A3000d - Zorro mysteries

[spyros1973]

Hello to everybody. Recently, I've been facing some mysterious behaviour with my A3000 computer and I will appreciate any help towards solving it.

The little baby is a 9.0 revision machine, with SuperBuster 7, MDAC 2 and Ramsey 04. It was equipped with an A3640, 2MB Chip, 8MB FAST in ZIP form onboard and another 8MB in a Zorro card. The machine has an internal SCSI 2.1GB WD disk and it runs OS 3.9

Recently, I bought a Picasso II and a Hypercom 3z (fast serial & parallel port card)... and the problems begun.

Basically, connecting any of the 3 cards alone to the machine works fine. Connecting two of them, results in some of them not working. For example, connecting the Picasso and the Zorro RAM card results in the Picasso not working (Picasso96 can't see the board to attach the settings to). Changing the Picasso to segmented memory mode makes no difference.

Connecting the Hypercom card and the Zorro RAM card to the machine disables the Zorro RAM card (without in being reported as defective in the early startup menu).

Connecting the Picasso and the Hypercom results to the Picasso not being "seen" by the machine.

Removing the A3640 and setting the mobo to work with the on-board 68030 changes nothing.

So, that's the mystery... Any ideas?

Spyros  :-?  :-?

[spyros1973]

Thanks for the suggestion. It's something I have already trying (it's obvious I was desperate ) - I tried all possible options, but nothing worked. I tend to believe it has something to do with the SuperBuster chip.

[spyros1973]

If the problem has to do with the Zorro II memory addresing, I think that the problem would appear only when using the Zorro RAM expansion. Then again, I'm almost clueless in this situation, so I wouldn't know.

I'll try the ShowConfig approach and post here the output, trying to find a solution.

To be honest, as I previously said, I tend to attribute the problem to the SuperBuster chip - I think I should try to find a rev 11 chip to solve "mysterious" Zorro problems. I tried my luck at softhut.com, but they are out of stock at the moment.

Thanks for the suggestions in any case,
Spyros

[spyros1973]

The 3640 rev is 3.1, but I also made some testing after removing it and working with the onboard 68030 - still the same results.

Another thing that puzzes me with the machine is that when the Picasso is not connected and I run in ECS 640x512 mode, I see some icon corruption when double-clicking on icons (=the highlighted icon appears corrupted). This problem disappears when I use the Picasso, probably indicating that some chip RAM is faulty? Can these problems be connected?

Another thing that isre ported to cause problems with some Zorro cards is the ob-board SCSI controller. I haven't located  the proper jumper to disable it but even if I did, I wouldn't have a hard disk and thus an OS installation to test the machine's behavior!

MrZammler - I'd be happy to meet another fellow amiga user (even though I mostly belong in the "Amiga nostalgists now"). Visit my site at www.paraschis.gr for my contact details.