@daveyw
It does seem OS4 can boot from USB on some machines. I will still be surprised if that is the case for all different machines that OS4 support... (Maybe I'll try on my Sam440 & X1000 one day.)

@outrun1978
Many thanks for your description. I will look at doing this myself *at some point* (sadly not likely to be any time soon), and then hopefully releasing a new version RunInUAE with this built-in...

I do however have a couple of questions:

Quote:
Why did you install OS3.9, rather than use RunInUAE's existing OS3.1 installation?

Quote:
What is the URL of the web page you downloaded Picasso96 from? (Previously I had tried to manually install the needed P96 files, without much success.)

Also, where did you get the "UaeGfx" file from?

@JosDuchIt Quote:

Quote:

It seems very odd that you have problems installing/booting OS4 on two entirely different HDs. That seems to suggest that your problem is nothing to do with the HD, but rather something else. (e.g. Dying power supply, dodgy SATA cable, dodgy RAM, dying motherboard, user configuration error).

@JosDuchIt Quote:
I wouldn't bother, as I think you're going to spend all your time trying to get an incomplete OS4 installation to partially work.

A more important question is why half the files are missing in the first place. If files have been lost due to issues with the USB stick, then you're never going to get it working right.

Which filing system did you use with the USB stick? If you used FFS, try changing that to SFS (and if SFS then try FFS), and then try reinstalling OS4 from the DVD. Also check the MaxTransfer/etc in MediaToolbox. (You could try reducing MaxTransfer to 1FE0000, which will be even slower, but might work if data is being written too quickly to the USB stick.)

@JosDuchIt Quote:
Not if you Amiga is using a standard ATX PSU, similar in size to (say) this one:



But if your Amiga is a compact one, with an external PSU brick (rather than a simple mains 'kettle' plug), then yes, it's *conceivable* that your new HD may not be getting enough power:



(I'm not saying I think it's *likely*, just that it might be possible.)

@JosDuchIt Quote:
I think forget about block sizes, as they should NOT cause such problems, and they clearly didn't help anyway. Stick to 512 block size for the moment, since it's the standard & works with all filing systems (even though MediaToolbox strangely does not default to this).

The suggestion to try using your Sam460's internal SATA port is an excellent idea, although by this point we are grasping at straws a bit.

By the way, what is the MaxTransfer & Mask of your partitions set to? OS4 *may* be more forgiving than Classic Amigas, but I believe the following is still the best settings:
MaxTransfer = 7FFFFFFF
Mask = FFFFFFFE
(Problems with both of these could theoretically cause the problems you have, although I have never heard of them causing problems on real OS4 machines, so again grasping at straws here.)

I would stick to either FFS (slow but extremely robust) or SFS (fast & still pretty robust), as they are both heavily tested.

Quote:
Copying & pasting probably won't work well with tables, but I think the most important point from it is do NOT use partition sizes above 128GB with SFS\00.

Since we have basically run out of ideas, and you do not seem able to try a different model of HD, I am going to strongly suggest you check the drive's SMART statistics. While there is an Amiga utility for doing this, it would probably be easier to just use a Windows utility, of which I suggest:

https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/homecomputing/download/drive-monitor/ (this link circumvents the registration process, so I will remove it soon)
or
http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe (which is linked to from http://www.hdtune.com/download.html )

Acronis Drive Monitor is (probably) the easier to use, as it gives a % health of your drive, in addition to the raw SMART statistics. If it shows anything less than 100% on your new drive, then it is faulty & you have strong proof that it should be replaced. (It does however also warn you that your drives are NOT backed-up by Acronis's backup utility, so you will probably want to uninstall it later.)

@Elwood Quote:
That's the official line, and you are entirely on your own if you try anything else...

... however, I had no choice except to use a 1024 (or was it 2048) block size with SFS2, so that I could create a big enough partition for my large HD. I've *never* had any problem, despite heavy usage.

It's also worth mentioning that SFS *used* to support non-512 block sizes, and they only removed official support for that later. I don't know why, although there was presumably a good reason!

@JosDuchIt Quote:
Since your drive uses Advanced Format (aka 4K Sectors), I suggest that you try using 4096 block size. It shouldn't make any difference (except for performance), but it's at least worth a try. If no improvement then go back to 512 block size.

I think FFS probably officially works any block size (including 4096), but I could be wrong. NGFS probably also supports any block size, but again I could be wrong.

@amigakit Quote:
It shouldn't be hard to ask the user if the installer should automatically download & install the MPEGA.library from OS4Depot. (One call to Curl, one call to LHA to unpack in RAM, one copy & rename of the correct .library file, and you are about done. Ideally add an error check for Curl download failure & option to retry.)

Let me add that I saw TWO users at my local Amiga club who could not work out how to make TuneNet play MP3 files. Not everyone is an Amiga wizard, and if we want to retain (and expand) the Amiga user base then things need to "just work" where possible. (RunInUAE taught me that good documentation isn't not worth nearly as much as a smart installer script, and sensible defaults.)

@JosDuchIt Quote:
I remember reading about such issues YEARS ago, in the days of OS4.0 & the original AmigaOnes, so yes it is *possible*. BUT I haven't heard about such issues in recent years, so I presume that most such issues have been resolved, and I think it's very unlikely (but still possible).

HAVING SAID THAT, I notice that your new HD (like most HDs recently made) is an Advanced Format drive. I do not have any experience with those drives, although I do know that OS4 does not directly support them... BUT that should not be a problem AS LONG AS the drive comes with an automatic backwards compatibility mode (which it should do, otherwise they would not work with Windows XP & other old OSes, which some customers may still want to use).

Quote:
OS4 compatibility problems with USB memory sticks are much more common, so I am not so surprised to hear this. (Usually the USB memory sticks in question do not fully stick to the USB standard, but happen to work with Windows because that's what they were tested with.)

@K-L Quote:
Ummm, one of the main purposes of DvPlayer was to play DVDs. And it does so FAR fast than MPlayer manages (although without menu support).

@JosDuchIt
I would be quite surprised if it was possible to boot AmigaOS4 from a USB stick, as that requires a number of special things to be supported.

Maybe the Wiki is mistaken, and the user who added that info to the Wiki was actually loading Kickstart from their internal HD, and ONLY THEN loading the remainder of the OS4 files from the USB stick. (I can imagine that would work.)

Or maybe there is some specific Amiga model whose firmware specifically added support for booting from USB sticks? (Although that would still require that Kickstart's USB stack specifically supports booting from USB, which I am doubtful is supported as it's such an obscure use case.)

What Amiga are you trying to boot with?
And why do you want to boot from USB? (Maybe someone can suggest an alternative solution...)

@JosDuchIt
I would try swapping the HD & DVD cables. Do NOT swap the sockets the HD & DVD are connected to, as that may work differently, or even not work at all (in some cases).

@JosDuchIt
It's not clear to me if you tried this, but the ONLY way to rule-out a cabling issue is to try a DIFFERENT cable. (Although trying it in another sock is also a good idea, incase the socket is failing. But this is less likely than a bad cable.)

@JosDuchIt
There are two possibilities:

1. The connection to your HD is bad. This means that data will be corrupted, and there is nothing OS4 can do about it. Try a different cable for a start.

2. Your HD has bad sectors. This means it is failing, and will completely die sooner or later. The HD will have SMART saying whether this is the case, but it's hard to explain how to check this (needs 3rd-party software on both AmigaOS & Windows, both of which tend to be overly technical).

Frankly, if you have ruled out option 1 (bad cable), then I would bin the HD.

@outrun1978
While your post misses some details, it sounds like you have two entirely separate problems:
1. Getting RunInUAE to boot from a HD image.
2. Getting it's E-UAE to provide (& use) Picasso96 screenmodes.

For problem 1:

I was definitely able to get RunInUAE to boot from a HD image in the past, just make sure that you are editing the ".uaerc_RunInUAE" config file for this aspect. Here's the line that worked for me in the past:

hardfile2=rw,DH0:Work:AmiKit.hdf,0,0,0,512,1,
(But if that ",1," at the end is HD priority, then increasing it to ",2," might help in some situations.)

However, I must warn you that when *I* tried it, I found that Workbench took FOREVER to boot. Like several minutes or more, due to all the 3rd-party programs that AmiKit used... However, I have not tried this since JIT support was added to E-UAE (and RunInUAE's public release doesn't directly support JIT, although that should not stop you enabling it in E-UAE).

Also, at the time, I didn't realise that the SDL version of E-UAE was needed for Picasso96 support, so I never saw if it uses Picasso96 screenmodes.

ALSO, make sure that RunInUAE's "Shared settings/Basic workbench mode" is turned OFF.

ALSO, make sure that you do your testing using RunInUAE's "Control E-UAE/Boot Workbench" menu option. This avoids any problems that might be caused by RunInUAE trying to make E-UAE start a game.

ALSO, beware that although you can tell RunInUAE to use E-UAE at a different path (using a "Shared settings" menu option), you canNOT tell it to use a different emulated Workbench path (non-HD-image), without reinstalling RunInUAE... although this should probably not affect your usage of a HD image for booting.

ALSO, I just noticed that you have the following line in the config file:

filesystem2=rw,DH0:Workbench:AmigaOS4.1:,0

This seems REALLY inadvisable, as you are giving E-UAE full write access to your AmigaOS*4* partition. (There ARE such things as Amiga viruses, never mind that E-UAE's write support is a bit buggy. RunInUAE defaults to read-only volumes for a reason!) It might also confuse things if E-UAE tried to boot your AmigaOS4 partition, so I'd suggest just getting rid of that line entirely.


For problem 2:

When I was trying to get Picasso96 support to work with RunInUAE's "built-in" Workbench, I found there was basically no documentation about which files were needed on the emulated Workbench side, so I was never able to get this to work. Someone told me that it *does* work, but they never explained how they got it to work. (I also didn't find out that the SDL version was needed until quite some way through my experimentations, which no doubt complicated things.)

ALSO, you need to beware of the following E-UAE config line, as it causes RunInUAE to overwrite the emulated Workbench's screenmode prefs file:

#RUNINUAE: SCREENMODE=

It *appears* this is only used in the ".uaerc" config file, but it is used by ALL emulation modes of RunInUAE.

While adding (say) "#Disabled!" (no quotes) at the begining of this line OUGHT to comment it out, I'm not 100% sure without looking at RunInUAE's code, so it would be simplest to just delete this line outright.


FINALLY, please do let me know how you get on with this. I always wanted to add Picasso96 screenmode support to RunInUAE. If you get further than I did, then that might be helpful.

@stonecracker Quote:
Correction: It is A-Eon NOT Hyperion who are tackling the LibreOffice port.

And regarding if they are looking at a modern browser port (and presumably modern compiler support), there are a few small hints given in this rather long podcast interview:
http://www.amigans.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2576
(The short answer is probably yes, if the guy is to be believed (I've not heard of him before), but if so, then it is very unofficial - so they could still easily cancel it (before announcing it) if they ran into real difficulties.)

It seems a bit strange that TuneNet's installer doesn't install the mpega.library, so TuneNet basically doesn't do anything useful until the user hunts that down (and that's not so easy due to it including libraries for multiple OSes & you need to rename the right one).

@328gts
Since it *is* opening some kind of URL with Odyssey, the URL must be getting lost. That points fairly directly at Prefs/URL needing to be fixed, so I'd check what settings it has for both the HTTP & HTTPS tabs...

@daveyw
Well spotted! I've got "230%" transparency

@Chris
Maybe the updated Ringhio will work for you, now that you've reset your preferences? Should be easy to test, as you can extract/copy the new Ringhio Server somewhere, and temporarily have WbStartup run it instead of the original.

@all/amigakit
nubechechorre posted a bug report here:
http://www.amigans.net/modules/xforum ... id=107458#forumpost107458