Xref: utzoo comp.sys.atari.st:32743 comp.sys.atari.st.tech:769 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!ukc!axion!uzi-9mm.fulcrum.bt.co.uk!beta.its.bt.co.uk!jvt From: jvt@its.bt.co.uk (John Trickey) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.atari.st.tech Subject: Re: STe troubles, video weirdness Message-ID: Date: 23 Nov 90 11:48:34 GMT References: <1990Nov20.085041.25605@math.lsa.umich.edu> Sender: news@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (News with an UZI) Organization: BT Applied Systems, Birmingham, UK Lines: 50 In article <1990Nov20.085041.25605@math.lsa.umich.edu> hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) writes: >Sorry to stir up the pot with what seems to be a now-dead subject, but I don't >recall the resolution of all the horror stories, and now have a (horrifying) >1040STe of my own to deal with. The main problem I'm having is that just >about everything that loads up gets partially written onto video memory. I get >vertical lines, I figure 16 pixels apart. I would have expected a plain-old >overwrite problem to wipe out a couple rows, starting at the top of the screen. >Instead I get 1 pixel wide vertical lines, evenly spaced out, and occasionally >the bottom of the screen gets trashed. What's going on? > >The STe arrived with the STE_FIX program in the AUTO folder of its language >disk. Can't boot into medium resolution without it. Yeehah. > >Along other lines... I just started using ICD's boot stuff with this new >host adapter... Apparently, whenever the driver detects a write failure, the >thing shifts the video into medium resolution. What I'm seeing is on my >multisync monitor in monochrome mode, all of a sudden there'll be a glitch and >my screen has been divided in half, vertically down the middle. Everything is >drawn in both the left and right halves of the screen. The screen borders are >resized, and look like the color rez borders, but everything stays in black and >white. The preferences menu still says high rez. This is incredibly annoying, >as well as making some stuff unreadable. (Although some of it is interesting, >really. Anyone for a 4 pixel wide font? 160 columns of text. Oooo....) It says >it's version 4.8.4, by the way. OUCH! Firstly apologies for including most of the original but I felt deletions would destroy the sense of Howard's message. I too have an ICD host adaptor with the same software. However I do not have STE_FIX and I am certainly not getting most of these problems. The only one I get is not booting Med-Res if the desktop is saved in Lo or Med. One *simple* fix I've found is to save the desktop in Hi-res then when you boot with a colour monitor it comes up in Med. I believe there is a hardware bug in the latest ICD board. I have contacted them & they are sending me a daughter board "which will cure it". Cannot confirm yet as Snail Mail is still doing its worst!! The problem is around noise on the DMA bus. To see if you have this problem, turn on write verify. If it reports error, you probably have read errors also. A short term fix is to find a DMA lead which allows the disk to write without error but it will vary from drive to drive. This may be the cause of your other problems - no promises though. John. -- John Trickey || ..!mcsun!ukc!axion!its G4REV @ GB7SUT Voice: +44 21 333 3369 #include