Troubles with Poseidon and subway USB
 

Hi there!
I have a Subway USB Controller that suddenly stopped working.

Since I switched from OS 3.9 to OS 3.1.4 I thought that it was due to some incompatibility but unfortunately now I'm pretty sure that it is broken.
I tried the Subway on a new OS 3.1 installation without success and, above all, I found out that the PSU of my A1200 Tower is having troubles (the power led sometimes flashes intermittently, the computer restarts, I get Guru messages, etc...). I've now replaced the PSU and the system seems much more stable but the Subway still doesn't work.
The error message in Poseidon is always a "failure to start subway.device". I have done my tests with a Viper MK2 40 MHz so the subway should work http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/subway.

I'd prefer to ship this within Italy in order to save on shipping costs but being a quite "rare" piece of hardware I think that it would be very useful if the repairer already had one of this card in working order, so, please, contact me if you think you can fix this card so that we can discuss about costs.
Thanks for reading!

Hi There!
I haven't received any help offer so I did some more tests and... there is still hope!
As you can see from the pictures, after various attempts. anaiis was able to see the card so something is still working.

I tried to plug a usb keyboard but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be "seen" by the system.
There are several possible reasons for that, maybe I connected wrongly the USB 5 pins cable with the usb ports to the subway.

Or/and the cable that connects the subway to the clockport is damaged. Actually I'm sure that there is something wrong with it because, after unplugging/re-plugging it to the clockport the system doesn't start or the card isn't shown in anaiis. Also, anaiis "state" on the Hardware tab has been either "2" or "1" or "0" (which one is the correct state???).

Not finding any more clues, I tried the subway on another A1200 where I installed Poseidon and, after various attempts, it was able to "start" the card (usually I received the following error: "20-poseidon.library: Opening DEVS:USBHardware/subwayusb.device unit 0 failed device/unit failed to open (-1)."):

However I plugged a USB pendrive know to work with my Amigas and it wasn't "mounted" by the system.
Now, in order to go ahead with the troubleshooting, I need to exclude as a possible failure cause the cable that connects the subway to the clockport.
Is there anyone that can provide me with a new (or used but 100% working) 22 pins cable like the one in the following picture?

Can someone with a working configuration post a picture of the 5 pins usb cable connected to the their subway?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Unlike Poseidon, Anaiis retries some times on initialization of the Subway.
But "Reset cnt=1" means that the Subway responds immediately.
The cable on the clockport is ok.
But it is very strange that a mouse or a keyboard are not detected and working.
Have you unset the Preferences/System/Disable internal drivers ?
If the Disable internal drivers is unset, you should check the usb connectors.
See page 6 of the manual, concerning black wire and positionning...
www.e3b.de/usb/soft/sw_manual.pdf
good luck !

Hi Gilloo and thanks for your reply.

Actually I haven't tried a USB mouse since I don't have any but I'll borrow one tomorrow from my work and I'll see if it is detected. A ps2 keyboard connected through an adapter wasn't "seen" by the system.

I'll check the Preferences/System/Disable settings as you suggested, I think that my usb hub is connected correctly (with the red wire on the outside of the plug) and I probably tried it in both ways but maybe there is something wrong with that cable as well. If possible I'll try to find another cable.

During the weekend I'll do more test, thanks. :)

I think that for "future reference" it is useful an update about this issue I initially had about an year ago.

After replacing the cable I was able to use the USB ports with a pendrive, a keyboard and a mouse so it was the cable indeed.

I haven't used that A1200 until a few weeks ago when I received my Vampire V1200. Instead of using the OS 3.1.4 I already had on my CF I decided to use coffinOS to easily enjoy my new V1200 but after a few days I noticed that the USB ports weren't working and that the subway USB didn't start correctly with the following error message on Trident/Poseidon (poseidon.library: Opening DEVS:USBHardware/subwayusb.device unit 0 failed device/unit failed to open (-1)).

Obviously I checked again the cable but it seemed ok, I also checked the area near the clockport and everything seemed ok. I then reinstalled Poseidon but nothing changed so I decided to give a try to anaiis and with it the subway USB worked without a problem (I tested a mouse, a keyboard and even a pendrive).

I was quite frustrated and even if this behavior didn't seem to be an hardware problem I tried the subway on another Amiga (using the same V1200 and the same OS) getting the identical result.

The problem looked to be in the software so I did search the Internet and at the end I did find a thread on amiga.org where a guy (platon42, thanks so much! :)) pointed out the fact that "on Amiga the file name of disk based libraries and devices MUST match the internal name of the object".

The name of the "subway.device" in my Devs:USBHardware/ folder was actually "Subway.device" with capital "S", I renamed it all lowercase, removed the controller on Trident and added it again and this time when I clicked on "online" it started correctly! :great

I hope this will help someone else in the future (or maybe myself when I'll have forgot all this :laughing)

@Mods:
Maybe the name of this thread could be changed in something like "Troubles with Poseidon and subway USB"

That would be Chris - who wrote Poseidon :D

Glad you got it going.

On a "case insensitive" OS like AmigaOS it is quite uncommon that something doesn't work for a capital letter... but so it is... good to know! :)

That's because AmigaDOS is a cut down version of UNIX. ;)

Come on. ;-) It's a port of TRIPOS which was influenced by who knows what (VMS?)