RadeonHD and A1XEG4

Thanks A-eon and Hans for the driver I have obtained a pci to pci-e adaptor and also a Sapphire Radeon HD4350 card. My machine is a non modified A1XEG4 with a ppc 7457 1267mhz with altivec enabled. with just the HD4350 card in the 33 MHz pci slot the machine boots up to kickstart and then freezes, it is looking for a file but I don't know which one. as per the instructions I have manually edited the devs monitor files and have also tried to boot with both the HD4350 and my old agp radeon 9000 card together with monitors attached to each. but on both cards the bootup stops after loading kickstart. the machine works fine with just the radeon9000 connected do I have some files missing from kickstart? the Radeon chip and pci chip are there and I have purchased and installed RadeonHD driver software?

@Swisso

iirc when my odysee ended (getting a HD card to work in an XE) it was the USB and LAN stuff (the onboard chips).

Whenever in the background of the boot splash screen the USB hardware was initialized (USBCtrl) it froze solid. (commenting that line out made it go to WB)

I managed to reach the WB ONCE but it froze again on every web access (so i turned off internet)

It worked...but it's like working with a typewriter...not really useable without net access

I refrained from using the HD card and dealt with the fact that my XE was never to become a useable HD gfx card powered machine.

Maybe you got a little luckier than me though...i have both DMA and USB fixed...

I got an X now, leaving the XE to be a second test system for my ports

i wondered if having the old ATIRadeon chip and the RadeonHD chip both resident in kickstart at the same time might be causing it to baulk ?

here are some answers from Hans on his website :
A Quick Summary
If your Amiga has a PCIe slot, then it is recommended to choose a mid to high-end Radeon HD 5000+ series card
When choosing a card for the Sam 460ex, be mindful that the PCI slot is right next to the 4x PCIe slot. Choose a card that takes up only a single slot, and does not have an oversized heat-sync/fan that would block use of the PCI adjacent slot
A1-XE motherboards with the DMA fix and uA1 motherboards require disabling DMA for the IDE drives and USB in order to use any PCI graphics card (in the 33 MHz slot)
Radeon HD cards (and Radeon X1000 cards) do not work in the Pegasos-II
These graphics do not work in Classic Amigas
The drivers will eventually be able to use the full amount of VRAM that these cards have
The ultimate choice in card is up to you. Whatever you choose, enjoy

http://hdrlab.org.nz/projects/amiga-o ... ndations-for-amigaos-4-x/

thanks LIo, as i mentioned before my amiga is not fixed at all barring the 7457 cpu. But since that was a direct replacement i do not think this will be causing any problem. I will try a high end 5000 series just to be sure but i am not convinced that will make any difference.
one thing i have noticed is that Kickstart loads all its files before cursor freezes and just blinks. i am wondering if any of my kickstart files may be interfering. Are there any that i should remove, or should have removed by now?
on the hardware side i have noticed that the start-up ping noise is missing when the HD card is fitted, just a note in case this is of any use.

I woud like to get this working if only to have a Radeon HD card running with the A1XE, So i will keep trying different options

Even if you get it working, you will have to compromise : DMA, USB...

I would like to keep my A1XEG4 running too as long as possible but one day, I know I will have to switch to SAM460 (or another Amiga-NG capable machine) !

My AmigaOne is more than 10 years old as my main system, not bad investment after all !

sniff mine too and it kicks ass still
i'll put out my info here i found a supplier for the Pci to Pci-e adaptors in case anyone wnats to buy any they are on offer at 25% of the retail price. here is the link.
http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/pci-32-b ... -pci-express-adapter.html
it may encourage more peeps to try a solution

@Swisso
Quote:

No, that won't cause any problems. You can have both in the kickstart at the same time.

What exactly do you mean by "stops after loading kickstart?" Does it show the boot screen? Does the screen go blank after it has loaded all of the kickstart modules? Does it even complete loading all kickstart modules?

When you have both graphics cards installed, what do you see on each screen? Have you tried booting with just the RadeonHD card connected?

Hans

it shows u-boot screen, you can see all the kick start modules load and then the cursor just sits there blinking. If i have both cards connected the hd card will load up to that point but the radeon9000 will only show a blank screen witht he cursor blinking.
yes the hd card will work by itself up to the kickstart modules loading up

@Swisso

Quote:
Does it load all modules?

What version of PCIGraphics.card do you have installed? Boot with the Radeon 9000, open a shell window, and type version PCIGraphics.card.

Hans

I have an AGP graphics card Radeon 9000
but version pci graphics card installed is 53.5
My guess is that a module is blocking the continuation of the boot process, but I cannot determine which one without isolating them one at a time. is there a way of slowing down the boot process so that I can see where the kickstart module loading stops?

if it helps I have another pci-e graphics card and the same thing happens with that one. it is a Radeon X1650SE. so I don't think getting another card will help.

@Swisso

Quote:
How did you check this? Did you use the method that I asked you to use (i.e., "version PCIGraphics.card"). I want to be absolutely sure that you're giving me the number of the version that is actually in use, and not one that happens to be on your hard drive.

Quote:
No, there is no way of slowing it down (other than disabling DMA on your hard drive).

Does the progress bar reach the end? If so, then it has loaded all of them.

Hans

yes I used the method you stated and that is what showed up,
the progress bar does appear to reach the end yes

@Swisso

Okay. In that case, I'm not sure what's going on. If the graphics driver were starting up, then you'd at least see the screen go black when the driver initialises the card. Clearly, it's not getting that far.

You can try disabling DMA for your drives, and disabling USB. You'll have to ask someone else how to both of those, as I haven't used an A1-XE in years.

Do you have a serial cable to read debug output using another PC? If so, then you might be able to see if something crashes. You'll have to add "serial" to the AmigaOS boot args in the UBoot menu (without the quotation marks).

BTW, what PCI-to-PCIe bridge chip does your adaptor card have? I always recommend using one with a PEX 8112 bridge chip, as that's what the PCI Radeon HD cards use.

Hans

Ok I will try that, bridge chip on this adaptor is pex8111, would that not affect u-boot screen too if it didn't work? i'll see if I can find an adaptor with 8112 chip as well.

Quote:
PEX 8111 should work too. At least, it used to.

Hans

@Swisso

Regarding the kickstart modules.
As i said you should probably try the USB modules first

comment out everything USB in kicklayout and go from there

@Swisso

Have you tried to take AGP one out and insert the PCI_to_PCIe connector into PCI66?