Troubleshooting an unfamiliar machine ...

[Noster]

Hi

I must agree Lemmink. You should use a Workbench according to your Kickstart ROMs, i.e. try to install 3.9 and see if the problems are still present.
And please give detailed informations about the errors occuring.

Noster

[Noster]

Hi

@macto

> The chip at U301 (an 8520A) had pin 40 bent and pin 20 looked odd.
> I noticed this when I pulled it out, so I presume that the previous owner left it like that.
> Should I be replacing the UART? I haven't been having trouble with the serial port thus far.

OF CAUSE REPLACE IT, this might be the defect of your system that leads to the crashes!

The 8520 do not only serve the parallel and serial ports, they also contain the systems clocks, several control-lines for the floppy-disk drives and other stuff.
They also generate interrupts! If any of these CIAs is bad, the whole system may be disturbed.

Noster

[Noster]

Hi

> Okay, the following site labels the pin 40 on u301 (CIA-B) as PPOUT.

You mean POUT ? It is connected to the paper-out signal-pin of the parallel interface

Ok, if that signal is missing that should not lead to your problems, but the CIAs are very "unstable", i.e. they are IC's that die very often in an Amiga (have already replaced three of them) so you should replace it nevertheless.

> I presume these are fairly interchangable.

Yes they are. As Paula they have never been changed really and are interchangeable.

Noster