Setting up a Video Toaster Flyer system

[mbrantley]

One of my issues with the Flyer system project I have going on is touched on quite a bit in a marketplace thread at http://amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=704951#post704951 but I thought it would be better if I started a new thread on the subject in the right place.

I have an Amiga 2000 with a 68060 accelerator board, a boatload of fast ram, 2MB of chip ram, and Indivision flicker fixer, a Video Toaster and a Personal Animation Recorder card with attached hard drive just for the PAR. There is also a Deneb USB card, and the system boots from a USB thumb drive attached to the Deneb. The 2000 has 3.1 kickstart and runs AOS 3.9.

I have just got the latest/last Video Toaster/Flyer 4.3 software from NewTek, and I also have here a Flyer card. The Toaster is installed and working (still with older 4.1 software), but the Flyer card is not in the machine and never has been. I just bought it for $20. :-)

I want to install the Flyer card and use this machine for some "retro" nonlinear editing. I'll either track down a trio of SCSI hard drives and run cables to a second enclosure or track down SCSI-to-IDE converters and run the Flyer from a trio of Compast Flash cards. (The SCSI-to-IDE converters seem to be harder to find now and more costly than they were just a couple of years ago, unfortunately.)

My stumbling block is the ribbon cable that should connect the Flyer card with the Toaster card inside the computer. I don't have it, and I'm getting conflicticting information on it.

Plaz was kind enough to provide a very nice photo of the cable he made, and that's in the abovementioned thread. I believe I can make this if necessary, but I need to know for certain that the cable that connects a Flyer with a Toaster 4000 and the cable that connects a Flyer with a Toaster 2000 is the same -- or not. I've been told both ways.

Also, I need to know where exactly to plug in the cable on the Toaster 2000. I see two 16-pin headers that are not labeled on my Toaster 2000 card. On the Flyer, there is clearly a 20-pin header labeled Toaster I/O.

Anybody know -- for certain? Anybody got pictures of how this goes together? Diagrams? Any documentation? I have no manuals or instructions for this stuff, alas.

Best yet -- anybody have this cable as a spare and willing to part with it? I was told by one person that the Flyer originally shipped with both 4000 and 2000 cables (which would indicate they are not the same).

Or.... anybody got a Toaster/Flyer setup they'd be willing to sell? Or a Toaster/Flyer set of cards with all necessary cabling? Wouldn't mind having a spare.

[mbrantley]

Matt, thanks for the link to DLH's site. Also found it on DiscreetFX's Open Video Toaster site. I downloaded the Toaster 4000 manual, which includes instructions for installing the Flyer with the Toaster 2000 as well. Page 28 tells and show how to connect the ribbon cable. Looks like the cable Plaz made (which is pictured in the above-linked Marketplace thread) is what I need to make or find.

gizmo, I hope we both get our Flyer setups working soon and can compare notes!

[mbrantley]

Ami_GFX, PM just sent.

[mbrantley]

Plaz, you should go into business making these cables! You'd have a market of, ahem, well.... two. :-)

[mbrantley]

Just a follow-up note to say I have just made my A2000/060 Video Toaster Flyer system functional. I have two of three 36GB SCSI hard drives connected at this time for video streams A and B. Before I can get the third drive online I will need to figure out how to house and power it. I found an old two-drive external SCSI enclosure in my closet but I have not found anything to hold the other drive yet. Man, the stuff I used to have and discarded! Anyway, I did make the Toaster-to-Flyer ribbon cable myself.

So, anybody got a TBC I can have? ;-)

[mbrantley]

Thanks for all the good info, folks. Pyromania, at present I only know how to make Flyer to Toaster 2000 cables. Are they the same or different for the Toaster 4000 card? I dunno. Anybody can make the one I did using Plaz's picture of the cable he made, the parts and a pair of pliers.

I'm still coming to grips with this Toaster Flyer setup, but I seem to be only able to sync up to a source connected to Toaster input 1. Do I need TBC to connect sources to other inputs? Same source works on 1 but not on 2-4.

And while I am messing with some digital source material now, I do have a lot of analog tape material in house. So I do want TBC in my setup. Just need to find one. They don't sell for a lot on eBay I just noticed, but I don't do eBay anymore. Anybody have one?

[mbrantley]

Thanks, AmiGFX. Good info.

I'm getting sequencing errors at times when playing back my test projects. Playback stutters and halts and then an error requester advises my to check scsi cabling and termination and to possibly consider using "voidal" whatever that is.

I am using new Seagate 36GB bare SCSI drives connected to flat SCSI cables run out of the back of the machine. One end of each cable is connected to the Flyer card SCSI 0 or SCSI 1 header and the other directly to the drive. Do I need to terminate something somewhere, and how? I'm using a 68-pin to 50-pin adapter for each drive.

I do not yet have an audio drive attached to the SCSI 2 header because I haven't figured out where to house/power the third drive.

I don't know what this voidal business is and haven't done anything about cache settings, etc. I was assuming I wouldn't have to mess with that kind of thing with a newer SCSI drive.

UPDATE: Found an old NewTek forum post from 2003 mentioning that "modern" SCSI drives lack onboard terminators. Each of my ribbon cables has headers for two drives, so I will just use the last one on each cable as a place to plug in a terminator. I just ordered a trio of 50-pin passive SCSI terminators from Amazon. Hopefully that will take care of the problem.