MiSTer FPGA Forum

For informational purposes, I'm not a new MiSTer user. I've had my DE-10 for about 4 years and I've run various versions of MiSTer during that time. I've even tried my hand a few times and developing on several of the cores.

But life goes on and I got busy. My last install was from 2020 or so ... so I decided to completely fresh install.

Being what I had on-hand, I copied the new image onto the micro-sd using dd on FreeBSD. This boots --- and I choose f12 to get the menu and then I choose the upgrade script. I'm using ethernet --- because it's convenient here.

That-all seems to run fine. No complaints on the screen. It then says it's rebooting in 10 seconds. I didn't notice this for awhile, and it seems to go to "press any key" after that. Nothing happens. So I re-flashed and started again. If I press a key right around the 10 second mark, I get a few seconds of the snow-screen menu reappearing ... but it doesn't reboot. If I manually cycle the power, it doesn't show video (although the cylon-lights seem to indicate that things are running).

I've repeated this 3 times so far... help?

I think I have more information. I first wondererd if my 2A power supply was too little. I procured a 4A power supply. The first screen of the install works flawlessly --- but then the screens with the static or the linux console are more flakey.

Now... my setup is to use an HDMI capture device. It has worked fine in the past. Are there any issues between MiSTer and various capture devices?

I would try a reinstall with just a bare bones setup: HDMI to a screen. Dumb question: did you do a sync after the dd action in FreeBSD?

Bas wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 6:20 am

I would try a reinstall with just a bare bones setup: HDMI to a screen. Dumb question: did you do a sync after the dd action in FreeBSD?

So, in my other duties, I hack the FreeBSD kernel. I can tell you rather canonically that is a dumb question. When you dd to /dev/da0, you are using an unbuffered device. Access to buffered devices was removed from the kernel long ago. In fact, IIRC, it left when the VM was integrated. So you never need to sync after writing to a raw device on a modern FreeBSD. Probably since at least version 4. We're cutting version 14 in October.

HDMI to a screen is somewhat of a pain. Sigh.

It wouldn't be the first time dd not followed by sync bit me, but that's probably all Linux then. You may want to tone it down with the snark a bit though. That's quite uncalled for.

Bas wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2023 8:53 pm

It wouldn't be the first time dd not followed by sync bit me, but that's probably all Linux then. You may want to tone it down with the snark a bit though. That's quite uncalled for.

Sorry if it came across as snark. I'm just very direct. I'm not super familiar with Linux ... so it may still have buffered devices. You should be able to just use the unbuffered device, but YMMV. There are many reasons that I don't generally use linux for things that pay --- but a big one is bad governance leads to bad code. I even did a quick google and I didn't get a definitive answer. Certainly sync doesn't hurt. Lots of people have long finger memory. I still have finger memory that dates back to ultrix

And now returning to our previously asked question.

... so only one of my desktop monitors has HDMI. I briefly used that to test. I determined two things.

1. The 128M RAM module seems to make things flake. It was previously reliable. Odd.
2. Even though non-ram cores seem stable on the monitor ... they flake after awhile on the capture thing.

... so I ordered new RAM and a new capture card. Hopefully will suck less.

... on that note, the 2A power supply, should then be enough. Oddly, the 4A power supply reads 5.4V when not connected to anything and the 2A power supply reads 5.2V. Is the DE-10 sensitive to this? Is MisterFPGA sensitive to voltages?

In my 100% anecdotal experience yes, power supply voltage and stability matters. Stuffing mine with boards and USB devices also made things unstable at times. It doesn't always crash outright though, just gets wonky showing strange symptoms that are unpredictable and hard to reproduce. A beefier power supply fixed it for me. Got a simple 4A one, now it's fine with an analog IO board, 128M RAM, USB board, and three USB dongles.

Got mine from https://misterfpga.co.uk by the way. The one on the website there is different from the one I got though.

Bas wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 6:40 am

In my 100% anecdotal experience yes, power supply voltage and stability matters. Stuffing mine with boards and USB devices also made things unstable at times. It doesn't always crash outright though, just gets wonky showing strange symptoms that are unpredictable and hard to reproduce. A beefier power supply fixed it for me. Got a simple 4A one, now it's fine with an analog IO board, 128M RAM, USB board, and three USB dongles.

I only have the 128M ram --- no other boards. I was most concerned at the slight overvoltages -- 5.2V ad 5.4V.

Got mine from https://misterfpga.co.uk by the way. The one on the website there is different from the one I got though.

I don't recall where I bought the DE-10. Might have been mouser. I live in Canada... and importing electronics from the UK is very costly.

Take a look here: viewtopic.php?t=3724

From my DE10, I can't upgrade beyond release_20200122 without suffering reboot hell.