ACSI2STM problems

[BrettRogersUK]

Well i'm at a loss now as to what to try next.

For the life of me I cannot get this thing working. I'm now starting to believe it is a problem with the ACSI port itself however, with the device getting the ready to go signal It would appear that at least the CS+A1 pins on the port are working. It;s just that there isn't any request or acknowledgement or even any data request going to this device.

I have never had as much trouble getting a project to work as I have with this one.

Would changing my original CPU to an HC one make any difference?

Has anyone got a working device that they could send me so I can try it on my Atari to see if the port does actually work. If it doesn't work then I know there is definitely a hardware problem somewhere.

I just don't have the tools or equipment to be able to diagnose the ACSI port problems. I do have a digital oscilloscope but not quite learned how to use it.

If anyone else has anything more to add here I would be very grateful of where to look next.

Kindest Regards,

Brett

[Darklord]

It's too bad you don't have another ST to try this on. Do you know
someone close who could double-check it on their machine, just
to rule things out?

[BrettRogersUK]

It's too bad you don't have another ST to try this on. Do you know
someone close who could double-check it on their machine, just
to rule things out?

It's been tried on my dad's ST as well and it didn't work there either. I built two devices exactly the same and neither of them seem to work.

It's frustrating more than anything.

Cheers

Brett

[Darklord]

In that case I'd just make the observation that the odds are pretty
long (but not impossible) that both ACSI ports on both machines
are flawed...

Do you have any other known working ACSI devices that you could
use on both machines? If you could just establish that those 2 ports
are in fact, working, it would at least allow you to concentrate on
the ACSI2STM devices.

[olivier.jan]

Hi,
How do you power your ACSI2STM ? I had various problems with mine in the past changing the USB power supply fixed it. On my STE it was not recognized and/or the floppy drive was not working when ACSI2STM was plugged in. Using a good quality 2.5A USB power supply fixed it.

[BrettRogersUK]

In that case I'd just make the observation that the odds are pretty
long (but not impossible) that both ACSI ports on both machines
are flawed...

Do you have any other known working ACSI devices that you could
use on both machines? If you could just establish that those 2 ports
are in fact, working, it would at least allow you to concentrate on
the ACSI2STM devices.

Unfortunately I don't. There has NEVER been an acsi device plugged into these machines at all up until I built the ACSI2STM the other day.

I have even tried cleaning the port on the back just in case any corrosion was present.

There is no way of testing the port without the test harness that goes along with the diagnostic cartridge but when the board went for repair @rubber_jonnie tested the port with his test rig and the test passed.

[BrettRogersUK]

Hi,
How do you power your ACSI2STM ? I had various problems with mine in the past changing the USB power supply fixed it. On my STE it was not recognized and/or the floppy drive was not working when ACSI2STM was plugged in. Using a good quality 2.5A USB power supply fixed it.

I've been powering it from a USB port on my laptop using a FTDI serial device, through a powered USB hub device and also through a Samsung galaxy phone charger with the 5v and GND wires soldered to their respective positions on the blue pill board.

I just have nclue as to why it isn't working, it's very odd.

[rubber_jonnie]

Hey Brett, at this point I'd suggest that you stop and take stock a moment.

Firstly, the device doesn't work on your Dad's machine either, and I suspect the chances of both machines having bad ACSI are very low, plus yours passes all the tests with the Atari diagnostic cart and loopback connectors.

Next, there is the image at the beginning of this thread that shows the SD card as not found. If it's still doing this, it doesn't matter how many STs you try it on, if it can't see the SD card, it can't mount the HDD image and you'll never see it on the ST.

If it is still showing this error message then you need to fix that first. If it's anything like the BlueSCSI it'll mount the SD card when the BluePill boots, so you can probably simulate that just by powering it up over the BluePill USB connector.

Once the SD card is detected, it may need filenames that are very specific, so double check the name of the image. The BlueSCSI requires a very specific naming convention to determine what drives are on a specific LUN and ID, and if it's wrong, it doesn't play nicely. I'm not familiar with the ACSI2STM requirements but it's worth double checking.

[BrettRogersUK]

Hey Brett, at this point I'd suggest that you stop and take stock a moment.

Firstly, the device doesn't work on your Dad's machine either, and I suspect the chances of both machines having bad ACSI are very low, plus yours passes all the tests with the Atari diagnostic cart and loopback connectors.

Next, there is the image at the beginning of this thread that shows the SD card as not found. If it's still doing this, it doesn't matter how many STs you try it on, if it can't see the SD card, it can't mount the HDD image and you'll never see it on the ST.

If it is still showing this error message then you need to fix that first. If it's anything like the BlueSCSI it'll mount the SD card when the BluePill boots, so you can probably simulate that just by powering it up over the BluePill USB connector.

Once the SD card is detected, it may need filenames that are very specific, so double check the name of the image. The BlueSCSI requires a very specific naming convention to determine what drives are on a specific LUN and ID, and if it's wrong, it doesn't play nicely. I'm not familiar with the ACSI2STM requirements but it's worth double checking.

The acsi2stm device doesn't really require an image to work. It has two modes that it works in.

1. In Gemdrive mode where if you have a clean SD card with nothing on it it will see that card as one big drive. Basically it implements the same thing as the Hatari ST Emulator.

2. Acsi mode. Where it'll treat the card an an ACSI hard drive.

https://github.com/retro16/acsi2stm/blo ... /manual.md

The pic earlier in the thread showed that the image wasn't found because it couldn't find it on the card, however it found the sd card as a mountable image because it was clean and reported the number of blocks the card had available. Otherwise it would have said that SD0 couldn't be found.

I have tried with the image of an HD placed in an acsi2stm folder called hd0.img and it finds it and opens it and marks the card as bootable.

The mode can be changed on the blue pill by changing the BOOT1 jumper to 1 to force a strict ACSI mode.

The odds that I have two duff ACSI ports are very slim indeed yes, but not implausible. It would be just my luck to have this happen. I can't see me building two devices with the same problem to be honest.

20230728_175507.jpg (401.37 KiB) Viewed 3491 times

[rubber_jonnie]

The pic earlier in the thread showed that the image wasn't found because it couldn't find it on the card, however it found the sd card as a mountable image because it was clean and reported the number of blocks the card had available. Otherwise it would have said that SD0 couldn't be found.

Fair enough on those points. But if you look closely at the picture, it shows this:

Screenshot 2023-07-30 at 11.27.03.png (228.02 KiB) Viewed 3489 times

Sure, there is an error, it can't find an image and it suggests SD0 is mounted, but it seems to be mounted as read only (ro), and I don't know if that is going to be an issue or not, just mentioning it.

BTW I fixed your image with a quick 90 degree rotate, and inserted it into the post inline.

I'd suggest you send me one over. I have a myriad of machines I can test it on and it'll verify one way or the other if it works or not. I have everything from a base 520ST up to my MSTE and most things in between, and unless you know if its working or not, you'll never know if it's your STE or not.

One other thing, I presume the image your using has drivers installed, if not then you'll need the drivers before it'll work.