Posts by Jens

Quote from phiwer

The only thing the cable does is passthrough of one digital signal to another. There is no signal transformation needed between dvi and hdmi that could be the cause of this issue?

Right - HDMI is a superset of DVI signalling, and the specific DVI solution on Indivision AGA MK2 has a pixel clock limit of 135MHz, whereas the HDMI standard has it's limit at 165MHz.

Quote from phiwer

Do you happen to be able to recommend a decent cable?

Sorry - as outlined above, I have no idea how to identify "quality" in this "i want it cheaper!" environment that has bult up over the past 20+ years.

Jens

Quote from abraXXious

So, when is this information populated?

After the first system start; you'll see the same message on any ACA500plus when you cold-start. If you enter the menu next time (reset with LMB held), it'll show what's already loaded in the MapROM area.

Quote from abraXXious

Out of interest, the card was functioning perfectly stable at 42mhz previous to updating it. Is it possible that the update uses "tighter timings" or something and so overclocking that was stable and usable with one firmware may not be stable with another?

A software update cannot change the hardware timings of the ACA500plus. It is NOT FPGA-based, but CPLD-based, and the CPLDs have fixed code, which cannot be changed with a flash update. Only our FPGA products can do that (Indivision, Chameleon and the Catweasel MK4, which was the first to use this kind of architecture).

One thing that may have changed is your power supply's stability, and of course temperature. We've had quite a few hot days in Germany this past week, and heavily overclocking a CPU does require very stable power supply and good ventilation. 42MHz operation may have been on the edge for your card, and with higher temps, your PSU might have lowered it's output voltage enough to become a problem for your CPU.

So the overclocking problems showing up "just now, after the update" is not a causal link, but merely correlation of things happening at (seemingly) the same time.

Also, note that the 28MHz setting is almost as demanding as the 42MHz setting for the CPU. This is because the base clock is 85.12548MHz. To get to 28MHz with whole-number division, you need to divide by 3, but that results in the duty cycle of the clock signal to be 33/66. However, I still added the 28MHz clock rate in order to be able to mimic the speed that the Supra accelerator offered back in the days.

This should explain why you have lost the *two* highest clock rates on this setup. However, it really seems to be on the edge, so you may be successful with a small cooler, new electrolytic caps for your power supply and a fresh voltage setting (yes, many of the original Commodore PSUs have a small potentiometer inside).

Jens

Quote from phiwer

I've tested it without the KVM switch and the result is the same. Amiga <-> Monitor.

That sounds like a bad cable. Nothing that we can do anything about - many (if not all) cables are made in China, not fully tested, and depending on the brand, they may get fancy labels and cool descriptions. Neither price, nor brand or looks are an indicator for quality. Even if you're willing to pay an arm and a leg for a cable, you still appear to be the first person ever to actually use it.

Jens

Please do take the time to read the Wiki documentation. Yes, it can be confusing at first, because the term "resolution" is used often, and in different context.

Once you get a grip on "output resolution" (the one that Indivision produces and sends to the monitor) and "Amiga resolution" (the screenmode you are setting in Workbench), it'll come together pretty quickly. Essentially, the Indivision Config tool will let you map an Amiga resolution to an output resolution.

Jens

Quote from abraXXious

if I hit the TAB key for information in the ACA Menu it says "MAP ROM empty or checksum error"...

That refers to the RAM area that contains the currently-mapped ROM, not the flash.

Quote from abraXXious

I saw a file on the Icomp site for restoring them,

...and you decided to ignore the "only use when prompted to" remark? Hmm.. OK, it *should* not make a difference, but there's an important detail, and that's "not not use this file if an A1200 accelerator is installed". You didn't mention one here, but you should really be careful if we write warnings like this in the Wiki.

Quote from abraXXious

But the problem is unresolved. It still crashes when attempting to read any ROM that should be in flash memory and ACA information reports the "MAP ROMS empty or checksum error".

Again, the "report" is not about the flash, but the RAM area.

The prime reason why an ACA500plus crashes when unpacking Kickstart ROMs is overclocking. Note that the system will be cranked up to the maximum speed that's set in the global settigns, regardless of what speed you're selecting for your launch configuration. If you are choosing a 14MHz profine, but still have enabled 42MHz in the global settings, the CPU will be run at 42MHz while unpacking the ROM to make this time as short as possible. Please set your max. speed to 14MHz and see if this resolves your problem.

Jens

It's possible that the KVM switch does not amplify the signal, but just puts analogue switches in. Or it does some digital interpretation and can't deal with DVI-only signals?

If you have verified the cable to be OK, and Indivision AGA MK2 produces a picture with that monitor, then the KVM switch is at fault. All I can say is that the signals from our flicker fixers comply with the standard.

Jens

No prob - when opinions change with new information, it's called science.

Quote from MrClump

including your good self suggesting it as a fix on EAB several years ago:

Did you look at the date? That's >14 years ago, and I have learned a lot since then. I certainly don't recommend "just bridging" any more.

We're dealing with 30-year old chips that aren't made any more. Reducing resistance to a capacitor means to increase the load to the pin, which may lead to a premature defect. It's not worth it - better remove the caps.

You did not answer my question about any unresolved cases in this support forum. I guess you didn't find any - so please stop claiming that this is the case.

Jens

Quote from stirnhagen

Isn't Buddha master/slave capable?

Buddha is perfectly capable of using two drives per port, giving you a total of four drives in a system. However, the DOM occupies the complete port, so you'll have a hard time adding abother drive there.

Jens

I personally *love* the old Samsung 1600x1200 monitors, as they are natively 4:3. However, the Syncmaster 214T is hard to come by: The power supply fails often with dry electrolytic caps, and people just throw it away instead of offering them on the used market. I was lucky enough to get two defective ones last year, repaired them with a total material cost of around 3,- EUR (combined), and I can encourage everyone to do the same

Jens

In this case, we should be able to reproduce the fault without the additional cables

Jens

This looks more like a contact problem between ACE2 and the Agnus socket.

Jens

The 3.3V regulator is at the corner near the 84-pin socket - if that gets hot, then it's pretty obvious that the Xilinx is latched up.

Yes, we do repair these units, and I always do my best to keep the price of such a repair well below a new unit.

If you need to return something to iComp for service...

Jens

Quote from shan2752

I wish there was a way to exactly match the color display of a 1084 monitor as the LCD colors are slightly off. I have a 1084 connected to the native display along with the scaler display so the difference is more obvious to compare.

Colour space conversion was actually on the "nice to have" list for the developments of Indivision AGA MK3 and Indivision ECS V3, but it turned out to take more resources than we anticipated. I don't see a mass-produced product anytime soon that implements such a feature, especially because there is no wide agreement about the actual changes needed to mimic the colours of a CRT. Heck, even measurement methods are more than hard to define, as we found out!

Jens

This sounds like a bad CPLD on the flicker fixer. Is the Xilinx part or one of the voltage regulators getting hot?

Jens

I didn't want you to reduce your WB resolution (looks like a plain Hires screen now!), but to *increase* the Indivision output resolution. After all, it's the only flicker fixer on the market that supports full resolution at full colour depth - has been for 15 years now.

http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/Indivision_AGA_MK3/doc

Could you be more specific, that is, provide links to unsolved support cases? I mean, the solution has been in the Wiki for >10 years and from a logical point of view: It's a weakness of the AGA chipset, not of the flicker fixer. The flicker fixer merely makes this weakness visible.

Here's an experpt from the 2012 short manual of Indivision AGA MK2:

Quote

Should you observe this behaviour, there are simple ways to fix this issue. Most of the

times, a small chip-cooler on the Alice-chip of your computer solves the issue. In rare

cases, you may need to do soldering on your mainboard. Please ask a technician or your

reseller for closer information on this.

Since introduction of Indivision AGA in the year 2008, we've solved such problems, although they are not *caused* by our flicker fixer. I believe that's a reason to say "thanks" - I see nothing that I could do better here (other than making a proper AGA main board, which is on the Agenda).

Jens

Quote from stirnhagen

I couldn't get the Buddhainstall:...CDsupport.../l/CacheCDFS version 60.0 to work. It pops up a requester but mentions only to work with "Buddhaatapi.device". I couldn't get it working on my setup and held on to v42.20 for all successful tests.

...which is why we're hosting a different version of CacheCDFS in our Wiki.

Thanks for your Pics. I have one SPIF223A-based adapter here that I could not get to work, but I should now double-check if it's the right direction. It may just be the version that allows using a PATA drive on a SATA controller - checking the data sheet of that chip, I found that it's bi-directional.

Jens

You are using an SHires resolution, but the standard output mode is 800x600 for best monitor compatibility. Just run the config tool and start using higher resolutions, that will produce higher resolutions.

Jens

Thanks - we may be able to cover this in the next update.