Posts by Jens

Just sent out an eMail to Steffen. It's been over three years of no contact. 'bout time

Quote from Ladjets

Am i missing something?

Hard to tell from your description, as I don't know how you attempt to "see" the CD drive. Note that CD-ROM drives need a separate installation, as they do not behave like harddisks, hence they are NOT shown in HDToolbox. This installation includes a CD file system and a mountlist entry. Please share this mountlist entry and the version of the Buddha flash ROM that you're using, so we can verify if the device/filesystem names are correct.

Some CD-Rom drives will only identify properly if a data-CD is inserted - you might want to do that when attempting to install the CD drive for the first time.

We're working on a new version - please monitor the shop site or register/log in and subscribe to product-related news by ticking the box at the top of the product description (this box is only shown to logged-in users). Note that the shop site needs a different login from this forum for security reasons.

Quote from Andrew Gibbs

Thanks for your efforts Jens, is service handled at the same location as listed in the about section of the wiki

"Im Zemmer 6, 52152 Simmerath"

Yes, we only have that one address.

Quote from Andrew Gibbs

and do you require and return reference number to identify?

Not yet, no. We are currently developing a new return procedure where you're getting the "iRep" number in advance, but this is work-in-progress, so just send the unit, include a short letter describing the problem (don't just write "as discussed on the forum", as that's not helping the person who is unpacking the unit),

Is there any other game/program that causes an issue in your setup? Further, if you've cross-checked with an ECS Denise, did you also enable the ECS feature in the config tool? The game might be confused by the actual chipset combination.

Please also describe your exact config: Type of Amiga (including board revision), type of Agnus, amount of Chip ram, PAL or NTSC, what power supply are you using, how do you launch the game (floppy/WHDload)?

OK, now the "suspicious shadows" are on totally different components, so we have to stop attempting to make a diagnosis from a distance. Please ship the card to us for service.

Quote from nine

That monitor showed that the powerup resolution was 1920x1080 and not 1400x1050 as reported by my primary display.

That means that Timm won't be able to reproduce the issue unless he has the exact same monitor with the exact same bug in it's firmware. Please understand that I have to declare this as "incompatible monitor", as you've been the first to report this after almost 1.5 years of availability of this product. I therefore believe that a firmware update of the monitor is the only thing that will really help you.

For the record, I'm not willing to pay for Timm's time further investigating this.

There is a "suspicious shadow" ont he right contact of R13, which passes part of the autoconfig-data to the other CPLD. Maybe another picture with better/different lighting will help showing a cold solder joint (or not..).

Quote from nine

If I reload and reproduce the issue, would you require the configuration from ENVARC: or are you able to reproduce using the 1920x1080.conf supplied in the archive?

Yes, please include all your settings, as I suspect there's something fishy with your installation or other screenmode settings (maybe a modified monitor driver, high-frequency audio patch or the like).

I wonder why the question came up in the first place - we just need the config, and this won't be changed if you just load the config tool and save it to a floppy or the harddisk. Once we have that, we can attempt to reproduce the effect here.

Can you take a close-up picture of the area around the 95144 CPLD? That's the square chip that's farthest away from the CPU. Please use the "macro" setting of your camera it it has one.

So what PSU are you using for that system?

AFAIR the config tool has a few commandline options to extract the config. Timm will be able to help you with that.

Should be in the parent directory of the disk.

Instead of a video, you might want to save the config and attach it here, so we can attempt to reproduce the effect on our machines.

Quote from Overmann

Elbox

...are not the developers of this board - ACT Elektronik GmbH was the Company, and the developer's name is Steffen Christ.

DCE is still the same company, but I fear that the only person who is still working for them since the Amiga days does not know anything about the internal details. However, Steffen Christ and Thomas Dellert were in regular contact back in the days. Although he normally doesn't want to hear any questions about "old Amiga stuff", I can try if you don't get any more info from other forums (such as EAB or a1k.org) by the end of the week.

If the error showed first after you moved the card, please check carefully for mechanical damages. The autoconfig on this card requires the two CPLDs to play ball together through dedicated lines, which are source-terminated through resistors for CE/FCC reasons. If one of these resistors has come off, autoconfig won't work, and reading the special registers won't either.

Yes, that update makes use of other card's Kickstart mapping feature(s) - it's not using Kickflash itself to re-map the Kickstart ROM. I never really liked the idea of linking my relatively-low-priced product to the functionality that a second product provides, because it mixes in a support requirement for somebody else's product. Not that I deliberately skipped V1.6 in our Wiki - that must have been an oversight.

To be honest, I don't even have the files of the Kickflash project any more; it does not have a directory on my NAS or the backup archives. I'd have to check the old machines that I've used in 2002/2003 when I designed the board (yes, I still have those), but that would take time that I don't have at the moment.

Quote from Overmann

Thank you for supporting "that wierd mode"

Just as an explanation why I'm calling it "wierd": The card needs to get on the bus before the address strobe signal actually says "the address is valid", so it's not exactly a clean solution. However, the Z4 boards were already in the field when I commented to the original developer that I don't have any indicator for a valid address then, and he was not willing to make a change - the idea of having all boards in the field identical definitely also is a good thing.

Having two fast-Z2 cards installed might actually trigger the first bug(s) due to the shortcoming of this requirement. Please report back if you found out how to activate the mode on your Cybervision.

None of these projects have been stopped - they might change specs when I get back to them, though. No further details until I really start working on them again.