Testing/Troubleshooting Amiga 1200 PC Card slot?

[hyperlogos]

I have an Amiga 1200 which I am fiddling with, the PSU failed so I hacked in a 80W PicoPSU. So far everything works great except the PC Card slot. I have a D-Link DFE-670TXD and a 3Com 3C589C and neither one seems to work. Both are recognized by their respective drivers: I can query their MAC using Miami Deluxe, and I can get card info at least from the D-Link card using the card info tool which comes with cnetdevice.lha.

the D-Link card never flashes a light, the light on the 3C-PC-COMBO-CBL dongle attached to my 3C589C goes out while Miami tries to DHCP and then goes back on, but I never get link state. This suggests to me that perhaps some voltage-providing line is not providing voltage to the card slot?

I also have a 12MB flash card (Simple Tech) and prepcard can see the card, but gives an error: Unable to prepare card: Error while writing changes. But it could just be a nonstandard card, I've never tried using it before. It was for my GRiDPad 2390. In theory I have a USB to PC flash card adapter here someplace, I will try to find it and see if I can read the card on my PC.

All the pins look straight. I will dive into the schematic if I have to, but if anyone else has solved the same problem, I'd like to hear about it.

It is probably worth mentioning that I have installed Pontus Fuchs' card reset fix, maybe I botched it? I have at least partial functionality though. http://ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/amiga_...reset_fix.html

[Cylon]

The flashcard will not work, only 2MB and 4MB are supported without hacks.
Do you have a PCMCIA-CF-adapter you can use for testing?

[Amiga1992]

I never managed to get PCMCIA network cards to work. They were really unreliable. I never figured out why, because I always thought I had models supported by either the 3com or prism drivers. Sometimes they showed up, sometimes they didn't, I just don'know, I gave up, it wasn't worth it.
First step is making sure the card is supported by teh drivers. Dunno about that D-Link, but your 3Com should work (but if it doesn't I wouldn't yet blame the PCMCIA port).

Try with a CF or SD reader, if that works, then I'd blame the cards/incompatibility.

Can you reverse the card reset hack? You can use cardreset.lha from aminet, no need for a physical hack. Also cardpatch.lha.

[hyperlogos]

The hack is easy enough to reverse, 1 cap, so I can reverse it OK. It also doesn't actually seem like I did it correctly since I do actually get link on my D-Link card after I hot-insert it, but I'm quite sure that I put it on the right pins as indicated, so maybe I did it with a bad cap or bent the leads too much during the hack and pulled one out as a result. I'll just use cardpatch, I guess.

The only CF to PC Card adapter I have is for my Sandisk 128MB+WiFi CF, which is kind of a weird thing. I'm not sure if that would cause problems in testing. I don't seem to have any 2GB CFs anyway only 512MB, will those work? I've got a bid in on a lot of 2GB cards. Other than that I only have an 8GB microdrive and a 8GB CF.

I double-checked with a flashlight and there are definitely no bent pins.

[Daedalus]

Okay, so to rule out any possible issues with the reset fix, I would just plug it in when the machine has booted. Hot-plugging the card once your machine is booted is the best way of ensuring that it's set up correctly. I would suggest setting static IPs for your Amiga on your router and in Miami - DHCP in Miami doesn't work very well, giving a constant refreshing IP-type status forever in most cases. AmiTCP doesn't do DHCP at all - Roadshow is the only stack that can do DHCP properly.

As said, you can't use an SRAM card like that directly as the Amiga's design only allows for up to 4MB, so that card won't work. CF adaptors do work as they access the card like a hard drive instead of like RAM, but they need drivers installed (cfd.lha, and fat95.lha for using Windows-formatted cards) and occasionally you'll find cards that refuse to work. You have a bit of a collection already and in theory they should all work as there are no practical limits on size (there are really but it's enormous). If the adaptor you already have is 16-bit (no little bumps along the edge of the connector) as opposed to 32-bit, there's no harm in trying it. 32-bit cards won't work though, so don't try to force them. This link shows the difference between the types. If your card doesn't work, there are countless cheap CF-PCMCIA adaptors on eBay for a couple of quid.

[hyperlogos]

I removed my hack successfully, and reflowed the solder on the component I took power from, so that's done.

The 12MB card isn't an SRAM card, it's a flash card.

Miami successfully DHCP'd to my server, but I'm using AmiTCP now. I can FTP to my server and I'm getting tolerable xfer speeds with the included ncftp-1.5.6. I'm not using Miami because of memory; I'm going to need a memory expansion before I can actually do anything with this machine. But I wanted to iron out the details of making it function before I spent actual money on a machine that's been sitting in storage for years. I should test the DSS8+ too, having a sampler is mandatory for my intended use. I am actually connected to a WDS access point, which means I effectively have WiFi

The Sandisk adaptor I have is indeed 16-bit, I own only one cardbus PC card these days and it's a non-prism NIC, as far as I know, so I'm not going to bother to try to slot it into my A1200.

I will test a 512MB Sandisk card in my sandisk adaptor.

The Sandisk 128MB flash+WiFi card is actually a prism2 IIRC, but driver support has always been a bit wonky there. Somehow it manages to be both things at once on a single card slot, either PCMCIA or CF, on supported platforms. That includes Windows and WinCE, and these days also Linux. It worked great on my iPaq H2215, but I don't have that any more.

My plan for the 4GB CF cards I hope I have coming is to use one of them inside the Amiga with a CF to ATA adapter. I have a 44 to 40 pin adapter coming on a slow boat from china, and when it gets here I'm going to go to internal CF and an internal LS120 as well if I can't get df0: working. I tried cleaning it, that wasn't enough.

I suppose I should also test my other card, the 3c589d, and report back on that.

I wonder if I had corrosion on one or more card slot pins which was just finally cleared by all the re-insertions, because I've been trying this for a while now and I'm pretty sure I did it right before, at least the Miami stuff. And I did try both cardpatch and cardreset before, too. I tried the mod because those things weren't solving my problem.

[Daedalus]

Yeah, there's a possibility that one of the pins was just tarnished alright, it happens. Glad you're up and running anyway. A 12MB flash card! Sorry, I assumed it was SRAM. Well, it should work in theory with the compactflash.device driver if it follows the standard CF/AT protocols, but when you've got 4GB cards on the way it hardly seems worth bothering

[hyperlogos]

I have a dual CF adapter, I wonder how that would work with dual 4GB cards in it. hopefully at least ONE of them works