20th Anniversary edition - "Controller not found" error when attempting Firmware update

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • I have 3, 20th Anniversary edition Buddha boards. 2 are working fine. The third gives this error when I attempt to run the command "buddhaflashtool Buddha_ROM_52-101.bin".


    This is in a stock A2000 rev 6.2 motherboard. No additional cards. Kickstart 3.1.


    I get the error "Controller not found" every time. I have tried the left and right mouse button presses on power reset and nothing happens. Since I have 3 of these cards, I took the eprom chip out of one of the controllers that works, and put it in the one not working and then the board that wasn't working runs normally.


    Based on that test, the eprom is not working correctly. Can this eprom be flashed outside of the controller or is there something else I can do to fix this?


    Thank you,

    Ahandyman59

  • Based on that test, the eprom is not working correctly. Can this eprom be flashed outside of the controller or is there something else I can do to fix this?

    This looks like the chip has lost it's contents completely. For this case, the controller still allows accessing the flash, although autoconfig did not happen yet. Please use the commandline option "initial" for the flash tool to make use of that backup "window".

  • I'd like to add a note to this thread - the Buddha card must be in the furthest right slot (next to the processor expansion slot) for this to work. Otherwise the machine will lock up. I assume this is because the card has not been autoconfigured.

  • I'd like to add a note to this thread - the Buddha card must be in the furthest right slot (next to the processor expansion slot) for this to work. Otherwise the machine will lock up. I assume this is because the card has not been autoconfigured.

    That's not correct. We use that exact same procedure for initial bring-up of the cards after production, and we use any slot of an A2000. The computer is booted from a floppy with the two files (flash tool and binary), along with the command line in startup-sequence. I developed that procedure some time in 2017 and specifically wrote into the instructions that during this mass-bringup, all slots should be used for some wear levelling.


    The best explanation I have for your observation is that there was some unconfigured card before the Buddha (closer to the CPU slot), or there was another Zorro card after it that you needed in order to bring the computer up. TBH, this is such a rare event that it's not worth investigating any further.


    Jens

  • I'll try to answer this as if it were phrased as questions rather than an outright dismissal of my several hours of debugging.


    Q: What other boards do I have in the machine?

    A: A 2286 bridgeboard and a X-surf ethernet card in the middle slots. There's also a A2630 card in the processor slot.


    Q: What operating system are you running?

    A: A minimal boot environment of 1.3, on a floppy formatted specifically to re-flash this card. Hence why the other cards are probably not getting configured.


    Q: What slot did you try in first?

    A: To the left of those two other cards.


    Q: Why did you need to do an initial flash and why did you build this special boot disk?

    A: Because this card "loses" its flash on a fairly regular basis and I have to re-flash it about once every 6 months.


    This situation might be rare for some but it's 100% repeatable for me. It might be for someone else so I hope this helps them.

  • hawkman, please mention the order ID that you've bought the Buddha controller with. We should try to improve your situation with a new flash chip.


    Jens