HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

HxC Floppy Emulator on Amiga support
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romppainen
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HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by romppainen »

To keep it short I have serious troubles using Lotharek's cased version of HxC Rev C as an replacement of A500's internal drive (this is just a temporary setup, machine is equipped with boot drive selector to switch HxC in external port (set as DF1) to primary drive without need to sacrifice internal one but I haven't found suitable external drive to cannibalize just yet so I threw this together for a sneak peek).

HxC is connected to internal bus with jumper set to ID0 A (DF0) and it communicates with Amiga but I keep getting AmigaDOS read/write errors, disk validating errors, gurus and/or self-reboots with EVERY disk image I've booted. They load for couple of seconds and either crash with described symptoms or just stop into blank screen. First I thought that my source ADF files might be corrupted as I haven't created them myself, but the fact that I've converted and tried about hundred different images without luck and even the AUTOBOOT.HFE supplied with Amiga File Manager does the same points to different direction.

Some information and stuff I've tried so far:

Amiga: A500 Rev 6a, floppy cable seem to be straight, original internal drive is Teac FD-235F. Boots without flaws from original drive.

Powering HxC: Tried with both A500's internal cable and standalone PSU with no difference, can't check the voltages tho.

Troubleshooting HxC: I hooked HxC up with CPC 6128 as secondary drive (ID1 A, switchable with internal drive via ABBA switch) and it worked like a charm in both autoboot and normal mode so unit itself doesn't seem to be defect unless the culprit happen to be something like single particular signal line Amstrad doesn't use - ?

Turning the floppy cable around: Makes HxC to keep quiet clicking sound with no activity in LCD or any of the leds using whatever jumper settings.

SD cards: I've tried 3 different Kingston SDHC 4 Gb Class 4 cards with no difference, I don't have any of the other brand here at the moment but all of those work with CPC.

Firmware: Updated to 1.7.2.0 before using the unit at all.

So, I'm running out of ideas: I've rummaged thru this forum quite a bit but while some people have had partially similar problems - nearest being probably read errors using A4000 - no case seem to match perfectly with mine so any help is much appreciated. Here's some pictures of the setup to show cable and connectors, you can't make anything out of jumper section but there's single one placed on top left.

Image
Image

Jeff
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by Jeff »

I don't see where is the jumper. please a redo a picture.

What is under the CIA ?

romppainen
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by romppainen »

Image

Top left, like said, shorting top and middle pins. The thing under CIA is boot device selector board.

Jeff
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by Jeff »

romppainen wrote: The thing under CIA is boot device selector board.
Did you try it without the device selector ?

romppainen
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by romppainen »

Jeff wrote:Did you try it without the device selector ?
Sure did, no difference.

Jeff
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by Jeff »

romppainen wrote:
Jeff wrote:Did you try it without the device selector ?
Sure did, no difference.
Where come from the hxc power supply ?

romppainen
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by romppainen »

Jeff wrote:Where come from the hxc power supply ?
Got it from eBay as a part of kit to connect external drive to CPC: It is just a regular wallwart with replaced connector, rated 5V DC, 2A. Connecting HxC to Amiga's internal floppy power cable didn't change the behaviour and HxC worked with CPC using this PSU.

Jeff
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by Jeff »

This amiga have some kind of accelarator board ?

romppainen
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by romppainen »

Jeff wrote:This amiga have some kind of accelarator board ?
No, it's stock A500 with only enhancements being the mentioned boot drive selector and standard 512K trapdoor memory expansion.

Jeff
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by Jeff »

This is maybe a sdcard compatibility problem... Anyway try the new firmware i sent to you by email (note : the autoboot will not work yet with this one).

elpiloto
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by elpiloto »

i had smilar problems, my amiga config is more expanded but i also have a boot selector board (with a GAL chip) under the cia even. All the problems were because the amiga psu 5v rail was a bit low, i solved all the problems powering the amiga 500 with an atx psu, now all works excellent.

romppainen
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by romppainen »

Firmware update - no difference.
Changing to 1GB Sandisk SD card - no difference.

I'll try to ask around if any of my friends would happen to have Amiga PSU I could borrow for testing, I don't have either Amiga or ATX spares at hand right now, but should the lacking 5V rail affect HxC if don't draw power for it from Amiga?

Jeff
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by Jeff »

romppainen wrote:Firmware update - no difference.
Changing to 1GB Sandisk SD card - no difference.

I'll try to ask around if any of my friends would happen to have Amiga PSU I could borrow for testing, I don't have either Amiga or ATX spares at hand right now, but should the lacking 5V rail affect HxC if don't draw power for it from Amiga?
In fact some AC/DC PSU may become instable when the 12V line is not loaded. Since the HxC doesn't use the 12V, this is maybe the case here.
This problem is very common with AT/ATX power supply.
Try to connect an harddisk drive to load the 12V output.

romppainen
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by romppainen »

Jeff wrote:Try to connect an harddisk drive to load the 12V output.
I don't have HD for Amiga, how about if I keep the internal disc drive powered but not connected?

elpiloto
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Re: HxC Rev C & Amiga 500 woes

Post by elpiloto »

you can plug any hdd just for testing, anyways i bought years ago an atx to amiga power adapter, basiclly is a cable that takes the voltages from the atx connector

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