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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Jtrim1 on June 28, 2006, 07:32:51 PM
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Hey guys, I hope I can find some help to revive my seemingly dead amiga 3000. Let me describe the problem briefly...
First off, I don't have a monitor that works with this 3000 (at least I don't think I do) but I'm using a standard SVGA monitor just in case it works. I got this amiga from a repo sale, and it has never booted for me.
When I plug the power in, and I press the power button, The Power LED comes on for about a third of a second, then flashes on and off steadily and unendingly. I hear the hard drive make a weak buzz noise every 10 seconds or so, and usually the buzzes come in pairs. like buzz (2 seconds pause) buzz, then a 10 second or so wait and it does it again.
If I try to turn it on with a floppy in the drive, I get no different reaction, the floppy doesn't try to read or anything.
Now, here's the really sucky part. I've opened the case up and noticed the battery has leaked. It doesn't look to have gotten up onto any components, and the leakage has pretty much stayed away from the Paula and Denise chips. It looks like it headed toward the rear of the machine from the negative side of the battery. It's mostly surface damage on the Circuit board, but the legs of several of the components have corrosion on them. I have since cut the battery out of the motherboard, but haven't gotten a chance to clean it yet.
So, there you have it, that's my current situation. Anyone up to the task of helping me figure this one out? I would appreciate any helpful suggestions.
Thank you very much!!! P.S. I can take some pics later on and post them if it would help anyone interested.
Jeremy Trim
Jtrim@woh.rr.com
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Does the power LED actually switch off, or does it just dim and brighten? If it switches off, then I would say there is a power problem. Either the PSU, or the power connector on the board, or the battery has eaten some of the board.
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moto
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Remove the battery and clean the area where it has leakaged. Try booting the computer without anything extra connected (remove Zorro cards, etc).
The A3000 has a build in scandoubler, so connect your monitor to it and you should see some output on the monitor. You might need to use the switch at the back to get it to display 31 Hz video output.
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motorollin wrote:
Does the power LED actually switch off, or does it just dim and brighten? If it switches off, then I would say there is a power problem. Either the PSU, or the power connector on the board, or the battery has eaten some of the board.
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moto
Ok, I cupped my hands around the Power LED so I could see more clearly what it's doing, and in fact, it's flashing, but it's going from bright green to dim green. It doesn't actually flash on and off. So, it's a steady bright/dim/bright/dim probably 3 times a second is how fast it's flashing.
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Ok, so it's maintaining power, which is good. Dimming and brightening power LED suggests the machine is crashing and rebooting constantly. Follow doctorq's advice and try to get some video output from the machine. You will probably find you get a coloured screen which will indicate where the problem lies.
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moto
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Didn't someone previously mention a web page about diagnosing and fixing after similar battery problems ? Try a search through the old forum posts. Good luck :-)
P.S. Which part of the world are you in ?
P.P.S. Did you try unplugging everything including hard drives as mentioned before ??
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motorollin wrote:
Ok, so it's maintaining power, which is good. Dimming and brightening power LED suggests the machine is crashing and rebooting constantly. Follow doctorq's advice and try to get some video output from the machine. You will probably find you get a coloured screen which will indicate where the problem lies.
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moto
alright, I've got the monitor hooked up to the 31khz 15 pin output on the back of the machine. Toggle switch is set to "Enable" and I am seeing something on the screen, but not much. It's basically a black screen, and every .... holy crap... I just went over to check how often this little white line flashed randomly on the screen, and when I pushed the power button, I got a steady "on" power LED, which has NEVER happened before. I'm still staring at a black screen however. But, anyway, before it decided to give me a solid power LED, the screen was black, and a white line would flash up on the screen, in a random position, about ever 5 seconds or so. Kinda like a quick signal on the screen, but not there long enough for the screen to synch and show me anything, so it just kinda flicked a white line.
anyway, I have a solid LED bright green now, but I have taken out all periferals, so it's just the motherboard and a power supply. Should I see anything on the screen?
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The daughterboard also needs to be installed.
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Homer wrote:
Didn't someone previously mention a web page about diagnosing and fixing after similar battery problems ? Try a search through the old forum posts. Good luck :-)
P.S. Which part of the world are you in ?
P.P.S. Did you try unplugging everything including hard drives as mentioned before ??
I've searched through the forums and found some good info on what to do after a battery has leaked, but I wasn't quite sure that this was the cause of my problems, so I wanted to post my symptoms and see what you guys thought.
I'm in Dayton Ohio, and yeah, right now I'm running it with nothing but the motherboard and the power supply.
And, by the way, I'm back to my flashing Power LED. Looks like that Solid power LED was a one time deal, a small glimps of hope, maybe the amiga is trying to give me a sign of life so I won't give up on it. :)
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doctorq wrote:
The daughterboard also needs to be installed.
Ok, sorry, I should have said that, the daughterboard is in fact still installed as well. But no periferals are in any of the slots. there was only one add-in card that came with the machine, it's some sort of video card, but I don't know what it is... It says "Opalvision" on the board.
thanks for your help!
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Can you verify the psu outputs to the motherboard ? Do you have a voltmeter ?
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Homer wrote:
Can you verify the psu outputs to the motherboard ? Do you have a voltmeter ?
No, I haven't got anything to test the power supply, but the amiga seems to power on ok. It just seems, as motorollin said, that the machine is crashing and rebooting constantly.
Update on the video output. It's sporadically giving me hints of a screen, it's very flickery, and if I had to describe the screen that is there, I'd say it's a solid gray screen. But it's flickering rapidly, and it goes away for long periods of time.
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@Jtrim1:
If the battery has leaked, the most probable cause of disfunction are damaged tracks on the pcb - the leaking fluid will corrode away the pcb.
Even if the chips are ok, if tracks on the pcb are broken, they need to be repaired (connected again).
Here (http://amiga.serveftp.net/battery.html) is some info on this issue.
Atleast remove the battery and clean the area thoroughly as described in the above link now, as it is eating away the motherboard as you read this. If it is really bad, the stuff can have made way to the back side of the motherboard also, so check there too.
/Patrik
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patrik wrote:
@Jtrim1:
If the battery has leaked, the most probable cause of disfunction are damaged tracks on the pcb - the leaking fluid will corrode away the pcb.
Even if the chips are ok, if tracks on the pcb are broken, they need to be repaired (connected again).
Here (http://amiga.serveftp.net/battery.html) is some info on this issue.
Atleast remove the battery and clean the area _thoroughly_ as described in the above link. If it is really bad, the stuff can have made way to the back side of the motherboard also, so check there too.
/Patrik
Thanks Patrik... I'm gonna get this thing home where I'll have more tools to work on it, and I plan to remove the motherboard, clean all the corrosion off and see what the traces look like. I have pretty much no experience in electronics, so I don't know if I'll be able to really do much of anything, but I've got some friends or are electronics savvy, so perhaps I can get them to reconnect traces if at all possible. Is this a very difficult thing to accomplish? I've seen those conductive pens, would that be the sort of thing that would be used to reconnect a trace?
Thanks again for all your help!
Jeremy
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Sounds like a good idea to give it a good clean and then just for the sake of it see if it works any better.
After that, one of your friends should be able to repair it quite easily if it is just damage to the top layer. It is a four-layer board (two layers in the middle, one on top and one bottom, so if it has eaten into the middle layers, it can become a real hassle.
It would probably be best to repair the tracks by connecting them again by soldering and thin wire.
Those pens tend to be rather bulky and the damage will most likely result in a very uneven surface, with possible penetration to the middle layers and if so, painting a new trace would result in a short-circuit, so I would advice against it. Anyhow, it depends on the amount of damage and the situation. Your friend should know, or else he should not be doing the repair :).
Here (http://www.shiftreload.com.au/users/4x4/schematics/index.html) you can find schematics for the A3000 if you need to do any trace-validation between pins on components when repairing.
Btw, pick the friend which is most skilled with the soldering iron.
/Patrik
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Awesome, thanks again Patrik, those links are going to be extremely helpful. I am fairly optimistic that I may be able to get this thing working again.
I'll keep you guys updated.
Jeremy
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Hey Jtrim1. As a basic rule of thumb, make sure that all socketed chips are firmly seated. That used to cause my old A500 and A2000 to do that constant rebooting and the flashing LED. When I got my 3000, a lot of the DIP memory chips were loose.
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Amiduffer wrote:
Hey Jtrim1. As a basic rule of thumb, make sure that all socketed chips are firmly seated. That used to cause my old A500 and A2000 to do that constant rebooting and the flashing LED. When I got my 3000, a lot of the DIP memory chips were loose.
that's a good suggestion, I'll check that out too when I get the thing home in a little while.
Thanks!!
Jeremy
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If it turns out you need a new MoBo I have a spare I'd be willing to ebay. However, you'd need to find out whats wrong with the SCSI on it. It's flaky.
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If you can, hook up an Amiga monitor to the 23pin video port. I've seen a few cases now where battery damage has caused output from the 15pin port to fail.
Other than that, you're on the right track. Cleaning up the battery acid should be your first priority. Isopropyl alcohol is a good cleaner for this job. Even if the tracks aren't damaged, per se, the presence of the acid on them can interfere with the signal. I once got a 4000 working again by simply removing battery acid.
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My thinking when something needs to stay on for a while for something different/better to happen it's most likely component dammage (solders and other metals expand when getting warm to give a possible better connection or capasitors thats on their last leg and need execive loading time for them to charge).
If I was you I'd stripp down the machine to motherboard alone (rule out other components such as bussboard, hdd/optical drives/floppy etc messing with the machine), make sure all the jumpers are set correctly. If you have a complete teardown in front of you with just motherboard and it still fails on you there's 2 options. Either it's the PSU or it's the motherboard and as you've just removed alot of load of the PSU without any changes occured it's more likely that the acidstained motherboard is actually dammaged (if you like you can always get hold of a second hand PC PSU and convert it to give power to the motherboard if you want to be totaly sure that isn't the culprit).
Remove ALL the acid and corrosion (dry clean is best to start with as water just gets the acid everywhere, then get yourself something that neutralize the acid to wetclean the rest and after that clean all again with regular wather), then inspect the motherboard carefully and repair dammaged/lost lines (and possible components) on the motherboard, don't be shy with the soldering iron.
Good luck. :-D
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And if all else fails (or perhaps sooner) there is JJ at Amiga Center France. JJ did an amazing job on my A4000 and daughter card. I had no Par: and my sound was nearly gone...not to mention no battery backed clock since I pulled the battery.
JJ completely referbed the mob and daughter card, fixed all the port and sound issues, and installed a rechargeable battery. All for a very fair price. Worth the postage from California for sure! It's like having a brand new A4000!
Bob
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I would try holding both mouse buttons down when you power up, just to see if you get the boot menu or not, If nothing comes up then I'd say the battary has done some damage to the tracks. But this doen't mean its just the video tracks, you could have a bad memory chip in the (Chip Ram array).
As far as replacing the battary, I used a standard two pin cmos battary clip from a old IBM computer, this way you can just pop the old one out and install a new one without soldering!
Your Opalvision video card is pretty good, but its not RTG and you will need a 23pin RGB monitor like the 1080, 1084, 1084s,etc.., The CV64,CV643D, and Picasso IV are your best bet! I have a CV643D in mine and it works great!
As for CPU upgrading, alot of the card don't work with out first making and small mod called INT2, This has to do with cards that have SCSI controllers on them, they wont allow the internal scsi to start up, or something, I have a A3640 installed in my machine, Its a 68040@25MHZ and makes a big differance over the internal 68030/68882! A 68060 card would be much nicer still but the A3000D drive plate doesn't allow you to use many of the boards, even with my A3640 I couldn't install a good fan/heatsink combo, I finally used a heatpipe with fan off an old IBM thinkpad notbook! This works very well as the fan blows the hot air straight to the PSU fan and out the back, as a bonus it cools my Zip Ram aswell!
I have another A3640(no heatsink) rev. 3.1 that is in Like New condition for $85 bucks, that is if you can get the machine up and running..Hope this helps and good luck!
Email:zxoney@charter.net
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My A3000 is ill.
Is that a Beastie Boys song?
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It could also be that your A3000 has an a3640 board in it, if this is the case these cards have been known to die and the Amiga will not boot with it dead the power light will flash just as you described.