Hello.

Well yesterday I had quite a scare. I turned on my A1, the HD light was stuck, and the montior said no signal!

I set up a null modem link and installed Term on the 4000. Power on the A1 and some garbled characters appear. Good sign. You only have to worry if you only get a couple of garbled characters, which happened with a dead CPU.

So I set Term to 115200 baud. And try again. Wohoo! UBoot! Phew! And hey, an A4000 can do 115200 on stock serial! Just realised that.

Nothing after my flash of 0KB. Sign. Battery dead.

So I managed to get it UBooting by taking the battery out and discharging the memory. Why was UBoot designed to act stupid and scare people by freezing when this happens? Couldn't use the speaker?

Anyway after the dotted lines it booted into OS4. Good start. I found OS4.1 had backed up my nvram prefs during the upgrade/install and they checked out. So I tried to load them in. I did so and I saw no change. Funny. I check the file and yes, it contains my config. Try again. It
doesn't change the GUI. Okay try and quit. Aha. It notices a few variables have changed. Okay save and reboot. Damn it stuffed up and OS4 can't find the drives! Kickstart screen!

I save out the settings from UBoot prefs to take a look.. It has completely forgotten about them, and it's half the size! And my custom vars are gone. Argh! So, if I have an nvram file I take it, how do I restore it to UBoot NVRam memory? We have NVGetVar, but no NVSetVar. How do I do this?

Apart from that the rest of the day didn't turn out good either. I bough a 550W PSU to hopefully help avoid the freezing problems in case the PPC wasn't getting enough power. And also Debian kept saying my USB ports did't have enough power. Including my new card. Booting with USB devices in my new USB card just got it stuck.

So fixed up my hardware and tested it out. Booted Debian with a flash drive in the USB. It got stuck again but got post it. Then did a fsck. Freeze. Oh crap! Reboot. Gets past USB and fsck. Starting to boot. Freeze. Crap! Pull USB drive out. Boots. Check USB power. Still not enough! Argh!

End up rebooting twice due to random lockups. This PSU is worst than the last one! Insert USB devices. Seems to spot it. Can't mount! Pull out and try another. No device detected. Where is it?!

Give up on Linux. Which also failed to set my time. Back to trusty OS4. Test out my USB card there. What? No devices showing up. Okay must be my UBoot settings. Replicate them for USB as far as I can see. Reboot. Try again. What? No reaction? Turn on my pinter. What? Where's the printer gone?!

Well my A1's own USB still seems to work. And ShowConfig/Ranger seem to show my PCI USB card as working. So where has it gone? It showed up first thing when I first plugged it in. And the USB inspector knows about it.

Just how could a dying battery, new PSU and Linux ruin my day by killing my new USB? Argn!

Oh yeah looks like the dream of using Linux for USB2 is now over!

Last edited by Hypex on 04-Jul-2009 at 04:52 PM.

@Hypex

Quote:

We have NVGetVar­ but no NVSetVar. How do I do this?

I'm not sure I understand your post in full, but the results you save from:
nvgetvar > [filename] need to be checked in UBoot itself.
Some settings remain upon a battery change, and some can get lost.
THOSE settings lost need to be reset in Uboot itself and saved in Uboot.
Prefs/uboot is certainly not a way to check this, since it has been discontinued and was never entirely reliable.

Edit: I see a new version of prefs/uboot [v52.4] for OS4.1.
The statement above about discontinuance was made after [v52.2], which was part of OS4 final.
I've no idea whether the new version is more favorable.

#6

Last edited by number6 on 04-Jul-2009 at 05:24 PM.

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@Hypex

Uboot Prefs has a "save" & "load" menu. You can save the uboot variables with the "save" menu & restore them with the "load" menu. Last I tried to do a restore, it failed. That was with os4.0 final, haven't tried with the newer version in 4.1.

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@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: Apart from that the rest of the day didn't turn out good either. I bough a 550W PSU to hopefully help avoid the freezing problems in case the PPC wasn't getting enough power. And also Debian kept saying my USB ports did't have enough power. Including my new card. Booting with USB devices in my new USB card just got it stuck.

It's new to me that the kernel prints out any power related messages for USB. Do you have a copy of the kernel log?

Quote:

So fixed up my hardware and tested it out. Booted Debian with a flash drive in the USB. It got stuck again but got post it. Then did a fsck. Freeze. Oh crap! Reboot. Gets past USB and fsck. Starting to boot. Freeze. Crap! Pull USB drive out. Boots. Check USB power. Still not enough! Argh!

Please try booting with l2cr=0 (disables L2 cache) and with the flash drive in a USB 2.0 socket.

_________________
A1SE: G3@600MHz, 2GB, 1GBit network card
A1XE: G4@933MHz, 2GB, refitted AC'97 codec
microA1: G3@800MHz, 1GB

- A1 Linux support -

@number6

Quote:

I'm not sure I understand your post in full, but the results you save from: nvgetvar > [filename] need to be checked in UBoot itself. Some settings remain upon a battery change, and some can get lost.

From looking at the output when my machine was fully working last it looked exact. But the UBoot prefs it saved and I have backed up seem to be a direct copy of the NVRAM space. All the variables are there but have EOF markers. So almost unreadable when looked at.

I once backed up my settings somehow to floppy from UBoot. If only I could remember how I could possibly make a UBoot restore floppy.

Quote:

Prefs/uboot is certainly not a way to check this, since it has been discontinued and was never entirely reliable....I've no idea whether the new version is more favorable.

For most things it worked, just some that were lacking. I have also used the UBoot menu to set things, just to make sure. But having UBoot prefs is certainly better than the Sam way of leaving the user to enter setenv on a UBoot command line! It's a bit complicated setting DMA on a Sam.

But, even after restoring variables, which can be done since I have a backup, my main worry is USB. Copied my USB vars to UBoot and the card didn't act differently. Which for me is a worry. Last week I left the printer plugged into my new USB card and happily printed away. Now it looks like I am back where I started with the motherboard USB being more reliable (!) and needing to plug the printer into my front card reader. Not a very neat solution.

@sundown

Quote:

Uboot Prefs has a "save" & "load" menu. You can save the uboot variables with the "save" menu & restore them with the "load" menu. Last I tried to do a restore, it failed. That was with os4.0 final, haven't tried with the newer version in 4.1.

Well it doesn't look any different. I think it only save variables it knows about and even then still manages to mess them up. It changed my Sii 0680 settings but stuffed up the config as OS4 lost all the drives and they are all still set to PIO.

I prefer the Amiga way of booting, where there was one system, the Amiga Kickstart that booted whatever OS we had, usually Amiga. Now we have UBoot, which then has to load Kickstart separately, which is even separate to AmigaOS still and has to boot that. It gets a bit silly when the "Amiga" has to be booted by a BIOS but after the Amiga Kickstart is loaded it can't find any hard disk despite having just loaded the kernel of the OS from one because of some other setting in the BIOS! Man! That doesn't make sense.

Last edited by Hypex on 05-Jul-2009 at 04:55 AM.

@Hypex
Quote:

We have NVGetVar, but no NVSetVar. How do I do this?

I think hyperion simply missed to include it to the A1 version, because the SAM version of 4.1 has it (but no U-Boot prefs).

However:
If U-Boot prefs does not work for you, you can simply set the envvars directly in U-Boot. http://www.titan.co.nz/amigaak/AA020816.htm

@ZeroG

Thanks for that link.

_________________
A1G3-SE + OS4.1 u1 iso (x2)

@ZeroG

Quote:

I think hyperion simply missed to include it to the A1 version, because the SAM version of 4.1 has it (but no U-Boot prefs).

Might have to talk to my Sam friend about that one.

I wonder if UBoot Prefs can work on Sam provided it uses an nvram.resource.

Quote:

However:If U-Boot prefs does not work for you, you can simply set the envvars directly in U-Boot. http://www.titan.co.nz/amigaak/AA020816.htm

Thanks for the reminder. Yes that site is a great resource for UBoot.

Well I ended up printing out that Uboot prefs OS4.1 had saved. I set a few from my old setup, old being last week. Then saved and rebooted. Whatever I did or whatever the machine felt like doing the USB seems to be working again with the new card.

But something is up. I got some kind of read error from the IDE device. I checked it and PW reported no errors. Other drives started playing up. No errors as well. But was WB was giving read errro at a negitive block. Then diskimage.device was crashing at bootup. Installed new version now but drive light kept staying on and Workbench stopped. Reboot and HD is all lost, Kickstart screen. Reboot again and it boot again. All seems good.

It can't be a year since I got a new HD to replace the old one. Think I might want to backup my WB, then fully reformat the volume and copy back just to make sure there are no errors. Bad things started happening with compiling as well. Three disk error requesters would come up. Try to retry "soft-froze" the system. Meaning I could reboot. Previously I only got lock up compiling same big source. What strange behaviour.

Last edited by Hypex on 05-Jul-2009 at 02:33 PM.

@Hypex

I feel your pain

I went through a similar senario in September 2008.

September 08 --- system acting up (searching for hard drive).
September 09 --- system acting up (searching for hard drive).
September 09 --- placed HD in best PIO mode.
September 10 --- replaced battery
September 15 --- installed AmigaOS 4.1
September 22 --- used U-Boot Prefs program in the Prefs drawer to set HD for UDMA 5 mode.

Big Mistake!!

My system entered the twilight zone. Although I could not see any other changes in the U-Boot (nvram) settings, my system was not booting correctly, and it was generally acting very weird (intermittant USB problems, PS2 mouse freezes). My system would boot ok from the AmigaOS4.1 CD, but not from hard drive. Booting from hard drive, it would load up to the boing ball boot image and sit there forever until I did a warm boot and then it would continue the boot process from hard drive.

September 24 --- I used U-Boot to "restore factory default settings".

From this point onwards, my system was in auto-detect mode, where it would scan for drives on bootup and figure out for itself what drives was connected. The system would leave all the drives in PIO mode. But atleast it would bootup properly from hard drive all the way into OS4.1 Workbench without any extra warm boots.

I used U-Boot setenv and saveenv commands to add and tweek the rest of the bootup settings.


I will never use the U-Boot Prefs program in the Prefs drawer again.

---
redfox

Last edited by redfox on 05-Jul-2009 at 09:59 PM.
Last edited by redfox on 05-Jul-2009 at 09:04 PM.
Last edited by redfox on 05-Jul-2009 at 09:03 PM.
Last edited by redfox on 05-Jul-2009 at 09:02 PM.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: Apart from that the rest of the day didn't turn out good either. I bough a 550W PSU to hopefully help avoid the freezing problems in case the PPC wasn't getting enough power. And also Debian kept saying my USB ports did't have enough power. Including my new card. Booting with USB devices in my new USB card just got it stuck.

You don't need 550W, unless you're trying to fry something with your CPU.

Is this a new USB card? Some USB cards don't supply much power, particularly for USB hard drives.

Hans

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@redfox

!

Thanks for sharing.

Last year I bought a new HD and it's not nearyl a year I think that now I am getting HD problems again! But these are different. I keep getting device errors, command 49152 and error 20. THat is command $C000, 64-bit read and 20 is genral catch all.

I wonder since I installed a new PSU if I broke the solder on the power causing random errors. It only happens when I use the Partition Wizard but when OS4 loads I am stating to get startup errors as if files are missing. Unable to load some ELF library th elast one.

@Hans

Quote:

You don't need 550W, unless you're trying to fry something with your CPU.

That was the least they had! They wanted to sell me more watts, but a quieter model.

Quote:

Is this a new USB card? Some USB cards don't supply much power, particularly for USB hard drives.

Yes. Debian Linux complains in deivce manager about all ports even if nothing is plugged in! And I only am testing a simple flash drive when I do plug it in. It fails!

@Geri

Sorry Geri needed, to grab at least one log before replying.

Quote:

It's new to me that the kernel prints out any power related messages for USB. Do you have a copy of the kernel log?

It was actually in the Debian Device manager where I saw a red minus and a message stating there was not enough power to the device. Is Linux confused about USB ports?

But here's a snapshot of the kernel log:
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: ehci_hcd 0000:00:09.2: EHCI Host Controller
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: ehci_hcd 0000:00:09.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: ehci_hcd 0000:00:09.2: irq 7, io mem 0x98100200
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: ehci_hcd 0000:00:09.2: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 1-0:1.0: 4 ports detected
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: ohci_hcd: 2005 April 22 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v3.0
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: UHCI Host Controller
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: irq 5, io base 0x00802080
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.3: UHCI Host Controller
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.3: irq 5, io base 0x008020a0
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb usb3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:09.0: UHCI Host Controller
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:09.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:09.0: irq 10, io base 0x00802440
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb usb4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 4-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:09.1: UHCI Host Controller
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:09.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: uhci_hcd 0000:00:09.1: irq 11, io base 0x00802460
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb usb5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 5-0:1.0: USB hub found
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: hub 5-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 3-1: not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb-storage: device found at 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb-storage: device found at 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb-storage: device found at 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
...
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: AC'97 codec is not ready [0x59595959]
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: VIA 82xx Audio: probe of 0000:00:07.5 failed with error -13
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: AC'97 codec is not ready [0xffffffff]
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: VIA 82xx Modem: probe of 0000:00:07.6 failed with error -13
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-4: USB disconnect, address 3
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00070000
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 551
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 122
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 123
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 124
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 125
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 126
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 127
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 128
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 129
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 130
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 131
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: scsi 1:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to dead device
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: usb 1-2: USB disconnect, address 2
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00070000
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 512
Jul 3 10:18:43 debian kernel: scsi 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to dead device

Quote:

Please try booting with l2cr=0 (disables L2 cache) and with the flash drive in a USB 2.0 socket.

Okay will try. Thanks.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @Geri It was actually in the Debian Device manager where I saw a red minus and a message stating there was not enough power to the device. Is Linux confused about USB ports?

Okay, the kernel doesn't show any power related messages, but I didn't enable all USB debug options. I guess the device manager gets this information from somewhere else (maybe sysfs!?).

_________________
A1SE: G3@600MHz, 2GB, 1GBit network card
A1XE: G4@933MHz, 2GB, refitted AC'97 codec
microA1: G3@800MHz, 1GB

- A1 Linux support -

@Geri

Quote:

Okay, the kernel doesn't show any power related messages, but I didn't enable all USB debug options. I guess the device manager gets this information from somewhere else (maybe sysfs!?).

Yes it looks like, now I know what sysfs is.

Quote:

Please try booting with l2cr=0 (disables L2 cache) and with the flash drive in a USB 2.0 socket.

Okay I tested this. Used my HP printer with an SD card in the slot. No change. Got stuck.

Will try new kernel now. And report back in your thread.