Picasso IV stops on black screen when booting

I have been trying for the last week to get WinUAE to boot with picasso IV emulation and have been having the same problem no matter what I try.

I'm really just trying it out to get it working so I can maybe consider buying a copy of OS4.1 classic once PPC emulation is a little more mature and stable and I have some money coming in.

I can Install OS 3.1 and OS 3.9 OK, everything is fine until I install Picasso96 then when I reboot it seems to be going OK but then the screen flickers, goes a slightly darker shade of black and nothing happens, no more HDD activity at all.

So here's what I have tried:

• Every 2.9.0 Beta from the last week up to Beta 13.
• Winuae 2.8.1 (I can't seem to download older versions).
• Windowed and full screen modes
• disabled the overclock on my CPU and run everything at stock settings.
• Tried different drivers for my radeon 7870 (13.12, 14.4 and 14.7 RC3)
• Many different confiurations I have created from scratchbased on different amiga models and ones I have downloaded, I'm currently using the one from the OS4.0 guide thread.
• I have made sure I have the PicassoIV flash rom in my roms dir.
• Tried with and without cyberstormPPC and Warpengine emulation.
• Picasso II and Uaegfx are working OK.
• Both A4000 roms from my copy of AmigaForever 2013.
• Picasso96 from the OS3.9 CD and the latest version I could find online.
• CyberGFX from OS3.9 CD

I did get it to boot once with Picasso96 installed by disabling Picasso IV emulation, booting with AGA screen mode and removing the board association in P96Mode then re adding it after rebooting, I could test all screen modes OK but after rebooting again the same black screen issue appeared. I haven't been able to get this to work again though.

I did find one person with the same issue on this forum earlier this week but there was no solution, I haven't been able to find the post again today though.

Thanks for reading all this, hopefully somebody can help with this issue.

WinUAE has got to be one of the most impressive emulators available, I'm amazed it's mostly the work of one man these days, As soon as I'm back in work I will be making a donation, Keep up the amazing work Toni.

[Toni Wilen]

First task is to make your config as minimal as possible to reduce unknown variables. No extra boards (especially no PPC!), disable everything possible and then try again.

EDIT: Replace PIV with something simpler like PII+. Still doing the same? (PII does not have hardware interrupt but PII+ and all others do)

EDIT2: Another test: reset using GUI reset button, still black screen?

Log does not seem to include reboot? Boot, reboot to black screen and then quit emulation and attach log.

Use 2.8.1 for testing. Current betas have too many changes.

Thanks for the reply Toni,

I created a config from scratch in 2.8.1 starting with a minimal config and adding things one at a time and it works fine even after recreating the config I was using in 2.9beta13 (minus the cyberstormPPC obviously).

That config is now working fine in 2.9beta13 with CyberstormPCC emulation turned on but so far only with a bare 3.1 install and P96.

I deleted my old configs and made a fresh install of OS3.1 in 2.8.1 so now have no way to test the problem I was having but if it shows up again i'll get some logs for you if you wish but so far all seems to be working as it should.

I had tried reseting with the gui button and it would reset and boot back to the black screen, if you were wanting to know if it did actually reset then yes, it did.
Picasso II was working OK before on 2.9 betas, the problem seemed to only be with Picasso IV although they were the only two boards I had tested.

If you think there may be a problem somewhere and you need me to test it then let me know, I have plenty of time at the minute.

[Pecosbil]

Originally Posted by DukeOfAwesome

I did get it to boot once with Picasso96 installed by disabling Picasso IV emulation, booting with AGA screen mode and removing the board association in P96Mode then re adding it after rebooting, I could test all screen modes OK but after rebooting again the same black screen issue appeared. I haven't been able to get this to work again though.

I also noticed that if you don't have "Dislpay Chain" checked in PVS Tooltypes tab, you can't get any Amiga display modes through (only black screen). On the other hand uaegfx doesn't require this but PicassoIV does (but I think this is not a bug, it's a feature. Maybe it's got something to do with fact that PIV had a scandoubler built in). But, if you only use Picasso IV screens, this doesn't help much with the problems you're having...

BTW, it seems that QEMU Cirrus Logic SVGA chip emulation has a small bug (this happens with Picasso II, Picasso IV, Piccolo, and probably with all the other ones as well) that displays 320x240 mode wrong. It looks more like 320x480, for example uaegfx doesn't have this problem and this screenmode works fine there.

[Michael Sykes]

P IV 320x240 works fine(in fullscreen) after I defined a custom resolution in my NV control panel.
In fullwindow mode with "scale if smaller" option ticked it should work even without that.

[Pecosbil]

Originally Posted by Michael Sykes

P IV 320x240 works fine(in fullscreen) after I defined a custom resolution in my NV control panel.
In fullwindow mode with "scale if smaller" option ticked it should work even without that.

That may be the case with fullscreen and custom defined resolution, but in windowed mode 320x240 is displayed incorrectly - even with full-window mode + scale if smaller option. The problem appears to be, that 320x240 mode is displayed 320x480. Full-window mode seems to honour aspect ratio and the screen doesn't fill the entire screen. Perhaps you could use filters to force the screen into correct dimensions, but that just feels like some quick'n'dirty duct tape fix when the real problem remains elsewhere.

I attached two screenshots that shows the difference between Picasso IV (and any other QEMU Cirrus Logic emulated card) and uaegfx.

[Michael Sykes]

When you launch the game is your WB set to a HiResPAL mode?
Seems WinUAE window will not to change the size when I switch to screens with smaller res.
So for me it stays in 640x480 when I display 320x240 for example.
Scale if smaller is disabled.

EDIT: Forget the PAL Hires stuff. The 336x541 are more lores interlace...

[Pecosbil]

Originally Posted by Michael Sykes

Seems WinUAE window will not to change the size when I switch to screens with smaller res.
So for me it stays in 640x480 when I display 320x240 for example.
Scale if smaller is disabled.

I don't have that problem, window size always changes nicely from screenmode to screenmode ("scale if smaller" disbaled, of course) - regardless what resolution I have in Workbench. Like I said, only QEMU Cirrus Logic rtg-expansions seem to suffer this problem, uaegfx works fine.

I could try to make some custom resolutions in Picasso96Mode to find out if this problem only affects 320x240. 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 and every other mode I tried works just fine.

[Michael Sykes]

Originally Posted by Pecosbil

I don't have that problem, window size always changes nicely from screenmode to screenmode ...

OK I had "allways scale in win mode" enabled. Somehow I missed it(just woke up and had my first coffee^^).
Without that it scales(the emu window) just fine.But no sing of an error here.

Maybe Doublescan or Interlace ticked/unticked in P96 mode would make a difference for you.

I add my config so you can check if the problem it is related to that.
Its P4/PPC...

[Pecosbil]

Originally Posted by Michael Sykes

Maybe Doublescan or Interlace ticked/unticked in P96 mode would make a difference for you.

Arrgh!! That's it, thanks! I had doublescan enabled in that screenmode, things seem to work a little bit differently in emulated environment...

I forgot that under OS3 Picasso96 screenmodes are defined with Picasso96Mode - under OS4 you just enter the modes into monitor tooltypes, at least by default.
I think I have to use Picasso96Mode in OS4 too to get that mode working, as apparently there's no way to disable doublescan from a tooltype defined screenmode.

[Toni Wilen]

It is correct. Doublescan = same line is drawn twice, it really has physically double the scan lines. It was needed because most VGA monitors need at least >30KHz scan rate.

There is no double scan autodetection (at least not yet) for RTG modes.

[Pecosbil]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It is correct. Doublescan = same line is drawn twice, it really has physically double the scan lines. It was needed because most VGA monitors need at least >30KHz scan rate.

Yes, I realize that...now. I just remembered the countless hours I spent tinkering with BVisionPPC custom screenmodes, doublescan had to be enabled to create low-resolution screenmodes (for example SNES and the like). I think I even fried my fathers monitor once, even though I was using frequencies that it was supposed to support.

[Michael Sykes]

I actualy tryed doublescan with the testmode in settings but that was when I still had autoscale ticked.
So for me it made no difference at this point.