Weird issue with Amiga 600

[walterg74]

Hi guys,  new on the forum, played with Amiga as a kid but never had one at that time. Took advantage of a trip to europe to get me some last month, and got 2 600s, one 1200 and a 500+ (over compensating? )

So anyway, i had/have a weird problem with one of the 600s.... I didn't have time to test it on the trip as it was short, so back home I hooked up everything and it wouldn't boot up correctly. Power LEDs went on, but the screen would either stay black (with video signal) or sometimes white. Seller said it was working before.

So anyway, a few days passed, I was about to list it on our local ebay as not working, and I tried hooking it up again, but after disassembling it and checking for any loose stuff, dirt, whatever (which I did not find). So after that, the condition changed, and now I would only get a fixed purple screen (not knowing if that was better or worse...).

So the thing is that I just left it like that and had to go do something else, and when I came back I saw that the classic "insert disk" screen had appeared! :huh:

So now I'm like WTF? Now if I power it down, I get the purple screen, and after waiting a variable amount of time (sometimes several seconds, sometimes much longer) the boot screen will appear...

Do any of you experienced/veteran folks know what on earth could be causing this behaviour??

Also, and this might be general, the disk drive does not work, and just goes back to the boot screen after inserting a disk. The seller did tell me that, and provided an external drive. However, inserting games in this external drive, none work Is this normal for booting games? (from the external drive).  Because if I put a workbench disk in it then it DOES load fine, so the drive is working...

Thanks for your input!!!

[walterg74]

Wow, that was quick.. ha!

Yes I tried, but the 600 only has the rom socketed, the others are directly soldered...

This particular one also had an expansion (being workbench read ~800k without and ~1800k with, I assume it's a 1MB expansion to take the machine to 2MB? Consists of 4 sims -256kb each?).

Tried both with it, and removing the expansion card, same results.

I might transfer this expansion over to my second 600 which seems to work flawlessly.

[walterg74]

If you switch the 600 on is the boot time before the kickstart screen about 30 seconds? If,  so it's most likely that the internal floppy drive is faulty causing the delay. Try re-attaching the floppy cable at both ends.

Hmmm.. I'd have to double check as I think sometimes it takes longer, but then again it could just be my anxiety for it to work... I will have to wait until next weekend though, as I am currently again on a trip for work (in Zurich now).
If I had thought it before I could have bought a replacement drive and have it shipped here, eh? Does the store known here ship express? (if its worth it and not that expensive).

Edit: Re-reading your post, if it is the faulty drive, what woud re-attaching the cable accomplish? (I think I already did that anyway -though maybe not BOTH ends- when I disassembled the computer to look for corruption/whatever on the motherboard). I mean, if it's faulty wouldn't it just keep causing the same delay? (also I don't know what exactly the fault is, since it does take and reocnize a disk is inserted).

[walterg74]

Yes, it does look like a floppy drive problem or HD problem. If the A600 has a Hard Drive, remove it and see if you get instant Floppy insert screen.
If you dont have HD, then try to re-seat the floppy drive cables, and maybe replace the drive with the one from A500 and see it that fixes the problem.

Nope, no HD. Would disconnecting the floppy remove the delay (if that was the cause) or would be exactly the same as the comp cant contact the floppy?

Side comment: san antonio? I have to go visit... i've been sent for work 5 times to the US, to Houston, and I always say "this trip I'll go see san antonio"

[walterg74]

As a test, plug one of the internal floppy's from your other 600 or even your 1200 in and see if corrects it. Just going from experience here, but I wouldn't be surprised. Also, bet this will bug you until next weekend

Ha! Of course it will bug me... That's why I'm here up writing about this at almost 2 am :insane:

What was that store, amigakit or something? Is that based of europe or the us?

So since all you guys are around... Here's another question I don't get...

Where I live, most of our tvs have 3 standards built in:

PAL-N (a weird variation used in my country and I think two others)
PAL-M (another weird variation used in Brazil and I think one or two others)
NTSC-M

So naturally, I knew these being UK machines, that they would not be compatible as-is. I currently solved it before leaving on my trip, by simply buying from someone on our ebay a tv from europe. Problem solved!

Still I have the following doubt... When I connect other european computers (spectrum, atari st, segas, etc) to my tv (my "normal" tv, not the recently acquired european one) the image of course is black and white and sound distorted.

However, when I hook up the amiga 600s or the 1200, through their builtin composite connectors, the image is in color... So wtf??? I though the only way you "lose" pal/ntsc/whatever info was with RGB? So how can the image be in color on these?

[walterg74]

Its like 3hr drive from Houston to San Antonio.

Yep.. That was alway the plan... Just cruising west on 10....

[walterg74]

erm, they don't have a composite output though. So how are you connecting them?

Well RF of course...

[walterg74]

The RF signals won't work correctly to NTSC AFAIK. The Amiga's will on composite because it doesn't rely on video standards. Composite is composite.

Thats what I thought too except its not?  Every site I looked says of course ntsc/pal information/signal IS contained in composite connections as well ( otherwise for example dvd players would work worldwide and it's not the case).
Trying to find one example (beside my practical experience) where a pal system would be seen in color on an ntsc system (also look at all the posts here from people with amigas that appear in b&w on their US tvs?) :huh:

[walterg74]

If u are in an ntsc screenmode is the composite out still in black and white?

First I don't know how to check that,  but also the comp gives me no option to actually "select" an ntsc screen mode (even when booting with the mouse buttons held I get no screen/video options). Also, connected on composite (the amigas) i never get a black and white signal, it's in color butnit puzzles me because they're  supposed to be PAL computers.

[walterg74]

Both mouse buttons to change ntsc-pal is a feature of 3.0 plus Roms only. U get colour because u use á euro monitor..

Ehmm... no, I'm not using a euro monitor. Even though I recently bought a euro tv, that's not the one I'm connecting the computers to. I am connecting to a TV that is NTSC-M/PAL-M/PAL-N ( not to confuse these PAL with the european nes, they are different).

[walterg74]

Composite is the carrier format. The video information that is "composed" (combined) into the signal can be any standard video format PAL or NTSC or SECAM but not all of them.

BTW Hi and welcome back to the Amiga...

Hi gertsy, thanks for the welcome!

Yes, that is what I have been finding, that PAL/NTSC/etc still exists and is encoded in the composite signal (and of course if must have *some* type of encoding for the tv/monitor to understand it ) hence my surprise when I saw the amigas in color (or course it's a pleasant surprise right? I mean I rather have this than for them to be in B&W of course, but I'm trying to inderstand why and what is going on exactly under the hood).

Regarding the amiga yes I am back but I think I have a lot of reading to do... After all as a kid! All we cared about was popping the game disk in and playing! We didn't even care about workbenches, rom versions, kickstarts, and all that nonesense...

[walterg74]

The good news is a purple screen usually means the Amiga has passed all the Power on Self Tests (POST).  As the guys have pointed out somthing on your 600 is making it think it needs to wait for the floppy to boot(My interpretation).  So it could be a faulty floppy as mentioned.  Best thing to do is try it with a known working floppy drive.
Worst case it could be a dodgy CIA or Gayle Chip.  But try the floppy drive and cable first as they are the most likely candidates.

Yes, I will try that as soon as I get back (currently in Zurich). I will open up my other 600 and try hooking up it's floppy that works fine. (i also want to swap the keyboards, since the one with the faulty floppy is whiter and the other has more yellowing).

I also bought on my previous trip 2 cf cards+adapters loaded with whdload. Are there games that are incompatible with this system? If so, any good solution for creating real floppies from images I can download?

[walterg74]

As long as the A600s are HD versions (IE Have the HD Header)  Were there some without Hard Disks?  Not sure as I'm not an A600 guy.  I think there was also a minimum ROM version for the HD to work properly on the A600.  Do some searches to find out more.  I have CF cards in both my A1200 and A4000 and they work beautifully.  A silent A1200 is superb as a A600 will be.

As far I know the HD version was just a 600 with the hdd already inside. The rom version is true, but acordong to the listing I have the minimum needed one (I think it was 37.33 or something like that, dont remember off the top of my head). So should be good to go and have fun

[walterg74]

For A600 hard drive support (scsi.device in ROM) you need Kickstart 37.300 or above.
There is supposed to be a harddrive size limit (bug) with 37.300 though, so 37.350 is recommended. 37.350 is normally expensive though, I suspect getting a Kickstart 3.1 chip would be cheaper (and easier) to obtain.

Yes, don't remember the number right now but I do know it had the minimum needed to support those CF solutions being sold that are loaded with whdload.

So would you all prefer to upgrade all your Amigas, or keep them original?

[walterg74]

I've seen A600s which develop a problem where they won't boot up after being switched on, but if left for 5-30 minutes they will eventually boot. It's caused by bad capacitors, which nearly all A1200s, A600s and CD32s suffer from these days.

Try turning them on and just leaving them for half an hour, see if anything changes. I'd advise you to change all the capacitors as soon as possible if it seems to be the same problem I've encountered before.

What do you mean with turning "them" on? I only have one computer with this issue. While the time it takes is variable, it's not nearly that long I believe.
In any case, I just bought a replacement drive for the 600 (since it was faulty anyway) and when I get back home next sunday I'll see if that fixes the issue...

So the capacitors go bad even without any sign of leakage?