exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hello all

I recently purchased from eBay a TF360 to replace the TF330 I had in my CD32.

The CD32 is recapped and the TF330 was very stable, with only very occasional freezes.

The TF360 will freeze very regularly, often when saving to disk (i.e. after quitting a game in WHDLoad). This happens with the OS3.1 installation that came on the SD card that came with the TF360, plus also a fresh OS3.2 installation I created myself. These freezes will often result in read errors on the SD, necessitating a reimage. I've tried multiple SD Card brands.

I bought a new power supply on the assumption the power draw of the TF360 might be more than the one I had could cope with, but this made no difference.

To potentially throw more light, I offer my experience was yesterday with OS3.1. I power on the CD32, jump in and out of 3-4 games using WHDLoad and it then freezes upon exit of the final game (about 5 mins). I reboot. Try loading a game, it freezes on exit (3 mins). I reboot, it freezes trying to start a game (1 min). The next two reboots it freezes as soon as WB loads (< 1 min), one of these reboots was a total power off and not pressing the reset button. In other words, the time between reboot and freeze was dramatically getting shorter and shorter.

I felt a slight warming on the CD32 plastic above where the CPU is. I wondered if the card was over heating? Ambient temperature in the room is typical UK winter so about 17 degrees C and the CD32 isn't in a small cramped space.

I have a 48mmx48mm heatsink for the 060 in the post. I yesterday put on two 20mmx20mm heatsinks on the two square chips on the board, but obviously no difference as the above experience happened while testing if that made a difference - in fact I do wonder if these heatsinks made the situation worse!

I'm wondering where to go with this?

Couple of other points; I got no software for the Terrible Fire, so wasn't sure if a) there was any or b) where to download?

The OS3.1 SD card has the software to set speed, but if you try running this it complains about a "clock control device not found" for the terrible fire.

Hi,

Have you contacted the eBay seller for assistance? That would be my first port of call.

Right. Real quick and dirty 100% way to rule out heat.

Undo screws from underneath the CD32, open and place the top lid to the side so the TF360 is visible. Get a pedestal fan, or a desktop fan, or some sort of fan. Have it blow air directly onto the TF360. Now run your games etc

No It's not permanent, yes it'll blow your paperwork everywhere, yes the wife will ask what the bloody hell you're doing. But it's going to rule out heat as being the issue, if it is.

Ask me how I know (but with a TF330, not 360).

The set speed comment about Device not found, either means you do not have the `CPUSPEED` program in your `C` folder or it is the wrong version, as was said contact your seller as they should resolve any questions or problems and point you to the software :)

Thanks for the replies. I will try the fan trick tomorrow as the wife is away for a few days and it will at least rule out a potential cause of my problem :)

On the subject of the "clock control device not found" error. I checked the C folder and the commands where there. I backed up those commands and then tried putting in the latest versions from the latest firmware zip file (from this forum) and alas, still no luck as I get the same error.

I have contacted the ebay seller to ask about software sources and will see what (if any) response I receive. If I get a response to that question I will ask about my problem, but I suspect I might not get far as the item was sold as "opened, never used" and "no returns accepted" (you pay your money, you take your chances is usually my motto when it comes to ebay purchases like this).

tommolb wrote: 05 Apr 2023 17:03 I have contacted the ebay seller to ask about software sources and will see what (if any) response I receive. If I get a response to that question I will ask about my problem, but I suspect I might not get far as the item was sold as "opened, never used" and "no returns accepted" (you pay your money, you take your chances is usually my motto when it comes to ebay purchases like this).

Good luck! That eBay "cowboy builder" is likely living it up in a beach bar somewhere by now, drinking your hard earned cash!

Probably didn't even pay for the assembled 360 PCBs himself, more than likely swapped them for some old junk A1200 motherboards, threw the remaining components at the board and then sold them on for a quick buck !!! :lol:

What revision of the TF360 is it ? rev 2 or 3, and you still have the wrong cpuspeed as a guess as obviously there are many firmware revisions so the one you got from here on Exxos is probably too new for your old firmwre

The board is a Rev3.

The ebay seller replied thankfully with a helpful response. They've seen this thread which I found hilarious and mortifying in equal measure cos of my previously expressed cynical take on ebay purchases (I'll only say I've been burnt many times)

Of my two separate problems; I have the wrong cpuspeed, the solution to which will be to work my way through every version I can lay my hands on in a process of elimination - is there a repository of these somewhere? I've tried tf360r3_2023_01_04_f8f10bb_alpha.zip and the rev2 version.

On the freezing system front, I have a plan expose card, external fan and see what happens and then (if temp is the cause) a heatsink on the 060.

I have updated my eBay seller, but also thought I would put the info here as well for anyone else who experiences a similar issue in future.

I tried the "case open, fan on" suggestion from matt020 and this made no difference as the system froze on exit of the first game. This freeze also corrupted the SD card.

After a reflash of the SD card, I tested again removing the SD Card extender from the equation and the system crashed on exit of the second game. SD Card also corrupted again. The case was open and the fan was also on for this test.

I then swapped the mouse to a proper Amiga mouse, (rather than PS2 mouse via an adapter) to rule out something silly like a mouse issue making me think the system was frozen. I loaded a game that I couldn't exit from (WHDload issue, the game exit key wouldn't work) and then after this the system would not load from the SD card, it just halted part way though loading from the card multiple times, despite full power on and off and even following use of a separate, newly flashed SD card.

I swapped out the TF360 and put in the TF330 and this loaded fine from the SD Card. Played a few games (7 in total), no freezes.

I put back in the TF360 and tested again. It loaded from the SD card this time and froze after the first game even with the Amiga mouse. The 060 was cool to the touch after this system freeze. Thankfully the SD card wasn't corrupted after this freeze, but I stopped testing at this point.

The only other tests I can think of is to swap over the IDE and SD Card reader from the TF330 to the TF360 and following that swap over the Riser cards?

I seem to have ruled out over heating of the CPU, mouse and SD Card extender from my testing today (having previously ruled out SD Card brand and power supply from other tests I have done).

Sounds like a hardware issue has developed somewhere. Raise a return request via eBay and send it back to the clown that built it.