Hello everyone.

I recently got an AmigaOne XE G4 motherboard "cheap" from a friend and bought a RadeonHD 5450 PCI card and the RadeonHD driver (version 2.18).

So now all is finally working* BUT when I tried to play around with the 3D features of the Radeon HD nothing seems to work. MiniGL/Warp3D doesn't work and even Picasso 96 PIP doesn't work.

I was aware from my research that the new Warp 3D Nova/Open GL ES doesn't work with this older card (which is fair enough), but I hadn't realised from my research that the "old" MiniGL/Warp3D doesn't work. And certainly I was expecting at least Picasso 96 PIP to work! The whole thing is actually a huge step backwards from my old Micro A1 with its ancient Radeon 7000/RV100 chipset.

Have I completely misunderstood something here or have I built a useless and very expensive system?

* As for "working" as mentioned above, it works, but crashes with my powered USB hub and the onboard sound doesn't work, and the total cost of "cheap" motherboard + upgrades to make the system modern is about the same as for a new Sam or A1222! So a word of warning: Don't try to "mordernise" an old AmigaOne XE G4 - throw it in the rubbish and just buy a new system!!! What a waste of time and effort and money this misadventure has been...

I have recently bought a second hand AmigaOne with a Radeon HD card expressly with the idea of using it to begin some 3D/accelerated/composited programming. My old AmigaOne Micro wasn't up to the task.

I am tempted to take on this task but it seems with Odyssey we have a project management issue. If we have a working 1.23 version then it should be in Github along with all of its dependencies and their #ifdef __amigaos4__ changes. And if you borrow some code from AROS or MorphOS then you should keep *their* #ifdefs when adding our __amigaos4__ stuff, so that you can share the code back with them.

Otherwise we just end up with forks of forks and the situation we have now where people would like to join in but there is too much work to be done just to compile.

I might regret this, but what is the address of the Github project? Is there only the non working 1.25 version in Github or is the old 1.23 version there as well in a branch?

If the community wants "Butter bei die Fische" then someone with some project management skills who can take over ensuring that the Github version is always up to date would be more helpful than any bounty or even developers stepping forward.

@tonyw

Hey Tony! Long time no see...

I am in Germany now. Which is lucky for you because otherwise I would be knocking on your door asking you to fit the CPU fan on my new Amiga - I hate fitting CPU fans!!!

Thanks to everyone for the tips here. They are enough to get me going setting this system up. It is booting now, but too noisy for any serious use until I get a new fan. I don't understand how the previous owner was able to use it without going crazy as it is as loud as a 747 taking off!

Hello Amigans!

I have just bought a second hand AmigaOne G4 as my AmigaOne Micro is starting to feel a bit old, mainly due to the limited onboard graphics.

So now I have a shiny new (old actually AmigaOne. But boy is this baby stuck in 2003! It has a "tiny" 50 GB hard drive, a Voodoo 3 (!) graphics card and a fan on the CPU that sounds like a 747 taking off... so time for a complete overhaul to bring it into the current decade.

So some advice:

1) What is the best graphics card?

In time I will go for the Radeon HD but given that it does not currently have 3D support I will just get something less powerful for now. The Radon 9250 seems popular. What is the best graphics card for an AmigaOne in terms of driver support, speed, 3D support and preferably DVI/HDMI output? Are there any special considerations I should be aware of (ie. supported voltages)?

2) What is the best and quietest CPU cooler?

And where can I get one? This needs to be whisper quiet - my AmigaOne Micro has a really noisy fan and I really want my new system to be quiet. I am typing this message on a high end PC (sorry and I can barely hear it - just a whisper in the background. I really want to get my AmigaOne like this so this has an impact on the graphics card choice too.

3) Hard drive

The world has moved onto SATA but this baby is PATA. Apart from needing a PATA drive then, are there any limitations? I don't think so but may as well ask.

4) PS/2 keyboard

A bit of a nuisance that U-Boot doesn't recognise my USB keyboard. I have a USB->PS/2 adapter but it doesn't seem to work so I had to borrow a PS/2 keyboard for now. Can anyone
suggest a working USB->PS/2 adapter?

5) Sound card

There is already a sound card in the system but if I am overhauling it then I might as well go all the way. One of these so-called "Envy" sound cards perhaps?

6) Power supply

How powerful should it be? 60W, 80, 100? I believe that PCs these days use different motherboard power sockets to what they did in the AmigaOne days, true?

Finally, does anyone know if there is a website around that lists hardware that is known to be compatible with the AmigaOne?

Thanks for any advice you can give and let me know if you have any ideas of how I can "improve" this system. Suggested hardware etc.

Looking forward to my upgrade!

Colin.

Wow, so many good responses, but I still can't make my mind up!

In a way my AmigaOne Micro is enough for me and the only thing lacking is a better graphics card that will allow me to drive a DVI widescreen monitor and maybe work on Open GL support for Allegro. My Radeon 7000 on my Micro can't do the first of those at all and can't do the second very well!

So in a way the AmigaOne 500 is just what I need and is very affordable.

BUT everyone is recommending the X1000 so it is a hard choice! And I do sort of get the feeling that the AmigaOne 500 might be nice at first but in the long run I will be wishing that I could expand it more. Some of the things mentioned about SATA (no DMA support and only having support for one drive) are worrying too and could be a limiting factor.

Hmmm, decisions decisions. I E-Mailed Amikit a couple of days ago to ask the price of an X1000 shipped to Germany so let's see what they say. No respnse yet!

A couple more questions:

For both the A500 and X1000 owners in this forum, what are they like in terms of noise? I see that the A500 has a passively cooled CPU. So does my AmigaOne Micro, and it also does not have a fan on its power supply (a so-called "pico" power supply). And yet it is still as noisy as a vaccuum cleaner due to the fan on the Radeon 7000 GPU! It would be nice to have a nice quiet system, whether it be A500 or X1000 so I'm eager to know how noisy these are.

Is it really true that the SATA on the A500 does not suport DMA? That doesn't make sense in the year 2012, and especially so given the throughput of SATA!

Many thanks for any information!

@Ricossa: This is a good point and I have E-Mailed E-EON to ask when I can expect availability. I'm not in a huge rush but if I have to wait a year then this would certainly affect my decision!

Hmm, 4 replies, all recommending the X1000 - ok, I'm starting to get convinced. Thanks everyone.

@logicalheart: Yes, the X000 is a huge beast and I'm not really sure why its creators chose to make it so big in these days of miniaturisation. I suppose they wanted to make it look impressive! But I do prefer smaller systems, which is why I have an AmigaOne Micro (which I had to wait an extra year for). I suppose for visiting friends and computer clubs I still have my "portable" Micro!

@tony: I didn't think that we had a working internal ethernet driver yet? Well bonus points if we do I suppose! When at my friends, he couldn't boot without removing and reinserting the USB cable for his keyboard and mouse as the OpenFirmware wouldn't recognise them. Do you have this problem or was it just his keyboard and mouse?

I'm going to go and do some research on the respective systems websites...

After seeing an X1000 in action at a friend's house the other day, running on a modern widescreen monitor, I decided that it was time to finally upgrade. My trusty AmigaOne Micro has served me well but it is getting a little outdated now, especially in the graphics department.

So, the big question then: AmigaOne 500 or AmigaOne X1000?

The 500 looks nice and is quite affordable, and the X1000, while being the deluxe model, didn't seem to perform that amazingly when I saw it. But my friend is encouraging me to get the X1000 so I'd like some opinions of the pros and cons of the two systems.

I don't mind paying the money for the X1000 because I know it will last me for 10 years like my AmigaOne Micro has (which was also very expensive at the time - $1600 AU) BUT if I'm going to pay up that amount of money for an X1000 then it would be nice to have some real reasons, rather than just "It's the deluxe model!"

Any advice would be appreciated!

@kas1e

Allegro 1.1 is the latest version released on OS4 Depot. If you have installed that then everything should be ready to go. Have a look in SDK:Local/Documentation/Allegro/index.html - this contains some OS4 specific documentation as well as an example makefile that can be used for compiling stuff on OS4. Plus it also contains links to the official Allegro documentation, which comes as a part of the SDK.

Hope that helps!

I just wanted to post a couple of ideas here before I raised enhancement requests for them, in case they already exist!

1) Is there a way to switch between tabs using the keyboard? In Cubic IDE I can do it with RAmiga-, and RAmiga-. and in Firefox I can do it with ctrl-pgup and ctrl-pgdown. Very handy!

2) ctrl-f brings the search box up, but is there a hotkey to get rid of it again? In Firefox you can do it with <esc>.

3) If you do a search with ctrl-f then every time after that if you hit ctrl-f again to do another search, the contents of the search box is replaced with the first search. ie.

a) Hit ctrl-f and search for "one"
b) Hit ctrl-f and search for "two"
c) Hit ctrl-f again and "two" is replaced by"one" which is annoying if you want to do another search for "two"

4) The LAmiga-d/lalt-d and ctrl-k hotkeys to highlight the URI and search gadgadgets respectively don't work if one of the gadgets or a text field of a form is already activated.

Before I raise enhancement requests and bugs reports, are these known issues?

Colin.

@Snuffy

Allegro coding is really really easy! In fact it is almost like "AMOS for OS4" it is so easy. You just gave me a good idea, which is that if someone wrote a wrapper for Allegro, so that people could program it in some language like Perl then it could be very useful as an AMOS style language.

But what is more difficult is making the Allegro library itself work on a new platform - that is a lot of work. But once it is done then people like you can write Allegro games very easily.

@DaveP

The reason why I use an Amiga version number is because the Amiga version of Allegro is based on 4.3.10 which is now frozen and will have no more releases. So any releases done by me will be bug fixes or improvements to the Amiga port. There will be no updates to the Allegro core. The Amiga version will always be based on 4.3.10.

There will probably be no Allegro version 5 for the Amiga because it is not compatible with Allegro 4.x and there are no games for it yet, so there's no point in porting it. Maybe in the future if it becomes popular then someone will port it. It's completely different to Allegro 4.x though so that will be a big job - there will have to be some very good games released to justify the work being done!

I'll add to the release notes that the Amiga version is based on 4.3.10.

@Slayer

Well I did Google it and I found the site mentioned above but the releases on there (and on OS4Depot) were so old that I thought there must surely be a newer version somewhere.

Anyway, got it and it's working now.

I downloaded MPlayer from OS4Depot thinking it was the latest one and it turns out to be a really old one that crashes a lot! I had a hunt around but couldn't find the latest MPlayer for OS4.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

@spotUP

I'm working on an Allegro based screen blanker that I hope to have released before I head to Australia for a holiday on the 4th of April.

I also have Allegro version 1.1 ready for release for you, but I haven't seen you around online for a couple of weeks!

@Cyborg

Excellent, thanks. I just wanted to double check and just bought one. Amazing - a piece of off the shelf hardware from Maplin for ?6.99! I'm impressed!

I have to buy a new ethernet card for my Amiga today but I can't quite remember the model numbers of compatible chipsets.

I found an RTL8139 based card in Maplin and I'm 99% sure that the 8139 is one of the RTL chipsets that works but just wanted to make sure before I bought it.

Can anyone confirm this? Just listing the RTL drivers in your Sys:Kickstart is enough.

Hi all.

OS4.1 with graphics card composition on my AmigaOne micro is so slow as to be unusable. I guess there is just not enough memory on the card and the system is always locking up.

I can't find where to turn this off in Prefs - does anyone know?

Has anyone else seen this problem?

@samo79

Hey.

It's basically finished and I was ready to release it, but found some last minute problems on OS4.1 and haven't had a chance to fix it - I'm just too busy at work!

But hopefully in the next couple of weeks it will be done.