(This is a reincarnation from the old CPCWiKi forum )
This thread is created to dealt with technical problems or issues anyone might have, with the ULIfAC and USIfAC II boards.
That way, it will be much faster & easier to get help & support by me, or anyone in the community.It will also help to keep the main thread “clean”, containing only useful informations and updates for USIfAC II board.
For start, a few important Hints & Tips (based on the majority of reporting problems):
- CLEAN THOROUHGLY Amstrad CPC expansion connector before plugging the board! From my long experience, many times, issues are related to dirt/oxidized edge connector!
- If you suddenly have weird issues, try to press firmly PIC MCU into its socket or unplug/re-plug it!
- If you boot Amstrad and you get a black screen,try to press pause button, if it’s active, then Amstrad will freeze upon booting!
- If you don’t get board’s boot message “USIfAC II Enhanced” and board doesn’t seem to respond, try giving OUT &FBD2,5, this will reset Board’s rom number to default ‘5’ and in most cases, resolve the problem
- Amstrad PLUS is not OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED, as i don’t own a PLUS machine, thus board is never tested on PLUS machines by me! However, there are many other people, who tried the board with Amstrad PLUS, and they claim that for the most part, is functioning ok , e.g. you will be able to load games from files or dsk images. So any questions/issues regarding PLUS machines they can only be supported by the community.
PROPER CLEANING of EDGE CONNECTOR (thanks to @RobertK from here):
Here’s another happy ULIfAC user for more than a year now, and here’s my report, better late than never.
Initially I couldn’t get it to work, the CPC showed some weird behaviour when powering it up. So I asked John for help, and his immediate guess were corroded contacts on the CPC’s edge connector. I first didn’t believe that, because the contacts looked fine to me - well, sort of, because I didn’t really know what they *should* look like…
Cleaning them with a rubber didn’t help, so I used fine sandpaper. Here I had cleaned just four of them to show the difference:
And finally, it looked like this:
It still wasn’t working, but the CPC’s startup behaviour had changed a little, so I knew that I was on the right way.
So I took my multimeter and checked continuity between the ends of each contact. On most contacts, there was an immediate beep, but on some I had to touch the copper a few times to get continuity, so I knew that I had to revisit these. And after that, it was working, and I’m delighted with it!