Questions regarding G-Rex 1200

[Hedeon]

Hi,

I was wondering what the symptoms are of an incompatible g-rex/bppc pair? I put everything together but I have a black screen. I am using a ATX to AT converter. Floppy drive is the only thing attached. Waited for 5 mins. The caps-lock of the keyboard still works after tens of times of pressing it. The black screen does not seem to cycle to lighter grays.

The BPPC worked last time I checked (which was 2 years ago...but still).

[fitzsteve]

Did you flash the grex firmware to the Blizzard?

[kriz]

Bppc revision 0 is not compatible.. Run boardtype and see your version.. https://grex.amigaworld.de/index.php?lang=en&page=42

[Hedeon]

Sadly, noone answered the original question. What do I see if it is incompatible?

Indeed, the BPPC did not boot due to wrong firmware, and dirt accumulated on the connector. Both were fixed.

Right now after flashing, it all boots. The Voodoo is recognized and outputs a signal while in the bootmenu, disk insertion screen and also while booting to shell by floppy. Don't have a HD installed yet.

It is a rev 0 board.

[fitzsteve]

I have ran GREX on Rev0 BPPC as well and it worked, although my main setup I did have a Rev2 BPPC only because I was told at the time it was needed. (rev 0 testing came later when I had a second Grex)

Sorry I didn't have the answer to your question although I know it wont boot if you don't have the firmware

Also this was by far my favorite ever Amiga setup and I really regret that I sold it, was sooooo much faster than the Mediator and I used GGX4 which was more compatible with the games at the time.

I did get a GREX 4000 but sadly the board was defective and I never got that working

[Hedeon]

The rumor has it that it depends on power management and that rev 0 160MHz no SCSI with 060 are more likely to work as they consume less power. Anyway, need to wait for my new ROMs, then I can assemble the lot. I now have to be careful not to sweat on the electronics as it is 40+ degrees Celcius in this room...

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Sorry I didn't have the answer to your question although I know it wont boot if you don't have the firmware

Sorry, did not mean to offend. I hope to get everything going :-) I heard about the speeds of the G-Rex compared to Mediator (plus the no-banking of the G-Rex). I have had this stuff stored for 4 years now. But recently the A1200 with the Mediator does no longer boot, so this is a nice project.

[kriz]

Hope you get it going, i sold my g-rex when i found out about the incompatibility, never tried it sadly.. This was on a 040/240/scsi card (but upgraded to 060)..

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Sorry, did not mean to offend. I hope to get everything going :-) I heard about the speeds of the G-Rex compared to Mediator (plus the no-banking of the G-Rex). I have had this stuff stored for 4 years now. But recently the A1200 with the Mediator does no longer boot, so this is a nice project.

Hey no offence taken at all, love following your work and hope you have fun with the GREX, I did toy with the idea of getting one again as I have a BPPC again which I'm using with a Bvision, I'll probably keep it in the wedge I haven't shared the project here as I'm more active posting on Facebook groups.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5l555iik2x7ubf7/20210317_121340.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u9sasucjzehospy/20210505_172435.jpg?dl=0

If you get stuck I think I still have working backups of the grex installations

[DarrenHD]

I have a working GREX 4000 setup. I used to have a GREX 1200. My understanding is that for stable free operation you need the rev 2. If paired with a rev 0 it may lead to instability, but it would still "work". You would get the odd freeze. And some rev 0's may actually be fine. I have a Sonnet as well but it's in my other machine with a Mediator.

[Hedeon]

I would very much like the GREX 4000T. Sadly, somebody is sitting on the blueprints and firmware files.

If everything works inside the A1200, I hope to get at least some of the PPC cards to work. Voodoo does not support bus master, so it can go in the second slot. I ordered a RTL8029 which also does not use bus mastering. And then the bus master slot is all free for a PPC card.

[fitzsteve]

Awesome will be cool to see what you can do with the PPC

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

The rumor has it that it depends on power management and that rev 0 160MHz no SCSI with 060 are more likely to work as they consume less power. Anyway, need to wait for my new ROMs, then I can assemble the lot. I now have to be careful not to sweat on the electronics as it is 40+ degrees Celcius in this room...

I’m currently putting together an A1200 with 060 603e plus BPPC Phase 5 with a G-REX in a Checkmate 1500 case. The BPPC has SCSI and I’ve upgraded the firmware to the latest for G-REX from the A1org site.

https://phase5.a1k.org/

I’m using the version 44.71 OpenPCI 2.2 version.

Luckily for me the G-REX has the bridging chip on it so I can use the ATX power supply to it. What I’ve found is that I’ve had to use an ATX splitter cable so I have 2 powered connections (1 to the GREX and one to the PSU board on the checkmate), also I had to splice in another cable off the original switch cable so that both the GREX and Checkmate get the power on and off signal at the sametime.

My only issues at the moment with 44.71 (I’m guessing) is that on first power up I get a Software Mediator error of either 8000000B or 80000003. Once it’s passed all that then all is good.

My point is that my phase 5 BPPC is a Rev.0 with SCSI ???

[Hedeon]

I still don't know what exactly the symtomps are of a non-working BPPC and GRex. I also flashed the latest and I get the insert floppy disk on the voodoo output and can see the card in the bppc openpci menu. Sadly, both my A1200 motherboards have an error preventing me from progressing atm. IDE connector missing a pin and no video output on the other (not on the RGB connector). I am looking into ways to get it repaired, but life happened.

Does it fit in a checkmate case?

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

I still don't know what exactly the symtomps are of a non-working BPPC and GRex. I also flashed the latest and I get the insert floppy disk on the voodoo output and can see the card in the bppc openpci menu. Sadly, both my A1200 motherboards have an error preventing me from progressing atm. IDE connector missing a pin and no video output on the other (not on the RGB connector). I am looking into ways to get it repaired, but life happened.

Does it fit in a checkmate case?

Yep, everything fits in a checkmate case. What I do have to do is use PCI extenders for the PCI slots as obviously you can’t fit PCI cards standing up

At the moment got a PCI Permedia 2 graphics card (Same as a Bvision card) and successfully got this mounted in one of the horizontal slots. Next is to get either a sound or Network or even a WinTV card underneath. Then work from there.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

I still don't know what exactly the symtomps are of a non-working BPPC and GRex. I also flashed the latest and I get the insert floppy disk on the voodoo output and can see the card in the bppc openpci menu. Sadly, both my A1200 motherboards have an error preventing me from progressing atm. IDE connector missing a pin and no video output on the other (not on the RGB connector). I am looking into ways to get it repaired, but life happened.

Does it fit in a checkmate case?

From what you describe it seems to be working: you are getting output on the Voodoo and the PCI devices should show up in the list in the blizzard early menu (hold ESC when booting). From there you should be good to go to install the OS and CyberGraphX latest version. You can download all the GREX drivers from the GREX world site as I am sure you know.

Regarding the revision zero Blizzard - it may depend on the card and it may or may not work. It might work most of the time or not at all. But for 100% error and freeze free operation you do need the revision 2, but some revision 0 boards will also work. Some will work but sometimes freeze. You just have to try it. The GREX had a fix on the DMA capability of the slots so there was a "new" version that was released that was indicated with stickers on the GREX. There may be patch wires installed on the fixed version.

[Jpor]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

From what you describe it seems to be working: you are getting output on the Voodoo and the PCI devices should show up in the list in the blizzard early menu (hold ESC when booting). From there you should be good to go to install the OS and CyberGraphX latest version. You can download all the GREX drivers from the GREX world site as I am sure you know.

Regarding the revision zero Blizzard - it may depend on the card and it may or may not work. It might work most of the time or not at all. But for 100% error and freeze free operation you do need the revision 2, but some revision 0 boards will also work. Some will work but sometimes freeze. You just have to try it. The GREX had a fix on the DMA capability of the slots so there was a "new" version that was released that was indicated with stickers on the GREX. There may be patch wires installed on the fixed version.

Well had the symptoms as you described on my 68060 603e plus. Like the poster has eluded to I tried a Voodoo 3 and it didn’t work. But it was fine with a Permedia 2 pci. Unfortunately (fortunately) I tried re-flashing the 68060 BPPC firmware and screwed up the card to see if a re-flash would fix it. Now when I try to reflash it, the card is picked up as a 603e with no clock frequency
So now replaced it with a 68040 603e plus version and now it’s fully working with a voodoo 3

Oh this was interesting. 3.1.4 ROMs won’t allow you to get into a 603e early menu (ESC key) or deactivate the BPPC card yet 3.1 ROMs will.