Amiga 3000, Deneb and the different Busters

[Damion]

The A3000 shipped with a Level 1 Buster 7 which did not contain Zorro III DMA in any shape or form.

The SCSI never changed over the years and so cannot be Zorro III DMA and in turn cannot interfere with DENEB.

Makes perfect sense, there's no SCSI DMA over the Zorro bus (just to onboard RAM) so why would the DENEB be affected?

Wouldn't this also be the case with the A4000T (NCR motherboard SCSI)?

[HammerD]

Makes perfect sense, there's no SCSI DMA over the Zorro bus (just to onboard RAM) so why would the DENEB be affected?

Wouldn't this also be the case with the A4000T (NCR motherboard SCSI)?

The Deneb should work in ZIII DMA in A3000 with Rev 9 or Rev 11 Buster chip.  Of course you have to have the denebdmausb in the flashrom.

And assuming you have no other Zorro 3 DMA cards like a FastLane Z3.

[save2600]

Just updated the Firmware to V9 and still cannot get DMA to work.

denebdmausb and the other two devices are in the FlashROM of Deneb.

I have deleted the other two and only kept denebdmausb.device in Trident.

System will boot with the card in ZIII mode, but as soon as I insert a flashdrive, it's icon will pop up and if I attempt to double-click on my HD OR the flashdrive - the machine freezes...

[alexh]

Should work if all your jumpers are right, latest Poseidon v4.3 software installed. Firmware updated to V9 and no other Zorro III DMA Masters present.

Ask Michael Boehmer of E3B. He's an nice guy and will give you all the support you need. Just read all the docs first.

Damion wrote:
Wouldn't this also be the case with the A4000T (NCR motherboard SCSI)?

Nope. The A4000T SCSI is a complete Zorro III DMA A4091 integrated into the motherboard.

[save2600]

If I can't get this resolved here, I'll track down Mr. Boehmer on that board per your suggestion.

I do believe there is a conflict of some kind though with my HD. Is there a jumper on the mobo that could be to blame?

Deneb simply will not work in PIO or DMA mode on my A3000. Zorro II is really frickin' fast though, but as would be the norm in Amiga hardwareland, just wondering why these other modes don't work?!?

Looking at a data sheet of the pinouts, nothing says 'DMA' burst mode or anything...  lol

[Matt_H]

Try without the FlashROM for now - empty it with Luciferin (you shouldn't have to deal with any more jumpers by this point). Then set up Poseidon and start it the old fashioned way by putting PsdStackLoader in user-startup. Make sure to do a cold reset to make sure the Flash contents are truly cleared from memory.

[save2600]

I did that as per a hint from the German site where I got the Firmware update.

I didn't disable Flash though... just emptied it.

PSDstackloader is in my User-Startup. There's a couple of things I am unclear of:

When the machine asks "clear all vectors", I always say yes - even though I have no idea what the hell a vector is - but it sounds good to flush anything...  lol

Do I need to run the PSDROMTag at anytime? Not even entirely sure what installing or uninstalling them really does...

-edit-

It's so weird... in ZII jumpered mode, I can start Trident, hit the restart button on the bottom and it'll default to ZII and work fine. If I do not have ZII jumpered and hit restart, it'll find the PIO.device and then crash the machine. Same with dma...

To be clear, so you think there's nothing wrong with a setting my A3000's mobo?

Do I need to update V8 of the Firmware and then V9? I skipped directly to 9...

Would the way the mobo or the HD is terminated be a problem?

[tone007]

USB on Amiga?! Unnatural! Unheard of! Absurd!

..seriously though, that's one of the few things I've absolutely never been inspired to try.

Good luck, though.

[save2600]

USB on the Miggy rocks when it works and it DOES work in ZII mode all_day_long. Not just this purported super-high-speed mode. lol  

Screw SCSI drives and the HD limitations of OS3.1. With USB, you can have as large a flashdrive as you want! The setup on my A3000 is an old 40mb Quantum HD with OS3.1 on it and the Deneb software. System boots uber-quick and I read/write all extraneous stuff via the flashdrive. Works extremely well and will be happy with ZII mode if I am forced to for whatever reason.

Tone, I assume that's you in your avatar? Always good to place a face with a name. We should all do that, but I've noticed on these kinds of forums, more choose not to than do.

[save2600]

Okay... Got her working in DMA mode finally!  Seems I had to completely erase the Flash part of Deneb a few times and then made sure ONLY denebdmausb.device was flashed to it (not the other two). I was trying 2-3 different things at the time (alternating between flashing the ROM and deleting the devices in Trident), so can only conclude something was funky residing in envarc or the Flash of Deneb.



Other "new" artifact I am experiencing is a green screen (maybe 2 flashes of green) before the computer starts up. IS that Deneb saying she's okay finally? lol

Okay... the system has been off for a while now. Going to re-boot and see if the damn thing still works...  lol

-edit-

Yep, spoke too soon. Seems dma only wants to work with a small 124mb card. Stuck a 4gb thumbdrive and she either crashes or pops an icon and then crashes  

[tone007]

Tone, I assume that's you in your avatar? Always good to place a face with a name. We should all do that, but I've noticed on these kinds of forums, more choose not to than do.

Yeah, I figure if I'm putting a picture on Facebook that's available to the whole world, might as well use the same one here.  I think my Joker pic was a little too weird.

[save2600]

So yeah, tried every Flash combo & Deneb jumper combo to no avail. I must have the only A3000 in the world where Deneb doesn't work in PIO or DMA mode. lol  

Zorro II or bust for this Amiga spud I guess!  

-edit-

A thought just occurred... because the ZIII DMA mode was flaky (big time) and caused computer freezes, might it have been because my 4GB HP thumbdrive needed to be hooked to a self-powered hub??

[Matt_H]

Let's see. In no particular order...

Reset vectors are something to do with reset-resident stuff. So if you've changed the contents of the Flash, clearing the reset vectors will make sure that the Flash is re-read when you reboot. It also clears out stuff like BlizKick, IDEFix (if it's been made resident), maybe even the 3.9 modules (don't remember). I've had mixed results clearing Poseidon stuff. A push from this tool sometime helps. A cold reboot usually works better.

Green flashes are normal. That's a good sign.

PsdRomTag makes your current configuration reset resident. Useful if you don't have a Flash ROM and you don't want to reload from disk at every boot. Also means that you can boot from a USB stick once the modules are loaded in. Makes more sense with a Highway or Subway card.

It sounds like you're almost there. I've got a few more ideas you might try. First, unset the Zorro II jumper. Comment out PsdStackLoader and (cold) boot with the Flash disabled (LMB by default). Pop into Trident and make sure the only hardware controller is denebpio.device. Go into the Configuration panel and delete everything there (except the core, which you can't delete). Go to Classes, massstorage.class. Set the Startup delay to 1000ms. Hit Save Defaults. Hit Save in Trident itself.

Now go into Luciferin. Clear out the list of modules on the Local tab. Now select Poseidon USB from the Quick Setup menu (should work out to be about 1300 blocks). Upload that to the Flash. Loading in the device alone isn't enough, because the rest of the stack needs to be there to know what to do with it

Make sure PsdStackLoader is still commented out from user-startup, and cold boot. Any luck?

The startup delay under massstorage.class is something that I only figured out last weekend. Whenever I tried to boot with a Flash drive attached, it wouldn't be detected and opening Trident would hang the machine. Maybe the same mechanism is behind your problems.

If this all works, you can probably swap in denebdma.device, save, and re-Flash to get going at full speed.

[platon42]

There is no known reason why the Deneb should be run in Zorro II mode in Zorro III capable machines. Zorro III PIO should always work in A3000/A4000D/A4000T. Zorro III DMA should also work in A3000 with no other DMA masters.

If you're using a Buster Rev. 9, you should install the DenebBuster9IDTag in flashrom and/or set the enviroment variable to reflect this (there is a readme about this in the Poseidon and Luciferin archives). As far as I know, this only is necessary for DMA mode on Buster 9 machines.

Some CPU board incorrectly set the Zorro III space to cachable at init even before the Poseidon kicks in and this can cause the hardware driver to fail to open (this does not seem to be the case here though). However, it might be still wise to check the MMU setup of the Zorro III region (because Zorro II is always cache-inhibit, but Zorro III might not be) especially on 68040/68060 machines. You might want to try out Thomas Richter's MMU library.

The DMA engine of the Deneb is only activated on larger transfers, so mice and keyboards will not trigger it -- you will need an USB stick to test it.

It always helps to have the latest firmware version, which can be obtained at http://www.e3b.de -- there were some specific fixes I cannot remember though. Michael will know (if you send him an email today, it's his birthday).

In Zorro III mode, the denebz2usb.device will fail to open. In Zorro II mode, both denebdmausb.device and denebpiousb.device will fail to open. So you need to select the right device in trident for your system configuration.

I know at least one user who is using the Deneb in Zorro III mode in his machine without problems.

Other than the Buster9IDTag and the wrong cache settings, Zorro II/III has no relevance to flashrom whatsoever (except that the Zorro II space is limited and putting the card in Zorro II mode will take up 128 KB address space instead of 64 KB).

Be aware that some software system hacks in the past have caused trouble of all sorts. To be sure that your system is clean, boot without startup-sequence with Poseidon in flashrom (use the quick setup menu item). Mount the stick, check if you can access it. If this doesn't work, try running setpatch before and after mounting the usb stick.

Also, other Zorro III board have known to interfere because of them violating the Zorro III timings and specs (Picasso IV). For the latter, all known problems have been fixed.

The latest version of Poseidon is V4.4.

[alexh]

The latest version of Poseidon is V4.4.

Oooo, released today.

I see from the README that the RTL8150 Ethernet adapter class was commissioned? Are we going to see one of the Amiga shops selling USB ethernet adapters?

[platon42]

Oooo, released today.

I see from the README that the RTL8150 Ethernet adapter class was commissioned? Are we going to see one of the Amiga shops selling USB ethernet adapters?

I doubt it. I was merely bribed with gifts :-)