#more amax4 troubles
22 messages in this thread
After I put PC0: into my wbstartup drawer, my amax4 will now mount mac hd disks
under mac emulation. i do not know why it works, but if i do not mount PC0:,
amax4 will not mount any mac hd disks. however, this has created another
problem during restart & shutdown of amax4. whenever you attempt to
reset/shutdown from the finder menu, the hd will spin and then stop leaving the
light on and the computer locked up.
another problem is 16 colors are horribly slow and i can not get the video to
go through my picasso card. in the monitor cdev, monitor 1 is the amiga video
and monitor 2 is picasso. i moved the menu to monitor 2 to make it the active
monitor, but for some reason when i reboot (i have to manually reboot the
entire machine since i can not reset/shutdown the mac) & run amax4 all i get is
the blocks of black lines across my monitor.
the only way i can get amax4 to show any sort of video is to have the picasso's
change screen commodity set to ntsc hi res. if i try any picasso mode, my amiga
will guru (8100 000C, i think).
some day, i'll get this to work…..
🙂
bob
Bob,
To get the Picasso board to work you have to select it in the video
drivers setup. Then select the Picasso driver and click on config. A requestor
will pop up and you can then select one of the Picasso resolutions you want. I
would use 640 x 480 for better speed. Then boot up the Mac. When the Mac
boots pull up the Monitor control panel and you should find a second monitor
along side the one you originally start with. Grab the menu bar from the first
monitor and position it on the second one. The second one will look larger (or
smaller) than the first depending on whether the Picasso screen is bigger or
smaller than the Amiga screen. Then position the mouse in the second monitor
and click on it to activate it. You should see a message in the control panel
that says the new monitor will be active on restart. Now restart you you
should now be in the Picasso screen. If you saved the Picasso setup in the
Amax setup program, then you will always have the Mac booting to the Picasso
screen. The Mac boot will start in the Amiga screen, then switch to the
Picasso screen.
To avoid problems DON'T run the Picasso's ChangeScreen commodity. For
the most part you don't need it, anyway. Also, don't use a resolution higher
than 800 x 600 for the Mac unless you know your monitor can display higher
resolutions. Generally, if your monitor's hsync is less than 35 Khz you won't
be able to display higher than 800 x 600.
ok, i'll remove the changescreen commodity and see if that helps. i have the
amax4 config setup for a picasso screen and the larger monitor does show up
next to the first in the monitor cdev. i have the monitor setup for the picasso
monitor, and that is when nothing but blocks of black lines appear.
now, do you have any idea why i can mount mac hd disks if i have mounted PC0:
on the amiga side first and why i can shutdown or restart? 🙂
bob
I have AMAX IV with a Picasso board and it works fine. Make sure you have the
screen size small enough, as what you describe happens to me if I try anything
too large. My AMAX has locked up from Day 1 with either shutdown or reset.
This is an obvious bug. It tries to write something to your DEVS:. If I let it
do that, it corrupted my drive and crashed. My DEVS: is write-protected, so
the system requestor comes up, and locks up when I select cancel.
Other bugs…crashes if you start AMAX with a CD-ROM in the drive, is
incompatible with Sound Manager 3.0 (either no sound or lock ups). The latter
is a real problem if you want to play MYST.
Dale
Dale,
Do you have a CD-ROM driver running on the Mac? If not, that may be
the reason for the crash. I have a CD-ROM and haven't any problem, but I am
running CD ROM Toolkit, which mounts the CD-ROM and puts it on the desktop. If
the drive has an unrecognizable CD-ROM in it, CDROM Toolkit simply auto ejects
the cartridge.
However, I do have a problem in that Amax IV won't recognize tape
drives. Readysoft is apparently aware of that and may fix it soon.
Amax always needs to be able to write to your drive because it stores
any Mac PRAM data to the drive because Amax doesn't have any real PRAM. The
data are stored in a config file written into the DEVS: directory. It also
stores it's config data in DEVS:. I would recommend not write-protecting the
directory, for those reasons.
I have a CD-ROM driver on the Mac side. If there is a CD-ROM in the
drive when I start AMAX, it crashes even before the happy mac. Amax
has written those files to my DEVS: area, now I write-protect it
because I dislike getting out Quarterback Tools to fix my corrupt
drive.
The Sound Manager incompatibility is a real pain, as I get to play
Myst for about 20 minutes, the crash, then reboot, etc. Takes a long
time to get anywhere. I also have Capitol Hill, and new graphics
come up behind the current graphic. I have to move the pointer all
around which rubs thru the old graphic to see the new one underneath.
This is some interaction with Amax.
Dale,
What Mac system do you run? If you are running System 7.x.y you may
need to check that your CD ROM driver is System 7 friendly. As I said, I use
FWB's CD ROM Toolkit driver and I've never had any crash problems.
As for Sound Manager, I have a version that came with a PD package, but
I don't recall what version. I've never actually used it much, but when I
tried it out it seemed to work OK. I'll check the version and perhaps can pass
that on next message.
I'm using System 7.1 and just got FWB's CR-ROM Toolkit but it will not
recognize any of my Mac CD-ROMs. How do you get it to work?
Dale
I was recently using Toshiba's 1.5.2 driver for my CD-ROM using AMAX
IV. I see where you are using CD-ROM Toolkit. As Toshiba wanted
$67.00 to upgrade to their 1.6 driver, I bought CD-ROM Toolkit
instead. I installed it, but now every CD-ROM I put in is not
recognized as a Mac disk and ejected. Wonderful. How do you get
CD-ROM Toolkit to work? I tried acceleration on & off without any
difference. So it's back to Toshiba's slow 1.5.2 driver. Any help
appreciated.
Dale,
I don't know. I have a Toshiba 3201B which seems to work fine. Since
my drive was generic I never got any special Mac driver or any other driver
with it. With CD Rom Toolkit I just pull up the control panel and it scans the
scsi chain until it finds the unit, then I just check the two boxes beside it
to activate it, and leave all the other settings at default. I assume you went
into the Amax IV setup for scsi and checked the cd-rom ''s device number.
That's necessary for Amax IV to know that the CD-ROM device is to be treated as
a scsi manager device. If Toolkit doesn't work with your drive, perhaps it's
one of the newer Toshibas not supported. Did you check the supported drive
list to be sure your model number is supported?
I have the CD-ROMs SCSI setup on Amax side, and it works ok with the Toshiba
supplied driver. It is a 3401 and is on the list of supported drives. Maybe
I'll give ReadySoft a call and see if they have a version newer than 4.00. I
feel like a beta tester for them. I'm on an Amiga 3000 with 2.1, are you by
any chance using an Amiga 4000?
Dale
Dale,
I'm using a 3000, too, with 2.1. I don't know why you have aproblem
with the Toolkit, though. As long as you have a working driver for it,
however, I wouldn't worry about it. Just don't use Toolkit.
yo wouldn't happen to know how to get it to use a 16 color picasso screen? when
i picked my screens from the amax4 setup program, the min color choice i get is
256 and the others are 32,000 & 16,000,000. in the monitor cdev the color
choices for the picasso are 256, thousands and millions. only the amiga video
monitor gives me a 16 color option.
bob
As of now you cannot get a 16 color Picasso screen, only 256 and above. The
Amiga 16 color screen is REAL SLOW.
Dale
ok, i figured i could not get below 256 colors on a picasso screen. the video
speed is sometimes a bit chunky (slows down for a little bit, then snaps back
normal speed) and i thought 16 colors might speed it up. i guess i'll have to
wait for a driver that supports it. yes, you are right the amiga 16 color
screen is very, very, very, very darn slow (unless you happen to enjoy watching
every segment of the screen being drawn piece by piece). 🙂
bob
God that is unusually slow, are you sure there isn't anything running to slow
it down? From my Emplant experience I haven't seen 16 color as being that slow
, although I've only seen it on A3000's and A4000's.
Ben
Steve is right, do NOT attempt to force AMax into the picasso mode through
external software. The picasso screenmode must be selected through the
AMax internal software ONLY. (It's working very well here, too) That's
in the manual also, BTW <G>
-Karl Speaking from the Rubble.
yes i know that is in the manual. i read that section a few times and was not
certain what it was refering to (village.lib? monitor file, what?). it would be
nice if readysoft took the time to write a trouble shooting section for those
of us who are not as smart as you are.
bob
Bob,
I'm not sure why you get the distorted display. Perhaps when you did
the setup your last selected monitor wasn't a Picasso screen. What I do is run
the Amax setup, go to Video and click on Picasso driver, then click on
Configure and select the 640 x 480 resolution. When the requestor pops up the
second time, I click on Done. Then click on OK and return to Setup's main
window and select Save, then boot the Mac. I think that the way it works you
boot into the resolution that was LAST selected before booting the Mac. I had
to get rid of ChangeScreen (or disable it) to get things to work right.
As for the PC0: think, I don't know what the story is there. Are you
running Amiga DOS 2.1 or 2.04? 2.04 did not correctly work with HD floppies,
but that was fixed in 2.05 and 2.1 software. I run 2.1 and haven't had any
problems such as yours. If you are running 2.04, I would make a small bet that
could be the problem. Mounting PC0: may do something that forces the OS to now
treat the drive as HD (sort of like a mount, itself).
As for the shutdown problem, I am stumped. I would still wonder
whether you might have a faulty or defective PAL or have it in the wrong
socket? I really don't know.
I am running AmigaDOS 2.1. though if i try using the format command in the
systems folder, it shows DF0: as an 880k drive. i am running setpatch v40.14
which has "150RPM HD Floppies" in the patch list. i will check all my libs to
make sure that they are the 2.1 libs and that there are no 2.04 libs hanging
around. btw, i am also using a 3000 that has a superkick sstartrom which uses a
37.175 kickstart file. i dunno what difference that might make.
the funny thing about the shutdown/restart problem is when i do not mount PC0:
the problem disappears (but i can not mount any hd mac floppies).
bob
well, i checked out the board and all the connections. the PAL chip was in the
right spot and all the pins were intact (nothing hanging out or bent) and all
the cables were properly connected (though i think if they were not, i'd get
problems on the amiga end).
this is what happens when PC0: is not in my wbstartup drawer:
1.) can not mount any macintosh hd floppy, and any attempt to format
a mac hd floppy will make my amiga guru
2.) shutdown and restart work normally
this is what happens when PC0: is in my wbstartup drawer:
1.) can mount mac hd disks and format them without any problems
2.) shutdown & restart will work, but after the amax finishes writing
to disk (pram, cache lazy write, etc) the hard drive light will
remain on, the screen will go black, and the amiga will lock up.
i can not switch to the amiga side and the only thing it responds
to is CTRL-A-A.
now the above only happens when PC0: is in my wbstartup drawer. if i mount it
before starting amax4, it will not mount hd mac disks and shutdown/ restart
behave as they should.
i'll give tech support a ring tomorrow and see if they have anything to add to
this. i wonder if i'll get a "I stumped ReadySoft's Tech Support" t-shirt? 🙂
have you had any problems with the 800k disktransfer program? i have a few
disks that it would not read that my amax2 would. so i too think it's probably
a bad PAL chip, which is strange considering it works fine otherwise. oh
well….
bob
Bob,
I'm puzzled, too. If I had similar problems it would be easier to help
because then I'd either know what the fix was or know it wasn't fixable. As
is, it's strange and certainly shouldn't be happening. Yes, I think a call to
Readysoft is in order because I have no earthly idea what to suggest at this
point.