Sam460le - new user experience

@arfcarl

You are talking about two different things the L2 length of the Frame and L3 the TCP /IP stack. The TCP/IP stack has to be 1500 or fragmentations has to be enabled throughout the path otherwise the packet will be dropped causing a lot of retransmissions. Since I have changed the Stack to 1500, it is working much better and quicker. According to Ranger, My L3 stack is 1500 and the HW is still 1518.

Conversely, on my x5040 in Ranger, both stack and hardware are at 1500.

@amiganuts

Yes, and I will have a look myself and try to set the MTU to 1500 (unless not already set to that).

I kinda shelved the SAM460LE but I have started to see if I can get things working right on it again.

Can somebody tell me why my Radeon Sapphire R9 X280 will not allow the SAM to boot past the kickstart screen when using HDMI? With HDMI connected, I see the Kickstart and it load OS4.1FE but it never displays the AMIGAOS4.1 logo. It goes to a black screen and monitor turns off. If I use the VGA output, I see everything and it boots fine.

The RX550 I can't see Kickstart but HDMI on OS and the X280 I can only use VGA. Is that a bug? It seems like I read it is a known issue but is there a fix for it?

@amiganuts

Sorry about your experience Can't your dealer help you in any way? Have you contacted them?

@trixie

Dealers want to sell full systems. In the US, I can buy the same components for 1/2 to a 1/4 of the price. With my X5040 I have recieved limited support because I did not but the full system and they cannot guarranty my experience not using components sourced and tested by them. I only purchased the motherboard.

I was one the pre-orders for the SAM460LE and only purchased the board as well. The fun should continue as I am an Early Adopter of the A1222 of which I again only purchased the motherboard.

To be fair, I have not tried to contact Acube since I heard they are busy and have limited resources as they are trying to get the SAM460LE out and now the A1222.

Looking at issues I am having with my SAM460LE, I am seeing these issues and questions from others as well. But you have to jump from Hyperion form, Amiga.org and here. It seems that the best site to talk to Gurus of os4 is Amigans and I TOTALLY APPRECIATE any and all help I get here.

From my experience, Amigans it first, followed by Hyperion Forum and then Amiga.org.

Since it is now a congloberation of Acube, Amedia, AEON and Amigakit for the A1222, they should create 3 threads on one of these boards so we have somewhere to get questions answered and to troubleshoot bugs. When OS3.14 came out, Richter had a thread on Amiga.org. It was great and help me and the community so much getting things fixed!

I agree. Merge Amiga.org and Amigaworld.net and setup official support forum(s) there.

@amiganuts

Good points! Would be very helpful if we had specific threads for this (Sam460, A1222+ etc.), especially here at Amigans.net where many of the active AmigaOS 4 users hang out. Thumbs up for your idea!

Btw, a bit OT, but I was trying to visit the official A1222+ website (a1222plus.com) and it redirects to Amiga.org. Strange.

@AmigaOldskooler

I found out if you put https://a1222plus.com it will redirect u to amiga.org. if you drop the https and just do http://a1222plus.com, it goes to the 1222 site. However, the site that they created for information is useless because they NEVER update it. It still says june 29, 2023.

For some reason Trevor likes using Facebook and to my knowledge and experience no Amiga browser legacy or 4.0 can handle it. Odyessy totally chokes on both my SAM and X5040.

Also, how is this site written? Using Odyessy on my SAM the CPU is pegged at 98-100% constantly and on my X5040 it 70-100% constantly.

@amiganuts

Quote:Which tool do you use to measure the CPU%?

Best regards,

Niels

@nbache
Ztools

I was using another CPU monitor before that with same results.

@amiganuts

Quote:
The falling snow decoration that's active around Christmas is a real CPU-sucker. I get 45 - 55% CPU use with Odyssey on my X1000 (using CPUInfo). Once the snow is put back in storage the site gets a lot lighter CPU-wise.

@amiganuts

Quote:

Yes, it is strange that they do not update it. One would think this could help market the board.

They could, for example, have added a link to the Facebook-page of AAA Technology for people interested
in making a purchase, or perhaps add the contact information to the company. A couple of YouTube videos
showing the system in action running games, programs, and videos to show what it is capable of would help to!
Something to tempt people to investigate it more and wanting to buy it.

Eliyahu's page about the A1222+ is great though, so definitely should be linked to on the main A1222+ website.

Here is a post I have on Amiga.org. Hans posted some really good info to my issues. To his first point, my Sam did come with the 4.1 Rescue SD on it, however, it would error out on install so I had to use the provided CD. I have inquired to Acube on this.

https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=76255.0

Hans:

"Sorry to hear about your experience. It sounds ilke a lot of this could have been avoided if the motherboard came with a "rescue USB flash drive" containing AmigaOS4 with the Enhancer and other bits pre-installed (e.g., the NovaBridge driver for backward compatibility with the old Warp3D & MiniGL). Ideally it would include an installer to help you set up AmigaOS on the hard drive.

Your experience shows how fragmented things have become. I wrote NovaBridge to provide backward compatibility and finally end the graphics driver confusion. Sadly, the confusion will remain until it comes bundled with all new machines.

A few quick comments:
- Making the OS multi-core is a tough problem. So tough, that certain individuals have been loudly proclaiming that it's impossible to add to AmigaOS. It is being worked on, will eventually be released for all multi-core machines (including the X5000)

- AmigaOS' browsers are seriously lagging behind. AFAIK, our browsers do 100% of rendering on the CPU, so there's zero graphics acceleration. This is why performance can be slow. And yes, there are bugs that cause Odyssey to crash on some sites. Sadly, nobody is maintaining Odyssey, so nobody is trying to fix it. There is a team working on porting the latest WebKit to AmigaOS 4, with the goal of creating an updated browser. I'm not sure what the status of that project is. Progress is slow

- I don't remember SAM460s having trouble with Candi. I usually don't run it. IIRC, it has a low CPU usage version that will pause the animation when the rest of the system needs more CPU power

- HDMI not working is a driver issue. Actually, it's likely caused by bad tables on the graphics card's ROM. The driver has a quirk table to work around these, but it's incomplete. These quirks has been a very frustrating part of driver development

- The SAM460 is noticeably slower than the X5000, even with only one core. You might not notice it too much if you start with the Sam, but you notice it if you've been using an X5000 and switch back to the Sam"

@msteed

Quote:
"The falling snow decoration that's active around Christmas is a real CPU-sucker. I get 45 - 55% CPU use with Odyssey on my X1000 (using CPUInfo). Once the snow is put back in storage the site gets a lot lighter CPU-wise."

I say bring summer sooner and get rid of the snow whoever the webmaster is!

@amiganuts

Quote:
Okay, I'm not familiar with ZTools' CPU meter. The reason I asked is that I use the CPUInfo docky, and with that I often see the CPU usage display rise to high levels for no apparent reason, and when I then click in the displayed graph, it falls down to where it should be.

I was just wondering if there could be a similar issue with your CPU meter application.

Best regards,

Niels

@nbache

Quote:
Hmm, you're right- I never noticed that before. Though it seems like CPUInfo gets less accurate when you click on it, not more.

Tequila reports that Odyssey itself uses around 40 - 45% CPU when displaying two Amigans tabs with falling snow. Add in the other tasks running, and the total CPU usage is around 45 - 55%, which is the same as what CPUInfo reports before I click on it. After clicking on the CPUInfo graph it shows the total CPU use dropping to around 5 - 15%, while Tequila shows no change.

The effect is so pronounced it's got to be intentional, but I've no idea what it's supposed to be doing (the docs that come with it say nothing about this). Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to accurately reflect total CPU use anymore. And strangely, if I open a third tab in Odyssey CPUInfo goes back to displaying the correct CPU usage, and it remains correct even if I close the third tab again.

I'm getting off topic here, so I'll just note in closing that it seems best to avoid clicking the CPUInfo docky. And indeed, the falling snow does represent a significant CPU load.

Quote:.
Now that snow season is over, opening two Amigans tabs with Odyssey shows 5 - 15% CPU use, according to CPUInfo. Tequila shows less than 5%, and almost all of that is stuff other than Odyssey.