Making CosmosEx work for the first time

[Jookie]

I got my CosmosEX today and installed it in my STE but can't get it to work. The LEDs are on so there is power and I got all the cables connected. I have an IDE interface ontop of the CPU, so maybe this is interfering with it?

With the ACSI cable connected, the existing harddrive got problems so I guess there is something with them together that is not working

Without the ACSI cable connected, I tried to put a ST image on a USB stick and boot with that installed, but nothing happened, so that didn't work either.

So I guess I must always have the ACSI cable installed and can not have any other harddrives attached?

I found one video on your site there you powered on the CE first and after 13 seconds, turned on the ST, but how can I do that? With the power button on my Atari, everything is powered on at once.

OK, so first few questions:
- did you get a full device (with Raspberry Pi inside), or did you install Raspberry Pi on your own?
- Disconnect all cables from CosmosEx except power cable, turn on the power switch, and describe what happens

The ACSI cable is not required for it to work (it should start up without any cables). You can have other hard drives while you have this one, but:
- all the ACSI IDs of CosmosEx must be different than ACSI ID(s) for other hard drive(s) located on ACSI
- not all ACSI hard drives seem to work together with CosmosEx on ACSI bus (and I have no idea about the IDE interface on top of your CPU - it shouldn't be a problem, but who knows?)

[Zamuel_a]

I got it without the Raspberry Pi since I already had one laying around at home. I think this part is working ok because I could get it to run at one occasion.

I got an normal STE with 4MB RAM and an IDE controller that is put ontop of the CPU. I also got a TOS switch so I can easily change between TOS 1.62 and 2.06.

I noticed harddrive problems with the ACSI cable connected and starting up in TOS 2.06
TOS 1.62 doesn't autoboot from a IDE drive so here it shouldn't be any issue.

I noticed that if I started up and after I got to desktop (so the computer hade been on for 30+ seconds) and pressed RESET, when it showed the CE boot text and I got an O drive on desktop, so the CE device must be working.

I tried to put an ST image on an USB memory but that didn't work. Should I format the USB memory in a certain way first?

[Jookie]

I noticed that if I started up and after I got to desktop (so the computer hade been on for 30+ seconds) and pressed RESET, when it showed the CE boot text and I got an O drive on desktop, so the CE device must be working.

OK, this is a good state...

I tried to put an ST image on an USB memory but that didn't work. Should I format the USB memory in a certain way first?

To make the floppy emulation work from USB, you need to:
- connect the floppy cable to CosmosEx floppy connector
- if you want to use the USB drive with HDDRIVER, in CE_CONF -> 'Translated disk' choose 'Mount USB media as - RAW'
- if you want to use the USB drive with CE_DD, in CE_CONF -> 'Translated disk' choose 'Mount USB media as - translated', and 'First translated drive' as 'G'
- insert USB drive into USB slot
- restart ST, let the driver load (either HDDRIVER or CE_DD)
- from config drive (or any other place) run the CE_FDD.PRG
- then upload the ST image to slot 1 from the USB drive (and / or other images to slot 2 and 3 if needed)
- use the front panel button to switch to corrent floppy image (1, 2 or 3)
- then your drive A: should be the emulated floppy with that image - either access the files through desktop or let it boot after reset

[Zamuel_a]

If I start the computer and reset after some seconds it did boot up (is there a way to get around this?), but I could only get it to work on TOS 1.62. In TOS 2.06 it didn't show any boot message. Could this be because the CE is interfering with my IDE harddisk?

I could open a USB memory in translated mode on TOS 1.62 so that seems to work.

When I run the config tool it often says that the communication with the CE is lost and waiting for it to reconnect.

EDIT

Now it seems to be totally dead. The Power LED is on, but nothing else and I can't get it to load on TOS 1.62 anymore. I just get the desktop screen without any extra drives. Tried to installed them manually but didn't work. I have reset it many times, powered off and so on, no change.
So I was able to see the files on my USB stick one time and after that, it's dead...

[Jookie]

If I start the computer and reset after some seconds it did boot up (is there a way to get around this?)

This sounds like the cold boot issue, which still needs a fix...

but I could only get it to work on TOS 1.62. In TOS 2.06 it didn't show any boot message. Could this be because the CE is interfering with my IDE harddisk?

Does it boot from the IDE hard disk with that TOS 2.06 even if CosmosEx is connected? If it does, it could be the behavior of driver which is loaded first - some drivers don't allow other drivers to be loaded after it (AFAIK HDDRIVER behaves like this).

When I run the config tool it often says that the communication with the CE is lost and waiting for it to reconnect.

Damn, this doesn't look good. I might give you some tool to check the read / write reliability...

Now it seems to be totally dead. The Power LED is on, but nothing else and I can't get it to load on TOS 1.62 anymore.

Disconnect all the cables from CosmosEx except the power, turn it on and see if anything happens - if it blinks with some other LEDs, or only the green power LED stays on, and tell me what do you see. If nothing blinks, it might be that the linux stopped booting on Raspberry Pi - see if the SD card is inserted good enough in Raspberry Pi, maybe try removing it and inserting it again.

[Zamuel_a]

double post

[Zamuel_a]

I reinserted the SD card, but with the same result.
If I remove all cables and turn on power, the power LED comes on, when LED nr 1, nr 2 and after that nr 1,2,3 comes on and stays on.

I am using the AHDI driver for the harddisk

Does it boot from the IDE hard disk with that TOS 2.06 even if CosmosEx is connected?

Yes it's like the CosmoxEX is not connected at all. One time the files on the harddrive got corrupted so I couldn't load anything, but the next time I restarted the computer the files were fine. If it had something to do with the CE or not, I don't know.

[Jookie]

I reinserted the SD card, but with the same result.
If I remove all cables and turn on power, the power LED comes on, when LED nr 1, nr 2 and after that nr 1,2,3 comes on and stays on.

This is the behavior when Raspberry Pi doesn't communicate with the rest of the CosmosEx (e.g. because the Raspberry Pi didn't boot). It should look like this when you look at the LEDs of RPi after power on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QalF64VP2WE

If those LEDs don't blink and you got the SD card inserted properly, then try:
A) disconnecting the cable between RPi and CosmosEx and see if it helps (I guess it won't)
B) go to download page - http://joo.kie.sk/?page_id=474, download 'Raspberry Pi SD card image for running the device', unzip it, remove SD card from RPi, write the image on SD card, insert it in RPi and see if this helps (it could, it wouldn't be the first time that this SD card got corrupted).
C) if the B didn't help, try writing it on different SD card - even the SD card could get broken
D) if C didn't help and you do have another RPi around, try it with that

Once the RPi will boot again, it should work fine. Now you just have to find out if you have to blame the SD card or the RPi.

Does it boot from the IDE hard disk with that TOS 2.06 even if CosmosEx is connected?

Yes it's like the CosmoxEX is not connected at all. One time the files on the harddrive got corrupted so I couldn't load anything, but the next time I restarted the computer the files were fine. If it had something to do with the CE or not, I don't know.

This might be boot order or boot priority of TOS - when booted from IDE, it might not boot from other devices. You might need to have the CosmosEx driver on the IDE drive when running with TOS 2.06.

[wietze]

Perhaps an obvious reply, but just in case; make sure that the RaspberryPI model you have is compatible with the CosmosEx. When you have an incompatible model, you will have 3 leds light up and the Cosmosex program will endlessly try to update the firmware that keeps failing (as can be seen from the pi commandline).

Regards,
Wietze

[Zamuel_a]

Perhaps an obvious reply, but just in case; make sure that the RaspberryPI model you have is compatible with the CosmosEx. When you have an incompatible model, you will have 3 leds light up and the Cosmosex program will endlessly try to update the firmware that keeps failing (as can be seen from the pi commandline).

Regards,
Wietze

I got the B model so it's not the A or the newer B+

[wietze]

Perhaps an obvious reply, but just in case; make sure that the RaspberryPI model you have is compatible with the CosmosEx. When you have an incompatible model, you will have 3 leds light up and the Cosmosex program will endlessly try to update the firmware that keeps failing (as can be seen from the pi commandline).

Regards,
Wietze

I got the B model so it's not the A or the newer B+

The very first model B is not compatibel. The old model differs from the other models by having a different gpio pin layout, and can be recognised by NOT having mounting holes.

Regards
Wietze

[Zamuel_a]

Ok, I will check this later (I'm not home at the moment), but I got it to work for a little while so it's not that it's totally dead

[Zamuel_a]

Some progress:

I reinstalled the files on the SD card (can't see any difference with the new files compared to the files already on the card) and now it boots up again! I was able to create a USB drive and see the files on the USB memory in TOS 1.62

To make it work for TOS 2.06. Should I try and put the CE_DD program in the AUTO folder of the harddisk? A little problem now since I don't have a floppy installed anymore...
I think the best is to have a real floppy as A and try and use CE as B:

[Zamuel_a]

I reinstalled my old A drive and only connected the ACSI cable and made an new 5V supply cable for the CE so I was able to copy CE_DD.PRG to disk and put in AUTO on the harddrive. Now CE is working in TOS 2.06 aswell! I haven't tried so much, but after a cold start I get bombs on the screen. I tried to reset and got more bombs. After a few resets it worked. I guess it was during the boot up time of the CE that TOS bombs.

[wietze]

I reinstalled my old A drive and only connected the ACSI cable and made an new 5V supply cable for the CE so I was able to copy CE_DD.PRG to disk and put in AUTO on the harddrive. Now CE is working in TOS 2.06 aswell! I haven't tried so much, but after a cold start I get bombs on the screen. I tried to reset and got more bombs. After a few resets it worked. I guess it was during the boot up time of the CE that TOS bombs.

Tos 2.06 bombs out if no floppydrive is present. If you have the cosmosex connected, but it hasnt booted up yet (and not yet emulating the disk drive) it will most probably bomb out.

[Zamuel_a]

I reinstalled my old A drive and only connected the ACSI cable and made an new 5V supply cable for the CE so I was able to copy CE_DD.PRG to disk and put in AUTO on the harddrive. Now CE is working in TOS 2.06 aswell! I haven't tried so much, but after a cold start I get bombs on the screen. I tried to reset and got more bombs. After a few resets it worked. I guess it was during the boot up time of the CE that TOS bombs.

Tos 2.06 bombs out if no floppydrive is present. If you have the cosmosex connected, but it hasnt booted up yet (and not yet emulating the disk drive) it will most probably bomb out.

I have a real diskdrive as A: so that's not the problem. CE is only connected with the ACSI cable.