Nevermind, solved by downgrading to stable openpci.library v2.1
Basic Guide on Setting up a Prometheus (Firebird) Daughterboard on A3000 and A4000 now here on Amibay
- Thread starter Boing-ball
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amigasquirrel
New member
Thanks for the guide, just wanted to clarify something.
It says to install both Prometheus Libraries and Drivers and OpenPCI Libraries and Drivers - I thought you installed one or the other?
I installed OpenPCI_68k https://aminet.net/package/driver/other/openpci68k and have managed to get the Firebird working with S3ViRGE and Matrox VGA cards, although having a few stability issues.
It says to install both Prometheus Libraries and Drivers and OpenPCI Libraries and Drivers - I thought you installed one or the other?
I installed OpenPCI_68k https://aminet.net/package/driver/other/openpci68k and have managed to get the Firebird working with S3ViRGE and Matrox VGA cards, although having a few stability issues.
Thanks for the compliment
Yes I installed both.
At the time to get the RTG and RAM for DMA to use other PCI cards I used the Prometheus.library.
The OpenPCI.library is used to get the other PCI cards working. Such as USB and Network.
Although a big caveat here. To use the PPC PCI cards you seem to need to use V2.1 only. Anything else and boom no PPC card is detected.
I know Thor has now released RTG drivers for other PCI Graphics cards. At the moment my setups only feature Voodoo 3 and 4 Cards. So cannot comment on THors way of using OpenPCI and the newer versions.
Feel free to provide the instructions you used on performing this. I can add them to the 1st page as an update.
Cheers
Hello all.
Just to be clear: having a Voodoo or Radeon card is important if you have other PCI cards to share the DMA capability with.
But if you only want a PCI PPC card (Sonnet stuff), you can keep using your Zorro cards.
Am I right ?
I ask this because I've recently bought TF4060, ZZ9000+ZZ9000AX and Firebird 1.1 cards in my A3000D.
I'm considering adding a Sonnet compatible PPC card, but I don't want to let go of the ZZ9000 to try and find a Voodoo/Radeon.
Can I keep using my Zorro cards and just have a PCI PPC board on the Firebird ?
Thanks.
Just to be clear: having a Voodoo or Radeon card is important if you have other PCI cards to share the DMA capability with.
But if you only want a PCI PPC card (Sonnet stuff), you can keep using your Zorro cards.
Am I right ?
I ask this because I've recently bought TF4060, ZZ9000+ZZ9000AX and Firebird 1.1 cards in my A3000D.
I'm considering adding a Sonnet compatible PPC card, but I don't want to let go of the ZZ9000 to try and find a Voodoo/Radeon.
Can I keep using my Zorro cards and just have a PCI PPC board on the Firebird ?
Thanks.
Hi,
From my understanding:
Unfortunately for the Prometheus Daughterboard (Firebird). The PCI side of things requires a RTG card to allow for RAM and DMA to be shared off to other PCI cards.
On the Zorro side, this isn’t needed as the Buster Chip Takes care of DMA for you.
Someone on this EAB thread has mentioned using a S3Virge card for RTG and DMA + RAM. This would be a cheaper option than Voodoo 3 and or Radeon.
mvickers03
Member
You can use zz9000 but you will also have to use a voodoo or Radeon. The reason for this is that the Radeon or Voodoo will serve as storage for the DMA transfers.
If you are going with PPC I strongly recommend you go with a Voodoo card or you wont be able to take advantage of some of those sweet sweet W3D ports Cowcat and others have cranked out over the years.
Radeon with Prometheus driver does not do DMA. Only Voodoo, Permedia2 and S3Virge you can use for DMA.
For PPC + Warp3D Voodoo is the way to go.
Radeon can not do Warp3D but can do WOS stuff.
For PPC + Warp3D Voodoo is the way to go.
Radeon can not do Warp3D but can do WOS stuff.
Last edited:
Okay. Just to add. Been playing around with another A4KD system with a Prometheus Firebird 1.0. Using a fresh install of AmigaOS 3.2.3. Plus the AmigaOS 3.2 CPU (Thors MMulibs) add-on as per the install disk.
This time I just used the newer OpenPCI libraries and setting from Thor including the latest Voodoo.card driver and P96 version 3.6.1 from Icomp. (As of 23/12/25 just received 3.6.2 from Jens on Email).
RTG works flawlessly with this setup. Not tried anything further yet such as a Ragnorock PPC or other PCI cards.
Latest OpenPCI and Voodoo card driver from Aminet.net
aminet.net
aminet.net
This time I just used the newer OpenPCI libraries and setting from Thor including the latest Voodoo.card driver and P96 version 3.6.1 from Icomp. (As of 23/12/25 just received 3.6.2 from Jens on Email).
RTG works flawlessly with this setup. Not tried anything further yet such as a Ragnorock PPC or other PCI cards.
Latest OpenPCI and Voodoo card driver from Aminet.net
Aminet - driver/other/openpci68k.lha
Aminet - driver/video/Voodoo.lha
It works great but not for PCI-PPC cards.
The latest OpenPCI by Thor includes PCIINIT but this gets placed into the MMU-Configuration. So will be interesting to see how this works with the sonnet.library.
When I get chance will give it a go.
I believe you can only allocate up to 384MB of PPC RAM as fast.
You’re lucky, as I can only muster around 128MB at the moment on one of my builds.
Yes, I know that on Mediator there is limit up to 384MB of PPC memory (that's in SonnetLib documentation), but I haven't found anything about limits of Firebird.
If you're right I should see 384MB of ppc memory not 233MB. I don't know is it configuration problem or limit of Firebird or SonnetLib.
Which OpenPCI library are you using? Old version 2.1 or new Thors 40.x?
No worries. This is the version I am running in my WarpEngine 060 with Prometheus Firebird v1.1 and 512MB 800mhz Ragnorock. I can only get 128MB.
Currently I am setting up another system with a fairly similar setup but WarpEngine with 040 and Firebird 1.0.
This time I’m just going through a full build up from scratch and using Thors 40.x OpenPCI libs with 47.9 Thors MMULibs.
Just working through this as I type. So will report back my findings.
So…..
Still no joy with Thors 40.x OpenPCI.libs.
Tried going through the Thor Documentation about setting GrantdirectramAccess=YES etc.
Lspci shows cards and dmamemtest shows DMA working well…. But startppc says no PCI PPC card found…
If anyone has membership over on EAB to ask why this is so? Then please feel free…..
I tried to run it with Thor's PCI library too, but with the same result.
I found in PCI-Configuration that my board is ignored on pci initialization. I tried to comment out this lines but it didn't help. Maybe there are some known issues...
I asked on EAB and waiting for answer.
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One more thing, I saw 386MB two times when I was trying to configure it, but I don't know why. It probably happend when PCI bridge was first initialized with Thor's library and then system was rebooted with old OpenPCI 2.1 library.
Unfortunately after turn off Amiga it is once again only 233MB visible. I didn't find a rule when it happends, but it happened two times.
Unfortunately after turn off Amiga it is once again only 233MB visible. I didn't find a rule when it happends, but it happened two times.