A1200 + ACA1220 = PCMCIA Ethernet Freeze

Hello all,

I've recently entered the Amiga scene and have started with an A1200. I've been trying to get it onto my wireless network and therefore bought a Linksys card that was guaranteed Amiga-compatible. It all worked with my previous accelerator (Apollo 1220/4mb), but of course I then had no RAM to use when WPA2 was running.

So, I traded for an ACA1220. Now when I try to initialise the card via WirelessManager (from the Prism2v2 driver) the machine locks up. Mouse frozen... Ctrl+A+A is the only way to get out of it. Removing the card doesn't change anything.

If I take the ACA1220 back out and use the NetworkBootDisk, then I can connect to my AP with no auth. The disk doesn't do WPA. It does to WEP though... so I put the ACA1220 back in, boot the disk and it freezes when SetPrism2Defaults is called.

I have a hunch it's something to do with timing or interrupts. I've tried CardPatch/CardReset and acatunes version too.

I've actually documented the current saga here:
http://modelrail.otenko.com/c64amiga...-network-cards

I've found quite a few others who also have the same issue... no one ever found a solution:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php...A401-WiFi-card

From here, I'd love to know if anyone has any hunches? I'd love to be able to see the interrupts, and have tried using IntList from aminet; which actually shows an issue: one interrupt seems to have an unterminated string for it's name... I don't know if that would cause an issue?

I requested help from Individual Computers and applied the hardware reset hacks. No avail. I was then told to ask the driver author if they were conflicting with the memory address space. The ACA1220 provides a full 020, instead of the EC020 and therefore has a 32-bit space.

The author told me to check modemtest on aminet... this also freezes the amiga. So it seems we need to dig deeper...

I am using 3.X Cloanto ROM on Amiga OS 3.9. I've ordered a stock 3.1 ROM, so will test that soon.

PCMCIA - CF card works perfectly. Wired Ethernet also locks up.

I understand that Ethernet cards make use of the RESET line... so I just wonder if that's causing an interrupt or something else that just doesn't mesh with the full 68020.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Zetr0]

@stevenh

G'day buddy, before we get into analysing and diagnosing your problem, first let me say "Welcome to EAB" you will find plenty of retrolicious mischief going on around here

While it is easy for me to shout out that you may need a PCMCIA reset fix, it would be best to find out what version motherboard do you have ?

it should be printed on the motherboard next to the expansion port.

Originally Posted by Zetr0

@stevenh

G'day buddy, before we get into analysing and diagnosing your problem, first let me say "Welcome to EAB" you will find plenty of retrolicious mischief going on around here

While it is easy for me to shout out that you may need a PCMCIA reset fix, it would be best to find out what version motherboard do you have ?

it should be printed on the motherboard next to the expansion port.

Evening,

Motherboard is a 2B.

Two hardware fixes have already been attempted. Both Ian Stedman's and another. See link to my blog for more information on those.

[Zetr0]

@stevenh

Thanks for the update, the 2B motherboard timing fixes are predominantly to ensure the functioning of accelerator cards. What we have here is the need for a PCMCIA RESET fix.

Good news is this can be done with just software - have a click here (thanks to alexh for the link)

If this doesn't avail your problem, then we shall look a little further


This thread is quite relevant to this one me thinks

@Zetr0,

I never mentioned timing fixes and it saddens me that you haven't clicked the blog link. Instead, I'll post the relevant information here:

CardPatch & CardReset
No combination of either of these, before or after SetPatch, did anything. There's also the resetpcmcia flag on acatune, but that didn't help either. Every now and then the PCMCIA card would stop the Amiga from booting, but this didn't worry me at all... you just need to pop it out and in again quickly to get it to continue.

Hardware PCMCIA Reset Fix
Just to quell a few advisors, I applied this fix as well... it did prevent the reset issue when the machine wouldn't boot... but had no effect on the card initialisation freeze. For those playing at home, connect a 10uf electrolytic capacitor from R715A to pin 5 on the Gayle chip. Further instructions are here.

...images...

'Gayle Reset Fix'
There's another reset fix for the IC that controls the PCMCIA Port, of which I soldered the capacitor to in the attempt directly before this. The IC is known as the Gayle chipset and Retro Kit came up with a nifty solution for the issue. Just like the Indivision aga-mk2cr, this fix involves a socket for the IC that slips on backwards. It inverts the reset signal so that PCMCIA cards will function correctly.

Here's the same fix from Amiga World in German. This time we get the component list. I'm going to purchase the components tomorrow and give this a go. If it works, then I'll buy the real thing from AmigaKit.

...images...

The parts cost less than AUD$1.00. The installation was very easy... the outcome was: waste of time. The freezing still occurs.


The above is badly pasted from my blog... here's the actual link:
http://modelrail.otenko.com/c64amiga...-network-cards

I'm really hoping that I can find some information on interrupt debugging or known timing issues with the ACA1220?