dying a600

[systmcrsh]

first hello!

i have an a600hd thats been nice to me for years. a few months ago it started having problems booting. what happens is when i power it on, all the LEDs come on and stay on (caps, floppy, pwr). there is no floppy activity, nor does the system boot.

if i leave the system on like that it will typically boot after 10-15 minutes - almost like its warming up or something. i should note here that if i do a soft-reset (ctrl-a-a) after it boots fully, the cycle repeats - no boot again for 10-15 mins

i tried removing the extras, hard drive, memory, pcmcia - but the problem persists.

thinking it might be a dying power supply, i tested the pins on the PS with a multimeter. it was my first time using a multimeter, but during the test of each pin the readout of the multimeter fluctuated and wouldn't settle.

anyways, i made a new power supply from an ATX, and am 95% confident i did it correctly. the same thing happens booting with the new power supply - all LEDs light, will not boot.

any suggestions? anyone experienced/solved a similar issue? i really love my amiga & i have a show in 2 weeks (i make music on it - protracker).

thanx!

[systmcrsh]

thanx!

i am going to give my soldering skills a shot before ordering a replacement or sending away for repairs...

i read the woes post and it was reassuring. after googling i found these pages not specific to the 600, but should provide enough info to get me started.

http://amiga.serveftp.net/audio_repair.html#Capacitor1
http://amiga.serveftp.net/SMD_soldering.html

ill post up here with an update

[systmcrsh]

well, got home and dismantled the machine & inspected the mobo. most of the caps look generally ok... but i found a culprit right underneath the floppy. there are 2 x 22u caps that have leaked quite severely. im confident i can replace those caps easily... but the leakage has caused bluish rusty looking damage to a chip marked M236 / LF347M. i dont have a digital camera handy atm, but it looks just a tad worse than a similar chip in a 4000 pic here: http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1421=12

i guess im gonna go ahead and replace the caps tomorrow and maybe clean the corroded LF347M chip as much as possible with iso alchohol... if im ambitious maybe i will try to touch up the solder points of that chip, but i dont have a tip that fine.

so far, doesn't look good

[systmcrsh]

well i gave it an honest shot.

desoldering the caps is HARD. not only is my soldering iron too big, the ancient solder is very hard to desolder. i ended up failing... because when removing the capisitor, it ended up sticking to a track on the motherboard while i removed it, and probably destroyed the track it was attached to. evein if i had been succesful replacing the cap, i still suspect the corrosion of the circuit nearby was severe enough that who knows how long it would have lasted me, if at all.

my 600 is going into the closet now minus 2 essential 22uF capisitors in case there is anything else salvagable from it at some point.

do the capisitors leak even when not powered up? ... im curious because if i end up purchasing another machine/mobo and a spare motherboard --- if that spare is just as likely to leak?

[systmcrsh]

thanx.. maybe ill keep the spare in a freezer haha

[systmcrsh]

yeah it was the solder pads that were destroyed... 1 of which lifted a trace while being removed. ive managed to trace the pads to very tiny pinholes. im going to attempt threading new capisitors through them today, bypassing the broken trace.