CFFA / Apple IIgs question

[Mark Lemmert]

I have a IIgs system with a CFFA card with dip 7 ON/DOWN to enable GS mode on the card. In my experience, GS/OS will not run unless this dip is set. Classic 8-bit games seem to boot directly off the CFFA smart port with dip 7 ON or OFF, but I haven't played any long enough to know if they are stable under both settings.

Is anyone aware of a known problem running classic 8-bit games directly off the CFFA smart port on a IIgs, when dip 7 is ON to enable GS mode?

I'm asking because of a Nox Archaist bug I'm chasing and if this if this config is known to be a problem, that would be very helpful to know.

Thanks much for any advice anyone has!


-Mark

[David Schmidt]

The GS mode toggle on the CFFA3000 will do various nice things like
enable the CDA so you can swap disks around without the physical switch.
There isn't a good reason to have it off, whether in 8 or 16-bit mode.

[Mark Lemmert]

On Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 1:48:14 PM UTC-5, schmidtd wrote:

> The GS mode toggle on the CFFA3000 will do various nice things like
> enable the CDA so you can swap disks around without the physical switch.
> There isn't a good reason to have it off, whether in 8 or 16-bit mode.

Thank you!

-Mark

[Antoine Vignau]

What kind of bug, Mark?
Does it deal with Peter's disk I/O routines? With sound/music? While playing/loading?

Antoine

[Frank M.]

Total Replay has a couple of open issues that we think are related to this dip switch setting, too. If it's set to normal the games play fine. If it's set to //gs mode, the game goes off the rails somehow. Would be great to know if there's a way to detect it and/or override the setting. We aren't sure why it's causing the games to fail.
f

[Antoine Vignau]

That is weird. Which games fail, for instance?
Antoine

[Andrew Roughan]

Frank M. <frank_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Total Replay has a couple of open issues that we think are related to
> this dip switch setting, too. If it's set to normal the games play fine.
> If it's set to //gs mode, the game goes off the rails somehow.

I had the attract mode running for 14 hrs last night on a ROM3 original
PSU, CPU, CFFA3K with switch set to IIgs mode. It was working fine. I
didn’t try any games.

There’s definitely an issue with Ctrl Reset not working as desired on a
machine with a TWGS in it.

Regards
Andrew

[Frank M.]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 10:48:02 PM UTC-7, Antoine Vignau wrote:
> That is weird. Which games fail, for instance?
> Antoine

Last Gladiator reboots itself just after the selection screen, but before the playfield is shown.

Aliens crashes during the intro music.

Microwave has graphical glitches.

The Games Winter Edition – after practicing some events returning to main menu actually reboots


Seems to happen on both ROM1 and ROM3 machines.

It doesn't crash during the attract mode.

f

[fadden]

On Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 7:09:33 AM UTC-7, Frank M. wrote:
> Microwave has graphical glitches.

Consistent or intermittent? If it's consistent, e.g. a bitmap is always damaged the same way, you could identify the image location on an emulator (where the debugging is easier) and compare it to the memory image on the physical IIgs with a visit to the monitor. Might provide a clue.

The other test would be to reconstruct the disk with a by-file copy, or run ProSel's defragmenter on the volume, and see if the problems move around. That'd tell you if the problem has something to do with (say) block numbers being a multiple of 4096.

[qkumba]

In the case of The Last Gladiator, it's a 100% consistent reboot.
However, the read in question is hitting blocks $A497, $A498, and $A54B-E, so it looks like something other than geometry.
It's like quantum mechanics - as soon as I tried to count the reads and hang intentionally in order to capture state, the rebooting went away, so I'm no closer to finding the cause.

[qkumba]

I think that Microwave glitching is intermittent, but Aliens issues are consistent (though which issue shows might be inconsistent).

[Mark Lemmert]

In Nox Archaist problem is a highly intermittent hang that occurs around the time when ProRWTS is performing a smartport read operation. The program counter never returns from the JSR to ProRWTS.

The hang occurs whether sound/music is on or off and either way Interrupts are disabled before the call to ProRWTS.

The hang occurs if GS mode is enabled on the CFFA. The hand does not occur if GS mode is disabled on the CFFA. The hang does not occur on a BOOTi card in my IIgs (ROM1).


-Mark

[Mark Lemmert]

Heisenbug!

[James Davis]

I like that! It is really funny. Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, ...

[Frank M.]

Last Gladiator has enough protection to make me think the CFFA3k's IRQ for the //gs CDA is causing a conflict with the interrupt handler, or the IRQ address just points somewhere that does $C600. Aliens is probably similarly an interrupt/load corruption issue.

Can confirm switching //gs support off will solve the issues in Total Replay.

I can't reproduce the Microwave issue (ROM3), but I know it makes extensive use of $3F0 vectors, screen holes, all that good stuff. I suspect the CFFA3k is occasionally throwing IRQs when the switch is on.

f

[Andrew Roughan]

The official support location for CFFA3K is the forum on Rich’s site. Have
these issues been posted there?

In my case, it doesn’t work properly with the switch not set in IIgs mode.
But I can try reproducing these issues.

Regards
Andrew

[Andrew Roughan]

Frank M. <frank_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Last Gladiator reboots itself just after the selection screen, but before
> the playfield is shown.

Reproduced on ROM3 TR4a2, CFFA3K slot 7
With disk II emulation slot 6 and 6 SmartPort devices.

However, it worked fine with switch on without any disk II emulation and 1
SmartPort device.

With switch on/off, Ctrl reset shows Not a startup disk. Reset Vector
issue?

> Aliens crashes during the intro music.

Reproduced on ROM3 TR4a2, CFFA3K slot 7
No credits were displayed during music.

However, it worked fine with switch on without any disk II emulation and 1
SmartPort device.

> Microwave has graphical glitches

I didn’t see any difference in behaviour.

[Antoine Vignau]

Hi All,
I have never used Total Replay so pardon if I what I write is incorrect, I applaud the efforts (especially with Peter in front of the keyboard) but I believe there can still be issues with programs that were not meant for ProDOS.

Do users encounter the same issues with a real 5.25" disk drive? With the same game booted directly (ie. not from the ProDOS port)?

When a IIgs displays "no disk", it is related to the disk controller not finding boot 1 (T0/S0), there is no link to a reset vector issue.

The IRQ part, as mentioned by Frank, is perharps more involved in the issue. One should ask Rich and Dave on their forum.

If Peter's ProRWTS runs fine on a IIe CFFA but not on a IIgs CFFA, I would ask Rich and Dave about the diff when the switch is either off and on. IRQ? Extended Smartport commands?

Antoine

[Antoine Vignau]

I've just posted a message @ http://dreher.net/forum1/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=622
av

[qkumba]

> > Last Gladiator reboots itself just after the selection screen, but before
> > the playfield is shown.
>
> Reproduced on ROM3 TR4a2, CFFA3K slot 7
> With disk II emulation slot 6 and 6 SmartPort devices.
>
> However, it worked fine with switch on without any disk II emulation and 1
> SmartPort device.

If you change just one thing (either disabling disk II or the number of SmartPort devices) does the problem go away? If you then change just the other thing, does the problem still stay away?
I would like very much to know if we can identify if there's only one contributor to the problem.