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Author Topic: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting  (Read 6472 times)

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Offline tlgroomsTopic starter

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Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« on: July 17, 2020, 04:37:41 PM »
Back in 2007 I was trying to install OS 4 on my 3000T with Cyberstorm PPC accelerator and Picasso IV. During the process, I restarted the machine (not while it was doing anything) and it failed to boot. Ever since then this is what I have gotten. I tried getting help with it a few times over the years here at Amiga.org and EAB but never was able to figure out why it won't boot. I'm attaching a youtube link of my 3000T when it is powered on. It cycles over and over as seen in the video. The power light flashes 7 times between each cycle and screen is black.

Here are some of the suggestions and things I have tried:


  • Battery, no corrosion as it was pulled before it ever went bad.
  • I have swapped all socketed chips with a working 3000 Desktop. The chips from the 3000T worked in the 3000 desktop but still had the same problem after swapping the chips with the 3000T. I swapped them back after the test.
  • I have pulled all the cards and reset the jumpers to boot without the accelerator, no change.
  • I have pulled all the socketed zip memory, no change.
  • I have swapped out the ROM chips with the 3000 desktop.
  • I wired up an ATX power supply to make sure it wasn't the power supply, no change.
  • I came across a new 3000T power supply on eBay and received it yesterday, pulled out the 3000T and tried it, no change.

There is no apparent damage on the board anywhere and like I say, it failed on a restart. It was working perfectly fine until that restart.

If anyone has any suggestions of anything else I might try or knows of anyone who might take a look at it and see if they can fix it I'd sure appreciate the help. I would love to get my 3000T going again. I am located in Arkansas but wouldn't mind driving several hours to meet with someone who would take a look at it and see if they can figure out what's going on with it. Hate to ship it anywhere as the board is huge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQtFA8iEVhA
Try my Amiga BBS -> telnet ciaamiga.org:6400 or www.ciaamiga.org
 

Offline TribbleSmasher

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2020, 06:10:33 PM »
Is it possible that your NVRAM is damaged or the battery low on power?
 

Offline tlgroomsTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2020, 06:26:24 PM »
I'm not sure.  I don't have a battery onboard anymore and I didn't have when it went down.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2020, 06:33:59 PM by tlgrooms »
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Offline Matt_H

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2020, 08:19:47 PM »
Just throwing out a few guesses here...

This looks an awful lot like what my 4000T was doing when my accelerator wasn't seated correctly. Double/triple/quadruple check that it's fully seated (and make sure all the standoffs/posts are in place to support it--and, though unlikely, that you're not experiencing this issue). Push down on the connector with a pencil eraser to ensure a tight fit.

It looks like it's crashing very early in the boot process, but can you get into the Early Startup menu (hold both mouse buttons)? What about the Cyberstorm menu (Esc key, I think)?

Can you confirm that your machine has an onboard 030? (Worth checking because some 3000Ts don't.) If so, try again without the accelerator and double check the motherboard jumper settings for the onboard CPU.

Have you tried disconnecting the hard drive? OS4 is extremely finicky and I wonder if something it installed in the RDB (e.g., a filesystem) is causing the machine to crash. I suspect it's not this because it looks like it's crashing before it even tries to access the drive, but you never know...
 

Offline don27dog

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2020, 07:09:09 PM »
Looks like your accelerator is not making good contact or your motherboard settings are wrong.

Here are the 3000T jumper settings

060
100 3-4
102 1-2
104 1-2
103 2-3

040
100 3-4
102 2-3
104 2-3
103 1-2

030
100 1-2
102 2-3
104 1-2
103 2-3

I would start by removing all boards .... set the motherboard jumpers to 030 and try booting off the onboard 030 then start adding the addons one by one.
Amiga 4000D Cyberstorm PPC 150Mhz, 68060 50 Mhz, 128Meg Ram, IndivisionAGA, Deneb USB Controller, Zorram 256, Os3.9/Os4.0 Classic
Amiga 3000T Warp Engine 4040, Elbox FastATA Controller, Progressive Perpherals ProRam3000 64Meg, Mediator, VoodooIII, Os3.9
 

Offline tlgroomsTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #5 on: July 20, 2020, 06:51:38 AM »
Matt_H

Cannot get into early startup menu or cyberstorm menu.  I can reset the startup process by pressing ctrl-amiga-amiga though.  Otherwise the power light flashes 7 times and then restarts over and over.

It has the onboard 030 and as stated above, I have pulled all cards including the cyberstorm, reset the jumpers for the 030 and still get the same thing.

No hard disk or floppy drives are connected.  It is strictly bare bones.  Although all of the above were in place when this first started happening including the hard disk and floppies, cyberstorm, picasso_iv, etc.

I have double and triple checked the jumper settings including again just now with what don27dog just posted.  Same thing I have and have been trying.


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Offline don27dog

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #6 on: July 20, 2020, 07:43:30 PM »
Will it boot off of a floppy disk? Could be scsi termination problem. Try removing the scsi cable from motherboard and see if the insert disk screen will come up.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 07:47:06 PM by don27dog »
Amiga 4000D Cyberstorm PPC 150Mhz, 68060 50 Mhz, 128Meg Ram, IndivisionAGA, Deneb USB Controller, Zorram 256, Os3.9/Os4.0 Classic
Amiga 3000T Warp Engine 4040, Elbox FastATA Controller, Progressive Perpherals ProRam3000 64Meg, Mediator, VoodooIII, Os3.9
 

Offline tlgroomsTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #7 on: July 20, 2020, 07:46:50 PM »
No, floppies do nothing.  There is nothing hooked up to the motherboard at present, no hard drives, no floppies, no cd.  All the socketed memory has been pulled as well as the cyberstorm and picasso iv.  Jumpers reset to 030 setting.  Still getting the same thing.
Try my Amiga BBS -> telnet ciaamiga.org:6400 or www.ciaamiga.org
 

Offline don27dog

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2020, 07:53:15 PM »
My 3000t did something similar years ago but I can't remember what fixed it. I will keep thinking about it and see if anything else pops into myhead.
Amiga 4000D Cyberstorm PPC 150Mhz, 68060 50 Mhz, 128Meg Ram, IndivisionAGA, Deneb USB Controller, Zorram 256, Os3.9/Os4.0 Classic
Amiga 3000T Warp Engine 4040, Elbox FastATA Controller, Progressive Perpherals ProRam3000 64Meg, Mediator, VoodooIII, Os3.9
 
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Offline tlgroomsTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #9 on: July 20, 2020, 08:04:55 PM »
Thanks I appreciate your trying.
Try my Amiga BBS -> telnet ciaamiga.org:6400 or www.ciaamiga.org
 

Offline TribbleSmasher

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #10 on: July 20, 2020, 08:10:21 PM »
Because you already checked for the PSU i guess you have probably one tiny cap or filter gone broken resulting in some essential clock or signal missing. If this is the case you certainly need some lab equipment to find that.

Did you try different ROMs, like the DiagROM, or attach a serial debug to it and see if something gots out?

http://www.diagrom.com/index.php/download/
« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 08:15:27 PM by TribbleSmasher »
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2020, 08:32:30 PM »
This won't fix the problem, but reconnect the floppy drive(s) as you continue testing. That may seem counterintuitive, but a barebones Amiga configuration expects a floppy drive to be connected. Not having a floppy drive produces its own set of odd symptoms, so keeping the floppies connected will prevent those symptoms from getting mixed up with the ones you're already experiencing.

It's a longshot, but consider removing the motherboard to see if there's any debris on the underside that may be causing a short, or if a solder point on the underside has punctured the insulation shield and is shorting against the case.

Capacitor failure is less likely on the 500/2000/3000(T) compared to the 600/1200/4000, but it is a possibility. If you're removing the motherboard, it's worth checking them with a multimeter.
 

Offline Castellen

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2020, 09:18:28 PM »
I'd agree to first remove any CPU board and return the jumpers to use the onboard 68030.  The CPU jumper configuration posted above looks as though it might be A3000D specific.  The A3000T is a bit different, see what I have documented here under A3000T CPU JUMPERS:
http://amiga.serveftp.net/A3000_HardwareGuide/jumpers.html

You'll likely need to use the left hand column in the table.

Regarding your other post about damaged contents of the NVRAM causing the issue; the system will work fine (using defaults) if the NVRAM contents are lost, or even if the RP5C01 real time clock IC is removed.  And invalid NVRAM is more likely to cause scsi.device to hang near the end of the ROM boot sequence, which isn't what you're seeing.  The RP5C01 is socketed in the A3000T (the DIP18 package near the edge of the board, by the battery), so to eliminate the NVRAM theory you could remove the RP5C01 and see if that makes a difference.

Regarding the lack of floppy drive connection, that will cause some boot delay as the system tries to read a drive that isn't there, but it'll eventually get over it without indicating a system error.

And regarding capacitors, the system will typically boot without electrolytic capacitors fitted, let alone if the existing ones are reduced in capacity.  That's a fairly wild stab in the dark.

Best guess it might have some kind of chip memory read/write issue, which since the minimalistic test in ROM only does a basic longword read/write every 16kB or something, and doesn't check for address issues, it will not indicate a green screen error for address faults.  Instead the system will fail early on when it attempts to use the memory it tested to be good.  Using DiagROM as suggested is helpful to see any obvious chip memory problems (but still won't detect address issues, which will also cause DiagROM to fail).  I'd need to attach the hardware debugger to the board to see where it's failing during boot and exactly what's going on.  It's not feasible to do this level of remote hardware fault finding using guesswork.

If you can't find anyone locally to repair the main board, I'm happy to take a look.  The main board weighs around 2.6kg with packaging, shipping to NZ isn't the cheapest for that weight/volume, though I expect the board would likely be repairable.

http://amiga.serveftp.net
 
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Offline tlgroomsTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #13 on: July 21, 2020, 05:39:30 AM »
I was able tonight to put in a set of v1.0 Diagroms and this was the result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3naLuT53w6o

I will be trying to hook up to a pc as soon as I can get one set up with a serial port.

No matter what keys I tried on the keyboard the result was the same as in the video.
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Offline TribbleSmasher

Re: Amiga 3000T need help troubleshooting
« Reply #14 on: July 21, 2020, 11:55:07 AM »
The weird repeated chars at the end of words must give some clues, is Chucky here on this board?