The Sam, and me.

Well, Day 2. What occurred?

Misco failed to deliver the SATA DVD drive, and despite the enjoyment I got from seeing it go to the "insert disc" screen every time it booted the interest started to wane. The two mouse button trick and the keyboard combinations to get to the early startup screen were NOT my friends. They ignored me. I tried my spare keyboard that actually did have two "Windows" keys on it. I tried a uboot setting that should have worked. I can only assume there is some bizzare copyright protection thing going on here.

Then, I spotted that someone had posted the setting above. I tried it, booted, it worked. I was into the installer! Because the manual was off wherever I'd last read it (bathroom perhaps?) I had no idea of the settings. With Rigo's help, I got the partitions sorted out and AmigaOS 4.1 installed.

It didn't boot.

Not remotely.

Sigh.

Eventually, and I do mean eventually after several zillion false starts, I noticed that I had selected SII SATA instead of Onboard SATA in the UBoot menu. I guess the excitement was getting to me. Or maybe just the tedium of trying to get something which should be easy, going.

I was up and running. It blazed into life, faster than I ever remember OS4.0 on the XE starting up. I was impressed, I had a fight with Roadshow and DHCP (don't bother, no seriously) and ended up with static IP address and DNS. I then eventually installed Wookiechat so that I could go "tada!!!" from OS4.

Well, I can say it did install. It was a breeze. But when I rebooted it went to a low res low colour startup screen and just bitched at me about missing assigns.

Whatever it was, I'm blaming Wookie

I couldn't be bothered to fix it, I just reinstalled AmigaOS4.1 - it was quick enough. Oh, another tip, just do quick format unless you have a decade of spare time.

However, once in, the only drive (and to this moment) that was showing was the onboard SATA one, even THOUGH if I boot with the CD ROM drive, the SII based devices show up.

If I dragged in a device driver from Storage for the DVD ROM drive (well ok I picked DVD RW as that was all I could see) and assigned it to what should have been the right dev and unit, it just moaned about running out of memory (trust me, there is a heck of a lot of memory free).

Chalk that up to useless error messages.

Day 3

This was marginally more fun. I installed Wookie, Sabre, and then remembered about the quickstart patches. I had a bit of a laugh to myself when I logged into Hyperion's site using OWB and it didn't show any downloads - then I tried using IBrowse, got in through uglyville and then got messages advising me NOT to use it (I carried on).

Several updates and installs later ... oh shit ... OWB doesn't work anymore! Errors about ELF this and whatnot. Great.

Never fear, IBrowse is still working... so I downloaded the newest OWB, installed that, and realised it was much slower than what was there before at rendering certain websites - but at least it COULD.

Still no drives showing up.

I installed the SDK, and then was stymied as no CD-ROM, no chance to install GoldED or anything like that. Goodie.

So I did a quick port of a raycasting engine I did a long time ago for the PC. Initially gcc whinged about weird characters all over the place. Sigh. A rapid adventure with dos2unix on Ubuntu later, and it compiled and ran.

The fact that it ran at 8fps as opposed to 50fps on a slow EEEPC 2G surf didn't put me off. It just needs "work".

So that is where I am. No SATA DVD/RW arrived in the post yet, and still no way of installing software from CD/DVD. But I am INCREDIBLY impressed so far. I've really enjoyed it, and I can see why it is such a welcome addition to assembled ranks of Pegasos 2 and AmigaONE owners out there. My only moan is how long g++ takes to compile.

Oh, and I need to recover the source to the Graphical Download Manager thats half written from my Sony laptop. Fun for all the family....

Thank you everyone for your help so far.

@DaveP

All the makings of a great movie script here DaveP, I was practically reaching for the popcorn mid-story...

My emotions were pulled this way then that way and just when I was coming right, whamo

I'm seriously glad your delight in the OS wasn't overshadowed by the complications involved in getting through the process...

4 out of 5 for content and commitment

@DaveP Quote:
Don't optimise! Seriously, -O2 takes half the age of the universe to finish.

Otherwise g++ seems reasonably fast to me. Well, unless you run out of real RAM, and it uses the virtual memory heavily, then it might crawl again.

Quote:

trying to get something which should be easy, going.

I do think you have been making things unnecessarily difficult, by doing things the most non-standard (and therefore untested/undocumented) way as possible

Quote:
There should have been no need to reformat. It was just using a 640x480x8 screen to show the assignment requester, because it was too early in the startup-sequence. If you had cancelled the requester it would have booted (and probably changed to the correct screen mode if no windows were left open). You could then have editied the S:User-Startup (I guess) to correct the problem.

Quote:
I would imagine that you need the correct Devs:DosDriver for OS4 to know that it should look on your strange PCI card for a CD-ROM drive. Although I'm not sure what the settings should be...

@ChrisH

Quote:
So, plugging in an IDE card that worked fine on an A1XE (and was indeed bought to bypass the onboard) and plugging in a CD-ROM drive is making this as hard as possible for the Sam?

That sounds suspiciously like it is "The User's Fault".

Quote:
I never claimed there WAS a need to reformat Chris. However, when I clicked on cancel it popped up again...and again and I lost patience. I put it to you ... why SHOULD I have to do manual edits?

Quote:

Yes, my strange PCI card that worked fine on the XE, and also it worked fine when booting from the OS4 CD.

Seriously Chris, you seem to be doing everything you can to say that I'm being a deliberately awkward bastard and using strange kit. Fact is, either it works (then I'm happy to document it), or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then I'm happy to document that it doesn't.

But "blame the user" is really a bit out of line, IMO.

@ChrisH

Quote:

That is just ridiculous, this just emphasises the need for more grunt in an Amiga machine, not optimising basically means the user ends up paying the price in slow and un-optimised software.

Quote:

If we all wanted to work and do things in the same way we might as well all move across to Windows. Again this is silly, the uboot in the A1 is quite capable of ignoring the onboard IDE, you can select which board/drive to boot from etc. at this point (and no I dont have a SAM) I can only assume that someone has done a shoddy job of porting uboot to the SAM.

Quote:

Actually its more likely he needs to uncomment or add into the kicklayout file, the correct SII driver, again this SHOULD (in an ideal world) be done for him either automatically or via some sort of control panel to enable/disable the relevant cards. This is obviously something that needs:

a) better documentation UNTIL

b) a control panel/automater can be written.

Mark

@Mark Quote:
You don't explicitly say which part of my description you think is ridiculous, so I am going to have to guess you are referring to "Don't optimise! Seriously, -O2 takes half the age of the universe to finish."

Commenting on something that you have no first-hand experience of (and which has not been described in any detail) seems a bit rash. Maybe it isn't as bad as you guess from what I said? I have no idea how well it works on an AmigaOne. Or maybe the OS4 SDK contains a bad version of GCC? Or at least one that doesn't optimise as fast as it could on a Sam440? Or maybe g++ optimisations take a long time, while gcc optimisations do not, and you are only used to using gcc? Or something else...

Or of course it could simply be that the Sam440's speed is not ideal for heavy compilation. In that case I would agree that it is not desirable for optimisations to take a long time, but it's hardly as bad as you make out. While a developer will likely use un-optimised programs during development, for the release version he can surely let compilation take a while longer than usual, so that an optimised version is released.

@ChrisH

The only reason for him trying to use "unusual" ways was because the SATA dvd player he had ordered had not arrived yet and didn't want to wait for it before installing. Obviously someone ordering a SATA DVD after noticing that there's no PATA connector knows that he's probably going to need the SATA one.

And obviously he couldn't try with a SATA DVD before actually having one around.

What was posted in his first post was simply the peril he got into (And he certainly ran into all he possibly could) when trying to find alternative ways to get the sam going while waiting for the SATA DVD to arrive.

Imho if the SAM doesn't already have big warning labels attached to it warning that you really need a SATA DVD or with clear descriptions on what other ways can be used then that really need to be corrected by ACube.

@ChrisH

Quote:

I have read it, and it still reads exactly the same way. I had a choice, either you hadn't read properly in the first place or you were searching for reasons to put the emphasis on me being at fault.

Quote:

My expectations were not too high, my expectations were informed by what worked on an older u-boot on the XE, and lack of any clear limitations documented. I have no problems /if/ I have a SATA CD-ROM ensuring it was on the right junction, however if you take the time out to read the posts I have been making it will become abundantly clear that I am trying out alternative methods. Methods which in the main, worked on the A1.

There are two bits of software here:

u-boot
OS4.1

Now correct me if I am wrong, but u-boot used to cope quite well on the XE and if it DOESNT support booting off a PATA based interface then it SHOULD be documented clearly.

Also, OS4.0 used to recognised CD-Rom drives when plugged into PATA based interfaces and 4.1 DOES recognise it if booted OFF one of those devices.

So I really don't get what point you think you are trying to make.

Any schmo can follow a golden path, but a lack of warning that there IS only the golden path or you are up a merde passage with a broken paddle is clearly a problem.

@orgin

Quote:
Uboot on Sam supports booting from HD or DVD attached to the following interfaces:

- onboard SATA (ports J20 and J23)
- PCI SIL 3114 SATA card
- PCI SIL 3112 SATA card
- PCI SIL 0680 PATA card

All a user need to do is to set the preferred booting devices in Boot Sequence/OS Multiboot Options menu, as it happens on an AmigaOne / microA1 in case you had to boot from an interface different from the onboard VIA.

@m3x

Yes, the trouble is for mainstream users they tend not to trust there own judgement and/or void of technical or logical progression...

If it ain't in black in white they would blame god himself

@ChrisH

You've totally lost me Chris. I can't reconcile that last post with your earlier ones. You also seem to think I am annoyed when in fact frustrated and wryly amused is closer to the mark. The distinct lack of any warnings like "BETA BETA BETA" is quite telling throughout don't you think?

It is similar to your response to Mark on unoptimised software. He makes perfect sense and is completely logical, your reply seems unreasonably personal to boot. The software I ported required optimisations turned on to get the best performance comparison.

@Back to the topic

More interestingly than getting bored with people trying to make out that I've been somehow unreasonable, my DVD-R/W (sata) turned up with the molex converters on Saturday. Unfortunately I did not have time to look at it until Sunday afternoon. I duly plugged everything in, unwrapped the molex-sata converter and realised that it was the wrong way around. Doh. It would convert a molex based device to work with a sata power cable ... and not the other way around. So I took it all out again, and tried to power up.

Blank screen.

Freaked out, called the Sam a few nasty words on IRC, and then started to look at it logically and took it out. Taking everything including the hard drive out worked.

That is a good sign.

So I plugged the hard drive back in and noticed that along the way the existing molex-sata converter on the back of it had become dislodged. Plugged that back in.

A necessary lesson learned here, if the hard drive has no power, and the sata-sata data cable is plugged in, the Sam will not boot (and probably no other motherboard either). One thing to check folks before you cross the road and tip the Sam motherboard into a skip.

@DaveP
My point is obviously not coming across, so please ignore all my prior posts about that topic. It certainly wasn't worth all the word I spent on the topic, and I should have dropped it sooner. I apologise if you construed my remarks as somehow offensive. As I said before, your posts are certainly valuable feedback.

BTW, I don't understand why you think I was "unreasonably personal" to Mark (whatever that means). I felt he was jumping the gun, by using my joking remark about the speed of GCC to deduce that Sam440 was "ridiculous" & unusable. (At best the story is rather more complicated than he paints, at worst he is just plain wrong.)