Another Blizzard 1230 mk 4 question - system lock ups...

[brianb]

Recently acquired a Blizzard Mk4 Accelerator for my A1200.  Prior to the upgrade my stock system (& DKB1202 Memory Expansion) was rock solid.  Now I experience total system lock ups (no error just unresponsive), reboots, or the red error screen.

Tried a few things, with no luck...

- Replaced A1200 power supply with bigger A500 power supply.
- Cleaned RAM contacts on accelerator board.
- Tried accelerator with and without RAM installed.
- Currently leaving trap door removed for better cooling.
- Disabled ROM to RAM cache.
- Reduced RAM speed.
- Have NOT tried pulling the board, cleaning contacts, and reattaching yet.  (I hate dealing with this slot.)

I'm leaning toward a heat related issue.  It appears to be after the system has been running for a while maybe 15-30 minutes.  And it doesn't even need to  be doing much just sitting with WB up.

I haven't installed any software related to the Blizzard card.  As I understand it, nothing is required unless I wanted to use BlizKick but that's not necessary.

I've read all kinds of suggestions from installing fans to re-soldering all the capacitors on the motherboard.  Neither of those options are very appetizing...

Any help would be greatly appreciated..

[brianb]

motorollin wrote:
If you do a soft reset after it locks up, does it subsequently lock up more quickly than it did the first time?

Also, please could you try booting with no startup-sequence and running something from the shell which will stress the CPU, for example a game or something. Just to rule out the possibility that a software problem is causing your issues.

--
moto

It does appear to happen sooner following a reboot from a lock up.  In most cases it actually just reboots itself.

I tried booting with a clean Workbench 3.0 disk.  Same thing after about 15-20 minutes it rebooted.   After the reboot the card was no longer present, it "reappeared" after a hard power off and on.

I have since cleaned all the contacts, reseated the card, and even touched up some iffy solder joints on the board.  I'm thinking it's heat related.  My next experiment I'm going to have a small PC (muffin) fan blowing on the board placed under the computer.  If it extends (or eliminates) the lock ups I'm pretty sure it's a heat related issue at that point.

I have an Amiga 1200 Rev. 1D motherboard.  Would this cause nay issues?

Anyone else have any ideas or suggestions?  It's got me scratching my head...  

Brian

[brianb]

If it helps anyone in the future (searching the forums)...  I was able to successfully run the Blizzard 1230 accelerator as long as I had a fan blowing on it.  Once the fan was removed the system locked up or rebooted after 10-20 minutes.  

So I guess I have a heat issue.  I'm assuming with the 68030 CPU itself, since it's the only thing that generates much heat.   Heck, it could still be a bad solder joint I suppose.  So I guess I either need to a) heat sink/cool the CPU somehow, b) replace the (bad) CPU with a replacement and see what happens.

Anyone hear of such a thing?

[brianb]

Thanks, for the help.  

I did find a 68030 50MHz CPU for $30 on Ebay.    Going to give that a try, and hopefully it will be good to go after the brain transplant.  If not I guess it's a solder or other issue.

Funny thing, I got this accelerator for a pretty decent price on ebay.  Guess nothing is that easy, as i now have to put more $ into it...  But if I can return it back to it's former glory with a little work and some $ that's better then trashing it I guess.

[brianb]

Soon we will be talking of refurbishing old Amiga's like classic cars...

It is actually pretty fun though, not often can you fix a modern PC/Mac with the old soldering iron.  Anyone know of a good guide for restoring motherboards, etc.  I've only seen forum discussions of cap replacement...