Diagnostics / Fault Finding

 

If you are having problems with petSD+, please try the basic tests described on the pre-shipment test page.

If those tests do not help diagnose your problem, the hints & tips on this page may help.

 

30/04/2019 - Potential Firmware Issue

A possible firmware issue has come to light which may impact a very small number of petSD+ users; in some circumstances, petSD+ does not appear to start up properly at power on. Please read through the contents of this page and if none of the tips here help, please go to this page for further details of the symptoms and potential work-around for this suspected firmware problem,

 

Power Indication

petSD+ Version 2 includes a power indicator (D5), this LED is normally Yellow and should be illuminated as soon as power is applied to petSD+. Obviously, if this LED is off, then the first thing to check is that power is being supplied. Depending on the hardware configuration, power is normally supplied by the datassette adapter, an external PSU or internally from the PET computer board.

 

Normal Startup Sequence

At startup, the "Error/Pending" (normally Red) and "Busy" (normally Green) LEDs provide an indication of the startup sequence and provide useful indications for fault finding.

When petSD+ starts up from power on or reset, the boot-loader code is activated, in this mode, both the "Error/Pending" and "Busy" LEDs are initially turned on. The "Error/Pending" LED will remain on for as long as the boot-loader code is active. If the "Error/Pending" LED flashes, the boot-loader has detected corruption in the stored firmware application and the device will need to be reloaded with a new copy of the NODISKEMU firmware.

The boot-loader will then try to check the SD card for the presence of a new firmware revision.  If a new firmware file is detected, the boot-loader will load the firmware into the MCU's flash memory. The "Busy" LED will flicker while the firmware file is being loaded into the MCU. When the file has been loaded, the MCU will be reset and the boot-loader will restart.

If the card is not detected, or a new firmware file is not found, the "Busy" LED will be turned off and the application firmware will be started. With no new firmware to be loaded, the "Busy" LED will be turned off and the boot-loader will check that valid firmware is loaded in the MCU's flash memory by evaluating its checksum. If this test fails, the "Error/Pending" will flash for two seconds and then reset the MCU and the process will repeat continuously.

If there is no valid firmware, either on the controller or on the SD card, both LEDs will be illuminated for as long as it takes to check the card and read the firmware, then the "Error/Pending" LED will be flashing and the process will repeat.

If valid firmware is detected, the "Error/Pending" LED will be turned off and the NODISKEMU firmware will begin executing. The firmware first tries to initialise the SD Card. During this process, the "Busy" LED will be turned on briefly. If the card initialisation is successful, the "Busy" LED will remain off, if initialisation fails, the LED will be turned back on and remain on.

 

Additional Notes on the Bootloader Operation

The following section is copied from Ingo Korb's README file included in his sd2iec bootloader package :

"Notes on use

This boot loader searches for files with the correct length in the root directory of the card. It does not care about file names at all, instead it checks a tag at the end of the file to determine if it should flash a file or not. The boot loader will only flash a file that is tagged for the correct hardware and that has either

a) a version number that is greater than the one currently in memory or

b) a special version number that designates the file as a "development version".

In case b) the boot loader will avoid flashing the same file over and over again, but a development version file with a different checksum will get flashed, as well as any non-development version if the program version currently in the chip.

FAT16 and FAT32 are always supported, FAT12 only if enabled. MMC, SD and SDHC cards with a supported file system should all work. The boot loader turns on the red LED while it is running. If it cannot find a valid application in the chip, it will flash the red LED for two seconds and try to find a valid file once more. During card accesses the green LED is on, during the actual flash operation the green LED flickers rapidly. "

 

Problems / Solutions

The table below lists some "problems" or issues that have previously been reported, along with solutions that have proved successful.

Issue	Meaning	Suggestions
On power up or reset of petSD+, the Red and Green LEDs show no activity	The Bootloader is not executing	Assuming that the bootloader has been programmed, no start-up activity on the LEDs suggests that the MCU is not running. The most likely cause is a bad clock signal. Use a 'scope to check for the presence of the 16Mhz clock signal on MCU pins 12 and 13
On power up or reset of petSD+, the LCD displays two rows of solid block characters.	The MCU has not been initialised correctly and the LCD has not started up properly.	It has been observed that the power being supplied from some PET's Datassette port is not stable enough to allow petSD+ to start. Try using an external PSU (5VDC, 1A, centre positive, 2.1mm x 5.5mm)
With an SD card inserted, the Green LED remains on after power up.
With an SD card inserted, the Green LED remains on after power up.	The SD Card has not been detected	Use the Diagnostic tests to verify that the SD card detect switch is working
On power up or reset of petSD+, the LCD displays two rows of solid block characters.	The MCU has not been initialised correctly and the LCD has not started up properly. Poor response to a PET power cycle	This might be unique to my PET, but if I power cycle the PET, petSD+ sometimes doesn't restart properly. I think that this is due to the PET 5V line not decaying sufficiently. If I allow 10s between power OFF -> Power ON, this issue does not occur and petSD+ starts up correctly.
When trying to access petSD+, the PET reports : "?device not present error"	The PET cannot find a device with the target IEEE address.	New Installation If you are using the edge connector to IEEE-488 adapter, check that it is installed the right way up. (Earlier versions of the adapter did not have an indication of which way up to mount it.) Both the old and new versions of the adapter should be installed with the IEEE-488 connector below the level of the PET computer board.
		New Installation Check that you have petSD+ connected to the IEEE-488 port on the PET and not the User Port. Original Commodore cables are keyed to prevent this from occurring, but the Edge Connector to IEEE-488 adapter does not have keys. The IEEE-488 port on most (all?) PETs is the one furthest away from the Datassette port but verify this on your model of PET before connecting the IEEE-488 cable !
		New Installation Faulty PET IEEE-488 interface : see below
		Normal Operation Check that the address shown on petSD+ when it starts (default #8) is the same as that in the command being sent from the PET
		Normal Operation Check that petSD+ is not in Menu mode. If the menu system is active, the Red LED is ON which indicates that the petSD+ is not visible on the IEEE-488 bus.

Faulty PET IEEE-488 Interface

For reference, the IEEE-488 interface in an CBM 8032 is shown opposite, other PET models are similar. The IEEE-488 interface is driven by a MOS 6520 Peripheral Interface Adapter (PIA) which feeds 3 x MC3446 bus transceivers connected to the PET IEEE port edge connector.   (Click the image to see the full size schematic)
The book, PET And The IEEE-488 Bus (GPIB), by Eugene Fisher & C.W.Jensen, is a useful guide to the PET's implementation of the IEEE-488 bus. You can find a copy on my PET Documents page. The PIA controls the 8 data lines
The VIA controls the control lines. A complete description of the control lines is beyond the scope of this page - refer to the book noted above for full details. The Interface Clear line (IFC) is worth a mention though. When the PET is powered on or reset, the IFC line is driven low for ~100ms to set all bus devices to their idle (inactive) states. If you power on the PET after petSD+, you may see "Interface Clear" briefly reported on the LCD.

Some users who have not previously used the PET's IEEE-488 port to connect to legacy disk drives have found the port to be faulty when trying to use petSD+. This is a difficult situation to resolve, without a working disk drive, it is hard to confirm whether the fault is with the PET or petSD+. Users who have access to devices with a serial disk drive port, e.g., a C64 or VIC20, can test petSD+ in IEC mode, if that works, it is highly unlikely that petSD+ is faulty.

If the PET IEEE-488 port is suspect, it is worth trying to change out the PIA. There are normally 2, 6520 PIAs installed - one for the IEEE-488 port and one for the keyboard. They are usually socketed and it is a simple task to swap over the 6520s and check whether there is any change in the behavior of the keyboard or IEEE-488 interface.

If the 6520 is proven to be OK, it is possible that one or more of the MC3446 bus transceivers are faulty. Unfortunately, these chips are soldered into the PCB so are not easily replaced. Other than taking a chance and swapping them out anyway, diagnosis of faults on these components is going to require some effort and access to an oscilloscope which probably means that it's beyond the capability of most users.

A picture (or video) paints a thousand words . . .

Normal Startup The video shows a normal startup when the PET powering petSD+ is turned on. You can see the power LED come on immediately and a short while later, you can hear the PET startup "chirp" in the background. The Red and Green LEDs come on immediately as the boot-loader starts to run. The SD card is checked, no new firmware is found, so the boot-loader exists and the application code is started. The "Busy" (green) LED goes off, the "Error" (red) LED goes off, the "Busy" LED goes on and the display starts to initialise, shown by the two lines (1 and 3) of solid characters. The "Busy" LED goes out and the display shows the NODISKEMU boot screen. A few seconds later, the display reports the petSD+ device ID and operating mode, in this case, IEEE(-488).		Click image to Play Video
Missing / Bad Application Program This video shows petSD+ being powered up when the MCU contains a valid boot-loader but no application program is available, either in the MCU itself or available for loading from the SD card. The "Error" and "Busy" LEDs are initially turned on and then the "Error" LED starts to flash to indicate bad/missing NODISKEMU firmware. The "Busy" LED flashes as the boot-loader tries to access the (in this case, missing) SD card. The cycle repeats as the system retries to read the SD card. Note: if the boot-loader was not present in the MCU, both the "Error" and "Busy" LEDs would remain off, the LEDs are controlled by the boot-loader and/or application firmware, with neither are available, the LEDs are not enabled.		Click image to Play Video