SpotUp:

I've been busy designing and building MIDI hardware, the last few projects have been made with PIC chips, and are not Amiga specific.

I'm sure I'll get back to Amiga stuff soon enough, it all moves in a big circle..

I'm real excited about the latest, I have had a few late nights getting it up to operational, it's a musical instrument that could be much easier than most "classic" instruments to play. It could mutate into a number of different products, but I'm still developing the core application, so it may be a few months before all the possibilities are realized.

I could NOT develop my MIDI toys without having CAMD on my Amiga. There is just nothing as flexible for managing MIDI on other OS's.

LyleHaze

@Paul

Quote:

Ninjas.

@ChrisH


Quote:

Wouldn't it be less reliable at all times, and not just while booting?

Otherwise an interesting thread...

LyleHaze

@Atheist

It sounds like you have everything you need.

Go for it!

So you'll be selling New AmigaOnes in March or April with all the bugs fixed? We should announce this on all the Amiga websites.

What will the prices be?

I can't wait.

LyleHaze

@gregthecanuck

I could be wrong, but I recall a note on the ACube site saying that a very specific type and brand of RAM is reccomended.
If that's the case you may be better off getting it factory-supplied.

Like I said, I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

LyleHaze

@COBRA
Thanks for that. I am glad to hear that I'm not the only one having issues with this.

@Rogue
I learned something new. Thank You.
Perhaps the problem is between UBOOT and Workbench.. I believe that would be the Second Level Booter. In that case it's outside the topic for this thread.

It's not a big issue for me, I'll probably swap a different drive in before my next OS upgrade anyway. I just thought it would be a good bug to squash if you were coding around in there already.

As I said earlier, if you or Stephane or anyone else wants to reproduce the bug, I'll be happy to send you my drive. I think I have a BENQ that will replace it.


LyleHaze

@Thread
I swapped the battery last night without losing the settings. Still, it's nice to have a backup on paper and in file form.
I notice the word "flash" used alot when discussing UBoot settings. If it really were flash, we wouldn't lose the settings when changing the battery.

Maybe that could be a suggestion for the designers of the next board we use. SRAM is so "Old School".

As soon as the new battery was in place, the random DSI errors disappeared. The machine is stable again, until it's time for the next battery change.

Thanks to all for the help.

LyleHaze

@Rogue

Re: Pioneer 107D optical drive.
Sorry, sometimes I read right past something I was supposed to stop and answer.

When a pioneer 107D drive is installed and UBoot is set to it's "normal" drive modes (automatic/best mode, I think).
The machine is unable to boot at all. Not only does the optical drive not appear, but the hard drives(s) disappear too.

This is from memory, it's been a long time. I recall a LOT of hair-pulling trying to figure out why my machine was dead. That's why I reported it, its a real stinker.

If the optical drive is disconnected, everything is fine.

If UBoot is set for PIO, no interrupts everything is fine.

Once you have made it past UBoot/SLB and into OS4, you can re-enable drive interrupts and everthing is happy.

What makes it worse is that you set uboot and user-startup and the problem is forgotten, until the next time you reset UBoot settings, then you're up the creek again.

The Pioneer 107D was the first drive listed as "compatible with OS4" at intuitionbase. a note describing the workaround has been added.

I have installed the latest firmware for the 107 drive, no help.

I'll look for previous posts on the subject and add references to this post if I can find them.

LyleHaze

Thanks to you both.
That worked like a charm.
I now have a saved file and a printed copy.

Big Thanks,
LyleHaze

Recent discussions have shown that prefs:UBoot can not save and restore all settings correctly (if I understood the conversation right).
Now I need to change my battery. Before doing this, I need to save off my UBOOT settings.
I tried typing printenv and writing down everything I see, but about a full screen had scrolled off before I could read it.

My question: How can I back up my UBOOT settings correctly?
Is there any way to read that information while OS4 is running, or is it only available before the OS has been loaded?

Thanks,
LyleHaze

@orgin

As you surmised, my registration e-mail never arrived.
Thank you very much for the assist in getting registered.

The audio noise issue has been added to the list.

LyleHaze

@Rogue

A discussion in another forum leads to a new bug here.

On a micro board, the sound outputs a stream of static until sometime after kickstart is loaded.

Rebooting after the first power up is quiet for OS reboot, but noisy again for a machine reboot. (as expected)

If the sound hardware could be muted during the first PCI scan, it would make using OS4 in a studio much better. It's a bit embarrasing to reboot, more so if it makes noise the whole time it's loading.

I have registered at OS4Depot for the bug tracker, but have not yet received my response E-Mail. I can log in there, but I can't figure out how to add a new issue.

As always, I'll provide any help that I can.

LyleHaze

Kicko: Youre beginning to scare me, man.

@Rogue

Re Pioneer 107D DVD Drive startup:

I am not connected for Debug output right now.
I can't even figure out how to turn it on.

Might be useful for a few things, I'm sure.

The drive bug has a workaround, so I'm not in
"Dire Straits". It may be easier for me to just swap in another drive the next time I'm in there.

I appreciate you being open for discussion!

LyleHaze

@Rogue

Excellent!
Pioneer 107D (and likely the 105 too) DVD/RW drives have an interrupt problem. If "Use Interrupts" is enabled for these drives, it can't find the boot drive (or much of anything else for that matter). I believe this is in UBoot because once the system is loaded, you can re-enable interrupts and faster transfers without problems.
If these are the only drives that it happens with, then it may not be worth fixing. But if it's a sign of a recurring problem.. Well, you decide what to do with it.
My 107D has been updated with the latest firmware, and if you need it for testing, it's yours. Just PM your shipping address to me.

Thanks,
LyleHaze

@Skov

Sure! We can do this.

All my instructions come from a 4.0 install. I don't have 4.1 yet. I hope they match.

You said the Pioneer is in the slave position.
Assuming it's in the same cable as the HD, that makes it the "Primary Bus", unit 1. Your HD would be primary bus, unit 0. That will come in handy shortly.

I had to disconnect the Pioneer completely to get booted up. Do this if you need to.
Boot the machine. Open your workbench, open Prefs, open "UBOOT". Click on the "IDE Ports" tab.
find the "Primary Bus, Unit 1" box, set the transfer mode to "Best PIO". Turn OFF "Use IRQ" for that device.

Press "Save" in the lower left corner. Power down, reconnect your pioneer drive and it should boot up just fine.
The only problem now is that your DVD drive is running a lot slower than it should.

Open your s:user-startup file from notepad and add the following two lines:

idetool -i a1ide.device 1 1
idetool -x a1ide.device 1 66

The -i line turns "Use Interrupts" back on for this drive
The -x line turns up the transfer speed to the correct setting.

the second letter of that device name is a one, not an El.

Let us know how it works out for you!

LyleHaze

@Skov

I can help with the pioneer drive problem. The drive firmware and UBoot don't get along.
You must change UBoot settings to downgrade the drive, and you can raise them again from user-startup after everything gets going.
If you don't do this, it may be unable to find your hard drive even.. the problem can affect the entire IDE bus.

It's been a long time, but I find this in my user-startup:

idetool -i a1ide.device 2 1
idetool -x a1ide.device 2 66

assuming "2" is secondary master (where my pioneer is)
Look up the idetool docs for the rest.

Have Fun,
LyleHaze

@salass00

Thank You.
It looks like it's just what I needed.

LyleHaze

Help porting to Amiga.. Again


OK, here's another request.
I am familiar with Amiga programming, but very little from other platforms. Lately I have been doing a lot of PIC programming, and I'd really like to get those tools working on the Amiga.
The source to GPUtils-0.13.6 is available, and is written for the (or a) GCC compiler. Ports exist for windoze, Mac, and I believe ?nix as well.
So I feel brave, and I download the source. Yup, unix paths throughout. Instead of makefiles, they have makefile.am and makefile.in, apparently for automake. I seek out automake, and found a python script that should work. I have python installed, but I can't seem to get it all together.
Between Python, automake, unix pathways, and no existing amiga port, I can't even quite get anything to make (or gmake, either)
I read the docs for make, and I see that vpath and VPATH may be able to help. I spent two hours on those alone, but couldn't get them to work for me. They MIGHT throw a requester asking for an odd volume name, but at no point could I get them to actually find a file there.

This is all a bit challenging. Not to be defeated, I ended up writing simple makefiles from scratch, and changing all the source #include statements to complete pathnames. What a pain. But I was able to get a few files to compile. This is NOT a reasonable way to go forward. It wasn't too long until my simple makefile wasn't getting everything done.

It shouldn't be this hard. Really!

All of that may be amusing, but I'm trying to show that I'm not just asking someone to do it for me. If it really is as difficult as it has been so far, I give up. I'll keep doing my PIC development on windows.
If there is something I'm missing, perhaps some tool or method I can use to get me past some of these problems, please let me know! I'd prefer to do all my work on the AmigaOne if possible.

Yes, I have read (spots?) porting guide. I tried what I could understand, that was not enough.

Any suggestions would be welcomed,
LyleHaze

@RacerX

type into Google:
convert 109 euro to USD

Google Replies:
109 Euros = 170.5632 U.S. dollars

This will change regularly based on the exchange rates.


Lyle

@Mikey_C

I have a Pioneer 107D. Don't go there.
It was one of the first listed as compatible on IntuitionBase, but it now interferes with bootup, unless you change UBoot settings and change your user-startup.

I've never tried to burn anything with it, but I have considered throwing it into a fire.

LyleHaze