CDTV with red boot pic

[btp]

I have a PAL CDTV unit that when is in CDTV mode it boots into the usual boot pic (the one with the rotating CDTV logo and the CD reflecting the laser beam) but in a red hue instead of the normal colours. I've read this means that the unit does not recognize that the CDROM drive is connected. I have double checked all connections and reseated all custom chips which did not made any difference.


When I use an Audio CD and the buttons on the front panel of the unit I can change tracks and even play all songs on the CD without any problems (the sound from the Audio CD is playing perfectly on my connected speakers). This leads me to believe that the drive is working alright and is able to read CDs (so not a mechanical issue or a faulty CD drive). Of course the CDTV does not display its Audio CD player software and when pressing the Play button on the front panel it simply goes to its configuration screen. After about 45 secs the unit resets of its own (and keeps resetting every ~45 secs).



Also note that when in A500 mode I have booted Amiga Test Kit and completed all tests successfully. Also I've booted without issues into Workbench from an external disk drive connected to the unit. And in overall when in this mode everything seems to be working perfectly.



Has anyone experience with troubleshooting a similar problem?
Is there anything I could try / test to pinpoint the issue?



Any help or suggestion is much appreciated!

[Amigajay]

Is it a stock machine for starters, or is it modified with more ram or newer kickstart roms?

[btp]

Its stock, with a Rev 2.2.1 motherboard.
The installed kickstart roms are 391009-01 / (c)1991 CBM V1.0

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by btp

Its stock, with a Rev 2.2.1 motherboard.
The installed kickstart roms are 391009-01 / (c)1991 CBM V1.0

More strange then if thats the case! Normally it goes red if the disc is not CDTV compatible or is missing the tm file to boot the disc. But something must be wrong for it to not load the cd player menu gui, but it plays via the front buttons, i’m not expect on this stuff, but either a KS or motherboard problem somewhere.

If you can’t get an answer here, try the CDTV group on Facebook.

[btp]

Thanks for your feedback!

I might try to burn some new kickstart ROMs (I would need first to source suitable EPROMs) and see if anything changes. My thinking is also that there is an issue on the motherboard. Probably somewhere on the communication path between the CDROM drive and the Amiga. If someone has an idea what to check please share with me!

[utri007]

Certain extended roms version turn screen red if no floppy drive connected.

[btp]

@utri007 thanks for your suggestion!

Since I have the original v1.0 CDTV ROMs I don't think this is the case but I connected an external floppy drive and tried again. Unfortunately nothing changed.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by btp

when is in CDTV mode it boots into the usual boot pic (the one with the rotating CDTV logo and the CD reflecting the laser beam) but in a red hue instead of the normal colours. I've read this means that the unit does not recognize that the CDROM drive is connected.

I've never heard that. Only that if you have an A570 extended kickstart ROM (v2.30) it will do this if there is no floppy drive present.

I imagine that your CD-ROM needs to have it's capacitors replaced? This is a common fault on CDTV but I have not heard of these symptoms before.

[CaptFuture]

Does the Audio Player screen pop up shortly before the red error screen appears?

When the system is booted up, do you have any software that can show you a list of devices and boards/expansion devices that were autoconfig'ed? Sysinfo is one of many that can do that, but there are loads of others on Aminet. Specifically can you check if:

• `cdtv.device` is present in the list of devices
• the DMAC is present in the "Boards/Expansions" list (The DMAC will often show up as "A590/A2090 controller" or something similiar).

I suspect that `cdtv.device` (which is the low-level driver for the CD-ROM hardware) failed to initialize on your system, which could be confirmed by its absence in the device list.

Explanation for those interested:

`cdtv.device` can fail to initialize for multiple reasons, one of them is the fact that the DMAC could not be found in the system's list of Autoconfig'd devices. If the DMAC is also absent from the boards/expansion list on your system, then we are very close to understanding why you are getting the red screen and why the CD-ROM drive does not work.

Note: The reason the CD Audio player can pop up before you get a red error screen is because the CDTV bootstrap module (cdstrap) does not check if `cdtv.device` was opened succesfully. As a result consequent IORequests fail and the function that checks if there's a CD present (and whether it's a CD-ROM or not) wrongly assumes a disc is present in the drive and that it is an Audio CD. The cdstrap module therefore launches the CD Audio player which immediately fails because it cannot open `cdtv.device` and exits -> cdstrap detects this and throws up the red error screen.

[CaptFuture]

Originally Posted by alexh

I've never heard that. Only that if you have an A570 extended kickstart ROM (v2.30) it will do this if there is no floppy drive present.

I imagine that your CD-ROM needs to have it's capacitors replaced? This is a common fault on CDTV but I have not heard of these symptoms before.

The red error screen is a generic way for TitleTask (=the Task that controls the CDTV Title Screen) to report an error to the end user. It unfortunately does not report what the error is.

The CDTV Title Screen will turn red if any of these conditions become true:

• A CD-ROM disc without a valid CDTV.tm license file has been inserted into the optical drive.
• DF0: could not be found (only on CDTV OS ROMs that were built for A570/A690, so not applicable in above case for CD1000).
• The CD Audio Player routine returned to cdstrap. (It should never return, only reboot when CD is removed. It only returns in case of error, as described above.)

Source: disassembly of cdstrap and playerprefs.library

[FOL]

Mine worked fine until I switched to 3.1 kickstart.
Then got red logo. I had to replace extended roms v2.30 to v2.70

[alexh]

Originally Posted by FOL

I had to replace extended roms v2.30 to v2.70

Just for the record it is v2.7 or v2.07 (not v2.70) it's the last version made for CDTV and is a lower revision than v2.30 which is A570

[btp]

@CaptFuture you are absolutely right!

Here is the exact sequence I'm getting on screen when booting on CDTV mode (no caddy loaded):

a) Yellow screen
b) Grey -> light grey -> white screen
c) Black screen and then the CD audio player GUI appears for a split second
d) The animated CDTV logo boot pic in red tint

If I have connected an external floppy disk drive with a bootable disk after step b) the disk starts booting. I will make a disk with sysinfo to check autoconfigured devices and report back.

[CaptFuture]

If you’re able to confirm the DMAC is missing from the expansion list (and cdtv.device is also not there), which I very much assume will be the case, you will need to figure out why the DMAC is not being autoconfiged. It very much sounds like a hardware problem.

I know you’ve reseated all chips, but you could try this again, with special attention towards the DMAC. You might also consider using some contact spray and cleaning the DMAC contacts and the socket, if you have not already done so.

If that all fails you could try doing some continuity tests to rule out damaged traces or just replace the DMAC to rule out a problem with the chip itself. Good luck!

[btp]

I've just tried booting from the external floppy drive (with the unit set in CDTV mode) with 3 different bootable disks and all produce a "software error - task held" that leads to a reset of the unit. In A500 mode all 3 disks are booting fine.

I'm not sure if the examination of the autoconfigured lists should be done in CDTV mode or not?

In A500 mode sysinfo reports no autoconfigured boards and lists the following system devices:

keyboard
gameport
timer
audio
input
console
trackdisk

[btp]

Can I test with a DMAC IC from an A590 hard disk controller?
I believe they are the same chips.

[CaptFuture]

Originally Posted by btp

I'm not sure if the examination of the autoconfigured lists should be done in CDTV mode or not?

The DMAC should autoconfig whether you are in CDTV mode or not, because this is done by expansion.library in the Kickstart ROM, so you can try running SysInfo with the CDTV ROMs disabled.

The DMAC should show up in the list when you click on the boards button (if you are using SysInfo). It will probably show up as A590/A2090 controller or something like that.

[CaptFuture]

Originally Posted by btp

Can I test with a DMAC IC from an A590 hard disk controller?
I believe they are the same chips.

To be honest, I am not sure, as there were several revisions of the DMAC. However, you wouldn't even need to "use" the replacement DMAC to do any I/O, like reading from CD-ROM to help you in narrowing down the root cause.

If you just install the A590's DMAC and turn on the CD1000 and the CDTV Title Screen comes up in normal colors, you've pretty much identified the currently installed DMAC as the problem.

[btp]

You got it right sir!

I've replaced the DMAC IC with the one from my A590 and everything seems to be working OK on the CDTV. The boot pic now has normal colours and 2 CD titles I've tried (Xenon 2 and the CDTV Welcome Disc) load and run just fine. Same when using an Audio CD, the audio player UI appears on screen and functions normally.

Also with the replaced DMAC the SysInfo floppy disk boots fine when in CDTV mode and the autoconfigured list includes an entry for A590/A2090 controller as you wrote.

I believe my CDTV is now fixed!

Many thanks for all your help and advice!
BTW congratulations for https://cdtvland.com and the great information and excellent presentation you have done for this (neglected) Amiga model!

Keep up the good work!

[Amigajay]

Glad you got some sound advice and it worked!