U1MB + SIDE2 = best practices?

[flashjazzcat]

 

Mr Flashjazzcat, you are a legend :-) Switched off basic on the SIDE2 Loader and all the images which did not work before now work :-) I am off to play some Yoomp and dropzone :-)

 

Ah - great stuff. I love it when it's an easy win like that.

[Paradroid90]

 

Ah - great stuff. I love it when it's an easy win like that.

Mmmmmmmm, might of spoke too soon. After 10 mins of use then files the did run then fail to run. Most concerning is that I get crashes whilst browsing the loader before I have a chance to select a file. If I remove the card the loader does not crash. Do we have any go to fat 32 formatter to use ? Thanks again, and sorry for being a pain :-)

[flashjazzcat]

Formatting with any PC using default tools is just fine. If problems start after 10 minutes, I'd suspect something thermally related. I had a similar issue (strange behaviour after 10-15 minutes) on one of my own machines which took many months to diagnose. Turned out the FPGA chip on the VBXE needed reflowing.

[Paradroid90]

Formatting with any PC using default tools is just fine. If problems start after 10 minutes, I'd suspect something thermally related. I had a similar issue (strange behaviour after 10-15 minutes) on one of my own machines which took many months to diagnose. Turned out the FPGA chip on the VBXE needed reflowing.

 

Thanks again, I thought it might be heat related. I will run the XE without the case lid for a while and see if any chips get hot :-)

[Paradroid90]

Run with the case lid off. Apart from Sally getting lukewarm at most I cannot feel any heat coming from the chips

[flashjazzcat]

This may be the case, but I can assure you that VLSIs, FPGAs, CPLDs and SRAMs can suffer from intermittent faults owing to heat expansion if there are poor solder connections, etc. This does not imply that they have to reach scorching temperatures for problems to occur. There are even documented cases of differing behaviours at different temperatures without the need for connectivity issues. Of course all this is pure speculation with regard to your situation. However, in almost every case I observed in which a machine worked for 10-15 minutes after cold power-up only to exhibit problems from then on, the problem was traced to a relationship between temperature and connectivity. I list a few:

 

1) Imperfect (hand) soldering on VBXE FPGA caused random lock-ups after 10 minutes of operation, once the FPGA became warm

2) Imperfect (hand) soldering on Incognito CF connector caused IO errors after 10 minutes of operation owing to absolutely fractional temperature changes on the board (this is why the device no doubt appeared to work perfectly well during testing)

3) Poor soldering on Stereo POKEY board SMD IC caused random lock-ups after 10-15 minutes of operation once the board became warm (problem was eventually diagnosed when moving the stereo board to a different Atari migrated the issue to the other machine)

 

Of course there could be another culprit (ribbon cables, jumper wires, sockets, bus capacitance). Just going by experience, things working well for the first few minutes following power-up are significant.

Edited March 8, 2018 by flashjazzcat

[Paradroid90]

This may be the case, but I can assure you that VLSIs, FPGAs, CPLDs and SRAMs can suffer from intermittent faults owing to heat expansion if there are poor solder connections, etc. This does not imply that they have to reach scorching temperatures for problems to occur. There are even documented cases of differing behaviours at different temperatures without the need for connectivity issues. Of course all this is pure speculation with regard to your situation. However, in almost every case I observed in which a machine worked for 10-15 minutes after cold power-up only to exhibit problems from then on, the problem was traced to a relationship between temperature and connectivity. I list a few:

 

1) Imperfect (hand) soldering on VBXE FPGA caused random lock-ups after 10 minutes of operation, once the FPGA became warm

2) Imperfect (hand) soldering on Incognito CF connector caused IO errors after 10 minutes of operation owing to absolutely fractional temperature changes on the board (this is why the device no doubt appeared to work perfectly well during testing)

3) Poor soldering on Stereo POKEY board SMD IC caused random lock-ups after 10-15 minutes of operation once the board became warm (problem was eventually diagnosed when moving the stereo board to a different Atari migrated the issue to the other machine)

 

Of course there could be another culprit (ribbon cables, jumper wires, sockets, bus capacitance). Just going by experience, things working well for the first few minutes following power-up are significant.

Thanks again FlashJazzCat for all your help with this. Must admit I am not a big techie, but I have forwarded on your feedback to my tech guru who installed the Ultimate on the board. It it configured for the simple stereo board which had a sound distrotion issue when installed and tested. This is on its way back to Lotherek. Thaks once again for all your help :-)

[flashjazzcat]

No problem. I'm sure the guru put everything through its paces prior to dispatch, but ensuring upgraded machines are completely stable can involve a heavy investment of time. Problem 3 mentioned above was on a customer's 800XL, and I eventually moved all the upgrades to a different motherboard (having stupidly overlooked the POKEY board issue) before figuring out what was up. I never considered dual POKEY boards as innocuous minor upgrades again after that.

[Paradroid90]

Had another thought out on the road today. After dealing with the basic issue it seems that only software which needs the extra memory from the Ultimate did not work? But might be just spitballing lol. I will keep you posted on how I get on. Thanks again for all your help :-)