Phil C's Raven build

[PhilC]

So those of you who have been following along know that I've been having some trouble with using a CL-GD5434 card in my Raven,with it crashing under Tyrian and Doom.

Over the last few days I've been conducting some experimentation with CPU clock frequencies and seeing if these have an effect on anything.

My Raven will run happily at 96mhz all day long with the overclocked CL-GD5429 graphics card installed but crashes within a minute or two when trying to ruin anything graphics wise with the 5434.

I wanted too rule out if the CPU was the issue causing the crashes, so tried a few other frequencies.

At 88mhz Tyrian and Doom crash instantly, with Tyrian only making it as far as the menu screen and crashing instantly. Doom was pretty much the same.

At 90mhz the Raven seemed to be playing nicer with the GD5434 but would still crash but after about 10 - 20 mins or the Tyrian demo looping.

The next oscillator I had that I'd not tried was a 50mhz rectangular oscillator (which doubles to 100mhz or the Raven) that I'd had in my parts bin for a few years. I didn't expect much from this, thinking that this would likely cause a CPU crash.

Amusingly this seems to be the most stable out of the lot. With Tyrian running for a number of 20 min sessions with me resetting the Raven and repeating. Now its not much faster than the Raven at 96mhz, so I wasn't planning on using the 100mhz for bragging rights or anything but strangely, this combination of the Diamond Speedster 64 overclocked and the Raven running at 100mhz CPU is so far the most reliable its been.

I do have a good fan on the 68060from a Pentium, some good case fans and heatsinks on just about everything else, so will be trying this as is and hoping it doesn't die in a bunch of flames :lol:

I did hear Amigawise that some Rev 6 68060s are more stable at certain frequencies than others but I wasn't thinking 100 would run better for me than 96. Wondering if it's also a Raven timing issue?

Watch this space.

[mrbombermillzy]

Nice work Phil!

:dualthumbup:

[PhilC]

Nice work Phil!

:dualthumbup:

Thanks, more trial and error than anything else.

Im happy to say that @agranlund's Raven has provided me with lots of fun and challenging opportunities in both hardware and software and I look forward to many more. (As long as I don't break it first :lol:).

I think I need to leave this one as it is now and build a second for all the experimentation.

[PhilC]

Another bit of Raven news today. The Pine CL-GD5434 graphics card does run fine in the Raven with a couple of different firmwares that I have. I've got to see what's wrong with the card when it's using the Diamond firmware, it's likely a ram config issue. It works fine but has lines over the screen.

The good thing about this card is that the GD5434 donor cards are so much easier to find and cost pennies compared to an ET4000/W32i and the new chips are still available. Probably cheapest way to make one into get a donor PCI card, then you've got the ram etc you'll need.

I'll have a couple of spare cards if anyone is interested.

[Atarian Computing]

Another bit of Raven news today. The Pine CL-GD5434 graphics card does run fine in the Raven with a couple of different firmwares that I have. I've got to see what's wrong with the card when it's using the Diamond firmware, it's likely a ram config issue. It works fine but has lines over the screen.

The good thing about this card is that the GD5434 donor cards are so much easier to find and cost pennies compared to an ET4000/W32i and the new chips are still available. Probably cheapest way to make one into get a donor PCI card, then you've got the ram etc you'll need.

I'll have a couple of spare cards if anyone is interested.

I'm interested in a card!! Pretty please!! Good job, btw. Been following this with great interest.

[PhilC]

pm me your details @Atarian Computing and I'll mail you one

[PhilC]

The mixer app is coming along. Learning VDI at the same time as reminding myself how to program in 68000.

PXL_20251101_131552029.jpg (563.76 KiB) Viewed 1353 times

Still work in progress but should be finished soon.

[LarryL]

PXL_20251006_131620975.jpg

Just the ram and a couple more bits that arrive tomorrow all being well.

Hi Phil,
Do you eventually have a photo of the fully built card at hand?
I am especially interested in the jumper settings (solder jumper and the 3 THT jumpers)
In my freshly built card I have the solder jumper settings to 1-2, JP3 at 1-2 and JP1/2 not set
Unfortunately the card is not working (black screen) and I want to rule out wrong jumpers

I have flashed the Bios @Atarian Computing shared in his thread two times (concatenated) into a SST39SF010A

The Raven boots and I see that the VGA BIOS is started (although not giving any special message)
And it is reporting only 8bit vgamem

Think I need to investigate a bit…

[PhilC]

PXL_20251006_131620975.jpg

Just the ram and a couple more bits that arrive tomorrow all being well.

Hi Phil,
Do you eventually have a photo of the fully built card at hand?
I am especially interested in the jumper settings (solder jumper and the 3 THT jumpers)
In my freshly built card I have the solder jumper settings to 1-2, JP3 at 1-2 and JP1/2 not set
Unfortunately the card is not working (black screen) and I want to rule out wrong jumpers

I have flashed the Bios @Atarian Computing shared in his thread two times (concatenated) into a SST39SF010A

The Raven boots and I see that the VGA BIOS is started (although not giving any special message)
And it is reporting only 8bit vgamem

Think I need to investigate a bit…

Here's a photo of my card. It does work okay but I'm using the Diamond one I bought right now.

PXL_20260130_150119893.jpg (381.64 KiB) Viewed 992 times

The Ram jumpers will depend on the type of ram you have but must also match the bios settings as well. For instance, I found using the Diamond driver's with this setup would give me a scrambled screen.

[LarryL]

Thanks for the photo
I immediately found (at least) one mistake I have made: rotated the OSC by 90 degrees :oops:
So JP4 - the solder jumper - is not set at all, right?