AmigaOne XE setup

I've finally reached my buried XE G4 and turned it on last night, after a handful of years being in the back/bottom of a large pile. Finally, OS4.1 after a very long time!

Since the coin battery died, I no longer have, and no longer remember myself any eeprom settings details. I remember something vaguely about the keyboard help key, a uboot setting to prevent my KVM keys from poping up help window every time I change which computer gets the screen.

It looks like I am using the onboard Via IDE, with a hard drive and a CDROM. Somewhere I have a SiI board, but it's not currently in use.

Any suggestions on what settings to do for this, and how to do them these days?

I need to figure out what rev I left off and get up to date on OS.

I plan to put Timberwolf, AmiCygnix, update the SDK, what other things are the must-have software today in 4.1?

From Documentation/Keyboards.doc:

Quote:

Apart from that, I can't think of anything you absolutely need to change from the default values of your NV vars for that setup; using the builtin IDE, you are limited to non-DMA modes anyway which (IIRC) are the defaults in the older updates of OS 4.1. Once you get closer to Update 6, you might need to add a varaiable specifically setting your a1ide to best PIO mode, I seem to remember the default changed, but maybe it did it "smart" so it was only on newer hardware.

But you could also do an "NVGetVar" in a shell and copy/paste the output here, then we can go through it and see if you have anything else needing change.

NVGetVar can also be used for reading a single UBoot variable from an AmigaOS shell. Since some years ago, there is also an NVSetVar (which initially only existed for the Sams) to set the variables from a booted AmigaOS. The alternative is still to do a setenv command from the UBoot prompt, followed by a setenv save.

Best regards,

Niels

Almost makes me want to try and fix my G3

Almost

well done!

Hi Bill

Have a look at This Site
A great resource, saved my bacon a few times.

It will probably refresh your memory, of all things OS4.

I fixed my screen resolution in P96mode so I can see straight.

I have Kickstart 53.5/Workbench 53.1. Anyone know how to map that to 4.1, 4.1u1, 4.1u2, etc? Copyright is 1985-2008.

It seems that from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS_4

based on the 2008 copyright date then I must have the original 4.1 release, and no updates, so I should start with the quick fixes and then update 1 etc.

OK, I think I'm successfully at update 5. I forgot to download update6 for the CD that I burned on the PC with al of this...

I did have one oddity, at the Update 2 stage, on rebooting the red text in Uboot announcing which version of the OS is loading still said Update 1. So I may need to go back and try again, unless it was a typo and was OK, or if a later update took care of everything and I'm now OK regardless.

I've been trying to configure the Prism Wifi card from Amikit, but have not yet got a connection to anything. I thought I had given it everything correctly, but today I realized it's asking for a WEP key, and my PC laptop says the router uses WPA2. I'll go chase after the more recent Atheros install file and see if that stuff has something I can use here. Can anyone comment on this part or offer suggestions?

P.S. As I'm trying to debug the wifi thing, what is the command to see what all PCI cards I have connected, comparable to lspci on Linux? I wan tto say Ranger or something like that, but it's been too long.

Yes, Ranger will show PCI cards.

Simon

There's also a command line program, PCIInfo. It might resemble the Linux one more. But Ranger is great too.

Best regards,

Niels

Quote:I don't think you need to worry. The method for automatically replacing the name of the configuration was perfected along the way, so it's very likely that it hadn't worked quite right back at update 2 (I honestly don't remember the exact details any more). But the important thing is that it's just a name/title which is updated to the correct thing at each update, so it should have been fixed with your subsequent updates.

Once you get Update 6 installed, AmiUpdate is at your service for topping up with the latest fixes. Don't forget to let it do that.

Best regards,

Niels

Quote:

I guess I was hoping for a "Yes, in Update 2 someone forgot to adjust that text line, that is known, and all is well" or "You should have seen it written as Update 2 so somehow you fumbled the Update2 install stage". The unknown makes me nervous. If I find time maybe I'll do the exercise again just to make sure.

And I now have Update 6 installed. I don't have a network connection yet until I get the WiFi figured out. Trying to figure out time to dig out a non-laptop PC to check and reflash firmware in the Prism Wifi card for WPA support. Though the card has an AmiKit sticker on it, I bought it from them, and I'd hope they would do any Amiga-ification needed before shipment. ;) I also have an Atheros MiniPCI + adapter coming for the more recent WiFi release stuff. Only when some WiFi thing works will I be able to benefit from AmiUpdate. In time, I'll save up for an ExpressCard to desktop PCI-Express adaptor with a PCI-Express to PCI32 slot adaptor on that, to have handy for any future needs like this potential firmware thing.

I just checked the installation program from Update 2 (install.py, part of the archive).

It tries to patch Workbench.prefs and the kicklayout.

Things that can make it not do the patch are:

- The file is not found where it looks for it (Prefs/Env-Archive/Sys/workbench.prefs, rsp. kickstart/kicklayout, both on the destination volume).

- It doesn't find the exact string it expects at the exact place it expects ("AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1" starting at offset 206 in a Workbench.prefs of 268 bytes in length, rsp. "AmigaOS4.1_Update_1" starting at offset 29 in Kicklayout - file length irrelevant, but you can't have made additions or deletions before that string, as the offset has to match.)

So did you get your Workbench title string updated to say Update 2? If so, it did find a Workbench.prefs to modify, and since this together with the kicklayout patch is the final step before the reboot, the rest of the installation must also have gone well.

If neither of the strings were updated, it *might* be a sign something went wrong, but it could also just mean you never saved your Workbench prefs.

if you're still feeling unsure, an easier check than redoing everything might be to open the Update 2 archive and check each of the included files' versions against the same ones installed on your system right now. If none of them have lower versions on your system than in Update 2, you're all set (if some of them are higher, it just means a later update overwrote them as well).

Best regards,

Niels

I'm reinstalling. The Update 2 did not change the red text to say Update 2. The install gave some message about kicklayout not changed, might have been modified. That is on top of a vanilla OS4.1update1 install from teh update 1 CD image I donloaded from Hyperion. As I did nto change anything whatsoever, the only other things I did was using the 4.1u1 CD t oinstall audio (envy driver), dopus4, amidvd, amiftp, dvplayer and tunenet. Last time all I did was dopus4... So it was all from the 4.1u1 CD onto a formatted partition as required by the 4.1u1 install CD. The 4.1-noupdates before u1 does not exist anymore.

So, I'll have to assume it's safe to no tget the red boot message updated to say "Update 2".

Correct, it is not a problem in itself if that text wasn't updated.

You can always change it yourself inside Kicklayout using NotePad - just be careful not to add or remove any lines or mess with the other lines in the file.

But since it gets updated again in the following updates, it's really not worth your while to do so.

The message that the kicklayout might have been modified is exactly the one the installer gives if the condition I mentioned above did not hold. So your kicklayout must have had a slightly different content than expected by the installer - either the title text was not "AmigaOS4.1_Update_1", or it didn't start at offset 29. And therefore the installer left it alone and warned you that you had to take care of the change (if desired) yourself.

But again, it's not important. The important thing is to be sure all the other files (for your architecture) from Update 2 were actually installed. So when you reinstall, after applying Update 2 and (I assume) seeing the warning again, use DOpus to check that the files were updated in your system, before you move on to Update 3.

Best regards,

Niels

AAARrrrrrrggggghhhhh!I just found the hidden Kickstart 4.1 animated floppy screen!

I set the keyboard helpkey setting and the uboot text color to green in the os4 uboot/nvram prefs program and rebooted. I don't think I changed any disk settings. Guess I need to pop the battery again.

:)

(I'm assuming all is well after clearing nvram and being more careful next time)

Spent a few minutes unplugges without the coin battery, and all seems good again. Whew!