Amiga 600 game port up and left not working

[Boing-ball]

Hi.. hoping someone can help me. So I have an amiga 600 which has been recapped and has been working fine for a few years now. Today I went to play it and noticed that the left and up aren't working on the joystick. I tried a sega mega drive gamepad and same behaviour.

I took the amiga apart and checked all the pins on the game port have continuity with a multimeter and they all appeared fine. Checked all the caps and resisters close to the game port and I'm finding a connection for each of the pins so they all appear ok. I cleaned all the board with some IPA and and a light brush and now I notice that if I push up-left on the joystick this works but still to movement if I individually press left or up.

Any ideas?

First off get hold of Amiga Test Kit which is downloadable for free. Stick this in a Floppy disk or USB thumb drive (If you have a Gotek drive). Boot this up where you can test the controller ports. Also run a CIA test. Possibility you may have a problematic CIA chip. Note that it is not advisable to be plugging Joysticks in and out of 9pin ports when the Amiga is switched on 😉

Failling that. Get hold of something called DiagROM which can be plugged in instead of the kickstart ROM which will also do tests like the CIAs etc.

[Boing-ball]

Thank you I will try this all out. Much appreciated.

Ive ordered a parallel 2 port joy stick adapter off ebay in the mean time - do you know if this will get round the issue? Or will this also use the CIA?

Also is it easy to replace CIA chip with just a solder iron? Or will I need hot air station etc...

The parallel 2 port joystick port is only for games that support 4 player mode. Therefore it won’t fix your problem. As for CIA chips, they will need to be removed with a hot air station. But check that it is a CIA problem first.