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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: rotorpowa on March 03, 2014, 10:00:41 AM

Title: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: rotorpowa on March 03, 2014, 10:00:41 AM

Hi all, I'm looking for some help with my a1000 I have a few unit's and they're booting to a blank white screen. They do there checks make the startup sound then goto a blank white screen, one did come up with the pic of the disk a couple of times but now it's just blank. They are hooked up with the composite output. I don't have any boot disks or software. Any help would be much appreciated.

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: Matt_H on March 04, 2014, 02:43:44 AM

Hello and welcome!

I don't have any experience with A1000s but a good first step with all troublesome Amigas is to pop them open and make sure all the chips are secure in their sockets.

Hopefully someone else here has some more ideas?

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: AmigaFreak on March 04, 2014, 04:26:30 AM

I'm not completly sure why it would go only blank. However, an A1000 will not boot without a kick disk... it does not have a built-in kick rom. When I still had a functioning A1000, it was not uncommon for the computer to be completly blank through the loading of the boot files from the kick disk. I would have a completly white screen until the blue AOS 1.x screen came up. Though.. this would usually only occure when I had the kick disk in the system before I powered it on.

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: klx300r on March 04, 2014, 04:47:20 AM

@ rotorpowa

first off, welcome:)

I'm pretty sure I've had that problem in the past when the Kickstart disk was defective.  PM sent.

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: rotorpowa on March 04, 2014, 09:29:11 AM

Hi all, thanks for the warm welcomes :) I don't have a kickstart disk and I'm aware that I won't be able to fully boot the a1000 without the disk's. I did however get when I first turn on one of the units a pic of a disk requesting a kickstart disk, this came up a number of times after switching off the unit and turning it back on 4 or 5 times. The next day I tried again to power the unit and instead of getting the pic of the disk requesting a kickstart disk I got a blank white screen, I then tried the other units I have (these units have no disk drive in them) and got the same white screen. I have tried to press the chips in and some did give a very small amount of movement but very small. I'm going to try next to remove all chips and reinstall them but I'm not holding my breath there. Seems strange to me that I got a screen requesting the kickstart disk a number of times and then with nothing more than turning of the unit and leaving overnight then got a blank screen.
Cheers Rob

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: delshay on March 04, 2014, 10:20:53 AM

I wonder how the g-rex driver works

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: rotorpowa on March 04, 2014, 10:25:02 AM

Hi delshay, you have lost me I'm very new to these.

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: Lionheart on March 04, 2014, 02:29:58 PM

Unlike most Amigas, the A1000 does not contain Kickstart in ROM, instead it loads it from the floppy disk into a 256 kB section of RAM on the Amiga 1000 called the writable control store (WCS).

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: joekster on March 04, 2014, 07:29:02 PM

I had a similar issue before. with no floppy drive (or a bad one), it takes about 2min to show the insert kickstart graphic.

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: desiv on March 04, 2014, 11:05:55 PM

I don't remember what my Amiga 1000 looked like when I was working on the drive, but I remember it wouldn't boot when I had the floppy disconnected, and I don't mean it came up to the insert disk screen.
It was a solid color screen (it's been a while tho)...

I believe white means it passed it's tests, so I'm wondering about a bad floppy drive???

desiv

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: save2600 on March 05, 2014, 12:14:54 AM

If the drive or a switch is bad inside the drive, could just keep the machine at the white screen.

I'd try reseating (not just pressing down) all I.C.'s (the two underneath the disk drive especially), the daughterboard and floppy cables first. See if you get the Kickstart hand consistently after that. If not, probably have a bad drive as joekster suggested and takes quite a while before it shows.

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: rotorpowa on March 06, 2014, 08:09:56 AM

Thanks for all the help, I found a external floppy drive and plugged it in today (in place of the internal). It worked and the hand came right up but it was black and white. I'm going to have a look for another drive to see if this helps. Before I tried the drive I left it on for about 5 min or more and the hand failed to appear.

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: rotorpowa on March 06, 2014, 08:36:55 AM

Ok, so I just tried the drive in one of the other a1000's and it came up in colour. Only problem there is the drive is not spinning. Atleast I now know that they do work and it is only that the drive is faulty, guess I need some floppy drives. Thanks again to everyone :)

Title: Re: a1000 boots to a white screen????
Post by: desiv on March 06, 2014, 08:18:30 PM

Or floppy drive emulators.  ;-)

desiv