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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: spavatch on September 07, 2004, 04:25:54 PM
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I've just got back home as summer holidays come to an end and guess what - she won't run any more :cry:.
Here's what it looks like. I press the power switch, both power and hdd leds are lit, all the fans and hdd spin up... and from this point it acts quite unpredictable. Most times it won't boot up from FDD even after disconnecting the HDD, sometimes it boots up like it should but after a while, just before workbench screen would appear, it freezes so hard even Ctrl+A+A combo won't help.
I've been advised to dismantle everything, blow away all the dust and then reassemble it. No effect, none :-(.
Any ideas what could possibly happen? Please, tell me it's not serious... :bigcry:
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Don't know, a number of things.
Battery leakage.
HD died.
Loose chips.
Best thing to do is to disconnect as much as possible( like all hard drives, zorro expansions etc etc), look if any chips have gotten loose (or if any memory is unseated or CPU daughterboard) and try again.
Anybody else ?
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Beign an 4000 I would say that the CPU-board has has jumped out of position. Happens to my computer all the time, just press on the top of the CPU-board and I would think that it should boot up just fine.
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seer wrote:
Don't know, a number of things.
Battery leakage.
HD died.
Loose chips.
Best thing to do is to disconnect as much as possible( like all hard drives, zorro expansions etc etc), look if any chips have gotten loose (or if any memory is unseated or CPU daughterboard) and try again.
Anybody else ?
I've done all that, everything is fitted and looks sound, no loose parts. HDD looks okay however I can't say I'm 100% sure. But even if it was HDD's fault it would boot up from a diskette after disconnecting the faulty HDD, right? And the floppy drive remains silent...
Oh, and battery's almost new, it's been replaced with a brand new one a year ago or so.
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What CPU board are you using?
Try fitting a different one and see what happens.
Remove EVERYTHING from the system but 2MB of chip ram and (preferably) the stock CPU board, and see if you can boot. For the 030 C= CPU board, set the clock jumpers to INT and if you have an A3640, then EXT.
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Check the PSU and the PSU connector.
If the +5v line is too low, it can cause the reset line to go low and hold the CPU inactive until the +5 gets within tolerance again.
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Oh, Mr. Toecutter :-D. I'm using A3640 CPU board and I'm afraid it won't be so easy to try your ideas in practice. Simply, there aren't any A4000 around. Maybe in some Amiga service-shop...
I'll try to connect a TV :-?, maybe there are some guru messages that can't be seen using a VGA screen in CGX mode? And speaking of the PSU, I'll try to examine that too.
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i would check the psu if i was you.
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so do i have the same problem with my a4000T i sent it to Amiga France to be checked and it seemed to be a battery clock problem
Came repaired but two months later it happened the same.
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I can send you my working 030 cpu board, if you wanna try and test your system. I suspect that your CPU board is busted, most likely.
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It would be very advisable to hook up this Amiga to an RGB monitor or vid monitor with adaptor. You may be getting an error message in native amiga mode you cant see on your vga monitor...
realize
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Okay guys, here's what I found out. I've hooked up a proper (meaning: old) TV and tried to fire her up. She didn't boot up from HDD, instead a welcoming screen (disk & drive) has appeared and after a while everything went dark - a freeze. After a while (half an hour or so) i did the same, this time - pressing both mouse buttons at once. The boot-up menu has appeared but then again, everything disappeared before I even clicked any option...
Any ideas now...?
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spavatch wrote:
Okay guys, here's what I found out. I've hooked up a proper (meaning: old) TV and tried to fire her up. She didn't boot up from HDD, instead a welcoming screen (disk & drive) has appeared and after a while everything went dark - a freeze. After a while (half an hour or so) i did the same, this time - pressing both mouse buttons at once. The boot-up menu has appeared but then again, everything disappeared before I even clicked any option...
Any ideas now...?
Maybe something is overheating.
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You definately have a HARDWARE problem. Was the machine stripped bare when you did this test? If not strip to the bare minimum. Chip RAM, no fast, no HD, no Floppy, no Zorro backplance. Reseat the CPU card. See if that helps.
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I think that overheating is not the issue here, running-stable-period is too short, just a few seconds.
Actually... I'm afraid of removing RAM modules, those sockets are pretty fragile... :-(
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@spavatch:
Check this (http://joj.home.texas.net/amiga/amiga00.html) link.
/Patrik
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Well if you want to effectively troubleshoot your Amiga 4000 problems, you are going to have to remove the Fast RAM SIMMs. It could very well be a bad seated or damaged SIMM module. The issue was not overheating to remove everything, it is to isolate the problem!
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I bet that the A3640 card is busted.
Afterwards, I would suspect the ram simms, yes. :-)
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For what it is worth, I had a very similar problem and, as others have suggested, it turned out that the A3640 card was the problem. Good luck getting it sorted.
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If the A4000 shows the early boot menu then why suspect the cpu board? The cpu board has to work before the boot menu is active, pass rom tests and error checking of the cpu itself etc
Disconnect the keyboard
restart machine and see if problem persists
I had a similar problem with an A3000 desktop machine that had a faulty keyboard!
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If the A4000 shows the early boot menu then why suspect the cpu board? The cpu board has to work before the boot menu is active, pass rom tests and error checking of the cpu itself etc
He pretty much pointed out that when the system does boot it hard locks. Considering the early boot screen is the first thing you see, well, you know... My money's on the RAM.
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@Azryl
When mine went, I could reach the startup-menu and sometimes have time to look at expansion board diagnostic etc. before it crashed. That's just my experience, though; I don't know any of the technicalities!
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If you've taken out the simms and the cpu card and "cleaned" the connectors, then there is most likely another problem. Could it be possible that the power supply is the problem, showing it's age? My current A4000, with gfx card, has the weird situation of not booting unless there is a monitor plugged into the RGB port. Only started doing this in the last year or so. Maybe the hardware is just getting too old and things are breaking internally.
I hope you solve your problem.
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TjLaZer wrote:
Well if you want to effectively troubleshoot your Amiga 4000 problems, you are going to have to remove the Fast RAM SIMMs. It could very well be a bad seated or damaged SIMM module.
Okay, I'll try to do it. Any ideas how to remove RAM modules without proper meshing things up? You know how fragile those sockets are... :-(
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I'd check the voltages first. PSU probably shouldn't be turned on without any load. So find a suitable "consumer" (some say that car light bulb 25W is good, maybe HDD would do) and check it.
I had the problem with power connector to the motherboard. It colud be that it loosens after so many years (that female connector coming from PSU), at least I had that.
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Actually, the PSU has been refurbished some time ago. The case remains stock but "all-that-inside-stuff" was changed, now it's 200W instead of 145. But I'll try to examine that.
S#!+, how I regret not buying that scandoubler-flickerfixer thingy... :-(