Blizzard 2060 in Amiga 2000 Problem

[ljones0]

Better quality of the image above taken in daylight (and outside!)

http://spfiles.no-ip.org/a2000-board2.jpg

Those tracks aren't the greatest looking in the world. Note the  battery crud under R914 and its green leg!

ljones

[actung_bab]

Thanks for the reply mate yep i brought it from you then , thanks for extra info on the card it looks amazing pity though , sorry you lost money on it too . yes i got to send anthony some machines 2000 and a broken 4000 .

[actung_bab]

Thanks for all that though I'm not having much success with the 2060. I've checked over -- sorry, I should have pointed out I still have the manual for the blizzard 2060 (discovered quitely decomposing in the loft under a load of boxes). I've tried different jumper settings and following what it says, but to no avail. Also btw that blizzard card wasn't in the A2000 bought off ebay sorry if it sounded like that -- I bought the blizzard 2060 way back in the late 90s actually directly from a company (I can't remember where from now!), it wasn't in the A2000 off ebay. It's just sat around unused and gathering dust; assuming the company wasn't lying the last time it did anything was when it was tested by the company I bought it from after returning it to them. I must've given them my (then) home and work 'phone number as that's how I found out about them testing it, they called me at work!

I'm not able with the 2060 inside to get to the early startup. I either get a white or black screen x.x . I can get into this if I remove the card.

As a sort of postcript or addition to this story - and now that I remember it I also recall back in the early 90s (when I had the A1500) that I had a Powerpc board inside it as well. Nothing to do with the CPU of the same name, this was a board made by KCS (european company) and was basically an entire XT PC on a board. The CPU was on the board itself with video being done by the Amiga (so I could have VGA 16 Color but very sloooowly!). Originally bought it for my *very* old WB1.2 A500 (which I still have!) though eventually ended putting it into the A1500 via an adapter card that KCS sold at the time to convert the KCS "trapdoor" board into one which fits into an A1500 or A2000. And now I remember about it -- guess what -- that had problems in the A1500 as well (and this was before I even had the blizzard card). Had to go back to KCS a couple of times probably because of some sort of fault on my A1500 (which at the time I wouldn't have known about). As for the A500 I kept it and still have it now, was going to sell it or trade it in back in the early 90s (when I got the A1500) but was told (when asking about a trade-in) "nobody wants an old amiga with WB1.2 roms any more, has to be at least 1.3!". Sorry I'm going off topic.

As to the whereabouts of the board and adapter I'm not sure. They might even still be about. Maybe! The photocopied manuals I got with it are definately still about!

Anyways back on topic -- prehaps I should remove the 060 CPU and check it over and see if it's been put in the correct way at all? It dosen't look like it's ever been removed! And while I think of it .... although it's not possible to tell just by looking at them btw sometimes when chips die (for example memory chips) they get very hot. None of the chips on the blizzard seem to be getting like that. The 060 CPU just got a little warm though. To tell if it's round the right way I guess I'd also need to prize off the heatsink as well though x.x .

Would put a picture up here as well of the card, would that help at all?

I'm wondering if maybe possibly just prehaps this is some sort of power supply issue. The A2000 (ebay purchase) was being cranky right from the start and needed several power cycles just to get it to start up. I read somewhere maybe elsewhere on this board that more modern accelerators need a *lot* of power and that it may be too much for the power supply. Thinking about it how old is the PSU in the A2000 -- I'm guessing none are younger than 20 years of age now. To elminate this at least I've bought a ATX to Amiga power supply from amigakit. At the very least it should elimiate the power supply from the problem.

ljones0

my card the cpu doesint even get warm or any temp so you car sounds like cpu whould be fine i leave it as is, this is not 100 % but i think i read where some early amiga 2000
you have to disable the on board cpu this chould be 100 % wrong though

[actung_bab]

Might have to check the capacitors though I hope they aren't bad. I'm not 100% sure if I can remove and replace them myself without causing any damage. I wonder how easy it is to test/replace them? It looks a lot easier than modern stuff whereby capacitors are the size (almost) of a full stop!

Well I got the PC power adapter eventually and I can say I've managed to advance forwards - slightly. I used the hard drive card (which was in the A2000 when I bought it) and the blizzard card inside the A2000. I was using the hard drive card so that I could at least have something which would boot to WB.

With memory installed in the blizzard card, no joy. Stuck at white screen. Without memory in the blizzard I got to the WB screen though the amiga acted very oddly. It loaded up to WB, but the mouse pointer was completely missing and I had a ludicrous amount of memory free (in the order of about 30 to 40K free).

I also removed, cleaned the socket (best I could) and reseated the 5271 chip (which I found out was the buster chip). Put the blizzard card back in with memory installed back in the blizzard but this time removing the hard drive (Since the blizzard card has a SCSI controller I was thinking *maybe* there's a conflict between it and the hard drive card that was originally in the amiga). More success this time -- although I had no WB to boot to, I got the purple incert disk animation the amiga gives you if it can't boot. Even had a mouse pointer too!

Still trying, right now its gone back to stuck at a white screen again x.x

ljones

try holding the 2 mouse buttons in this state and see what says about the 2060 card
from memory its said words to effect defective with mine

[actung_bab]

I'm no electronics expert but I guess it might be a possibility. Depends on if they have anything to do with supplying power I guess. Don't capacitors that have had it go open or closed circuit though? (Can't remember!).

I've been trying to look over my amiga motherboard btw and two of the tracks near the battery look a bit lousy. Here's a picture (warning -- large picture 300kb) ;

http://spfiles.no-ip.org/a2000-board1.jpg

the picture is a bit deciving as it looks different in different light and its dark here so I had to hold a torch and a camera at the same time (flash on the camera you can't see anything). I'll try for another picture tomorrow.

The tracks lead to a chip U801 an M6242B which appears to have something to do with the real time clock.

There are quite a lot of capacitors to look over on that A2000 board! Glad I have a DMM to check 'em with! (a UNI-T UT803).

ljones

Looks to me like battery acid damage like one my amiga 4000 mbs and i brought a
Amiga 2000 that looked brand new then i powered it up and wreaked it as the battery leaked aghhh that was mint machine , clean it of as much as possible mind you i say already done as battery has been removed

[ljones0]

my card the cpu doesint even get warm or any temp so you car sounds like cpu whould be fine i leave it as is, this is not 100 % but i think i read where some early amiga 2000
you have to disable the on board cpu this chould be 100 % wrong though.

*nods Pretty much going to leave it be. The thought did cross my mind that if there was heat coming off the custom chips then they might be bad though I'm not experiencing (once I "get in" so to speak) any random lock ups or bad graphics. According to the blizzard's manual on very old amigas A2000s with an "A" motherboard you have to remove the 68000. I did try this but with no joy x.x -- though after a *lot* of poking around on the 'net I found out (eventually!) that my board isn't an 'A' board and is newer. According to the manual newer boards you don't need to take out the CPU.

Managed to remove the CPU without bending any legs though! !

try holding the 2 mouse buttons in this state and see what says about the 2060 card
from memory its said words to effect defective with mine

I gave that a go on one occasion when I managed to get it going. It didn't say anything about any of the installed cards just which boot device to choose. Though and I'm not sure from memory was it WB3 Roms which tell you about the cards and WB2 Roms don't do this? (I have WB2.x roms in my A2000). That is on really old WB 1.x rom machines, no menu at all, WB 2.x it has a menu but lets you choose only the boot device and with WB 3.x it also does that but also lists cards? (Not sure, been a *long* time since I did anything really with Amiga hardware!).

Looks to me like battery acid damage like one my amiga 4000 mbs and i brought a
Amiga 2000 that looked brand new then i powered it up and wreaked it as the battery leaked aghhh that was mint machine , clean it of as much as possible mind you i say already done as battery has been removed

First thing I did was to check to see if the battery had leaked --  in fact mine had a rusty leg on the battery so it pratically near fell out. Though I don't know if those traces have been badly damaged (and if that's what causing the problem) or if itis down to bad capacitors or something else.

On one occasion when I managed to boot I ran the amiga WB's default system info command from the CLI (I forget its exact name, sysinfo or something similar; it's on one of the system disks that comes with an amiga). That told me I had 32MB installed and a 68040 (I should have an '060, though I've not been able to copy across the relevent .library files yet). Bear in mind this was just a run of the mill plain old fashioned boring WB3.0 bootdisk (it's all I had to hand) with not a lot on it. Though (and I'm guessing here) wasn't the '060 released before WB3.0 was released? If it was then maybe WB3.0 would know nothing of the '060. Sorry, I'm clutching at straws here, guessing. Don't know why my '060 was reported as an '040.

If I were to guess so far it looks like the blizzard card might still have life in it but the amiga itself (the motherboard) which has the problem. I'd have thought a bad expansion or cpu card would cause all kinds of trouble like random lockups, corrupt graphics and other strange things happening while running though so far and I admit although I've not "pused" the blizzard card it hasn't done anything like 'just stopping' or causing perculiar problems while running. It's just getting it to start up is the problem, like an old car that won't turn over.

When I bought the amiga off ebay (and before I put the blizzard card in) it took several reboots just to get it going. Something somewhere is duff its just a pity I can't say "ok well this part is more likely than that part so I'll start there". I'm really starting off flying blind so to speak. First job is to check all those electrolytic capacitors as one might have croaked it.

One question though. What would be the best chemical/solution to clean the tracks with?

ljones

[zipper]

Loosen and push back all socketed chips; use pencil eraser on the Blizzard connector. WB 3.0 or 3.1 do know nothing about a 060 so they reconize it as a 040.

[paul1981]

Sorry, I'm clutching at straws here, guessing. Don't know why my '060 was reported as an '040.
ljones

Yes, like zipper said, Workbench 2/3/3.1 ShowConfig tool doesn't recognise a 68060 at all, but being as though it detected it as 68040, then indeed your 68060 is working.
To correctly detect the cpu, download and run this program instead (similar to ShowConfig, but more sophisticated, and it recognises the 68060 correctly):

http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/WhichAmiga

Also, do make sure you have installed the 060 libs from the Blizzard2060 Install disk (Systemdisk) (also on the disk is a new cpu command for your "C:" drawer, which can control all caches/functions of the 68060):

http://phase5.a1k.org/index.php?driverslibraries

As for the electrolytic capacitors, they loose capacitance (electrical charge storage capacity) over time. Some failures are short circuits though, but if that was the case you would be able to see it (fried/leaked/exploded capacitor).

[ljones0]

Loosen and push back all socketed chips; use pencil eraser on the Blizzard connector. WB 3.0 or 3.1 do know nothing about a 060 so they reconize it as a 040.

Must give this a try -- though getting some of them out of their sockets looks really awkward. Just a little worried about this wonder if the plastic on the chip sockets have gotten brittle over the years. Will give it a go though .

Don't have an eraser though I think I can get my  paws on some isopropanal and q-tips to try to give the edge connector a clean.

Yes, like zipper said, Workbench 2/3/3.1 ShowConfig tool doesn't  recognise a 68060 at all, but being as though it detected it as 68040,  then indeed your 68060 is working.
To correctly detect the cpu, download and run this program instead  (similar to ShowConfig, but more sophisticated, and it recognises the  68060 correctly):

Will have to give that a try .

Good point about the capacitors. I'll need to go over every single one. Isn't it annoying if only there was a way of saying "that's the bit that does such and such so it's most likely to be that part" x.x !

ljones

[ljones0]

Loosen and push back all socketed chips; use pencil eraser on the  Blizzard connector. WB 3.0 or 3.1 do know nothing about a 060 so they  reconize it as a 040.

Just working through the stuff to do ....

Cleaned off the connector on the blizzard and CPU slot but made no difference.

With the socketed chips even if they seem firm in their sockets should I prize them out and reseat them?

ljones

[paul1981]

Just working through the stuff to do ....

Cleaned off the connector on the blizzard and CPU slot but made no difference.

With the socketed chips even if they seem firm in their sockets should I prize them out and reseat them?

ljones

You can mate yeah, just prise them out a bit each end and push them firmly back in again.
Be extremely careful though. If you're too scared to do it I'd look into other things first like the caps and the power supply.

Amigakit sells this ATX PSU adapter:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=998

Amigakit will probably replace all your caps as well if you ask them for a price.

[ljones0]

You can mate yeah, just prise them out a bit each end and push them firmly back in again.
Be extremely careful though. If you're too scared to do it I'd look into other things first like the caps and the power supply.

Amigakit sells this ATX PSU adapter:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=998

Amigakit will probably replace all your caps as well if you ask them for a price.

Some of the chips look quite awkward to get to. Don't want to crack/break/knock anything off or out of the way.

BTW already now have the ATX PSU adapter I'm using it over the original commodore PSU.

Didn't know amigakit did repairs on actual motherboards! Just thought they sold upgrades and bits 'n' pieces.

Must say though its a pity there isn't any website around for people who have had problems with old amigas and then found out what they are like some sort of list or in some sort of format maybe like a txt file or a pdf. I'm guessing there must be several people out there with older amigas that are getting problems nowadays.

ljones

[ljones0]

So that I can check the board over more easily I've completely taken the motherboard right out of the A2000's case. So it's now just an empty tin box.

Going to give it a clean first already went over it quickly with the hoover and removed the obiligatory dead spider and cobweb. That didn't fix the fault though. :roflmao:

Now the board is out I should be able to get to look at stuff more easily. A quick look at the board reveals no sign of any broken components and (less now one dead spider and cobweb) the bottom of the board looks ok.

Pity that removing the dead spider and cobweb didn't fix the fault. I'd have loved to have written on here that it did. Imagine if it did fix it though I think that would be the most weird fault report (and fix) ever -!

Now comes the more complex task of checking components!

**UPDATE 2**

Ok I've started a quick preliminary look at the capacitors. Looks as though because I can't really remove them (I'm guessing the amiga board is a multilayer board and I don't want to ruin any solder pads or tracks) plus my hand shakes a bit I won't be able to determine if the capacitors themselves are in spec, i.e. what they read all that easily. Only one read correctly all the others that I tried (not tried many yet) read "overload". So for now it looks as if all I can tell is if they are either 'dead' or 'alive'.

** UPDATE 3**

Amigakit dosen't look like they support replacing capacitors on A2000 boards -----> http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=932 it appears to be A600/1200/4000/CD32 only .x.x

ljones

[lassie]

So that I can check the board over more easily I've completely taken the motherboard right out of the A2000's case. So it's now just an empty tin box.

Going to give it a clean first already went over it quickly with the hoover and removed the obiligatory dead spider and cobweb. That didn't fix the fault though. :roflmao:

Now the board is out I should be able to get to look at stuff more easily. A quick look at the board reveals no sign of any broken components and (less now one dead spider and cobweb) the bottom of the board looks ok.

Pity that removing the dead spider and cobweb didn't fix the fault. I'd have loved to have written on here that it did. Imagine if it did fix it though I think that would be the most weird fault report (and fix) ever -!

Now comes the more complex task of checking components!

**UPDATE 2**

Ok I've started a quick preliminary look at the capacitors. Looks as though because I can't really remove them (I'm guessing the amiga board is a multilayer board and I don't want to ruin any solder pads or tracks) plus my hand shakes a bit I won't be able to determine if the capacitors themselves are in spec, i.e. what they read all that easily. Only one read correctly all the others that I tried (not tried many yet) read "overload". So for now it looks as if all I can tell is if they are either 'dead' or 'alive'.

** UPDATE 3**

Amigakit dosen't look like they support replacing capacitors on A2000 boards -----> http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=932 it appears to be A600/1200/4000/CD32 only .x.x

ljones

Hi did you get this 060 to work?

[ljones]

Unfortunatly I haven't had any luck so far. The problem is I don't quite know what I'm looking for -- checking the capacitors on the A2000's motherboard could be tricky as I could be reading right through the entire board and get a false reading. I'm tempted to try another buster (is that the name?) chip but I don't know if it would make any difference.

I guess what I need to know is what part of the amiga would be most likely to cause the problem I'm having. Though where that is and what is anyones' guess x.x !

All I can say for the moment is the following;

* The system can be tempermental even without the blizzard card and can take a few reboots to get going. Once it's up and running though it goes.

* The A2000s video chips seem to be OK, when the system does boot up the display is ok.

* The sound also appears to be working.

* The blizzard card is certianly alive after many reboots and fiddling about I can finally get it to work, the system works ok after this until power off.

* There is always a dead spider in old computers.

ljones

[jsixis]

*nods

I gave that a go on one occasion when I managed to get it going. It didn't say anything about any of the installed cards just which boot device to choose. Though and I'm not sure from memory was it WB3 Roms which tell you about the cards and WB2 Roms don't do this? (I have WB2.x roms in my A2000). That is on really old WB 1.x rom machines, no menu at all, WB 2.x it has a menu but lets you choose only the boot device and with WB 3.x it also does that but also lists cards? (Not sure, been a *long* time since I did anything really with Amiga hardware!).""


  Boot holding down both mouse buttons, when you get to the startup screen you have an option to view boards, click on that.

 If it says the board is working then that eliminates 1 problem. Re seating the chips is always a good thing.

 I'm assuming you have tried other slots the old school in me says the 060 takes the 1st slot and the scsi card next (even though they claim it makes no difference) and you installed the 060 software (pay attention where it installs to just in case you have to remove it)