Mediator troubles...

[Disparil]

I recently managed to bring my old towered A1200 back to life after a few years of presuming it was dead (the culprit for all the trouble is apparently the Blizzard 1260 turbo and its connection to the Mediator, apparently I need to nudge it a bit every time if the machine won't boot).

But now there's a problem with the Mediator 1200, seems I can't get it to work. Installing the drivers goes fine, but if I try to run the configuration program, the Amiga just stalls completely. Every time, no matter what versions I try. The same thing happens if I try to run PCIinfo.

Changing the Config-jumper to CLOSED on the Mediator does enable me to run the configuration program, but the Mediator board isn't recognized then.

Any ideas what to try?

[magnetic]

bro your telling us you have a dodgy board you have to "nudge" the cpu to get it to work and you wonder why the mediator isn't working?

First, is the mediator known in working condition? 2nd do you have enough pus for all of that?

[Disparil]

The 060 turbo only needs a nudge if the system isn't booting, once it boots the turbo works fine. And it isn't the CPU that's causing it, it's the connection between the turbo and the Mediator. Maybe the connectors need a bit of cleaning. Met a fellow Amiga owner who complained about the same problem, that's how I figured out where my problem was...

The Mediator was working a few years back, before the boot problems began. Now, not sure. The turbo is connected to it, the PSU is connected to it, it recognizes when I alter the CONFIG jumper so there is *some* life, but if I try to *do* anything with it, the whole machine crashes so I need some suggestions on what to try.

By pus I guess you mean PSU? It's an AT PSU with 200 or 250 watts, it was enough before, should be enough now.

[magnetic]

yes thats plenty of power but we will need way more details and troubleshooting you have tried to begin to help.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I assume you've tried the obvious - remove everything, test to see if it works in it's base configuration, then re-add components one-by-one until it fails, yes?  

[Disparil]

I assume you've tried the obvious - remove everything, test to see if it works in it's base configuration, then re-add components one-by-one until it fails, yes?  

Yeah, I tried it without any cards, then with just the Voodoo3, then with Voodoo3 and a network card, also switched their places around... Now I got my hands on a Radeon 9200, tried with that too. Always the same thing, if any software tries to communicate with the Mediator, the Amiga freezes. It's like it's conflicting with something.

Or it might just be a dead Mediator. Too bad I don't know anybody nearby with A1200's so I could test it on their machines.

I read somewhere that older Mediators have problems with newer drivers, but since this problem persists no matter what driver version I try, this doesn't seem to be the case.

[amiga1260]

Have you set the MaxTransfer value of your HD Partition 00x01fe00?
Sometimes it gave some freezes witth software.

[paul1981]

The 060 turbo only needs a nudge if the system isn't booting, once it boots the turbo works fine. And it isn't the CPU that's causing it, it's the connection between the turbo and the Mediator. Maybe the connectors need a bit of cleaning. Met a fellow Amiga owner who complained about the same problem, that's how I figured out where my problem was...

The Mediator was working a few years back, before the boot problems began. Now, not sure. The turbo is connected to it, the PSU is connected to it, it recognizes when I alter the CONFIG jumper so there is *some* life, but if I try to *do* anything with it, the whole machine crashes so I need some suggestions on what to try.

By pus I guess you mean PSU? It's an AT PSU with 200 or 250 watts, it was enough before, should be enough now.

Have you tried doing what Mike has said yet? I know it's a right pita to strip your machine but you really need to test your system without mediator and then with. You're saying when you nudge it it can work, well just because the nudge enables it to boot does not mean that there is a good connection (it will boot with poor connection)! And if there was a good connection after the nudge, it doesn't mean it would be good throughout the session. Like you, I think this is a connection issue and I wouldn't be looking any further at this stage.

[mechy]

I recently managed to bring my old towered A1200 back to life after a few years of presuming it was dead (the culprit for all the trouble is apparently the Blizzard 1260 turbo and its connection to the Mediator, apparently I need to nudge it a bit every time if the machine won't boot).

But now there's a problem with the Mediator 1200, seems I can't get it to work. Installing the drivers goes fine, but if I try to run the configuration program, the Amiga just stalls completely. Every time, no matter what versions I try. The same thing happens if I try to run PCIinfo.

Changing the Config-jumper to CLOSED on the Mediator does enable me to run the configuration program, but the Mediator board isn't recognized then.

Any ideas what to try?

It sounds like u have a bad connection somewhere. I think you should stop and clean all connectors on all boards until its all booting reliable.. Reseat the chips on the mediator board,check the chips and sockets for any corrosion.

try running pciinfo in a cli and see if it gives a list of cards.

This old site suggests jumper settings:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030822080305/http://www.amiga-mediator.co.uk/comp.shtml

Here you can find step by step graphic card(and others) setup:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030812010922/http://www.amiga-mediator.co.uk/graphics/graphics.shtml



good luck

[D00kie]

I had a very similar problem - A working A1200T boxed and stored in 2005 and unboxed in 2015. Same specifications, except an Apollo 1240 rather than a Blizzard, and a somewhat troublesome 2B motherboard.

It booted sometimes, if I got a black screen and endlessly-blinking power light, giving it a jiggle got it working temporarily. I'm not sure exactly what fixed it, but here are things I did...

First, I created a bracket from Plastimake to keep the accelerator stable. An improvement, but not much. I cleaned the contacts on the edge connectors and carefully prised some of the pins of the Apollo card out a bit so they had better contact and cleaned them as well. I still had problems so reseated the SIMM a few times, which had the same result as wiggling the card.

Then I re-arranged the cards - fast ethernet in slot 1, Voodoo 3 in slot 2, SB128 in slot 4. Set the jumpers to CONFIG and 8MB memory window, appropriate for a card with > 8MB memory.

Software-wise, the Mediator MMU variable is ON and VoodooMem is 15. (I think this leaves a 1MB "buffer" for sound and networking?) and I replaced SETPATCH with RemAPollo. I think that made the biggest difference - It probably initialises the MMU and CPU better than setpatch because it's a patched 68040.library.

For good measure I did the Rev2B Ian Steadman "timing fixes" but that was not really necessary although some old games worked better.

What I have now is a very stable system - I had it running nonstop for several days with Quake timedemos. If I could hazard a guess at the failure in the Mediator I would probably say the MMU (or the way it's initialised) or possibly faulty RAM on the Blizzard card could be the culprit. It took me months to sort out, though, so best of luck!