I have an AmigaOne 500. I'm having all kinds of problems using the onboard SATA connector. It would be helpful to know the specific uboot variables. For example the Silicone Image 3512 SATA interface card has the variables "sii3512ide_xfer, sii3512ide_maxbus" etc. "sii3512ide" seems to be the base identifier. It seems like the computer came with a file with this info, but it isn't on the OS4.1 Final Edition installation CD and I lost it when I reinstalled. Any help would be appreciated.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

@thinkchip

I am not familiar with those but a web search revealed:

https://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/UserDoc:BIOS

@Mr_Capehill

I found that one already. It doesn't have the variables I need. Thanks anyway.

Last edited by thinkchip on 02-Mar-2019 at 03:00 PM.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

@thinkchip

The uboot that came with the AmigaOne 500 is specifically for it because it only has variables for the Silicone Image 3512 card, which is part of the package.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

@thinkchip

The Documentation is on the Original Sam460ex CD .
Amiga_OS4.1 Update 2.
In Sys:Documentation .

Some areas to look at for your problems.

Bad or bent Sata cable
Device compatiability issues . Some hard drives and SSDs have problems
CPU overheating
or
Power supply issues
This one can be the hardest to detect but can cause serious stabilty issues with files copying etc.

I used the onboard sata for a short time relatively recently with no problems and did not have to set any of the sam460sata uboot variables .
File operations seemed a little slower than with my Sil 3112 due to max PIO 4 mode of the sam460sata controller though .
This is the hard drive mode that I used .

Seagate Barracuda Mobile

Last edited by Spectre660 on 02-Mar-2019 at 04:38 PM.
Last edited by Spectre660 on 02-Mar-2019 at 04:37 PM.

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Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

@Spectre

I don't know what you're trying to say exactly. I don't see how removing the SII 3512 card increases the load on the power supply / CPU. Modern hard drives don't use a lot of power. I'd like to know the variables and then decide if or how I want to use them. I might try a different hard drive, but I still want to know the variables. If you run into problems you can always reflash the uboot rom.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

This document contains sam460sata-specific documentation information.


How to use
==========

- This driver can work happily aside the other AmigaOS drivers

- Only PIO modes are currently supported.


I - Configuring sam460sata through UBOOT envvars
================================================

Currently sam460sata is configurable through the following UBOOT envvars :

- sam460sata_verbose

Legal values are : set to anything makes the driver verbose at boot time.

Default if unset : driver silent.


- sam460sata_timeout

Legal values are between 1 and 30 (seconds). The latter is the recommended
value from the ATA(PI) spec.

Default : if you don't set this envvar, sam460sata will use a 20 second timeout.


- sam460sata_conf

Compose 1 character using :

0 : nothing
1 : harddisk
2 : dvd/cdrom reader or burner

Default : if you don't set this envvar, sam460sata will scan the IDE buses and
try to determine the configuration by itself.


- sam460sata_xfer

Allows to define the xfer mode which will be used for the drive.
Compose 1 character using :

0 - Automatic PIO (driver will use the best PIO mode
that the drive claims to support)
a - PIO 0 ( 3 MB/s, modeid 8)
b - PIO 1 ( 5 MB/s, modeid 9)
c - PIO 2 ( 8 MB/s, modeid 10)
d - PIO 3 ( 11 MB/s, modeid 11)
e - PIO 4 ( 16 MB/s, modeid 12)

NB : sam460sata will fall back to the best mode that the drive claims to support
in case you ask for an unsupported mode.

Default : if you don't set this envvar, sam460sata will use the best PIO mode
supported by the drive.

- sam460sata_irq

Compose 1 character using :

1 : use IRQs
any other char : don't use IRQs

Default : if you don't set this envvar, sam460sata will use interrupts.

EXAMPLE : to set ide timeout to 5 seconds, force prime master as harddisk

setenv sam460sata_timeout 5
setenv sam460sata_conf 1
saveenv

Then reboot. Don't forget the 'saveenv', as sam460sata uses nonvolatile.library,
which only accesses the envvars stored in nvram.


II - Notes
==========
- These envvars HAVE to be saved ('saveenv' after modifying them), because
they are read directly from the nvram.

- To delete an envvar, just define a blank content & then saveenv (i.e.
'setenv sam460sata_conf' and then 'saveenv' will delete this envvar).

- Using sam460sata_conf (properly set !) saves need for timeouts for drive
detection at boot time.

- It looks like each CD/CDR/DVD/DVDR drive reports its own status codes
when a blank media is inserted. Thus, OS4 will report different info
on different systems when a blank CDR is inserted.

- If you experience VERY SLOW harddisk writes with FFS, then you probably
have a drive that does not execute properly a FLUSH_CACHE command
(sam460sata checks that at init time). Thus, sam460sata disables the drive's
write cache. Thus, your drive really crawls in writing.

This does not show for the same drive with other drivers under other
os'es, because they don't check if the drive can execute a FLUSH_CACHE,
and just leave the write cache ON.

Under Linux or AOS3.x, this can *look* fast & reliable, but this *is* fast
and not reliable.

Some filesystems depend on proper execution of FLUSH_CACHE, when *they*
decide it, not when the drive decides. Thus, those fs'es can appear to be
working, but they are not really reliable. SFS is one of those.

Thus, it was decided (long ago) by the os4 dev team (mainly js & myself ;),
to disable the write cache if the drive cannot properly execute a
FLUSH_CACHE.

The consequence is that under those circumstances, FFS really crawls at
write, but you can move to the latest SFS + its diskcache.library,
which works around this problem while (mostly) staying on the safe side.

Make sure to create your SFS partition this way :
- 500 buffers
- blocksize set to 512
- maxtransfer set to 7FFFFFFF
- mask set to FFFFFFFE



III - Fine Art of drive partitioning
===================================

A few things you must know :

- You'll get decent performance from any FS only with buffers >= 500

- You'll get decent performance from FFS only with blocksize >= 2048

- You'll get the best performance from SFS only with blocksize = 512

- SFS is way faster than FFS in its default (non-caching) behaviour,
but FFS is said to be safer.

- SFS + its diskcache.library is even faster.

- There is a cache plugin for FFS, and you can also set FFS in
writeback cache mode. Using both things make it waaaaay faster
(almost comparable to SFS). The FFS cache plugin is 'fs_cache_plugin',
you will find it somewhere on your OS4 CD, just 'run fs_cache_plugin DH0:'
for each FFS partition you wish to run with cache.

- The command I use to bench r/w perf is scsispeed, found in the
latest diskspeed archive from Aminet, and also in an OS4 native
form on the OS4 beta server (quick port by myself, dropped the
m68k CPU usage measurement code).

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Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

@Spectre660

Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted! I'm going to put it in my "vault". That's where I keep valuable stuff and there are two backups.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

It would be nice to have the boot menu with OS4 and MOS selection rather to have to select the boot device each time. Anyone solved this issue?

@thinkchip

I changed the disk drive and all my problems went away. That seems to be very counterintuitive to me. Out of three drives I tried one worked. I think if you have weird problems, immediately put the drive in the "don't work" pile and go to another one. As far as I know, the uboot environment variables didn't make any difference.

Last edited by thinkchip on 03-Mar-2019 at 02:26 PM.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

@Spectre660

Seriously? The 460 doesn't have DMA support? Has it been updated yet?

That would be really going backwards if IDE was stuck at same the level as an AmigaOne XE onboard IDE or an Amiga with an IDE card.

@Hypex

There is a problem with DMA which causes lockups uder certain conditions.
The AmigaOS 4.1 driver thus never had the DMA inplemented ,

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Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

@Spectre660

Sigh .That really does bring me back. Cache incoherent DMA conflicts anyone?