Cumulus Issues

[peacer]

I have received my cumulus and set up everything according to explained documents.

Now, let me explain the situation :

My PSU is 12 V, 8 Amp original oric PSU.

- If I connect Cumulus to oric and without SD card, it succesfuly turns on. Oric says "No operating system on disc" blinking.

- I have 4 gb microsd card loaded into SD card adapter. I used that card and cumulus sees the card perfectly.

- I choose a .dsk image from cumulus menu and then send Reset oric signal.

- In this step, oric tries to boot with the disk image, but in 2-3 seconds during boot process oric hangs up with some regular letters scattered on the screen. Sometimes sedoric boot up initials are seen. This stage changes from each image file but the result is always the same.

So, to summarize, cumulus sees the sd card, and all the disk images. Oric sees cumulus. When I try to boot oric with selected disk image, booting process halts everytime and had to reset again.

What seems to be the problem? Could it be because of microsd card usage inside SD card adapter? I have some other stand-alone SD cards but as they are less than 4 gb sd cards, cumulus did not detect them.

Some hints which might help to explain the situation. :
- I have microdisc drive already and Oric boots up with real 3" disks with no problems.
- I tried to format Microsd card in FAT and exFAT format . These formats are not recognised by cumulus. Cumulus sees the dsk images Only if I format the card in fat32.

p.s. : What is the "jumper" for in the cumulus near oric expansion port?

[barnsey123]

Hi Peacer,

SD cards aren't recognized at all yet (so stick to SDHC - formatted with FAT32)

I think you need a more powerful PSU (the original oric psu wont cut it apparently). Read previous entries on this thread regarding power supplies.

Try a different IDE cable - this worked for me - had same problems as you. Also try leaving your switched oric on for about 10 minutes before booting. Mine needed a bit of a warm up. Changing the cable reduced the warm up time.

good luck

[ibisum]

Try to format the SD card with a single (non-GUID) partition - many SD cards are pre-formatted at the factory, and the partition table is not correct for the Cumulus - it should have a *single* partition-table entry, and should use the MBR partition scheme.

[peacer]

@barnsey : I've already read all the messages before I post this . Still problem persists.

I've tried 12 V external adapter. Still the same

Now waiting Oric to warm up.. I wish it helps..


@ibisum, I don't still think its card problem. Cumulus reads the card and see all the .dsk images correctly. Yet, I've formatted it in many ways.



This is the formatting screen of windows. I think I am formatting one partition with it. Does "allocation unit" matter? 4096 byte default formatting..

[Godzil]

Your problem looks plied like a bus problem than a de card problem. Do you have another oric to test it ?

[peacer]

Your problem looks plied like a bus problem than a de card problem. Do you have another oric to test it ?

My Oric is my unique precious Unfortunately there's no other Oric that I can find around in Turkey, its more diffucult than impossible.

As I said, My Oric can boot with real microdisc. Does that eliminate bus problem?

BTW : I've wait more than half hour & heated but still problem persists ..

[Chema]

Hi peacer.

Your problem is exactly the same I experienced when I tried an ASUS cable I had at home (I liked it for the black color). When I use the cable that came with Cumulus everything goes perfectly.

I don't think it is a related to the SD, though I would try first of all with a normal SDHC card. My laptop for instance seems to be unable to even detect a microSD+adapter :/ and who knows if there could be any timing issues.

Anyway probably this is a bus issue, even if your Oric boots with a Microdisc. Things you can do/try... If you have another (better) IDE cable, just try it.

Else you can use the small jumpers on the Cumulus and CumulusBUS: connect the two pins with them and connect the cable using the second connector (which results in a shorter cable). In this case I think you have to reverse the connectors (black to Cumulus, blue to CumulusBUS).

A shorter cable should mean better signals. Let's see if this works.

EDIT: And be sure you're using the correct PSU. I'd get one with at least 1.5A, definitely not the original

[Alcofribas]

Unfortunately there's no other Oric that I can find around in Turkey, its more diffucult than impossible.

Are You Sure About That?

Come to visit me soon!

[peacer]

Hi cheme..

I am using the cable that Boris sent but I'll try to find another IDE cable.

I changed the cable setup to use as second connector with jumper trick but this time, oric did not open at all. Only white and black strips.

My PSU gives 8A. So it seems to be not a PSU problem too


@Alco You are exceptional as you know !

[Dbug]

My PSU gives 8A. So it seems to be not a PSU problem too

Could you show a picture of your PSU?
My Atmos has a 9v/1.2 amps one, my big Samsung laptop only has a 9v/4 amp PSU.

[peacer]

I'm not good at electronics at all.. My dad checked the output with his measuring device and said that the amperage is 8 A and voltage is 12 volts.

I think I made a mistake when I said "My PSU is 12 V, 8 Amp original oric PSU." in the first message. . Its original oric microdisc psu modified for double usage.

The PSU I am using is one big black oric microdisc PSU. My father modified that PSU to supply both microdisc and oric at the same time. So that PSU has two power cables for microdisc and Oric. I can't remember the details as this modification was done years ago, probably before the year of 2000. The aim was to get rid of two PSUs over the table when running microdisc and Oric together.

The batteries of my photo camera are being charged now. Then I'll take a photo of it.

I made many attempts to run cumulus which took more than 3 hours and gave up .. So its not related with warm-up issue. Sometimes the boot sequence reach to see the first screen after booting of the disk image. Sometimes oric starts with regular non-disc enviroment. But usually (>90%) just hangs up with random letters, blinking and colorful dots. Resetting the oric from cumulus menu gives the same thing. I've tried more than 30 different .dsk file including demo disks, recent games, sedoric boot disks and disc images I created from some tape files. It does not matter.

Tomorrow I'll try to obtain another IDE cable with 80 ways..

[metadata]

peacer: sorry to hear that your cumulus not working on your oric at the moment.
Please make a picture of your power supply.

I try a little bit with my Orics and the Cumulus and it seems to be different on different ROMs. On my Atmos with ROM V1.1 everything runs fine. But on my 2 Oric-1s with ROM V1.0 there are some difficultes on loading programms with the Cumulus. For example it is really slow make a DIR. On my Atmos it is a lot faster.
So i switched the ROM from my Atmos to my Oric-1 and now the Oric-1 runs fine!
Can you all please post the ROM version you have and if the Cumulus is running?
Typ on your Oric:
?PEEK(#E4B6)

My ROMs:
Atmos: 162
Oric-1: 48

[Godzil]

It's really easy to differentiate between a 1.0 and a 1.1 ROM, just look at the RAM Free, the 1.0 lie (49152) the 1.1 tell the correct value (32xxx) of available memory.

Anyway, for Sedoric there maybe a problem with 1.0 ROM which is not related with the cumulus itself and make dir & co slow.

Peacer: you can have one peripheral working and another not working this is not strange. I still suspect that the Cumulus may have problem with the Phi2 timing. The cumulubus should correct the possible ripple effect on the long ribbon cable but there are other timing issues. The original Microdisk have a potentiometer to shift how Phi2 is used internally, but Cumulus does not have this.

I can't tell for sure that Phi2 is the culprit on the problem you have (and also other) but the problem you have is definitely related with the Extension bus. The Oric is poorly design on this part and creating an extension that have no problem is really difficult..

[metadata]

Anyway, for Sedoric there maybe a problem with 1.0 ROM which is not related with the cumulus itself and make dir & co slow.

hmm.. but when i insert the Atmos 1.1 ROM in my Oric-1 it is faster when i make a DIR and all the software loads fine.

[peacer]

PEEK(#E4B6) reads 142 in my Atmos. . As far as I see, Its the same number that I get with Oricutron running 1.1 rom.

Free ram is 37631 bytes when booted.

So we can be sure that I have 1.1 rom Atmos..

The PSU is capable to give 8 Ah when calculated by avometer (ampermeter). This PSU runs my atmos and microdisc together perfectly.


And we have tried an accumulator as alternative PSU giving 12 V - 7.5 Ah. Still the same result.


And this is the video of cumulus working with my Atmos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJwPHxLL-ps

@Godzil.. excuse me for my nescience.. what is Phi2 timing ? Is there a solution to get rid of that problem?