Running Amix on Real Hardware¶

If you have an actual Commodore 68030 Amiga, you can run Amix on it — but the machine, CPU, RAM, SCSI IDs, and graphics must fall inside a narrow envelope the kernel hard-codes. This page collects what you need to bring up Amix 2.1 on real iron: which machines and ROMs work, the disk-ID-6 / tape-ID-4 rule that trips up everyone, how people substitute modern flash-SCSI (ZuluSCSI) for the long-dead hard disk and tape drive, and the realities of feeding it a distribution and a network in 2026.

Most of the machine facts here are ✅ verified from the Ditto paper and the install scripts on the root floppy. Almost everything about modern substitutes (ZuluSCSI, tape-free installs, finding 10 Mbps Ethernet) is 🟡 community-reported — credible hobbyist practice, not primary-verified. Where this page is uncertain it says so.

If you just want to run Amix today, emulation is far easier than real hardware. Start with the WinUAE setup guide; this page is for people committed to original Commodore gear. The actual OS install steps (partitioning, streaming the distribution, kernel build, patch disk) live in the installation walkthrough and apply identically on real hardware and emulators — the only difference is the SCSI back end.

The two official machines¶

Amix shipped on exactly two Commodore configurations. ✅

A3000UX¶

The reference platform. ✅

68030 @ 25 MHz with a 68882 FPU @ 25 MHz (the FPU is mandatory — see below).
1–2 MB Chip RAM + up to 8 MB Fast RAM as shipped.
On-board (A3000) SCSI controller.
A3070 QIC-150 tape drive (the original install medium).
A2065 Zorro II Ethernet card (10 Mbps; see networking realities).
Optional A2410 "Lowell" color graphics card (TMS34010, 1024×768) for color X11; without it you get monochrome X on the built-in chipset.
"Superkickstart 1.4" bootstrap ROM: a special A3000 boot ROM that decides at power-on whether to boot Amix or AmigaOS. Hold the right mouse button at power-on to load an AmigaOS Kickstart instead of booting Amix; default (no button) boots Amix from SCSI. ✅
3-button mouse (X11 and the AT&T windowing tools expect three buttons).

A2500UX¶

An A2000 pre-configured for Unix. ✅ The "UX" suffix means it shipped with Amix pre-installed; the hardware is otherwise a standard A2500:

A2000 chassis + A2630 accelerator (68030 @ 25 MHz + 68882 FPU).
A2090 or A2091 Zorro II SCSI controller (no on-board SCSI on the A2000).
First publicly demoed at Uniforum, Dallas, January 1988 (then running SVR3, not SVR4). 🟡 (event + year documented; the machine and month are community-reported)

A2500UX has no Superkickstart. The dual-boot-by-mouse-button behavior is an A3000UX feature of its boot ROM ✅. On an A2500UX you boot from the SCSI disk (or a boot floppy) the normal way.

Hard requirements (the kernel will not negotiate)¶

These are absolute and enforced by the kernel or the install scripts; you cannot patch around most of them because the relevant source was not shipped. ✅ throughout unless tagged.

Requirement	Detail	Why it's fixed
CPU	68020 or 68030 with a real MMU	Amix uses the 68030 MMU (HAT layer); a 68EC020/68EC030 (no MMU) cannot run Amix
FPU	68881 or 68882 mandatory	No soft-float; the kernel and userland assume hardware FP
No 68040/68060	A4000 cannot officially run Amix	Kernel predates the 68040 MMU
Fast RAM	4 MB minimum, 16 MB MAXIMUM	Kernel hard-codes a 16 MB ceiling; >16 MB mis-maps the SCSI drive
SCSI disk	ID 6 (convention)	Installer prompts for the disk target; ID 6 is the universal default, baked into device names once installed
SCSI tape	must be SCSI ID 4	Hard-coded in install scripts (`/dev/rmt/4h`)
No Zorro III	Zorro II cards only	The memory-mapping layer can't address Zorro III space, and that source wasn't shipped, so it can't be community-fixed

For the full hardware story — supported SCSI/graphics/network/serial cards, the AUTOCONFIG mechanism, the RAM-ceiling failure mode — see the hardware reference page.

Why SCSI ID 6 and ID 4 matter so much¶

The install scripts on the root floppy stream the distribution from the tape at the literal /dev/rmt/4h / /dev/rmt/4hn, and reference the disk through a $SCSI variable (/dev/dsk/c${SCSI}d0s${BOOTPART}). ✅ The tape must be at ID 4 — the installer looks nowhere else for the distribution media. The disk is ID 6 by convention: the installer prompts for the disk target, so another ID would work, but pick 6 — the chosen ID is baked into the device names (/etc/vfstab) once installed, so changing it later means editing that file 🟡. Set the tape to SCSI ID 4 and the disk to SCSI ID 6 before you start. Getting the tape ID wrong is the single most common reason a real-hardware install can't find its distribution media. ✅/🟡

This same ID rule is what the emulator configs reproduce: WinUAE/FS-UAE put the disk hardfile on SCSI ID 6 and the tape image on SCSI ID 4 (see the WinUAE guide).

Modern SCSI: replacing dead disks and tape with flash 🟡¶

Original SCSI hard disks and QIC-150 tape drives are 30+ years old, unreliable, and increasingly impossible to source. The community substitutes a modern SCSI emulator — most commonly a ZuluSCSI (or BlueSCSI-class device) — that presents SD-card-backed images as SCSI devices. This is 🟡 community-reported hobbyist practice; it is not described in any Amix primary source.

The principle is straightforward because Amix only cares about SCSI IDs, not the underlying media:

Configure the SCSI emulator to expose a disk image on SCSI ID 6 (this becomes your c0d0 Amix hard disk, RDB-partitioned). 🟡
Configure a second device on SCSI ID 4 to stand in for the tape, if you need a tape-style install path. 🟡

Warning (🟡, unverified depth): This page does not have a primary-verified ZuluSCSI profile for Amix. SCSI emulators vary in how faithfully they emulate a sequential (tape) device versus a block (disk) device, sector sizes, and parity/termination behavior — and Amix's SCSI handling is old and picky. Treat any specific device-profile recipe you find online as unverified until you reproduce it. The reliable, well-trodden path most people use is the tape-free install below, which sidesteps tape emulation entirely.

For how the disk is laid out once Amix sees it (RDB scheme, the 2 MB boot partition, swap, UFS-vs-s5 choice), see filesystems and disks and the installation walkthrough.

Keep partitions reasonably small 🟡¶

Keep Amix partitions roughly ≲ 1 GB each. 🟡 This is community guidance, not a documented hard limit — but combined with the 16 MB RAM ceiling and the era's filesystem assumptions, oversized partitions are a known source of trouble. A modern SD card is enormous relative to what Amix expects, so size the Amix RDB partitions conservatively rather than the card.

Tape-free install (dd/cpio from another host) 🟡¶

You do not need a working tape drive to install Amix. The distribution is streamed from tape only because that was the 1992 medium; the actual data is a cpio archive, and you can deliver that archive by other means. Building the distribution onto a disk/swap area from another host (Linux or AmigaDOS) and extracting it with cpio is documented on comp.unix.amiga 🟡.

The mechanism mirrors what the installer does from tape. The install scripts on the root floppy run, in effect: ✅ (the command form is verified from the root.adf scripts)

# What the installer does when reading from real tape at SCSI ID 4:
dd if=/dev/rmt/4hn bs=256k | cpio -imdcu
# (a variant pipes through zcat for a compressed stream)
#   dd if=/dev/rmt/4hn bs=256k | zcat | cpio -imdcu

The tape-free approach replaces if=/dev/rmt/4hn with a regular file (or a raw partition such as swap) that already contains the same cpio stream — written there beforehand from another machine. 🟡 In outline:

On a modern host, write the Amix distribution cpio image to a SCSI/SD region that the Amix installer can read as a device (for example, a spare partition or the swap area). 🟡
Boot Amix from the boot floppy and into the root miniroot as usual (walkthrough).
Point the extract step at that file/device instead of the tape: dd if=<file-or-device> bs=256k | cpio -imdcu. 🟡

Note: The exact device/partition you stage the image on, and how you wire that into the installer's package flow (amixpkg -i -r /mnt), are not primary-verified here — the precise recipe is community lore and varies by setup. The fact that tape-free installs are possible and were done is 🟡-documented on comp.unix.amiga; the byte-level how-to is left to that source. See the installation walkthrough for the package-install flow this plugs into.

Non-standard tape drives: `viper_kludge` 🟡¶

If you do use a real tape drive that isn't the original A3070, note that the root floppy ships viper_kludge (by Frank "Crash" Edwards), which patches kernel memory so a non-standard Archive Viper 2150S drive works. ✅ (it is present on root.adf, with viper.README). Its own README warns it is incompatible with the A3070, Caliper, Wangtek, and Sankyo drives — do not run it with those. ✅ It does not help with arbitrary modern SCSI-emulated tape devices; it is specific to the Viper 2150S.

10 Mbps Ethernet realities¶

Amix networks over the A2065 Zorro II card (Amix device aen0). ✅ The A2065 is a 10 Mbps card 🟡 (10Base2 coax / 10BaseT in the original A3000UX configuration), and that creates practical problems on a 2026 network:

Modern switches are gigabit-only and often won't negotiate 10 Mbps. You typically need an old 10/100 hub or switch, or a media converter that explicitly supports 10BaseT, between the Amix machine and your modern LAN. 🟡 (This is general 10 Mbps-vintage-hardware reality, widely reported by the retro-Amiga community rather than stated in an Amix primary source.)
For coax-only cards, you may need a 10Base2-to-10BaseT converter and proper terminators. 🟡

On the software side (✅/🟡, from the brief's networking notes):

Static IP only — there is no DHCP client. ✅/🟡

DNS is off by default; Amix resolves names from /etc/hosts. To enable resolver DNS you relink the socket library and configure a resolver:

ln -f /usr/lib/libsockdns.so /usr/lib/libsocket.so
# then configure /etc/netconfig, run in.named (or point at one), and write /etc/resolv.conf

The default route requires a metric: route add default <gateway> 1. ✅/🟡
NFS client and server work. SLIP is buggy (reboot between sessions); there is no PPP. 🟡

For the fuller networking picture (STREAMS TCP/IP, TLI + sockets, the A2065/Hydra options), see the networking page.

What "real hardware" buys you, and what it doesn't¶

Be honest with yourself about the trade-off:

Emulation (WinUAE) is the reference target and is what almost all current driver work is built and tested against. ✅ It is easier to set up, snapshot, and recover. Start there: WinUAE, FS-UAE. (Note: Amiberry 8.x also runs and installs Amix now — it emulates the A3000 SCSI disk + tape. ✅)
Real hardware gives you authenticity and native I/O, but you inherit every hard limit on this page plus the sourcing problem for 68030 boards, FPUs, working SCSI/tape, and 10 Mbps networking.

If your goal is to develop drivers or explore the system, emulation is the pragmatic choice. If your goal is to run Amix on the metal it was written for, this page is your checklist.

Sources¶

Research brief §2 (Hardware & requirements: A3000UX/A2500UX specs, Superkickstart, 68020/030+MMU+FPU mandatory, 4–16 MB Fast RAM, SCSI disk ID 6 / tape ID 4, no Zorro III, no 68040, A2065 networking) — primary facts ✅, expansion notes 🟡.
Research brief §9 (Installation flow: dd if=/dev/rmt/4hn bs=256k | cpio -imdcu and … | zcat | cpio variants reconstructed from amix_21_root.adf scripts; viper_kludge / viper.README; tape-free installs documented on comp.unix.amiga 🟡).
amix_21_root.adf analysis via tools/inspect-adf.sh (install scripts: BPART=/dev/dsk/c${SCSI}d0s${BOOTPART}, /dev/rmt/4h, viper.README) ✅.
Research brief §11 (Networking: A2065 aen0, static IP only, DNS off by default + relink recipe, route add default … 1, NFS, SLIP/PPP) ✅/🟡.
Research brief §8 (Emulation: WinUAE reference target; Amiberry 8.x adds A3000 SCSI + tape support — BlitterStudio/amiberry issue #1376, implemented). First-hand confirmation on Amiberry 8.1.6.
ZuluSCSI/flash-SCSI substitution, old hub / media-converter need, and the byte-level tape-free recipe: community-reported (🟡), retro-Amiga community practice and comp.unix.amiga; not primary-verified in any Amix source.