VA2000 Support Thread

[JimDrew]

You can see from the benchmarks that the .card driver really needs some blitter support!

[klx300r]

Originally Posted by mntmn

Hello again!

Firmware release 1.8.3 is now finished:
http://mntmn.com/va2000/

It brings a de-interlacer ("flicker fixer") for VA2000CX and new linear memory model, which fixes all Picasso96 related bugs and makes it compatible with all games and demos that previously showed only pixel garbage. Enjoy!

OK finally all works fine..THANKS

[IvanEBC]

How are you guys fixing the flicker?
I'm using battlemech and SimAnt *hires* to test and my screen flickers all over the place. Now i get that i'm meant to use the cx2000 tool which is in my startup sequence. I've tried a few random numbers
c:va2000cx 100
c:va2000cx 150
c:va2000cx 200
etc and i get various results of bad flickering, but with a range between -255 and 255, it'll take me weeks of trying each individual number and game reloading to test.

Is there some shortcut i'm missing here?

UPDATE: Realising after posting this i tried only positive numbers, i tried a single random negative number, in this case -200, and the flicker is gone..... still don't know if that was a random guess or a whole range of numbers work, but for now, its looking great.

[JimDrew]

The phase shift value will depend on your exact monitor, so it's something that you have to experiment with. On my HP ZR2440w monitor it didn't flicker at all in 640x400 mode until I put WB into 8 color mode and had some color icons, where then only a few colors actually flickered (black/white/grey/red didn't flicker at all). I found that 50 worked for this monitor to eliminate the flickering.

[IvanEBC]

I posted this in another thread but maybe it needs to be here .... i have spoken to Lukas about this who simply suggested it was my monitor unable to create what i wanted. My A1200 using a native chipset IS able to create the correct screenmode so i'm not sure.. here's my original message from the other thread.

--------
After getting my va2000 updated to 1.7.2/1.8.3 and getting my workbench into a wonderful condition, i wanted to put a focus onto getting the old demos and games that use the native AGA chipset to be centred on the screen, something that va2000cx tool is meant to be able to do, but i haven't quite worked it out and hoped someone here could help.

So i present to you three images.
1> My Workbench running in 1024 x 768
http://users.on.net/~ivanw/CX1.JPG
Nicely to the edge of the screen (Benq912)

2> When i run a game or demo, it only takes the top left of the screen
http://users.on.net/~ivanw/CX2.JPG

3> So the va2000cx tool is meant to be able to fix that, and the instructions say to add it to your startup-sequence. Maybe it needs to activate earlier or later or maybe i got options wrong?
http://users.on.net/~ivanw/CX3.JPG

When i tried the va2000cx mode 320 256 apply, it changed my actual workbench yet i thought it was only meant to adjust the native AGA screens, not my workbench that uses the main va2000 RTG graphics.
If it was to work as i expected, i was then going to use the offset commands to line it up on my monitor. Also irecently i think the hsize and vsize have disappeared from the cxtool?

So what options do i need to centre the native AGA screen?

Thanks for any assistance.

[IvanEBC]

Originally Posted by JimDrew

The phase shift value will depend on your exact monitor, so it's something that you have to experiment with. On my HP ZR2440w monitor it didn't flicker at all in 640x400 mode until I put WB into 8 color mode and had some color icons, where then only a few colors actually flickered (black/white/grey/red didn't flicker at all). I found that 50 worked for this monitor to eliminate the flickering.

I found as an example, running the big time sensuality demo by Axis, the flicking disappeared on the static hires loading screen, but further into the demo (AGA plasma) the screen then again flickered, i guess it'll take some fine tuning near the number i'm at now which is -200. Got that on sim ant as well, loading screen no flicker, menu screen slight flicker, game screen no flicker...
My benQ912 actually has a phase shift build in as well... maybe they are fighting each other.

[.misha.]

Originally Posted by mntmn

Hello again!

Firmware release 1.8.3 is now finished:
http://mntmn.com/va2000/

It brings a de-interlacer ("flicker fixer") for VA2000CX and new linear memory model, which fixes all Picasso96 related bugs and makes it compatible with all games and demos that previously showed only pixel garbage. Enjoy!

Hi!

I'm using va2000 +cx, flashed the latest firmware and I have issues with PAL laced modes like for eg. 640x512:



RTG resolutions are OK, PAL lo-res also is OK:





With 1.4 or 1.5 PAL laced wasn't broken.

I'm using A4000 + warpengine 4060 128MB. 256MB bigram+, fastata4000, x-surf-100, rapidroad usb

help!

[mntmn]

Originally Posted by .misha.

Hi!

I'm using va2000 +cx, flashed the latest firmware and I have issues with PAL laced modes like for eg. 640x512:

Misha, cool to see some photos, thanks. The problem comes from va2000cx tool settings. Please remove va2000cx entries in your Startup-Sequence (except the one for clock shift setting). Then do a cold start and the problem should disappear.

Cheers

[.misha.]

Originally Posted by mntmn

Misha, cool to see some photos, thanks. The problem comes from va2000cx tool settings. Please remove va2000cx entries in your Startup-Sequence (except the one for clock shift setting). Then do a cold start and the problem should disappear.

Cheers
Lukas / mntmn

Thank you Lukas - that was the reason indeed..

; recommended PAL mode
va2000cx mode 640 512
va2000cx hsize 320
va2000cx vsize 297
va2000cx hoffset 65
va2000cx voffset 40

with that lines commented, the problem gone :-)

[amigoun]

Can anyone using VA2000 in stock A3000 (030/25) put theirs P96Speed benchmark here? I was happily using the card for some time and it was very responsive, until I out of curiosity put a commodore 030 cpu card to see if/how it will affect the speed.
From then the gfxcard speed dropped down dramaticaly making it slow and unresponsive and I have no idea what is causing it or how to restore to original speed.

[Drewlio77]

The speed will greatly depend on the screen resolution and color depth. On my 040/33 A4000 it runs OK at 800x600 or less in 16 bit. Anything over that will be noticeably slower, slower than AGA at 256 colurs (8bit). Then even slower the higher resolution you go.

I have seen in previous posts Blitter emulation is not currently supported in the Va2000 Picasso Drivers. Without it, the CPU have to do all the work.

Drewlio77.

[amigoun]

I have found that the big slowness was caused by the processor datacache being on. Switching it off (this was mentioned somewhere) by cpu command made the graphics speed usable again. But it a pitty because switching datacache makes computer somehow slower (at least in benchmarks).
Now if anyone is able to hack firmware to run in 50Hz instead 60Hz to have smooth native graphics thru VA scandoubler and I am happy

[Beska]

I have an A3000 and with the card it refuses to boot. I get a yellow screen every time. I've recently flash it with the 1.8.3 firmware and still no luck.

Is there anyway to confirm what firmware the card has outside of running it?

I have an Amiga 3000D, 16MB fast 2 Chip, Buster 11, scsi2sd, a2065. ks 3.1 and naturally va2000 + cx.

Here is couple of issues I have experienced. Already emailed about them to Lukas, but I´ll put them also here just in case someone else is experiencing the same.

Since I upgraded to fw 1.8.3 the boot has become very unrealiable and it quite often ends up to a total freeze.

To me it seems that the boot process starts normally and when it comes to the phase where screenmode settings are applied and the resolution changes, the amiga waits for a while and then...
a) freezes for a while but continues to workbench,
b) freezes totally (reset needed) or
c) boot continues and ends up to workbench "normally".

I have tried to see if something in my hardware causes this issue, but so far it seems to be a fw issue. I have removed all my zorro cards but that does not make any difference.

I have tested this on my Classicwb installation (os 3.1) and standard os 3.1 installations. They both act the same.

Downgrading back to 1.7.2 seems to solve the issue and boot is reliable and fast.

I attached here links to three videos with the issue.

- 1.8.3 working boot - [ Show youtube player ]
- 1.8.3 freeze but continues -https://youtu.be/X2Qmhq3S9MA
- 1.8.3 total freeze/lock up - [ Show youtube player ]
- 1.7.2 normal boot - [ Show youtube player ]


Then I have noticed some gfx clitches when using Amiga Unix through VA2000cx.

[ Show youtube player ]

[amigoun]

That partial freeze I had too, but if you switch off the datacache by cpu command it will run ok.

Originally Posted by amigoun

That partial freeze I had too, but if you switch off the datacache by cpu command it will run ok.

I had cpu nodatacache at my user-startup as lukas suggests at the first post of this thread. But your comment made me test if it is actually run too late. So I just changed it to startup-sequence, right after setpatch and.... so far after quick testing it seems to help.

Thanks!!

[mark_k]

Some programs can use the MMU to mark memory regions as uncacheable, maybe that could help rather than having to globally disable the data cache? Look into SetCPU and MuSetCacheMode in the MMULib package.

[JimDrew]

Turning off the datacache is going to kill your overall performance. It's like going from an 030 to an 020.

[Locutus]

Thats why you have a MMU so you can mark individual pages as noncachable.

[amigoun]

Anyone using the MMULib approach? Any easy how-to?