A1200 not booting up (screen remain black) Please help!!

[spaceman]

Hi everyone,

I am really happy I found this incredible website. I use to be a big Amiga gamer when I was younger and am trying to get back into all the classic gaming. I have quite a big collection already but just pickup an A1200 with which I have problems. Hopefully someone here can help me. Here are the details:

A1200 Rev 1.D.4

The system came with 2 hard drives. Inside is a 2.5" Seagate st9051A which is about 40 Meg (might be the original one).
Also, there is a power hack (from the inside of the A1200 connected where the power supply plugs-in which power up a second hard drive which is mounted in a little black box outside the Amiga. It's a 3.5" (with a cable that convert) which a Samsung SHD-30420A (420 MEG). You connect the 2.5 end of the ribbon inside the Amiga 1220 I think therefore it seems you can use only one or the other. I have no idea what’s on them, but assume they would have been setup for the Amiga as it comes with it.

Also, it seems like a Blizzard 1230-II (15/93 78 60 EL)
68EC030 @ 40 MHz which is fitted inside which contain 2 72 pin SIMMs (not sure which size).

Now I have plug all this using an A500 PSU and my A1084S cable to the monitor. When I turn it on, the lights turn on, the yellow led flash and you can hear the hard drive spin and then the yellow led flash again but nothing happens and the screen remain black (I know the monitor is plug ok as if I disconnect a hard drive or else it remain yellow).

I have tried with both Hard Drive (individually); without any; without the Blizzard expansion, all without success. If I put a disk in the drive nothing happen either. I have rebooted many times using the Ctrl A A and that works but still nothing happen.

Hope someone get me any tips or things to try. Hopefully it's nothing big (although it's not looking good). I couldn't wait to set myself a nice Amiga 1200 and try some AGA games for the first time and some old classics. (I have about 800 disks to try on).

Thanks
Jon

[spaceman]

Hi Doctorq,

Thanks a lot for your nice welcome and precious help.
With both hard drive, when I turn the A1200 on the power up and you can hear them ticking for about 10 sec but then nothing.

I wasn't aware of this. But I have tried without any hard drive following your recommendation. I have also tried with and without the expension and still after like 5 minutes, just black.

I guess this isn't a good sign. Let me know what you think or if you have any other ideas.

Thanks.

[spaceman]

HI Morley,

No offense at all. I really wish it would be something simple as well. I have tried with the 23 pin RGB (making sure the witch are allright) and the composite as well. I use the Amiga monitor often either with my A500 or with my video duplication equipment. So I am usually not too bad with it. But it's was definetely worth checking into and I really appreciate your help. Unfortunately it seems like it might be something else.

About the different color screen, I got this from somewhere on this website:

-Black
Opening screen
Initial Hardware tests passed
Initial system software tests passed
Final initialisation test passed

-Red
ROM error, reseat or replace Kickstart ROMS (this can also be caused by worn insulation covering the back end of the pins that connect an IDE cable to a hard drive, aka short).

-Green
Chip RAM error

-Blue
Custom Chip(s) error

-Yellow
68000 detected error before software trapped it (software or hardware error

The yellow sceen happen just once and I think it's because I had a hard drive plug the wrong way around, so that was to expect. It kinda prove me that at less that was detected (same with the keyboard which reset when pressing the right keys).
As for the Black screen it says here that it's the opening screen and that every test hhas passed. But then why doesn't get to something else after. If I coudl at least load from a disk I would be able to load workbench or else to look into the hard drives. But seems like the problem is before that.

Let me know if you think about anything else.
Thanks again, I really appreciate.

[spaceman]

Thanks again dotorq and everyone else.
I have tried without a floppy,and the first time I booted I got it all, Yellow than Purple than Black. Tried the rebbot with teh Amiga Keys and got Blue and Black. Then nothing much else apart from Black. The hard drive dont boot I think they just make the 10 sec noise because they being powered but not more. Nothing start from the floppy either. I have tried holding the 2 mouse button and nothing either, it just remain black. Soit seems like this is it and there something majorly wrong (properly the motherboard as doctorq suggested.

If someone think about anything else, let me know, if not than I'll guess I'll have to try and get another Amiga 1200 that work so that I can at least try some of the component I had with this one. I actually also got a CD32 with SX-1 component which I'll try and the week-end. If it possible to conect the hard drive on that? (alhought workbench or rom might be different).

Thank sagain everyone, you have been extremely nice. I'll definetely get involve here more...

Jon

[spaceman]

Ilwrath wrote:

For a laugh, though...  Power the machine up, wait about 20 seconds, and then try cycling the CAPS LOCK about 20 times.  Most likely after about 10 on/off cycles (twenty presses) it'll freeze, as well.  (The CAPS LOCK light will stop responding)  In my mind, that would be the final test to eliminate a simple display failure as cause of your problems...

Just tried that, it actually took 10 times only (or 5 cycles) and the caps look was frozen.

So I guess I'll see what I can salvage next time. Is the Blizzard 1230-II board worth much providing it would work well?

Thanks again to everyone.