I fried my A3000 PSU!

[mechy]

if you get the insert workbench disk screen, more than likely the power supply is fine. i would work with the floppy first and see if it will load workbench.

just fyi, if the floppy data cable is backward you will usually get a solid light,if its right listen for the clicking

you can also hold both mouse buttons down and get into the early startup menu on power up.

[mechy]

Of course I'm in the middle of a big deadline, so this is how I'm spending my time.  Oy.  I'll never learn.

Regardless...  

Yeah. You're right. The unpopulated sockets are probably a red herring I shouldn't even consider...

More clues:

Clue 1:



Bootup sequence colors.  Regular colors not happening.  I get black screen with stripes before I get the enter disk screen (or WB screen if booting from floppy.)  According to Castellen's page that points to a ROM/CIA issue.  How to go forward with this?  Order new ROMs?  Call the CIA?  The FBI?  Oy bad joke.

Clue 2:



Battery:  Reading up on this, the battery, if not working, could be a source of SCSI woes.  I attempted the setclock command, which, when used without arguments gave me no error, which I think would seem to say the battery is ok.  For a second opinion, I ran the time prefs program off the 3.1 extras disk.  The time was set to sometime in 1994.  I changed the date and saved.  I powered down the computer, and unplugged the power from the PSU.  I rebooted.  It seemed to remember the new date.  Does that prove the battery is operational?  I may consider putting a new one in regardless.  Maybe even the same kind since it looks like a solderless solution, and he's had put some slick velcro holding it in place.

Anyway... I hope I'm not babbling too much here and being a nuisance..  You don't hear from me for years, then I come on and bug the living daylights out of you.

edit:
if it is holding time, batt should be ok, just measure the voltage on it.

should of read closer before replying.. looks like you have it booting.. pull any all expansion cards out that are not needed. this will narrow things down.
seems you managed to boot a disk, do have you tried hdtoolbox?

you can swap the cia's with one another and see if symptoms change.

double check the part numbers on the roms, someone may have swapped in incorrect roms, its doubtful but it might happen. i had this problem on a a4000 someone put 1200 roms in, it booted but would never see fast ram


i have been an amigan since 87 and owned tons of 3000's and repaired many in the past, not saying i am some kind of expert but..... dont worry about the internal termination sockets for resistor packs, its better they are gone, just make sure you run a terminator on the last internal drive and a external terminator on the db25.

the battery does keep scsi prefs,mostly if its set to async or synchronous etc. It will default back to async when the battery was removed.  it will run fine without the battery in almost every case. You can use setbatt.lha off aminet to set these prefs,of course if you can't boot the machine you cant set this.

Check the western digital scsi chip, the latest has a -08 in the part number at the end, or it can be a amd 33c93a.. proto does not matter as long as its either of the ones i mentioned. the 04 and earlier ones have problems with more than 1 hd sometimes but should work with 1 drive . check for term power,you are looking for close to +5v- on the external scsi connector its pin 25,internal 50 pin connector i *think* its pin 26(please verify this first!).. BE CAREFUL! any shorts could kill it and ruin your day. without term power terminators do not work. if no power, check diode d800 i think it is,some are shorted,some open,some installed backward on some boards.


you need to get a working floppy on it, then boot with a install disk and run hd tools to look at the hard drive partitions and or partition/format the drive. if the current HD isnt set to bootable or the filesystem is messed up,it wont do much.

Good luck and keep us posted!

Mech

[mechy]

thanks Mechy

Just measured the battery.  Outputting -15mV.  I'd say that thing is toast.  I've been able to run HDTools, and it just doesn't see the HD.

I'll see if I can order another battery like the one I have.  That'll make for easy installation.

I'll check out the CIA chips.  I'm not sure where they are, but it's nothing the internet (the oracle) can't tell me.

Thanks again

Ah ok,i amazed the clock held time after power off and on with that dead of a battery

the cia's are marked 8520(u300,u350)..

be sure to check term power and d800 diode,but it sounds as if the HD may be bad.  if you have a scsi card in a peecee it might be good to check with it. otherwise try another hd.

mech

[mechy]

So, I was able to get it to boot up from the HD, but there is still some SCSI voodoo going on.

It won't boot up from the HD if there is no external SCSI device attached.  If no SCSI device is attached externally, the HD won't spin up at all (power light on tho.) And, even if there is an external SCSI device attached, sometimes the power supply doesn't come on at all, and sometimes it does, and the HD boots up.  I can't find a rhyme or reason to it.

I swapped out the CIA chips... no change there.  I still get a black screen with vertical stripes when booting (see earlier photo), and I don't seem to get a typical set of boot sequence colors.  I have no idea if this is also an issue.  

Front panel power lights and HD lights not coming on.  I seem to remember they did come on in the past when it booted via the HD.  I could be wrong on this though.

A fresh battery was installed and it tests at a nice 3.6v.

I've downloaded setbatt from Aminet, and unpacked it onto a floppy.  I've not tried it yet, as I'm not quite sure what I should do with it after reading the docs.

I did enough testing on the HD to feel pretty sure it's ok... and so is the power supply methinks.

So, it kinda works... I had to put the computer away for now though and who knows if it will work when I get it out and wire it up again...

Thanks again for all your help :cool:, and of course if any of this SCSI weirdness sounds familiar to anyone, any suggestions would be welcome.  

I had some fun snooping around that HD.  There's lots of good stuff on it.  Up to now, I've never dealt with any WB past 1.3.  So, this is all fairly new to me.

scsiprefs.lha might be easier than setbatt.  use it to set up scsi prefrences, setting it to synchronous will gain speed. I wouldnt do that until you have the scsi chain sorted.

Not sure what colors you are looking for at boot time, its just a switch between dark and light grey when things are going well. the stripes are likly caused by the lcd and not there on a proper crt. - it could also explain why you dont get the color you think you should.

What you describe is normal scsi termination problems. Assuming you have +5 term power on the scsi bus properly(check pin 25 of the external port-BE CAREFUL to not short anything and be sure you are on the right pin!).
Without term power, nothing works-not even terminators.

the WD -04 chip is known to also have problems with multiple devices, i dont recall if you said it already has the latest -08 or the amd 33c93a.

The power supply not coming on at all almost sounds like a short, maybe the device you are plugging in is shorting it-get a proper external terminator instead.

there is no scsi weirdness there, just lack of proper termination. since there are no terminating resistors on the motherboard, you need to terminate the external port.,you are in a sense doing this when u connect the external drive. If you need a db25 active terminator let me know,i have tons cheap...$4+ship

Most users run with internal devices,no motherboard terms,and although this works in many cases,its not correct. a external terminator should be used. most 3000's came with these but many have been lost.

Understanding how the basic scsi bus works and terminating it properly will go a long way in preventing frustration. This is the most common thing i see with 3000 owners in the last 20 years-always wrong or missing termination and they all claim "weirdness"

the led problem is likely the led board has a cracked trace or bad solder, its nearly impossible to see the broken trace, so continuity check it.

[mechy]

I mailed you a db25 terminator... i am confused?  
Yes, the scsi chip is wd33c93 with numbers after it. just let us know what chip you have when you get back and we can advise you.

[mechy]

Just a note that I picked up a couple active SCSI Terminators from Mechy and sure enough, that cleared up my SCSI issue.  So, I more or less have a working A3000!  Yay!  Thanks to Mechy and everyone for all the help.

Now, I have a whole new slew of issues I'll be dealing with trying to get some of these SCSI devices to work.  I'll start a new thread.  That's a threat.

Thanks again!

On the Front Leds: the little led pcb almost always develops cracked traces,its poorly made. check it for continuity,resolder etc.  the other thing that causes them to crack is sliding the front cover on and not taking care to have the leds aligned with the respective holes.  also, there should be a plastic insulating washer behind the led board,the screw goes through it.

Workbench 3.1 has scsi drivers for cdroms,but they are not active by default. Copy CD0 from storage:dosdrivers to Devs:dosdrivers.  
you must then edit the file for the correct scsi device unit number for the cdrom drive.
reboot and it should work to read cd's.