Need help getting P96 working on my Pixel64 with Ateo Bus

Hi, Jens,

After having my 1200 motherboard recapped, I am reassembling my Ateo tower over a clean install of OS 3.2. When I saw in the release notes that your latest version of P96 contains updates for the Pixel64, I decided to purchase it and use it rather than the old version that came with the Pixel64.

I am not getting usable output from the gfx card just yet. Here's what I'm seeing.

(By the way, I did skim through this thread and maybe the answer is hidden there, but I found it hard to follow.)

First I installed the Pixel64 install disk archive, minus the older P96 software. (The installer actually gives you the option to install a newer version of P96 from another archive, but I couldn’t get that to work, so I just unchecked the option.) By the way, the Ateo Pixel64 install archive was also supposed to install ModePro but that part hung so I'm not sure if it installed correctly or if it is even needed.

The card isn't working, so I looked at my Screen Mode prefs, and the only options there are the 6 standard NTSC modes.

I then looked at Picasso96Mode in Prefs, and when I launch it I get a "Could not find any modes!" message.

If I drag a new file icon to Settings, and then go to the Attach Setting To menu, I can see a Board0: Pixel64 menu item. (By the way, when I first starting trying this, I saw Pixel64 listed twice, once as Board0 and again as Board1, but that has gone away.)

Upon selecting Board0: Pixel64, I get this warning message: "A mode which is not suitable for this board has been found. Mode: "NoBoard:1024.768 TrueColor" What do you want to do with this mode?, followed by options from Ok to Erase all. I've figured out that if I choose Erase All, then I can click to define some parameters (for example. HiColor 1024x768) and then click Test, and the test screen will display on the Pixel64 (most of the time. Sometimes it doesn't work and I don't know why).

The consistent problem is that if then go to ScreenMode in prefs and select one of the Pixel64 modes for my Workbench screen, it doesn't work. I just get a black screen on my monitor.

Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this would be much appreciated. I'm SO close!

Hello again, Jens,

I am delighted to report that the latest P96 is now working perfectly with my Pixel64. 😊

I didn't have to do anything with the software. A fellow on the Commodore Amiga Facebook group suggested that manually disconnecting my monitor cable from the Invidision and then connecting my monitor to the Pixel64, (switching the monitor off in between so as not to "fry" anything) might be causing the Pixel64 to drop it's signal. So I reinstalled my Eyetech (remember them???) Bmon, which has a front mounted switch for switching video sources between AGA and a gfx card. It has two cables and simultaneously attaches to both the Indivision AGA VGA output and the Pixel64 VGA output, and allows you to swap which source is being fed to the monitor by flipping that toggle switch. That works just fine.

Here's a lovely photo of my new, 1024 x 768 HighColor Workbench, courtesy of P96. 👍

By the way, your story about the guy from Ateo trying to fix part of the system at a demo using sandpaper made me cringe, but isn't entirely surprising. Ateo, to me, always had this vibe of "a couple of French guys in a garage, making things up as they went along." Beyond that, though, I'm just thrilled to have my Amiga up and running again. Hopefully I have equal luck getting the ethernet board working, as well. That's next.

Many thanks to you, and thanks for the Indivision, P96 and the buffered CF to IDE interface, as well.

Steve

Well, maybe I spoke too soon... I seem to be intermittently having the same problems again. It started when I tried actually saving (instead of just using) a P96 Workbench screen mode (the one pictured above) and then rebooting. The WB screen came up as graphical garbage and eventually I had to boot from my Workbench 3.2 adf in order to reset the WB screen mode to something native. I managed to get a P96 WB working again as use and not save, but it took a lot of fiddling. Anyway, do you still think I should try the original, old Ateo version of P96?

Hi, Jens,

I wanted you to know that I don't think the problem is with the P96 software, especially since two of the other Pixel64 users I've been in touch with on Facebook are using the latest, registered P96 software with no problems. Things seem more stable now that I have added some of the optional arguments after C:startateobus in startup-sequence, specifically, COLD (which is supposed to better support accelerator cards like my Blizzard 1260) and INT2, which the docs say is needed if the Ateo Bus board hasn't had a hardware modification which had to be done to run one of their other expansion cards. Anyway, I am more consistently booting into a perfect P96 Workbench screen (1024 x 768 High Color) since adding those flags. There is one other argument I might try which one of these other folks is using, NOREBOOT. It tells startateobus not to force a system reboot during the boot process, and according to the docs is intended to be used to prevent multiple reboots if another program launched later in startup-sequence also forces a reboot. What mystifies me is that the docs say that a keyboard reset during start up is necessary to initialize the Ateo Bus, so I don't see how this other person says they can boot directly into a P96 workbench screen without making a keyboard reset during boot, but I'll explore that a bit more. Anyway, wanted you to know that I believe that the problems I was experiencing have been Ateo configuration issues and not P96 issues.