Quick and dirty video of my SAM 440ep part one

Just a quick and dirty video of my mini-itx SAM440ep.

I have had it since 2008 and never really used it as I have been too busy doing other stuff.

So my knowledge of the hardware and especially OS4.1 is rather weak.

The board is a SAM440ep at 666MHz, year: 2008-09
with 512MB, onboard Radeon M9, SATA 24x DVD-RW and the award winning OCZ 60GB Agility 3 SSD SATA 3. There are no moving parts and it's absolutely silent!

I have been playing with it more and more in the last few weeks as some friends of mine wanted to know more about it and possibly going back to Amiga.

So I have assembled the fastest SAM440ep configuration I could possibly come up with and shot a couple of videos for fun.

Sorry about the quality, the video was taken at night and without any recording software just a camera pointing at my 24" monitor.

After finishing the build I have to say I am very impressed with this tiny machine.

I'll finish part two later today.

Have fun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3JUWtNN-P8

I saw you video, well not all, but is a fantastic initiative to bring more Amiga users.

Well it can be boring for people who know about the Amiga and OS4.1 but to a newcomer or an old Amigan then it's, I hope, interesting. My friend was really impressed and he used to have an A1200 with 4MB Fast. He didn't even know that Amiga, nowadays, can run videos.

I love when the OS gets installed from 1:38...the second bar flies (writing to the SSD).

My SAM440ep has been transformed

Brilliant video dude :)

Perhaps a suggestion for youre next one, maybe you can show the SAM browsing more common sites such as the BBC or eBay? Maybe a voice-ver commentary too?

Keep em coming! This is great for awareness of the platform!

@TheDaddy
That's a very nice video! I can also see why you wanted to have several videos playing at the same time :)

Thanks Taj,

nothing special, I have only got back into OS4.1 recently, the SAM I got with OS4.1 CD in 2008 has been sitting on my bench for three years (I have been working on my A500 inspired case for it) so I decided to mess about with it.

The addition of an OCZ Agility 3 SATA III 60GB SSD is scary!

It makes my 7200 rpm HDD feel useless, booting and opening windows is fast and it's a SATA 3 SSD on SATA 1 controller, if we had a SATA 3 controller even in PCI mode I am sure it would cut the times in half!

Shame I haven't got proper recording software and had to do everything with a camera at one metre distance

Chris,

you know I have always got an agenda for my requests

I forgot to say that I am not sure if DMA is enabled or not, I believe it isn't, can someone verify it? As I said I am not an expert.

If it isn't then it should be even faster? MUWAHA! OK I'll calm down now.

Part Two later today

Oh and please vote Likes if...you like it!

@TheDaddy
Regarding DMA, you can check whether it is enabled using one of these two Shell commands:
IDETool -l sii3114ide.device
NVGetVar sii3114ide_xfer

And you can permanently enable it using this one:
NVSetVar sii3114ide_xfer GGGG

If you have problems, then you can disable it again using:
NVSetVar sii3114ide_xfer 0000
(something similar can also be done from Uboot, should OS4 not boot for some reason, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it)

Chris,

What do I have to look for to see if it's enabled after typing those lines?

These are the results:

Flags : $000001C5 - present, supports DMA, ATA, supports power mgmt, supports cache flush, interrupts used,
Xfer mode : best pio 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s) / best dma 70 (UDMA 6, 133 MB/s) / current 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s)
Total blocks : 117231408
Blocksize : 512
Power mode : 2 / idle (ready for operation)
IO1 / IO2 / BMCR @ : $1100 / $110A / $1120
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 1
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 2
-------------------Unit 3 information------------------------
Flags : $0000019D - present, supports DMA, removable media, ATAPI, supports cache flush, interrupts used,
Xfer mode : best pio 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s) / best dma 69 (UDMA 5, 100 MB/s) / current 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s)
Total blocks : 0
Blocksize : 0
SCSI devtyp : 5
Packet size : 12
Current medium read speed : x 65535 ('65535' stands for max.)
Current medium write speed : x 65535 (idem)
Power mode : 2 / idle (ready for operation)
IO1 / IO2 / BMCR @ : $1110 / $111A / $1128
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 4
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 5
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 6
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 7
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 8
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 9
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 10
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 11
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 12
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 13
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 14
*** Error opening device sii3114ide.device / unit 15

and after typing NVGetVar sii3114ide_xfer

I got:

4.AmigaOS:>

I have enabled DMA permanently (thanks ChrisH).

Now booting in 15.3 seconds

Warm Reset in 10 seconds.

Off to edit the video...

"The video has been removed by user"

Any Chance of you re-uploading it :)

Edited the video with the latest times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3JUWtNN-P8

Well as everybody already knows I am desperate/eager/looking forward to/anxious to see some proper screen recording software released soon!

I think if we had that there'd be some truly awesome opportunities to showcase Amiga by current developers and users alike.

Quote:I know you already got your answer off-thread, but for the benefit of any future readers searching for the answer:

The line with the transfer mode info is the interesting one. It tells you that your drive can do PIO mode 4 max or UDMA mode 6 max, and that it is currently set to do PIO 4. So the solution would be to change it to do UDMA mode 6 by setting the sii3114ide_xfer UBoot variable to something with a G (upper case) in the corresponding position. More info in the sii3114ide_dev.doc.

Best regards,

Niels

Nice video.

Thanks everyone and thanks Niels, I'll do some more reading.

So from what I gather my machine was set to PIO4 and could do DMA 70 (UDMA 6, 133MB/s) but by inputting this line (I have done it in a shell in Workbench):

NVSetVar sii3114ide_xfer GGGG

I have changed it to DMA 70 (UDMA 6/ 133MB/sec)

Correct?

The same can be done via UBoot?

@TheDaddy

Maybe it's a bit too long but it's nice

Thanks.

Added a couple of comments in part one of the video.

Does anyone want to see anything else in part two?

Anything cool and funky I could add? Obviously something Amiga-only related.

If so please post it here.

Quote:Yes.

Quote:Yes, in fact NVSetVar does exactly the same as a setenv (followed by a saveenv) would do on the UBoot command line. But if you mean through the UBoot menu system, then no, I don't believe it can be done there. The UBoot env variables for the IDE (SCSI/SATA) drivers are a bit special, because although they are set as part of UBoot's variables, they are not used (or known) by UBoot, only by the OS once booted. But they are needed very early in the boot process, when a normal AmigaOS ENV: variable would not be available yet, which is why the other method was used.

Best regards,

Niels