ACA 1221 soft boot issue ?

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.

    Am having an issue whereby on doing a soft reboot the system is often(but not always) ether stuck at a red screen followed by black after a few seconds, or red screen followed with an error of no signal from my TV after a few seconds. A hard boot via power on or power cycle has never failed, and the system otherwise appears to be stable in operation when it is powered on.


    Given that I am using the 3.2.1 rom via the maprom function of ACAtune and that a red screen would seemingly indicate a kickstart checksum error I would guess this is likely to be an issue with the maprom function ?

    This sounds like you have the very first ACA1221 that does not yet have the "overdrive" function. With introduction of that feature, the occasional "red screen" is also gone. This only happens on select A1200 motherboards, and completely disappeared when we introduced the new bus interface that is much more tolerant against false E123C/E125C assembly.


    Before attempting to debug this, I'd try updating the CPLD - please ship the card to us for that.

    A Google search would seem to indicate that "false E123C/E125C assembly" is related to the mainboard timing fixes ?


    My mainboard does not have these done at present but I am planning on having this work done shortly after xmas.

    Quote from Jens

    This sounds like you have the very first ACA1221 that does not yet have the "overdrive" function. With introduction of that feature, the occasional "red screen" is also gone. This only happens on select A1200 motherboards, and completely disappeared when we introduced the new bus interface that is much more tolerant against .


    Before attempting to debug this, I'd try updating the CPLD - please ship the card to us for that.

    Quote from mfny

    A Google search would seem to indicate that "false E123C/E125C assembly" is related to the mainboard timing fixes ?

    Yes. THe new bus interface can tolerate these, even if installed wrongly.


    Quote from mfny

    My mainboard does not have these done at present but I am planning on having this work done shortly after xmas.

    I doubt that this will get rid of the occasional red screen, but it's worth a try.

    Quote from Jens

    Yes. THe new bus interface can tolerate these, even if installed wrongly.


    I doubt that this will get rid of the occasional red screen, but it's worth a try.

    I am having other work done on the mainboard so am getting the timing fixes done at the same time so I wont being going out of my way to try this in terms of cost/time so it would seem worth a try, if it fails I will look at the option of getting the CPLD updated as you suggested.

    No way for us to update the CLPD ourselves? Shipping the cards from USA is a tough proposition! I am also having the same red screen issue. I can't use 3.2 or 3.2.1 at all with the Maprom option. Do we know if installing real 3.2.1 rom chips on the board will work?

    Quote from ziggystar12

    No way for us to update the CLPD ourselves?

    That would mean opening up the design - I can't do that. The ACA1221 and successors are still active designs. Happy to talk about that when it's a few years after tha last sale of an ACA122x card.

    Quote from ziggystar12

    Do we know if installing real 3.2.1 rom chips on the board will work?

    Worth a try, but I don't have a source for such a ROM chip.

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