Elbox A1200TX Fast Ethernet Downloads keep stopping?

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by alexh

The reason that it is an unpredictable amount of time is probably because the 680x0 bus is not in use for different amounts of time depending on what the CPU is doing. You have to remember that the PiStorm + FastRAM + RTG are not connected to the 680x0 bus and so it can run for long periods of time with the 680x0 bus being free for DMA until it gets an interrupt or whatever that required it to access the motherboard and trashes anything going on because it doesn't know anything is going on.

Indeed & very random without pattern.

[specfreak]

@Kin Hell, I feel your pain, having recently got my Amiga A1200T out of storage to find my BPPC worked for a week and then packed in :-(.
Got it recapped and now have a PiStorm/rpi3a+ just cos it was the cheapest to get stuff up and running again (and the other options are expensive when you're used to an 060/PPC).

Got my A1200 1D.4 + PS32 setup with OS3.9 and Mediator with Voodoo 3/3000 16MB, NIC 10Mbps RTL 8029 (MediatorNET.device) with Genesis TCP and a SB128 sound card.

Using EMU68 1.0.2 (02.06.2024) git:b9f91e8 to start on a 32GB SanDisc mSD, main HDs are 4GB CFs or smaller.
Anyway I thought things were going well until I tried to setup the network card.
I'm sure it worked initially, when I went down to EMU 0.16.0 (31.07.2023) git:5b84934 when I read of others with network/machine freezes.
It worked okay for a little while, then suddenly froze even upon first connection.

Yesterday, the machine wouldn't power on, so I was in a right sweat. Fortunately I had a spare ATX PSU, so swapped it out and what a relief when it worked again.

Like others, I'm seeing differing freeze times. The mouse pointer still works, but nothing like SnoopDOS shows anything of use as to why it's barfed?

So with the new(er) PSU in, and I had the case open, I decided to swap my PCI cards around. I noticed that My Voodoo and Sound Card were on the same Interrupt pin, although I don't know if this is normal for the Voodoo to provide a bit mem or DMA to the Sound Card (thought it was the NIC)? Anyway, it wasn't an issue on my BPPC before and no freezes.

Previous card order on Mediator SX (6 PCI slots) with PCIInfo info:
Device 1: Voodoo 3 (Slot 1), as per Mediator instructions.
Device 2: Network Card (Slot 3)
Device 3: Sound Card (Slot 5)

Changed card order:
Device 1: Voodoo 3 (Slot 1), as per Mediator instructions.
Device 2: Sound Card (Slot 4)
Device 3: Network Card (Slot 6)

With the new order no card was sharing the same Interrupt Pin.
Still getting freezes, but it only seems to be if I try and download a large file (few MB)?
That latest 5mins. However, when I downloaded a load of small LHAs from Aminet I was online for 30 mins and it didn't freeze. Not sure if you can enable some kind of debugging on EMU68 or something to figure what causes it?

It's early days for me at the moment and I'm trying to get back into how things worked, it's been a while. I may try going back to 1.0.2 and see what happens or incremental builds to see when it gets worse.

[Kin Hell]

I've done Elbox PCI in the past with Mediator on the A4KT & never had any issues at all, but that was with a 233Mhz PPC/060 with full MMU setup.
G-REX 4000D was the mutt's nuts tho'!

I was always a Voodoo guy back then & Radeon was still a new thing & poor by comparison on the day.

My main pain was for saying No to MMU & for doing so, it would only set a maximum of 8Mb for the 128Mb Radeon. Even if I tried editing the Elbox files in Env-Archive to reflect normal use-age, everything still crapped out on the desktop. If you had Icons & opened a partition, you'd see the windowed icons too. Open another window over these icons & then hardly any icons would show & closing that window made all the icons underneath that it touched..... disappear!

The 50Mhz 030 card I have here worked like a charm but then you're able to configure correctly using the Elbox MMU option during the configuration process.

For me.... you can only go round in circles for so long with Elbox issues....

Good luck fella.

[specfreak]

Do you think one of the issues with Mediator and PiStorm/EMU68 is the lack of MMU?
I might try and config up the olde Musashi, although I think I've read even if it does MMU, it's not very compatible?

The next config to try would of course be the PiStorm with native RTG and Wifi when it's stable enough, and I also like the look of the Flametrower RGB Video feed into the unicam pi port. Wonder if it'll solve the jail bars on my current Micronik Scandoubler?

BTW, is there any advantage having a FastEthernet PCI card over a standard 10Mbps one? Or is it just as problematic.

I could never afford an A4000, but did get the P5 BPPC 060/50+603e/240 from one of my pay packets back in 1997. Perhaps it's fixable one day.

A lot of fun, but also a lot of hair pulling.

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by specfreak

Do you think one of the issues with Mediator and PiStorm/EMU68 is the lack of MMU?
I might try and config up the olde Musashi, although I think I've read even if it does MMU, it's not very compatible?

The next config to try would of course be the PiStorm with native RTG and Wifi when it's stable enough, and I also like the look of the Flametrower RGB Video feed into the unicam pi port. Wonder if it'll solve the jail bars on my current Micronik Scandoubler?

BTW, is there any advantage having a FastEthernet PCI card over a standard 10Mbps one? Or is it just as problematic.

I could never afford an A4000, but did get the P5 BPPC 060/50+603e/240 from one of my pay packets back in 1997. Perhaps it's fixable one day.

A lot of fun, but also a lot of hair pulling.

Not sure if it's just down to the lack of MMU. - Elbox have a kludge in place for DMA functionality & that might be involved as well.
Lack of MMU with a PiStorm setup certainly has some issues & the way the Gfx card sets itself up acts as a buffer for the Network card to function so I kind see why the network downloads drop out. The real problem is the lack of continuity.... Sometimes, you think it's fixed & then after several successful downloads, it all goes tits up again!

Fast Ethernet is faster than 10Mbit in real terms, though I didn't have the patience or the drive to go slower. Who does?

Wi-Fi is working well. Highest speed I've seen in Download Manager using iBrowse & Roadshow is just over 3,500cps. Not too shabby for an Alpha release tbh.

Shave your head to save the hair pulling!

Above all, have fun.

[specfreak]

Was messing yesterday with Caffeine OS 922, which is canny, but I immediately changed the config to give 2MB CHIP RAM since it was barfing with only 0.5MB in that release.
I might try and install the mediator stuff and try the network card in that.

I also put 1.0.2 back onto my other test 32GB SD Card after 0.16.0 was still giving me grief. Oddly I was able to stay online for like 1h 30 without it barfing, but I'm sure it was still stuttering the system. I also didn't download anything over a few MB, just x128 ZX Speccy Emulator which worked okay. I was trying to get it on an RTG screen rather than native PAL (vertical lines annoying me), and it did show something in window mode but it was slow as hell. Native was fine.
I did note when I tried to download the LHA ROMs using IBrowse it wasn't too happy, also didn't like the ftp link rather than http. Odd that lha t said the archive was okay, but then lha x didn't wanna work.
In the end I downloaded them with AWeb and unarchived to RAM. I think I used the built in de-archiver in OS3.9.

So at this point, I don't know if it's:
* PiStorm/EMU68
* Mediator or the NIC
* Lack of MMU
* TCP IP Stack (Genesis in my case).
* Or something else.

Don't know if there's any debug tools to figure out why it's freezing or slowing the machine down (Amiga side or Pi Side)?

Not gonna shave me heed at this stage, cherish it while I have it, although I keep it short.