Impulse Firecracker 24 help

[HammerD]

Hi, I have an Impulse FireCracker 24 board in my Amiga 2000. It appears to be working, shows up in ShowConfig, and the pass-thru functionality works - if I connect the cables it will pass-thru the Amiga native display and display it on my 1084S-D1 monitor. I can see the workbench thru the board's output.

It is installed in an Amiga 2000 with Blizzard 2060 (68060) with a CyberVision 64/3D graphics card running CyberGraphX V4.

I have several issues with it though:

1) The "Light24" program that comes with the FireCracker just freezes right after I click on the icon. Maybe it doesn't like the 060? If I set the Workbench to NTSC (eg. don't use the Cybervision 64/3D), it still freezes.

2) Using ImageFX 2.6's FireCracker render module, it doesn't display anything via the Firecracker. When I select the Firecracker render module, and click "render", the output on the 1084S-D1 turns white, then when I press the "Show" button, it turns black. It's either all white, or all black. So it's doing something, just not the right thing.

Has anyone ever got this board working? I'm running OS 3.9.

Thanks
Darren

[HammerD]

The only disk I have is the Light24 disk and it's not bootable.  It has the fc24.library which you copy to libs: and the Light24 program.  That's all.  I have copied the fc24.library to libs:  and when I click on Light24 it's an immediate freeze.  Snoopdos doesn't say much, if anything.  I could try it with an 030 card instead of an 060 card, but that would be a pain

[HammerD]

I have a Retina card in my A4000, and I find a lot of the Retina- specific software does not work right if I am using the Picasso-96 RTG interface. You might be running into something similar with your Cybergraphx RTG software.
I suppose the only way to test that theory is to boot into standard ECS mode with no Cybergraphx running and test it from there
I also find ImageFX 4.5 is a bit odd with RTG cards and you need to experiment a bit. I have a Picasso II, and my system uses Picasso-96... But in ImageFX on my A2000 I have to use a Cybergraphx viewer to get it to display? I try the Picasso and get nothing, I use the Cybergraphx and it come up great.
Maybe you are experiencing the same thing

Yes, possible.  I can try with a Vanilla OS 3.9 (or even 3.1) setup.   

[HammerD]

You could try ViewTek to show a test picture.
http://aminet.net/package/gfx/show/ViewTEK21

Maybe you have to readjust the colours on the card itself?

I will try that Viewtek program first.  There are pots for adjusting RGB levels on the card.  When passing thru the Amiga video (eg. NTSC) the colours are pretty good.  I just found the manual for it, it doesn't really have a troubleshooting section nor talk about Picasso96 or CyberGraphX...

[HammerD]

You could try ViewTek to show a test picture.
http://aminet.net/package/gfx/show/ViewTEK21

Maybe you have to readjust the colours on the card itself?

Ok tried Viewtek_FC24.  Loaded a small jpeg, image on the 1084S turns white, solid white.  (was black).  so it's doing something but I don't get the image, just a white screen.  Card is toast? :-/  ImageFX did the same thing.  Unless the RGB pots are totally off....I can try adjusting.  Have to haul the card out of the machine to do it :-/

[HammerD]

amiga.resource.cx  mentioned something about internal genlock incompatibilities. Any chance the card gets such a signal from somewhere?

I'll have to read up in the manual, but I have no other genlock in the Amiga 2000.  I do have a flicker fixer in the A2000 video slot - a Microway AGA 2000.   Could that potentially be an issue?  The FireCracker is a Zorro II card, it does not use the Video slot of the A2000.

Darren

[HammerD]

Actually I just tried Light24 again from shell, it also turns the 1084S monitor screen to all white....I guess it looked "frozen" because you lose mouse control on the workbench.  You'd have to quit Light24 and probably it would come back, but as the screen just turns white I can't see anything other than white

[HammerD]

Made some progress...got the Light24 program to start.  I changed my workbench from a CyberGraphX screen to NTSC.  started light 24 and it came up on the 1084S!  I get white "snow" in the background, when I load an image I don't see it, but the program interface is there and it's working, mouse is working.  Maybe the memory on the board is not working properly? (or pots are totally out of wack).  I haven't removed the card yet.

Ignore the diagonal bars - they do not show up to the naked eye.  You can see the white snow in the background behind the GUI.

[HammerD]

Made some progress...got the Light24 program to start.  I changed my workbench from a CyberGraphX screen to NTSC.  started light 24 and it came up on the 1084S!  I get white "snow" in the background, when I load an image I don't see it, but the program interface is there and it's working, mouse is working.  Maybe the memory on the board is not working properly? (or pots are totally out of wack).  I haven't removed the card yet.

Ignore the diagonal bars - they do not show up to the naked eye.  You can see the white snow in the background behind the GUI.

Ok, took the card out, cleaned the contacts.  The card itself is very clean, no dust, connector was clean.  Cleaned it anyway.  Changed it to another slot.  Adjusted the RGB pots - which are working and they were/are at good positions.  I can change the red, green, and blue levels.   But that did not have an affect on the output.  I can turn the Amiga display on and off (using the software - AON and AOFF), but when I load a picture it doesn't show anything other than a white screen.   

   

I don't think it's a Zorro slot problem as all the other cards in the machine are working: Prisma megamix, Emplant, C= 2065, CV 3D, and of course the Blizzard 2060.   The Firecracker is now in the slot where the Emplant was.

To be sure I will have to try a different processor card...maybe tonight I will try that, I have a C= 2630 card. The good news is the software runs from shell, even with no startup-sequence, so I can just put it on a floppy and run it, as I will lose access to the SCSI hard drive attached to the Blizzard when I remove it... 

EDIT/Update: Actually the Blizzard 060 can be deactivated by holding down the 0 key while turning on the computer....so I will try that safer method first and see if the Firecracker responds!

Darren

[HammerD]

You could try ViewTek to show a test picture.
http://aminet.net/package/gfx/show/ViewTEK21

Maybe you have to readjust the colours on the card itself?

Thanks for posting this. I have one of these cards but never had any software for it. Now I have something I could try to reverse engineer, and it's easy to find the firecracker-specific code just by comparing the executable with one of the non-firecracker versions...

At some point I'll have to rig up the 15KHz RGB and see if it even works.

Yes it would be nice if you can try yours.

Ok I disabled the Blizzard 2060 and unfortunately got the same result...just a white screen when trying to load a picture.  Booted to Workbench via floppy and confirmed 1MB chip and no 060...so just running off the 68000.  Light24 software loads but says not enough memory to even load a picture.  The showfc program works from shell:   "showfc test"  is supposed to load a color bar test picture.  The screen just turns white when I do that.  AON and AOFF commands work (turns on or off the Amiga video).   That's about all that works!  But I had the same behaviour with the 060 too.

Not sure what else I can try at this point.  Funny, the card looks like pretty much brand-new condition.

[HammerD]

Small update. I tried again, using the VT (ViewTek) program.  I managed to get one small .gif picture to show - although not perfect.  Yes it is supposed to be black and white, but not corrupted  

Subsequent loads of other pictures were either black screen or corrupt.  Even trying to load the same .gif a second time resulted in a corrupt screen.

[HammerD]

Another Update. I am able to display that U2 picture, and it actually is supposed to have the dots in it - the original filename is U2noise.gif.  I'm also able to display a picture named "molecules.gif".  Both of those GIFS are from ImageEngineer software as sample photos.  I was able to do this by booting with no startup-sequence and running VT. 

However, so far I am unable to display any jpeg images.  I just get corruption.  I also can't display the molecules.gif picture if my workbench is fully loaded (with Blizzard 060 card and CyberGraphX screenmode.).

Strange card indeed.  For sure still something wonky with it in my system.

[HammerD]

Ok so now think the card isn't actually working correctly after all.  When I saw those images it was using the pass-thru feature, so it was actually using the Amiga ECS chipset to display images. 

I've now set it up a separate monitor that only displays the direct Firecracker output.  Another 1084s monitor is connected to my Amiga 2000's RGB output.  So a 2 monitor setup so I can be 100% sure what is coming out of the Firecracker.  When I use AdPro, ImageFX, ViewTek, etc... to show images on the Firecracker all I get is a white screen on the monitor connected to the Firecracker.   So I think the card is not working.  It "functions" like it should, the software works, but it ultimately only displays a white screen when it should be an image.

I installed a vanilla AmigaOS 3.1 setup and the various software I tried (listed above) seemed to work better, including Light24 from Impulse, but ultimately I still got a white screen when I tried to display any image on the Firecracker monitor.

[HammerD]

The ROMs on the card are in the right place? (just to be sure). Any socketed chips you could push?

At least the white screen is a stable valid signal, as reported by the monitor?

There are only 2 socketed chips, I did press them in and they creaked   Didn't help.  There is one jumper on the board, I will move that to see if it helps.  I'll do some more tinkering with it later today...including trying it in my Amiga 4000.

[HammerD]

Tried the Firecracker in the Amiga 4000.  Same result - white screen when rendering an image to the board.  I give up   Switching the single jumper on the board had no effect either.