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Author Topic: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?  (Read 5226 times)

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Offline Pat the Cat

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #14 on: October 17, 2021, 07:09:24 PM »
To clarify, set the GVP HC+8 to 2MB of memory rather than 4MB. :)

EDIT: The LEGS error message points to the installed drivers for EGS having a problem starting up.

I am thinking they were done a long time before 3.9. Might not work with it, Software problem rather than defective card.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2021, 08:08:06 PM by Pat the Cat »
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

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Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #15 on: October 17, 2021, 08:10:46 PM »
One thing you are clearly doing is relying on the bundled EGS software for RTG rather than Picasso 96.
OK, so I downloaded and installed Picasso96.  Still doesn't work.  It doesn't throw any errors, just nothing happens - my usual WB appears on the CRT but no video on the LCD.  I rebooted and opened Picasso96Mode in Prefs but all the settings in there are grayed out no matter what resolution I choose.  So I figured maybe I'm missing a monitor definition.  I installed LCD-Monitor too but the first thing the readme file there says  ". Copy "monitor.LCDs" in your PicassoModeTNG-directory."  Uh, well I haven't got a "PicassoModeTNG-directory".  Now what?

I think what I really need is a Picasso96 for Dummies book.  The documentation that's included just isn't doing it for me.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline Pat the Cat

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #16 on: October 17, 2021, 08:40:48 PM »
Am pretty certain you need "Picasso 96" icon dragged to devs/monitors.

You are bypassing the built in chipset way of dealing with monitors. ;)

"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline QuikSanz

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #17 on: October 17, 2021, 09:15:35 PM »
The EGS software that comes with it is junk, like the GVP prep disk, toss em in the bin.

Chris
 

Offline utri007

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #18 on: October 17, 2021, 10:56:28 PM »
First thing to do with P96 is choose attach to board from top of its screen.


Here, it is german, but it show to do it.

https://youtu.be/6HM1qUZGQig?t=589
ACube Sam 440ep Flex 800mhz, 1gb ram and 240gb hd and OS4.1FE
A1200 Micronic tower, OS3.9, Apollo 060 66mhz, xPert Merlin, Delfina Lite and Micronic Scandy, 500Gb hd, 66mb ram, DVD-burner and WLAN.
A1200 desktop, OS3.9, Blizzard 060 66mhz, 66mb ram, Ide Fix Express with 160Gb HD and WLAN
A500 OS2.1, GVP+HD8 with 4mb ram, 1mb chip ram and 4gb HD
Commodore CDTV KS3.1, 1mb chip, 4mb fast ram and IDE HD
 

Offline QuikSanz

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #19 on: October 18, 2021, 12:37:50 AM »
Thinking about it, Spectrum cards are a bit long in the tooth, caps maybe?

Chris
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #20 on: October 18, 2021, 04:26:01 AM »
Thinking about it, Spectrum cards are a bit long in the tooth, caps maybe?

Chris

From what I can tell looking at the card, the caps are not the failure-prone electrolytic kind. So while it’s possible, I think it’s unlikely they’re the failure point. This looks like a software config problem now.
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #21 on: October 18, 2021, 04:56:22 PM »
Thinking about it, Spectrum cards are a bit long in the tooth, caps maybe?

Chris

From what I can tell looking at the card, the caps are not the failure-prone electrolytic kind. So while it’s possible, I think it’s unlikely they’re the failure point. This looks like a software config problem now.

Yes, they're plastic.  There's a post somewhere where someone showed a photo where C57 had literally exploded off the board.  There was nothing left in that spot but two solder pads.  I checked both of mine.  They're neither shorted nor open and my capacitance meter seems to be trying to read them but it doesn't work very well in-circuit.  I don't think they're bad.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #22 on: October 18, 2021, 05:17:23 PM »
First thing to do with P96 is choose attach to board from top of its screen.

Here, it is german, but it show to do it.

https://youtu.be/6HM1qUZGQig?t=589
Thanks - that helped a lot.  However, when I run Picasso96Mode, it opens with "not attached: Village-64" in the Settings panel.  I followed the video and dragged a new setting into the Seetings panel, then went to the right-click "Attach setting to" drop-down menu.  But the drop-down in the video lists three items, "No Board, Board 0, and Board 1".  Mine only has "No board".

But when I do showconfig, it has
Board (Viona Development):   Prod=2193/1($891/$1) (@$0 2meg)
in it, so at least that seems to think a Picasso board is there.

So something is screwy here.  Say, am I supposed to have a "spectrum.device" or some similar name somewhere?  Because I looked in SYS:Devs and see nothing at all like that there.

UPDATE:
Answering my own question, I see a thread here https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=70917.90 where someone says "Went back thru all my procedure.... had the GBAPII++.card file in Libs:
Should be in LIBS:Picasso96/"

So I looked in SYS:Libs/Picasso96 and sure enough, there *is* a Spectrum.card file there.  But still nothing in the Picasso96Prefs drop-down.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2021, 08:58:15 PM by Michele31415 »
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline utri007

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #23 on: October 18, 2021, 10:17:45 PM »
Anyone near by and could test it to you? Generally, this kind of hardware doesn't get binned, they get repaired.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2021, 10:53:29 PM by utri007 »
ACube Sam 440ep Flex 800mhz, 1gb ram and 240gb hd and OS4.1FE
A1200 Micronic tower, OS3.9, Apollo 060 66mhz, xPert Merlin, Delfina Lite and Micronic Scandy, 500Gb hd, 66mb ram, DVD-burner and WLAN.
A1200 desktop, OS3.9, Blizzard 060 66mhz, 66mb ram, Ide Fix Express with 160Gb HD and WLAN
A500 OS2.1, GVP+HD8 with 4mb ram, 1mb chip ram and 4gb HD
Commodore CDTV KS3.1, 1mb chip, 4mb fast ram and IDE HD
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #24 on: October 19, 2021, 01:10:05 AM »
Anyone near by and could test it to you? Generally, this kind of hardware doesn't get binned, they get repaired.
If this is in fact a hardware problem then I'd dearly love to see it repaired, not even so much for my financial investment in it as for its value as an historical artifact in the Amiga ecosystem.  Unfortunately I don't know anyone personally who still has an Amiga who could help me with this :-(  I'm open to suggestions.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline utri007

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #25 on: October 19, 2021, 06:11:07 PM »
Where are you located? If somebody here is near?
ACube Sam 440ep Flex 800mhz, 1gb ram and 240gb hd and OS4.1FE
A1200 Micronic tower, OS3.9, Apollo 060 66mhz, xPert Merlin, Delfina Lite and Micronic Scandy, 500Gb hd, 66mb ram, DVD-burner and WLAN.
A1200 desktop, OS3.9, Blizzard 060 66mhz, 66mb ram, Ide Fix Express with 160Gb HD and WLAN
A500 OS2.1, GVP+HD8 with 4mb ram, 1mb chip ram and 4gb HD
Commodore CDTV KS3.1, 1mb chip, 4mb fast ram and IDE HD
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #26 on: October 19, 2021, 07:17:00 PM »
Where are you located? If somebody here is near?
Upstate NY.

*However* - today having finally run out of other ideas I jumpered out 2MB of the RAM on the GVP 2000 controller, leaving it with just 2MB active.  Then I did a L+R boot and checked the Expansion Diagnostics.  This time the Spectrum was listed as "Working"!  So I booted the disk, ran Picasso96Prefs, and this time the board showed up the the "Attach to" drop-down menu!  I had to fiddle around with the multitude of options there to find a mode that didn't generate a "mode not supported" message on my LCD but I finally got it to display a beautiful color test pattern in 640x480.

Now I need to figure out how to see anything more than that test pattern there.

So I'm a doofus.  I was advised very early on here that it was an 8 MB RAM limit problem but for some reason I didn't investigate that.  With 2 MB of RAM removed elsewhere, the board now seems to be working fine.  It's always the last thing you check, isn't it.  I'm still kicking myself.

Bottom line: a GVP EGS 28/24 Spectrum board will be reported as Defective in the pre-boot diagnostics even if there's nothing wrong with it at all, if you don't have enough Zorro-II space free to avoid going over 8 MB.  The Spectrum has either 1 or 2 MB on board (depending on if you got the economy or deluxe version) and it *does* count as Zorro-II RAM.

Many thanks to everyone who helped on this one.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #27 on: October 19, 2021, 07:49:23 PM »
I think I'm getting close here.  I went into Prefs -> ScreenMode.  All of the new Spectrum modes are there now but if I select any of them and click "Use" I get a pop-up "Intuition is attempting to reset the Workbench screen.  Please close all windows, except drawers."  Well all I have open is enough drawers to run the Prefs tool.  I closed everything that I could close but when I say Retry I get the same message.  All I can do is select Cancel which leaves me right back where I started.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #28 on: October 19, 2021, 07:59:08 PM »
*Something* is still open on your Workbench screen. It could be AmiDock, it could be a Shell, it could be a clock utility, it could be DOpus, it could even be an AppIcon on the Workbench. Make sure absolutely everything is closed.

Or, hit Save instead and reboot. Workbench will boot up in the mode you selected. This can be risky if you haven't tested the modes yet.
 
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Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: GVP Spectrum defective - replacement advice?
« Reply #29 from previous page: October 19, 2021, 08:46:20 PM »
Ah ha - thanks.  It was ClickToFront.  (I found it by running Exchange and then removing items one at a time until it worked).   I now have a real full-color Workbench running on my LCD.  I'm still playing around with modes,sizes, centering, etc. but by God it's working.  Yay!

UPDATE:
I now have 1024x768 16 color working and it boots directly to the LCD.  I must say this is extremely cool :-)
« Last Edit: October 21, 2021, 08:10:07 PM by Michele31415 »
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091