Posts by Jens

I'm assuming that you've chosen a mode that the monitor actually supports (not exceeding the max. HSync frequency of the MicroVitec monitor).

I remember that when the first German "Amiga" incarnation was active (1995/1996), they also used MicroVitec monitors and re-badged them with Amiga. It's probably why you're trying to connect it to the Amiga, right?

That was the time when I developed my first commercial product, the Graffiti card. I had serious trouble making it work with one of the prototypes and had a solution adding a driver to the HSync output. So I know that these monitors are special, maybe even violating the standard.

I suspect that the monitor puts a heavy load on the HSync signal and does not acept the 3.3V signal that Indivision AGA MK3 outputs. If you're a little into electronics, you could try to buffer the HSync signal and see if it makes a difference. I won't be able to do anything about it, and to be honest, don't really see the need, as we didn't have any report of a non-working monitor in all these years, indicating that the monitor violates the standard with it's load and/or switching threshold.

Jens

I stand corrected

The hardware test core mainly tests memory, which is what the green left-to-right-bar is showing. The red green and blue colour transitions are for judging if anything on the D-A converter for VGA is wrong, and the write dots at the bottom will show a diagnoal pattern if the testing cable harness is connected (which we do during QC, but that harness is not available as a product).

So the main functions of your Chameleon appear to work OK, and you can continue testing with a PS2 keyboard - it may already do what you want it to, as a stand-alone device, saving some shipping and repair cost.

Jens

Quote from robinsonb5

Hmm - maybe my memory's playing tricks on me - I thought the HW test core scanned the C64 keyboard matrix and joystick ports?

It does so if a Docking Station is found. However, it doesn't test access to the C64 itself.

Jens

Try the Wiki - it's the prime source of tech info and files for all our products.

Jens

The HW test core does not test the bridge to the C64, which is where I'd suspect the fault. In any case, if it's a hardware fault, it can of course be repaired.

Jens

Quote from melonhead

Sorry, it's the A1200/600 CF-IDE Adapter (buffered) from amigastore.eu I have.

Haven't had that im my hands, but the mere fact that it appeared only a few weeks after our product has hit the market, has the exact same chip count and the same feature-description as mine (minus the mechanical features), I have to guess that it's the same circuit, aka "copy". Can't tell for sure unless I have a high-res photo of both circuit board sides. If you can post these here, I can give a more precise opinion.

Quote from melonhead

Maybe you could edit the amigakit reference above in case someone gets offended..

I stand by what I write and say. If someone gets offended by the truth, it's his/her problem, not mine.

Quote from melonhead

It's absolutely fine but 40 Mhz is noticeably snappier than 26.67 with workbench on the ACA1221LC I found.

So the system is stable at 40MHz, but only locks up if you activate the IDE speeder?

Quote from melonhead

They (Thomas over in eab) was saying somewhere I think, idefix no longer required for 3.2.

Ok, fair enough. But I've never gotten over 2.6 MB/sec with the same setup in 3.2.2. So it does *seem* it might still be required maybe in some cases.

IDE-fix really digs deep in the OS structures, including the non-documented ones. I have my doubts that it's even compatible with 3.2 and higher. Further, I believe that many of the errors that the old IDE device had were ironed out with 3.2. It's not programmed to gain top speed, but to be 100% reliable and compatible with as many devices as possible. Personally, I'd always prefer the latest development instead of a 20-year old hack that happened to get best speed.

However, the 2.6MB/s do sound pretty slow for an activated IDE-speeder. You might want to contact the OS3.2 team and ask if the inner transfer-loop really uses longword-transfers.

Jens

We have a similar case in the German part of this forum, so this may actually be a problem in the menu system of the ACA500plus. We'll investigate.

Jens

Quote from OleK

Any updates on progress on the ACA

1240/60? I have money all saved up and ready to go 🤩

We're getting closer - it's still a LOT of steps until we can launch the (paid) beta phase. The mere fact that the hardware is already in production might paint a wrong picture of "available soon", though.

Quote from OleK

Also, any idea on the PSU-requirements?

Yes: Something that powers the Amiga

Part of the complicated design is that the requirements especially on the 5V rail (which is not properly regulated on 99% of all PSUs out there, especially new ones) are very low. All main power (3.3V logic/RAM voltage, 2.5V PLL voltage, 1.2V FPGA core voltage and 3.3V/5V CPU core voltage are all generated from the 12V rail, which has plenty of reserve power on pretty much every PSU. Usually, Amiga power supplies can deliver 1A on 12V, and the A1200 itself only needs maybe 100mA of that. That leaves well in excess of 11 Watts of power available to the ACA1240/1260, even on the worst power supplies out there, with very low requirements on regulation, as all regulation is happening on the ACA1240/1260 locally. The one thing I wanted to avoid is to have support cases because of known-bad PSUs that are sold as "new and great" on Amazon or other shops. I've been trying to educate the Amiga community about power supply problems far too long, largely unsuccessful.

Jens

Quote from turrican9

I have a TheC64 (the emulator based remake of the C64) and that one has full TAP support.

Sure, that's VICE-based, and VICE has gained a lot of compatibility from our research. Anything we've found in the past 15 years of work on the Chameleon went into VICE one way or another. We didn't have part in tape emulation, though.

Jens

IDE access speed does change with CPU speed when the IDE speeder is on, but I haven't observed any problems with any CF card. Granted, I never tried with the Amigakit buffered interface, but given that AmigaKit just knocked off my old IDE-fix express design, not really knowing what they're copying, it may well be that they don't enable the data bus drivers fast enough, or they are not using the right kind of bus drivers.

Note that the old LS-type drivers from IDE-fix express may not be fast enough. The data bus drivers on our buffered CF card interface are about five times as fast as the ones we've used on IDE-fix express.

Further, data bus capacitance plays a huge role. Our buffered CF interface uses no cable for a reason: It helps keeping bus capacity low. So far, I haven't had a single CF card that doesn't work with the ACA1221lc at 40MHz, but that's not a guarantee. You're mentioning Sandisk, which is a high-quality and high-price brand, often target of counterfeit products.

Jens

Tobias will be back on Monday. Let's hope that delivery of the cards that I've bought are on time.

As for your recent purchase: Please note that this was unprompted, purely your own decision while we haven't even been in a position to investigate the problem.

Jens

Quote from Xanxi

Sure but is there any technical explanation about the differences here between Indi mk1 and mk3?

No, not anything technical, as they do the same thing. I can only speculate that the VGA output of your MK1 goes through a scaler on your monitor, but the digital output of the MK3 doesn't.

Jens

Splash screen: This will only show if you've configured it. On the very first Indivision product, the splash screen was always there, and people complained about it, so we've made it configurable. The OSD now shows a number of seconds that you can set to anything you like, including zero.

I haven't tried the config tool on NTSC without overscan lately, but I'm sure that Timm has tried it back when he developed it. However, it's worth a quick try - there can always be something that slipped the attention of testers. Please also see if you keep getting config tool errors if you run NTSC interlace.

Jens

We've had other discussions like this in this forum - though I can't remember if German or English.

The effect can't be removed by any flicker fixer, as it comes from the fact that sprites (=mouse pointer) are not interlaced, but moved across the screen at 50Hz update rate, while the graphics are interlaced, and technically only updated with 25Hz. The root source of the "problem" is the Amiga chipset, not the flicker fixer - Indivision (and other products) merely make it visible, but it's always there, even on a 1084 monitor.

Jens

OK, that's what the menu shows, but it doesn't tell me the exact type of CPU on the ACA500plus, and it also doesn't tell me what else there is in your A500. I guess it's best if you give me the warranty ID of the ACA500plus. The ACA1234 with warranty ID GT85D shows a different CPU here in the database, so please also take a picture of the card.

I do see 2M of chip ram: What product is that? Or is this an A500+?

Jens

The A-Power thing is known-bad. I suggest to send it back for a refund, because it's sold with false advertising. I have proven that in my "designing a better Amiga power supply" video for Revision.

Yes, it may very well be a PSU problem, but it might be a bus load problem as well. Let's collect some more info: What version of the ACA500plus do you have? (CPU, year, DisMo size)? And what speed is the ACA1234, what CPU mask is installed? I can look that all up if you give me the warranty IDs of the cards.

Jens

HDMI is a current standard. If a new TV is using the HDMI logo, it MUST support 50Hz.

Hint: If you buy a TV instead of a computer monitor, you have the full HDMI feature set, which includes 50Hz compatibility. The only thing you then have to look after is a true "PC mode" where no "magic" is applied to the picture, like movie enhancement or whatever nonsense TV manufacturers think of to "enhance" the picture. When we were in the hot phase of development, we've bought a few cheap HDMI TV sets, and all of them had 50Hz support: Very low cost, very nice picture, even including audio.

Jens

Quote from mnewkirk

Note: I have not installed the hotfix 3-JAN-19 as this is not Amiga 600.

That hotfix is already implemented in the newer flash versions, so you might as well ignore it.

Your Kickstart version is OK to run the tool. However, we may find more hints if you describe your system in full.

Jens