Buddha problems

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • Hi, I finally found some time to play around with the parts ordered. Both the Micromys and Lyra 3 work perfectly fine, the Indivision ECS works too although I'm quite disappointed with the image quality (very appartent ghosting is present - is this normal?).


    Unfortunatelly Buddha IDE interface doesn't seem to work. It's visible in the card listing (in the SysInfo) in my both Amigas 2000, but it won't boot from the included Disk-on-Module (jumper next to it is installed) and no connected drives are visible anywhere (Workbench etc). I tested it with Kickstart 1.3, 2.0 and 3.1. At the same time my SCSI drives (A2091 card) or Fast RAM card do work perfectly fine so I guess it's not a Zorro slot issue as described in other threads here.


    Do I miss something because it definitely doesn't work as show in Jan Beta's youtube video...

  • If there is a harddrive connected to the A2091, it surely has a higher boot priority than the DOM. Hold down both mouse buttons to get to early startup and specifically choose the DOM as boot partition.

  • Yes, there is, but I tried following configurations:

    - first Amiga without A2091

    - first Amiga with A2091 (and SCSI HDD)

    - second Amiga without A2091

    And it didn't worked in any of them (it's not booting from DOM).


    But sure, I will try with the mouse buttons. Thanks

  • If there is a harddrive connected to the A2091, it surely has a higher boot priority than the DOM. Hold down both mouse buttons to get to early startup and specifically choose the DOM as boot partition.

    OK, I did what you told me. DOM partition is not visible at all.


    Here is how it looks in my first A2000 (the one with SCSI drive, Kickstart 3.1):


    https://imgur.com/a/QhDZUo4


    First pic: Early boot menu - card list

    Second pic: Early boot menu - available boot devices (Buddha installed, SCSI drive disconnected), also IDE HDD (4GB Bigfoot drive) hooked up to the second channel

    Third pic: card list in the SysInfo

    Fourth pic: card list in WhichAmiga


    and here is how it looks in my second A2000 (plain jane machine, no extensions installed at all, Kickstart 2.0):


    https://imgur.com/a/3Y1qIo9


    First pic: card list in the SysInfo

    Second pic: Early boot menu - available boot devices


    Regards

  • your picture hoster only shows me a single pic, there is unrelated content if I click on "next". I'd prefer if you post pictures to this forum, as external picture hosters usually only show pictures for so long, and archiving the content of this thread is limited to text-only. So please don't use external picture hosters.


    Connecting a BigFoot drive to the "second port" sound like you have removed the DOM, as that is on the second port by default. Moving the DOM to the first port also requires you to set the power-jumpers accordingly. Why are you making things so complicated?

  • Your forum is complaining about picture sizes because the script is to dumb to auto resize pictures (which forces me to resize the pics using external application). You complain about imgur (works perfectly well - I checked the problem you described in several browsers and it's non-existent) but it's me who is making things complicated? The passive-aggressive behaviour on your part is completly unnecessary and not something I would expect from a customer support.


    If you have looked at the pictures you would see that the DOM is in place (I havn't touched the factory configuration of the card) and by the second port I meant the another port beside the one with the DOM installed (not the second IDE channel).


    Regards

  • Thanks for posting the pictures here - note that my browser is set to maximum privacy settings, which breaks many websites, obviously including the external picture hoster you've chosen. iComp is subject to multiple attacks daily, including tailored attacks on my mail account, so I'm "more than careful".


    That's a nice 7MHz retro system you've built there. The first thing that comes to mind is the power jumper for the DOM: Could this have fallen off by accident? This would be an explantion for the observed behaviour.


    Next thing I'd try is to re-flash the unit. For flashing to be possible, please keep the mouse button held at power-up, otherwise write-protection will be set for the Buddha, and flashing is not possible until the next power cycle.

  • So...


    Using BuddhaFlashTool without any parameters resulted in following Error (when machine was booted without right mouse button pressed):

    Or with a freeze (when machine was booted with right mouse button pressed):

    Trying to flash the ROM (with right mouse button pressed on boot) resulted in the following error:

    So I removed the ROM from it's socket and flashed it in my TL866-II. Result: it seems to work now:


    The error visible on the first screen is still present when I try to use the tool without any parameters, but I think I will take it from here as the drive controller seems to work OK now. I wonder why it didn't came already flashed with this firmware (as the original one seems to be problematic and I wasted a bit too much time trying to figure it out :( ).

    Thanks for the help.

  • I wonder why it didn't came already flashed with this firmware (as the original one seems to be problematic and I wasted a bit too much time trying to figure it out :( ).

    It did come with the firmware flashed - otherwise autoconfig wouldn't have worked at all (note that this version of the Buddha controller has the config nibbles stored in the flash as well). However, it sometimes happens that a power glitch erases parts of the ROM. You might want to check the output capacitors of your power supply.

  • Yes, I know it had firmware flashed, I just wonder why it was the firmware which causes seemingly undocumented problems and not the trouble-free Buddha_ROM_52-101.bin (firmware bundled with the controller was in different (older?) version).


    PS: PSU was recapped.


    PPS: Everything seems to work fine now. I wanted to keep my boot partition on the SCSI drive and use IDE devices only for storage and moving the files from the PC so I deleted partitions created by the installer from the BigFoot IDE HDD and I configured FAT16-formatted CF card as additional drive (using FAT95 driver) for moving files from the PC both devices work OK!

  • Just a quick followup... machine was sitting not being used for a few months. When I turned it on... IDE drives were not present. DOM wouldn't be detected as well. I pulled the PLCC EPROM and re-flashed it on my PC. IDE drives showed up again. So definitely there is some fault with this controller or maybe just the EPROM is faulty? I'm pretty sure that it will happen again...

  • It's most likely the EEPROM that's faulty. Unfortunately, we currently don't have any spares, but I've sent out a few eMails to brokers, requesting their stock situation. No high hopes during chip shortage times, but it's worth a try.

  • Thanks for reply. It happened again since I last posted. I wasn't using the machine in February and when I tried to use it today - it again didn't saw the CF cards hooked up to the Buddha IDE. I have another Buddha controller right now not installed in any machine so I may switch to it. Also I may look for replacement Flash/EEPROM (unless I have one in my parts box which is likely).

  • That's a single-bit flip. You should be able to re-flash it. And you should re-cap your PSU - everything points to high ripple as the root cause for flash failures.

  • The last reply was more than 365 days ago, this thread is most likely obsolete. It is recommended to create a new thread instead.