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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: mindprober on October 02, 2008, 07:51:05 PM
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I recently acquired an A3640 (v3.1) card. I followed the instructions below for installation in my Amiga 3000 desktop. The A3K has v3.1 ROMs, DMAC-02, RAMSEY-04 and BUSTER-11.
http://l8r.net/technical/t-a3640.shtml
Unfortunately, the A3000 does not boot with the board inserted. The power LED never changes from dim to bright and does not attempt to access the hard drive. It just gives me a blank screen.
The instructions indicated that the older DMAC/RAMSEY combo may present a problem with SCSI operation and advised to upgrade to the latest chips, but did not mention it causing boot problems.
I also checked my fast slot and all appears well.
Any ideas?
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I've put A3640's in a couple of A3000's but I had the updated Ramsey & DMAC chips. You double checked all of the jumpers, correct? I had some trouble once putting a MKII 060 in a 3000T and I had to try several different jumper settings until I found one that worked.
Dan
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Quoting The Big Book of Amiga Hardware:
V3.1
This card works fine in general however it does have a bug related to Zorro II DMA that causes some cards like the GVP Phonepak to stop working, when installed in an A3000. The PAL or GAL chip located at U209 should be -02.
Installation in an A3000
Though the size of the A3640 board fits perfectly even in the small A3000 desktop case, you can have some problem with the height. The earlier A3640s have a large heat sink on the 68040 CPU that would need some room in one of the two floppy drive bays of the A3000. Newer A3640s come with a flat heat sink that fits under the drive bridge without problems. If the heat sink of your A3640 is too high it may be necessary to replace it with a smaller one. One of the reasons why Commodore never recommended the A3640 for the A3000 is heat. The A3000 was designed to be upgradable with such a board, but the 68040 turned out to run hotter than expected and hotter than the A3000 was designed for. If you use the A3640 in the A3000 desktop, you always risk overheating the 68040 or any other part in the computer. This can cause errors, crashes or shorten the life of certain parts. To avoid heat problems, it might be a good idea to install an additional fan in the A3000. avoid using hot hard drives inside the case and not using it with high room temperatures.
The other thing to consider is the version of Kickstart your A3000 uses. If it contains Kickstart 1.4, the pre-boot Kickstart which loads a Kickstart image from disk you cannot use this accelerator, regardless of what version of Kickstart it eventually boots. If your A3000 uses Kickstart 2.04 then you can use this accelerator providing that you have a Ramsey Chip newer than revision 4 and you aren't using Static Column Fast-RAM. There are no known problems if you use Kickstart 3.1.
Jumpers
J100: CACHE & MMU at startup
Pins 1-2 Closed: Caches enabled
Pins 3-4 Closed: MMU enabled
J400: MAPROM
1-2 Closed: MAPROM enabled
3-4 Closed: MAPROM disabled
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Is your A3000 a 14 MHz 030 version? I had one of those and had to have it modified to make use of the 3640. Don't ask me what has been modified as I had Vesaila taking care of it.
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Yes, checked and double-checked with a nice, bright flashlight. :)
dannyp1 wrote:
I've put A3640's in a couple of A3000's but I had the updated Ramsey & DMAC chips. You double checked all of the jumpers, correct? I had some trouble once putting a MKII 060 in a 3000T and I had to try several different jumper settings until I found one that worked.
Dan
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No, sorry I did not clarify-- I have the 25MHz '030 version (9.03) motherboard.
amiga_3k wrote:
Is your A3000 a 14 MHz 030 version? I had one of those and had to have it modified to make use of the 3640. Don't ask me what has been modified as I had Vesaila taking care of it.
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The info on that page appears to be the same as the site I posted. The chip located at U209 on my card is -02, by the way.
rkauer wrote:
Quoting The Big Book of Amiga Hardware:
V3.1
This card works fine in general however it does have a bug related to Zorro II DMA that causes some cards like the GVP Phonepak to stop working, when installed in an A3000. The PAL or GAL chip located at U209 should be -02.
Installation in an A3000
Jumpers
J100: CACHE & MMU at startup
Pins 1-2 Closed: Caches enabled
Pins 3-4 Closed: MMU enabled
J400: MAPROM
1-2 Closed: MAPROM enabled
3-4 Closed: MAPROM disabled
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On a side note- can the updated DMAC and RAMSEY still be had somewhere? I checked Softhut but the prices seemed rather high.
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They do not have stock anyhow. You'll be hard pressed to find a DMAC 04 anywhere except another A3000 (which sort of defeats the point).
Have you confirmed the A3640 is in working condition?
Are you 100% sure you do not have KS1.4 boot ROM's? Lots of A3000's without accelerators have KS1.4 which can softkick into KS3.1 If you did not buy the KS ROM's it would be worth double checking?
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That's a bummer.
I was told the board was fully functional when I purchased it. It was from a trustworthy source.
I'm very, very positive I'm using 3.1 ROMs since I installed them myself and I'm looking right at the labels that say so...not to mention that I couldn't boot OS 3.9 without them. :)
alexh wrote:
They do not have stock anyhow. You'll be hard pressed to find a DMAC 04 anywhere except another A3000 (which sort of defeats the point).
Have you confirmed the A3640 is in working condition?
Are you 100% sure you do not have KS1.4 boot ROM's? Lots of A3000's without accelerators have KS1.4 which can softkick into KS3.1 If you did not buy the KS ROM's it would be worth double checking?
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I think you may have to set the clock source jumpers on the motherboard to external.
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/
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Yep. I did follow these instructions per the guide....unless you're saying the guide is incorrect.
joekster wrote:
I think you may have to set the clock source jumpers on the motherboard to external.
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jdryyz wrote:
Yep. I did follow these instructions per the guide....unless you're saying the guide is incorrect.
joekster wrote:
I think you may have to set the clock source jumpers on the motherboard to external.
It may be. My memory is fuzzy, but the clock source jumper positions may be wrong.
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jdryyz wrote:
unless you're saying the guide is incorrect.
The guide is correct.
It might be worth trying to disable static column mode within your Ramsey chip using SetRamsey (http://aminet.net/package/driver/other/SetRamsey)? But I do not think this affects KS3.1
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I agree with joekster. Check your motherboard clock jumpers.
If I recall correctly, you want:
J104 = EXT
J102 = INT
J100 = EXT
I can check my machine later on to ascertain.
EDIT: the card should work fine with your custom chips (DMAC, Ramsey, Buster) and no matter if you have Static Column or Fast Page Mode ZIPs.
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That matches the guide and my current settings.
da9000 wrote:
I agree with joekster. Check your motherboard clock jumpers.
If I recall correctly, you want:
J104 = EXT
J102 = INT
J100 = EXT
I can check my machine later on to ascertain.
EDIT: the card should work fine with your custom chips (DMAC, Ramsey, Buster) and no matter if you have Static Column or Fast Page Mode ZIPs.
:rtfm:
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@jdryyz
OK, I hadn't looked at the posted link in detail (I only saw the A3640 jumper settings). Well, at least I got'em right! :-)
Unfortunately then it sounds like either an incompatibility or a dead A3640.
Here are a couple more things to try:
1) Put up the brightness of your CRT so that it's not black but grayish. Turn on the Ami and note if the color changes to an even lighter gray. If so, the CPU is good. Otherwise, replace the CPU and try again.
2) Assuming in the above test the CPU is good, put your nose very close to the SMD capacitors (5 of them IIRC), and smell them. If there is some nasty stench, they've leaked. Also check to see if their solder pads are fuzzy vs. shiny. If shiny, no leaks. If fuzzy, they've leaked.
3) Desolder and replace the crystal oscillator. It could be dead. Unusual, but it's a possibility. In fact, before you desolder the crystal oscillator, I'd personally get some el-cheapo electrolytic caps and replace the SMD ones. You'll need 22uF @ 16Volts. Here's more info you'll need, because they've been soldered on backwards:
http://amiga.serveftp.net/A3640_capacitor.html
Good luck!
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da9000 wrote:
EDIT: the card should work fine with your custom chips (DMAC, Ramsey, Buster) and no matter if you have Static Column or Fast Page Mode ZIPs.
Not true. There is a known problem with A3640 & A3000 with DMAC-02, RAMSEY-04 if you have Static Column ZIPs.
But as I have already said, It appears to be limited to KS2.04 (or at least that is what all the sources say) and as he's got Kickstart 3.1 it is probably not the issue in this case.
It's looking more and more like a dead A3640 board or a broken A3000 CPU slot
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Thanks for the info. I tried the smell test but didn't come across any stench. Some of the solder pads are NOT shiny but neither do they appear fuzzy. Hmmm...it's hard to tell, really. They're just a little dirty looking but so are a lot of other spots on the board.
That is interesting about the polarity of the caps. I do appear to have them all this way.
If I was more daring and had the time and tools, I may have wanted to replace them but not now.
da9000 wrote:
@jdryyz
OK, I hadn't looked at the posted link in detail (I only saw the A3640 jumper settings). Well, at least I got'em right! :-)
Unfortunately then it sounds like either an incompatibility or a dead A3640.
Here are a couple more things to try:
1) Put up the brightness of your CRT so that it's not black but grayish. Turn on the Ami and note if the color changes to an even lighter gray. If so, the CPU is good. Otherwise, replace the CPU and try again.
2) Assuming in the above test the CPU is good, put your nose very close to the SMD capacitors (5 of them IIRC), and smell them. If there is some nasty stench, they've leaked. Also check to see if their solder pads are fuzzy vs. shiny. If shiny, no leaks. If fuzzy, they've leaked.
3) Desolder and replace the crystal oscillator. It could be dead. Unusual, but it's a possibility. In fact, before you desolder the crystal oscillator, I'd personally get some el-cheapo electrolytic caps and replace the SMD ones. You'll need 22uF @ 16Volts. Here's more info you'll need, because they've been soldered on backwards:
http://amiga.serveftp.net/A3640_capacitor.html
Good luck!
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A3000s can be finicky, even 25Mhz versions. Back in my anachronism days i had at one time 2x A4000ds and 3 A3000ds for testing. One of the A3000d (25mhz) refused to take a Prometheus, period. It would work with every other zorro card I'd throw at it except prometheus. The prommy works with everything, including early 16mhz A3000d with oldest custom chips, so this was odd. Of all the prommy I ever sold, probably more than half went to A3000d owners. Yet I only ever heard of 1 other instance of this happening with a prommy.
That is probably why Commodore never offered the A3640 with A3000s :-(
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alexh wrote:
Not true. There is a known problem with A3640 & A3000 with DMAC-02, RAMSEY-04 if you have Static Column ZIPs.
He said he has a A3640 (v3.1). As far as I know the problems with Static Column chips were with v3.0.
Where is the A3640 & DMAC-02/RAMSEY-04 documented?
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jdryyz wrote:
it's hard to tell, really. They're just a little dirty looking but so are a lot of other spots on the board.
A picture (hi-res) is worth a thousand words :-)
jdryyz wrote:
That is interesting about the polarity of the caps. I do appear to have them all this way.
Not sure what you mean by "to have them all this way". What's "this" mean? Reversed or corrected?
jdryyz wrote:
If I was more daring and had the time and tools, I may have wanted to replace them but not now.
I thought you were in Canada, but I see you're in California. Not sure where Torrance falls, but if you're coming to AmiWest, then I can take a look and replace the caps for you (I posted about this someplace on the forum).
Good luck!
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da9000 wrote:
but if you're coming to AmiWest, then I can take a look and replace the caps for you (I posted about this someplace on the forum).
That's awesome, can I bring my A3640s in for a checkup and tunning too? Ya ought to set up a table! :-D
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@T3000:
Sure! Check this post of mine for details:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38302
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da9000 wrote:
He said he has a A3640 (v3.1). As far as I know the problems with Static Column chips were with v3.0.
Are you sure you are not getting your confused with your 3.1's? Using kickstart 3.1 is documented as a fix to the problem, not read anything about A3640 v3.1 being a fix.
da9000 wrote:
Where is the A3640 & DMAC-02/RAMSEY-04 documented?
Everywhere? Even the website listed earlier in this thread.
http://l8r.net/technical/t-a3640.shtml
KS2.04 ROMs will work with the A3640, execept if you have the combination of a RAMSEY-04 chip (which almost any A3000 has) and static column Fast-RAM. In this case, you need to exchange the SCRAM at least in bank 0 with page mode RAM chips or (even better) upgrade to AmigaOS 3.1 ROMs.
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Three simple things to remember when using the A3640 in an A3000 (other than making the jumper settings on the m/b):
1) With Kickstart 3.1 roms, you can use either static column or page mode zips or a zip-to-simm adapter. The problem with static column vs. page mode zips only surfaces with 2.04 roms.
2) Rev3.0 A3640s won't work in any A3000. You need at least a version 3.1 or 3.2 A3640. Either will work with Rev2DMAC and Rev4 Ramsey combo (no need to source Rev4DMAC and Rev7Ramsey).
3) Because of the low drive bridge, you need to source a low-profile heat sink for the A3640, especially if you plan to overclock it.
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Thanks for all the help, folks. I have actually returned the card to the party I bought it from. My A3000 will be going up for auction soon also....whenever I get around to pulling off some files and restore the original OS.
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@Alexh:
yes, you're right, I got my 3.1s corn-fused :-)
@jdryyz:
:-( Hope you can get one that's working!