Hello.

Whilst I've been using my X1000 as my OS4 machine full time I've noticed some issues. Generally the XE models were considered to suffer stability issues and the Sam models a lot better. Despite the X1000 being better overall hardware than the XE, I am finding I am having some issues. Most noticeably, system freezes.

I thought I had left that behind with the XE. But these have followed me onto the X1000. It's hard to tell if the system really is frozen or something just killed the input device. Because of the nature of using USB devices for input this puts the system at greater risk of freezing. AmigaOS is not designed for USB input devices and neither is OS4 since it uses the same OS model. I say this because USB is read as a task. And if a program trips up and crashes internally then it can have the effect of disabling the input device. Once that happens all input is dead. Hard reboot only. Mind you the Sam has the same problem as do all the following machines. But I've really started to notice this while using the X1000.

AmigaOS is designed to read input in an interrupt. It goes through the device drivers but the end result is that mouse and keyboard on an Amiga system were read through a hardware register. On the AmigaOne XE models the input was read through PS/2 inputs so a similar hardware interface was still in place. With the Sam models and above this changed. With USB being the new input standard. Because USB is task based in OS4 it lacks the stability of an interrupt which runs separate to normal processes in isolation. This means USB device drivers, which need to read input by a more complicated communication protocol, are running on an equal level as a standard process. And as can and does happen, USB drivers and even the input device itself can be crashed by another offending program. System input freeze will result. Perhaps it would better if these input drivers ran in a soft interrupt instead. This would let it be run similar to a task but at a higher priority and with better isolation.

I've found the X1000 kernel can exhibit other strange behaviour. For example, I tested sending a process some signals from an interrupt, and it caused a crash. This was strange. Sending signals from an interrupt handler has always been a legal operation on AmigaOS and also is in OS4. But on the X1000 it can crash. I found that running the test from Workbench or CLI can effect it as well, with the test passing on Workbench, but crashing from a shell. I've never resolved this. But internally in the system where it uses this method this places the X1000 at greater risk of instability. Testing on my XE and on a Sam I've seen no such issues.

Some tasks can easily trip up the X1000. UAE also freezes but the X1000 specific JIT version seems fine, just lacking P96 when I ran it with my setup. I've had Odyssey freeze the system before. It's going okay now but always closes itself on exit while leaving a child task hanging around. I had no trouble with OctaMED on the XE, but on the X1000 it keeps freezing. It appears to be random, caused by some action like pressing play or opening a file, but randomly resulting in a freeze. Unlike the XE where a soft reboot could be performed, the X1000 is a hard reboot only to recover from such a crash. And this is more annoying, because unlike the XE, the X1000 takes longer to boot. More frustrating.

So, what is other peoples experience of the X1000 and stability? Is it stable? Or do you experience instability? And other machines like the Sam and X5000 relying on USB input I'm also interested in.

@Hypex

I have no stabilty issues at all on my X1000.

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@Hypex

Sounds like you got more gremlins than me, amigainput however is a pain, sometime it works, some time it crashes, surprised when I looked into it, its a known problem on Os4, shame it cant be fixed as RuninUAE also seem to struggle to know that a joystick is plugged in and it some time works, but some time requires me to load up amigainput to repatch the inputs to work then it just seem there a 50/50 chance of it crashing, it very odd behaviour that I just got use to it now.

The only other annoying behave I had was "error accessing the volume" https://twitter.com/amigang/status/974019795531296768/photo/1
again it sometime happen, sometime did'nt, got worst over a month so had to try and fix it and after a quick clean inside my X1000 and changing SATA for the drives it stop happening.

OS4 does feel to me like a beta OS,its not always the fault of the OS, some apps too have issue you have to work though, but can become annoying.

One complaint I do have is Grim Reaper, it has an option to Kill the problem if one happens, but this HAS NEVER WORKED ! all it seem to do is stop the system crash for a min or two before a freeze happens anyway, I've leaned to just quick save anything I'm working on and do a reboot if one occuss now.

But still my X1000 is fairly stable, and the key apps that I like, Odyssey, TuneNet, AmigaAmp, YAM, Hollywood, ScummVM , youtube player, Emotion, all run fine no issue.

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AmigaNG, YouTube, LeaveReality Studio

When I had an X1000, I came across some minor stability problems, but not something very disturbing.

@amigang

Quote:

One complaint I do have is Grim Reaper, it has an option to Kill the problem if one happens, but this HAS NEVER WORKED ! all it seem to do is stop the system crash for a min or two before a freeze happens anyway, I've leaned to just quick save anything I'm working on and do a reboot if one occuss now.

This has always worked. However I suspect you think it might be some kind of loonixy kill the task and clean up all resources thing, which it is not. AmigaOS doesn't have that feature. If you kill as task an it has resources open that other tasks might try to interact with (say a window) then as soon as that interaction happsn it will likely lockup the system as the task / process is not there to deal with the interaction.

Some tasks may be 'killed' more safly than others, an instance of python running in the background that crashes is often quite safe to kill, an instance of OWB or similar with windows and subtask likely not.

Last edited by broadblues on 17-Sep-2019 at 12:33 PM.

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@broadblues

I guess he meant like windows-style (which fully kills a task and all resources), which under AmigaOS is never the case. But I have to agree, system would crash after a while, no matter what you will do. We have to admit, Grim Reaper was totally uninspiring compared to Guru Meditation.

@broadblues

Do you use much 68k software? Would you use OctaMED much? Though I know what 68k software I can generally trust it is always with a little trepidation.

@Thread

My X1000 is my main computer and I never encounter freezes or crashes with the tasks I'm doing with it.

It is way more stable than my former AmigaOne XE G4.

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FPGA Replay + DB 68060 at 85Mhz

I haven't noticed any issues with general USB use under OS4 on my A1-XE (a small miracle, you might say), such as flash drives, keyboards and mice. But there have always been serious issues with AmigaInput specifically, with it falling over whenever I try to do anything with USB game controllers. Changing settings in the AmigaInput prefs more often than not causes serious crashes, which means trying to play a game with a controller typically involves plugging in the controller and having 2 or 3 reboots to set it up as necessary before I can actually launch the game, then 2 or 3 more reboots if I want to set up another controller or change any of the mappings in the AmigaInput prefs.

Perhaps it's AmigaInput, and not the USB subsystem in general, that's the problem?

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@Hypex

Quote:

Would you use OctaMED much?

No, I'm a musician....

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@Samurai

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We have to admit, Grim Reaper was totally uninspiring compared to Guru Meditation.

I was never inpired, only bemused and frustrted by a Guru, whereas a GR gets you a stack trace and more useful info like register states at the crash point, to enable you to actually debug the crashing program!

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@Hypex

on sam460 i solved a usb crash problem at startup due to a problem in the user-startup

@Hypex

Odyssey is rock stable on my X1000 and usb is also ok, every stick just works without crashes. I use usb sticks, new and some of 15 years old. Sometimes copy errors with long filenames, but I think that is the filesystem.
Usb keyboard, mouse and gamepad no problems.

The X1000, is in my experience, the most stable AmigaOne I owned, I had AmigaOne XE, Sam440/460, Classic PPC systems.

Yes, it is very annoying that soft, and in my case, also hard reboot does not work.

And also that software can crash the complete machine, recent titels from os4depot and Amistore work fine, but older titles from Aminet can crash the machine because they are not compatible.

@Samurai

Quote:

Grim Reaper was totally uninspiring compared to Guru Meditation.

The Guru Meditation certainly has cultural value: it formed part of the original Amiga identity. However, its practical value was close to zero.

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The Rear Window blog

AmigaOne X5000/020 @ 2GHz / 4GB RAM / Radeon RX 560 / ESI Juli@ / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition
SAM440ep-flex @ 667MHz / 1GB RAM / Radeon 9250 / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition

@Hypex

I've had a few stability problems over the years, most of the random ones were hardware problems not software. I bought the X1000 motherboard only and skimped a bit on cables, psu, network card atc. planning to upgrade them as soon as I could afford it.

Getting better sata cables made a big difference, my originals were a bit loose and needed a wigglle ocasionally to get drives to mount. I've had 3 or 4 pci network cards trying various chipsets and drivers, last year I had a lot of network and booting problems so finally installed a psi-e card and my system has been far more stable since then.

The PSU got replaced on shedule and improved things at the time.

some software problems I tracked down to a dusty simm connection, pulling the ram, cleaning the socket and edge of the simm fixed them.

I beta test a lot of stuff so software problems are far more 'normal' for me

Yes I also get the usb freezes but not as often as I used to.

Clean your ram every six months, replace your sata cables if you have random crashes, drives not mounting, read / write erors or just if the drives seem slower than normal. Blast your heatsink with compressed air when you clean the ram to remove any dust and fluff.

Basically, give it a service at least once a year, pull your boards, ram, cables, clean and replace and your system will be happier and you'll have more hair

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OS4 Rocks
X1000 beta tester, Sam440 Flex (733)

Visit the Official OS4 Support Site for more help.

It may be that your sole purpose is to serve as a warning to others.

@Hypex

My X1000 is the most stable Amiga I've ever owned hands down with the exception of being able to run Timberwolf beautifully before FE came out that is but that's software related anyhow

For USB I only mainly use USB sticks and a wireless USB joypad so can't comment on any other specific USB device

Odyssey always closes fine but I do have the occasional system freeze if I have alot (10+) windows open but again thats not often at all so nothing to annoy me

The only other NG systme I've owned was a Samflex@800 bought when they first came out and back then USB was a mess but got better and better each OS patch/update but hardware wise I had no issues again it was very early OS4.1 stability issues back then

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@amigang

Quote:

Sounds like you got more gremlins than me, amigainput however is a pain, sometime it works, some time it crashes, surprised when I looked into it, its a known problem on Os4, shame it cant be fixed as RuninUAE also seem to struggle to know that a joystick is plugged in and it some time works, but some time requires me to load up amigainput to repatch the inputs to work then it just seem there a 50/50 chance of it crashing, it very odd behaviour that I just got use to it now.

I had forgotten about AmigaInput, or, as it also could be called, AI. LOL. It's been years since I tested it. I had a joypad but it went bad and I never replaced it. Just forgot to get another one. I managed to set it up once I figured it out. I also wondered what the point of it was. I plugged a joypad into my PPC Mac and it worked straight away. Why did OS4 need some complex program to configure input devices when they should just transparently work? PPC OSX wasn't exactly known as a gaming OS.

I have been having issues with my mouse. Could be time to get a wireless one. I did have one in the XE days but got sick of dealing with batteries. I keep getting messages about it being plugged in. It's plugged into my keyboard. It was fine with my XE. Soon after I set it up on my X1K it starts giving me grief. Weird. I wonder if it had been causing some freezes. Though I've never come across a bad connection before over USB freezing the whole system I can recall. I could see it was frozen as it happened once on the Workbench screen and the CPU clocky stopped dead.

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The only other annoying behave I had was "error accessing the volume"

That was a failed 64-bit read command. I would classify that as hardware error. I've seen that type before. I'm sure I have a similar issue here. I've noticed one of my BD drives doesn't eject. In OS4 I don't see any change except for a missing drive in MTB. Which could be bad as a unit missing will mess up the master/slave setup unless SATA can ignore that. But it is affecting Linux as I keep getting boot messages about read errors. I thought I had sorted out the cables years ago which is more annoying. But I might need to get the special SATA ones that attach to the port with a clip.

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OS4 does feel to me like a beta OS,its not always the fault of the OS, some apps too have issue you have to work though, but can become annoying.

I can see that. And now a system like the X1K needs the AEON software pack to be usable. But that introduces problems as well. Time has been broken for ages and remote reading is broken. The original Time had some problem which I'm sure was fixed. Either I don't like replacing system components with those from a third party.

I thought I had TuneNet working. But opening an mp3 or FLAC on Workbench failed. Didn't try wave. It's a def icons thing, I know, but I expected it to be set up. But an OS that doesn't know what a common audio file format is on 2019 is seriously behind the times. AIFF works. MultiView should load these files but it doesn't happen.

And that makes it also look a like a beta OS.

Quote:

One complaint I do have is Grim Reaper, it has an option to Kill the problem if one happens, but this HAS NEVER WORKED !

Well, that's because it killed the "program" but the "problem" remains.

Once a task crashes the system can be unstable. The only exception would be a simple DSI like a null pointer read that was harmless and recoverable. And even that I'd quit that program ASAP. But if you need to kill a task, if "Ignore DSI" fails to work an example, then I consider that too far gone. And save ASAP then reboot. In some cases it can be safer to leave it in the frozen state as pressing the kill switch can end up killing the system instead.

@Hypex

In my experience the X1000 is a very stable machine. It can run for weeks as long as I don't run dodgy programs, or run out of memory! Odyssey doesn't like to run out of memory, and by out, I mean above 70% usage. When the memory meter goes above 70% it's time to restart Odyssey otherwise it will crash quite soon making the system unstable.

Have input through USB is indeed annoying because you can never do a fast soft-reboot when you need it (i.e. when the system froze, or is about to freeze). It's always the button and wait a minute for the slow "BIOS" to convince itself that each and every IDE-slot is indeed truly empty, and no USB-slot surely does not want to boot. Then it spends 7-10 seconds reading the kickstart in PIO0-mode, which would take 0.5s in the trivial PIO4-mode.

A soft-reboot also tries to shut down networking, which hardly ever works, causing the reboot itself to hang the machine. There should be a timeout on such library closing attempts and ignore programs (like AmIRC) that doesn't respond to Ctrl-C, which is not normal on Amiga anyway.

Killing programs with the Grim Reaper (including Odyssey) usually works fine and long as you immediately run Excorsist and kill any window the program left behind, WITHOUT touching that window in between. But Odyssey can often be killed with resource cleaning as well from Scout. It will leave memory behind, but windows and files are closed.

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@broadblues

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No, I'm a musician....

I have a saying. Musicians do it horizontally. Trackers do it vertically.

Depends how you look at it. I know you have used Audio Evolution which is geared towards "real" music and mastering. But "musicians" have also used OctaMED to create hit songs. I wouldn't consider techno to be real music myself nowdays, since it is artificially generated on computer, but I still liked to listen to it. Of course keyboards and the like can be played live but tended to be looked down upon compared to acoustic instruments. Especially against that "unplugged" phase the music industry went through.

@bennymee

Most USB sticks work fine. Some times I don't see a stick recognised and re-plug it in. But rarely have I seen a USB stick cause a system freeze.

I've come across this broken hard reboot before. I don't know what causes it. So even with a fresh Workbench pressing Ctrl-Alt-Alt does nothing?

What about your case reset button?