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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Ross1 on February 24, 2007, 10:08:58 PM
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Hi, My toaster in my A4000 has been acting up recently and I would like to know if there is a way to make sure that the video slot is functioning properly.
I have tried my spare toaster card as well and that makes no difference. The video output is all garbled and I know the card works fine.
Could using an ATX power supply with an adapter be causing the problem?
Thanks
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Atx has more than enough power. I would look at adapter and see that all pins have a good connection and that goes for all video cables as well.
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Thanks for the quick reply,
So the ATX adapter could be the problem, I wonder if the pins are in the right spots for the toaster to work. The Amiga runs fine it boots up great and runs all programs fine. the only issue seems to be when I start up the toaster (that uses the video slot) wont pass video through properly the picture seems all out of sync.
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Some things to try.
1) do you have a non-NTSC monitor selected? If so at least some of them wont allow the Toaster to sync.
2) Unplug anything but a moniter from the 23 pin video plug, unplug anything from the Parallel port or the audio ports, be sure you have a sync strainer if you are using a multi sync moniter
3) Autohue the toaster is not a bad idea either.
4) Give me a better idea what happens when the toaster boots, and also tell me what version of software. Do you get a toaster video output but the amiga output is bad, vice versa, both of them bad?
-Toastin Tigger
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Two little suggerstions:
- Swap the PSU for a brand new one (they come to be faulty);
- If you have enough skills, change the caps in the Toaster board. Change ALL electrolitics caps, they become faulty after some little time (~10 years):-D....
Do you use a Flyer? Check if the SCSI disks are working properly (format all disks, they are used for temporally store, anyway).
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rkauer wrote:
Two little suggerstions:
- Swap the PSU for a brand new one (they come to be faulty);
Thats a good idea, but I'd try mine first because its free.
- If you have enough skills, change the caps in the Toaster board. Change ALL electrolitics caps, they become faulty after some little time (~10 years):-D....
Thats a TERRIBLE IDEA, please do not do this. First of all since it happens on both toasters, its most likely the computer or a setting, second of all, since Newtek will fix a broken toaster for almost nothing, making there job harder by soldering on it is silly. If the toaster is broken, Newtek will fix it, the issue is that since it works the same with 2 toasters, its likely not the toasters problem, so we need to help him figure out whats wrong with his computer or setup.
-Toastin Tigger
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Here's another thing you can do that is free.
Clean the edge connector on the toaster cards with alcohol and swab.
Then clean the gold connectors inside the video card with a fine cloth, saturated with alcohol folded over an old credit card.
Most Amigas are over 15 years old now that these connectors get dirty.
Okay....it's probably unlikely that this is the cause of your problem, but it MIGHT be, and it's a good thing to do anyway.
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I was getting garbled AGA because of faulty/dirty chipram ...
try clean the simm connectors, and if it still fails, try another simm for chipram...
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Well it has been a number of years, but I recall having this problem with Toaster systems I used to fix. First, the clean connector suggestion is a great one. Do that, and if you still get the garbled output, there's a small potentiometer on the board which you can very slowly turn while watching the garbled output, which should adjust the garble out. Tigger I'm sure will remember what this pot is called, sorry I don't, I just remember firing up the jittery toaster, and if I didn't get a TNR (Toaster Not Responding) error, quitting the toaster. Then the output was garbled till I very gently adjusted that pot, usually about a tenth of a turn would do it. Then once I got it running, time to autohue it. Sometimes we had to autohue it a bunch of times. Newtek told us to do it a lot if we had to.
Back then, it wasn't 'next to nothing' to get Newtek to fix a Toaster, we had to gat an RMA for each one. It could go up to $600 depending on the problem! So we'd basically mix n match the bits of various Toasters till we had one with all three boards bad, then send it in for repairs. Once we got the new, known good board we'd either sell it whole as a refurbished board (we weren't unethical to call them 'new' when we knew they'd been overhauled, but some places, cough, AG, cough, were so..) or use its parts for repairing customer's units without the two to three week turnaround of sending it in to Newtek. Newtek were, however, very nice to deal with and I always liked calling them. Keep in mind that this was before everyone had a Mac with Final Cut Pro and firewire digital camcorders. The Toaster was still a very common profesional system. Lots of places made their living with the Toaster for a long time :-)
I remember lots of A2000s full of TBC IVs or Kitchen Syncs. Very cool gear back in the day!
Memories...
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Hi guys, Thanks for all the advice so far.
I have tried both toaster cards in the amiga and both do the same ting. I then swaped out the Daughter board with another one, same problem.
I then switched monitors to my old 1084 and still the same problem.
just for clarification the Amigas video out (workbench etc) works fine its the video though the Toaster card thats garbled. I did the adjustment on the "center frequency on the toaster card but it is not the problem. It is staying at 2.54 olts no matter where i put it, it should be at -2.1 volts. so thats why i am thinking the the ATX power supply adapter is not wired properly or something like that But again the Amiga its self runs fine. The toaster software boots up properly and i do get the switcher screen i just do not se any framestores loaded onto the two digital inputs and the video is all garbled or none at all.
By the way i am running a toaster flyer system but have also disconected the flyer card just to see if that helps. no difference.
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And you do have a NTSC monitor like someone else asked?
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Yes is a NTSC monitor, This system worked for a long time and now it is not and I have done no changes to it.
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Tigger wrote:
Some things to try.
1) do you have a non-NTSC monitor selected? If so at least some of them wont allow the Toaster to sync.
Using a toastscan hooked up to an LCD monitor but have also connected a 1084 directly to the RGB out of the amiga and no change.
2) Unplug anything but a moniter from the 23 pin video plug, unplug anything from the Parallel port or the audio ports, be sure you have a sync strainer if you are using a multi sync moniter
Did that and no change,
3) Autohue the toaster is not a bad idea either.
Yup did that and it wouldn't do an auto Hue as it says to have a video signal hooked up to the input #1 (which I do) but it wont sysnc because the video through the toaster is all garbled.
4) Give me a better idea what happens when the toaster boots, and also tell me what version of software. Do you get a toaster video output but the amiga output is bad, vice versa, both of them bad?
-Toastin Tigger
The Amiga boots up with no issues and the display on the RGB out is solid and all icons are present. I see a distorted black video image on the program monitor and when i boot up the toaster software the program screen goes all nuts but the switcher screen does load but no images (bars and toaster logo load up into the frame buffers. I'm running Version 4.3 with the millennium package installed. I have even done a reinstall of the software.
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Do you have a leaked battery on the system? Or even caps leak anywhere?
Remember what I said: Search for leaking caps over the Toaster and MB itself.
Get a multimeter in the PSU to see what happens when you starts the Toaster.
Looks very like you have bad caps somewhere who causes "ripple" in the force lines.
Or even some SIMM going bad.
It's not a bad idea plug a oscilloscope in the power line to see if there are any ripple in those lines
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Ross1 wrote:
The Amiga boots up with no issues and the display on the RGB out is solid and all icons are present. I see a distorted black video image on the program monitor and when i boot up the toaster software the program screen goes all nuts but the switcher screen does load but no images (bars and toaster logo load up into the frame buffers. I'm running Version 4.3 with the millennium package installed. I have even done a reinstall of the software.
Ok, this is on a A4000 so we have possible short of the toaster to the memory, though that shouldnt be the issue. Power supply is probably still the likeliest problem. You have verified that NTSC is your monitor selected correct (or 1084) because that will definitely cause the issue you are talking about. Check preview out as well as program out, to be sure both have the problem, also does the toaster software change from one input to another? Run a camera is you have one live into input 1 and see if you can see it. Try an effect to see if that appears on your program screen or just on the amiga screen. Do verify that the A4000 batter if its still present isnt leaking onto the motherboard. You can get the toaster fixed for the price of shipping these days if its broken, but with two of them showing the same symptoms, I just dont think thats likely.
-Tig
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Thanks rkauer and Tig for your input so far.
@ rkauer, The Toaster card is fine as it works in my second A4000 system. I had Newtek look at it just last month and they sent it back saying that they replaced the main board. But it is still doing the same thing.
@ Tig, When you say a short of the Toaster to the memory are you saying the Amigas system ram? should I place some sort of plastic sheet between the back of the toaster card and the ram?
The system battery was removed several years ago and in its place I have a rechargeable Ni metal hydrate coin battery. Could this be a problem?
The video that I have connected directly to the vidoe input 1 is barely visible due to the garbled image (like its out of sync) it shows and sometimes not at all on both the program and preview but yes I can switch between inputs as there is a change on the program and preview monitors when I do a cut and transitions do show on the amiga monitor but because the toaster is out of sync they do not show up properly on the program out.
When the Toaster was working I would get a nice clean black screen on the program monitor when I first boot it up or after a soft reset it would pass through the video on input 1 nice and clean. but now its a very fussy black screen or the distorted and usually a black and white image with a tinge of green showing on program. ALso when I exit out of the Toaster software the workbench screen is suposed to show on the program output but instead I get a very distorted jittery immage of the workbench or just black fuzz.
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@ Tig, When you say a short of the Toaster to the memory are you saying the Amigas system ram? should I place some sort of plastic sheet between the back of the toaster card and the ram?
In the past I have done that on some systems, some memory is taller then others and theoretically that could be the problem.
The system battery was removed several years ago and in its place I have a rechargeable Ni metal hydrate coin battery. Could this be a problem?
No, that should be no problem.
The video that I have connected directly to the vidoe input 1 is barely visible due to the garbled image (like its out of sync) it shows and sometimes not at all on both the program and preview but yes I can switch between inputs as there is a change on the program and preview monitors when I do a cut and transitions do show on the amiga monitor but because the toaster is out of sync they do not show up properly on the program out.
We were doing that to be sure that the toaster software was booting correctly, etc, since its switching video (out of sync video, but video none the less, and doing effects, 4.3 is up and running correctly.
When the Toaster was working I would get a nice clean black screen on the program monitor when I first boot it up or after a soft reset it would pass through the video on input 1 nice and clean. but now its a very fussy black screen or the distorted and usually a black and white image with a tinge of green showing on program. ALso when I exit out of the Toaster software the workbench screen is suposed to show on the program output but instead I get a very distorted jittery immage of the workbench or just black fuzz.
I hate to suggest this, but since you have a second 4000, why dont you plug its power supply into the other board, and verify whether its the power supply. The other thing you might want to check is the riser card, verify that it doesnt make a difference which one is in the system. If you 4000 has socketed parts (at least one of the ones I owned did, you might want to be sure they are seated well. I've probably got an A4000 desktop power supply around the house I could be talked out of for a few bucks if you want to go back to that as well.
-Tig
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Thanks Tig,
I will be trying the old A4000 Power supply that I still have around tonight. I just dont like using it because I have a Cyberstorm PPC and a SCSI 9gig drive as my system drive so they draw a far bit of juice and I dont want to over drive the A4000 power supply. I already tried swaping the riser board from my other one and the same problem is there.
Given all the knowledge you seem to have do you or did you work for Newtek at one point?
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I wrote Audio Blackbox, Promix Tools, RenderFX, and several other toaster packages including a big chunk of Millenium. SO as one of the leading 3rd party guys for Newtek, I know quite a bit about the Toaster and Flyer.
-Tig
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Thats great that you did allot of the work on that software, Millennium is a great package. I'm glad I am part of this community its proven to be a great help so far. :-)
If this power supply test dosent solve it I'm going to try swaping the A4000 MB (not an easy task) I have one of my systems in a Tower (the one I am having troubles with) to give better cooling and thats the one I use the most.
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Well, I tried the original A4000 PSU and low and behold it worked :)
It appears that the ATX to amiga PSU adapter is possably not wired properly. I bought it from Amigakit, It seems to work properly with the Amiga its self but not with the Toaster???
Tig, do you have any ideas why this would happen? could it be a bad ATX PSU? Or the wires hooked up to the wrong pins on the ATX side?
Anybody using an ATX power supply with a Toaster that does work?
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It is possible to use a non A4000 power supply, is your adapted correctly, I have no idea, I might be able to get to the microtronix A4000 tower and look at its power supply and see if I can give you some more info. I guess I need to look at the A4000 power connector and see what could be causing issues for the toaster and yet allow the computer to run fine.
-Tig
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If you could look at what pins are connected to what that would be great. I'm thinking of building my own adapter. I have the Amiga 6 pin end I just need to either cut off the end of an ATX PSU and hard wire it directly to the wires or get another ATX 20 pin connector but I am thinking it would be better to hardwire it so there are less connections that can go wrong.
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Hi Tig and everyone else who helped me in this thread,
I found a wiring diagram on the net for the Amiga PSU and rewired the new ATX power supply that I bought yesterday and my system works like a charm :-)
One question I have is are the wires coming from the ATX PSU heavy gauge enough to drive the Toaster cards and Cyberstorm etc? They are only 18g wire where the A4000 PSU uses 16 and 14g wire. Can a person double (tie two together) up on the ATX wires as there are several +5v, and +12v wires that come out of the PSU or will I short it out.
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One question I have is are the wires coming from the ATX PSU heavy gauge enough to drive the Toaster cards and Cyberstorm etc?
unfortunately nope.
Too thin for a overloaded system as yours (and mine also)
I've purchased some Amp (well actually are tyco Electonics) 6 ways "Mate-N Lok" series connectors (code 1-480704) to achieve a more stable power conection with ATX PSUs.
RS-Components code- 848-874
Male pins sold separately.
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Thanks for the answer Framiga,
I actualy cut off the ATX connector and simply soldered the wires needed to the A4000 connector wires that I cut off the Amiga 4000d power sup. that I had (it was shot and no good anyhow so now I only have one spare for testing) and then heat shrinked the exposed ends. That will make sure that I have a good connection.
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yep its a good option too :-) (less "elegant" but it works as aspected)