The following description has been put together to the best of my knowledge. I do not guarantee its accuracy. I accept ZERO responsibility for any damages you incur as a result of using this document! This document may not be modified or redistributed without the permission of its author.

copyright by Jürgen Lucas
translation by Andreas Zierl


MorphOS / Pegasos - QUICKSTART Guide
installation instructions for MorphOS on Pegasos with an empty IDE hard drive
powered by http://www.morphos-news.de/

:: Index ::.

1.Preparation 5.Copy MorphOS onto your Hard Drive
2.Booting from CD 6.Boot from your Hard Drive
3.Installing the Hard Drive 7.Auto-booting
4.Format the Partitions 8.Troubleshooting


:: 1. Preparation ::.

In order to get the current MorphOSboot-CD-Image you should log in the provided Betatester II FTP Server and download the latest version. If you don't have your FTP login information, please contact your dealer to arrange it. If you don't have the means to burn a CD from the image, use the CD that came with your system. You can upgrade to the latest version at some future time.

Hint: To avoid problems with your Pegasos, use 80-wire IDE cables right from the start.

anzeigen 133-P19700-002 64M DDR 200M/250E

Welcome to SmartFirmware(tm) for bplan Pegasos version 0.1b107 (20020919142323)
SmartFirmware(tm) Copyright 1996-2001 by CodeGen, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Pegasos BIOS Extensions Copyright 2001-2002 by bplan GmbH.
All Rights Reserved.
ok _

When you switch on your Pegasos it will greet you with the Smart Firmware screen. In the first row you can see information about your graphics card. Here it's a Radeon 9000 with 64 MBytes DDR Ram. When the ok prompt appears, the system is ready to accept your commands.

:: 2. Booting from CD ::.

anzeigen ok ls /pci/ide/cd
...
ok _ 		ok boot /pci/ide/cd boot.img
...

Insert the MorphOSBoot-CD in your drive and list its content with "ls /pci/ide/cd". It makes sense to switch to a smaller font size by pressing the [F9] Key. To switch back to the bigger font hit [F6]. You should find the file "boot.img" on the CD, which is the MorphOS kernel. To start it, type: "boot /pci/ide/cd boot.img". Now MorphOS starts up to the Ambient screen, the GUI of MorphOS.

:: 3. Installing the Hard Drive ::.

Double-click the CD icon in Ambient, go into "Tools" and execute the program "SCSIconfig". The hard-drive may be partitioned with this program. To do so, select the "ide.device" in the "SCSI Controller" list. Now should appear at least two devices on the left in the "SCSI Drives" list. One of them is your hard drive, the other one is your CD drive. Write down the unit number of your hard drive, you'll need it later on. Now select your hard drive and click on the «Partition» button. The "Partition List" pops up. If your hard drive is new, there should not be any entry or possibly a QDH0 partition. If there's such a partition, «Delete» it. Now we add two partitions:

Partition 0 Partition 1
  • Install a new partition by clicking on «Add»
  • The name of the partition should be given as "bi0"
  • Specify its size as 20 MBytes
  • The Filesystem must be "FFS" in any case, bacause currently only "FFS" partitions are bootable
  • At this time the mask must still be changed from "0xffffffff" to "0xfffffffe". The warning that the settings are not optimal may be clicked away without concern
  • Remove the check mark under "Boot"
  • Set the check mark under "Mount"
  • Click on «OK»
  • Install a new partition by clicking on «Add»
  • The name of the partition should be given as "DH0"
  • A size of 512 MBytes should be perfect.
  • This time, choose the "SFS" filesystem
  • Set the mask to "0xfffffffe" also
  • Set the check mark under "Boot"
  • Set the check mark under "Mount"
  • Set the Buffers to 600
  • Click on «Ok»
In the "Partition List" window, click on «OK». Back in the "SCSIconfig" main window, write all changes onto your hard drive with «Save Changes». Confirm two times with «OK» and leave the program with «Quit». Reboot your system as requested to apply the changes.

After the reboot, type "ls /pci/ide/disk@0,0" at the SmartFirmware prompt. With this command you may check if the partitions were installed correct. The first zero in the command stands for Channel 0, the second for Master. If the unit number you wrote down before is not 0, you have to alter the command the following way:

  • Unit 0 == /pci/ide/disk@0,0 [channel0,master]
  • Unit 1 == /pci/ide/disk@0,1 [channel0,slave]
  • Unit 2 == /pci/ide/disk@1,0 [channel1,master]
  • Unit 3 == /pci/ide/disk@1,1 [channel1,slave]

ok ls /pci/ide/disk@0,0
RDB patition 0 <FFS> : <bi0> (0x444F5301)
RDB patition 1 <SFS> : <DH0> (0x53465300)
ok _

If you see the same display as in the figure above, everything is alright. If  there are DOS partitions instead of RDB partitions, you'll get an "The Filesystem is not supported" error when booting from hard drive (see Troubleshooting for a solution). Now proceed with booting from CD.

:: 4. Format the Partitions ::.

Now we'll format the partitions you just created. Select "Format Disk..." from the "Utilities" entry of the menue bar. Choose the partition you want to format on the left, give it a name in the "Label" text field and click on «Format». A reasonable name would be "System" for DH0 and "Bootimg" for bi0. When you formatted both partitions, «Close» the program.

:: 5. Copy MorphOS onto your Hard Drive ::.

MorphOS v1.4 and higher:
To copy the files onto the hard disk, use the "HDInstall" script which is supplied on the CD. The script recognises an already installed version of MorphOS and updates it. All settings are kept. But don't forget to backup your data before updating an old version.

MorphOS v1.3 or earlier:
The most convenient way of copying all files is using the Shell, since MorphOS doesn't enclose a comfortable file manager at the moment. To open a Shell window, select "Newshell" from the "Ambient" entry of the menue bar or use the shortcut [ramiga]+[n]. The following commands copy MorphOS to your hard drive:

  1. "copy cd0: dh0: all"
  2. "copy env:sys/def_disk.info dh0:disk.info"
  3. "copy dh0:boot.img bi0: move"

The first line copies the whole content of the CD to the hard drive. In doing so, the hard drive gets the the same icon as the CD, so the second line replaces it with a HDD icon. The third line moves the boot image to the "bi0" partition, because MorphOS wouldn't be able to boot from the hard drive otherwise.

:: 6. Boot from your Hard Drive ::.

To finally boot from hard drive, take the MorphOSBoot-CD out of the drive and reboot your Pegasos with the reset button or via the menue by selecting "Shutdown" in the "Ambient" menu and clicking on «Reboot». Back on the OpenFirmware prompt, type "boot /pci/ide/disk@0,0:0 boot.img". Pay attention to the unit number (see 3.) and adapt the command according to your setup. The third zero after the colon refers to the partition number where your boot image is located.

ok ls /pci/ide/disk@0,0:0
boot.img              1422588 Bytes
1 File(s)   0 Dir(s)
ok _

Partition 0 has to use the FFS filesystem and must include the file "boot.img". To check this again, type "ls /pci/ide/disk@0,0:0". If everything is ok the Pegasos should start up to the Ambient screen.

:: 7. Auto-booting ::.

To avoid typing the command line shown under 6. everytime you start your system, you may enable the Auto-Boot feature. After a reboot, type the following lines on the OpenFirmware prompt:

  1. "setenv boot-file boot.img ramdebug"
  2. "setenv boot-device /pci/ide/disk@0,0:0" <- check for the right HDD unit!
  3. "setenv auto-boot-timeout 3000" <- Auto-boot after 3 seconds
  4. "setenv auto-boot? true"

The "ramdebug" parameter in the first line redirects the debug output which is normally sent to the serial interface to RAM, so you may use the serial interface for another purpose. It has also an positive effect on the speed of your system.
If you eventually don't want to use the Auto-boot feature, press [Esc] to interrupt the boot timeout. To deactivate Auto-booting permanently enter "setenv auto-boot? false" at the prompt.

printenv ok printenv
...
ok _

To check the environment variables you just set, type "printenv". Now you may start MorphOS by entering "boot". When you start your Pegasos the next time, the booting will run automatically.

Have a lot of fun!!! :)

:: 8. Troubleshooting ::.

I can't burn the ISO Image to CD with MakeCD If the ISO is recognized by MakeCD as "Audio", this may mean that you are using an old MakeCD version. Get the latest version, which may be found at http://makecd.core.de (Twister)
I can't boot from the CD by typing "boot /pci/ide/cd boot.img". I get the error message "boot.img not found" Make sure that the data on the CD is recognized by typing "ls /pci/ide/cd". If the boot.img data is, for example, shown as "boot.img;1", try typing "boot /pci/ide/cd boot.img;1" to boot. (Twister)
This error occurs if the ISO is burned on a CD-RW wich hasn't been deleted properly before. (antibike)
SmartFirmware can't find any of the two partitions Did you pay attention to to unit number where neccesary?
Make sure the hard drive is connected with an 80-wire IDE cable.
Did you follow the steps exactly and in the right order while installing your hard drive?
When I boot from the hard-drive I get the error message: "The Filesystem is not supported" Probably the hard drive you're using was once in a PC and has a MBR (Master Boot Record) which causes this error message to appear. To solve this problem you should make use of the program "HDWrite", which may be found in the "SYS:Tools/debug" directory. If your using MorphOS v1.4 or later versions it's in "MorphOSBoot:morphos/c". All you need is a file wich is between 512 and 1024 Bytes in size. The program file "reboot" in "Mossys:c/" with about 800 Bytes is just perfect for our purpose. Type "HDwrite ide.device <unit> MOSSYS:c/reboot 0" in the Shell but replace <unit> with the unit number of of your hard drive.
While booting from hard drive, the operation stops after loading the "boot.img" at the Smart Firmware screen without displaying any error message. After loading the "boot.img", the system tries to start from a bootable partition. This error occurs if you made more than one partition bootable. Ensure that only DH0 is installed as a bootable partition. If you want to boot from another partition than DH0 from time to time, use the "bootdevice" parameter. E.g.: "boot /pci/ide/disk@0,0:0 boot.img bootdevice=dh1"
The booting stops at the MorphOS logo and nothing else happens If you're trying to use a AGP and a PCI graphics card at the same time remove one of the two cards. It's not possible to use more than one Gfx card at one time.
I can't hear any sounds If you aren't hearing any sounds then you should start the "Pegasosmixer" (found in WBStartup drawer) and save the settings. The "Pegasosmixer" can normally be started with the keyboard combination [ctrl]+[ralt]+[p], too. (Senex)