A2000 big hardware problem or not ?

[Desmon]

@Effy

Have received an A2000 with scsi card and 2030 turboboard, but it didn't boot up. Only get black screen without any colours, so it means that da processor might be crashed. So I opened up an old A500, removed da processor and then opened up da A2000. But, and now comes the problem, this computer has got a MiniMegaChip that gives it 2 Mb chip memory. In real life this means that an A2000 chip is placed onto a little board that is inserted onto the motherboard, but also a black wire that is connected to two pins of the processor, somewhere in da middle of the processor. So now it becomes complicated. Is da processor malfunctionning or is it that MiniMegaChip with its black wire that is causing the problems ? I don't wanna damage anything so I ask it here to get useful information.
I still wanna use that A2000 to insert an X-Surf and a CV64/3D so don't tell me that it's old stuff and that I need to get rid of it. It may be slower than my A4000 and towered A1200 with Z4, but it's still a great machine that only doesn't have AGA or da possibility to insert PowerPC cards, that's all !!
So please, if somebody has got experience with my problem then please help me out !!! This is da first A2000 I ever have and I wanna keep it !!

As per another suggestion here, I'd strip the machine of all the third-party addons, including the '030 board AND the Megachip. Take careful note of where that black wire clips on. The Agnus chip out of your A500 will easily replace the Megachip and drop the machine back to it's standard configuration.
From there, start adding things back in, checking that the machine boots properly at each step.
I have several A2000s, but the main machine sports a Blizzard2060 w/ 32MB, X-Surf, extra Oktagon SCSI card and 2032 (Amber) Flickerfixer. A great workhorse that's run 24/7 for the last 8 years. :-o

[Desmon]

@Effy

Desmon my man, if you were here I would give you a kiss, even if ya're a man !! It works !! I just took the Agnus out of the A500, took the MiniMegaChip out of the A2000 and placed the A500 chip in return and it worked !! I now get the kickstart 3.1 screen !! (that kickstart also comes from that A500)

Yup. Sounds just like my Rev6 A2k. It'll run like a charm until I install the Megachip. I had to revert to a Rev4 motherboard.

And now another question, not so urgent or mega important, but in that A500 I have got ECS installed instead of the original OCS. I might be nice to put that in the A2000 too, but which chip is that ??

That'll be the Denise chip. (8362 = OCS, 8363 = ECS)
[/quote]
Kronos : is that the Denise chip you just talked about ?? I've seen that the chip in the A2000 is a CSG chip and the A500 has got a MOS chip ...[/quote]
Yeah, the chips were made by two different manufacturers. MOS was bought out by C= around 1990.
BTW, the Obese Agnus chip on that Megacip unit is still worth around $40 USD if you intend selling it.

[Desmon]

@Effy

Okay, it all boots up into a Workbench 2.0, or as Showconfig says Disk Version 38.12 and kickstart 40.63.

That's odd. You have a 3.1 Kickstart and Workbench 2.0 Why?

 Da A2630 has got da 68030 with fpu and mmu but only 2 Mb Ram on it which is in my eyes extremely low !! I'm used to have at least 64 Mb on my A1200 !! But hey, I just got started !! Those 2060 boards are getting cheaper and cost less than a 1260 card and certainly less than a 68060 for A4000.

Yeah. The best thing I ever did for my 2000 was the Blizzard. I only have 32MB on the accelerator, but still have three vacant SIMM slots.

Next question. Sorry guys but this is all too new and exiting for me !! I feel like a little kid in a play store !! When I open up da A2000 I see on da very left two slots that are half da size of da other Zorro slots. Do they have a function too ?? Is this for cards like Hypercom and Buddha ?? I've got such cards that I used to have in my towered A1200 (bfor it crashed) ...

No. Those two slots are ISA, same as older PCs use. You'll need a bridgeboard to use either. The GoldenGate was the unit to get, if you can find one these days.

I plan on using the 5,25" inch bay to put a scsi cdrom (a Plextor rewriter that won't write anymore) in it. Any other suggestions what this bay can be used for ??

Maybe a Syquest drive, if you can find one cheap. Even an internal SCSI Zip disk would do it.

[Desmon]

@Effy

What's so special about that Obese Angus chip ?

There were only several thousand made and even without the Megachip unit they can be used to expand a 1MB A2000 or A500 to 2MB of chip RAM.

[Desmon]

@Effy

If that chip can be used to expand da chip Ram then why do they put it on a little board ?? Just wondering ...

Because the board carries the extra Meg of RAM that you'd need to otherwise add to the motherboard manually. Actually, IIRC I had to remove the 4 chips that made up the first meg and replace them with chips to make up 2MB. Then there's all the rest of the work in builing a line across to the Gary chip just to get the new address recognised.
The Megachip was such a big seller because it didn't need all the soldering and cutting.

[Desmon]

@Effy

More problems, at least one. I tried to connect an external scsi case to my scsi controller with its Evolution.device. Tried different scsi cable but no result. The computer won't detect anything else but the one internally connected harddrive. In the external case there are two cdroms and one harddrive, all with different adresses through jumper settings so that is not a reason for problems. Actually, just to make sure, I disconnected two devices and left only a cdrom connected with a jumper on it so it doesn't have adress zero like the internal harddrive ... sorry, the ScsiInquire of AsimCDFS does not detect anything else but that hd ... possible reason is a terminator on the card that I don't know of.

Sounds like you lave a "LastDevice" setting somewhere on the internal HDD. Either that or the SCSI interface may have it's external bus "turned off". Look around the 'net for docs on the card if possible and aslo see if you can find a copy of GVP's FaaastPrep to check the LastDevice setiing.

But I do remember that on my (R.I.P.) A500 with a scsi harddrive with Evolution.device too that that one also didn't detect anything else but the connected hd, and that with kickstart 3.1 !!!! My other A500+ had a A590 with a 'normal' scsi.device and that one didn't have any problem at all to detect a cdrom !!!

Yeah, see above. My old A2091 would happily play with any device on the external bus, unless the device happened to have removeable media (CDROM, Zip, et al) until I finally found a firmware upgrade for it. Could be part of your problem too.