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C64 reloaded mk2 board--no text at all

    Hi all:


    I was hoping someone could give some advice as to what's going on here. I have been struggling for 2 month now, since I received this board and it's truly been an uphill battle. Placing the chips in the ZIF sockets was easy, however figuring out if the chip were good or bad at least I had the chipset information to tell me something let alone the flashing light codes.


    This time I think the BASIC ROM is shot from what I keep reading about this condition. Frankly, I get the blue screen and the blue border and there is no text, cursor or input, output of any kind. I am starting to think it's the CIA chips however that seems to just handle the peripheral type devices. The other odd thing that just started to happen is that the S-video connect must remain in the socket otherwise the video just totally fades away. This is also in tandem with the DIN video connector too. As soon as the S-video remove it doe not find the NTSC signal. Plug it back in, and the video comes back, but still no text at all. I really have no clue as to what this means, if got to find another VIC chip or thew BASIC ROM on the board itself is no good. I would really hate to have to ship this back to Germany, though it's looks like I may have to seeing I am getting nowhere fast and the problem is not very apparent to me. I would appreciate any help in trying to resolve this.

    Do you have established the USB connection and can you access the board by a terminal program?
    The issue with the cable sounds weird, do you have any other cable to test it? Usually a standard S-Video cable, used for older video cameras for example, should work. What kind of television or monitor do you use?
    The whole thing with the Basic ROM sounds strange since there is no dedicated ROM anymore. Accessing the board via USB and terminal could provide some hints or at least provide the chance to reset the settings.

    Hey dukestash:


    I am glad the terminal program and the USB connection does work and consistently too! So I am able to get in there and see the chipset information which is this below:


    VIC-II: 6567 (1B 5C 9880 NTSC)
    SID 1 : 6581 (A0 D3)
    SID 2 : 6581 (9F CD)
    CPU : PHI2 OK (045B)


    All these chips are being addressed in memory appropriately, so I imagine this is where they should be and reading out.


    Thus far, I found a bad RCA cable that I was using and simply replaced it with the S-video adapter and that started working fine without the DIN video connector. The TV I have is an LCD Insignia the port for composite and component video are shared, so it's detecting rather it's one or the other. So still I get the blue border and screen with no text whatsoever. I can talk to the board via USB and I see the options in front of me, though I do not know what any of them can or will do for me seeing this my first time trying with a board like this. That's a good point, I can try on the Vizio TV I got here and see what results.


    With regards to the basic ROM I was reading/watching the older boards from 1984 so that's where that thought came from.

    So with the Vizio TV this is what happens:


    WIth the S-video connector it's the same blue border and screen and no text


    With the DIN video, everything above, but in greyscale


    I'm assuming this VIC-II has issues if anything even though it's displaying colors< i still don't understand the reason for no text or cursor.

    Hm, hard to guess what could go wrong. Are you sure that the ICs are working fine? I've got one faulty CPU which fails hardware tests but runs certain demos. Maybe the CPU is detected by passing PHI2 but isn't doing anything else. Or one of the CIAs is faulty and can't access certain functions. Is it the same result when you swap the CIAs?
    Using the terminal, have you tried to set all the functions in the menu 'M' to default? Should be a standard setting by default but perhaps it got changed.

    At present I have nothing to really swap out at all expect trading places with the two CIA chips that didn't do anything either. I have two more CIA chips coming after the new year so I'll have to see until then.


    Though interestingly enough, when I press "Z" it seems there is something a test pattern that come briefly and fades away. In the "M" menu everything is set to the standard, default, settings right now. I had tried messing around there and got no results at all changing any of the character ROMs or kernel ROMs. May have look into another 6510 CPU and possibly as you're saying above and the functionality will just come about.

    plain blue screen already confirms that a lot of things are working: CPU and VIC appear to be OK. I'd focus on the CIA chip near the joystick ports, as that's the one responsible for the IRQ. It may have a stuck IRQ line (i.e. defective).


    Does the behaviour change if you swap the two CIA chips against each other?


    Jens

    Zitat von ajkatz83

    Hi all:


    I was hoping someone could give some advice as to what's going on here. I have been struggling for 2 month now, since I received this board and it's truly been an uphill battle. Placing the chips in the ZIF sockets was easy, however figuring out if the chip were good or bad at least I had the chipset information to tell me something let alone the flashing light codes.


    This time I think the BASIC ROM is shot from what I keep reading about this condition. Frankly, I get the blue screen and the blue border and there is no text, cursor or input, output of any kind. I am starting to think it's the CIA chips however that seems to just handle the peripheral type devices. The other odd thing that just started to happen is that the S-video connect must remain in the socket otherwise the video just totally fades away. This is also in tandem with the DIN video connector too. As soon as the S-video remove it doe not find the NTSC signal. Plug it back in, and the video comes back, but still no text at all. I really have no clue as to what this means, if got to find another VIC chip or thew BASIC ROM on the board itself is no good. I would really hate to have to ship this back to Germany, though it's looks like I may have to seeing I am getting nowhere fast and the problem is not very apparent to me. I would appreciate any help in trying to resolve this.

    In ceas you a susepcting the CIAs to be the reason, you can also ahve al look at my video (populating the MK2). There I show some screens that appeare in case of a defect CIA.

    Thanks for the response!


    That takes a lot off my mind there in knowing the CPU and VIC are OK!


    Yes, I did swap the two CIAs and it made no difference. I do have two other CIAs coming after the new year to find out if that's the case or not, though I feel as well too that the CIAs, especially the on you're mentioning is the problem after reading about the chip a little bit.

    SO I just replaced the two CIA chips with 6526A and still the same blue border and screen. I am suspecting now that the board itself is defective on some of those SMD component pieces. Has anyone got a refund from on of these boards? If so please let me know? I have dumped so much money into this things only to have it not work whatsoever. If it's not the CIAs, the VIC or SIDs, that only leaves the CPU and in the chipset information it says it's working fine. I'm at a loss here.

    If it's really a problem with the ROMs, then an MCU update will help. I've sent you a tool that does the update through e-mail.


    Jens
    P.S: The e-Mail came back:


    Remote host said: 552-5.7.0 This message was blocked because its content presents a potential
    552-5.7.0 security issue. Please visit
    552-5.7.0 (the Google support URL) to review our
    552 5.7.0 message content and attachment content guidelines. k51si643724wrf.311 - gsmtp

    looks like a *.exe file in a zip archive is suspicious. I'll upload that to the Wiki shortly.