CDTV + Derringer Problems

Hi Guys,-
I have upgraded my cdtv a bit. It now has a derringer 030 @ 25 MHz with co pro and 8 MB
2 DB9 Joystick ports, a SCSI WAW clone, SCSI to IDE bridge and a 2 gig compact flash card fitted in the card readers space. Its al finished now but I can’t get the extra dram to work.
On the derringer this works by a small program called D3 if the command D3 dram is given it tests the 32 bit RAM and adds it to the system memory. This works but not if the SCSI card is installed.
The moment the RAM is accessed the system hangs and reboots it can also be that the moment the HDD is accessed is crashes I’am not sure about that.
I am at a loss at this moment.
The SCSI controller uses a standard [FONT='Arial','sans-serif']WD33C93, the same as in the A2090. Is something the SCSI interface uses in the address space assigned by the derringer board. How will I find out whats going on here.[/FONT]


Hope you can help,

Regards Sebastian,-

[Toni Wilen]

I guess CDTV DMAC can't access >24bit memory (=accelerator card memory) and fails to fallback to normal memory. (which unfortunately would be chip ram is case if you don't have non-accelerator fast ram)

Does the CD drive still work with accelerator ram enabled? (and SCSI adapter removed/disabled) CD also uses CDTV built-in DMAC.

ROM versions? Note that you can't use >1G harddrives with built-in CDTV scsi.device without filesystem with direct scsi support. CDTV scsi.device is based on 6.x A590/A2091 versions, there is afaik no "7.0" CDTV scsi.device.

EDIT: Mask setting in HDToolBox may also help (set it 0x00ffffff)
EDIT2: Make sure ACard has latest firmware, there was one version that caused problems with CDTV, all writes failed.

[patrik]

There are many accelerators for the A500 where the 32-bit ram is mapped into the first 16MB, ie. "Zorro2 space" and should be accessable by Zorro2 dma controllers, but still it cannot be accessed from the outside by these dma controllers - cheap ass accelerator construction.

If this is the case, it means the scsi controller tries to dma to/from the 32-bit ram on the accelerator as it has the highest priority and the default mask for the partitions probably is 0xFFFFFF (first 16MB), which won't stop it, causing it to fail and hang.

To see if this is the case, set the mask for all partitions of your drive in hdtoolbox to 0x1FFFFF, which will limit the scsi controller to only dma to/from the first 2MB of the computers address space - in other words chipram.

[Toni Wilen]

Derringer supports >8M fast so its fast ram should be above 16M area.

On advice from the builder of the card (jopower/Jochen) I changed it to 4FFFFE and it worked.

I don’t know yet if the cdrom drive works I lost my caddy so I have to order another one, but I have been told it will not work with any accelerator. Will the cdrom crash my system just like the scsi controller did because it will try to write to the same address space as the hd controller did?
If I understand correctly in a A590 the scsi.device is located in a boot rom. Where is it located in the cdtv? In its custom rom’s? But then again it’s also in 2,05 kickstart rom..

Jochen also told me that he got a 2 gig drive working with it but my attempts to do so fail, 1,5 gig did seem to work.
Anyway can’t I just use the NSD patch or idefix97 and patch the scsi.device?

Will mapping it to chip mem makes it al lot slower? Will it speedup things putting some normal fast ram in it? Maybe I can squeeze a 2 MB fast mem expansion between the accelerator and the cpu socket.

Thanks for all your help

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by voyager

On advice from the builder of the card (jopower/Jochen) I changed it to 4FFFFE and it worked.

Nice

I don’t know yet if the cdrom drive works I lost my caddy so I have to order another one, but I have been told it will not work with any accelerator. Will the cdrom crash my system just like the scsi controller did because it will try to write to the same address space as the hd controller did?

Perhaps. I can test if someone sells/donates CDTV compatible accelerator

If I understand correctly in a A590 the scsi.device is located in a boot rom. Where is it located in the cdtv? In its custom rom’s? But then again it’s also in 2,05 kickstart rom..

CDTV "extended" ROMs. It can't be updated easily because it includes special code that handles cdrom driver's DMAC accesses. (both doing same simultaneously = very bad things will happen..)

KS2.04+ scsi.device is A600/A1200/A4000 IDE driver (it is called scsi.device for compatibility)

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=32271
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=33675
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=28081

Jochen also told me that he got a 2 gig drive working with it but my attempts to do so fail, 1,5 gig did seem to work.
Anyway can’t I just use the NSD patch or idefix97 and patch the scsi.device?

Does it really work (not just appears to work because root block is under 1G?)? In my tests it always returned error when accessing any data over 1G "barrier. (without using PFS direct scsi version)

Easy test: create second partition that is completely above 1G. If it automounts = ok. Appears unformatted = Not ok.

Will mapping it to chip mem makes it al lot slower? Will it speedup things putting some normal fast ram in it? Maybe I can squeeze a 2 MB fast mem expansion between the accelerator and the cpu socket.

Chip ram will be slower. I'd guess speed will be at least 1/2 slower.. Display DMA will "steal" cycles.

EDIT: more likely 1/3 or even slower..

- Normal "non-masked" transfer: DMA directly to destination address
- "Masked" transfer: DMA to chip RAM (slow), CPU copy to destination address (slow)
Fast RAM to 32-bit Fast should be faster.