Firebird PCI Daughterboards

[AwakeningStar]

Has anyone tested the clockport of the new Firebird v1.1?
I'm also testing with a PicoWyFy with no success so far,
appreciate knowing other experiences

Finally I managed to get my PicoWyfy clockport to work

I used the instructions provided by @hese but the final support came from Niklas and his discord PicoWyfy team

Although the Firebird v1.1 provides information regarding the memory addresses that can be selected, does not inform that the addressees are a range

I have followed the instruction documentation by @hese and decided to set my Firebird clockport with #ef0000
Configured the PicoWyfy.config file with the address #ef0000 and the interrupt 6.
But didn’t not worked

Then the the PicoWyfy discord team advised me to configure the PicoWyfy.config with the address #ef0001 (instead of #ef0000, one single bit difference)

And amazingly my A4000D with the new Firebird 4000 v1.1 and one PicoWyfy was connected to the internet without a network cable (normal internet WiFi).

Thank you for all the Amiga community that supported me, with special thanks for @hese and Niklas

 

[PeachMan]

I recently tried a Radeon 9250 PCI card in a Firebird A4000 rev1 (Altera) daughterboard.
The VGA card failed after a short period of use.
Does the 3.3V support only apply to the power supply or to the data lines as well? Could it be that the Firebird daughterboard used a 5V data line for this card and that's why it failed?

 

[hese]

3.3V support applies only for the 3.3V power pins. PCI I/O lines always operate at 5V level.

 

[torsti76]

If the card physically fits in a 5V keyed PCI slot, it has to be 5V tolerant by design. If it were a 3.3V only card it would only fit in a 3.3V slot (with the notch near the back of the machine.)

 

[AwakeningStar]

3.3V support applies only for the 3.3V power pins. PCI I/O lines always operate at 5V level.

Is there any schematic and one PCB explorer of the daughter board to help diagnose traces ?

 

[PeachMan]

Thanks for the information. It seems like something else may have been the reason it broke.

 

[bfgmatik]

3.3V support applies only for the 3.3V power pins. PCI I/O lines always operate at 5V level.

In A4000D Firebird rev 1.1, Xilinx CPLDs seem to be powered only from 3.3V. Does it mean that older version based on Altera is 5V I/O and Xilinx version is 3.3V I/O? I ask because I kept telling people that Firebird I/O is 3.3V and it is safe for Radeon 9200/9250 and now I'm confused. My Radeon works fine for almost 6 months.

 

[torsti76]

@bfgmatik as I tried to explain in your thread, it is dangerous to assume that I/O voltage levels are only dependent on what the CPLDs deliver.

Imagine a scenario where a 5V only card is plugged into the same bus. As it is a bus, this card is - by specification - allowed to drive signals. And since it's a 5V card, it is perfectly legal to drive these at 5V high levels.

These 5V signals are then also "seen" by the 3.3V card, which in turn can suffer damage.

One might get lucky nonetheless because many 3.3V chips have a maximum rating of 4.6V, and Amiga busboards often come with a significant voltage drop, but it's out of spec for a 3.3V part.

All of this might be a hypothetical scenario in practice, but it's within the allowed specs of a 5V PCI card to drive the bus at 5V.

 

[bfgmatik]

Ouh, now I get it. Didn’t think about other cards driving the bus with 5V.

 

[PeachMan]

I may be asking a stupid question.
It occurred to me that the Radeon 9250 PCI vga has 2 PI5C 16211 bus adapter ICs on the PCB.
Don't these also do 3.3V/5V I/O signal level matching?

 

[torsti76]

I may be asking a stupid question.
It occurred to me that the Radeon 9250 PCI vga has 2 PI5C 16211 bus adapter ICs on the PCB.
Don't these also do 3.3V/5V I/O signal level matching?

Exactly! This card has two notches in the connector, so it's called a "universal" card that fits both 5V and 3.3V slots. To accommodate this, the two 16211 do the voltage level translation of the bus signals (if necessary).

 

[CodePoet]

I have a rev1 Firebird AA3000+ daughterboard, and would like to make sure it has the latest FW.

I've been having weird Zorro-card slot ordering issues with it, incompatibilities with A4091 cards, etc.

I have a Pi-based JTAG programming setup, not sure it can be used to program the Altera MAX chips or not? Or maybe there's no newer FW than what I have... (how do i tell?)

Thank you.