Dead Cyberstorm PPC

[cehofer]

I have a totally dead Cyberstorm PPC. When I first acquired it, I sent it to AmigaCenter in France to JJB. It looks like they don't exist anymore. JJB at that time tested and said the board was completely dead. I have another Cyberstorm PPC and have been doing a bit of troubleshooting. The 060 is good and the PPC has been removed. I get all the correct voltages. JJB said that the Oscillators were good and SCSI chip. He had ran it through his oven to resolder the 060 socket. I am wondering if I should remove the socket, reball it and replace it but I would have thought he would have done that. So I have tested a lot of the socket pins and they appear to be good. There is nothing obvious pwr, gnd etc. I am thinking it is the PLCC custom chips between the ram slots or possibly the firmware is bad in the chips. Is there anybody out there that has troubleshot this down this far or can replace/fix the PLCCs?

It seems Phase5 might be back with talks of the Cyberstorm PPC2. I have emailed their support but I haven't heard anything yet.

Any ideas? This board is in perfect physical shape. It is such a shame this is dead. My other one looks like it has been through a war and works fine, lol.

[Kawazu]

I would contact stachu on amibay, but he have had alot of experience with the csppc cards and reballing. He is located in Poland.

And then you have Chucky also on amibay that is located in sweden, he have done alot of repairs and reverse engineering on Amiga hardware.

[cehofer]

I will give them a try.

I have an IR heat plate, solder station and purchased the reballing solder and jigs.  I have successfully recapped 2 - 4000D and one spare MB, 2 - 4000T, all power supplies and my CD32.  I removed the PPC from the Cyberstorm PPC and have a new one for it once I get it working.

If these guys can provide me advice and assistance, that would be super.

Thanks.

[rxxic]

I am curious about your results. I have a CyberStormPPC here too which does not work. And a Blizzard 1260. They were working intermittently, but the last time I checked they refused to boot. The screen was just black. I did test the RAM on another machine and it's error free.
I would love someone would repair both of them.

[cehofer]

RXXi,

I can tell you this much of what I have found out researching the Cyberstorm PPC.  It is probably the same for the Blizzard.  The PPC had what I call a manufacturing defect where the solder balling under the 060 and PPC would crack and become intermittent with a normal user.  For the guys that were overclocking the PPC chip, it would burn up.  Even if you used the PPC factory stock, it could still burn up in a 4000D because of bad ventilation.   It working intermittently sounds like the solder joints under the 060.

Another thing about the PPC is that the memory has to be installed in pairs in bank 0 and bank 2.  It will not boot without memory.  If you reboot and hold esc, it will come up in bios mode provided you are at the correct firmware level.  I don't know exactly what that level is but my working PPC I can get into the bios of the card.

Another common thing about the card is that the 50MHz Oscillator would die.  Even if the PPC chip burned up, the 060 on most would still work.

You can try to push and hold on the 060 during boot up and see if you can get it to boot.   If that causes it too boot, you are suffering from the cracked solder joints under the 060.