Buddha Flash problems

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AmiBayer
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Hi peeps need some help again!

I got this buddha flash in a job lot last year and have only just got round to using it (or trying to). It's in my A4000 which has a CV64/3D, CS2 060 and 146mb ram. I currently only have one sata hard drive fitted to the on board IDE connector using a sata to ide converter.

If I plug the buddha in and then power on the system boots to workbench fine but then if I try to open any drive icon on workbench the whole system freezes up. This happens if I have drives attached to the buddha or not, but when drive are attached they are all good drives known to work with the IDE cables I have as they are all tested using the on board IDE with no problems at all.

The card does have two places for jumpers on it but there is none on those pins. I have looked at the docs on the icomp wiki but there is no mention of them that i can see so I do not know if this is related?

Any insights would be great.

As I type this I have also just thought I am using loadmodule to load a new scsi.device to access all of the hard drive I am using... not sure if this might be the issue here, does the buddha need any drivers of it's own?
 
Hi,

There are no jumpers on the board that need to be added or removed.

Also, have you installed the Buddha tools from the disk that came with it?


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RichyV is right, those 'jumpers' are the drive activity LED outputs.

As far as I know the Buddha does not need it's own drivers, but it does need a patch to see drives/partitions bigger than 4Gb. What size is your drive?

Have you tried it with a real IDE drive? (not via a SATA adapter?) Maybe the adapter is not following protocol but your mobo's controller tolerates it?

I have a 2Gb real IDE drive and CDROM on a Buddha Flash which boots to WB and operates fine (before any of the Buddha install disks were used), I'd suspect my card as faulty if it didn't! But I'd want to eliminate the SATA converter before everything else.

Hope that helps! :)
 
Alright i tried removing my sata hard drive and putting the buddha back in on it's own. I took my 160GB IDE hard drive (only 128GB utilised) from my A1200 and booted up. It takes around 40 seconds to finally bring up a kickstart screen and does not see any disk attached to it - the same happens if I use an ancient 2GB drive I have from the 90's as well. I can get into the early boot menu and it shows up as board 3 in the expansions menu so at least the Amiga sees it. I have tried it plugged into the 3 different Zorro slots of the daughter board however it's not the original as I towered my A4000 so it's using an Elbox rev 1.1 daughter board, is there any way this could be the problem?
 
Hmm, that doesn't sound good. I would expect the 2Gb drive to be recognized, and the 40-second wait you're describing is likely Kickstart 3.1 attempting to read the IDE port and finding nothing - as you've discovered. The fact your SATA converter is recognized but a real IDE drive isn't is a bit troubling, perhaps pointing to difficulties on the Buddha itself with correctly reading the IDE bus signals.

Just to eliminate some possible issues, do you know for sure your 2Gb drive works from a regular Amiga IDE port (perhaps the one in your A4000)? I'm guessing you've tested it. Also, do you have another IDE cable you can test it with, just to eliminate any bad connection issues? (And you're making sure to match pin1 to the proper side of the Buddha's header of course!) If you can take the 2Gb drive from the Buddha, attach it straight to the Amiga's IDE port and it works (with either cable) it's fair to say you have a good test drive and the fault lies elsewhere.

The fact the Buddha can be seen by autoconfig suggests the Zorro bus is communicating properly (from several different slots too!), so I wouldn't have *thought* it'd be a daughterboard issue either. IDE over Zorro is AFAIK fairly simple so I'd expect you to see issues from other cards too, or it should "just work".

Perhaps there's someone else here on Amibay who has a Buddha and an Elbox 1.1 working together? Just to confirm there's no incompatibility?

Finally I'd suggest getting the Buddha tested in another rig - perhaps you have a friend close by who has a Zorro-based Amiga you can try it in? If not I'm sure there's someone here who could help if you decide to go down that route - I'd be happy to pop it into my 1200T and see if it exhibits the same behaviour if you'd like.

Sometimes re-seating the socketed chips can help, and I'm sure you've already checked for visual signs of damage on the PCB. I believe there are pull-ups on the PCB which could be changed, and a decoupling cap or two, I don't know if it's worth swapping those out if it comes down to it but it sounds like a nasty fault. My own experience so far suggests if no poor tracks exist then these kinds of problems lie in the logic or bus drivers themselves. I know the Buddha Flash can be updated (flashed :) ) so perhaps the programmable devices on the board could be cloned and replaced - maybe Amigakit could refurb it for you? Again, maybe someone here either has the kit to do that or knows where they can be repaired? I bet if you replaced everything on the PCB it would come back to life ;)

I think testing the expansion in another Amiga after first checking the contacts and IC sockets are good should show a Buddha fault pretty conclusively. I'll keep my fingers crossed though it won't come to that, and good luck! :)
 
Hmm thanks for taking the time with the long responses dave much appreciated. I think I will ask one of the specialists on the forum to take a look at it for me as I do not know anyone else with an Amiga locally yet alone one with Zorro slots :(
 
You're welcome, I'm only sorry I can't assist you more. Maybe stachu could help? I know he sometimes looks at Zorro cards.

If not hopefully there's someone here who specialises in this type of testing/repair...
 
Last edited:
Hi Cugar, mine isn't the Phoenix version just the standard flash version (gold connectors) and it doesn't have a power connector. The card itself looks in pristine condition, so i'm at a loss as to it's problem as I just wouldn't know where to start with diagnosing it.
 
It sounds like it needs flashed if ur not sure best thing is to see if stan or hikey or even bebek would be willing to do it for u. Its possible the last owner has tried the card the wrong way round but normally if thats the case it kills the card completly. Also sounds crazy but check u have the correct cable pin 1 in postion and u have master selected on ur first drive and slave on the second.
 
I tried installing this again and now I get the expansion menu on boot in red saying the card is defective (i've only seen this happen once before). Looks like I need someone to take a look at it for me :(
 
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