adam242 Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 After installing my Incognito board, and seeing how superior the 800's video is (you were right, guys), the 800 has now become my primary machine. I had a PAL ANTIC that I put in my 1200XL (my former main machine) for maximum software compatibility, and tonight I moved it into the 800 for the same reason. It seems to work fine, but has a strange side effect that did not occur in my 1200XL. Now when I power on the 800, I get a black screen for about 10 seconds before the machine will boot. Doesn't matter if I have a cart installed or not, disk or not, etc. The same thing happens whenever I press the Reset key. Is this normal? Any thoughts on what would cause this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 Strange it would take that long to power up. Possibly the Incognito Bios is different for Pal/NTSC ? Maybe it goes through a detection stage and gets confused. GTIA has the register that most software checks if it wants to know whether you're Pal/NTSC but Antic actually determines the frame rate/# of scanlines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted March 16, 2013 Author Share Posted March 16, 2013 The Incognito config screen comes up immediately as it should. Also, after several cold starts, the delay is now down to a few seconds. Still longer than it was before I swapped the chips, but shorter. Maybe something got confused and needs to adapt? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 Is it an antic that does only do a 7bit memory refresh or 8bit memory refresh? I know that early ANTICS do the 7bit memory refresh, which is not a problem in stock machines, but can be an issue in expanded machines. Perhaps that is the case? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted March 16, 2013 Author Share Posted March 16, 2013 Is it an antic that does only do a 7bit memory refresh or 8bit memory refresh? I know that early ANTICS do the 7bit memory refresh, which is not a problem in stock machines, but can be an issue in expanded machines. Perhaps that is the case? That had occurred to me, too... it is an early 7-bit refresh chip. But I don't think that's the problem for two reasons: First, the 1200XL has a 256K upgrade, and it (the ANTIC) worked fine in there. Second, the 800 had a 7-bit NTSC ANTIC that played just fine with the memory expansion provided by Incognito. Either way, the delay is now only 2-3 seconds. I don't understand why it has shortened, it was 8-10 at first. It's a mystery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 It's odd.... The only situation where my Atari does what you describe, is when I switch on my atari, as soon as my blackbox is just powered on and my harddrive is not read (spin up time). Then my atari has a black screen and everything is on hold... and as soon as the harddrive is ready, it continues to boot. But that is a complete different situation, so I don't see a relation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 Fairly sure Ultimate 1 Meg and Incognito both use Static Ram - no refresh needed so Antic version shouldn't matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 After installing my Incognito board, and seeing how superior the 800's video is (you were right, guys), the 800 has now become my primary machine. I had a PAL ANTIC that I put in my 1200XL (my former main machine) for maximum software compatibility, and tonight I moved it into the 800 for the same reason. It seems to work fine, but has a strange side effect that did not occur in my 1200XL. Now when I power on the 800, I get a black screen for about 10 seconds before the machine will boot. Doesn't matter if I have a cart installed or not, disk or not, etc. The same thing happens whenever I press the Reset key. Is this normal? Any thoughts on what would cause this? Are you trying to boot the machine with no CF card inserted? If there is no CF, or the CF has an invalid partition, it will cause a delay when booting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted March 17, 2013 Author Share Posted March 17, 2013 Are you trying to boot the machine with no CF card inserted? If there is no CF, or the CF has an invalid partition, it will cause a delay when booting. Nope. CF card is there, with both APT and FAT32 partitions, both working. The only variable, only thing that's changed is the machine now has a PAL ANTIC instead of NTSC. Everything works great, can run PAL games / demos, just the (now slightly) longer boot-up time than before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 Possibly the I/O is upset because the master clock is different and something is reliant on knowing if it's Pal/NTSC for the correct setting to talk to the CF card. Candle of course would be best qualified to answer that. I'd suggest try running the I/O speed benchmark, the program can be had from one or more of the IDE Plus 2 threads at least. If you try with Pal and NTSC Antic installed on seperate runs, if there's some large discrepancy then it could indicate a problem. Of course there's always chance the benchmark mightn't calculate properly with a mixed Antic+GTIA combination but it's worth a shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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