SuperVidel and SvETHlana problems with CT60e

[jvaltane]

I have found some problems with my set up. CT60e+SuperVidel+SvETHlana+VGA-syncs soldered.

1. SuperVidel works only if I set CT60e:s 060 clock to over 95Mhz. I have tried with all available v10 and 11 firmwares. But no, none of those works properly under set 060 under 95Mhz. Got bus error. Removing the CT60 filter jumper makes it even worse.
2. SvETHlana kind of works. Looks like it works only some time after reboot. Right after reboot I have managed to receive at one about 200Mb of data with FTP. Usual amount is 50MB and then I have to reboot the machine. rev10_score41 works the best. If I wait some time it does not work anymore at all. I'd like to test with lower mhz of 060, but it is not possible because of problem 1.
3. resistors of the vga-syncs. I managed to lost those which came with the card. I checked from images available what are values of the resistors, but I'd lke to be sure. So what were the resistor vales.

Test environments have been FreeMiNT from 1-17-0 (precompiled svetlana driver) to 1-19-cur (self compiled sethlana driver)

What I have not tested: Change the DIMM.

Any ideas?

[Rustynutt]

The resistors here are 68 ohm.

[jvaltane]

Thanks. Resistors should be ok then.

[mikro]

Hmm, this is strange, somebody has successfully reported the SV working on CT60e: viewtopic.php?f=97&t=31362 ... looks more like a hardware issue. Did you try to remove Svethlana, i.e. try just the SV?

[jvaltane]

CT60e work with any Mhz from 66 to 100Mh without SV. SV works just fine when I set CT60e:s over 95Mhz with or without Svethlana.

The main problem is that I can not use Svethlana transfer large amounts (over 100mt) of data at the time. IT is only Svethlana which stop to work. SV works after network freeze.

[mikro]

Well, the author of the post, fidzen, says in his signature he has a Svethlana, too. Maybe you can ask him to contribute his experiences?

[fidzen]

I have Svethlana in my Falcon also, haven't tested it so much with the CT60e yet.
The problem I had with CT60e and SV was that I couldn't go over 66MHz, but after
removing the filtering jumper on the SV it works great from 66 to 95MHz.
I will test a little bit more with the Svethlana also and let you know.

[jvaltane]

That would be great.

I have currently tested only with FTP and server is in my own 'intra'. Cable is about 10m long. I tested with both Litchi and aFTP. Server works just fine cause I use it with other machines also. Usually I am able to transfer 10-100Mbytes, but one time I reached to 200Mbytes.

After shutdown and boot up it works again. Not sure about reboot.

[mikro]

That would be great.

I have currently tested only with FTP and server is in my own 'intra'. Cable is about 10m long. I tested with both Litchi and aFTP. Server works just fine cause I use it with other machines also. Usually I am able to transfer 10-100Mbytes, but one time I reached to 200Mbytes.

After shutdown and boot up it works again. Not sure about reboot.

Btw, what firmware version and timings you're using for the SuperVidel? On Nature's web you can find plethora of driver flavours to try, have you tried all of them with the same result? And it goes without saying, do you have latest firmware? The source code published on their website works only with >= FW10.

[jvaltane]

I tested SV with all available rev10 and rev11 firmwares. All variants and as said in first post rev10_score41 works the best with Svethlana. With most of the firmwares I could not get Svethlana work at all and some had problems even with SV. Maybe I should have wrote down how well each version worked. I'll make another firmware round tomorrow and wrote down results.

I have not tested yet with rev9 or older + precompiled driver. I'll test this also.

[jvaltane]

I tested with FW11, FW10, FW9 and FW7. That did not change result.

But I found that when it stops sometimes looks like button is held down. I didn't have the sounds on so I found that from other way. That is something I did not expected. Would it be possible that some buffers (drivers or network stack) might leak?

Results: http://jvaltane.kapsi.fi/ct60esve.txt

[mikro]

Man, this really looks like something funky is going on on the hardware side. It would help if you had another SV or another CT60x to test to rule out the working component.

Now we can only speculate that since CT60e+SV @ 66 MHz works for others, most likely the culprit is the SV, especially because you can't get it working on basic 66 MHz.

I'd ask Nature guys, as a last resort solution I'd send them your SV for checkup.

[jvaltane]

I dropped SV resolution from 1680x1080(x16bpp) to 640x480(x4bpp) and Svethlana worked much better. I was able to receive over 300Mbytes in one FTP session.

Keyboard thing might be some other problem. Like with aFTP or Teradesk. ...or even problem with 1-19-cur.

Yes at some point I'll have to contact to them. First I'll try to find out that has anyone nearby CT60/CT63/CT60e to test SV with.

[jvaltane]

Actually it was the application which halted this time. So looks lik network works fine with 640x480.

[mikro]

I wanted to suggest the same, replace aFTP with something more reliable, best is to use SpareMiNT's ftp client, second best option is Litchi (slower but more stable than aFTP). aFTP has countless of bugs and it's awfully slow as a bonus. :)

[mikro]

Actually it was the application which halted this time. So looks lik network works fine with 640x480.

Maybe a problem with cooling?

[jvaltane]

If you mean 68060, its temperature has been in normal use 45-50C and max 55C in very hard load. I think it should be pretty OK. I'll replace fan after I get suitable resistor to limit the speed. Tested fan preliminary and temperature should be 40-50C.

I'll continue testing with different tools and resolutions later today.

[mikro]

No, I meant somewhere on the SuperVidel, I imagine that more than 640x480 requires higher clock rate which in turn requires more power. But that's just a wild guess.

[Rustynutt]

I dropped SV resolution from 1680x1080(x16bpp) to 640x480(x4bpp) and Svethlana worked much better. I was able to receive over 300Mbytes in one FTP session.

Keyboard thing might be some other problem. Like with aFTP or Teradesk. ...or even problem with 1-19-cur.

Yes at some point I'll have to contact to them. First I'll try to find out that has anyone nearby CT60/CT63/CT60e to test SV with.

FWIW, almost all my Atari at one time or another go into a keyboard fit. If you have the speaker connected, it sounds like a key is being depressed.
Not long ago, read why this was occurring, and what the fix is. It's documented somewhere on atari-forum.....
Don't know how it pertains to what your going on with, but it will reek havoc on the desktop as windows will flash off and on. Without rebooting, you can play a mouse game and try to close the window. Without a speaker, and possibly only a console window open, you may not see it.

[jvaltane]

FWIW, almost all my Atari at one time or another go into a keyboard fit. If you have the speaker connected, it sounds like a key is being depressed.
Not long ago, read why this was occurring, and what the fix is. It's documented somewhere on atari-forum.....
Don't know how it pertains to what your going on with, but it will reek havoc on the desktop as windows will flash off and on. Without rebooting, you can play a mouse game and try to close the window. Without a speaker, and possibly only a console window open, you may not see it.

Probably this one?: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=30966&p=308714

I'll give blitter setting a try as soon as I get home, it is easy to test. I can also add fan for SV just for test purposes, but SV:s FPGA chip has not been hot.

BTW. Changing application/desktop did not work. Changed Teradesk to Thing and tested with other FTP applications.

[jvaltane]

Finally contacted to guys at Nature and asked do they have any suggestions. I hope their hotmail addresses are still in use.

Meanwhile I tested without luck: Update abe and the other file to ct60e, cooling SV (big case-cooler), change blitter setting, different power source, different memory.

Also tried to debug drivers and installed inet4.xdd:s debug version. Usually when using verbose debug level enough with serial debugging, machine freeze after less than a minute. Printing debug prints to screen worked better, but using the machine is impossile.

I also played a little bit with inet4.xdd sources and increased some allocated sizes like stack etc.. It might have helped a little bit. I think changes keeps networking up little bit longer. Of course I can not be sure until problem is really found. What I also found that sending and receiving packets has lots of errors. I have not compared error frequencies in 640x480 but I do it next. If there are no much errors in 640x480 mode, I'm suspecting that network stack just does not behave well in error situations. Again, I can be totally wrong.

[jvaltane]

Finally had some time to test setup. I have just ran setup with lower resolution when network was needed.

HW - tack is falcon <-> ct60e <-> SV + svethlana. SV has VGA-clock connected.

1.. tested with SDMAtest that there should not be clock problem. No clock patches installed.
2. added RF-shield back partly, not everything. Still same problem with random keyboard presses. But this can be stopped by pressing esc-key. It is not just sound, but really like keyboard presses.
3. just for test I removed clock-filter jumper from SV. Surprise was that SV started to work with any MHz I set to CT60e. Before this change only two small ranges of Mhz booted to mint or TOS. 100Mhz worked well.
4. CT60e at 75Mhz with SV(ct60clock jumper removed) and high resolution and high bpp: Networking worked very well. I did only short tests, but I'm happy to see some progress. I was able to transfer almost 300MB file with ftp and after that browse network with Netsurf.

I'm bit confused. SVs installation manual points that ct60clock filter must be used for stable operation, but in my case it makes things worse.

Wondering how well setup will work while CT60clock-filter is disabled. If clock is not good, what happens? Random crashes? Does CT60e provide better clock than previous versions and filter is not needed any more? Might it be possible that my SVs filter is not fully functional? Something else?

[stormy]

I read somewhere on this forum that the clock filter should be disabled when using a ct60e because the ct60e does not have the same hardware issue of the original ct60, this was fixed in the 'e' revision. It might of been in the original ct60e thread.

[Galvez]

Also tried to debug drivers and installed inet4.xdd:s debug version. Usually when using verbose debug level enough with serial debugging, machine freeze after less than a minute. Printing debug prints to screen worked better, but using the machine is impossile.

You wrote this more than one year ago but if you still need to debug through the Falcon's serial port there is a guide in FreeMiNT's wiki:
https://github.com/freemint/freemint/wi ... erial-port

[jvaltane]

I read somewhere on this forum that the clock filter should be disabled when using a ct60e because the ct60e does not have the same hardware issue of the original ct60, this was fixed in the 'e' revision. It might of been in the original ct60e thread.

If this is the case it might be good idea to update SuperVidels installation manual.

I found from original thread that ct60-bus has done better with ct60e. Might be related.