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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: doctorq on June 20, 2005, 10:25:06 AM
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Hi,
I have a Blizzard PPC board with 68060, 603e CPU running at 240 MHz and integrated SCSI controller. The board works fine, except for one thing. No matter what kind of ram module that I have tried installing (50 ns, 60 ns and 70 ns) gets recognised. All I have is my 2 MB chip ram :-( Anyone experienced this, and managed to fix the problem afterwards?
I have had the board sent in for repair at Amiga Repair Centre, but he wasn't able to fix the problem, so unless any of you guys know to go from here, I can only use it for display :-)
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This happens to me every time my flashrom goes weird (which comes in cycles).
Can you see the card in the early startup expansion board diagnostic list?
It should be listed as something like product ID 8512, manufacturer 110.
If it *doesn't* show up, but you can still boot into a no startup amigados shell, type CPU.
If you still see your 68040, there is a chance it could be the same problem. If you see 68020, it's possible that your card has been disabled using the '2' key.
If it is the latter, reset holding the ctrl-amiga-amiga combination for at least 10 seconds (if like me you have a PC keyboard adapter that generates /KBRESET for just 500ms, this may prove impossible).
If you still see the 68040, you might have the same weird problem I get. Solution? Reflash the card.
If you do decide to reflash, read this first:
1) The last update before the grex one is best if you don't have a grex expansion.
2) This update might actually fail to install (usually because "sector 0 is write protected"). If you see the somewhat melodramatic "Oops, your in deep trouble now! Close all doors and wait for the end of the world, or rerun the program...", message the trick is to use an earlier flash install which ignores the write protect status of the ROM. The older version I use for this I no longer have the version information for (I have the flash tool and the latest pre-grex one sat in a folder on my HD for emergencies), but the 040 version is 325964 bytes, so look for an archive that contains this ;-)
You can then reboot and install the later one over it.
3) Flashing the ROM when you have no fast ram takes *ages*. Don't worry if it seems to be taking a long time.
So, make sure you have 2 versions available when you start off ;-)
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@Karlos
Thanks for the tip, I would be just so lucky if it was as simple as that, but I doubt it.
The board does shows up as working in the expansion card list, and it can also boot to Workbench from my harddrive.
Now you specifically say 68040 throughout the text. You are aware I'm talking about sa 68060 board right? You wouldn't happen to know the filesize of the flashrom I need? Or the archive name would be fine, I can then extract it from the archives I have on my hdd.
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doctorq wrote:
Now you specifically say 68040 throughout the test. You are aware I'm talking about sa 68060 board right? You wouldn't happen to know the filesize of the flashrom I need? Or the archive name would be fine, I can then extract it from the archives I have on my hdd.
Yes, I was aware but I'm saying look for one containing the 040 version of the length I said. The main archives contain both the 040 and 060 versions.
I lost the actual archives a while ago but burned the flash programs I used to CD so never needed to worry about it, hence the reason I can't say exactly which archive it is, but look for the one that contains that specific 040 one. Then extract the 060 version ;-)
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Of course your description adds another possibility. The memory might have been disabled by holding 'm' during startup. Again the reset for 10 seconds should fix this.
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Well, nothing has been disable by keypresses, I know that for sure. I guess I will just have to go through all my flash archives :-)
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Karlos, are you sure about the size of the 040 update?
None of the latest 1999-2000 (before GRex) matches with those Update.
Are all 354.xxx or so.
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I was just going to ask the same thing :-) Looked through the updates available at ftp.meanmachine.ch and none match :-(
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erm . . . Thomas do you have a custom FlashUpdate? :-D
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An update:
I just reflashed the card with the BPPC 060 flash from Flashupdates-090400.lha. Ram still isn't recognised :-(
As a side note, I would think the Jean-Jacques at Amiga Repair Centre would have tried this as well, so maybe it is a dead end. Most likely a hardware error which isn't repairable, at least he said that he couldn't fix it.
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{bleep} :-( as aspected, they can do very little, without official ManualService/scheme!
pity
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I have other BPPC boards with 060 and SCSI so I'm covered, but it wouldn't be a bad thing to have an extra fully working board.
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Framiga wrote:
Karlos, are you sure about the size of the 040 update?
None of the latest 1999-2000 (before GRex) matches with those Update.
Are all 354.xxx or so.
I'm not sure now. I'll check when I get home. Maybe a typo?