Problem with Amiga 3000T , Please help !

[Matt_H]

What the heck are you talking about dude?  :confused:

It's a joke/reference to a rather insane person we had here (under numerous user IDs) several years back. He had an irrational obsession with A2000s, ceramic-housed ("mil-spec") chips, and throwing away perfectly good hardware that was suffering from minor configuration problems. Core lesson: never, ever, ever enter into any sales or repair agreements with anyone from Beaverton, Oregon.

Back on subject, I think Zac67 and Castellen are putting you on the right track, but I thought of one more thing you might try. Even though the battery has been removed, the SCSI settings can sometimes get garbled - I had a desktop 3000 suffering from this some time ago. If you can get the machine booted, get SetBatt on there and run it with the amnesia flag (SetBatt -a, if I recall) which should clear things up.

I think you should hold off on the PPC until you can get the stock configuration working

[Matt_H]

Question - is there any harm in removing and bridging that resistor (R179), when replacing the original battery with a diode and 2032 coin? I've done this on my 2000's, by simply installing the diode (1N60 in my case) in place of the resistor (R803). Based on what you've written, it would seem the RTC battery should last quite a bit longer. Any potential issues with this?

Edit: Just pulled my 2000 from the closet, it's been sitting off for well over a year, and the battery is nearing 3 years old. I was surprised to find that it had only lost 20 minutes. Looks like the RTC on the A2000 is good all the way down to 2.0V, which helps.

I think it depends on the battery. The NiMH batteries that I've used seem to lose their charge after a few weeks - much quicker than the NiCd originals.

Well, I checked my stash of zip memory chips and they are indeed mixed.  So, they are most likely mixed in my Amiga 3000T too.  I did not know that there are 2 different types of zip memory and that you are not suppose to mix them.  So, I just spent the last hour sorting thru my pile of zips.  I put all of the SC in one anti-static bag, and all of the FP zips in another.  So, this mixup will never happen again.  Tomorrow, I will remove the Amiga 3000T motherboard from the case.  Then I will remove all of the zip memory and start over.  So, SC zips are best for the 030 processor?

It might be easier to pull the chips with the motherboard in the case, thus providing a strong anchor. You'll definitely want to remove the drive bridge, though, if you haven't already. Well, use your best judgement. And caution.

Also, make sure your ZIPs are all the same size. I'd guess that they are, since Workbench probably reported 16 megs, but since you had some SC/FP mixups, it doesn't hurt to check for a capacity mixup as well

Good luck!