Indivision installation with hard drive

[murple]

I really wish I'd been aware of this before forking over the money for an Indivision a few days ago. I'm actually kinda pissed off reading this, it would've been a helpful thing to put in the Indivision marketing information. I most likely wouldn't have bought one had I been fully informed, which perhaps is why they conveniently neglected to leave such a critical piece of information out.

If I can't figure out a way to get a hard drive to fit in there with the Indivision, I'm going to go from "kinda pissed off" to "fucking furious" real quick.

[murple]

I looked at the catalog listing on AmigaKit (where I bought it).

I looked at the catalog listing on Vesalia.

I looked at all the information I could find from the manufacturer.

Nowhere in ANY of those places does it even hint that you won't be able to use a hard drive with it. I'm only a little upset about that, because as much as I don't want to go CF, it's possible. I'm extremely pissed off that the manufacturer and sellers didn't bother to include one simple sentence to indicate you'll need a tower case, CF disk replacement, or external drive. Im hoping I can insulate the Indivision and lay it on top without the pressure damaging the Indivision, but I'm positively furious at this negligent marketing. Had I known I should buy a CF disk I might have, or I might have not bought the Indivision. As it is, apprently I have the choice of having a 1200 with a fancy display and no disk, or a 1200 with a proper disk and an expensive bookmark, or buying a bunch of new stuff and migrating my system over.

Clearly the manufacturer and sellers must know this issue exists, yet no web sites mention it and neither does the manual that came in the Indivision box.

The stupid thing came today, and yeah the display is nice. I'm hoping I can somehow make this all work, but... the maker and sellers of this product dropped the ball in a very very big way this time. Not cool. Not cool at all.

[murple]

Well, laying the drive on the Indivision works fine... if I want an ALL PINK display.

The only words I can use to think of my feelings at the maker and sellers of this product for not pointing this problem out would be entirely inappropriate for this forum. It's a good thing for them that I'm an ocean away. Ugh.

[murple]

NovaCoder wrote:

Yes you are right, they should have mentioned it and also it should come with a VGA backing plate. At the end of the day though, the Classic market is very small so you have to cut them a large amount of slack for producing such a great product.

I don't agree, actually. These businesses have all been pretty good at pointing such things out in the past, which just makes it all the more troubling that this time, nowhere in the supply chain did somebody bother to mention something so obvious and so critical.

I now have to decide if I want to invest in a crappy CF (nice idea, but considering the only flash media you can use with those adapters are the older Compact Flash drives with a limited write-life, not to mention decreasing supply of drives 4GB and under... I'd rather use a real drive) or try and return this board and try to make due with out a decent monitor.

And no, "make an external drive case" or "put it in a tower" is not an option. I could build out my 4000 if I wanted that. The entire point of this system is to have a compact and portable Amiga with a good modern display that works with modern projection equipment so I can use it VJing at clubs. I have a gig in less than 2 weeks, and as it is I'm pretty much screwed. Thanks, Indivision.

[murple]

Also, the damn thing doesn't fit very well. even without the drive in, the slightest pressure pops it off, unlike older flicker fixer/scan doublers I've used which fit tight on the chip and take a lot of prying to pop off.

Individual Computers in the past has always made really good things. I don't think I feel the same about this POS.

[murple]

I'll see if I can find that. Still, that seems like a technology that seems cool now but is short lived. CF cards go bad eventually, and with most cameras and other flash-based devices moving on to newer and larger types of flash, it'll get hard to find fresh 4GB or smaller CF cards in not too many years. On the other hand, I have IDE drives that are well over 20 years and still work fine. I just don't trust CF as a reliable long term solution. Especially if you're talking cheap Chinese made stuff.

[murple]

At this point if the drive fitting were the only problem, I might be more inclined to spend time on the piece of crap. So far, in addition to that, and the weird coloration when the thing loosens itself, I've found that in over half of the demos I try, there is no sound. Or in the case of State Of The Art, I get the 3 heartbeat sounds when the words flash, but no music. Other demos like My Kingdom have perfectly normal sound. Sound was working perfectly without the Indivision.

Also, the vertical lines on LCD screens that this was supposed to fix are only mostly fixed. Most graphics screens look OK and much of the Workbench is OK, but many icons and scrollbars have visible vertical lines on LCD but not CRT.

Also, in PAL, the bottom row or 2 of pixels only goes about 90% of the way across the screen, leaving a little black line on the bottom right. This doesn't happen in NTSC modes.

A little hacking to fit things together is one thing, but considering the price these things are selling for, there should've been a bit more hacking on the manufacturer side.

In the nearly 30 years I've been using computers, this may be the most annoyed I've been with a piece of hardware.

[murple]

-D- wrote:

This reminds me of people who say "ever since I had my oil changed, my radio doesn't work." No problem with sound here, and all I use my A1200 for is demos. Maybe it's time to check the motherboard caps, or some software trashed your audio.

Audio works fine, put in Indivision, audio doesn't work. Take out Indivision, audio works again. Underlying problem could be on the motherboard I guess, but the Indivision is involved somehow too. I haven't installed any new software on this machine in over a year, so I don't think that's it either.

Is your VGA cable grounded? What settings on the Indivision? When you use a non-native screenmode, your LCD has to scale the picture, which can distort the image. (For best picture you really have to use a CRT.)

What brand/model is your LCD? Maybe it's your monitor that's a POS.

I tried PAL and NTSC high res and high res laced, all of which give the same results. Also get this on both my PC LCD monitor (which isn't anything fancy but works pretty well) and on a ridiculously expensive LCD TV that has VGA inputs. Same on both.

Funny, I paid _less_ money for the Indivision than I did for my DCE scandoubler years ago (which actually was a piece of crap).

I got my DCE for about $45, and it works fine on CRT monitors, and the only reason I got an Indivision to replace it is that it was supposed to work without lines on an LCD. I'd say that's about 95% true, but on the other hand the DCE didn't present problems with a hard drive or audio or.....

[murple]

Commodore. PAL. I'd have to be at home to check for revision.

The Indivision just came yesterday so it probably has the newest firmware, though I haven't had time to do an update since I've been more focused on just getting the system to work with it and a drive.

I'm willing to try a CF drive and see if the speed is as good as a real drive, and buy a bunch of spare 4GB cards. I'm not willing to go with only partially functional sound however!

[murple]

Its weird that the sound works perfect in some demos (all AGA, coincidentally) but not others (OCS/ECS). I havent tried enough to make sure there's an AGA correlation though. I just got the motherboard from AmigaKit in the past year, so hopefully it doesn't need replacement caps or sound chip or an entire board replacement.

I went to the Microcenter already mentioned in this thread tonight, all they have is 40 pin IDE CF adapters and they said thats all they ever carry. Guess I'll have to mail order.

[murple]

Well, that motherboard is fried. I don't know if the Indivision pushed it over the edge or if it was just coincidence, but when I took the Indivision out, I tried running State of the Art and it got half way through with normal sound, then the sound stopped, then the video went berzerk and would show a frame, pause on it for 10 secons, skip ahead to another, etc, until after 3 seconds it just locked hard.

I put my old NTSC motherboard back in and sound works fine with it.

Back to the original topic, I'm thinking maybe a drive holster could somehow be attached to the underside of the keyboard. That would raise it off the circuitry completely and I think there's room.

I'll still give CF a chance (though I'm still a little skeptical), but this may work for holding a real drive.

[murple]

$3 dollars is expensive?? haha... cool. Thanks.

Do any of the dual card adapters work woth a damn in Amigas?