How to stop Deneb splash screen

[Michele31415]

The Deneb is a very cool card that gives my Amiga access to USB, but the splash screen it puts up on boot is driving me nuts.  First, two little lines laboriously trace out the word "DENEB" on the screen.  Then it gets filled in with some pattern.  Then the pattern falls to the ground and DENEB remains so you can admire it.  Then it disappears.  Then the whole $%&# thing starts over again.  Not until that's all over with does the machine continue booting - and it takes at least a minute.

The first time I saw this, it was cute.  The second time it was boring.  But now it's simply beyond irritating.  Is there any way to make this piece of animation simply go away?

[Michele31415]

Just fire up Luciferin, copy the flash contents to a folder for backup purposes and save/flash either your modules of choice or even an empty flash (if you don't want any extra module inside) and you're gonna be set

OK, I got Luciferin running and there's a whole list of items on the left side and another list of items on the right side.  And there's a message on the bottom that says "Loading modules list from 'Default.mods'...failed!" (whatever that means).

In the right pane under the FlashRom tab, I see something called "DenebIntro".  I assume that's what I want to get rid of.  But ir's not at all clear how to do that.  And after reading two paragraphs of warnings in the documentation about how this stuff is for experts only and one wrong move can brick your machine, I'd rather not experiment with this.  :angry:  Thanks.

[Michele31415]

Thanks for the explanation.  So there's no way to remove just one thing from the FlashRom, you have to rebuild the list of everything minus the one item you don't want?

So what I need to do is Download everything I want to keep from the right side to the left side, then drag & drop them from there into the Local pane and then click Upload?  Is that right?  (Just want to be 100% sure)

[Michele31415]

Well, one step forward, two steps back.  I put the "2632" command in my  startup-sequence file as recommended in the DKB manual and now the  machine won't boot anymore.  It goes all the way through the "Deneb  intro" thing twice and then hangs.  I'll have to boot from my 3.9  emergency floppy tomorrow and take that line out.  At least I hope  that's why it's not booting now.  Sigh...

[Michele31415]

Well what I did was boot from my OS 3.9 Emergency floppy.  That let me edit out the 2632 command from startup-sequnce.  After that, it rebooted OK.  So then I ran Luciferin and was able to reflash the Deneb card, removing the DenebIntro module (as well as that annoying "StayingAlive" requester).

Then I rebooted again.  Now the machine won't boot at all.  All I get is a blank screen.  I finally had to pull the Deneb card out.  With that gone, it boots OK.  So now what?  Did I just brick my Deneb?

For the record, I reflashed using the following list:

denebpiousb.device
denebz2usb.device
hid.class
hub.class
massstorage.class
poseidon.library
PsdStackloader

Heeeeellllp!

[Michele31415]

So... If your system works just fine without anything... then install Poseidon, configure it and if it works, insert into Deneb's flash the correct device that works on your system, and the PsdStackLoader that resides on your Env-Archive folder. Don't forget that every change you make on the USB configuration needs a fresh PsdStackLoader!

OK, so I stuck in the "disable ROM" Deneb jumper and rebooted.  This time the system came up normally (and for once without the Deneb animation and the "Still Alive" requester) but also without my 8 gig USB stick device that's plugged into the internal Deneb connector showing up in WB.

So what are you suggesting - that now I should reflash the Deneb ROM again with nothing but poseidon.library and PsdStackloader in the list?  Does it matter what order they're in?   For that matter, is it even possible to set the order?  It seemed like when I was adding stuff last time they ended up in alphabetical order, although that's not the way they were originally.

All I really want is to be able to use USB devices on the Amiga.  I'm not too concerned about being able to do USB boots.

The problem now is that when I run Luciferin, it says "I'm sorry, I couldn't find a Deneb device",  So now what?

[Michele31415]

Ah ha - thank you so much, Matt.  Obviously my assumptions about the way this card worked were incorrect.  Your explanation really helps. And I'll bet anything that you're right about the pio device too.  I have no idea how that got it there.  I'm pretty sure I just followed the installation instructions that came with the card.

It's getting late tonight but I'll give that a try first thing tomorrow :-)

[Michele31415]

" Fire up Trident, configure Poseidon, bring the stack online, and hit Save."

I hate to sound dense, but can you expand on that a bit?  I got the  "fire up Trident" part OK, but how do I bring the stack online?  In  Trident I see menus for controllers, devices and classes (oh my) but I  need some help in finding my way to Oz, as it were.  Thanks.

[Michele31415]

OK, well scratch what I said last time.  The machine did boot, but the reason Trident said it couldn't find a Deneb board was because I hadn't reseated it fully in the card slot after setting the "No ROM" jumper.  I also realized that there were no green LED's on on the Deneb.

So I reseated the card fully and rebooted.  Now the machine won't boot at all.  The No Rom jumper is in place, the top two LED's on the Deneb are lit ("FPGA booted" and "Zorro II mode"), but absolutely nothing happens, no disk activity or anything.  It won't even boot from DF0.

I did the L-R mouse button boot and ran the Expansion Board Diagnostic.  This is what I got:

Board  Number  Manufacturer  Product   Status
        1                  514             81     Working
        2                  514              3      Working
        3                 4626             23     Working
        4                 3643             18     Working
        4                 3643             19     Working
        5                   513              1     Working

The Deneb is board no. 4, mfr. 3643.  According to the Deneb manual, this should show up as Products 18 and 20.  I'm seeing 18 and 19.  Is this (part of) the problem?

The current configuration, looking from the front is

Slot   Board
1      empty
2      A2088
3      Deneb
4      Xsurf
5      A2091
6      empty
CPU  A2630 with DKB2632

If I pull the Deneb out, it boots normally.  Any ideas?  I'm starting to wish I had just left the fool thing alone.  At least before I reflashed the ROM, it was working.

Update: After about a dozen reboot attempts, I got it to boot off the Emergency OS 3.9 floppy, with the jumper removed on the Deneb.  But now when I click on Trident, I get an error "Failed to load version 3 of Poseidon.library".  All I can do then is click "Cancel".  What's that all about?

Update 2: OK, I figured out how to assign the libs: so Trident was happy.  Now in Trident I click to the Controllers panel and see Unit = 0, Online = No, and Product = unknown until online.  So I click on the "Online" button at the bottom of the window and I get an error:

"Failure poseidon.library Opening DEVS:USBHardware unit 0 failed deviceInit failed to open(-1)".  

This message is repeated three times.  Now what?

Update 3: Just for laughs, I tried running Luciferin again.  This time I get a pop-up error
"Your Deneb card has the ROM-OFF jumper set and thus the Flashrom contents are currently "DEACTIVATED" until you remove the jumper.  This is only an information."

But I removed the jumper one or two reboots ago!  This is shall we say, slightly mystifying.

[Michele31415]

"Have you tried inserting Deneb in another zorro slot (for example the first empty one you got)?"

No I haven't.  I only have one empty one all the way to the right, but I can't use it because the 2632 blocks it.  I could try pulling the 2088 and moving the Deneb one slot to the left.

"Also, what version of Poseidon are you installing?"

Yup - 3.0.  That's what came with the Deneb.  Thanks for the link.  I grabbed the latest Poseidon and Trident and will install them tonight.

[Michele31415]

Um, I have a stupid question - if the only way I can get the machine to  boot is by inserting the Deneb "no rom" jumper, but Luciferin refuses to  rewrite the rom when that jumper is in place, then how the heck can I ever change the contents of the rom?

[Michele31415]

"Luciferin is easy stuff, it just needs a bit of attention."

Sure - it's easy once you know how it works.

"Btw I dont' recall Deneb coming with Poseidon 3.x"

Well mine did.  I bought it brand new from Amikit on 8/6/08 and followed the installation directions exactly.  I never downloaded any Deneb software from anywhere else, so that's the only place 3.0 could have been.

[Michele31415]

Get Poseidon 4.4 installed first and report back.

Did you try the "hold left mouse button to disable Flash" trick I mentioned earlier? The board ships with the settings I described, so unless a previous owner changed them, you should be able to disable the Flash in software

Poseidon 4.4 downloaded and installed without problems.  I also installed the new version of Luciferin - again it installed OK.

Thanks for reminding me about the left-button boot.  I just missed that somehow.  I tried that and hey presto, it booted normally from the hard drive with the Deneb installed with no jumpers on it.

So I fired up Trident and clicked on "Controllers".  This time I saw this:

             USB Hardware Contollers available

Name              Unit  Online      Product

denebz2usb.device   0     Yes   Deneb EHCI USB Host Controller
denebpiousb.device  0      No   unknown until online

So that's different!  Last time, this pane was empty.  So we're clearly making some major progress.  Can you tell me exactly what I need to do now to get the pio device (which is apprently screwing things up) out of the ROM?  I'm so paranoid about this now I don't want to screw it up.  Thanks.

[Michele31415]

And that deletes it from the Flash rom too?  I thought I had to use Luciferin to do that.

By the way, even without clicking on anything in Trident yet, I noticed that my USB stick is now showing up on the WB screen, and when I open it, my files are all there.

[Michele31415]

OK, I think I've got it now.  I deleted the pio device using Trident and then saved that.  Then I used Luciferin to reflash the rom with nothing in it.  Then I I did a normal reboot (no mouse buttons presses, and no jumpers on Deneb).  Surprise - everything came right up, including the icon for the USB stick!  I guess I thought all that poseidon stuff was required to be in the flash rom in order for the Deneb to work but apparently that isn't the case.

So I guess the only remaining question is, if I'm not planning to boot from a USB device, do I really need to store anything in the flash rom at all?

Anyway, thanks very much to you and Matt for helping me figure out this Chinese puzzle.