exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

FluffyRedLobster wrote: 30 Apr 2019 21:36 Tried a 25Mhz oscillator. A bit more stable with cpu fastrom enabled - navigating workbench didn't freeze up. However memory tests in amigatestkit still froze when filling fastram.

Ordered the necessary resistors, will try that next :)

25Mhz is a bit slow for testing a TF5xx card. Go up to 33 or 40.

Cheers for the tip. Got a 40 on the way. :D

So I tried a 40MHz oscillator and resistors on RP106 and 107, with no improvement. Still all good without cpu fastrom, unstable with it turned on.

I had 4 spare RAM chips (TIN rather than TCN but I believe that the difference is only the operating temperature range) so I removed the existing chips and popped those on to rule out a bad ram chip... and made it worse - it now only boots into diagrom, ks 3.1 gives a white screen :lol:

I'm pretty sure it's just a solder bridge, but by this point my patience was wearing thin so my attention turned to the drawer full of 534 components waiting to be assembled :roll:

So for now my 530 is sitting on the side while I (hopefully) use the lessons learned from building it in the 534 build. I'll come back to the 530 when the 534 works. I'll start a separate thread for the 534, early signs are good though - both cplds programmed on first attempt :D

Oh that's rough. My 530 build was difficult too. I had tons of soldering problems - most of mine had to do with pins not being soldered; there were only a few bridges. Once I figured out a way to test for unsoldered pins, things went well. To test, I give each pin a little push. If a pin doesn't move it's good; if it does move, I add a little solder. Some kind of microscope is helpful while doing this. To test for bridges, I use a continuity meter and test every single pin with its neighbors.

Anyway, it took me 2 months to get my 530 working.

My 534 went a lot smoother - it worked after a few days. Hope yours is working soon.

Thanks chue - I think I struggle with unsoldered pins more than bridges too.

I got my 530 back up and running today with the new memory - still alliance per the bom but TIN rather than TCN. Since my last post I've acquired another 500 rev6a motherboard so I was able to test on both. Still getting the same behaviour with cpu fastrom / mufastrom on both boards. Interestingly I saw 8 Bit Dreams post in the 534 forum that there might be a known issue (not specific to TF cards) with cpu fastrom on 030s.

I really should leave it alone as it runs pretty nice now it's alive again :lol: