Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: willbloke on June 23, 2011, 10:14:28 AM
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Right , dug an old A1200 out at work , it's got an unidentifiable RAM expansion , with a socket (unpopulated) for I guess an FPU , and a battery , again I'm guessing for a RTC .
With this in place you get a green screen on boot , which checking on the NET is a memory fault.
With the card dropped out it gets to the load WB screen and gets no further .
I'ts got a 4.8G HD , which you can hear spin up , but nothing else happens .
Now forgive me , it's been so long since I used an Amiga that I'm struggling to remember , but you have to get it into WB to check the HD I think ?
Is there any likelyhood the the RAM can be resurrected or is it toast ?
Time to try and locate those old WB discs I guess !
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Green screen is chip RAM failure (the onboard RAM, not the expansion board which is fast RAM). The change when removing the board may just be coincidence.
Has the battery leaked? Heavy corrosion damage on the expansion could also lead to weird problems.
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If you have an Amiga mouse, hook it up and hold down both buttons while starting up the 1200. This will bring you to the early startup screen and from here you can see if the Hard Drive is even detected.
If it is detected, then you will need your disks like you said to check further. If it is not detected, then make sure the cable is firmly connected. Power is through the cable, so the fact that it is spinning up is good, but if the connection isn't flush, then the pins on the other end of the connection may not be making the proper connection.
Either way, excellent find! I hope you can bring it back to life…
If you still haven’t figured out what the memory board is, try comparing it to pics on the Big Book of Amiga Hardware. Ok, never mind there a million and one memory cards on there! If you can take a pic of it and post it in the forums someone might be able to recognize it…
GOOD LUCK!:)
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Some older drives spin up too slowly to boot 1st time... Like mine... A simple CTRL-Amiga-Amiga at the boot screen gets mine going... If it doesn't boot after that then it's either not being detected for some reason, not formatted or just plain broken :(
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Ok , both mouse buttons pressed it shows no HD , so I guess that it's borked .
Just found another randon 2.5 HD , this doesn't show up either , could be 2 duff discs (they're bound to be old) or is it a duff HD controller on Mobo ?
The green screen thing is confusing , sometimes it does , sometimes it doesn't :confused:
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Right !
Good here init !:afro:
The trapdoor card is a Power Computing 4M/CLK/FPU PC528 which doesn't seem to be on the Amiga Hardware site ?
I'm using my rapier like mind to deduce it's 4 Meg with a real time clock and a socket for an FPU !
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Ok , both mouse buttons pressed it shows no HD , so I guess that it's borked .
Just found another randon 2.5 HD , this doesn't show up either , could be 2 duff discs (they're bound to be old) or is it a duff HD controller on Mobo ?
The green screen thing is confusing , sometimes it does , sometimes it doesn't :confused:
You need to have a look at the motherboard itself to see if there are any signs of visible damage there. It's possible for a trapdoor expansion to trigger it, but unlikely. As for the hard drives - unless they contain Amiga partitions and RDB, they're not going to show up in the early startup menu, even if they're perfectly good. You need to boot from a floppy with a hard drive prep tool to really see if they're working, not working, or working with a DOS or Windows setup.
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You need to have a look at the motherboard itself to see if there are any signs of visible damage there. It's possible for a trapdoor expansion to trigger it, but unlikely. As for the hard drives - unless they contain Amiga partitions and RDB, they're not going to show up in the early startup menu, even if they're perfectly good. You need to boot from a floppy with a hard drive prep tool to really see if they're working, not working, or working with a DOS or Windows setup.
Ahh , right , so if it's not been partitioned with WB it won't show up then ?
Let's see if I can find any WB discs !
Woohoo , found some WB3 discs ....
Arrrghhh .
They don't work , drive spins and does the "feed a disc in screen."
Sooo , either the drive is dead or the 19 year old discs are unreadable ....:furious:
I'm not going to let this beat me ...
What about if I build a WinUAE machine , could I effectively build a working virtual machine and swap the HD into the real Amiga .
Is this possible ?
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Right !
One of the other Techs here saw me playing with the A1200 yesterday and said "I've got an old Amiga in the loft , you can have"
Bought it in today , it's an A500 , fired up ok played a bit of Turrican with a dodgy joystick , loaded WB ok .
Went to restart it and that's now got the green screen of death :pissed:
Now I know the A500 floppy is working , will it fit into the A1200 ?
I'd rather get the A1200 working if possible ??
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Ok, totally out of the blue, but you now have TWO Amigas giving you the green screen? :eek:
I don't know how "lucky" you could be having that happen to you twice so close together.
I almost wonder if there is an external issue causing it. With the Green screen being chip ram, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but I keep getting a nagging feeling it might be a grounding issue.
I have nothing to back that up, mind you, other than that I was in the repair biz LONG ago and it might be a loose synapses trying to fire from eons ago.:lol:
So, try a power strip that tells you if your outlet is grounded and barring that, just try to hook it up in a different room. That and maybe try a different monitor TV.
GOOD LUCK! ‘Cuase if those don't work, YOUR PROBABLY CURSED!!!:nervous:
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Just call me magic fingers !
The A1200 is playing ball , must of just needed a bit of a run, it works with the RAM card , detects the RAM card as working , but won't boot from floppy.
Before I killed the A500 it was booting fine , so I know that floppy is ok .
Just tried the A1200 with a game that worked in the A500 and it wouldn't read the disc , so I know the drive is duff .
Will the A500 floppy fit/work in the A1200 ?
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Just call me magic fingers !
The A1200 is playing ball , must of just needed a bit of a run, it works with the RAM card , detects the RAM card as working , but won't boot from floppy.
Before I killed the A500 it was booting fine , so I know that floppy is ok .
Just tried the A1200 with a game that worked in the A500 and it wouldn't read the disc , so I know the drive is duff .
Will the A500 floppy fit/work in the A1200 ?
Will, now poke your head outside - is there any crop circles near by your place? Glowy lights in the woods? Can you see Stone Hedge from your window?
Glad to hear it awakened :lol:
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On a 500 it can very well be the Agnus socket. Push down Agnus with a bit of force and chances are it'll creak a bit, settling into the socket. If present, check the trapdoor expansion as well for battery damage and/or bad contacts.
And yes, a 500 floppy should work in a 1200. It may not fit mechanically though.
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Yep, only Amiga partitions show up in the early startup menu. Well, the floppy drive should work, but IIRC it doesn't physically fit. So if you connect it up and leave the top cover loose on the A1200, you should be able to get it going that way. Those original drives are dying of old age unfortunately - it's quite possible the A1200's one's time had come...
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Right , dug an old A1200 out at work , it's got an unidentifiable RAM expansion , with a socket (unpopulated) for I guess an FPU , and a battery , again I'm guessing for a RTC .
With this in place you get a green screen on boot , which checking on the NET is a memory fault.
With the card dropped out it gets to the load WB screen and gets no further .
I'ts got a 4.8G HD , which you can hear spin up , but nothing else happens .
Now forgive me , it's been so long since I used an Amiga that I'm struggling to remember , but you have to get it into WB to check the HD I think ?
Is there any likelyhood the the RAM can be resurrected or is it toast ?
Time to try and locate those old WB discs I guess !
Hi from Somerset! :laughing:
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Might be a weak power supply? Maybe powering the extra RAM is more than the stock unit can handle, I know the A1200 PSUs were pretty weak (I always used mine with an A500 PSU until I went to a tower).
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Hi LordSpunky , I did have a quick Google , do you actually have a museum or a shed load of "old junk" :lol:
I've tried it with the A1200 and A500 PSUs , same result.
I do remember that the A1200 PSU was a bit marginal .
I did the old "twist the A500" trick which sometimes re-seats the chips , but same result , Green Screen .
I'll strip the A500 floppy out and try it on Monday .
In amongst the box of bits there was an external drive , also US , now I see you can still get A1200 internal floppies from a well known Amiga spare parts supplier , would one of these fit the external drive chassis as well ?
If I can get it to format the HD , I will shell out for a new HD , are modern IDE/PATA drives compatible with an A1200 ?
I'm not going to let this beat me !
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Don't bother with a hard drive, get a 4/8/16Gb CF card, and a CF -> IDE adapter instead. Uses less power, is silent, and is solid state - oh yeah they're also cheap. Be careful though, as not all brands of Compact Flash card seem to play ball with the Amiga. I use both Sandisk and Kingston which work for me. I think Amigakit sell them, if not search e-bay and you'll find loads.
Some more modern 2.5" IDE HDDs don't seem to work with the Amiga anyway from what I've read, but I haven't tried so couldn't say for sure.
Also, get a PCMCIA CF adapter and CF card, again from Amikit, comes with drivers etc. Then you'll never need worry about your external floppy drive. As for the internal one, if you haven't already, try cleaning it with an air duster/head cleaner disk etc, its probably just caked in dust.
If the expansion card doesn't work, check the A1200 edge connector for corrosion/dirt etc. Your RAM expansion is probably this:
http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/pc1204
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I haven't come across a modern drive that wouldn't work with the A1200, but of course haven't tried them all... But like others have said, a CF card and adaptor are very cheap these days, and probably more than you'd ever need!
If that external floppy drive works, you should be able to connect it to the A1200 and boot from it - the OS doesn't really discriminate between drives, only some games do and require running from the internal drive...
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Yep , that's the one Oldboy .
Is this what I need ?http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=883
It says it comes with an unregistered version of WHDLOAD , how is this limited ?
The A500 came with a few games (Zool , SWIV etc.) how much hassle are these to install onto HD/CF ?
Is this joystick any good ? http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=52&products_id=610
I used to have a mini version that was ace , but fell apart may moons ago .
Are there any other Amiga joysticks out there ?
Would be good to get 4 player Bomberman going again !
I still need to sort a floppy and hope the WB discs are readable .
What's the service life of compact flash like , don't they have a quite limited read/write life ?
Only other thing worrying me is the A1200 keyboard , the caps lock light flicks on briefly as it starts up , but once running doesn't respond .
Also the CNTRL -A-A reset doesn't seem to work , but then is that only from WB , as I haven't been able to get it to WB yet , it's difficult to know if the keyboard is ok ?
sorry for all the questions , I'm quite excited !!! :cool:
Oh , one other thing the external drive doesn't work , not sure at this time if it's just the drive or if the whole thing is knackered .
I guess if I get the known working drive out the A500 , I could try it on the interface .
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That CF reader from Amigakit is what you need! I do suggest checking your Workbench discs first! I own 2, one in my A1200 and one in my A4000.
The unregistered version of WHDLoad comes up with a slash screen for about 5 seconds as you load a game, unregistered doesn't. I haven't registered mine yet, but I will.
I love Bomberman!
As for the 'shed'! Well it is a virtual museum at the moment, and it will all be moved into my loft conversion very soon. I would love to display to the public but it is affording somewhere and setting it up.
If you require testing of PSU's or use with any other Amiga bits let me know I have 4 x A1200, 3 x A500, 3 x A600, 1 x A1500, 1 x A4000, 1 x CD32, all have original PSU's........although I am still relearning and don't know a lot, can't help with the green screen really ;)
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2 Machines doing the same green screen thing sounds suss? What monitor are you using ?
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2 Machines doing the same green screen thing sounds suss? What monitor are you using ?
I'm not that daft !
I'm using an LG TV/Monitor.
I worked fine through the RF Modulator using composite on the A500 , played a game for a bit , THEN it green screened on startup .
The A1200 has now decided to play ball , can get at the early startup screen fine , but it won't read any floppies , even one that worked fine on the A500 before it packed up.
So I'm going to swap the A500 floppy into the A1200 temporarily , just to prove it's behaving , then I guess it's time to order a replacement from Amigakit , and maybe a CF reader .
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this any use? green means chip ram..
- Green - Chip ram faulty.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickstart_%28Amiga%29#cite_note-colcode-2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickstart_%28Amiga%29
and this
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/selftest.html
lost
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YES !
The A1200 lives !
Put the A500 floppy in and it boots WB3.
Some keys of the keyboard don't work and whilst it will recognise the HD it won't format it , but it is a 11 year old HD .
Is there anything to check before ordering a new keyboard ?
(the ribbon is seated properly as far as I can tell)
News just in , the (new/second hand) HD is formatting !
Wooo !
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The ribbon needs to be fully inserted into its slot, and the "grip" pushed fully down onto the top of the socket. Failing that you could have dirty contacts or a cracked cable...
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Yep , that's the one Oldboy .
Is this what I need ?http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=883
It says it comes with an unregistered version of WHDLOAD , how is this limited ?
The A500 came with a few games (Zool , SWIV etc.) how much hassle are these to install onto HD/CF ?
yup, thats the kitty:-) Checkout http://www.whdload.de for installers for most (if not all) Amiga games. Usually download installer -> unpack with lha, run installer, insert disks when requested etc. There is a site (not sure I'm allowed to mention it) that is a repositry of games that have allready been installed with whdload, all you need to do is download, unzip and run...
Un-registered whdload will run a lot of stuff as mentioned, but some games will quit after 1 level etc check the readme accompanying the game installer - most will fully work though in my experience. I registered mine though, as its very cheap and well worth it.
Is this joystick any good ? http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=52&products_id=610
I used to have a mini version that was ace , but fell apart may moons ago .
Are there any other Amiga joysticks out there ?
Would be good to get 4 player Bomberman going again !
I've got a clear, original one of those - they're okay, as are the very similar ZipStick (looks the same but has square yellow buttons). I mainly use a competition Pro CD32 pad though - pretty good for most stuff
What's the service life of compact flash like , don't they have a quite limited read/write life ?
Dunno, I think if you write loads you may run in to trouble, but I've had mine a couple of years with no bother, and have re-installed the OS/AmigaSYS multiple times etc
Hope that helps a bit:-)
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Thanks Oldboy !
The fun and games continued earlier , I managed to install most of WB , it crapped out on , I think , Locale (CRC error) , but it boots from HD , so hopefully all is not lost .
I should , in theory , have another set of WB 3 discs somewhere , just a case of finding them !
I had a look in the loft earlier , found an A500 case and motherboard , a gutted A600 and a few original Commodore service notes for A500 , A2000 and A590 !
I should , in theory have another A1200 keyboard because i towered an A1200 years back , but I haven't found it yet . (Used an A2000 keyboard)
Did find the A1200 tower and the A2000 keyboard and a Commodore 1084 monitor , but haven't found the cable yet , will have to make another I guess .
Wow , this is more challenging than a role playing game !:lol:
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Yeah, I know what you mean. Thanks to my Dad bringing an A1000 home from work all those years ago, I've had lots of experience with various Amigas. Its surprising how stuff moves on though even with 'retro' computers, and how quickly you forget stuff when your not using them.
I re-setup my A1200+ Blizzard 1230 for the first time in about 5 years back in 2007 having moved house - it took me a while to remember all the cli stuff, editing the startup-sequence and get WB how I wanted it again! Then I saw lots of people had started replacing their HDs with CF cards etc - more to learn!
Ended up buying a B1260 last year to appreciate all those '060 demos at their best, and have just started resurrecting my towered A1200 - haven't had as much fun with a computer in years! (not having fun with em' comes with working in IT I guess...).
The wife doesn't mind, as it keeps me quiet (that and the fact they're not cluttering up her lounge) :-)
let me know if you need WB3.0 disks, I'm sure I've got enough working blanks to do a complete set.
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Ha !
I work in IT as well , look after about 35 PCs and about 30 Macs ish , but this is much more fun.
Got a placement student who is slightly underwhelmed with the power of an Amiga , until I point out that it's older than him !
There's some kind of perverse pleasure in breathing new life into an old computer .
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Just out of curiosity, How was the green screen problem resolved. If that was mentioned, I missed it.
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Just out of curiosity, How was the green screen problem resolved. If that was mentioned, I missed it.
The A1200 just decided it was happy after all !
I haven't had another look at the A500 as I had to pinch the floppy to get the A1200 going !
Whilst in the loft last night I did find my old A590 , somewhere there should be another A500 to go with it , I doubt if the HD will boot after all these years , but I will try and see if I can get it going .
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I'm glad to hear everything is coming together!
What are you going to do with all the other goodies? I saw you mention an A600 and a A1200 tower? Those sounds cool and I'd like to know what you got in them.
Hardware specs. are my CRACK!:roflmao:
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I'm glad to hear everything is coming together!
What are you going to do with all the other goodies? I saw you mention an A600 and a A1200 tower? Those sounds cool and I'd like to know what you got in them.
Hardware specs. are my CRACK!:roflmao:
Well , as I had to go over to the dark side in 95 , I never really got into the PPC accelerators and all the rest of the clones/off shoots .
I haven't found the video cable for the tower yet , but from memory it was a plain jane A1200 , with I think an 030 accelerator, 4M RAM, hard drive , 2 floppies and CD-ROM , with an external MIDI interface fitted inside the PC case .
It was never very pretty , because the A1200 is quite long the case was really old and ugly , but worked ok.
Somewhere I have an A2000 that I was given , not sure if it worked , but I used the keyboard from that for the A1200 tower .
I bought a load of stuff off a guy who used to fix Amigas , that's how I ended up with the A600 , no floppy , might try and see if it'll boot off another floppy ?
I've also got my old A500 with A590 , that's not been run for so long I doubt it'll spin up .
Found a GVP sidecar RAM/HD expansion as well , not sure if that works .
Somewhere I've got a CDTV , but the drive is knackered , I seem to remember that I modded it to work with standard Amiga mouse and keyboard ??
The A1200 that I'm playing with at work at the moment was given to me years back and has sat unloved in a cupboard , the floppies duff , but I've temporarily stuck an A500 floppy in it , the keyboard is also knackered , some lines of the switching are shot so only certain keys work .
I've not found the A2000 yet , I moved house 9 years ago , hope I didn't throw it away .
I also found a few original Commodore service/repair manuals , A500 , A600 , A590 , there's a box of stuff I haven't gone through yet !