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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: amiga4000freak on April 08, 2011, 09:54:04 PM
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hi to every one on this site
I only joined two days ago and i have a problem with my amiga 4000 rev b motherboard. Its not displaying anything only a couple of colours?.
Does anyone have any clues to whats causing this because i have checked the monitor lead and monitor on my amiga 1200 and both work fine:confused:
Much appreciated with any help
(http://www.amiga.org/forums/images/icons/icon14.gif)
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Are you working with a video card or just AGA graphics? What are your color setting set for? And, did this machine just have a bad crash?
Throw us a bit more info....
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It is difficult to speculate but video problems (when colours are missing) we have seen when repairing Amigas can be due to a defective op-amp or BT101, broken track due to capacitor leakage or blown capacitors near the video port.
What do you actually see on the screen?
If you see a solid colour screen on power on, the Amiga is displaying the possible error- each solid colour screen represents a specific error.
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I only joined two days ago and i have a problem with my amiga 4000 rev b motherboard. Its not displaying anything only a couple of colours?.
Do you see the colour directly from the A4000's built in video port and if so, which colour(s) do you see? It could be that you are seeing one of the hardware failure diagnostic displays:
Red : ROM error
Blue : Custom Chips error
Green : Chip RAM error
Yellow : software failure without trap
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hi
No graphics card just using aga graphics an showing no display when i was trying to boot it into workbench using floppy disk. Can these machines be set to default like a pc?.
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On power-up, does the A4000 display the purple insert disk screen animation when the hard disk is not connected (and no floppy disks are inserted)?
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I did get green colour at first then i got a dark colour with purple lines
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im getting nothing m8 just dark lines with no hard drive attached
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..did it work before on this monitor? its always defaulting to aga unless you have a graphics board. is the disk accessed when you load up workbench from floppy?
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It has worked before on this monitor. There powe light on the amiga does flicker slightly?.
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It has worked before on this monitor. There powe light on the amiga does flicker slightly?.
Flicker, or alternate between bright and dim in a regular cycle for a few seconds?
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please answer the question regarding disk loading too :)
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hi m8
There power light is ok now still getting no picture thou its gone all together, what are there custom chips?.
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sorry m8
not loading from floppy an im getting a purple screen
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If i plug there mouse in there screen flickers when i move there mouse around
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I would guess Lisa chip is gone if replacing chip ram doesn't fix it.
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I'd suggest hoping off the bus.
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im 90% certain that there rom chips have failed.
Are there rom chips different in an amiga 1200?
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im 90% certain that there rom chips have failed.
Most ROM initialisation failures should result in the "red screen of death".
Are there rom chips different in an amiga 1200?
As far as I know, yes.
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Is that there graphics chip?.
Also can it be repaired it looks like its there same has my 1200 chip set
Could i use a graphics card instead?.
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Ok, can you check your system motherboard? Make sure you check the area around the battery and also check for leaking capacitors. The batteries in A4000's are notorious for leaking after all these years.
Make sure you earth yourself before probing around in there. You don't want to add ESD to whatever malaise is affecting it presently.
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battery was removed by previous owner and there is no sign of any leaks of acid, the board is very clean
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It did work at first but it was not displaying all colours when i attached my amiga 1200 hard drive 3.5 an only got a few colours since then it has been showing a grey screen.
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It did work at first but it was not displaying all colours when i attached my amiga 1200 hard drive 3.5 an only got a few colours since then it has been showing a grey screen.
When you said the display flickers on moving the mouse, if the hardware was broken I wouldn't expect that.
Can you get a shot with a camera or something?
I wonder if it has booted into a displaymode you can't see properly.
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I used my amiga 1200 just to check and monitor ok
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I used my amiga 1200 just to check and monitor ok
I'm sure the monitor is fine, I'm actually wondering about the settings on your 4000.
What happens if you power on from cold whilst holding down both mouse buttons for about 30 seconds?
Do you get into a working early startup screen?
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no m8
It goes dark then a light grey again
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Remove and reseat the CPU board!
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already done that a few times no change m8
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Darn.
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no m8
It goes dark then a light grey again
The thing is, light grey is what you'd expect from all the initial hardware tests passing.
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How long did you let it sit at the light grey screen? With no hard drive attached, I seem to remember it taking 30 seconds to a full minute before a 1200 would throw up a Kickstart screen, can't remember if a 4000 would do the same thing.
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thats why im sure it might be rom chips but has you said it goes red if they are gone.
I have had the amiga for 3 days and i had to take out the both ide hard drives because it was not displaying properly only showing mixed up colours. When i had no hard drives connected it did show the disk insert at first but since trying to use other hard drives i have not been successful since then.
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How long did you let it sit at the light grey screen? With no hard drive attached, I seem to remember it taking 30 seconds to a full minute before a 1200 would throw up a Kickstart screen, can't remember if a 4000 would do the same thing.
IIRC, the 30 second delay was introduced in Kickstart 3.1 to allow for slow-to-spin-up drives attached to IDE on the A1200. As the A4000 also has an IDE interface, it's possible it does the same thing. Having never owned one (*sniff*) I can't say for sure. Certainly my old KS3.0 machines would think nothing of showing the insert disk animation after a couple of seconds whilst the hard drive was still whirring up.
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thats why im sure it might be rom chips but has you said it goes red if they are gone.
I have had the amiga for 3 days and i had to take out the both ide hard drives because it was not displaying properly only showing mixed up colours. When i had no hard drives connected it did show the disk insert at first but since trying to use other hard drives i have not been successful since then.
Ok, so without any hard disks attached, you get the regular insert disk animation. That's a promising sign at least insofar as it indicates your ROM, Custom Chips and Chip RAM are OK at least. It doesn't preclude a problem with your IDE interface, but we need to clear out a few possibilities first.
Are you trying to boot from hard drives that already have an AmigaOS installed from another Amiga model (eg an A1200) ?
Unless the install is absolutely vanilla, this might fail in one of many different ways and even if it is vanilla, there are differences in the configurations between a fresh install on say an A1200 and an A4000.
Which version(s) of AmigaOS do you have? I would recommend starting off by booting from an original Workbench 3.0 or 3.1 floppy disk as appropriate (with no hard drive attached).
If that works, attach a hard disk and boot again from floppy and see if you can access the hard disk once it has booted. If so, it might just be in need of reformatting and reinstalling.
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hi m8
no its not booting now just only stopped booting since yesturday so something as failed
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hi m8
no its not booting now just only stopped booting since yesturday so something as failed
I'm trying to be systematic here. If you can see the insert disk animation, your core hardware is still working. You may have problems with peripheral hardware, such as a dead hard disk, or IDE interface.
So:
Step 0: Power down the machine*
Step 1: Remove all hard drives from the system.
Step 2: Insert a bootable floppy disk, preferably Workbench 3.0 or 3.1 (whichever version goes with your installed kickstart version)
Step 3: Power on the system and tell us what happens...
*this step included to avoid any litigation potential :lol:
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hi m8
Its not reading there workbench disk all hardrives are disconected
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it just hangs with a grey screen?.
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it just hangs with a grey screen?.
Is there any floppy disk activity at all?
hi m8
Its not reading there workbench disk all hardrives are disconected
Leave the workbench floppy disk in the drive for a couple of minutes and reset. If there is no activity after that time, see if you can read the workbench floppy disk in another machine, assuming it is compatible.
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workbench disk is ok in my amiga 1200 so i think my amiga 4000 is nackerd m8
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workbench disk is ok in my amiga 1200 so i think my amiga 4000 is nackerd m8
Ok, but I don't think your A4000 is *completely* knackered, not if it will show the insert disk animation. Whatever is wrong with it would seem to be fixable at this stage.
What is the full specification of your A4000 system? RAM (motherboard, chip, accelerator card, zorro), ROM version, OS version?
Is it using an accelerator and if so, what kind, which processor and what speed?
Other expansion cards?
A full breakdown of the hardware might enable someone with more experience of this model to help you.
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hi m8
Its not showing insert disk now anyway here goes
amiga 4000 with a 030 cpu in a revision b motherboard
2mb chip ram
6mb fast ram
3.0 rom version
no operating system at present
no zorro cards installed
thats it
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hi m8
Just letting u know i have found there problem, both rom chips where put in wrong sockets an i think that was my fault for messing with roms (shrug) thanks for trying to help me, much appreciated
thankyou
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hi m8
Just letting u know i have found there problem, both rom chips where put in wrong sockets an i think that was my fault for messing with roms (shrug) thanks for trying to help me, much appreciated
thankyou
Well, in the end I wasn't much help. I'm surprised the misplaced ROMs didn't give you the red screen though :confused:
In the end, nothing tops this for improperly seated Kickstart ROMS:
(http://www.amiga.org/gallery/images/3097/large/1_2387.jpg)
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hi pal
One other question if i put a picasso 2 into there system would most games work?.
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hi pal
One other question if i put a picasso 2 into there system would most games work?.
Various Zorro graphics cards have options to pass through the native video. As far as I know the Picasso II is one of them - however, that doesn't mean it will automatically perform any mode promotion. You'll still need a 15kHz capable monitor.
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so if i use there graphics card i cant conect it to a lcd monitor i best buying a aga indivision. I have noticed with my amiga 4000 when i move there mouse it resets itself and sometimes i get a error message guru in red at top of screen
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Just an addendum, if you are going the Picasso route, I'd recommend trying to get a Picasso IV (unless you already have a Picasso II).
I'm a bit hazy on the details these days, but I recall that the Picasso-II is a Zorro-II only card. It will work, but it places limits on how much fast ram you can have in the system before it ceases to be possible to map all of the card's memory in to the Zorro-II space, after which it falls back to using a segmented memory layout which is very slow.
Furthermore, Zorro-II is slow anyway. Believe it or not, but your motherboard Chip RAM has a higher bandwidth as far as writing from the CPU is concerned.
The Picasso-IV supports more memory, will run in Zorro-III mode, has a faster/wider blitter and equally supports pass through of native modes.
Hopefully someone with the hardware can confirm this, as I said, I am a tad hazy.
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so if i use there graphics card i cant conect it to a lcd monitor i best buying a aga indivision. I have noticed with my amiga 4000 when i move there mouse it resets itself and sometimes i get a error message guru in red at top of screen
Sorry, is this with, or without a graphics card attached?
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hi m8
i dont have a graphics card yet just seen a picasso 2 going on ebay for £70 so was wondering if it is worth buying a card or a indivision from amigakit?.
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hi m8
i dont have a graphics card yet just seen a picasso 2 going on ebay for £70 so was wondering if it is worth buying a card or a indivision from amigakit?.
Tough one, it depends on what you envisage using your Amiga for. As it's an A4000 I'm guessing more than just retrogaming. After all, you said you had an A1200 too?
The Indivision is certainly one of the better scan doublers out there. The ECS version is incredible, adding all sorts of interesting features that go way beyond scan doubling. The AGA version is, however, pretty much just a scan doubler but it does have the advantage of supporting the full 24-bit colour definition AGA is capable of. Most other examples on the market have a tendency to truncate the RGB channels to just 4-bits each, resulting in some unsightly banding. I'm pretty sure you can get some half decent resolutions out of your AGA system using the indivision too (I've seen 1024x768 displays in the gallery here).
The indivision AGA, however is no substitute for a proper graphics card if you want to do productivity work. At higher resolutions and colour depths, a genuine graphics card with onboard blitter/rasterizer outperforms AGA in (almost) any 2D operation you can throw at it.
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hi
Im getting a guru error message when i try to move or press there mouse button when my amiga has loaded up into workbench. Could that be a fault with there mouse itself?.
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hi
Im getting a guru error message when i try to move or press there mouse button when my amiga has loaded up into workbench. Could that be a fault with there mouse itself?.
Nope, or at least it's extremely unlikely to say the least. Can you make a note of the hexadecimal codes reported in the guru?
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hi m8
guru screen saying software failure
task 07c03270
error code 8000 0003
0004 either one comes up
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hi m8
guru screen saying software failure
task 07c03270
error code 8000 0003
0004 either one comes up
The last digit in the error code is the 680x0 trap number. Without checking the 680x0 programmer's manual, these are:
2: bus error
3: address error (misaligned access)
4: illegal instruction
5: divide by zero
6: chk instruction
7: trapv instruction
8: privelege violation
9: trace
A: line 1010 emulation
B: line 1111 emulation
I suspect that in your case the 3 and 4 are related since a 68030 should be able to perform misaligned accesses to data - the only penalty is extra bus cycles. However, I'm pretty sure the 68K does require that instruction words are aligned. Perhaps some dodgy patch or stack overflow has resulted in a jump to an odd address?
What, if any, patches are installed on your system?
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Also, can you try booting without startup-sequence?
Hold down both mouse buttons on power-up and wait until the early startup screen appears.
If you can safely drop into a shell and use the mouse without any issues, then some dodgy bit of software would seem to be the cause.
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Well, in the end I wasn't much help. I'm surprised the misplaced ROMs didn't give you the red screen though
Swapping the ROMs completely messes up the word order - even the init vector is nonsense. You can't expect the ROM checksum routine (which turns on the red background) to work under these circumstances...
Doesn't damage anything though (in contrast to reversing the ROMs) but makes the CPU fail to run any code very reliably.
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Swapping the ROMs completely messes up the word order - even the init vector is nonsense. You can't expect the ROM checksum routine (which turns on the red background) to work under these circumstances...
Very true. Guess I wasn't wearing the smart trousers that day :lol:
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hello
whats happening is when i boot up showing disk insert its ok until i move the mouse in either port it will go off into a grey screen and it will reset itself eventually showing error code
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hello
whats happening is when i boot up showing disk insert its ok until i move the mouse in either port it will go off into a grey screen and it will reset itself eventually showing error code
Umkay, that doesn't sound at all good. Mouse movement shouldn't just crash the system, especially whilst you are just on the "insert disk" screen.
Ropey CIA chip I wonder?
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where are they on motherboard m8
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where are they on motherboard m8
Sadly, unless you are well versed in replacing surface mount components, knowing that isn't going to help.
The CIA chip being at fault was a wild stab in the dark anyway. Right now I'm fresh out of ideas, except for one (now that you can boot it at all).
Power down the machine completely.
Hold down both mouse buttons and keep them held.
Power up the machine whilst holding down the mouse buttons and wait.
Do you get to the "Early startup" screen, and if so, does using the mouse cause any problems then?
My thinking here is that perhaps some really dodgy patch messes up some resident component of your system such that every boot except the first one has a problem.
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hi
It boots into a start up control but the mouse pointer wont move and im getting a couple of lines when i move the mouse around
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hi
It boots into a start up control but the mouse pointer wont move and im getting a couple of lines when i move the mouse around
You mentioned you'd tested the mouse in both ports, so I have to ask, is it in the regular one?
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yes m8
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yes m8
The lines that you see when you move the mouse around. Are they just random corruption or does it look like it could be the mouse pointer, but just smeared across the screen? For example, does the position of the lines vary systematically as you move the mouse around?
Perhaps the sprite hardware is borked.
I'm starting to grasp at straws here. Hopefully another user can step in and offer some suggestions.
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yes m8 whem i move the mouse the lines move around more and i cant boot up unless i connect there mouse into the port
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Actually, you can.
You can use the Left-Amiga key in conjunction with the cursor buttons to move the mouse pointer around the screen. Still holding the Left-Amiga key and pressing the Left-Alt button will issue a left-click...
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its not letting me move the mouse cursor its toggling between pal and ntsc mode when a press any button on the key board
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its not letting me move the mouse cursor its toggling between pal and ntsc mode when a press any button on the key board
Ah. Actually maybe the feature doesn't work on the Early Startup screen. It certainly works after you boot, even if you boot without a startup-sequence.
To be fair, it has been a while since I ever used an Early Startup screen that wasn't routed through my graphics card.