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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: leofoe on July 24, 2006, 01:33:14 PM

Title: Sidecar crashes Amiga
Post by: leofoe on July 24, 2006, 01:33:14 PM
I know I have a difficult question about the Amiga 1000 with A1060 Sidecar. I think this combination is not very widespread, but I hope someone has any indication where to begin troubleshooting.
When turning on the combination, the Amiga crashes with a guru after running the first command in the startup-sequence, which is BindDrivers.
It works fine without the Sidecar. Same thing happens with this Sidecar connected to a different A1000. :-?
Title: Re: Sidecar crashes Amiga
Post by: leofoe on January 13, 2007, 10:38:58 AM
I left the Sidecar for a while but decided to take it apart one more time.
First I did was make a new WB-disk from the installer-disk. No more binddrivers problems now. But the A1060 is not recognized: "Couldn't find Janus library".
What I did so far: Clean all connectors, reseat all chips. I also found that 3 pins of the sideconnector were not OK. I resoldered them so they make contact again.
Unfortunately these actions did not have any effect.
I am stuck now because I have not the slightest idea where to begin troubleshooting.
Any hints appreciated.
Title: Re: Sidecar crashes Amiga
Post by: Zac67 on January 13, 2007, 01:26:22 PM
Well, you could start with plugging in a POST card (to the Sidecar), they're ~10 EUR on eBay (ISA/PCI).

In addition, you could try an ISA VGA card/monitor and look if the Sidecar is showing any sign of life - I'm not sure whether it's starting before drivers load on the Amiga side though.
Title: Re: Sidecar crashes Amiga
Post by: leofoe on December 24, 2011, 09:21:12 AM
After all these years I picked up this problem again. Used a multimeter to check the 86pin CPU slot in the Sidecar. Bingo! Pins 80 and 82 pins didn't make contact. Managed to solder these and voilĂ , the Sidecar works again.
Next problem: the 30MB Western Digital Filecard doesn't work. At first the harddisk didn't spin. After fiddling with it it spins, but isn't recognized.
Title: Re: Sidecar crashes Amiga
Post by: olsen on December 24, 2011, 01:39:25 PM
Quote from: leofoe;672715
After all these years I picked up this problem again. Used a multimeter to check the 86pin CPU slot in the Sidecar. Bingo! Pins 80 and 82 pins didn't make contact. Managed to solder these and voilĂ , the Sidecar works again.


Lucky you :)

I received a Sidecar as a gift, more than ten years ago. When I first plugged it in, it too would cause the system to crash when Binddrivers was invoked. I couldn't immediately figure out what was wrong, and since there was no alternative hardware I could have tested it with (it doesn't really connect well to an A500), it subsequently sat on the shelf.

I had bought the A1000 used, and it sported a curious memory expansion which fit into the 68000 CPU socket. In order to use it, you had to run a special program which knew where the memory would show up in the address space and made it available for use. This was likely a major ugly hack, and opening up the A1000 for the first time, I discovered that the previous owner had actually sawed off part of the metal shielding around the main board so that he could stick that memory expansion into the machine.

When I eventually received a MicroBotics memory expansion for the A1000 as a gift, I removed the CPU socket memory expansion hack for good. And out of curiousity, I also tried the Sidecar again. Guess what, it worked perfectly. What kept crashing the system was the awful CPU socket memory expansion that didn't even support AutoConfig.

It has been a very long time since I powered up the Sidecar. Maybe I'm going to take it out of storage over the holidays :)