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Author Topic: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help  (Read 3480 times)

Verault

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Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« on: December 11, 2021, 12:15:48 pm »

Hello everyone I am new to this forum.

I finally got around to sourcing all the parts to build my Camero Aphid. I downloaded the premade image from this link: http://stepleton.com/cameo_aphid_image.php
I used Etcher to copy the premade image to an 8GB micro SD card. Dont know if its common but it took almost an hour to do that!

First off it says this will be a blank image ready to load and if I plug the MicroSD into my PC it will show a Fat partition. My Lisa cannot see it and my Modern PC sees no FAT partition (in fact it asks me to format it) What should I try?
« Last Edit: December 11, 2021, 12:32:40 pm by Verault »
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stepleton

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2021, 12:35:09 pm »

Hello, thanks for giving Cameo/Aphid a try! Let's try things one at a time.

An hour to flash the image sounds suspiciously long to me, but there could be a few reasons for that. Do you know what class of SD card you are using (see table)? Class 10, or U1 or U3, should be fine. Slower classes may work, but I haven't tested them. Another possibility is that you were using a slower USB port.

Anyway, when you start your Cameo/Aphid from the flashed card, does it appear to start up in a normal way? Specifically, do all of the four User LED lights (the ones circled here) all turn on and stay on after a short amount of time (sometime under a minute)?

For later: if you're using a PC, what OS are you using?
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Verault

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2021, 12:45:20 pm »

So I ran the whole disk image copy again today. took 10 to 15 minutes this time.

I bought an 8 pack of 8Gb micro SD cards from amazon this summer to build a bunch of BlueSCSI devices (they all work well for those devices) Teh cards say HC and have a stamp of 10 on them in a circle.

I use windows 7 64bit.

All 4 leds blink in succession and after a while one of them goes dark and the other 3 stay on.
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stepleton

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2021, 12:56:57 pm »

Good, it sounds like the PocketBeagle is booting correctly. (The one LED going dark is an artifact of the new fast-boot procedure and will go away on the first read or write.) Your SD cards sound fine, too.

You say it's not working in your Lisa. Just a few questions then: what kind of Lisa is it, what port are you trying it on, and what happens if you try to boot from the Cameo/Aphid in the STARTUP FROM... menu?
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Verault

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2021, 01:02:14 pm »

I have a Lisa 2/10 The 10MB widget is toast but the 400KB floppy drive works. Most times I just use one of my Floppy emu's as the disk drive. I have a working 5MB Profile hard drive and at the moment am just installing LOS onto it since I have nothing better todo.

I have the Parallel card with an upper and lower port. When I use the APhid on either port and tell it to boot from there it just says it cannot find anything there. It finds my profile on both ports.

I rebuilt the keyboard this year but never got to loading the profile. I figured I would build this Aphid and then continue working on the LISA so this is the first time I have been able to with a working keyboard.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2021, 01:06:57 pm by Verault »
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stepleton

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #5 on: December 11, 2021, 01:12:25 pm »

Hmm, it should work pretty well when attached to the parallel port card. How long a cable are you using? A shorter cable (ideally under a foot) will be best.

If you're already using a short cable, and if the cable has good continuity on all of the pins, then there could be a problem with the assembly of Cameo/Aphid itself. Things to check:

- Are the resistors placed exactly as shown here?
- Are there any shorts between the legs of the ICs?
- Are the ICs oriented the correct way?
- General condition of solder joints everywhere.

A different question: when you try to boot from the STARTUP FROM... menu, do the User LEDs on the PocketBeagle blink off momentarily? Does the one dark LED turn back on?
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Verault

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #6 on: December 11, 2021, 01:20:48 pm »

Take a look, let me know if these are clear enough. https://photos.app.goo.gl/3DAkbGuuo7Wic9L78

But just for clarification, should I be able to see a working FAT partition on the micro SD card after the image is copied over and Its connected to my PC?
« Last Edit: December 11, 2021, 01:46:05 pm by Verault »
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stepleton

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #7 on: December 11, 2021, 03:07:18 pm »

Well, your cable is certainly short enough. Looking at it closely, it appears to be wired correctly as well (for example, neither of the connectors appear to be the wrong way round).

Can you confirm continuity and no shorted pins? It's a drag, but that's debugging... Beeping out each wire in the ribbon cable might be worthwhile, as might confirming that no two DB25 pins that correspond to adjacent wires are connected (so pairs like pin1-pin14, pin14-pin2, pin2-pin15, pin15-pin3, and so on). It would be nice to competely eliminate the cable as a factor. I notice in this photo that a grey and a purple wire on the header connector end may have some ragged ends --- could that be a short?

The soldering on the Cameo/Aphid board looks good at a quick inspection, and all of the components seem to be in the correct places. In fact, your technique for soldering the ICs looks nicer than my own. That said, problems with SMT soldering for ICs can be difficult to spot. It seems unlikely that any of the legs are shorted, but one other possibility is that one or more of the legs do not have a good bond to the PCB pad. I've encountered this problem on other projects, and it can be almost impossible to see without a microscope (which I don't have!).

Therefore, checking continuity between the legs of the ICs and the places they connect to (for which you'll have to refer to the schematic) might be worthwhile. You might also be able to accomplish this check without the schematic by delicately placing one probe lead on the IC leg and the other probe lead on the bit of pad that sticks out from underneath it. Of course, pressing down too hard on the leg could complete the broken connection and temporarily "fix" the fault.

If all of those things are fine, the next area to investigate is probably the Beagle-to-Aphid header connectors. Attaching headers to the PocketBeagle can be tricky to do, especially right around the SOC package itself (so pins 6,8,10,...,22 of P1). In the worst case, if soldering those pins involved high heat and/or long dwell times, it might have been possible to melt some of the ball solder joints underneath the SOC. I'm not too worried about this, because your system still boots, but I also note that P1 pin 14 in this photo seems like it might have a wee "blob" that could reach under the SOC? It's very hard to tell, especially since that part of the photo is still dark.

That's most of what I can think to check for right now, other than very basic things like making sure that your PocketBeagle and the Cameo board were plugged into each other the right way round. What test equipment do you have available for debugging the problem --- do you have an oscilloscope?

As far as seeing a FAT partition goes --- I don't know for Windows 7, unfortunately, but I have seen Windows 10 not show the CAMEO_APHID partition automatically. I can describe my Windows 10 procedure for getting the partition to show up on insertion; maybe you will be able to find a similar Windows 7 method.

- First, put the SD card into the computer. Dismiss any messages about needing to format.
- Open the Disk Management control panel (use the Start search box for "Create and format hard disk partitions").
- In the bottom half of the window, you'll be able to see a row corresponding to your SD card. It should have two partitions and probably some empty space. (You may need to scroll.)
- Select the second partition, right click, select "Change Drive Letter and Paths...".
- Click the Add... button. Choose a drive letter for the partition next to the "Assign the following drive letter" option.
- Select "OK" and then "OK" again.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2021, 03:19:52 pm by stepleton »
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stepleton

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #8 on: December 11, 2021, 04:13:06 pm »

Also, when you have a chance, can you remark on this question from earlier: "when you try to boot from the STARTUP FROM... menu, do the User LEDs on the PocketBeagle blink off momentarily? Does the one dark LED turn back on?"

If yes, then we know at enough of the connections are working to get Cameo/Aphid through part of the ProFile handshake. This would be a useful clue.
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Verault

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #9 on: December 12, 2021, 12:35:11 pm »

Thank you for taking the time to help me on this I really appreciate it. I will take some time and check the cable for continuity and check for shorts on the board as well. I will post back when I have gone over everything.
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stepleton

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2021, 05:49:44 pm »

Good luck! If this doesn't turn up anything useful, then the next troubleshooting steps I might recommend will probably involve trying to exercise each pin on the Cameo board itself, seeing if it's really doing the bidirectional level adapting that it's meant to do.
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Verault

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #11 on: December 13, 2021, 09:38:45 am »

I went over the whole thing. No shorts. I even made a new cable because I wanted to ensure it was getting the best fit.

As far as the LEDS behaving differently when I tell it to boot from the upper or lower port. No, no change in the leds on the cameo.

I also just want to ask again. The github says there should be a fast partition accessible on the SD card but after imaging mine both times there is not a far partition. Shouldnt there be?
« Last Edit: December 13, 2021, 09:51:13 am by Verault »
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stepleton

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Re: Built my first Cameo Aphid. Could use some help
« Reply #12 on: December 13, 2021, 11:14:01 am »

Quote
I also just want to ask again. The github says there should be a fast partition accessible on the SD card but after imaging mine both times there is not a far partition. Shouldnt there be?

Please see the bottom of this message that I wrote earlier. I strongly suspect that the partition is present (otherwise Cameo/Aphid would not show the pattern of lights that you see), but also that Windows is probably not assigning the partition a drive letter and not mounting it automatically.

As I don't have a Windows 7 computer, I'm not sure how to tell Windows 7 how to do this, however based on a web search it looks like a procedure similar to the one I described for Windows 10 might work. There is surely a correct procedure, I just don't know what it is.

Alternatively, if you have access to a macOS or Linux computer, you might see if the partition is visible on those machines.

I don't know why it's necessary to intervene to get Windows to mount the partition. I suspect that most SD cards that Windows encounters don't have multiple partitions, and certainly not in the way the Cameo/Aphid SD card has to be partitioned.

Quote
I went over the whole thing. No shorts.

The good news is that now we know that the cable is almost certainly not the problem. Let's focus on the Cameo board next.

It's good that you have eliminated shorts. (I assume that by "whole thing" you mean that you have confirmed no shorts on the Cameo board AND the cable.) What we must do now is establish continuity on the Cameo board --- we need to confirm that each leg of the two ICs has a connection to where it needs to go. Your soldering job looks very good, but looks can be deceiving.

I have thoughts about how to do the next troubleshooting steps, but in order to give the best advice, I need to know what equipment you have available. It seems certain that you have a multimeter, and we probably won't need much more than that to make progress. But we can make progress faster with some additional tools. Do you have:

- A solderless breadboard?
- "Dupont" jumper wires --- that is, wires with ordinary "header" ends? (Ideally, you'll have two types: (a) wires with a "plug" end and a "socket" end, and (b) wires with two "plug" ends.)
- An oscilloscope?
- A logic analyser?

Don't worry if you don't have an oscilloscope or a logic analyser --- but if you do and you know how to use them, it would be very good to know that!
« Last Edit: December 13, 2021, 11:30:51 am by stepleton »
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