@Skateman

Awesome! Thanks for sharing!

@daveyw

I was referring this part:

Quote:

So in our case, the solution to the USB problem was to go into U-Boot command line and run "usb reset" command.

@skynet

I don't have any evidence of Candi working after Update 3 (sorry if I made it unclear).

When we've tried to apply Update 3 for the first time, we had Candi up and running. Things went wrong and after trying to boot from USB stick, we've experienced some Grim Reaper errors, including the one related to Candi.

On the second attempt at installing Update 3, we had Candi switched off and didn't even try using it after the update.

@MazinKaesar

Thank you for the hint! It will certainly be very helpful at some point in future!

@smf

Quote:

As @smf mentioned in the quoted fragment, grey screen occurring between the U-Boot and AmigaOS splash screen indicates a problem with Kickstart. Obviously, grey screen is not very informative, and connecting through a serial cable may be a bit of a hassle for somebody who didn't do it before. Being a Sam owner, I have little experience with X5000, but still I have a small observation that I somehow hope could be helpful.

When supporting my colleague in restoring his X5000 back to life after Update 3, accidentally I've made a typo in the Kicklayout file in the bootable pendrive I've created. This resulted in a strange behaviour and also a grey screen - even after we've reinstalled AmigaOS from scratch. Of course the problem here was that because of that typo, one of the files from the Kickstart wouldn't load and at the same time it tried to load the mistyped file that did not exist at all.

How did I learn about it? I have entered the boot menu, selected Boot from Hard Disk option, and then triggered boot procedure by typing "boota" in the command line. This way I could see some useful information during Kickstart loading, in particular the message about the missing file. Much more helpful than simply a grey screen. Now I wish I knew that before we decided to format the SYS partition.

My point is, maybe someone who still hasn't resolved this issue, could try this approach and see if it brings anything to the table.

@daveyw

Looks like Update 3 can mess up with USB.

Feel free to look at my post in the other thread (which also is a follow up on this post). I described issue with USB after applying Update 3 on X5000 and how it was resolved.

Yesterday, together with my colleague, we took another attempt at solving the issue with his X5000/20 after failed Update 3 installation.

tl;dr
We have decided to reinstall AmigaOS from scratch, and eventually succeeded in installing Update 3 from the downloaded archive, but first we had to solve a problem with USB by doing "usb reset" in the U-Boot. For the detailed description, please continue reading.


1. Bootable USB preparation
Using my Sam460, we've created a bootable USB stick (this was the easy part, thanks to this tutorial with a great, screenshot illustrated guide attached).

2. USB problem
We've inserted newly created bootstick and launched X5000. Any hopes that we've had, faded away right after AmigaOS splash screen. Workbench greeted us with a grey screen with only a top bar with a Boing Ball visible, and some Grim Reaper errors popping up one over another. The errors were mentoning hid.usbfd and a keyboard. We've unplugged both mouse and keyboard right after launching a boot procedure, which left us with only single Grim Reaper error related to CANDI (I still don't understand why it was there despite booting from freshly created USB, but this makes me think that the original corrupted OS installation from internal SSD was still involved in the process).

Initially, I thought that I have made a mistake when preparing the bootable pendrive. We've carefully created another one, but still no luck.

We've also tried with replacing the ehci.usbhcd driver from Update 2 (despite it was X5000/20). Obviously, that didn't help as well.

We've ended up performing "usb reset" in the U-Boot. Only after that we've experienced a proper AmigaOS installation screen after booting from the pendrive.

3. AmigaOS fresh installation
At this point we were already short on time and decided not to spent another (possbily frustratingly fruitless) hours trying to repair existing installation.
Instead, we've just quick formatted the system partition and proceeded with fresh installation in the following order:
* AmigaOS 4.1 FE
* Update 2
* Enhancer Software 2.2
* Update 3

4. Final thoughts
I don't the know the precise details of the AmigaOS 4.1FE setup on which we originally failed to install Update 3, but certainly we had Update2 and ES 2.2 installed, and CANDI up and running during the Update 3 installation. Knowing that the CANDI doesn't play well with Update 3, on second attempt we haven't turned it on.

I want to emphasize, that prior to applying Update 3 for the first time (before all the things went off), we didn't have any problems with USB devices. Keyboard, mouse, pendrives... everything was working fine. This makes me think that the failed update messed with the USB on the U-Boot level, but I have no idea how that would even be possible.

This time we wanted to try installing Update 3 via AmiUpdate, but for some reason AmiUpdate didn't see the proper server and as such, we couldn't connect. Only after installing Update 3, AmiUpdate started working as expected, enabling future updates.

@AmigaSociety

Quote:

This is exactly the same behaviour we've experienced with my colleague when I was helping him out with Update 3 install on his X5000 (as described in this thread AmigaOS 4.1FE Update 3 - Bugs and Experience Report).


@cloverskull

Quote:

This is exactly the way we've proceed - downloaded the update package from Hyperion website, unpacked and run the install manually.

@Kyle

Quote:
Together with my colleague we've been unfortunate to share your experience when trying to apply Update3 on his AmigaOne X5000. The update seemed to be progressing well up to 100%. Then it stopped on 100% and several minutes passed, but nothing seemed to be happening. Eventually we've chosen to restart the machine, after which the grey screen welcomed us.

@smf

Quote:
It happens before AOS4.1 splash screen so it looks like a Kickstart problem, according to what you've mentioned. Do you possibly have any ideas on how we could narrow down the issue to find the problem?

Personally, I had more luck as on my Sam460LE the update (through AmiUpdate) went smooth. The only inconvenience was that after the first reboot I had AmigaDOS window opened instead of Workbench and I had to restart the OS again.

@Maijestro

Quote:

Successfully performed update on my Sam460LE via AmiUpdate as well. Indeed, the web pages seem to be loading a bit quicker now

@AmigaOldskooler thank you so much for your work on these roundups! Having not so much time to follow everything that's going on in AmigaOS 4 world, I find them very helpful to stay up to date.

Good luck!

@MartinW

Quote:

Several other people (including myself) encountered a similar problem. I'd suggest sending an email to info@lookbehindyou.de directly (the address they have specified in their webpage footer). This is what I did and from my experience I can tell they are very responsive and supportive.

I hope this helps!

@Maijestro

Quote:

At the same time, as long as the OS itself does not support multithreading, there's probably no motivation for developers to go that way. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that once SMP support is there, the software utilising the new possibilities will start to emerge.

@smarkusg

Quote:
Two years ago, when I was starting to consider buying a native hardware for AmigaOS 4 and was gathering information, I got this odd feeling that people pay fair amount of money for their machines (which are brand new commercial products) but then have to rely on forums and community to solve any problems they may possibly encounter. While I really do appreciate the awesome community support (and this actually raised my interest in the topic even more!), I withheld my decision for a while because of this potential lack of support.

I don't have any personal experience with other machines and hence cannot comment on that, but certainly I'm very happy about how ACube approaches this. The support is there, and definitely Sam is alive and kicking! It's a great feeling, knowing that your favourite platform is under active development (such a convenience that with update 2015.d, finally I don't need to switch keyboards to access the UBoot).

Even if at some point in time I will choose to buy more powerful hardware, I will certainly keep my Sam460 with me.

@afxgroup
Quote:
I really hope it will eventually make it to the surface (I wouldn't mind if it would be as a part of new ES version, AmigaOS 4.2 or simply a standalone product like RadeonHD driver). Definitely, it is a highly demanded and absolutely crucial piece of software for Sam460 users.

Another awesome stuff for the AmigaOS 4.1! Thanks!

Initially I had a problem with running Doom64 EX+ on my Sam460LE with Radeon RX 560, though, so decided to share it here in case someone encounters this issue.

On game launch, the video was suddenly switching off, leaving my screen with no signal until the OS reboot. The problem was caused by an older RadeonRX driver (I had v2.11 installed). Simply using Updater to update the driver to v2.12 resolved the issue (thanks @mufa and @smarkusg).

@kikems
Many thanks for sharing your experience. I really enjoyed the story.

I got interested in AmigaOS 4 around 2023 (after a long gap in using any Amiga systems) and quickly I started looking forward to buying a hardware that could run it natively. After doing some research (and looking at the price tags) I was not very convinced, to be fair, so I started with AmigaOS 4.1 FE Classic on WinUAE. The first impression was really good! I quickly got allured by it, but I hit the limitations of such setting very soon.

So, end of 2023, I eventually made a decision to buy X5000 but couldn't afford it at that moment. When I was just about to get funds I could spend on the X5000, A1222+ suddenly came out... with the nasty side effect of a sharp increase in X5000 price, effectively pushing it outside of my budget (oh no, not again!). To say I was unhappy about it would be a huge understatement. But it was what it was, and I had to make a decision on which low-cost system to take. It wasn't hard, though. Two core CPU for OS without multicore support didn't look very appealing as an exchange for a sacrifice on FPU. It also occurred that 3D games like Heretic II won't run on A1222+ at all, and I wanted to play Heretic II under AmigaOS. I also knew I was going to play around with some C/C++ programming, and latest gcc version in the SDK supporting SPE was the oldest(!) of the available versions. On top of that, I was really upset that the system which was supposed to be an affordable entry level machine became "cheap" by making its older sister even more expensive. With that, I considered A1222+ a no go for me, leaving me with Sam460LE as the only viable option... and I'm definitely happy with the choice I made.

Today I kind of feel limited, similar to what you've mentioned. Lack of GART makes 3D games get significant hiccups, the issues with system stability are sometimes annoying (like today I got a sudden crash when browsing Amiga sites while listening to music with AmigaAMP running in the background, and I was in the middle of writing a forum post). I also long ago spotted that UAE runs slow under Sam460. For occasional classic Amiga games playing I quickly reverted back to WinUAE.

Now, I know that switching to X5000 would make a big difference, and your story makes me think about it even harder now :)

At the same time we just got another UBoot update, which finally is capable of a proper handling of my Logitech MX Keys keyboard (this and RadeonRX support makes UBoot complete for my needs at the moment). My WB runs in QHD (1440p). It may not be the smoothest experience, but it's not that bad either, and I get a decent working space plus pixel perfect display on my screen. Also, I don't spent as much time using AmigaOS (certainly not as much I would like to) and when I do, I mostly play around with some basic C programming, explore the capabilities of AmigaOS itself or browse Amiga forums. If only there was a chance for the GART support to be added, Sam460 could still remain a considerable option for entry-to-intermediate level. So I guess it's not the time for me to change, yet. And when the time comes, Mirari may also be an option :)

Seems I was too late for the Collector's Ed., so just ended up in ordering a regular box.

Awesome stuff, thanks!

@kas1e

Great stuff! I've put the Radeon RX card in my new Sam460LE just this week. So glad I'll have an easy UBoot access again