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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Kristian95 on April 23, 2008, 11:07:51 PM
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I've finally gotten all my bits and pieces together to use my A4000T and it won't boot :boohoo:
When I start the machine I am stuck with a black screen and the caps lock on the keyboard blinking slowly... blink.... blink..... blink.... it blinks like that continuously.
The machine has a Picasso IV card, a CSPPC card and a 2Mb eFlash card in it.
I read somewhere that the continuous one flash on the caps lock indicates a problem with one of the CIA chips... is that true, in if it is, is there anyone in the US capable of fixing my dear Amiga for me ??
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Take the cards out and see if it boots as a "standard" machine. You could try CAREFULLY re-seating the IC's one by one.
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Follow these rules:
Number Of Caps Lock Blinks -- Description Of Error
One -- Keyboard ROM failed.
Two -- Keyboard RAM failed.
Three -- Watchdog timer failed.
Four -- Short detected in keyboard.
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I am guessing it will be the E-flash card causing the problem if memory serves, I had a similar problem with my E-flash card but don't recall the exact fix other than moving the jumper so it won't boot from it.
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I have tried taking the e-flash card out, I have disconnected the SCSI cd-rom drive and I have disconnected the IDE->CF adapters (taking the IDE-cable out completely) and still no go. I cannot remove the P-IV card as I have no monitor to connect to a bare Amiga and I cannot remove the CSPPC card as I don't have any other CPU card.
The CPU fan on the PPC as well as the case fan both run when the computer is booted.
Btw, the keyboard has been bought as working from Vesalia.de.
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Have you tried doing a warm reboot after turning it on? might not work but you never know
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I tried a warm reboot, both trying the Ctrl+Amiga+Amiga and the reset button, none worked, still have the caps lock flashing
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Try reseating the cards themselves, including the CPU card and 4000T I/O cards. If this doesn't work then take them all out and blow out with a can of air or similar and use alcohol on the contacts. Reassemble after drying.
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An A4000T don't boot if the SCSI chain is not terminated.
Either by a terminated device (like a CD-ROM) or the "passtrough" connector on the back side. Check the SCSI cable, too.
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It`ll be the CPU card.
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One step closer actually I have had the Amiga booting. I think the problem was a conflict between my 2 IDE -> CF devices, I think both wanted to be masters... I solved that one, though my preferred device had to be slave.
The computer boots, no caps flashing, but I'm not there quite yet, because I have problems with the video signal from my Picasso IV card:
Most of the time when I boot (using a standard PC CRT monitor) I get a black screen, well I can see that the Amiga image on the screen is slightly less "black" than the surrounding. Once in a while, when I boot, I get a grey screen instead. It even booted and showed me a _very_ blurred WB screen. Also, once, I got a Guru screen which displayed perfectly. I checked with the monitor, when the screen was giving me the blurred wb screen it was at 31 KHz.... does this indicate that the scandoubler/flicker fixer is in trouble ??
Thanks to all of you for your help throughout this ordeal!!
Btw, I do, somewhere, have an Amiga -> Scart cable for the standard video output, but I am in the US and the TV I have access to does not have a scart plug but only the 3 plugs for Y, Pb and Pr.
The SCSI cable has starts at the external plug, then goes to the CSPPC board and ends at the SCSI CD-ROM.
Btw, I have 2 HD floppy drives in the Amiga, one FZ-357A and one FZ-357B drive, I have bought a new floppy cable from Amigakit, but I am unsure how to set the jumpers for drive selection... should both be DS0 or should one of them be DS1 ?? If one should be set to DS1, should it be the one before or after the "twist" on the floppy cable ??
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Ok, I'm getting closer now :)
I have switched the P-IV card to the other video-slot and now it works... when I use WHDLoad it keeps working fine, but when I am in Workbench after a few minutes it stops working (giving me a black screen on my LCD)... anyone have any idea what causes this to happen ??
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Hi,
which display mode do you use for your WB ?
did you use an overscan setting ?
sometime LCD have strange reactions when it's a bit below it's possibilities.
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Also check SMT electrolytic capacitors on the board. Swap 'em all, if you get a chance.
EDIT:
This is why I insist in swapping the SMT caps around the Amiga boards:linkie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague)
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Nice to see things working out with your machine..
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I've set my WB to run at 1024 x 768 at 24bit colours. I've not been able to fiddle around with making a custom setup with my P-IV board as I run out of time before the screen goes black. It looks perfectly fine when it boots, and if I start WHDLoad games I don't get the screen going black at all, so I am a bit miffed at this :(
Hope someone has some good ideas of what to try. Btw, my WB install was made in WinUAE, I tried installing PIV software in WinUAE but it of course has trouble finding the PIV board, any ideas whether I could make a custom screen thingie in WinUAE ??
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I know I ought to have the capacitors changed... but I am not that good with a soldering iron... I'd have to find someone close by who could help me out (beer, wine or the like could easily be supplied hehehe)
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I found the cause of my problem but I don't know how to solve it :(
It seems that the gfx settings from my P-IV card are at a too high refresh rate for my lcd monitor, as when I run it on a crt monitor the image stays there just fine.
I have tried many times to access the early start menu for the P-IV board (both holding down left or right or both shift keys or tapping them) to no avail :( When I try using PicassoModeTNG I can't seem to be allowed to save settings, I read the guide on the Amiga but was left none the wiser :( Can someone help me out please ??
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this is what i think:
you can't enter either csppc or p-iv early startup because you are using a keyboard adapter with a ps/2 keyboard and not an original amiga keyboard (or?).
csppc is set to default 31khz out on the the rgb port of your amiga, caasing problems when p-iv is scan doubling to your lcd monitor. you have to set csppc not to default 31khz. hold down the esc-key (may not work because of the above).
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I am using an Amiga keyboard bought at Vesalia.de.
Is there anyway I can make the CSPPC board not default to 31KHz on the Amiga RGB-port apart from accessing the early boot menu ??
Btw, the only bootmenu I can get to show is the Amiga bootmenu itself (both mouse buttons pressed).
EDIT: I have tried with the esc key, I get a black screen with a white line at the top, pretty strange. This was the result I got on a standard PC crt monitor.
What is the easiest way for me to connect the Amiga to a TV in the US, using the Amiga rgb port ??
I got a bit of help with PicassoModeTNG so I have it working on my lcd screen... I'm still miffed at how come I cannot get to the two early boot menus though!!
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if you can see the amiga early startup you should be able to see the others too :/
i used to have a rgb-to-scart cable, but i guess you don't have a scart input? got an a520 available? try using a rgb-to-vga (the one that came with the a1200/a4000) instead of connecting to your p-iv if the signal is indeed 31khz.
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I think I have found out why I don't have the early boot menu for my CSPPC card... the rom version is 44.60 which is not a rom that has the boot menu.
I wonder whether there is a similar thing with P-IV rom versions??
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i'm afraid i do not know.
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np, thanks for your suggestions and tips :)
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The PIV does not require a special rom-version to show the
bootmenu. It can be a bit tricky though to get it to
display the bootmenu at all. I have a lyra ps/2 keyboard
adapter, and the only way that i can get to the piv
bootmenu is by pressing 1 of the shift keys while resetting
the system. If I press the key too late or too early,
the bootmenu won't show and the system just boots straight
into workbench. As already said, if the normal amiga
bootmenu shows up, then the piv bootmenu should show up
too.
Edit: Thought I could get the piv bootmenu only when
pressing both shiftkeys, but pressing 1 shift-key
is enough. It doesn't matter which one.
It's just the timing of when to press the key what's
important.
Regards,
Lloyd
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ok... can I beat the timing issue by repeatedly hitting a shift key ??
I have tried many times now and never seen the menu.
I've also tried flashing the card with P4Update 7.4 but the flashprg stalls prior to flashing, nearly gave me a heart attack as I feared improper flashing had been done.
I've just flashed my CSPPC card to the newest version so that I can get to a boot menu for that card too... we'll see if that goes any smoother.
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Yes, repeatedly hitting the shift key also should work,
but you have do it very quickly. I just tried it on
my system and it worked 2 out of 3 times.
Good luck.
Edit:Maybe you'll have more luck, if you repeatedly pressed
both shift keys (very quickly). It was easier getting the
bootmenu pressing both keys than with pressing only 1.
Regards,
Lloyd
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I just tried accessing both my CSPPC and P4 menus with no luck.... could having an eFlash card installed be the reason ??
EDIT: When I hit the shift key / Esc key (CSPPC) I hit it 4-5 times per second, no luck though :(
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Not to my knowledge. But if you want to be sure, you can
always ask Elbox. But I really think it's your timing of
pressing the keys. You're not the only one having this
problem. The only reason I can do it fairly easy, is that
I have the concierto addon and it plays a system startup
sound, so I can sort of figure out when to press the shift
key.
Regards,
Lloyd
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hehehe ok, I guess it doesn't make things easier for me that my A4000t takes a loooong time to boot... it hangs for a long time before even beginning the booting sequence, my guess is it waits at least 30 seconds :( I wonder what I can do to eliminate that.
Currently I use the A4000t IDE for my CF disk, I guess if I used the CSPPC SCSI it would boot faster ??
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KS 3.0 and later have a boot delay to check for IDE devices
I think the boot delay may be the culprit. I use scsi
myself and have nothing attached to the IDE connector.
To solve the boot delay problem I use a blizkick module
called NOIDE. This disables the onboard ide and cuts down
boot-time as soon as blizkick kicks in. this means that
on a cold boot i get the 30 sec delay, and after that
with each reboot i get no more delay.
For testing purposes i disabled blizkick and tried
accessing the piv bootmenu. Try waiting for like 20 secs
and then start pumping your shift keys like a madman.
Keep on doing this for another 15 seconds.
That worked for me.
Regards,
Lloyd
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Cool, thanks, I'll give that a try :)
Btw, do you know how I can get Blizkick modules working in an eFlash card ??
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Sorry, I don't have an eflash. I really don't know.
Maybe someone here on the forum owns one and can help
you out. Also I should let you know there also is a
hardware solution for the delay problem.
IDE-Killer (http://aminet.net/package/docs/hard/IDE_Killer)
Regards,
Lloyd
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I've seen those, and once, when / if I run my CF cards by the CSPPC I'll probably get one of those :)
Meanwhile, I tried again, using your timer as a guide and again with no success at all *sigh* I guess the boot menus for my P4 and CSPPC cards are well hidden!!
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I have a 4000T with P5 CS MKIII (very similar to CSPPC) and a 2MB E-flash.
I use the ESC key very early in a reboot and I can hold it to bring up the accelerator boot menu. If you can get the Amiga to pause and never reboot but can't see anything then push the space bar to temporarily toggle between a 15kHz and 31 kHz display.
I have been unable to get my E-flash to work. Elbox's documentation and software support of this product is bad. Early versions of their software crashed and later versions just failed. I do run a 68060@80MHz but my Zorro bus is still 50MHz. I edited my own 40.70 ROMs with Romulus and Remus replacing the 40.70 modules with the newer ones from 3.9 as well as bug fixed modules. I applied a few modules from BlizKick like Noclick which work and use Blizkick as the first command in my startup-sequence. I had to turn MAPROM off on the CS early boot menu and add NOROMUPDATES to setpatch but it works great. It's faster with less patching. I left the ide scsi.device out of my kickstart which speeds up the boot. With a CS UltraSCSI hard drive and 2 CD ROMs on the 4000T SCSI bus I get cold boots in the 15-25 second range and warm boots in about 1/2 that.
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I managed to make the boot sequence halt using the Esc key, but I got no image, well there was one! grey line in the top of the screen and the monitor reported running at 31.7 kHz, I did this before knowing the space bar thing, I wonder whether pressing space will help there?
EDIT: I am way too much of a noob to try making my own kick-roms... I wouldn't even know where to start on that one :(
EDIT2: I now managed to get the early boot menu :) Now I try figuring out what ID my SCSI CD-ROM drive has... there are 4 jumpers : : : : and no. 2 is closed ( : I : : ) I figured that would make it SCSI unit 1 or 2 but no dice when I set it up like that in the CSPPC menu... at least if I only have to do stuff in the SCSI menu, I honestly don't know
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Ok figured things out and have the CD-ROM drive working *yay*
It doesn't read my OS 3.9 cd though... it read my eFlash one and a random audio cd too.... but no icon for the audio cd nor for the OS 3.9 cd (I suspect it is treated as an audio cd ??)
How can I make my OS 3.9 cd accessible from OS 3.9 on my miggy and how can I set up icons for audio cd's ??
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good too see you got your csppc menu up. care to share what you needed to do? :)
did you get any p-iv menu up as well in the end?
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*yay* ;-)
I guess switching the boot menu to 15 kHz made it visible? I hope you saved the 15kHz mode bootmenu so you don't have to use the space bar every time.
I guess you're using the built in CSPPC CD driver. This is a very basic driver and doesn't support some things although it allows booting. Most people don't use the built in driver and use a mountlist in Devs:DOSDrivers using CacheCDFS which is included with 3.9. You may already have a CD0 entry in SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers you can drag over to Devs:DOSDrivers. You will need to change the tooltypes to...
DEVICE=cybppc.device
UNIT=your CD-ROM's scsi address
ACTIVATE=1
You wont be able to boot from CD but this usually isn't used on an Amiga.
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ah thanks for the tooltype help :) I'll get right on that :)
Btw, there is a CDFS menu item in the CSPPC menu, would I be able to alter the things I'd do in the tooltypes part in WB ??
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@sniken
Sure, what I needed to do was first to flash the ROM of my CSPPC card to the newest version (4.71) to have a boot menu at all. Then, when booting I pressed the Esc key to get the boot to stop, I then had a black screen with a single white line on top, I then pressed the space bar to change from 31 kHz to 15 kHz display of the boot menu and voila, there it was :)
I haven't been able to access the PIV menu at all yet, and I think it may be due to it having way old ROM version, but some people say it should have a boot menu regardless... we'll see how that one plays out as I have tried flashing the ROM to v 7.4 but the program stalled (I even tried twice) prior to flashing the ROM with the floppy light on without any response from the floppy or computer.
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Just read the docs for my paloma addon for the piv.
It came with firmware 7.4 where the boot menu was
introduced. So I guess I was wrong, sorry about that :-D
So if you have piv firmware prior to 7.4, *edit: and you
want to use the boot menu *, you must flash you piv with
the latest firmware. Boot without startup-sequence and
setpatch and run p4update. The program returns some info
when the update is finished.
Regards,
Lloyd
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I have tried flashing the PIV ROM several times, both with v 7.4 and (when 7.4 stalled) 7.1
It writes:
Board #1 at $42000000
then nothing happens.... anyone know how long the flash procedure should take ?? Flashing the CSPPC took less than 30 seconds and at no time did it make me feel it had stalled.
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I just added this to my CD0 tooltype:
DEVICE=cybppc.device
UNIT=2
ACTIVATE=1
It still does not read my AmigaOS 3.9 cd :( what else could be wrong ??
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I don't remember how long it takes. The docs say
p4update should give a message when the update has
finished. I strongly advise you NOT to interrupt
the update process.
Regards,
Lloyd
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I just added this to my CD0 tooltype:
You must enter this info in the CD0 file itself.
Open CD0 in a texteditor and edit the appropriate
lines.
Regards,
Lloyd
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ah, ok :) thanks!!
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@MozzerFan
Hmmmm ok... I just wish I had an idea of how long I should expect it to look like it's hanging :-?
I have interrupted the flashprocess 3 times now, I think it hasn't even begun flashing when it appears to be hanging on my system
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@ MozzerFan
I tried editing the CD0 file itself, I was allowed to open it, but after editing I was not allowed to save the file.
I also noticed that the file claimed that these things (DEVICE, UNIT and ACTIVATE) would be handled by the icon tooltype.
Btw, if I double click on the CD0 icon I don't get the "Unit already mounted" explanation... could this be because I have not installed the CSPPC SCSI disk ??
EDIT: If the CD-ROM drive is unit 2 (in 0 to 15) in the CSPPC boot menu it should also be unit 2 in tooltypes in WB, right ??
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I believe the tooltypes override the DOSDrivers entry (mountlist). In any case, it can't hurt to change the entry itself. You should turn the CD-ROM file system in the CSPPC boot menu off if you use the DOSDriver entry. CD0 must be in your Devs:DOSDrivers drawer for it to start at bootup. You can start it anytime, anywhere by double clicking CD0. The SCSI address has to be correct. If there is still a problem with no error messages then your CD-ROM drive probably doesn't like the 3.9 CD.
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dang I guess it doesn't like the OS cd then because all other cd's play fine... well I only tried two others, my eFlash cd, which shows a nice icon, and an audio cd, which did not show any icon, but cd player could play the cd...
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hmmm, I just checked, when I double-clicked the cd0 icon it said "cannot open file" or something similar. It turns out there is no cd0 file only the cd0.info file :( I hope someone can help me out getting me that file :)
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What CD-filesystem are you using now ?
Regards,
Lloyd
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Uh good question, the one that is standard when you install OS 3.9, I think it is CDFS, but am not sure...
EDIT: I think it is CacheCDFS
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Well, earlier you mentioned that you own a PC.
Can't you just load the CD on you PC, copy CD0.info
and CD0 from your OS3.9 to floppy and read it on the
amiga with CrossDOS (don't forget to adjust it with
the correct device and unit number)?. Also did you do
what Matthey said and turn CD-ROM filesystem off in the
CSPPC bootmenu?
Regards,
Lloyd
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I tried editing the CD0 file itself, I was allowed to open it, but after editing I was not allowed to save the file.
It turns out there is no cd0 file only the cd0.info file :( I hope someone can help me out getting me that file :)
I don't get it :-? Do you have a CD0 file or not?
Regards,
Lloyd
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I only have the cd0.info file, the file cd0 is not present
for instance there is both a pc0 and a pc0.info file.
I'll doublecheck the OS cd for the file and meanwhile do an WinUAE install to see if I can get hold of the file that way :)
I did remove the CD-ROM from the CSPPC menu after which it didn't read any cd's in WB, I think it's because the cd0 file is missing
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You don't have to install winuae to copy the file.
Just use Explorer to copy it to floppy.
And yes, your CD isn't working because the file
is missing.
Regards,
Lloyd
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Thanks for all the help guys, I got the file and put placed it on my Amiga and lo and behold, now it works :)
I can read my OS 3.9 CD :)
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I would now like to add PPC support to my OS, what is the proper way to do this.... by use of the AmigaOS 3.9 cd or by use of the driver cd for my CSPPC card ??
Also, should I install the things from the SCSI floppy and CD that came with the card ??
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I don't own a Cyberstorm PPC, so I can't help you with
that. Maybe you should start a new thread about this,
after all your amiga is working now.
BTW about the piv flashing, maybe you should just let it
be. If your flickerfixer settings don't need to be reset,
and if your not going to use a concierto or paloma etc.,
and if all is working well, the bootmenu isn't that
usefull. You know what they say: if it ain't broke, don't
fix it.
Regards,
Lloyd
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I'll take your advice and make a new thread :)
As for the PIV card, I'll be careful, I will only try flashing it again if I know for sure I have a working flash file and know what to expect time nd output wise.