PIC Arrived!

[Darrin]

Okay.  PIC is now on the board.  I plug it in, but still no display, which was my suspicion in my previous post.  PIC or no PIC, I did think there should be some kind of display even if it were only a blank screen.  I've got Minimig1.bin and a kickstart file from Amiga Forever on my SD card.  There is still no blue light as described in the manual.   What else might I not be considering, keeping in mind that I have no prior experience with FPGA or Minimig?  I am attempting to output to a 1080P modern display in the US (an LCD TV with PC input).  I would suspect an incompatible display IF I was seeing all the lights described in the manual.  The fact that I am not is leading me to believe the board is either faulty or something is still set wrong on my part.  The LCD TV with VGA input is my only monitor at home, but I could bring to work to try another monitor.

First of all, make sure you have set the 15/31KHz jumper to 31KHz.

Try an old CRT monitor.  If nothing else, you should see the blue FPGA boot screen for a second or two as it loads the Minimig core.

Also, check your PSU.  Make sure you have the polarity of the thing set correctly (tip should be positive, end of the shaft should be neg) too happy with a 4.5v setting and would sometimes refuse to start (plugging and unplugging would eventually get it to boot).  The final solution was to set the PSU to 6v instead.

Edit:

Saw your post above.  Looks like your PSU is fine and it is your monitor and a mis-matched PIC/Minimig core.

[Darrin]

Thanks, bbond007.  I am going to try this first chance I get.  The monitor/TV may indeed have PAL compatibility problems.  I took it to work and hooked it up to a dedicated computer monitor and actually got a red boot up screen with text.  There was a firmware related error message there, possibly something about MDC or some such.  I didn't take a photo at the time, but I'll do so tomorrow. I feel as if I may be almost there.  Thanks for your help.  I am it the IT field, but my skills are limited to desktop support of typical business systems.  I am in completely new territory here.

If you have a firmware error then it means the PIC doesn't match the Minimig code on the SD card.  Look on Minimig.net for the latest firmware update and it will have the PIC and the SD card files matched together.  Put the correct core file on the SD card and flash the PIC using a null modem cable with the matching update.