I got ripped off on a dead Amiga 4000

[save2600]

@Ceaser,

You can't expect a computer system such as this with all its socketed chips, daughterboards, etc. to NOT come loose in transit. Hell, A500's and A2000's have had to have their Agnus chips reseated after UPS hauled them away from Commodore back in the day!

The seller looks legit and the screen did have Workbench up. If you are going to own an Amiga system, you MUST NOT be afraid to remove and reseat chips and components. That's common sense 101 when dealing with vintage computers.

Using a very small flat blade screwdriver, you may carefully pry up one end of a chip (I.C.). When you feel the pins have moved up slightly, you may then press down on the chip to reseat it. That "fixes" most chip/socket problems. If not, the more aggressive thing to do is remove the chip completely (working your screwdriver from one end to the other carefully and slowly) and press it back in again. Assuming the legs/pins did not need to be cleaned. Look for oxidation on the pins and if necessary, light sand paper or better yet: a fibreglass brush may be used to clean them up.

The Busters people talk about require a PLCC chip removal tool (if it's not directly soldered to the board that is). Rat Shack sells them for $10 and are a necessity. NEVER try to remove one of those square chips with a regular screwdriver!!

Other scenario is that the capacitors on both the 040 card and audio sections could have been soldered in backwards. + <> - got reversed, causing the caps to blow up and leak their acidic spunk all over the board. VERY common when buying someone else's old Amiga 4000's.

One more thing: be sure to tighten the motherboard down with all the screws AFTER you've determined that the capacitors did not blow up. Good grounding is necessary for our Amiga's to behave properly. Removing the 040 board, observing that all those TINY pins are in alignment and reseating *IT* is also something you're going to have to do...

BTW: Great price you got there! Well, if you can get it to work that is  ;-)

[Plaz]

if he has it listed as working you cant blame him for the shipping damage.   If you do end up going that route, I hope you dont rip him off and file a claim and end up keeping the A4000 and the refund.  (its happened to me before..theres losers as sellers and buyers)

Do what others have posted to see if its something that needs to be reseated.  I hope you know what you're doing and dont screw it up more.  (I've had that happen to me also)

Totally disagree. If a seller is advertising that he will be selling and delivering a working system, that is what should be received. If he plans to pack it so poorly that you'll be lucky to get it in less than 30 non working peices, then that's what should be posted in the ebay listing and the price should reflect the fact that you may get a big pile of trash.

However, I would hope too that in a worse case senerio, the buyer would honest and return the equipment while getting a refund and not keep the money and the equipment.

[Rant on]
My first rule after more than 10 years on ebay.... expect a bad experience. It didn't used to be that way, but that's what it's become more and more. In the past year I've had my fill of buyers who complain for discounts and refunds. Seems to be a trend. Once they get the equipment and then say "there's a problem" how can you prove them wrong? I had one buy a laptop with a new drive less than a year old. I packed it in foam, boxed it, wrapped that box in foam, and double boxed it. You would have to drop a piano on it to think about hurting it. The buyer got it, then said the HD wouldn't boot. I found that hard to beleive, but how can I dispute it? I said fine, send the laptop back for a refund. They said "well could you just refund $50 instead and I can get a new HD?". I said fine just to end the painful deal. It would have cost me almost that to get it abck and resell/ship it, and I think some sneaky buyers relize that. This was the second such senario in a month. It's like become ebay discount shopping, get the item, complain, get a discount. Right after those last two transactions, I had one buyer who didn't even communicate at all after wining the bid. The first thing I got was a dispute from ebay. After 15 years of internet and ebay sales without a hitch, suddenly almost every transaction stinks there. Ugh, I'm through with ebay. Craigslist has been far better for me as a buyer and seller and everyone's been happy. You just have to cover all your bases. [Rant off]

Plaz

[ceaser]

I'm still looking for this other post to reply to but wanted to address this.  Amen brother.  I can't believe some people think you should buy something as "working" then have it not work.  Also there is an advanced lookup on Ebay.  When someone's a jerk about responding to questions, or they take days to do so, after you spent $380.69 on a broke old computer, you can do this thing advanced lookup.  This guy left a number that wasn't only fake, it was "a single mother of 4 who knew nothing about computers."  Thankfully I left a civil message but it was like "Hi my name is Greg I bought a computer from you and it doesn't work.  Please call me and left my #."  This lady was so confused and wtf about the whole thing.  And I had to apologize and look like more of a fool than I already know I am for buying a used weird computer on Ebay.

I know it's old.  If I can fix it you bet you this seller's not hearing another word from me.  But he IS a jerk!

Oh and do you see how much he sells that it's working and what cool stuff he put in it?   I bought a 500+ a month ago that the guy didn't even know if it was working.  I gotta do the battery resolder but it wasn't leaking yet at least or close (voltage tests good) and it works.  Guy had it in a closet for years and it works.  Probably what looks to be a nice beer spill or 2 on it.  But he didn't blow it up and say it was the greatest Amiga ever.  Like this guy.  It is sad what this guy did and I don't care how great of a tech you are, you buy something that says it works, and it doesn't, you got ripped.

[ceaser]

I have had a dead 4000 with simler problem and it was the BUSTER CHIP not seated properly , so check it. i removed it and put itback in.

this has some merit for sure.  i happened to have purchased a bunch of extra ram clips for the 4000, so i put those in instead for the hell of it but nawp not the RAM.  there's these cool clips as mentioned in the listing.  clicks in much easier than any ram in any PC i've ever worked on i must say.  but you gotta take them all out to take the back one out is the only hard part (not really more of a pain).  There's still a little mixing and matching I can do but I think all the 72-pin SIMM's are good so reseating was best I could do.

This Buster chip is definitely there.  You need something called a chip extractor to remove those things without breaking them, or a needle nose pliers that's not 1000 years old.  I think it's was my grandfather's or something.  But I'm going to break my Buster chip if I try pulling it out with that.  suggestions on how to pull one of those out without a chip extractor?  I see 2 sides of the square shaped seating have a little plastic blocker and 2 sides don't, upper right and lower left don't have the little blocker thing.  When I barely touch that Buster chip, i get some weird differences in alternating from just black(very dark grey) to whitish green or really bright green(this is when I actually boot up and turn it off again, not flashing to different colors in the same attempt).  I tried to inch the Buster chip out with something that wasn't small enough to help at all, and then I got just dark grey.  Then I sort of pushed it gently further in and got the bright green or whitish green again.  Looks like for sure I'm going to need to get a chip extractor for getting this out.  I need something to get in there on both sides and lift it out gently.

my A4000D was doing something similar.  Turned out there was corrosion around the crystal (I think that's what it's called the 4 Pin DIL connected box on the motherboard) which was causing it to not connect always and I would get a dark gray screen or a black screen with everything cycling but nothing else.  So check those, I think they're called crystals, there should be 2 on the motherboard, they are socketed, so carefully pull them out and then put them back in the board in the exact same way you pulled them out, then try to boot the system.  It's worth a shot.

Not too sure what you mean about this.  Are they near the power supply connection to the motherboard?  At this moment I screwed the HDD back in so maybe I'm not seeing these.

[Matt_H]

suggestions on how to pull one of those out without a chip extractor?

Don't even try. Accidentally damaing the socket is not an unlikely outcome, which will be incredibly annoying/difficult/expensive to repair.

Are they near the power supply connection to the motherboard? At this moment I screwed the HDD back in so maybe I'm not seeing these.

The crystals are underneath the CPU card. I think some machines don't have them, depending on the CPU card installed at the factory.

[ceaser]

You can't expect a computer system such as this with all its socketed chips, daughterboards, etc. to NOT come loose in transit. Hell, A500's and A2000's have had to have their Agnus chips reseated after UPS hauled them away from Commodore back in the day!

The seller looks legit and the screen did have Workbench up. If you are going to own an Amiga system, you MUST NOT be afraid to remove and reseat chips and components. That's common sense 101 when dealing with vintage computers.

Using a very small flat blade screwdriver, you may carefully pry up one end of a chip (I.C.). When you feel the pins have moved up slightly, you may then press down on the chip to reseat it. That "fixes" most chip/socket problems. If not, the more aggressive thing to do is remove the chip completely (working your screwdriver from one end to the other carefully and slowly) and press it back in again. Assuming the legs/pins did not need to be cleaned. Look for oxidation on the pins and if necessary, light sand paper or better yet: a fibreglass brush may be used to clean them up.

The Busters people talk about require a PLCC chip removal tool (if it's not directly soldered to the board that is). Rat Shack sells them for $10 and are a necessity. NEVER try to remove one of those square chips with a regular screwdriver!!

Other scenario is that the capacitors on both the 040 card and audio sections could have been soldered in backwards. + <> - got reversed, causing the caps to blow up and leak their acidic spunk all over the board. VERY common when buying someone else's old Amiga 4000's.

One more thing: be sure to tighten the motherboard down with all the screws AFTER you've determined that the capacitors did not blow up. Good grounding is necessary for our Amiga's to behave properly. Removing the 040 board, observing that all those TINY pins are in alignment and reseating *IT* is also something you're going to have to do...

[ceaser]

@Ceaser,

You can't expect a computer system such as this with all its socketed chips, daughterboards, etc. to NOT come loose in transit. Hell, A500's and A2000's have had to have their Agnus chips reseated after UPS hauled them away from Commodore back in the day!

The seller looks legit and the screen did have Workbench up. If you are going to own an Amiga system, you MUST NOT be afraid to remove and reseat chips and components. That's common sense 101 when dealing with vintage computers.

Using a very small flat blade screwdriver, you may carefully pry up one end of a chip (I.C.). When you feel the pins have moved up slightly, you may then press down on the chip to reseat it. That "fixes" most chip/socket problems. If not, the more aggressive thing to do is remove the chip completely (working your screwdriver from one end to the other carefully and slowly) and press it back in again. Assuming the legs/pins did not need to be cleaned. Look for oxidation on the pins and if necessary, light sand paper or better yet: a fibreglass brush may be used to clean them up.

The Busters people talk about require a PLCC chip removal tool (if it's not directly soldered to the board that is). Rat Shack sells them for $10 and are a necessity. NEVER try to remove one of those square chips with a regular screwdriver!!

Other scenario is that the capacitors on both the 040 card and audio sections could have been soldered in backwards. + <> - got reversed, causing the caps to blow up and leak their acidic spunk all over the board. VERY common when buying someone else's old Amiga 4000's.

One more thing: be sure to tighten the motherboard down with all the screws AFTER you've determined that the capacitors did not blow up. Good grounding is necessary for our Amiga's to behave properly. Removing the 040 board, observing that all those TINY pins are in alignment and reseating *IT* is also something you're going to have to do...

BTW: Great price you got there! Well, if you can get it to work that is  ;-)

This Buster chip was not a soldered down chip.  However there were 2 chips under the CPU board, I'm dumb about Amiga I think they're the Kickstart 3.0 ROM's actually, but those definitely would've broke if I tried to jimmy rig them out.  So Buster chip was in the type of socket that you can shimmy it out a little with a small flathead and I blew a tiny bit of canned air on it and the socket.  Reseating that is what seems to put me from black or very dark grey to the green (I guess meaning RAM error screen).  It seems to be key.  When I mess with the seating of Buster, it goes black(after of and on again not during because that would be lame to remove during operation) then green when I mess with Buster.  I stripped it down to the motherboard all the way.  For this chip extractor at Ratt Shatty Shack you are talking about chips like the ROM's under the CPU board only?  many of those chips are not socketed and I really don't know what you do to service those in any way.  So reseating Buster wasn't a problem.  He came out of his socket super easy as soon as I found a small enough flathead not to scratch up and ruin it taking it out.  Also I must ask but am pretty sure the processor is not in a ZIF socket on the Amiga CPU boards?  I removed the heat sink and again blew some canned air in but was surprised there wasn't a clip or anything I could see to remove the processor itself.  I suppose you just replace the CPU board if your CPU goes bad.

But main thing is green is all I'm getting.  When I said white in my 1st post I was wrong.  I just had the monitor brightness jacked up too high and so it looked white.  I gotta close it up for tonight it's just going nowhere since I got the nothing/black to goto green.  Reseated RAM.  Actually had bought some extra 4000 RAM in case something went wrong.  Noticed one of the 72-pin RAM chips was a DIMM and could only be put at the back of the set because it was too wide to fit in any other socket as it would squash too close up against the other clips of RAM, thus preventing them from seating properly.  It didn't matter a bit which chips I put in and whether I put 3 72-pin SIMM's in or all five, the DIMM at the back or all SIMM's.  Sorry I been to too many computer classes and I just mean the RAM that has chips on both sides is DIMM and the one that has chips on only one side is SIMM.  This is all the memory clip I'm talking about here though.  Very nice connectors that hold the RAM.  Better than any RAM clips I've ever seen on a PC.

It'd be a travesty to not get this box working.  I won't rest until I have it working.  Unfortunately I must sleep and my brain does burn out from time to time.  Let me know should I get Rat Shack's chip extractor for the ROM's under the CPU board and reseat them?  I understand you need a chip extractor to get some of these chips out but which ones I'm asking.  Also it would seem since your Buster wasn't in the socket type that you can just get the chip out with a tiny flathead, our 4000 boards are probably different.  Do any of the other chips without the obvious socket like my Buster was in, come out with the chip extractor?  I'm definitely not afraid of taking things apart.  I just have to be aware of my level of knowledge and what is worse than having something broken is breaking it worse.  Lots of good input thanks.  Let me know if you have any further answers.

[wawrzon]

colors on boot: white: cpu failure
grey: could indicate different contact problems or hw failures, basically the machine went through checking hardware but couldnt start the system anyway if i recall right
green: basically faulty chip ram but could be something else too.

the guy says it has been refurbished: good. i tend to believe that the fotos of the unit are fresh so i dont think the motherboard has been chemically damaged and they do not break in transport. i beleve you really have component contact problems.

you say you are getting green when pressing on buster. it could be that buster legs are bent. it might happen if it has been removed before and carlessly reseated. it isnt that difficult to pull this chip but normally pushing it deeper into the socket is enough. i think applyin pressure to buster you bent the whole board a little and the flaky contact should be sought elsewhere.

to eliminate further possible failure sources i would pull the daughterboard and the fast ram. examine the cpu card contacts, assure the jumpers under cpu board are seated correctly (they could got loose or lost, lol), check the roms. reseat the card.

now try to power on again. also you could take the chip ram out to assure that you get green screen on boot, then reseat it.

edit:reason: the seller might have exchanged ram without checking, and a4k are sometimes quite picky about the modules.

[ceaser]

Don't even try. Accidentally damaing the socket is not an unlikely outcome, which will be incredibly annoying/difficult/expensive to repair.


The crystals are underneath the CPU card. I think some machines don't have them, depending on the CPU card installed at the factory.

All mine has under CPU card is 2 ROM chips which are Kickstart 3.0.  They aren't something you'd take out without extractor for sure it'd break.  Nothing that LOOKS like you'd call it a crystal.  So I don't think I have those.

[ceaser]

colors on boot: white: cpu failure
grey: could indicate different contact problems or hw failures, basically the machine went through checking hardware but couldnt start the system anyway if i recall right
green: basically faulty chip ram but could be something else too.

you say you are getting green when pressing on buster. it could be that buster legs are bent. it might happen if it has been removed before and carlessly reseated. it isnt that difficult to pull this chip but normally pushing it deeper into the socket is enough. i think applyin pressure to buster you bent the whole board a little and the flaky contact should be sought elsewhere.

to eliminate further possible failure sources i would pull the daughterboard and the fast ram. examine the cpu card contacts, assure the jumpers under cpu board are seated correctly (they could got loose or lost, lol), check the roms. reseat the card.

edit:reason: the seller might have exchanged ram without checking, and a4k are sometimes quite picky about the modules.

That would be a shame if Buster's legs were bent.  And it could be true.  I really was pretty gentle with that chip though.  To clarify I never got white, I had my brightness jacked up too high on the monitor because it was that dark dark grey before.  So it's been whole time either the dark grey or the green.  And it doesn't seem to make much sense what I do for it to change, just that when I take stuff out or put stuff in, that's when it'll end up alternating colors.  But it's only one or the other.  I'm going to mess around with those RAM clips a little more since that's almost safe.  When I removed buster, I saw that the side I hadn't lifted on had what looked like a little scratch.  I don't know why someone would've removed that chip before unless they were having a problem, and if it really was just serviced by a pro last year, it shouldn't look like that.  I don't even know what that chip is supposed to do.  I'm guessing some memory stuff since agnus in 500's were in those type of sockets and they were memory.

Thanks for the input and let me know if you think of anything else.  I said in answer to someone else it would SUCK to not get this computer working.  It's a cool computer.  And the reason I'm trying to get a hold of the seller is I want him to reveal to me what he knows.  I need to ask him what prompted him to get his Amiga serviced and sell it only a year later.  If I had that box and it was working I would NOT let it go for $340 (+40 shipping) but as some others have said to me, that's a good price, if I can get it working.:angry:

[ceaser]

if he has it listed as working you cant blame him for the shipping damage.   If you do end up going that route, I hope you dont rip him off and file a claim and end up keeping the A4000 and the refund.  (its happened to me before..theres losers as sellers and buyers)

Do what others have posted to see if its something that needs to be reseated.  I hope you know what you're doing and dont screw it up more.  (I've had that happen to me also)

that's the last thing I want to do!

[ceaser]

It looks like it got damaged in transit.  The listing and seller look legit.  The system is old so please try and be understanding.  You got a good deal for it and even the case is rare.  I would just keep it and buy another MB, IMHO!  It would be worth it.  Or you can send it off to Amiga Center in France to fix it.  Well worth it.  I know you are mad but this stuff happens especially for vintage computer gear.  The 4000 is not very stable to begin with.  I have had a few 4000's die out of the blue too.  I now have like 5 as backups! LOL

I would disassemble it down to the bare MB and reconnect the floppy, PS, memory chips and daughter board and CPU card and see if you get a KS boot screen (purple insert disk screen)  Give it about a minute for this screen to show up if there is no IDE device connected.

In a perfect world I'd send my Amiga off to the good repair center in France but I just wrecked my vehicle again and was already broke before that.  If I can't fix it myself, it won't get fixed, and that'll be a tragedy.  Who cares about the seller by the way?  He got money for this and it doesn't work until I fix it.

[TjLaZer]

In a perfect world I'd send my Amiga off to the good repair center in France but I just wrecked my vehicle again and was already broke before that.  If I can't fix it myself, it won't get fixed, and that'll be a tragedy.  Who cares about the seller by the way?  He got money for this and it doesn't work until I fix it.

My point is unfortunate things do happen and this is not the sellers fault.  (unless the packaging was bad and it came physically damaged)  Cards do come loose and most people don't think about the cards working loose.  It's an honest mistake.  The CPU card is not a PCI or Zorro card after all.  That High Flyer case and everything else is worth the money you paid so I would rather keep it all as is then send it back for a refund.  That's just me though...  If you had it insured you could try to get the money back, but I think there has to be PHYSICAL damage or else they won't give you money.

I had a 2000 shipped years ago and it arrived in pieces!  UPS issued me a check for the $600 I had it insured for.  It did take like 2 months but I finally did get the $ and I bought another NOS A2000.  

Good luck I know how you feel.

[wawrzon]

after you spent the money to sent your miggy to any repair center (if only for them to check that it is working ok) it might not be working again when you get it back because something got loose again in transport.

said that i replaced busters dozens of times with no problem, you have to be careful though not to break the socket. you have to look if all legs look even, not bend to the side. the chip itself is not likely to take any damage even if it looks scratched or something.

in most of cases i had problems to get a4ks running (especially them from 96AY) was due to ram. do the banks look good? do they have been replaced too?
as i said take all ram out except chip and remove the daughterboard. a4k can really boot without it. if you are sure it has 3.0 roms it should boot pretty quickly. i dont recall if floppy has to be connected. but if yes it has to be connected right and supplied with current. check if you havnt shifted the connector to a side.

on the other hand if your kickstart roms are 3.1 by any chance, know that then the system waits for some 30 sec for a boot media.

patience is half a way too succeed. keep cool. it will work...

[ceaser]

Who cares about the seller by the way?  He got money for this and it doesn't work until I fix it.

nevermind he's talking to me again. heh

[wawrzon]

@ceaser: just to content you i have always got the 4000s i bought to work except one that was clearly stated to be non working. they not always turned out to be in a physical condition i expected them to be and quite a few didnt fire up on the first try, so i was frequently already blaming the seller, but eventually all of them are in service by now.