Dying A1200?

[Disparil]

Hi, I've been having trouble booting up my precious towered A1200. At first it occasionally failed to boot, but it started to become more and more usual for the machine to fail, and now finally it won't boot properly at all. Sometimes when booting the floppy disk drive doesn't wake up at all, and the computer won't even try anything. If the disk drive wakes up, then the Amiga tries to boot and even sends some signals through the Voodoo since the monitor activates, but no picture comes through.

The specs are: towered A1200 with IdeFix Express (2 hard drives and a DVD-Rom attached), Blizzard 1260 turbo (68060 + 64 MB), Mediator 1200 with Voodoo 3 and a Realtek ethernet card, Indivision scandoubler.

First I went after the PSU, since someone else had the same trouble and the culprit was the PSU. Changed the PSU from the AT version to a fully working ATX with adapter, but no change. Then I started systematically removing the extra parts between boots to see which one was the problematic one, and plugged the Amiga into the TV set to see if it would send signal from that port. Well, in the end I had only the Mediator (because I haven't got a true Amiga PSU and the Mediator is needed for the ATX power supply to work), a mouse and a keyboard attached. I even disconnected the floppy drive from the motherboard. The tv did flicker a bit every time I powered up, but in no stage a picture ever appeared.

I'll still have to test the board with a real Amiga PSU, but I guess it looks like the motherboards busted somehow. Or does anyone have any other suggestions?

[Disparil]

Have your tried to give some extra power to mobo through to floppy disk power connector? I had a similar problem and it was solved with that trick.

Tried it, didn't help :/

[Disparil]

have you tryed stripping it down and rebuilding it? It worked for me when my towered 1200 wouldn't boot.

Yeah, I took it apart to its bare bones but the damn thing still won't boot.

[Disparil]

But the machine worked properly before with the PSU connected to the Mediator, wouldn't that indicate that the fault is something else? I've had to install the Indivision a few times since it had the tendency to jump off if I moved the Amiga, and I always feared that the force inflicted on the mobo would break something.

[Disparil]

Mine was worked before I spliced the third connector but it was flaky at the best of times and would refuse to boot quite often or just lock up for no apparent reason too, which is why I performed the modification.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

[Disparil]

Yeah, I have 2 A500's and 2 C64's as backup if the main ones fail, but I haven't gotten around to getting spare A1200's Well, now I ordered a used A1200 motherboard so that I'll have a fallback if the power trick won't help my poor dead machine.

[Disparil]

Update: Splicing the adapter from an Amiga PSU didn't help either. Luckily I should get a new (well, used) A1200 motherboard next week. If that doesn't work, then I'm soooooo out of luck

But thanks to everyone for suggestions!

[Disparil]

UPDATE: I got the spare motherboard, and... I found the culprit. The 3.1 roms! The new motherboard had 3.0 roms and booted, but when I switched the 3.1 roms from the old one, it didn't work at all. The old one worked fine when I installed the 3.0 roms. So, both boards work with the 3.0 roms, but neither work with the 3.1's. I already ordered new 3.1 roms so all should be well soon

Weird though, I would've never thought that the rom chips could fault like that. Has anyone ever encountered something like this?

[Disparil]

Sorry to conjure up an old thread, but there have been changes. I might have spoken too soon about the ROMs being to blame, since the thing wouldn't work properly even after changing them. However, after a long time of changing stuff and getting really pissed at my Amiga, I got it to boot. I only had to change the Mediator's CONFIG jumper...

But the problems don't end there, oh no! Now on every boot Cache CDFS informs me "Cannot open "atapi.device" on unit 1. I tried to reinstall IdeFix but it couldn't find my CD drive. I have changed the IDE cable, tried 3 different cd drives. There's a hard drive on the same cable and that works fine.

Pciinfo can't run since it can't find pci.library, which is weird because pci.library has been installed. Also, MedConfig couldn't find any PCI cards installed on the Mediator and told me to change the CONFIG jumper setting, but if I do that, then the Amiga stalls on the error message about the atapi.device.

Does anyone have any idea what I could do about this? I'll probably try to do a clean install on a fresh drive using UAE and then see if that will do anything...

[Disparil]

Okay, update on the situation! After tinkering feverishly for a few nights, I finally have a working setup again, and somehow I even got the CD drive to work again. HOWEVER...

Mediator is still giving me grief. The drivers install alright, but depending on the CONFIG jumper setup, if I try to run Medconfig it either crashes the Amiga or complains about the CONFIG jumper. The same thing with Pciinfo, it either crashes the system or complains about not being able to open pci.library.

I currently have the Voodoo3 and an ethernet card installed on the Mediator. I suspect the Voodoo might be fried since at one point I got an electric shock from it I've read that the Mediator _needs_ the Voodoo for anything else to work, could that be the answer? Oh well, I have a Radeon 9200 on the way, I guess I'll find out then...

[Disparil]

From the looks of it, you are trying to get a rusty car that squeeks, goes to the mechanic all the time for repairs and breaks right away with a very long milage to get it back into a racing car O_O.

I know It may not make any sense, but then again, not everything has to. At one point I almost gave up but now the thing is up again, so I guess perseverance paid off... at least until the next hiccup!

[Disparil]

I would avoid messing with anything else and just go source a motherboard. The risk is that you will damage a component of something that is way more valuable. Amiga 1200 motherboards are really ten a penny compared to some of your other kit... Thinking about the Blizzard mostly.

I actually changed the motherboard at one point, and it *seemed* to help things somewhat.

I have problems with one of my towers which I put down to it standing vertical in the case, cus with just the odd nudge it will come back to life. The things junk so I really am not that bothered. Just funny giving it the old BSA treatment to get the thing working.

That used to work in my case, too. When the machine didn't boot up, I'd nudge all the cards and components a bit and then it worked again. Especially the Indivision often crept out of its place a bit so that it wouldn't work. At some point, that nudging tactic just didn't work anymore.