P96 3.6.1 - XSurf500 Oddities

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    So back when I had P96 3.5.0 everything was working perfectly every time.

    (Amiga 500 Rev 6a, ACA500Plus, ACA1260 accelerator, XSurf500, Indivision ECS V4, ACE2b ram extender, iComp RTC Module, iComp power supply (Rewired for proper 5 volts), Amiga OS 3.2.3)


    I upgrade to P96 3.6.0 and then at that point the XSurf card stopped connecting to the internet. (I was using Roadshow)

    I then ran the network installer for the XSurf again and then I got networking back functioning again. (I'm not sure of this overwrites Roadshow or not, all I did was just run the XSurf installer)


    Next comes P96 3.6.1. I just installed this right over everything. And what is odd now is that the XSurf card only works about 50% of the time. I usually will not work on cold start and if I do a Control A A then most of the time the XSurf card works.

    It just seems strange that this is intermittent now. I have the Network tool set to DHCP (I can't seem to get a static IP to work).


    Just wondering if anyone has run into this? This new P96 is so much faster, but at the expense of the network being hit or miss now.

    (Nothing has changed on my home networking side, and when I can get booted with the networking working everything works just fine)


    Side note, with the iComp network installer, what's the proper way to set a static IP? I'd like to rule out DHCP....

    I know every support place likes to blame the networking gear... So for another project I had to replace all my networking equipment with new stuff.


    I still have the same issue. On cold boot The XSurf wont connect to the network (I can see flashing LED on it though like its trying)

    I have to soft reboot a couple of times and then it will connect and work fine.


    I have a backup Flash card from I think before the P96 upgrade. I fired that in and it also doesn't work on cold boot, but I wonder what version of P96 is on this back.


    Is there a way to tell which version of P96 I am running by looking at a file somewhere so I can confirm?

    Maybe I have a failing XSurf card

    Not sure if you're reading other support threads here, but we know that we have an open issue on PCMCIA timing which is scheduled to be looked at in the near future. This may affect X-Surf-500 operation as well.


    Do you have an older/slower accelerator to verify that it's really changing with CPU/speed? Something like a 68030 with MMU and enough memory, so you can still run RTG and network without changing too much sotware?


    Jens

    Quote from omniphil

    Amiga 500 Rev 6a, ACA500Plus, ACA1260 accelerator, XSurf500, Indivision ECS V4, ACE2b ram extender, iComp RTC Module, iComp power supply, Amiga OS 3.2.3

    Not necessarily helpful, but as another data point, I have exactly the same setup as this, except I have an ACA1234 accelerator (030 instead of the ACA1260's 060). After updating to P96 3.6.1, my XSurf500 (via Roadshow) connects and runs as it did before.

    Yeah, I think I do have an ACA1234 kicking around. I can try that... (I did try 68060 at 25 and 66 mhz to slow it down, that didn't help)


    What is the open issue for PCMCIA timings for? P96 driver or the XSurf500?


    How would I verify what version of P96 I am running?

    Quote from omniphil

    (I did try 68060 at 25 and 66 mhz to slow it down, that didn't help)

    That's expected not to help, as the "dynamic bus sizing interface" never slows down, always runs at 100MHz to scan the 14MHz size of the Amiga1200 bus. In case of the ACA1260, it does know that it's connected to an ACA500plus and therefore runs a slightly different version of that interface, but it doesn't make any difference about the way it "emulates" a 68020-14MHz interface. That 68020 "emulation" part is what we need to work on, as PCMCIA access on an A1200 has reported errors, which we've already been able to reproduce, but not reliably (takes a few hours to trigger, but obviously happens more often with those other customers).


    Jens

    So I dug out from the attic my ACA1234. I popped that in and got the exact same issue.

    On Cold boot I have no networking, but after 2 or 3 CTRL A A's networking boots up just fine and work continuously until I power off again.


    I'm not an Engineer, but I am an IT guy with decades of troubleshooting experience...

    This tells me that the software is not at fault here as I can get it to run after some reboots.

    And from what I recall this issue appeared after a P96 firmware update. (3.6.1)


    This isn't mission critical to me as I have a way to get it up and running fine, but maybe just something for everyone to think about...


    Lineof7's it would be interesting to know if you updated your P96 firmware/Drivers ?


    I still need a good way to verify what P96 firmware/drivers I have? (It's been a while since this issue happened and am just getting around to messing with it again)

    Quote from omniphil

    On Cold boot I have no networking, but after 2 or 3 CTRL A A's networking boots up just fine and work continuously until I power off again.

    We've now reproduced the issue with ACA1240/1260 and started to write a test bench for exactly that case. The issue is gone if we use any other accelerator, so your issue must be a different one. We also can't make it work with a few more resets - the MAC address is just never correct when the driver is launched, but it's shown correctly in the ACA500plus menu.


    Since there is no extra software installed when the ACA1240/1260 is connected (the flash currently only contains the FPGA cores), we are actively looking for a fault in the interface to the A1200 mainboard (which is of course the same interface that talks to the ACA500plus. Also, there's no P96 installed on the test system that we used for reproducing the X-Surf-500 issue in combination with ACA1240/1260.


    If you can really confirm that P96 V3.6.1 is the cause of your problems by rolling back to V3.5.0, it'll give Thor something to check. However, I don't think that P96 is the root cause - you may have a different effect of the same cause, because your system is NTSC, while all other systems we work on are PAL. The chipset clock is slightly different, which will have different corner cases for the high speed interface of the ACA1240/1260.


    Since you're saying that the ACA1234 has the same problem, can you check if that's the case for other clock rates? You didn't mention it's clock speed, but I know it's got three more :-)


    Jens

    Ok, that sounds promising for sure!


    I did try different clock rates on the aca1260, you want me to try the same thing on the 1234?


    I still need to remember how to go back to P96 3.50 to test that, if you could refresh my memory on that process I will try that as well.

    Did a little experimenting tonight...

    I ran the installer for P96 3.5 and only checked the box for Update Drivers.

    That didn't seem to help at all, but I feel like there is also a firmware for the Indivision as well that I did along with the P96 3.6.1 when it came out?

    I seem to remember that it enabled blitter or something significant.


    So maybe its the firmware on the ECS 4 that I need to try and roll back?


    I also tried booting my Amiga from the ACA menu in Pal mode a few times from cold. 1 time it did fire right up with networking, but not consistently after that.

    Quote from omniphil

    So maybe its the firmware on the ECS 4 that I need to try and roll back?

    That doesn't have any connection to the CPU bus - it's exclusively on the chip bus and can't have any influence on networking, which is even separated by yet another bus driver. I currently can't think of any way these two things could interact with each other - and I do have twisted ideas at times :-)


    Quote from omniphil

    I also tried booting my Amiga from the ACA menu in Pal mode a few times from cold. 1 time it did fire right up with networking, but not consistently after that.

    Switching to PAL will still leave the chipset clock at 28.63636MHz. True PAL Amigas run at 28.37516MHz.


    Jens