Did I kill my A600?

[Xamiche]

Did you have a 44-pin CF adaptor? And if so you didn't connect it the wrong way around did you? Pins 41-44 carry the power for the drive on a 44-pin IDE connector. If you got it the wrong way around some damage may have been done.

Edit: Just saw the pics of your adaptor set up.



If you plugged the CF Adaptor in the way it looks on the photo, I think you may have plugged it in the wrong way. I'm not sure what damage that may have done, or whether it would damage only the card or both the card and the IDE on the a600 MoBo.  :-(

[Xamiche]

On a 3.5" Hard Disk yes, it usually does. On a 2.5" <-> 3.5" adaptor however the 4 pins on the Molex socket are pins 41 to 44. So the pin next to the Molex plug is generally pin 40. Unless the maker wanted to have some funky tracks on the PCB.

[Xamiche]

I'm not sure with any real certainty that you've damaged the boards IDE controller, but the fact it no longer boots the drive that it used to is a pretty good indicator. Which custom chip handles the IDE on an Amiga 600? You might need to replace it. Though surface mounted chips are really hard to replace. AmigaKit sell A600 MoBos for around $40. I also see them come up on eBay fairly frequently.

Just go over everything slowly and make sure you have the old drive hooked up the way it was before you installed the CF card. You said you had a 3.5" HD in there? How are you powering the 3.5" HD? Did you reconnect the power to the 3.5" HD? That's a mistake I used to make all the time. I'd put a 3.5" HD on my A1200, then freak out that it wasn't working only to find that I hadn't connected any power to it.

[Xamiche]

RedWarrior wrote:
and I've definitely done this on a PC previously- it didn't boot, so I turned the cable around.... no problem.  why should it burn out?

A PC 3.5" hard drive only has 40-pins, and it's cable doesn't carry the power for the drives logic and motor on it. So you can get the cable around the wrong way and be okay. However with a 2.5" drive, having no molex power connector like a 3.5" HD, the power is carried on cable via pins 41 to 43. (41 = 5v, 42 = 5v, 43 = GND) If you get the cable around the wrong way you're dumping the 5volts from 41 & 42 into pins 3 & 4. Which are data lines.

If the A600 still boots from floppy, like someone here suggested, connect your old HD, boot from floppy and use the HDToolBox to try and detect the HD.

[Xamiche]

That's great news RedWarrior. :-)
Great news indeed.

[Xamiche]

monami wrote:
aha! we were all rooting for you.

:lol:
Funny you should use the word 'Rooting'. Here in Australia rooting means f**king. I get a very x-rated visual from your comment.
:-P