TF1260 IDE weirdness
Posted: 01 Apr 2022 17:17
Just recently purchased a TF1260-50 for my 1D.1 board and am having issues with the card IDE. I am in contact with the seller and working with them as I am aware support has to be through the seller but that effort is frustrating and very slow going so I wanted to post on here to see if anyone may have seen something similar before or have any suggestions I could try. Seller confirmed the card was flashed with 999 firmware.
If I boot and run only off internal IDE then everything works great. Card is rock solid and I can run it for hours with no issues and pretty much every app or game I try load is behaving as I would expect, just usually much faster. Seller supplied new 3.2.1 kickstarts with EHIDE preloaded so naturally want to get the 1260 IDE working next.
When I move the CF card to that IDE it boots workbench and everything seems OK. However if I try and start any WHDLOAD game I get the info screen and then either it goes black screen and then nothing or it starts to play the game for 1-2 seconds, the screen freezes and the sound continues playing. Eventually after a while the sound dies also. Frontier is a great example where you just see the intro screen and it freezes every time.
I also noticed that if I try and reformat a drive partition in workbench the quick format will start but after 1-2 seconds the whole workbench locks up solid or the machine just reboots. Does this regardless of the partition size or block sizes I tried ... the lock or reboot is guaranteed. If I only have the internal CF connected then formats work 100%. I have tried multiple CF adapters, 5cm IDE cables and CF cards and even tried a SD adapter connect to the 1260 IDE. All behave exactly the same.
Now the very weird part. If I boot off the internal IDE CF and have all my data on that card but have a CF card in the 1260 enhanced IDE, even one with a single clean formatted partition that I never access the issues come back, for both CF cards. Running WHDLOAD off the internal card using scsi.device gives me the same display freezes and locks with formatting. If I remove the enhanced IDE CF which stops ehide.device loading then all the problems go away and the machine is stable again. It looks like it needs to have ehide.device loaded for the instability to happen regardless of the Cd being accessed.
Seller suggested it was my machine at fault so I also tried the card on my other 2B A1200 with a different power supply and once again the same issues surfaced. Both motherboards have the timing cap fixes and both have been recapped, one by me and another by the seller of that machine. Both motherboards also run my older E-Matrix 68030-50 with no issues and I have never tried to increase the speed of the 1260 beyond the stock 50Mhz. Running out of ideas on what else I can try but if anyone has any ideas please let me know.
If I boot and run only off internal IDE then everything works great. Card is rock solid and I can run it for hours with no issues and pretty much every app or game I try load is behaving as I would expect, just usually much faster. Seller supplied new 3.2.1 kickstarts with EHIDE preloaded so naturally want to get the 1260 IDE working next.
When I move the CF card to that IDE it boots workbench and everything seems OK. However if I try and start any WHDLOAD game I get the info screen and then either it goes black screen and then nothing or it starts to play the game for 1-2 seconds, the screen freezes and the sound continues playing. Eventually after a while the sound dies also. Frontier is a great example where you just see the intro screen and it freezes every time.
I also noticed that if I try and reformat a drive partition in workbench the quick format will start but after 1-2 seconds the whole workbench locks up solid or the machine just reboots. Does this regardless of the partition size or block sizes I tried ... the lock or reboot is guaranteed. If I only have the internal CF connected then formats work 100%. I have tried multiple CF adapters, 5cm IDE cables and CF cards and even tried a SD adapter connect to the 1260 IDE. All behave exactly the same.
Now the very weird part. If I boot off the internal IDE CF and have all my data on that card but have a CF card in the 1260 enhanced IDE, even one with a single clean formatted partition that I never access the issues come back, for both CF cards. Running WHDLOAD off the internal card using scsi.device gives me the same display freezes and locks with formatting. If I remove the enhanced IDE CF which stops ehide.device loading then all the problems go away and the machine is stable again. It looks like it needs to have ehide.device loaded for the instability to happen regardless of the Cd being accessed.
Seller suggested it was my machine at fault so I also tried the card on my other 2B A1200 with a different power supply and once again the same issues surfaced. Both motherboards have the timing cap fixes and both have been recapped, one by me and another by the seller of that machine. Both motherboards also run my older E-Matrix 68030-50 with no issues and I have never tried to increase the speed of the 1260 beyond the stock 50Mhz. Running out of ideas on what else I can try but if anyone has any ideas please let me know.