Picasso IV installing on A4000 with CF card

[jman]

Subject: Picasso IV installing on A4000 with CF card

Hello,

I'm trying to install the PicassoIV card and the CyberGraphX 4 drivers into my A4000D (with an AmigaKit CF attached) but I'm experiencing a weird issue, I hope I can get the most detail about the whole procedure without writing a lengthy post.

First try: I attach an IDE HD and a CDROM drive to the A4000, install IDEFIX. I understand that the minimum video driver to pilot the Picasso IV is the "PAL" one so I set accordingly Prefs->ScreenMode.
The Picasso IV with the PAL driver works ok.

Launch the CGX4 installer, I understand that I *have* to set the horiz sync value (the installer also gives you the opportunity to choose "skip/none") according to my monitor otherwise the screen would go out of sync.
Reboot, everything fine, I succesfully update the CGX driver to the latest 42.7r6 release.
Noted that for both my monitors (described below) the valid range for horiz sync is 31khz-57khz.

Now I can replace the IDE HD with my usual CF and go straight through the process.
First surprise, the CDROM is not detected by IDEFIX, apparently there's an issue having the CF card and the CDROM on the same IDE channel: sent a ticket to AmigaKit for support, will wait for their feedback. Remove the CDROM.

And here's the problem: there's no way I can have a proper visualization with my monitor and the CF card, the monitor is always out of sync.
The only tricky way I could successfully have a stable image (e.g. not out of sync) is:

1) remove the file sys:prefs/Env-Archive/sys/monitor.prefs
2) reboot the A4000 and in the Early Startup Config choose NTSC
3) Normally boot loading my startup-sequence *or* (if I remember correctly, excluding the startup-sequence at all)

If I try to set *any* video mode (either the most basic PAL or NTSC) the screen goes out of sync.
Tried the same procedure with two monitors: a CRT Panasonic PanaSync4 TX-T1565 and an LCD LG Flatron L1720B.

Why can't I have a stable image with the PAL driver? And why this issue only appears with this CF card?

Thanks for reading so far :-)

[jman]

What happens if on a 4000D with KICK 3.0 (39.106) I install WB 3.1?
Can it be the problem?

[TTD]

Have you the picassoiv in your system:devs/monitor or is it located on system:storage/monitors ?

I mean with system means your general workbench drive aka dh0: ect.

[jman]

Originally Posted by TTD

Have you the picassoiv in your system:devs/monitor or is it located on system:storage/monitors ?

I mean with system means your general workbench drive aka dh0: ect.

I still have not installed the Picasso IV drivers yet, but I expect the Picasso IV to work even without drivers, that is a plain PAL video driver.

But I tried to boot the A4000 with a plain WB 3.0 and it worked.
Surely my CF card has some problems, I'll try to reinstall from scratch the operating system on it ;-)

[Jope]

Originally Posted by jman

What happens if on a 4000D with KICK 3.0 (39.106) I install WB 3.1?
Can it be the problem?

Can't believe it would be. I run WB3.1 on all 3.0 machines and have done it even with RTG.

[jman]

Originally Posted by Jope

Can't believe it would be. I run WB3.1 on all 3.0 machines and have done it even with RTG.

My A4000 was running fine too, kick 3.0 and wb 3.1 installed on AmigaKit CF.
Then I started installing the CGX4 drivers, possibly screwed up something.

However someone else (not anyone, but a guy I trust concerning Amiga knowledge) told me that this could lead to potential problems.

What can I say? I trust you both, you may be both right as far as I know ;-)

Anyway, I've understood the source of the issue, so I know how to take care of it.