After a long period of time I've decided to bring back to life the A1XE I got a few years ago. As I did not have all necessary HW for testing purposes I was asking a friend who gladly helped me out on hw level. Now the situation is kinda promising. The config has now a Radeon9250 PCI gfx card, a 250GB IDE HDD, a DVD writer, (it seem to be replaced as it refuses to read written discs, albeit had no issue with any original ones.) Current issues are: - No sound. As I've read it is a common issue with the mobo's onboard VIA97 audio. The question here is which soundcard could be the best for this machine? - AHI. It doesn't shows up any card(s), albeit drivers are in their dedicated folders. In AHI prefs I have options for Filesave and "device", but it doesn't answers the questions, which hw the system tries to use (or it doesn't tells me correctly to understand :D ) - No USB. I was trying the motherboard's USB connector on the backside, but neither a pendrive nor an external DVD drive was recognized. Shall I use a PCI USB card instead? Second question on this one is about the driver, to ensure it will work properly... - Not enough RAM. The machine has now 256MB ram, which is flawless, but not really enough I think. I was bought 2x256 MB Infineon ram sticks, set the available memory to 512 in UBoot, but the system randomly crashes. Sometimes during the time when the AmigaOS4 logo appears on the screen during booting, sometimes it reaches the WB, but then various things are crashing. Is this machine really this sensitive to the brand of ram modules? What would work without any issue? I'd hunt down preferably 2x512MB but at least 2x256MB would be better than the simple 256MB I have right now.
@Reynolds I don't have experience with the real machine, only know some things about it from writing emulation of it but I recommend studying @sailor's articles at https://intuitionbase.com/tag/amigaone-xe That should answer some questions about accepted memory. As for sound I think some of the motherboards omitted the codec chip as they could not make the AmigaOS driver work with the VIA chip so it was thought to be useless. I think this is the small square chip inline with the AGP slot near the edge of the board next to the ports at the back. There are two pictures at https://intuitionbase.com/system/amigaone-xe and one of those does not have a chip there. These are not too high resolution so hard to see but here's another picture where that chip is missing. If your board does not have that codec chip then on-board via-ac97 audio won't work. A sound card that AmigaOS has a driver for should work. I had no problem with emulated USB so I think it's supposed to work. Does your USB port work with a keyboard or mouse? Maybe it's just the devices you plugged in were not recognised for some reason but it could be real machines has some issues I'm not aware of.
@Reynolds Do you know if your A1 XE has the "DMA fix" applied? It was a failed attempt to work around the Articia S bugs, both on the AmigaOne XE (re-soldering of some wires required) and MicroA1 (already included in the release versions and has to be undone to make it usable) as well as the Pegasos1 (April "fix"). Without the "DMA fix" the onboard VIA PATA IDE controller only works reliable in PIO modes, but not in DMA/UDMA modes. OTOH nearly everything else (ethernet, USB, sound cards, etc.) worked. With the "DMA fix" applied onboard VIA PATA IDE works in DMA/UDMA modes, but nearly everything else using DMA (ethernet, USB, sound, etc.) stops working, at least if 2 or more DMA controllers are used at the same time.
Onboard audio doesn't work in most (or even all?) release versions of the AmigaOne XE, as @balaton wrote because the DAC chip was removed. Only the AmigaOne SE, and maybe some early beta versions of the XE, still had it. No idea if the MicroA1 included the audio DAC chip or not.
@joerg On my mA1 I have onboard audio, ethernet and USB working fine, as well as the UDMA. Are you sure that this is the case for that machine?
@Reynolds You can find information about these fixes at https://intuitionbase.com/system/amigaone-xe, in the attachments section at the end of the file. There is a zip file with all the information. This is also available in OS4depot.
Reynolds wrote:After a long period of time I've decided to bring back to life the A1XE I got a few years ago. As I did not have all necessary HW for testing purposes I was asking a friend who gladly helped me out on hw level. Now the situation is kinda promising. The config has now a Radeon9250 PCI gfx card, a 250GB IDE HDD, a DVD writer, (it seem to be replaced as it refuses to read written discs, albeit had no issue with any original ones.) Current issues are: - No sound. As I've read it is a common issue with the mobo's onboard VIA97 audio. The question here is which soundcard could be the best for this machine? - AHI. It doesn't shows up any card(s), albeit drivers are in their dedicated folders. In AHI prefs I have options for Filesave and "device", but it doesn't answers the questions, which hw the system tries to use (or it doesn't tells me correctly to understand :D )
Probably you have newer version of motherboard, without sound chip. Best is use PCI sound card, like Creative SBLive! - look here for compatible cards. Quote:
- No USB. I was trying the motherboard's USB connector on the backside, but neither a pendrive nor an external DVD drive was recognized. Shall I use a PCI USB card instead? Second question on this one is about the driver, to ensure it will work properly...
If you have different USB sticks, try them. Maybe some of them works. To add PCI USB 2.0 card is good idea, because XE has only USB 1.1 onboard. Any NEC or VIA card should work.
BUT: if you will have more cards, XE is picky with PCI card combinations. You should experiment with it and try to place them in different PCI slots combinations.
Quote:
- Not enough RAM. The machine has now 256MB ram, which is flawless, but not really enough I think. I was bought 2x256 MB Infineon ram sticks, set the available memory to 512 in UBoot, but the system randomly crashes. Sometimes during the time when the AmigaOS4 logo appears on the screen during booting, sometimes it reaches the WB, but then various things are crashing. Is this machine really this sensitive to the brand of ram modules? What would work without any issue? I'd hunt down preferably 2x512MB but at least 2x256MB would be better than the simple 256MB I have right now.
Thanks in advance.
You definitely need ECC REG modules - something like this.. Without REG XE is unstable, mainly with two modules. With REG modules XE is capable of 2 GB RAM without problems.
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
@balaton I have to check if the chip is on the board or not. Ethernet is working on the mobo at the moment.
@joerg I have to check the DMA fix, but as ethernet is working, that is possibly an answer on that. I will remove the motherboard from the case but now I have to decide, if any solder-requiring mod worths it at all or not, how it would be the best to use. Regarding sound, I will choose a compatible PCI audio card then.
@sailor Thanks, I will read all your guides regarding this machine, they are looking really useful. And will hunt down an SBLive :) In the USB I was trying a 32GB Kingston, and an external DELL DVD writer, but have smaller pendrives, so will give a go for those too. Also thanks for the exact ram specifics, that will definitely make my life easier to get the proper pair of them.
I happened to fire up my G4-XE last weekend to test a few things and I suspect the month (year+?) being off probably lost its uboot vars.
So it's just the chore of finding my old (PS2?) compatible keyboard and resetting everything.
It makes me wonder: is there any way we could get the uboot updated for the XE machines??
I believe the Friedens were the keepers of XE's uboot (I could easilly be wrong). Does that mean Trevor has its source now?
ACube has done a more than honorable job of keeping up the uboots on the SAMs. Could they be enlisted to make a paid for XE uboot upgrade from those sources?
At the very least it would great to have automatic drive recognition. I can't remember all the other shortcomings of the old XE uboot.
I too have an A1-XE, which I haven't used for quite some time. It was never a very stable machine for me but I remember I had it running nicely at one stage under AOS4.0. I never switched off for two years!
After the OS went to 4.1, it didn't seem to be as stable, but I have no idea why not.
I do remember I had a Soundblaster fitted. I also have a Terratec sound card. I wanted to swap it for the SB as I wanted to use that in an A1200 with Mediator but never got around to it.
I also had a SIL IDE card, which worked fine,.
I never managed to get good results using an AGP card for video. I tried several different cards but usually fell back to a Radeon 7000 in one of the lower standard PCI slots, as that also seemed to make a difference.
Reading this thread has enthused me to try to bring the old girl back to life, too.
pjs wrote:@all It makes me wonder: is there any way we could get the uboot updated for the XE machines??
If you have registered AmigaOS, there are latest official U-Boot version on Hyperion webpage. And if your XE is bricked, you have to find somebody who burn it into chip.
But if you lost only U-Boot vars and U-Boot is not destroyed, you should see at least U-Boot console. In such case I recommend replace coin battery and fill u-Boot values by hand. From console you can also upgrade U-Boot.
Edited by sailor on 2025/9/17 17:21:49
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
AmigaOldie wrote: I never managed to get good results using an AGP card for video. I tried several different cards but usually fell back to a Radeon 7000 in one of the lower standard PCI slots, as that also seemed to make a difference.
Radeon 7000 is not ideal. AGP is card are more powerful. The best is Radeon 9000 Pro, followed by Radeon 9000 ( also LE ) Next are 9200 ( also LE, not SE ) - this one is also PCI The above cards has 128bit memory bus, it is better. Here are with 64-bit bus: Radeon 9250 ( also PCI, SE is slower ) Radeon 9200 SE ( also PCI )
And to put graphics card on lower PCI slot is not good idea. First slot ( just next to AGP ) is 66 MHz, three bottom slots are only 33 MHz. But if you have hardware DMA-fix, 66 MHz slot not works. In such case I recommend use AGP card instead.
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
Okay, I was checking it and there is no chip in the socket on my board, so will have to use a PCI card instead. Also will add a Pioneer DVD writer I have currently in my mA1, so I think these issues will be solved. I will take the time soon and will check if there is any soldered modifications / fixes are on the board... thanks all the help :) Oh yes, and going to get proper SDrams too ;) 256 MB is far from enough for this config :)
@AmigaOldie Glad to see you changing your mind and also breathing new life into your setup :) I really hope I'll be able to manage it getting audio and all other stuff I miss currently. I wish you Happy Rediscovery :)
FWIW, mt XE boots, it's just not seeing the drive that is on my SATA card (my usual boot drive). Therein lies my interest in a more intelligent uBoot version.
But I wonder about the following posts regarding gfx cards...
I started with a 7000 and moved to a 9250 (IIRC) that was great exccept for its weak immunity to thunderstorms. So I had to go back to the 7000. :/
I've looked for an upgrade gfx card... But there are different levels of AGP and I was always fearful of getting an AGP card that might be incompatible.
Is that an issue? Would an 8x AGP card fry my ole XE? Are AGP cards backwards compatible even if they don't explicitly say so?
Of course there's also the various recent efforts to run newer cards via various Rube Goldberg bus interfaces... Has any ever really worked?
Anyway, these are my XE thoughts.. Aside from trying to find more Miggy time....
The AmigaOne XE uses an 2x AGP slot. If you put an 4x or an 8x only card in the slot you will fry the graphics card due to higher voltage the 2x slot uses.
Some cards are backwards compatible, it should say somewhere in the manual if it is.
Fastest universal cards are R300 generation, but AmigaOS has no 3D drivers for them. So R200 generation cards are fastest for us with Warp3D. R200 generation has several graphics chips: R200, R250, RV200, RV250, RV280 Unfortunatelly we cannot use cards with R200 chip, becouse they have graphics artifacts.
Here you can compare details of our compatible cards. All two keys cards are OK.
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
FWIW, mt XE boots, it's just not seeing the drive that is on my SATA card (my usual boot drive). Therein lies my interest in a more intelligent uBoot version.
When I testing PCI card combinations, I have allways issues with booting directly from SATA card, regardless of U-Boot version. My configuration is:
IDE: CF card, one FFS partition bi0:/Boot:, bootable, priority -10 SATA: SATA SSD, SFS02 partion DH0:/System:, bootable, priority 0
- Boot: there is only /Kickstart directory copied here from System: - is good idea configure /Kichstart/BootDevice with DH0 and add corresponding line to end of kicklayout - in U-Boot I have booting device = IDE disk
This way you boot from IDE, Kickstart ( with SATA drivers ) is loaded and booting continues from SATA System: Is very elegant and not depends of U-Boot SATA recognition. I am using latest U-Boot 1.1.1 from Hyperion.
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
??? Even 20-25 years ago, when I still had a working A1 XE (at least 2 fried CPU modules, IIRC the last one was a G4 one from ACube), I already had U-Boot 1.1.4 or 1.1.14 (not sure anymore). Additionally access to beta versions of U-Boot 1.2.x, but I never tested them. But definitely not only 1.1.1 or lower. Hyperion was never involved in any U-Boot developement anyway, that was done by EyeTech (A1 SE/XE/µA1), ACube (Sam440, Sam460) and A-EON (X5000, A1222+) only.
??? Even 20-25 years ago, when I still had a working A1 XE (at least 2 fried CPU modules, IIRC the last one was a G4 one from ACube), I already had U-Boot 1.1.4 or 1.1.14 (not sure anymore). Additionally access to beta versions of U-Boot 1.2.x, but I never tested them. But definitely not only 1.1.1 or lower. Hyperion was never involved in any U-Boot developement anyway, that was done by EyeTech (A1 SE/XE/µA1), ACube (Sam440, Sam460) and A-EON (X5000, A1222+) only.
From Hyperion here means, that you can download this U-Boot from Hyperion site. I doesn't mean, that Hyperion was developer.
When I experimented with PCIe cards I tested U-Boot versions 1.1.4, 1.1.6 and 1.2.0 and none of them was ideal, so I returned to 1.1.1.
AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200 AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000 MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook, Mac Mini, iMac, Powermac Quad
??? Even 20-25 years ago, when I still had a working A1 XE (at least 2 fried CPU modules, IIRC the last one was a G4 one from ACube), I already had U-Boot 1.1.4 or 1.1.14 (not sure anymore). Additionally access to beta versions of U-Boot 1.2.x, but I never tested them. But definitely not only 1.1.1 or lower. Hyperion was never involved in any U-Boot developement anyway, that was done by EyeTech (A1 SE/XE/µA1), ACube (Sam440, Sam460) and A-EON (X5000, A1222+) only.
The latest A1XE U-Boot still available can be found on Hyperion's site and is version 1.1.1. If there are later versions those are not published. As can be seen in this picture this U-Boot has a Hyperion copyright at the bottom although that may only be for the menu system. However even the files not related to menu that were in upstream U-Boot (but removed a long time ago and never really worked) had copyright headers saying:
So this does suggest Hyperion has the copyright for this. When I asked about the sources Thomas Frieden answered that these were in the Hyperion SVN but that's not around any more and nobody seems to know if it was back up and where that backup is. If somebody at Hyperion can find it it would be nice the publish these sources according to GPL.
When I asked about the sources Thomas Frieden answered that these were in the Hyperion SVN but that's not around any more and nobody seems to know if it was back up and where that backup is.
Hyperion SVN? Hyperion just had a FTP server for beta-tester updates, SDK updates, etc., a bug tracker and a web server, but definitely never anything with AmigaOS (related) sources.
I only know of 2 CVS servers, at least one of them was later converted to SVN, with AmigaOS 4.x related sources: - The one hosted by Olaf Barthel: Included a lot of AmigaOS related sources, incl. ExecSG, as well as a lot (but not all) of the 3rd party contributions which are owned by the dozens of different AmigaOS 4.x developers. Additionally a lot of for AmigaOS 4.x useless, ancient parts (AmigaOS 0.x-3.9 m68k NDK and build tools, etc.). Access to it by Hyperion (and Amiga Inc.) explicitly forbidden. No U-Boot there: I accidentally downloaded the whole thing (one directory level to high in a checkout) with several GB of data about 20 years ago. - A private, self-hosted CVS (accessible using some DynDNS service/domain) by the Frieden Brothers, which included for example the sources of their FireFox port. Probably their OpenOffice port as well. No idea if there was more on it like U-Boot, I only checked out the FireFox 4 sources from it.
A-EON apparently has a SVN or GIT server, and bug-tracker etc., for the AmigaOS software owned by them, or exclusively licenced to them, like ExecSG, AmiTCP, Enhancer Software, maybe the Radeon drivers, etc., as well, but I don't have access to it and it's even less related to the EyeTech AmigaOne XE U-Boot.
As for the "Copyright by Hyperion Entertainment" texts: Hyperion insisted on it, and I added it in some of my AmigaOS software as well, but it's of course just some legally irrelevant comment, at least for developers from Europe. For example the USA and Canada have very different copyright laws and a "copyright by ..." text isn't a useless comment but legally binding there.
News feed
OS4 Feedback forum
OS4Depot Feedback forum
AmiCygnix forum
ABC shell forum
AmiKit forum
Cinnamon Writer forum
CodeBench forum
Digital Universe forum
Dopus 5 forum
E-UAE forum
Gnash forum
Ibrowse forum
JAmiga forum
Odyssey forum
OWB forum
Qt forum
SmartFileSystem forum
Timberwolf forum
TouchDevice forum
TuneNet forum
Unsatisfactory Software forum
Donate
