DFBX1 Issues

[VadimK]

Flashing TOS 4.01 cured all my issues

Thank you!

[mikro]

If you remove the TOS4.01 from on-board, you'll find the corruption turns to black boxes instead. I wouldn't recommend this as then you remove your ability to boot with DFB1 disabled to reflash.

While we are on the topic of chips removal: what about the FPU? Not sure whether it was on Exxos page or your wiki but somewhere it was recommended to remove it due to bus conflicts. Is this still true with the Exxos version? If so, would you mind to explain why it's not a problem for TOS ROM (well, except the one described above ) but it is for the FPU?

Btw how sensitive would the DFB1X be to 50 MHz DSP? If it worked, that would surely increase backward compatibility with DSP demos, mine included.

[Kcr060]

Hi everyone.
I recently acquired a DFB1x from Exxos and must admit I've had quite a lot issues with it. Long story short, after changing the psu for a new one (which did not help) , buying an ide buffer and a lot of reading and fumbling around, it now runs quite stable, but (at least for now) there are still two things I could not fix:
I just can't get Magic 6.2 to run. The Loader crashes and hangs right after start. Tried a lot of stuff, but with no result.
The same goes for Texel v. 2.2 and 2.3. Mostly it bombs, but sometimes it shows anerror message - I made a photo. See the attachment.
My Setup:
TOS 4.04, FPU, 14MB ST-RAM, new PSU, CFCard as HDD, HDDriver 12.06. I did not change the flashed TOS 4.04 - it's the same as on the falcon board.
Tried Maprom 1.9 and 2.2 - same results. Boot order: Maprom, wdialog, nvdi.
It might be a single problem causing the two issues. I also tried scsitool / hushi as driver and at least Texel did start, so it might be somehow linked to Hddriver, but I did not find any settings there that would change anything. Just ran out of ideas... and time by now. Any help is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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[Steve]

We probably need to @Badwolf because there seems to be a few DFB questions lately, this and also Stephen's in his thread viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7445

[Kcr060]

Thanks for your reply. Just tried acetracker. It starts up and I hear a cracking sound in the loudspeakers but as soon as I try to load anything the picture disappears and the monitor just goes to sleep.
I don't think it's a dsp issue in my case though, because badmood now seems to run. At least for a few minutes. Need to test it longer.
I also tested fastram.prg instead of maprom and then loading Magic: it throws 2 bombs and goes to the desktop.

[Steve]

@Kcr060 did you mention what clock patch is on your motherboard?

[Kcr060]

Well, I don't know what happened, but suddenly Kobold.prg does not start anymore. Throws bombs and hangs... even after turning the Falcon off for some minutes and resetting the NVRAM (which in my machine is empty but keeps the settings in the dfb1x TOS somehow). So does correct.prg and probably others, too.
With no offense, I think it is great that there is new Hard & Software for Atari computers in 2024, but this card is really driving me crazy... At first, I mysteriously lost all my data on the harddisk right on the beginning when I started my adventure with this card, spent countless hours in trying to get it working reliably, spent money on new PSUs and stuff but sadly it still fails. It is so disappointing...
And I have to say, that I would not buy it again knowing then, what I know now. Honestly, right now I'm in the mood to rip that thing out and have a working stock machine again.

[Kcr060]

@Steve I don't know actually if there is one. I will make a photo, when I open it up again. But before the card I did not have any issues.

[Kcr060]

Kobold and some other programs still won't start anymore. I tried with another Harddisk driver, but still throwing bombs. I have no idea what to do...
Is there a way of resetting the dfb1? Or should I flash it with another TOS? But which one?

[Kcr060]

Just flashed Emutos 1.3 to the second bank without errors.
Sometimes it seems to work and sometimes this happens...

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IMG_20250104_215515.jpg (413.73 KiB) Viewed 1042 times