x1000 documentation and other x1000 related questions

No ether.

@kas1e

Onboard sound is fine (using it myself)

Onboard ethernet has a beta driver stuck in limbo and probably lost forever, so extra card needed (using a rtl8169)

@kas1e

What I understand is that
Onboard Sound is working .
Onboard Ethernet is not .

I can confirm onboard Sound is working fine, Ethernet is no driver available for OS4, only Linux works with onboard Ethernet.

@Spectre660

That is correct

Hello everyone.

Finally I'm here.

So a few subjects...


CFE version:
There is no obvious way to check exact CFE version. All versions report same version number from CFE. The only sure way to check for latest is boot image as reported earlier. Another way is trying to boot a modern CD like OS4.1 and see if it breaks. There weren't many updates.


USB booting:
USB booting can work but it doesn't support it automatically. For comparison, the XE can autoboot USB, but it needs some manual setup. Looks like the Sam already has set up as standard. There are a number of ways to do it, depending on if you load amigaboot from USB, or from HDD as normal and let it scan and find your USB drive. Though I can't find any info on if amigaboot scans USB drives so that may be a showstopper. CFE can load any binary from USB needed to boot.

So, you will need to script it, or enter boot commands manually to do it. Described in the manual. This brings another issue, CFE has no ability to autoboot drives, unlike UBoot. It cannot even scan for drives. It must be scripted. The boot set up relies on it. Technically, it could be scripted to scan drive ports with a rigid script checking internal ports, but they didn't do that. By default, it expects a CD in one SATA port and HDD in next. It may be CD in 0 and HDD in 1. I forget. Some people change it. I left it to avoid trouble. Like Uboot, you can enter boot commands in env vars, and use them as commands for booting. So it's similar in a way. Unlike X5000 there is no USB booting standard. You could automate by loading a batch file from USB. You can save env vars in CFE containing boot commands. So, you could create a custom "usbboot" command that executed a few boot commands, or even off loaded to USB and ran a batch file from USB drive. I used to do that with Linux.

If you keep all files on one partition then the USB drive will need formatting as FFS. As amigaboot needs to load from it and then locate it as boot media. Otherwise you can install amigaboot to a FFS boot volume and add another for Workbench as SFS, for example. It may be easiest to set up a boot menu to do it. So on to the next part.


Boot menus:
The X1000 can be customised with user boot menus. Like most things on X1000 it has to be set up by hand on a cryptic command line. So, once you managed to create a USB booter, including commands needed to boot it you can then manually set it up in CFE. Saving it to NVRAM in the format outlined on the boot guide for adding a boot menu. Then a fancier looking one will appear on boot up.


CFE warning:
A word of warning. You cannot use CFE after a binary executes! Example: aborting amigaboot and exiting to CFE. It will crash and reboot within one minute or seconds later! So if you need to use CFE make sure to do it from the menu before amigaboot loads or you will find it will suddenly reboot.



Amiga booting:
Okay, so the amigaboot.of boot loader is in a file, against SLB in a bootblock. In a perfect world Media Toolbox would set this up and hide it from the user. Be it SLB boot block, or amigaboot partition file, it doesn't matter, it simply needs to part of the Media Toolbox HDD install procedure. Installing a boot block, or creating a hidden boot partition, as part of the process, is the obvious solution. But unfortunately Media Toolbox doesn't do this. There was a BOOT: volume standard idea but it came too late and not even the updaters support it and force you to do it manually because all systems might be different. It would have helped to define a standard first rather than a later. And if MTB did the job it would be a moot point.


Boot media:
Following on. You don't need a CF card or USB or whatever to boot from. It can boot from the HDD. Both Linux and OS4 can boot from HDD. I only found Linux even can a few years back. You just need to plonk an amigaboot.of file on a FFS boot volume, first volume best, on your HDD then forget about it.

A bit about Linux. The convention is to boot the kernel from CF or USB in my case, as it would not load from HDD. I found out why. X1000 kernels are commonly 30MB uncompressed. This loads fine from FAT formatted drive. But breaks from FFS for some reason. From FFS CFE can only load a binary up to about 11 to 12MB. Like XE UBoot. So I could never get Linux to boot off HDD. I only had one HDD so had no FAT volume I could load from. But, when I found the X1000 kernals are abnormally uncompressed, I GZipped one up and got it to load off FFS HDD! Problem solved! The X1000 kernals are also abnormally released as GZip you must install by hand. I say abnormal because normally kernels are released as installable packages. All the XE kernals are in packages since years, it's part of the PPC build script, so I don't know why it's not packaged for the X1000 releases.

However, if you have a hankering for Linux, for any possible reason what so ever, and manage to install it, then I fully recommend my X1Boot Manager! This will allow you to manage Linux installs and kernels from within Linux without needing to touch CFE. Using amigaboot so can boot from Linux using a standard shared menu.

@All
If CFE versioning is the same in all the CFE updates, then what about checking on the data of build inside of CFE ? This one for sure should differs.

For example i have 2 CFE binaries: one called cfe.7z , and inside of binary i find "Mon Aug 22 14:30:17 CEST 2011". Another CFE binary i have, named as cfe_20120608.lha, and inside i find this: "Fri Jun 8 16:04:49 CEST 2012". So build dates surely different, and mean that for me latest one is cfe_20120608.lha from 2012.


Can anyone refresh the memory, how many CFE updates were done since CFE in rev2.1 of board ? Or none at all and one coming with rev2.1 was the latest one ever ?

And if some of you can load their cfe bin in any hex editor and search for 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 that will help to know how many were updates, and how have latest one.

My X1000 is a rev2.1 and I have only ever updated CFE once.

del

@ddni
Still have somewhere that CFE binary by which you update your rev2.1 ? If so, can you check for words "2012" inside of it, or for "2013" and "2014" , just to find build date.

I think it is the one from here: https://www.amisphere.com/download/?agree=yes

Hex editor shows date "Fri Jun 8 16:04:49 CEST 2012"

@ddni
Yep, then seems like the "Fri Jun 8 16:04:49 CEST 2012" is the latest one. Thanks for checking

@All
Find out that X1000's Nemo didn't have rs232 connector on the rear of the motherboard (while X5000 one have), so there needs to connect on the board itself.. not very tasty, but not big deal of course, just one more difference.

@kas1e

This was an optional extra when buying the full AmigaOne X1000 system from Amigakit back in the day.

@ddni
Quote:

Probabaly it was just internal cable coming from motherboard to the adapter with 9 pin connector :)

@kas1e

https://amigakit.amiga.store/amigaone- ... -serial-cable-p-1062.html

https://amigakit.amiga.store/images/x1000-serial-cable.JPG

Just a backplate with a serial header and a wire to a mb connector.

Something to add. USB keyboard issues.

KVM issues:
Issues with KVMs include stopping it from booting, no being detected from CFE, crashing the USB stack, disrupting keyboard and mouse from early startup like blocking mouse movement and corrupted keycodes being sent.

Amiga Alted:
There used to be support for a proper Amiga and Alt placement of keys, which is Amiga keys adjacent to space bar, the Amiga way. For keyboards that were labelled this way but sent the codes backwards, that is sent them the PC way with Amiga as Alt and Alt as Amiga there used to be a CFE variable called keymap_swapaltamiga as mentioned in the X1000 boot guide.

For some reason they removed this and forced users to wait until AmigaOS has fully booted. This is unacceptable. For the following reasons. Some users understandably want to use a keyboard in a proper Amiga layout and not in the common PC or Microsoft way.

If they boot to the early start up screen and try to soft reboot from a Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga combo the X1000 will fully reset instead!

So you have a keyboard that is configured correctly in CFE, breaks in AmigaOS shell and startup menu, but then only works correctly if prefs are later loaded. How is that user friendly?

What also doesn't make sense is that officially supplied AmigaKit keyboards configured in the proper Amiga layout are also broken. This change should not have happened. It broke proper working behavior and there was no need to drop it. In the years since users have been frustrated because the OS doesn't consistently map the reset combos. So two wrong keys are being misinterpreted by the OS. Two wrongs do not make a right!

Following on some more info.

Keyboard issues:
Depending on your keyboard you may experience drop outs. I frequently have keyboard drop outs. The keyboard is still lit up but goes dead including the mouse. The USB log usually has some unknown key code error if it relates, but I also see the error when the keys still work. I have an Apple keyboard with hub and mouse plugged in so it's possible it does have a power issue and is sucking too much power for the USB ports.

However, this is a frequent occurrence on other machines like the Sam series where it is common. Commonly annoying more like. It's not unusual to boot up and find the mouse or keyboard must be removed because it doesn't work. No wonder people think the USB stack should be replaced.


Fatty issues:
You can configure the bootloader to load from HDD, USB or CF. A few people have it setup from CF card. This can be good for a backup in case there is a HDD error. But it isn't need for booting normally off HDD.

For USB and CF you can use FAT32 or FAT16. You can encounter FAT problems from CFE when it doesn't see any files. Sometimes FAT16 is best because CFE has an issue where it cannot find files after new files are written. I'm not entirely sure, but this may relate to writing files from OS4 which does not correctly dismount the filesystem and leaves it invalidated. Yes, the infamous FFS issue affects FAT drives, in exactly the same way. And it also affects Android phones, as a crash and reboot corrupted my SD card, and Android refused to mount. Doesn't even have basic tools to check and clear filesystem. How quaint. FAT16 appears to be more robust when new files are written.

Boot filesystems:
Aside from choosing which medium to load the boot loader from you can also choose file system. This can be FFS, FAT or Ext2. With an Amiga formatted drive with RDB this can be limited to just FFS as a compatible boot block will be needed. So sometimes another HDD is needed if you have Ext2 or FAT partitions with an MBR so CFE can understand it.

@All
Have few more questions:

1). We do have 2 serials on motherboard: 0(p26) and 1(p27). To which one you connect to have debug output ? When i connect to serial1 (p27), then debug output not works. If i connect to 0(26) then it works. To make it works for serial1 (p27) should i change something in CFE, or, setial1 just didn't works for debug at all ?


2). Is there a command in CFE, which mean "resume everything on the base settings" and then save it all ? So i want to clear everything to be as it should be by default.

3). Is it normal that when you type "reset" in CFE, things not resets normally and stay in black screen, and you need to power off/power on to have it back or use hard-reset on case ?

ad 1)
fisrt serial in CFE ( acc to CFE manual ) is activated "set console uart0"
so try "set console uart1". I am not tested it, have connected only first one.

2) and 3) I don't know