@Hypex I just go easy route for now : I create FFS boot of little size and put amigaboot.of there when booting from CD second time after installing os4.
What is strange is why X1000 installation CD didn't ask me about bootloader .. because i am sure, when i install OS4FE on pegasos2, it surely did ask me to where place bootloader (and there i the same have "Boot" volume).
By all means it looks like bug in x1000 (only?) installation CD.
Anyway, step by step i relaize why they go X5000 route : Cyrus boards for sure much better , not only because of DDR3 vs DDR2, but all those tasty things, like inbuild rs232 on rare of motherboard, like booting from USB possible (very big deal should to say), or like default way to have in the microSD card uboot/amigaboot.of.
The only thing which i for real like a lot, and what Cyrus didn't have : is this good tasty graphical kind menu on booting which you can navigate with case up/down. X5000 menu looks realy bad in compare. X1000 one looks like "amiga", while Cyrus one looks like "another not adapted enough menu". Dunno what the reassons were to go that route, and didnt' create the same good menu as on X1000.
Ah, and USB copy for crossdos : on x1000 and sam460 it fast. On x5000 slower much. There were something in usbstack i remember like "we reduce the speed, because it bring bugs", but that just about software side. But i need to test it all once done with finetuning Nemo, maybe something changes already in beta drivers.
@djbase Correct me if i am wrong, but as far as i aware Nemo come by default without CF card, while Cyrus come by default with microSD ? I mean yeah, on X1000 we can put CF card and use it for amigaboot, but just by default there none come with.
@All Those ones who buy full x1000 and not just motherboard, where your amigaboot.of were placed, in the BOOT: partition, or some CF card coming with X1000 on which you have amigaboot.of ?
@All Those ones who buy full x1000 and not just motherboard, where your amigaboot.of were placed, in the BOOT: partition, or some CF card coming with X1000 on which you have amigaboot.of ?
Mine came with amigaboot.of on an FFS formated BOOT: partition on the hard drive.
CFE is old and has not been updated since the original public release. It was modified to recognise FFS as well as the other FS that it already knew (Ext2, FAT32 etc). It does not recognise or read SFS, NGFS or any other Amiga FS.
At boot time, CFE looks for and reads amigaboot.of (from the device nominated in the ENV-vars command line). The current version of amigaboot is 54.8, which you should have as a betatester. That amigaboot version can read and boot any Amiga FS and is the same as amigaboot.ub on the X5000, but is loaded and run by CFE instead of by U-Boot on the X5000.
CFE can certainly load and run amigaboot from a USB stick - that is how I booted my X1000 back when I first got it. IIRC the instructions were in the PDF manual. The USB stick has to be in the "first" port. Don't remember any more about it, it was over ten years ago.
You can load amigaboot from a CF card also, but it will probably have to be FAT32. There is no benefit to be gained by formatting a CF card with FFS. You may be able to write a whole AmigaOS installation onto a CF card, but it would be slow as hell to run, since it can not do DMA transfers.
Once CFE/U-Boot has loaded and run amigaboot, Amiga file systems FFS, SFS and NGFS are then readable, on any device that CFE/U-Boot can read.
Amigaboot uses CFE/U-Boot functions to read everything from the boot volume. So you can only boot (load Kickstart modules from) a device that CFE or U-Boot can read. That means no PCI devices.
AmigaBoot can decode any of the file systems listed above, it only has to be able to read them using CFE/U-Boot functions in raw mode.
What is strange is why X1000 installation CD didn't ask me about bootloader .. because i am sure, when i install OS4FE on pegasos2, it surely did ask me to where place bootloader (and there i the same have "Boot" volume).
They must have lapsed and forgot to include this boot breaking step in the installer as it seems no one noticed.
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By all means it looks like bug in x1000 (only?) installation CD.
Yeah, you could consider it a bug. I mean, without it the system won't boot. You got stuck on it.
It's really no different to what was needed in my X1Boot Linux installer I released last year. That needed to scan all partitions on all HDD drives for a compatible FFS partition. Same process but using foreign Linux tools to do it.
So natively on the OS, with native tools and API, I don't see much reason for excuses in this area.
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Anyway, step by step i relaize why they go X5000 route : Cyrus boards for sure much better , not only because of DDR3 vs DDR2, but all those tasty things, like inbuild rs232 on rare of motherboard, like booting from USB possible (very big deal should to say), or like default way to have in the microSD card uboot/amigaboot.of.
RS232 would be design thing I suppose. It's there but you need the external port for it.
The X5000 is quirky as it has both firmware and boot loader on micro SD. This means it's always needed and the boot loader won't even be loaded from HDD. Aside from firmware you can store amigaboot.of on CF so it's similar. Of course, like serial, CF was an option. So you need to BYO unless you had the full case set up.
I just bought the board, optioned on serial, and don't ever recall using the CF slot. Suppose needing an extra disk to plug in just seemed a hassle. I just left USB stick in my keyboard.
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The only thing which i for real like a lot, and what Cyrus didn't have : is this good tasty graphical kind menu on booting which you can navigate with case up/down. X5000 menu looks realy bad in compare. X1000 one looks like "amiga", while Cyrus one looks like "another not adapted enough menu". Dunno what the reassons were to go that route, and didnt' create the same good menu as on X1000.
That's interesting. I've only seen pictures but my impression was that the X5000 looked more Amiga like with the Gadtools early startup look in the menus. The X1000 looks nice. But it doesn't look like Topaz to me.
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Ah, and USB copy for crossdos : on x1000 and sam460 it fast. On x5000 slower much. There were something in usbstack i remember like "we reduce the speed, because it bring bugs", but that just about software side. But i need to test it all once done with finetuning Nemo, maybe something changes already in beta drivers.
Didn't know that. Not reduced to USB 1.1 speed? Unimaginable! Well, USB on OS4 has always had bugs. I have to drop the speed down from 2.0 to 1.1 on my VIA USB card in my XE currently as it crashes otherwise. But that's being investigated now.
Last night I had an annoying time trying to write a booter. So I grabbed my install CD. Was going to use RawWrite to create a CD image but it wouldn't do that. So I used AmiDVD to image it in RAM. Then mounted it. Copied it to RAM so I could modify the contents and write back. Something went wrong and it froze. I suppose this is because of the new RAM Disk bug where it was thought a whole system freeze is better than an out of memory error. It's supposed to use extended memory. I don't have much hope in that. I have 4GB installed and it can't even handle 1.2 GB of data in 2GB RAM.
So I thought I would quickly format USB as FFS and quickly copy over a test volume. Big mistake pal! 3/4 through writing it just froze randomly.
Next I tried FFS boot and SFS Workbench. It finished doing that. But it was weird with SFS. It kept "thinking" with a clock pointer. It didn't do that with FFS. So tested that, but I couldn't get it to work. CFE kept having trouble finding the boot loader off USB. And when it did load it didn't see the SFS volume.
Next thought I would just image CD direct to USB. I used RawWrite. But made a mistake. RawWrite cannot be used to write a full image to USB because it wants a DOS device. I wrote it to first device on USB but in CFE it just couldn't see it. Then I realised I had written a CD image to an offset on disk as it had an RDB and I wrote to a partition!
We need proper USB tools. We need a USB image writer which we don't have. I didn't know USB was so bad on OS4. We need Format to not ghost itself and always load so we can pick a disk and always format it to a format of our choice. As it stands we cannot format USB disk from OS4 as either FAT or NTFS because there is no tool to do it and the hidden commodity for the job, with no tool or icon anywhere, is broken again and can't do it. Seriously why is the mass storage commodity always broken? Useless!
So somehow I managed to create a recovery image. I used FryingPan as it can use CD as source and substitute files. But the interface is quirky and annoying to work with. It does however work. I would have preferred AmiDVD as it's simpler but OS4 would freeze again if I tried to modify files in RAM then image it out to RAM.
So created a booter iso image and back to CFE. CFE won't load disk from tower USB port. Typical. Stick in my keyboard. Loads. I somehow forgot about this CFE bug, it can read USB sticks, but it cannot mount them so they don't work.
Manage to get CFE to load the boot loader! It's looking up! AmigaBoot loads! It scans! It's missing my USB stick!! Arghhhh!!!!!
I bet I know what it is. The CD image wasn't set as bootable. I don't know if and where FryingPan can do that. I've used a Linux app that can when I built the Debian Jessie installer image which was a tad easier than Frying Pan. So looks like I will somehow need AmiDVD if FryingPan can't create a bootable image.
One of these days, if I ever get to it after shelving new projects I started, I will write my own USB booter. Recovery image creator. But I need to learn ReAction first. Or it will be scripted from DOS.
The USB stick has to be in the "first" port. Don't remember any more about it, it was over ten years ago.
Is that the first port on back panel or first port on front case? I suspect now it's first port on back as in keyboard port. This would explain why it won't mount from my front ports but will mount in my keyboard hub.
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You can load amigaboot from a CF card also, but it will probably have to be FAT32. There is no benefit to be gained by formatting a CF card with FFS
Well, there's one benefit, FFS is more robust. FAT32 is just too buggy in CFE. Well, CFE isn't very robust perhaps. You can write to FFS and CFE will see it. But write to FAT32 and it will go missing in CFE. I suspect this is because OS4 did not dismount the FAT32 disk so it is in a manner of speaking invalidated. It needs to copy whatever Windows is doing as you can pull it out now without ejecting which is like the Amiga way.
FAT32 can corrupt easily. My phone suddenly crashed and rebooted. It would not mount the FAT32 SD card. Did not have any basic tools to check or clear file system. Only format. Didn't know FAT support was so bad in phones.
FAT16 is better somehow. CFE likes it better. Ext2 another option. Not sure of transparent OS4 support with FUSE. So FFS remains best from CF card I would say from my USB experience.
CFE can certainly load and run amigaboot from a USB stick - that is how I booted my X1000 back when I first got it. IIRC the instructions were in the PDF manual. The USB stick has to be in the "first" port. Don't remember any more about it, it was over ten years ago.
Are you sure that installation from USB stick is possible on Nemo ? I mean, yeah, i can rawwrite X1000_install cd on usbstick, and then do "boot -fs=iso usbdisk0:amigaboot.of", and amigaboot.of is find and loads, but then "no bootable devices found", while this the same usb stick should be bootable device.
But i didn't try to put this usbstick on the first port on the rare, because first port on the rare is busy with keyboard, and as i remember, in the dos were said : keyboard should be in the first port on the rare of motherboard.
I will try today to put keyboard to other port, and try to boot from USB stick.
Maybe you was just cheated by this : if you have installed system on the HDD already, and then type "boot -fs=iso usbdisk0:amigaboot.of", then it will read just amigaboot.of from usb stick, and then will find your filesystems on your HDD and boot from HDD instead.
That's interesting. I've only seen pictures but my impression was that the X5000 looked more Amiga like with the Gadtools early startup look in the menus. The X1000 looks nice. But it doesn't look like Topaz to me.
Yeah, x5000 one looks like old classic menu, while X1000 imho looks more "NG". Dunno, x1000 one looks imho better. On x1000 this menu also placed over the main x1000 image, which make better visual look as well and it also fully customizable , i do not know if on X5000 i can customize those entries at all in the menu: probabaly they just hardcoded, and you only can change actual commands which will be executed when you choose what you need in menu, but not the menu itself.
On x1000 it's just done logicaly imho. You just power on machine and have menu, have words "hit this key to enter to firmware" or choose what you need , or let it boot on defaults. All good.
But on x5000, as it now, you should know that you need to hit "esc" to enter to firmware, but then you didn't enter to firmware, you inter to the "early startup menu", and only from this one you can enter to firmware, which btw, called "command line" instead (dunno why).
Imho, on x1000 it just .. just more user friendly for newcomers. You don't need to enter to submenu, to be able to enter to the firmware's promt. You don't need to think what key to press to enter to. While on x5000, you need to know that need to hit "esc", you need to go to command line from there (which is firmware promt, wtf is command line, command line of amigaos one may think).
Whole things about boot menu on x1000 just better, easer, lighter, fancy, easy to change and whole boot menu can be changed as you wish.
Yeah, x5000 one looks like old classic menu, while X1000 imho looks more "NG". Dunno, x1000 one looks imho better. On x1000 this menu also placed over the main x1000 image, which make better visual look as well and it also fully customizable , i do not know if on X5000 i can customize those entries at all in the menu: probabaly they just hardcoded, and you only can change actual commands which will be executed when you choose what you need in menu, but not the menu itself.
Okay I see what you mean. That's a real customised menu. I got as far as one for AmigaOS and two for Linux.
Since I find it easier to manage menus in software, even though it's not as pretty, my main boot menu looks like this. I don't have a HDMI capturer. So this is a recreation.
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On x1000 it's just done logicaly imho. You just power on machine and have menu, have words "hit this key to enter to firmware" or choose what you need , or let it boot on defaults. All good.
It of course has to be set up from hand with the quirky CFE CLI as it has no built in editor.
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But on x5000, as it now, you should know that you need to hit "esc" to enter to firmware, but then you didn't enter to firmware, you inter to the "early startup menu", and only from this one you can enter to firmware, which btw, called "command line" instead (dunno why).
I find Esc easier to remember. Top left go. Where as with F key I had to scrounge around looking for it and have missed it. Especially after changing timer to 1 second! Most annoying is laptop with F2 or some illogical key that's hard to remember.
So I tested again on USB. Made up a small boot image with FE files and amigaboot.of. Using AmiDVD and set to bootable. Was able to load the bootloader from USB. But amigaboot did not list the USB as a boot source. So it doesn't work. If USB support was added in 2015 then it must be buggy or they removed it. I'd say we'd need to track down that version. Or do what they did with ub2lb to boot Linux, write your own USB booter!
After re-reading it I think what Tony is referring too is just loading amigaboot.of from USB. That works. Actually booting OS4 off USB presently does not.
@Hypex The problem with USB boot, is that it can't boot when it ISO (so rawritten from x1000_iso image). I.e. you type "boot -fs=iso usbdisk0:amigaboot.of" it finds just fine, loads up, but then, amigaboot.of know a shit about "fs=ISO" , it's know about FFS, SFS, NGFS and stuff.
IMHO boot from USB it possible fully (not just amigaboog.of), but for that, you should format your usb stick as FFS, and put all the files on it (and also make it bootable too). Then amigaboot.of probabaly can find filesystem is know, and then boot from it.
I do not know through how done on x5000 that boot from rawwritten iso on usb stick works, maybe they do change UBoot to know something else in compare with CFE.
The problem with USB boot, is that it can't boot when it ISO (so rawritten from x1000_iso image). I.e. you type "boot -fs=iso usbdisk0:amigaboot.of" it finds just fine, loads up, but then, amigaboot.of know a shit about "fs=ISO" , it's know about FFS, SFS, NGFS and stuff.
Technically amigaboot.of knows about ISO because it can boot off a CD! An O4 install CD isn't fancy like an OSX install CD with HFS. An OS4 install CD is just standard ISO9660 with RockRidge extensions. And amigaboot needs to scan for it when it boots off CD drive. so it can certainly do it. If it doesn't find it then it's not looking in the right place or isn't scanning usb. It should know the boot source but I don't know if it does.
Also, the "-fs-iso" tells only CFE what filesystem it is, so CFE can easily load from USB. But after CFE loads amigaboot.of CFE can do no more, it's out of its hands. In fact, at that point, CFE is effectively dead when amigaboot loads as a binary load will destroy CFE and it will crash if the binary exits.
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IMHO boot from USB it possible fully (not just amigaboog.of), but for that, you should format your usb stick as FFS, and put all the files on it (and also make it bootable too). Then amigaboot.of probabaly can find filesystem is know, and then boot from it.
I tried all that, FFS. SFS, then gave up. It's like kicking a dead horse. If amigaboot.of won't read USB, purposely or otherwise, then it simply won't boot from it.
I think that 2015 one you found with specific USB support is the go. Or it's writing your own boot loader. Which is beyond the scope of the average user and simply booting from USB shouldn't be that hard!
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I do not know through how done on x5000 that boot from rawwritten iso on usb stick works, maybe they do change UBoot to know something else in compare with CFE.
They probably geared it towards the needs of the modern market. I can get Linux to boot off USB from UBoot on my XE. But when I created an autoboot USB image I had to write a stub bootlock and modify ub2lb to check USB. So my stub was RDB boot block like SLB that fit on start of ISO image so UBoot would find it. It was just a chain loader I called UBL (Universal Boot Loader) that then checked for an ISO bootblock and executed it. So the end result was ub2lb being loaded. I had to slightly modify that to be USB aware. I'd pretty much defined my own XE ISO/Hybrid standard. The image could be written to CD or USB. And boot off both. In fact, with some editing of the UBoot boot command, it could also auto boot off USB if it was left in drive on boot up.
In the case of CFE, aside from CFE bugs not able to detect and mount USB drives, CFE can load or boot from USB. The obvious problem here is amigaboof.of. Which for some reason isn't scanning USB devices.
It's supposed to share common code with amigaboot.ub, which can boo from USB, but how much? Both would need some kind of HAL, or FAL, Firmware Abstraction Layer, since one is using an OpenFirmware API and the other a UBoot API. Whatever it is doing it isn't scanning USB drives or actually mounted drives. I don't know how much is forged in the OF tree from CFE, but something is missing.
I have a First Contact X1000 and it came with a CF Card. But i get in trouble when i broke this port. Get me a pain of headache before i came to the solution to boot from a CFCard Adapter in the old atapi port on the mainboard.
But i get in trouble when i broke this port. Get me a pain of headache before i came to the solution to boot from a CFCard Adapter in the old atapi port on the mainboard.
I take it this was easier than needing to backup, reformat and restore the HDD? Assuming you didn't have space for a small boot partition.
USB stick could possibly be used but may have needed a hub to share with keyboard and plugged in keyboard port. But it's not an internal solution.
@All Just in case someone in this topic found it intersting, i created some big video about x1000 on which i spend for about a week. There i covered everything i may think of : history, the board itself, assmebling it into the unusual case, making an serial adapte for, installing FE+updates, stress test on RadeonHD with many apps running the same time, etc, etc. All with a lot of subtitles where cover boot process, some basics, etc. Everything over the music from "Messer Für Frau Muller" band.
@All Can anybody point me out if there some CFE command or settings in the os4, to prevent this "beep" melody arise when kickstart module loads ? I mean not that .wav sound when os4 loadsup, but which sounds like a beeper, and arise when ahi drivers loads up or a bit early, can't say. But surely in the process of showing AmigaOS4.1 logo.
Can anybody point me out if there some CFE command or settings in the os4, to prevent this "beep" melody arise when kickstart module loads ? I mean not that .wav sound when os4 loadsup, but which sounds like a beeper, and arise when ahi drivers loads up or a bit early, can't say. But surely in the process of showing AmigaOS4.1 logo.
IIRC, it's a kernel module that plays the sound. Removing the module from the kicklayout will stop it from playing. Nothing else relies on it, so you can safely remove it.
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