exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

So I just installed the Thunder, Storm, Lightning into my TT, and it's all happily running with lots of hard-drive and more TT-RAM than you can shake a stick at. I was just using the base machine config while installing, and now that it's all going, I tried plugging my Nova card (from @frank.lukas ) back in.

Ah.

MENU.PRG hangs on boot, it turns the normal VGA screen black-on-white and just stays there after announcing itself. The Mach64 card's video output doesn't start up either (the monitor stays in sleep).

I have just plugged in the VME card for LightningUSB, but it was supposed to be compatible as far as I knew, unless there's jumpers on it to change in order to get both LightningUSB and the Nova card working on the same VME slot..?

It's an absolute bugger to get the LightningUSB card onto both of those 40-pin VME slot ribbon cables, and it's also delicate work, so I'm a bit loath to unplug it all and try without the USB extension if there's any other thing I can test...

It's also possible it needs newer drivers I guess, but I thought I was using the latest ones from Idek (at https://www.silicon-heaven.com/atari/nova/TT030/Mach64/). I know this can work because I've seen the pictures (pics, and it happened!) so if anyone has a known-good working set of EMULATOR/MENU/STA_VDI that also works when LightningUSB is installed, I'd be interested in getting hold of them :)

Make a good Picture from the Nova VME Adapter ...

It must have the Lightning Patches and the OGFA GAL to work with the Lightning VME.

For a first Test make a new AUTO Folder with only the Emulator Program, the Menu Program and the STA_VDI Program and the two BIB Files in it.

So I double-checked the date of the Nova drivers I had installed previously, and they weren't the latest, so I pulled down the latest ones and tried again. I do just have the three programs in AUTO right now, and the boot process goes like this:

Boot into EmuTOS:


Then the auto folder starts to process, and I get a white screen on the built-in VGA-output while it runs either EMULATOR.PRG or MENU_E.PRG (not sure which one is running because there's nothing on the screen...). Note that this is the usual bordered screen - the TT display is in a smaller window inside the screen bounds.


And then after a delay (I presume this is the 5-second delay), the built-in VGA screen changes to a different blank screen... This time the entire screen is white.


... and sometimes nothing at all happens on the external card's output screen (the power button continues to "breathe" to indicate there's no signal) or that screen goes blank-white as well (after the monitor has synchronized to the signal). I haven't found a pattern yet to determine why I get one or the other.

Hey @frank.lukas, thanks for getting on this so quickly :)

Here's a picture of the card in place


Cheers

The Nova Adapter is the right one with the OGFA GAL.

Why you try a Snapshot EmuTOS Version? Try EmuTOS 1.2.1 ...

Work it all with Atari TT TOS 3.06?

I have in my Atari TT Thunder IDE + StormTT with 256MB + 10MB ST Ram + LightningVME + original Atari TOS 3.06 + HDDriver + Nova and no problems at all.

EmuTOS has built-in Nova drivers for ET4000 and Mach32. Maybe there's something wrong/problems with MACH64 and the other jumper Setting of JP1 on the Nova Adapter?

@czietz might have something to say about that?

I'm using that version of EmuTOS because that's what the Storm/Lightning/Thunder combo came with :)

I haven't really tried 3.06 other than to boot into it to run the memory checker. I have pretty much the same setup as you, except only 4MB of ST RAM.

I would be interested in whether JP1 could be causing issues. I'll try and see how TOS 3.06 works tomorrow.

The only thing I can think of is perhaps your boot order isn't correct for the drivers. The addition of the lightning usb should have no effect on the nova drivers at all. I use patched thunder/storm 3.06 on my TT (the roms that came with my set) with a mach64.

Just to clarify: your mach64 was working fine before all the upgrades? Did you change the hard disk or boot order?

Also, what other people use as their driver might be different to yours because it all depends on the ram DAC of the card. So my driver's might be completely different to yours.

I can confirm: Thunder + Storm + Lightning + Nova + Mach64 (even with 4 MB) + EmuTOS works OK.

Has you try boot from Floppy Drive A:\ ...?

Make yourself a Bootfloppy with only the Nova driver on it in a AUTO Folder.