Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!rutgers!netnews.upenn.edu!grad2.cis.upenn.edu!ranjit
From: ranjit@grad2.cis.upenn.edu (Ranjit Bhatnagar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Help! What's wrong with my Ronin Hurricane?
Summary: Any ideas?
Message-ID: <10948@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 10 May 89 03:08:31 GMT
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: ranjit@grad2.cis.upenn.edu.UUCP (Ranjit Bhatnagar)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 117

I got a nice shiny amiga 1000 (Rev 6 motherboard and Rev 3
daughterboard) and a Ronin Hurricane 1000 (20 MHz '020/'881)
to plug in it.  Unfortunately, they dont work together.  The
nice (but somewhat snooty) folks at Ronin (they say "row-neen")
don't have much to say except "send us the hurricane board and
at least 50 bucks and we'll see how much more it'll cost you."

So I thought I'd describe the symptoms, not only because perhaps
someone will have an idea, but because they're weird enough that
you may get a laugh out of them.

The system: Amiga 1000, Rev 6 motherboard, Rev 3 daughterboard.
	    Comspec SOTS 2 Meg expansion
	    Ronin Hurricane 1000 (20 MHz)

	    All the parts were bought used.  Previous owner
	    claims that the hurricane was never used, I think.

Without the hurricane installed, the system works fine  by every
diagnostic I can think of.  (Nasty software, memtest, dpaint II,
the works.)  I grounded the PALs very carefully, and it still
worked.

With the Hurricane installed, the symptoms depend on whether the
memory expansion is also plugged in.

With memory removed:
	if the RFI shield is removed, the system will ask for
	and load kickstart, then flash the power light and either
	cold-start or enter a cycle: screen flashes black-gray-white,
	power light flashes (too fast to count the flashes).
	Ronin says that the hurricane should work with the shield
	off.  My room is not a particularly bad interference environment.

	If the RFI shield is installed, then I can boot a workbench disk.
	However, loadwb fails with a guru B (opcode 1111). 
	I resoldered
	all the connector pins on the hurricane on the suggestion of the
	guy who sold it to me, and this problem went away.  All the 
	following problems remained:

	DigiPaint version 1 crashes after entering password,
	guru 8.3342 (priviledge violation) even if I run ronin's
	move sr filter - if run from an icon.  If run from CLI
	it works fine, except:
	Any selection of a menu item may cause a guru B or 4.
	Selection of the menu item "SHADING" which creates a new
	gadget is very likely to cause a guru 4 (illegal instruction).

	note that turning the 020's cache off didn't change anything.

With 2 meg sots memory (comspec) installed:
	with or without shield, system is likely to go into
	cold-boot loop as described above.  It can read kickstart
	but not continue to the INSERT WORKBENCH prompt.

	If it will read the workbench, it will often immediately
	crash with a guru 1076 (yes, 00 00 1076, I know it's weird).
	If it makes it past that, then screen and window title bars
	rendered on any screen may be rendered either 3 times normal
	height, or occasionally what looked like negative height:
	the border would extend up off the top of the screen no matter
	where I dragged the window.  This condition was unstable
	and would eventually crash with a guru 4, B, or 1076.
	loadwb would crash with a guru B, and after hitting the
	left mouse button or control-a-a, would immediately crash
	with the same guru.  Hitting the button again would warm-boot.

	Rebooting while holding the mouse button down (cool boot?)
	would sometimes allow intuition to come up with normal
	sized window and screen title bars.  The system at this point
	would be mnore stable: less likely to crash at random.  At
	this point I could run a memory test, and confirm that
	the hurricane has no problem reading the comspec memory.
	I could run vt100 2.8 and it would work for a while and
	then crash.  Any selection of a menu item or selection
	of an intuition gadget (not including window standard gadgets)
	would cause a guru 4.200E42 - always the SAME address,
	no matter whether I booted 1.2 or 1.3, or what I had done before.
	Exception: the menus in microemacs from the 1.2 extras didn't
	cause crashes, ever.  I tested menus and gadgets in Digipaint, 
	Dpaint II and Sculpt 3D.  I also tried gadgets in DropShadow-
	after some use, the same 4.200E42 appeared.
	Marketroid gurud immediately after saying "THE REAL STOR"
	with a B.2092A8.
	Nemesis hung (no guru, but system froze) on displaying the big 3.
	vt100 would guru at random.

That pretty much covers the symptoms.  What bothers me is that
the symptoms are not only weird, but VERY repeatable!  For instance the
fat window/screen titles, though they only came up in 2 out of 3 warm boots,
were always exactly the same height (approx 3 times normal).
Menus in some programs would never crash, and in others would always
crash, at exactly the same mem. address.  It is my hope that because
of the combination of the repeatability and the very strong PERSONALITY of
these problems that someone will have some idea of what is going on.

I'll reiterate that the very same software with the same kickstart disk
(1.3 from the enhancer packge) works absolutely perfectly (well, for
dpaint II that's a relative term) when I plug in the 68000 in place
of the Hurricane board, so it's very unlikely that I have a bad
kickstart disk, amiga, or memory expansion.  I have checked the grounding
of the pals, as well as that of most of the rest of the motherboard,
and it seems very solid.  Even if you have no idea what's going on,
perhaps this gave you some laughs on a cloudy day.

	-ranjit (aargh!)


*** ranjit bhatnagar * 4333 osage av * phila pa 19104-3905 * (215) 386-7159 ***




"Trespassers w"   ranjit@eniac.seas.upenn.edu	mailrus!eecae!netnews!eniac!...
        Near the sides of tall buildings, how dare they kiss goodbye?
  Those buildings that saw the airplanes that kiss the air in their fantasy.