seeing occasional crash on ROM3, scrolling colored lines

For people with technical questions about their CFFA Interface card. You can use this forum to communicate with me and with other CFFA users. If you are posting a problem, please be as detailed as possible, including any necessary sequence needed to cause the problem, your system information and any error messages.

Moderator: rich

Postby mportune » Sat Apr 10, 2004 3:58 pm

Hello all,

I've been playing with my new CFFA card for a few days, and it's fantastic. I'm using it with a Microdrive 1GB, running in default mode, with the GS/OS driver (4 prodos, 1 hfs)

Every once in awhile (more often, but not restricted to, HFS use) the system stops responding and horizontal colored lines appear, scrolling swiftly up the screen. It happens during reads and writes, and there's no pattern that I can find.

I have since set my zip card to run all slots at 'normal' speed (ugh) and while the stability has improved, I still get the rainbow screen of death every once in awhile.

Has anybody seen anything like this yet?

My GS is:

ROM3
4-meg RAM card (so 5.125 total)
CFFA in slot 7
Zip 9/32 in slot 3
LANceGS in slot 2
fresh install of System 6.0.1
GUPP 1.07
HFS patch (fst modified date set to 1995)

Besides that it's working great, and I love having everything internal and silent. :smile:

- Matt
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Postby rich » Sun Apr 11, 2004 10:15 pm

Hi Matt,

I hope others will reply to this thread, because I don't have much to offer, but traffic here is pretty low these days. Anyway, at some point you might want to try uninstalling the GS/OS driver (assuming you can do without your last HFS partition) and see if you still have the problem. Without Dave's GS/OS driver the system will once again use the on-card firmware, via a generated driver, and only support the first 4 drives. That might tell me better where to look. i.e. Is it the hardware, or firmware or GS/OS driver. Of course, any other tests that can eliminate other system hardware would be great.

Also, I might try senging you a another card if all else fails, just to rule out a bad CFFA card. A bad card is doubtful, but possible.
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Thanks,
Rich

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rich on 2004-04-11 23:19 ]</font>
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Postby mportune » Mon Apr 12, 2004 8:30 pm

Hi Rich,

I disabled the CompactFlash driver and have been copying gobs of data between the ProDOS partitions (via the finder) all night without a single rainbow crash. I was even able to turn the slot back on "Fast" on the Zip card. Granted, it's still slower without the driver, but it's also not crashing. So unless I just haven't hit the magic button yet, it looks like the driver is the culprit.

Of course this doesn't explain why I'm the only one seeing the problem. Do you have any ideas of what else I can try? Sort order comes to mind, since I spent last week getting Marinetti 3 working by changing the loading sort order. I can't think of what else would be causing it.

Thanks, Matt
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Postby dlyons » Fri Apr 16, 2004 12:21 am

Hi guys,

I'm not quite sure what to suggest next...it's possible there is a timing issue with the GS/OS driver (either with or without the Zip chip), because the driver runs from "fast RAM," whereas the firmware always runs at 1 MHz.

When running from fast RAM, the actual accesses to the card's I/O locations are at 1 MHz, but the instructions are fetched faster.

What magnitude of performance improvement are you seeing with the GS/OS driver?

Cheers,

--Dave
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Postby mportune » Fri Apr 16, 2004 9:15 am

I haven't done any benchmarks, but the difference in speed is human-noticable. With the slot on "fast" (via zip DIP) and the CF driver loaded, everything just responds faster. (If the difference wasn't so big, I would just disable the driver and run the card in 8-partition mode.)

Anything you need me to try to help solve this problem, let me know.
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Postby mportune » Fri May 21, 2004 7:01 am

Hi guys,

Has there been any progress on this? Is there anything I can do to help troubleshoot? I really want to use the GS/OS driver but the rainbow crash is still happening.

- Matt
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Postby ppuskari » Wed Jun 23, 2004 11:05 pm

Hey there! I am hoping a lot of this may be fixed with the 1.3 firmware. WAY TO GO RICH!! I really need to get a scope on my GS and CFFA and watch the timing patterns and see what is happening at boot time. From what I have deduced from the many hours of playing with my different Rom 01's and Rom 03 machines and both of my CFFA's... It looks like if the card gets through the boot cycle okay, then all is usually well, but if something is just slightly out of whack during the initial second after applying power, then it all sorta works, or just crashes.. I've seen everything from crash into monitor, to random video corruption on the desktop.

One thing that makes me think it is some kind of timing issue is the fact that in almost all cases, I can make any of my motherboards boot 95% of the time off the CFFA in either slot 1 or slot 2 but percentages go down the higher the number of slot it is in.

I have also noticed that if you do NOT boot from the card, the percentage of it working correctly after bootup is pretty good actually.

I am VERY interested in getting a new set of firmware for the two cards I have.. I'll be emailing shortly for sure.

Petar Puskarich
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Postby mportune » Thu Jun 24, 2004 6:22 pm

Are there other fixes in 1.3 besides the new machine support? I wasn't going to request an upgrade, but I will if there are.
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Postby rich » Thu Jun 24, 2004 6:38 pm

Hi Guys,

Well, as for the firmware itself. There is nothing new for IIe enh. and IIgs users. Sorry.
They are still using version 1.2 firmware. I guess I am calling the new EPROM version 1.3 because it now includes version 1.2 firmare for the 65C02 and the new version 1.0 of the 6502 firmware.

The new CPLD v1.3 logic, may well have an affect on any version of Apple II. The timing margins have been much improved. I can't say if that will cause any improvement for the corrupt video problem or not. The only way to find out is to try. I hope to get to shipping upgrades in a week or two. I have been very busy with a new job.
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Rich

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rich on 2004-06-24 19:46 ]</font>
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Postby ppuskari » Sat Feb 19, 2005 10:50 pm

Hi Rich! I hate posting my email to the group but PLEASE PLEASE respond in some manner. I have emailed you now on 5 separate instances to your standard email address and no email response over the last 4 months or so.

Congrats on the new baby! Yes, I understand you will be VERY busy!!! :D

I am in need of two of those updated firmware and CLPD sets for my current two CFFA boards from the second run. I have the tools to dismount the CLPD without cracking the sides so that should be easy. Would love to get these to the latest revs.

my email with the proper dot replacements is.

ppuskariathotmaildotcom
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