Sam460le - new user experience

I got my Sam460le recently. I always wanted to have AmigaOS4.1 running on native hardware and now it works (mostly) as it should.

I tried emulation on 5600x, it works but Sam460 feels way, way nicer - faster, despite CPU benchmarks showing many more MIPS.

Sam460 related:
Exerince with Sam460 is really nice, from simple things like booting from CD/SD card, attaching wireless mouse/keyboard combo that simply works, or all modes available for my monitor are automatically detected (magic ;) ), SATA ports, 2 GB of ram, modern GPU, Sound Blaster works great (zero issues with driver) etc.- so that is all good :).

Unfortuanttely, not all is great. Fan delivered with a board is not working at 5V, and at 12V is just noisy (I replaced it with nice Nocuta, 12V and it great, I wish Acube could nice fan for Sam460, for a ~$1000 you could add something nice to this board, like ~$13 fan :P ). Also, for some reason I'm unable to make R7 240 and 250 work with AmigaOS4.1. AmigaOS4.1 that is delivered on SD after adding drivers for ReadeonHD/RX (drivers from Enchancer 2.2, updated online) is not cooperating - system freezes almost immedietly after booting. I'm not sure what is an issue here? I stripped everything from computer, left mobo, SD card and GPU and the same story. Also, for ssome reason my slim CD rom is not working :(, I need to keep CD/DVD in it so it will be visible (strange!). EDIT: My LAN connection on Sam460 is only at about 600kb/s? Why?

Also, it seems there is no any power menagment for GPU (fan runs at max speed). The same card under Windows is silent at idle - obviously that is not Acube issue, but drivers.

AmigaOS4.1 experience:
I'm also happy to be able to run AmigaWriter, ArtEffect, ignition, TuneNet, Odyssey etc. etc. I would say for regular user of software tha dosen't need heavy lifting is is very nice computer :). I hope Odyssey will mature and we can have very efficient, light webbrowser. I'm writing it from Odyssey so I'm quite happy wih it.

I have to say that Workbench have the same "feel" as the old one, just beautified, and fast, much faster.

Now, I'm going to configure software etc. and squezze as much as possible from Sam460. Most likely will be asking here "few questions".

Thank you all who contributed to Sam460 /AmigeOS /Enchancer /drivers /software development - keep making it happen!

PS. Is there any idiot proof way to install Linux on it?

@PixelHi

Re: R7 240 and 250 .

Try booting with Compositing effects turned of in the Gui prefs.
You would have to change the settings with a working card then change cards and restart the machine unless yo have a bootable
USB drive of some sort with gui settings disabled in prefs.

Most of the Sam460ex issues with this were fixed in a Radeon HD 5.x update that has not been released yet .

@Spectre660

I tried to boot from SD card. I belive this is the most "clean" AmigaOS4.1 (just added the drivers) and still the same issue. I can click window to start Amiga "live CD" and it will load properly and after that when I try to click on something, system will stop/freeze.

So, should I get version 5 of this driver? I'm not sure, if I really need it (?). Right now I'm using 7750, I'm not sure if I will "gain" much more from RX. Only thing I can think of right now is power efficiency.

@PixelHi

Looks like a similar issue I have on my X1000 with freezing after boot. But in my case Update 2 caused it which I haven't solved. I updated my drivers from the latest Enhancer, thought it had fixed it, but found it came back.

I'm using RadeonHD v3.7 currently. What version do you have?

Good to know, I'm just hoping it's not my Sam460 having some issues.

RadeonHD 3.7 and RX I think 2.12.

Side note: When I used drivers from Enchancer 2.2 on my 5450/7750 Candi was using about 15% CPU for both GPU. When I updated drivers (there was newer version online) when Candi is running on 5450 the CPU usage it's ~90% (!?), but when I switch to 7750 it's ~15%.

@PixelHi

welome aboard There's alot of Linux info over at the Hyperion support forum

@PixelHi

If you only intend to run AmigaOS 4.1 then the Radeon RX cards are the best option (RX550 or RX560), The latest drivers Radeon RX drivers are available through the A-Eon Enhancer and the A-Eon Updater app.

If you intend to use a Radeon HD card then the best working diver version for the Sam460 models , a bug fixed version of the Radeon HD 5.x with specific fixes for the Sam460 has not been released yet .

I had lock up problems problems on boot with the RadeonHD v3.7 driver version included with the A-Eon Enhancer and also the released Radeon HD 5.x versions . The released 5.x version would work for 2D with the compositing effects turned off.
Note I only used Radeon HD cards for beta testing .
The Radeon HD card I use is an OEM Radeon HD8570 which uses the Oland Chip set .

@PixelHi

Try to set in DEVS:Monitors the radeon icon tooltype "INTERRUPT=No"

Thank you for suggestion. I literally tried that yesterday night (was reading the Radeon v5 thread), same issue persist.

I'm getting rx550 most likely.

@328gts

I tried. I burned CD, I made SFF/00 boot partition, copied the ub2lb as boot loader, I clicked Install Ubuntu Mate 16.04 - Sam460". It will start booting from a CD but after a while it will reset and start again.

Another quick update. I got RadeonRX 550 and it works well and power management works - I mean I HOPE it works, I can select options, but I'm still getting error about "configuration being wrong or something similar to that) :).

I still can't get my R7 240/250 work under AmigaOS, but there is a chance it will work with new driver (is there any way to test it before purchase?).

I'm thinking to try Linux so for that it would be nice to have R7 work under AmigaOS, so I will not need to swap graphic card constantly :).

Beside that it is quite nice AmigaOS machine :). Now, it is time to install software, configure it, etc.

I will bother you later ;).

It looks like power managment works fine, fan on my RX 550 slowed downed and now I have almost completly quite computer :).

I'm considering to get Radeon HD v5 driver, but I can't add it to the cart at AmiStore (I found it by searching for it, but when I add it, and try to check out it is not in my "bag" anymore). Strange.

If I can get my R7 240 (or 250) work (v5?) and there will be power managment for it I think right now it will be best choice, since I can have Uboot and possibly I can try to make Linux/MorphOS work on my Sam.

@PixelHi

I have a Biostar Radeon RX550 and I cannot get it to work on the SAM460LE. I also am running Enhancer 2.2. I purchased 2.1 and it was upgradedto 2.2. Did I maybe need 1.5? It is stable now with my RadeonHD 280x.

UBoot does not recognize the RX550 at all. It is suppose to with the correct Enhancer driver.

One thing is that it seems Odyssey especially will peg the CPU at 100% and copying files from partition to partion or even to the SD card. I have the Sil3114 xfer set to GGGG. I have also tried 0000 which is suppose to be auto sense.

It cannot run Candi. Candi pegs the CPU at 100% and the the mouse lags.

The Rx550 works fine in my x5040 but I cant figure out what Warp driver will make the miniGL working for my Boing ball screen saver. Is it on AmiStore or do I have to go through Amigakit?

UPDATE: I purchased NOVABridge on Amistore and that enabled Warp3 and miniGL on my x5040 now. $57 US seems pricey for a driver!

I would say comparing it to my XE, The LE is a little faster but stable. I could not run Candi on the XE either and Odyessy was taxing. My X5040 seems to handle it all but Odyessy does tax the CPU too but not peg it.

Ibrowse 2.5.8 is quick and doesn't tax the CPU. Ibrowse needs a 3.0 version of a nice modern light browser.

@amiganuts
Quote:U-Boot and AmigaOS 4.x are completely independent sofware, an AmigaOS 4.x driver can't add support for new hardware to U-Boot, nor can an U-Boot update add support for new hardware to AmigaOS 4.x.

For AmigaOS 4.x there is a RX driver, but there is none for U-Boot.
With a RX gfx card U-Boot doesn't work, but as long as there are no problems booting AmigaOS 4.x the gfx card will work without problems as soon as AmigaOS is started.

Usually that's no big problem, but if anything goes wrong in loading and starting AmigaOS the only option with a RX gfx card is using a serial terminal for U-Boot.

Quote:Considering the very low number of users it's very cheap. If it would be a Windows driver instead getting 1¢ from each user would be a lot more money than charging 100€ from each AmigaOS 4.1 user...

@amiganuts

U-Boot is not displayed on Sam460 models currently when using a Radeon Rx card.


Can you check to make sure of the following :

Check the following re the Radeon RX driver installation :


In the file System:Kickstart/kicklayout make sure you that have the following line :

MODULE Kickstart/RadeonRX.chip

in the same directory System:Kickstart/

Make sure you have the following file :

RadeonRX.chip

I can confirm that this was an issue:

"In the file System:Kickstart/kicklayout make sure you that have the following line :

MODULE Kickstart/RadeonRX.chip"

For some reason Enchancer 2.2 installer is not adding this line automatically 🙄, after that my rx550 (both actually) work fine.

For now I switched to r7 240, system finally works, Compositing works, so I can set up various things.

Hopefully update Hans mentioned will help with issues I described.

@Spectre660

Good to know. I will check this out when I get a moment.

Update: It was not in the Kicklayout file:

MODULE Kickstart/timer.device.kmod
MODULE Kickstart/PCIGraphics.card
MODULE Kickstart/ATIRadeon.chip
MODULE Kickstart/RadeonHD.chip
MODULE Kickstart/3dfxVoodoo.chip
MODULE Kickstart/3DLabsPermedia2.chip
MODULE Kickstart/siliconmotion502.chip

It is now:

MODULE Kickstart/timer.device.kmod
MODULE Kickstart/PCIGraphics.card
MODULE Kickstart/ATIRadeon.chip
MODULE Kickstart/RadeonHD.chip
MODULE Kickstart/RadeonRX.chip
MODULE Kickstart/3dfxVoodoo.chip
MODULE Kickstart/3DLabsPermedia2.chip
MODULE Kickstart/siliconmotion502.chip

But it sucks if you cannot see Uboot during the bootup process.

@jabirulo

I changed INTERRUPTS=NO. Now, I can run Candi with about 27% CPU but on a reboot Candi doesn't fully load. For instance on the default Candi, on reboot the clouds appear but the Amiga Logo doesn't. I have to go into Prefs and say use the default or another Candi Option and then it will appear.


Is there a setting for Odyssey that I can change to stop it from pegging the CPU at 100% when loading pages. Here is a weird thing. On my x5040, I can load ebay.com and log in no problem. However when I try it on the SAM460, I can type in my username but I cannot "Continue" or log in with another way such as Google.

One thing I noticed is that when scrolling through a website, The CPU varies sometimes pegging at 100%.

I can login and use the following sites:

amazon.com
amigaonthelake.com
amiga.org
amigakit
aminet.net
amigans.net
https://amigaos4gaming.wordpress.com/
gmail.com
hyperion-entertainment.com
os4depot.net
pagestream.org

Cannot use: Except eBay, I cannot use any of the following or media sites on x5040 either:
ebay.com - I can search but not log in
webmail
youtube.com
rumble.com

If it would work for Rumble, Youtube, and other media sites, I would totally use my Amigas as my sole computer.

NOTE: I went into SYS:Devs/NetInterfaces/ppc460ex_eth and added
mtu=1500. In Ranger I saw that the MTU for TCP stack and HW were both 1518 and any packet over 1500 needs to be fragmented. So I made RoadShow MTU to 1500. It is loading faster and not causing the CPU to be pegged constantly. My thoughts is there is something nonstandard in the TCP/IP stack that strict websites do not like.

Ethernet frame size 1518 = MTU 1500.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_transmission_unit

@amiganuts

That is I reverted back to R7 240 (I will try to get Linux on it, just for a sake of it). However now nothing 3D related doesn't work under AmigaOS, but with 5.14 driver at least I can use R7 240 and configure system, software etc.

Hopefully next driver update will help with my issue.

Besides that issue I'm quite happy with it. I need to figure out how to.. use euae to set up Workbench 3.2.1 on it 🤔.