Anyone installed a Buddha Flash PHOENIX ed. Z2 controller on an A3000/4000 ?

[alenppc]

@primero

Sorry I can't help you there, but I wanted to say that I just bought the same board from AmigaKit.

Firstly, I want to say that I got the board in less than 7 days which is absolutely amazing considering I rarely get the stuff that fast when I buy in Canada, let alone the UK! I wasn't charged any customs fees either. Awesome! Two thumbs up for AmigaKit here! :-D

Now, I installed the card inside the A2000. I tried plugging a 2.5" HDD (carefully paying attention to the pin 1) toghether with the floppy power connector to the board, but with this configuration the Amiga won't even recognise the card... :-? The drive does not spin up, and the Early Startup Menu lists no zorro boards.

With no drives attached or a 3.5" HDD connected to the secondary connector the board is recognised and boots immediately. I guess I could live with that but I would really like to be able to use the 2.5" HDD considering there's a 44 pin connector already there for it.

Does anyone know what might be causing this behaviour? The HDD works fine when connected to an A1200.
Also how do I know I'm using the latest flash ROM, and if not how do I update it? There is no mention of these features anywhere inside the docs provided on the floppy disk.
Also I could find no documentation regarding the flash ROM jumper...

[alenppc]

Ok... I did some other tests, and it appears it is impossible to use a CompactFlash card with this controller...

If I connect it to the first port, all I get is CF adapter's LED permanently lit, and the Amiga does not boot. If I plug it into second port, the LED is OFF but the Amiga does not see the CF card at all and boots only from a floppy...

I am at a loss here... Either my Buddha is defective or it features the most incompatible design I have ever seen. I don't know what else to try. The strange piece of paper that came with the board mentions a manual on ami.ga, but there is no manual there...

 :roll:

[alenppc]

Update: I can get the 2.5" HDD recognised by the card now, but it was a bit fiddly... the CompactFlash cards still don't work, no matter what.

I think Buddha's ROM has several bugs that cause these problems... I also noticed a very funny bug:

when connecting a 2.5" HDD onto the first port and a 3.5" HDD + CF (master/slave) onto the secondary port, the kickstart 3.1 (40.63) will mistakenly think it is running on an A600 and display a CC0 carddisk.device in the boot menu. :-) I am using the card on an A2000...

Shame about CF though. I wonder if Jens reads amiga.org. :-)

[alenppc]

The very same 3.1 chip is used for A500/A500+/A600/A2000, same version, same revision (40.63). The carddisk.device is simply inactive on machines other than the A600, but for some reason a bug in Buddha's ROM appears to cause kickstart to think it's running on an A600.