Falcon030: Installation of clock patch and DFB1X issues.

[stephen_usher]

Looks like I can't make a floppy image with the Joy demo on it as that's 10MB in size! :-)

[stephen_usher]

Here's Ace Tracker and one song in a 1.44MB floppy image.

Run Ace Tracker, wait until it's finished setting itself up and then find the grey "Track" tab above where it has the logo in the bottom left.

Hold shift and click on the "Load" in the "Module" section and select the song on the A drive (suffix .AM). Find Play -> Song and click upon it.

[Badwolf]

Here's Ace Tracker and one song in a 1.44MB floppy image.

Run Ace Tracker, wait until it's finished setting itself up and then find the grey "Track" tab above where it has the logo in the bottom left.

Hold shift and click on the "Load" in the "Module" section and select the song on the A drive (suffix .AM). Find Play -> Song and click upon it.

OK, thanks. A hard disc image would have been fine too.

With Joy does it just crash immediately or is there a noticable place?

Ta,

BW

[stephen_usher]

With Joy does it just crash immediately or is there a noticable place?

The timing is not guaranteed. It could crash the graphics sub-system (invalid mode on the monitor) when it tries to set up the video (after it's set up the DSP), or it can run for up to a minute before it crashes. However, it's guaranteed to crash.

AceTracker will usually have the same problem with the graphics sub system, but if it gets past that you can load a song and then it will play for a random amount of time before things go west.

[Badwolf]

I haven't had a chance to try these yet, but I note Exxos had a video playing Joy on a DFB1X, so it rules out an across-the-board problem at least.

Will give them a go when I get a spare hour.

BW

[Badwolf]

AceTracker will usually have the same problem with the graphics sub system, but if it gets past that you can load a song and then it will play for a random amount of time before things go west.

OK, I had a quick go with AceTracker with both DFB1 and DFB1X.

The screen had problems under acceleration on both of them with it failing to initialise probably three quarters of the time both under VGA and RGB interlaced modes.

Disabling acceleration but still running on DFB and with TT-RAM worked fine so I'd guess there are critical timing issues with the screen set up somehow.

I think we'll probably have to mark it down as incompatible with DFB1(X) until such time as someone feels like investigating the problem and proposing a fix. Or perhaps the author could shed some light on what's going on?

I don't have Joy on my Falcon so haven't tried that yet as my network card's in use on my -FM ATM.

BW

[smoore100]

Ace tracker works fine on my DFB1X

[Steve]

@Badwolf It might be worth pointing out that it's hard to draw a conclusion on the joy demo... reason being that it is notorious for being the most blitter intensive demo. It'd break most Falcons that didn't have an adequate clock patch (accelerator or not) I think one of the reasons of making the video was to show the stability of the joy demo and the v4 clock patch (as far as I remember) the fact that he used a DFB1X might have been just 'extra'. Out of interest BW, what clock patch are you using on your system?

[jwd]

@Badwolf It might be worth pointing out that it's hard to draw a conclusion on the joy demo... reason being that it is notorious for being the most blitter intensive demo. It'd break most Falcons that didn't have an adequate clock patch. I think one of the reasons of making the video was to show the stability of the joy demo and the v4 clock path (as far as I remember) the fact that he used a DFB1X might have been just 'extra'.

Totally concur with Steve here, i had the official atari clock patch from new in the 90s and most part my Falcon did everything i wanted it too, only when refurbing and using it recently did i notice more instability, there are many posts regarding the joy demo (here and af) but it is the ultimate clock patch test for a falcon imo.

My falcon has always passed every 'test' for instabilty thrown at it only joy and strangely Steel Talons would consistently fail.

Opening it up and looking at the clocks on an oscilloscope they were awful, wonder how it ever worked!

Long story short, base falcon, does it run joy without issue?

Yes - if you have issues problem is probably not the clock.
No - you need a clock patch

But i have a clock patch!

You need a better one then, this was exactly my case and i used Steves pcb of the phantom patch. Crucially the clock to the sdma was cleaned up massively on the scope (plus others just more noticeable here) and joy runs everytime now.

I don't have an fpu installed so if i were to add that and/or some other extension/addon using the expansion socket which all feeds to the dodgy clock section i would again look at the clocks to see if they are any worse and then may need another better clock patch, exxos v4 or could be v5,6,7 by then!

Good luck

[stephen_usher]

Long story short, base falcon, does it run joy without issue?

As I noted previously, yes, and it always did. Indeed, disabling the DFB1X allows it to run again.

Fitting the Exxos V2 clock patch made no difference.