicklayout" and "/System/Kickstart/kicklayout"
3. Disable compositing in your "Installation-Support/startprefs.bat" by disabling the following lines:

;:Installation-Support/CheckHardwareCompose
;if $RC EQ 0
;copy :Installation-Files/GUI-compose.prefs env:sys/GUI.prefs
;setenv _INSTALL_HWACCEL 1
;else
copy :Installation-Files/GUI.prefs env:sys
setenv _INSTALL_HWACCEL 0
;endif


See this thread for more info:
https://www.amigans.net/modules/newbb/ ... id=135388#forumpost135388

@Hitman
Quote:

It is correct. You can do as explained by geennaam.
But you need an OS4 system to do it as the SD card is in an OS4 format that Windows/MacOS/Linux cannot read.

Quote:

You see nothing in Uboot because the RX Cards are not yet supported by Uboot. But when OS4 starts and when the correct drivers are installed, you will be able to use the system normally.

To use a RX card you need to purchase the Radeon RX driver from Aeon to support the RX video cards.
This it NOT the V5 driver.
See https://amitopia.com/a-eon-with-great- ... -software-graphics-users/

Thanks for the information.

So before I pay €90 for the Enhancer 2.2 software I want to confirm:

1) This contains the driver that allows me to use a Radeon RX560 in my Sam460LE
2) Using an RX card allows me to use 3D OpenGL

I ask because on the Enhancer software page (https://amigakit.amiga.store/enhancer-software-release-p-1278.html) it talks about 2D support for Radeon RX but doesn't mention 3D. I bought my Sam460LE because I want to be able to run a modern graphics card with 3D support, so if the RX doesn't do 3D then it's not very useful for me.

@Hitman

1 Yes
2 Yes
3 (even if you did not ask) yes, it will also allow you to play HD and 4k videos (With Emotion or DvPlayer)

@Hitman
Do not remember if i spam you with my video about sam460 (probably yes), but just in case, the whole procedure of installing RadeonRX on sam460 here:

https://youtu.be/X75KbnOpZhA

There you can see that because of no UBOOT visibly on radeonrx, i do use Serial cable attached to some notebook with putty , so i can see what actually happens. Without serial cable attached you will be in pain, because it easily can be that uboot is setuped somehow different, and you will be not able to boot until not touch some settings of it (at least, that how it was with my sam460).

Also, at the end of the video, you can see what you can expect in terms of speed. 3D games through will be slow mostly, because GART is disabled in RadeonRX driver for sam460 by technical reasons, which mean in turn that while sam460 all fine in all areas, in 3D games front is not the best.

@kas1e that's a very useful video. I am using serial as I understand that nothing will appear on the screen with an RX560 card.

In your video, when you didn't have a USB stick in, you got this output on serial:

VGA: 1
VESA: OK

Then it stopped. I get the same thing. But when you put a USB stick in, it started scanning it. When I put the SD card in, I don't get any text coming up about scanning for boot devices. It just stops at VESA: OK. When I remove the RX560, I get this:

VGA: NO CARDS
Model: Sam460cr/le, PCIe 4x + PCIe 1x
USB: EHCI 1.00
scanning bus for devices... 3 USB Device(s) found
scanning usb for storage devices... 1 Storage Device(s) found

So I understand that I won't get any output on the monitor, but why is the boot process stopping for me after it detects the RX560 card? It does not continue and print Model: and "scanning bus" etc.

This is the part that I don't understand.

Hi, so you get text on serial debug?

Can you boot without rx card and on serial just type:
printenv
it should spit Uboot envvars.
Please post'em here.

I have/use a sam460EX and a RX550 (slim)
...
PCIE1: successfully set as root-complex
02 00 1002 699f 0300 ff
...

maybe the vga boot emulation (x86emu Uboot envvar) set in your sam is to "strict", such value in my sam460EX is 1.


my Uboot envars are:

@jabirulo

Here is my list of environment variables:

] printenv
baudrate=115200
loads_echo=1
hostname=Sam460ex
stdout=vga
stdin=usbkbd
hush=0
ide_doreset=on
ide_reset_timeout=15
ide_cd_timeout=20
pcie_mode=RP:RP
pciconfighost=1
ipaddr=192.168.2.50
serverip=192.168.2.222
video_activate=pci
bootcmd=menu; run menuboot_cmd
menucmd=menu
boot_method=boota
usb_enable_4x0=1
usb_retry=1
usb_ohci_power_down_before_reset=1
scan_usb_storage=1
ethact=ppc_4xx_eth0
serdes=pcie
s4sii_maxbus=1
ethaddr=00:50:c2:80:d6:19
boot1=usb
boot2=s4siicdrom
boot3=s4sii
boota_timeout=2
menuboot_delay=2
os4_commandline=debuglevel=0
bootargs=root=/dev/sda3 console=tty0
ver=U-Boot 2015.b (Dec 23 2022 - 13:11:28)
menuboot_cmd=boota

Environment size: 644/1020 bytes

There was no x86emu, so I set it to x86emu=1 but it still just hangs after detecting the video card. Nothing appears on the serial port and it doesn't try to scan boot sources. So it seems that I have bought an incompatible RX card that just hangs Uboot!!!

@Hitman: Can you reach the boot menu, or does it hang before you reach that stage?

@arfcarl

No, I can't reach the boot menu. It hangs just after detecting the graphics card, before trying to scan for boot devices.

@Hitman

I guess it doesn't help to remove all USB peripherals? Keyboard, mouse etc.

Just grasping at straws at this point.

@Hitman

I can see that @jabirulo has

while you have

Not that i think it will make a difference, but sometimes it's the little things.

Also, try to set

not that the *vga* output intervenes...

@Raziel & @Hitman

Alas I can't remember what "serdes" variable is for.

IIRC the "stdout=serial" is to get on serial output (text) uboot, no menu available, just to see amigaos menu boot options and to pause/cancel boot and change some values using serial debug if I need to.

Using on a PC putty as serial/com1 terminal.


EDIT1: seems "serdes" is (on my "old" sam460EX) to enable/disable SATA2 instead of PCIe x1, so I set it to pci-e (instead of sata2)

The sam460LE doesn't have internal SATA2 connectors, but "serdes=pci-e" seems "Default environment variables"