@wawa

Whatever the problem is it's gonna have to wait a wee while, it's just after 11: o'clock here and my dinners now ready (nice extra hot & spicy chilli con carni)...

I never give up on things like this until it's solved and really should be going to be after my dinner but I know me and I won't be able to sleep until I get this sorted, so it looks like a long night ahead for me...

The simplest solution would seem to be to install it on my DH0: partition but like I say this currently contains my "normal" Amiga set up & files for this particular Amiga so I'll have to decide if it worthwhile backing up everything and installing Aros onto it to test...

Either that or I use one of my other Amiga's they only really contain the same stuff as my main miggie but are 030's and I really want to test it out first on my main miggie with 060 & PPC board...

I'll decide after I've had some grub but I don't think I'm gonna get much sleep tonight...

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@Franko

i have an amiga drive setup with two partitions: dh0: aos3.1 with lower priority and dh1: aros with higher one. this way i can boot into aos if i need to in early startup.
so it should be perfectly possible.
what are the specs of your main miggy?? remember that scsi controller on csppc boards doesnt boot as yet, so dont use it. if its a blizzard i would guess its alike. just to be sure attach the drive to internal ide port.
i have a4k/060/csppc as main testing machine. but csmk1, 3640, and 030 works as well..

Last edited by wawa on 05-Mar-2012 at 11:33 PM.

@wawa

The miggy I'm testing it on uses the FastATA MKIII board, it has 2 500GB HD's attached and 2 DVD/CD burners attached...

I know everything works fine on it as I have it configured so that I can easilly swap between booting up in "normal" OS 3.5 or OS 4.0 just by a simple reset and selcting DH2: for OS4.0 which is on partition DH2: and uses the PPC version of SFS to boot with...

Now that I've had my dinner I'm gonna have a good look around and see if I can see what's going on here...

The early startup screen definitely isn't fully functional yet and I don't think there is really a way to change the priorities easily using the FastATA, like I said the simplest solution it seems would be to install AROS on my DH0: partition as this is the first one on the HD's RDB block structure so it is being selected first as it normally would...

But this would mean me having to back up the entire DH0: partition as this is my main one for OS 3.5 and a lot of other important stuff...

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@Franko

omg. i shouldnt probably ask how many partitions these both drives contain?

why not try something simple? havnt you got a spare old 2gig ide drive you dont need anymore? even if not, i would disconnect all the unnecessary devices temporarily from the fastata and see if it helps. also i dont know about how to set priorities on that fastata, i dont think there is anything like that. however you have to have the partition boot priorities on all your attached drives set accordingly. aros would have to have the highest one to boot automatically.

i appologise, this is real basics you likely know, but i really dont get it why it doesnt boot. have you checked the size of aros.elf in your aros/boot dir?

@wawa

Quote:

wawa wrote: @Franko omg. i shouldnt probably ask how many partitions these both drives contain?

Well the primary one contains partitions labelled DH0, DH1, DH2, DH3 and then DHA to Z allong with OS0, OS1, OS2, OS3 & OS4 that I use for OS4.0...

The secondary one is lot more simple and is just split into two almost 250GB partitions called HD0 & HD1...

(all of them are almost full though)...

Back on topic however...


The Aros.elf is 1Mb or 1,045, 672 bytes to be exact...

Not having any luck so far...

I have plenty of HD's but they're all full of stuff I don't want to delete so that's kinda screwed...

I do have an SD card adapter thingy I bought a couple of months back and a 32GB SD card for it, I suppose I could use that but I kinda gave up with it as it wasn't as fast as a real HD...

Looks like I'll have byte the bullet and backup DH0: and install it on that but I'm not really keen on that idea...

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@Franko

Quote:

The Aros.elf is 1Mb or 1,045, 672 bytes to be exact...

maybe i wasnt precise, but this qualifies it as the broken file in my opinion.
please proceed as described in my post #34. this is the last time i ask you to..

@wawa

Quote:

wawa wrote: @Franko Quote: The Aros.elf is 1Mb or 1,045, 672 bytes to be exact... maybe i wasnt precise, but this qualifies it as the broken file in my opinion. please proceed as described in my post #34. this is the last time i ask you to..

All right, all right... keep your hair on...

I'll download it and give it a go (anythings worth a try at this stage)...

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Downloaded...

just putting it on an SD card then copy it to the Amiga...

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@Franko

dont forget to rename it to aros.elf. im pretty sure that is the problem.

@wawa

Quote:

wawa wrote: @Franko dont forget to rename it to aros.elf. im pretty sure that is the problem.

(don't worry renamed it)

Sadly that one has just made things worse...

You get the initial message that Aros is booting up, followed by the reset, then a black screen followed by a grey screen with a lot of HD activity (the led shows this) but then nothing...

It appears to freeze on the grey screen with the HD light stuck on and the floppy drive stops making it's clicking noise like everything has frozen...

Dont even get the initial screen now with the error window showing me the software failure like I did with the other version...

Think I'm gonna give up for tonight, getting a bit sleepy and so proably not the best time for problem solving like this...

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@Franko

have you removed screenmode.prefs? if there is hd activity and no software failure then maybe its booting into some rtg mode it doesnt show up on your aga screen?

hd light on and no floppy klick doesnt sound good though, aros68k doesnt have noklick by default. tomorrow i would advise you to try a plain aros nightly along with aros.elf fix as ive told you. in case you will have to report back to jason or toni a serial debug will be probably neccessary, its anyway helpful to see what goes wrong. if you are familiar with it, i have posted the settings above. if no it isnt really difficult, you just have to be careful, not tired.

btw, you shouldnt possibly fail. in the end me, the complete noob, i have succeed to run aros on pretty much every 68k setup i have dusted off.

Last edited by wawa on 06-Mar-2012 at 01:42 AM.

@wawa

Quote:

wawa wrote: @Franko have you removed screenmode.prefs? if there is hd activity and no software failure then maybe its booting into some rtg mode it doesnt show up on your aga screen?

Yeah... first thing I thought of but it made no difference I'm afraid...

Gonna give up for tonight and head to bed all this resetting and grey screens are beginning to make me a wee bit narky...

I'll give it a go in the morning when my brain cells had a chance to refresh...

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I would love to test it on my a1200/060

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@Yssing

at risk of hijacking the original posters request, i strongly advise to follow my instructions and try to install the nightly build first. it is less demanding and i can help with that to a certain extent. it seems olaf didnt test his distribution on real hardware, while i test aros68k nightly on real machines regularly therefore able of practical assistance.
besides it might be a little early testing this distribution, as most bugs will likely be standing aros bugs and not related to problems of the distro.

@wawa

I have found this on aros-exec from Toni Wilen:
You don't need floppies, just transfer arosbootstrap and aros.elf.gz to Amiga's HD and run arosbootstrap. No other files needed. (Of course make sure you enter AROS early start up menu and select boot without startup-sequence because AOS startup-sequence can have commands that poke private system structures)

this thread:
http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6185&forum=4&post_id=58194#forumpost58194

@OlafS25

you can just copy the content of iso to hd and boot from there. no floppies neccessary. did i mention booting from floppy anywhere??

Last edited by wawa on 06-Mar-2012 at 01:01 PM.

@OlafS25

Well time to try again I suppose...

Got an email from Jason during the night, I was correct in thinking the early startup screen is not yet properly implemented/ functional, so I can't use that to change which partition to boot from...

Jason has said as it stands just now AROS will always try to boot from the partition/ device with the highest priority, so I'll try and see if I can make DH1: be recognised with the highest priority from boot up first...

Failing that I think I'll try it on one of my other machines after I have found a hard disk that I can sacrifice for this...

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@OlafS25
okay, im sorry i have not tested aros on winuae lately and forgot that you just use kickstart images instead of arosbootstrap there. so as winuae user you have no experience with softkicking aros68k.

on a lassic it works a little differently, as there is currently no means to flash the aros kickstart anywhere. its just too huge. but as i said previously you can softkick it from hd with no problem no need for messing with it other than what i described in post #34..

@wawa

no problem... that was why I wrote it. Thanx for explanation.

@Franko

good luck

@Franko

Quote:

Jason has said as it stands just now AROS will always try to boot from the partition/ device with the highest priority, so I'll try and see if I can make DH1: be recognised with the highest priority from boot up first...

mygod, not only aros but amiga will always try to boot from the *partition* with the highest priority. this is basics!! you can change the priorities of your partitions with your system/hdtoolbox on aos3.x, if you dont reformat the partition nor change the settings of the filesystem it will not affect your stored data. i thought you know all that as an experienced user??

but now i feel, i will better put a disclaimer beneath:
remember: you are doing it on your own risk! dont blame me afterwards..

Last edited by wawa on 06-Mar-2012 at 01:25 PM.