Old-timer looking for A1200 hardware help

[lorddef]

I'm in the process of trying to ressurect my A1200 tower, which has been sat in the loft for many years. I'm looking for some tips and advice to refresh my knowledge

The system is an A1200 2b / Blizzard 68060 with the scsi kit / original 5v mediator / 3.1 roms and fast ata board. The hard disk seems to have been the main fatality, so I'm slowly getting it set up again.

I've managed to get os 3.9 reinstalled with the help of an emergency disk, I've got the voodoo3 card functiong with an old 2.0) version of picasso96 and fairly old mediator drivers. I've yet to get it on the network or bring in any updated software - I intend to update the mediator drivers and picasso 96 once I can.

What I've had issues with are the mixer library and the ata3.device driver.  Questions I have are:

After installing the mediator mm cd and update the Amiga will not boot - I managed to remember the whole startup-sequence thing, and after removing the mixer entry from user-startup it now boots and the voodoo3 is working. What should I try to debug the mixer issue? Is this related to AHI?  I've a feeling I may have some sort of mashup of different AHI software after the reinstall and install from the mm cd, and possibly the incorrect sound driver.

After installing the ata3.driver from a floppy disk I have the machine also failed to boot. Again this was a case of removing the entry from the startup-sequence to boot again.
Back in the day I had a powerflyer in another amiga 1200 so said floppy disk could have come with that, could it be the case I simply have the "wrong" ata3.driver? The board I have simply says "fast ide controller" on it - is there a way to tell which one it is? (I dont see anything in the early boot menu for this board).

I'm sure I'll get to the bottom of it, but would appreciate some tips and memory jogging!

Also a lot seems to have changed in 20 or so years! New accelerator boards and now another branch of os 3.1! Am I wasting my time on this setup?

[Boing-ball]

Hi,

Welcome back to Amiga ownership.

So let’s answer these questions for you:

- Mixer not working = No PCI Soundcard being seen. Check that the soundcard has been fitted to the mediator. This is either s Soundblaster CT or FM card.

List of supported Mediator PCI cards and software here:

https://elbox.com/downloads_mediator.html

Remember, that to check your PCI cards, then open up a Shell CLI and type the command pciinfo

This will list up all of the PCI cards the libs pci.library and s vendors.list can see.

As for the FastATA. Then yes it can depend on the version and driver used. If this is one of the oldest and first made FastATA then you will need to try the MK1 driver. Any other drivers for mk3 to Mk VI will not work. But again it could be the card has failed to be seen or needs a removal and reconnect maybe due to getting loose or maybe dirt build up.

FastATA drivers are found here:

https://elbox.com/downloads_fastata.html

Nothing wrong in using P96 V2.0 for the RTG side with the Voodoo 3.

[lorddef]

Thanks. Unfortunately tonight I went to boot it up and its not booting.

Annoying as the voodoo card was at least working.

Now if I comment out loadmondrvs in the startup-sequence I can get it to boot, but running the voodoo monitor causes a lockup.

Is there any way to debug a monitor loading up?

All the boards are showing up in pciinfo, so I guess it could be some sort of hardware fault.

I had installed some mm cd updates, but ve tried going back and no change. Os it possible the eclectic mix of  drivers is the issue?

[Boing-ball]

Okay. So if no longer booting, then it indicates driver or hardware issues.
The devs monitors will have a voodoo monitor tool type which P96 relies on for display.
Either the P96 is messed up or the card has become disjointed from the PCI connector enough to fully function.
Have had this many a time with the newer 1200 Mediator boards.

Can you provide an output of your pciinfo on here?

The cards should show the name of the card and not the term “Unknown”.

You do still have the vendors list in S draw? As pciinfo and pci.library require this to understand the cards attached.

What does P96mode in Prefs show? Ie. When you try and attach a RTG card, does the Voodoo show up?

Other issues maybe around the PSU not providing enough voltage to the Mediator at 5v per PCI slot.

[lorddef]

Thanks, yes I'm hoping I just messed up the Picasso install somehow by adding the updates.

The ones I installed were MM_CD1.23 and Mediator_UP37 - I'm unsure what the differences are between those updates, they were from back in 2003 and I'm sure the were the last ones I used. It was late at night when I did that and I can't for the life of me remember if I rebooted and it was working or if I just shut down afterwards.

Last night I tried uninstalling P96 and starting over but no luck.

To answer your questions; yes I have a "voodoo" monitor in devs:monitors and I also tried recreating that afresh from the Cybervision 3d one and updating the tooltypes - no luck.

Being a homebrew case the PCI edge connections have never been properly aligned, but it did always work before; I've just disassembled it and reseated the fastata, mediator and sorted that so they are now better positioned.

pciinfo is complete for most cards - I have Realtek nic and that is showing unknown. Hard for me to get the output because it's currently isolated - maybe I can take some photos tonight.

Could you please elaborate what you mean when you say "vendors list in S draw"?

P96Mode did show all the different modes for the voodoo card. When it initially stopped working it still showed them, but the mode I was using changed to "inactive" (I think that;s what it said)

I know that's all probably a bit of a garbled reply, hopefully I'll be a better "help asker" when I've had another go.

Will report back after trying the re-seated system. Thanks for the help, much appreciated!

[Boing-ball]

Okay to answer this in order:

Lastest MM CD UP is 2.6 but there are later drivers missing from that update. Check here:

https://elbox.com/downloads_mediator.html

Such as Voodoo.driver 4.36 as well as pci.library ver 3.14 for 68060 utilisation and V 3.15 for 68040 (possibly 68060 as well).

In S you should have something called Vendors.txt this has a list of all known PCI card vendors.

Just to check, when you installed the latest MMCDUP you did run Medconfig in prefs to setup the card preferences?

[lorddef]

Apologies for the late response, life got in the way! Thanks for all the version information too; I did have vendors.txt but hadnt run med config.

Whilst hunting for a CD with mui on it, I stumbled across a backup file!

The system is booting off the backup which has various things like the ata3 driver and ahi enabled, however as soon as I try to use the vodoo3 it crashes.

Now, I should be on the last known stable setup, I've now noticed sometimes the voodoo3 shows up and sometimes it does not.  I'm currently investigating the psu its an old AT one that has been rewitred.  Will let you know how I get on,  hopefully I can find a source for a new AT psu, or a suitable converter.

[lorddef]

Had chance to take another look last night.  It sems if I  move the voodoo3 into the first pci slot it is recognised always, but in the 4th slot only occasionally.

I can now conistently get the machine to boot and load the workbench screen on the voodoo3, but as soon as I see the screen on the voodoo3 the machine freezes.

I wondered if it could be a power issue, but +5v is stable at 5.06v and +12v stable at 11.92v; the latter seemed a bit low to me but I have read that's within spec.

I'm pretty certain it is a hardware issue, since the workbench install is a restore of my working setup back on the day.

Could be that the voodoo3 is failing.

Had anyone had similar issues and resolved them?

[Boing-ball]

I have had this issue a couple of times in the A1200 Mediator setup. This is normally down to the Voodoo card not getting a good connection. This card is used by the mediator for DMA and for other PCI cards to function.

Couple of things to try first:

- Clean the PCI slots and Voodoo card edge connector with contact cleaner or Deoxit to make sure of proper connection.

- Has the Amiga Mainboard been recapped?

- Try reseating the Mediator board onto the adapter as well as clean those connectors with contact cleaner or deoxit.

- Try another PSU just incase

Good luck.

[lorddef]

Pulled out a can of serviceol 10 and a toothbrush and it's up. In all it's 800x600 glory - thats all the monitor in the garage can handle, it usually just sees car diagnostics.

Now, i need to update some software I guess. Is there a modern ssllibrary?

What else is new in 20 years?

[Boing-ball]

https://www.ibrowse-dev.net/

Have a look on Aminet.net for other stuff….

Depends what you want to do with the Amiga.