Strange CFFA3000 Problems

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Strange CFFA3000 Problems

Postby GerryS » Mon Jan 23, 2017 2:42 am

Hi Rich,
I first have to say that I am a real fan of your CFFA3000 card. When I saw it existed a few years ago, it actually got me back into Apple II retrocomputing. I ended up buying 3 of the cards and put them in my ROM 01 and ROM 03 Apple IIGSes and my Platinum IIe. I focused more on the IIGSes since that was my second computer I owned after upgrading from a IIe.

Anyway I'm having an issue with one of my CFFA3000s and I used the CFFA3000 out of the IIe to confirm the problem. First, I use both of my IIGSes to compare how they work differently. Both machines have the exact same hardware and here's what's in them. Slot 1: Uthernet card, Slot 2: Apple Hi-Speed SCSI card with an Apple CD-ROM drive connected, Slot 3: TWGS upgraded to 17 MHz, Slot 4: empty, Slot 5: Apple 3.5" Superdrive I/F card with two superdrives each. Note: right now Slot 5 is set to your card so I can have 1 3.5" 800K drive in 5,1 and a RAM5 disk in 5,2. Slot 6: empty as the two 5.25" drive are daisy chained to the back of the 3.5" drive, Slot 7: CFFA3000 with a 32 GB CF card and a 64 GB USB thumb drive. Both machines run great as I have replaced the power supplies with 140W units and a System Saver IIGS is used to keep it cool. The monitors are replaced with a converter from Nishida Radio that converts the analog RGB signals to Y, R-Y, B-Y to display on any flatscreen TV. Finally I'm running GS/OS 6.0.4. and I have 14 volumes mounted on the desktop, all from the CFFA3000, nine from the CF and 7 from the USB and about half of them are 1.5 GB HFS images and the rest 16 or 32 MB ProDOS images.

Okay now for my issues. First, all three CFFA3000 cards are v1.0 Rev C originally shipped with firmware 3.1. The USB thumb drive on the 01 machine would sit and oscillate between ready and none at about a 1 Hz rate no matter what thumb drive I plugged in. I replaced the CFFA3000 with my IIe card and it did the same thing. So I put the thumbdrive in my 03 CFFA3000 and it sort of worked most of the time. Plugging the thumb drive directly into the USB port on the card also fixed the oscillation issue. I then upgraded all three cards to firmware version 3.1.1 and, so far, no issues. But at the same time I found I had a bad USB extender cable (it was white), so I replaced it. Does the 3.1.1 firmware upgrade address the ready issue on the USB port? What are the maximum sizes the CF and USB drives the the CFFA3000 can support before there are issues? Have you had any problems with with 14 images or more volumes mounted on a IIGS at once from a CFFA3000?

The second problem is even weirder. I recently got Safe2 up and running on the IIGSes to FTP files from my Mac Pro. In the left home screen of Safe2 it lists all mounted volumes. On my 01 machine it list 13 volumes, and on my 03 machine it lists all 14 volumes. The drive not shown on the 01 machine is called SIS.Files and it's the same 16 MB ProDOS image (.2MG) I made using Ciderpress on both IIGSes. It mounts on the desktop under GS/OS 6.0.4 without an issue on either machine. So I put my IIe CFFA3000 in the 01 IIGS and that SIS.Files mounts in Safe2 just fine. I put the original CFFA3000 back in and that volume is missing on the 01 machine in Safe2. Put the IIe CFFA3000 back in and the volume is shown in Safe2's volume list. Should I return the card in question back to factory defaults and see if that fixes the problem?

Hey, great cards, I love them to death and will probably buy more. I look forward to your response.

Thank you,
Gerry
GerryS
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 7:35 pm

Re: Strange CFFA3000 Problems

Postby GerryS » Mon Jan 23, 2017 2:46 am

Forgot to mention, 8 MBs of RAM in both machines.
GerryS
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 7:35 pm

Re: Strange CFFA3000 Problems

Postby GerryS » Mon Jan 23, 2017 10:24 pm

Update. I first-birthdayed the CFFA3000 card and that cleared the problem with the SIS.FILES volume not showing up in Safe2. It now shows up in the volume list. Weirder and weirder. Have you ever seen this before? If so under what circumstances?

Thank you,
Gerry
GerryS
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2015 7:35 pm


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