Hello.

An Amiga guy recently bought a Sam Flex, but unlike the way a real Amiga works, the Sam has been a complete pain! And is still not working.

First off, the OS4 CD. Somehow, however they did it, he was given a nice looking OS4.1 CD with nothing on it! It was blank! Is this unheard of or what?

It was totally unbootable with UBoot saying it had no SLB. And MakeCD confirmed it was blank. This was only the beginning of the confusion. We got around that by using a Sam OS4.1u1 CDR we had.

Okay so now are able to boot an OS4.1 CD with actual data on the disc. The FLB find the SLB and the kernel starts to load. Then, when AmigaDOS is ready, up comes the insert disk screen. Huh? Go to the early startup menu and check the drives. The CD drive is missing? What the?

We play around with soft rebooting and UBooting and the CD drive always goes missing. Sometimes we manage to boot into a shell. But there are no files anywhere! At one time it looked like it had the CD but all the CD'ing and trying to run commands went no where.

I wasted time in UBoot thinking the DMA settings might mess it up and erased them all. No change. Then I noticed a friends Sam we were using as a refernce machine has pci settings and this Flex didn't. It was going too far but I thought I would copy them in. Bad move, no change! I also found that when I changed the boot settings in the menu to add the HD below CD it kept loosing them! I told it to save but they kept getting lost. What ever that was about. At one point they stuck.

We got deperate next and decided to rip the HD out and install OS4.1 on another machine. We did that and then plugged it back into the Sam to boot. It seemed to work but the screen mode was very low. I changed some settings for screenmode and went to reboot. Up comes window that says NDOS disk! Wha?

The HD gets ripped out again, reinstalled and replaced in it's spot. As you can see we were putting too much work into it. If you can't install an OS on the actual nachine you intend to use something is definitely wrong! We test it again and this time there is an error on some block! What is going on?

Something else also wasn't right. When the CD was booting the HD light kept flashing. We started getting into arguments over this one. The Sam owner thought OS4 was writing to the HD as it booted, copying the kernel as it goes. I tried to say it loads into RAM and not the HD, I mean, where on the HD would it write? It would corrupt it RDB or not! My argument didn't work as the HD light was telling all. That it was writing to HD apparently. I felt like:

I thought the SATA drives needed jumpering as well but it was argued that SATA drives just plug in and don't need master/slave settings. Not knowing much about SATA this seems logical to me and so I had to concede. He also had tried drives in different spots on the SATA ports but all had the same result. So HD and DVD was put back on J20 and J23.

In the end we had to give up. It has a Lite-ON DVD and a WD 1.5TB HD. Is that too big? AAMOF Media TB was reporting some block size in the install page as -99999 sometihng. Not good! Like the OS3.1 32-bit days.

I know these machines have a newer hardware than the Amigas that Amiga users are used too, but shouldn't the experience be a whole lot better? This is quite a hard experience on someone new to the Amiga OS4 scene and who has spent money to be there. The manual wasn;t much help either. And this isn't even getting into the technicalities of installing and seting up a new HD. Which is made harder than OS3 where with OS4 it doesn't automatically do things for you (A1 booter) and requires you to set up the filesystem where defaults should already be set. (FFS.)

Last edited by Hypex on 22-Feb-2010 at 02:26 PM.

@Hypex

I'm sorry for you and your friend that you have so much trouble - but, really, I had all this with classic Amigas as well. This is the reason why I (mostly) buy pre-assembled systems...

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@Hypex

First of all, look at my signature. Can you solve it?

Secondly, you have definitely some kind of hardware failure. Make absolutely sure that cd and hd are connected to the correct sata port. The hd must be connected on J20 and the cd on J23. It seems to me that this is the mistake you have made.

Best regards.

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You should have got some documentation telling you which SATA ports to install the HDD and CD onto. If you didn't do that you'd get the problems you listed above.
As for the HDD light going on when booting off a CD... it's not an HDD light, it's an activity light for the SATA port, including the CD!

When I installed OS4.1u1 onto my Sam, I had no problems at all (as my devices were on the correct ports....). Make sure you follow the docs (if you have none, look on the net, but you should have!) and it should be fine!

@Hypex

Quote:

First off, the OS4 CD. Somehow, however they did it, he was given a nice looking OS4.1 CD with nothing on it! It was blank! Is this unheard of or what?

Ask your reseller. He must help you here.
I hope you bought from a reseller, and not from some guy on ebay.

I read so many users that were happy with their machine and how their reseller helped us all along the process (and many of them didn't need any help at all) that I am very very surprised by your comments.

Last edited by elwood on 22-Feb-2010 at 03:40 PM.

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@Hypex
You obviously never installed windows or linux then.. OS4.1 installation was a breeze compared to any windows or linux distro in my experience.

Sounds like your friend was very unlucky though. I think they should indeed at least verify that the cd is working before shipping it out.

Last edited by Tomas on 22-Feb-2010 at 03:29 PM.

@Tomas

Quote:

You obviously never installed windows or linux then..

No, it sounds like YOU didn't. Please, installing Windows 7 or any current distro requires you to pop CD in and press "Next" few times. It also takes under 15 minutes.

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@Hypex

Uboot is not born on Amiga, it is not so friendly some times. Anyway OS4 installation itself is quite easy now with update 1.

If you buy a machine from a reseller usually UBoot is already configured, this was my experience with ACube. I just inserted OS4 cd and installed it.

First step download OS4 update 1 and install it directly. You shoudl have a serial to register at hyperion website.

Ask help configuring uboot and set it to boot from CD or if there is no CD from HD. Insert cd and enjoy OS4.

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ikir

@opi

Most Linux distros are increadibly stupid setting up. I will never use a windows machine again but as far i know windows setup now with 7 are better... but XP was stupid, incomplete and not clear in many ways imho. Best installation i've tried is OSX one But OS4.1 update 1 is pretty cool, easy and fast too.

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ikir

@ikir

Quote:

Most Linux distros are increadibly stupid setting up.

Name one desktop oriented distribution that is "stupid to setup". And what you find "stupid".

Quote:

I will never use a windows machine again but as far i know windows setup now with 7 are better...

It is.

Quote:

but XP was stupid

Released 10 years ago.

Quote:

OSX one

I don't really see nothing special about installing OS X over, say, Ubuntu or OpenSuSE.

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@Hypex

> An Amiga guy recently bought a Sam Flex, but unlike the way a real Amiga
> works, the Sam has been a complete pain! And is still not working.

That is absurd! It took me about 15 minutes to set up my SamFlex with OS4.1upd1.
Just connect the drives, a graphicboard and power, boot from the installCD and follow the instructions. That's it.

Have you ever tried to install OS3.9 on a 'classic' Amiga? THAT is a complete pain.


Something must be wrong with your mainboard and/or optical drive.
You may also want to check if you have the latest uboot bios installed.

Kind regards,

Dennis

@Hypex

Quote:

boot settings in the menu to add the HD below CD it kept loosing them! I told it to save but they kept getting lost. What ever that was about. At one point they stuck.

* Replace the backup battery!!!!
* Install the newest UBOOT firmware!!!

Check all device settings for SATA device not just the DMA.

If the CDROM drives have problems try different CDROM drive, maybe it takes too long to spin up.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Feb-2010 at 05:15 PM.

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My A1 is lighyears easier to install and get it to run then my A4000 was with all the 3rd party hw.

@opi

Quote:

Name one desktop oriented distribution that is "stupid to setup". And what you find "stupid".

Debian. As long as a everything is fine it'easy. But Tasksel has a habbit of crashing, (at least it did when I installed linux on a "new" machine just after Christmas, it would only work if I installed a full desktop, rather than a base system, then I needed two goes to get past it) Once I got past that grub refused to install correctly. failing on reboot, the install CD then insisted I go through the entire process again! It would not let me skip on to the grub installation, until I had done the earlier steps again, even in "advanced mode" eventually I got it to useLilo instead, got booted, and after a week or so it auto upadted grub , replaceing lilo (ouch! I didn't ask too) but this time it worked (phew!)

On other times installations have gone swimmingly!

The main point is you can't judge an install procedure by what goes right, it's when things go wrong that it counts.

@Hypex.

I had no issues at all with installing update 1, so I suspect a hardware incompatabilty / misconfiguration. Check the docs and how things are wired up. Which Uboot version tec. Consult your dealer, especially abouit the blank CD, it's not impossible to do (i sent out a blank audio CD once) and any dealer would happily replace it for you.

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@broadblues

Quote:

(i sent out a blank audio CD once) and any dealer would happily replace it for you.

Way not just register at Hyperion and download the newest AmgaOS4.1 update 1 cd image for Sam440.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Feb-2010 at 05:19 PM.

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@opi

Quote:

opi wrote: @Tomas Quote: You obviously never installed windows or linux then.. No, it sounds like YOU didn't. Please, installing Windows 7 or any current distro requires you to pop CD in and press "Next" few times. It also takes under 15 minutes.

And installing OS4.1 took less time than Windows 7. I also did not have to go through a bunch of windows updates, reboots, driver install and so on.

I have lost count of how many times i have installed windows and linux. It was pretty much my job for a while to install/prepare windows boxes as well.

@broadblues

Quote:

Debian.

That's generic purpouse system. I was talking about desktop oriented one: SuSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Mint. I never had Debian installation crashing on me, but I don't use Tasksel. I have my own packages that prepare machine for me from base-mini installation. And I do install about two Debian based servers daily.

Quote:

The main point is you can't judge an install procedure by what goes right, it's when things go wrong that it counts.

Agreed. I had bad installation of OSes, 9 in 10 it was because of my installation media, broken hardware that started acting when auto-detection subsystem kicked in or PBKIC.

I am just tired of "M$ Windoze", "Linsucks" guys, who can put some FUD like "if you think AmigaOS is hard to install, try Windows!". This is BS. Installing any mainstream OS in 2010 is quite easy.

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@Tomas

Quote:

And installing OS4.1 took less time than Windows 7

You get features for that. You know, drivers, subsystems, all that jazz that makes your computer fun to use?

Quote:

I also did not have to go through a bunch of windows updates, reboots, driver install and so on.

You get additional security and hardware that works beyond 2D. If you prefer to have unsecure OS because you are annoyed by system maintaince then sure, yoy're free to use what you like. Just don't put it down as "idiotic installation procedure".

Quote:

have lost count of how many times i have installed windows and linux. It was pretty much my job for a while to install/prepare windows boxes as well.

I install Linux servers daily. This, with proper tools we wrote, takes me about 40 seconds. I bet you can do automatic Windows installation, too.

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@Hypex

I have the same problem

But it is easier to manage UBott on an SamFlex then UBoot on AmigaOne.
Here is a link with Uboot my SamFlex.
UBoot on the SamFlex

Last edited by MH2 on 22-Feb-2010 at 06:55 PM.
Last edited by MH2 on 22-Feb-2010 at 06:39 PM.
Last edited by MH2 on 22-Feb-2010 at 06:38 PM.

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@opi & everyone else discussing linux/windows/whatever else OS

Please stay on-topic here, it's about why OS4 machines are hard to setup.

Thank you!

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