Amiga 3000T won't boot

[mvansickle]

I have a beloved 3000T that has soldiered on through a lot of hardships (relocations) but this last house move finally did it in.  After unpacking it and setting it up, it refuses to display a video signal or (from what I can tell) boot at all.  It powers up, fan is on, and the hard drive spins up but then - nothing.  I've tried attaching a 1084 and VGA monitor, neither give a signal although booting the Amiga DOES bring the VGA display out of powersave mode so there is some kind of signal there.  I have tried reseating ZIP ram (that was fun) and also booting without the hard drive attached.

There really is nothing broken that I can see, the MB is in mint condition, the only thing is that the SCSI terminator on the back of the machine is a bit bent.  Could that cause this kind of problem?

Any ideas what else I can look at before I try to find a place to repair it?  Gotta have this baby working again!  I miss it!

Matt

[mvansickle]

Yes, the key is in it and I've tried it in both positions.  I wonder if perhaps the wiring has come loose for that piece.  Is there a way to disable the key lock?

[mvansickle]

I am in Castle Rock, Colorado.  I am terrible with electronics (at least at the level of checking wiring, etc) so I'm at a loss what to do next.  It may be something as simple as this keylock not functioning anymore, I can't remember if you are supposed to see a video image when it is in the locked position.  What I am seeing is the monitor turns on from powersave mode but I get no picture.

It has been so long since I had to do any troubleshooting on an Amiga I'm really lost.  If I boot the machine without the hard drive connected I am assuming I should see SOMETHING prompting me to insert a disk or something but maybe not.  I haven't actually tried booting it with a kickstart disk in the floppy drive.

[mvansickle]

What would it do if the termination wasn't working?  Would it just not boot at all or would it show up on screen asking for a floppy?

[mvansickle]

Also another update - I know the drive is not dead because I bought an Amiga 2000HD from a local guy today and plugged my A3000T drive into it, it worked just fine and booted up to my old system.  Awesome!  I don't like how slow it is compared to my 3000T though.  

[mvansickle]

The power light stays on continuously, it never flashes.

Holding both mouse buttons during boot didn't do anything.

I actually left it powered on for a couple of hours once (before I took the drive out) and it never booted.  I have it on now with the SCSI cable disconnected and will leave it on for a few hours to see if anything changes.

One thing I noticed the last time it worked was that the hard drive seemed to be going bad - i.e. sometimes it would not boot properly or would freeze when loading the system.  I have not been able to repro that since I put the drive in the A2000 so now I'm thinking it's something to do with the SCSI controller that was going bad.

Anyone know if there's a way to disable the onboard SCSI controller?  If so I could put the SCSI card + hard drive from the A2000 into it and see if it boots.

I guess first I need to get it to boot to the kickstart screen before I start worrying about getting the drive working in it though!

I have a feeling that finding a replacement motherboard for this guy is going to be damn near impossible.  

Can anyone give me step by step instructions for bypassing the keylock, just in case that turns out to be the problem?

[mvansickle]

alexh wrote:
I thought that you could repeatedly press a key (Caps lock?) and if after a while it never stops blinking then the 680x0 isnt working?

Not sure the exact details but worth looking into.

I tried this and indeed, after pressing Caps Lock a few times it stops blinking.

Anyone know exactly what this means?  Fried CPU?

[mvansickle]

Since I had retrieved my data by moving the drive over to the A2000 I got brave and took apart the A3000T tonight.

Sadly, I seem to be a victim of the leaking battery.  I can see where a drop of acid has fallen from the battery on to the motherboard and disintegrated 2 or 3 traces.  Argh!!!  I wish I had known about the battery problem sooner.  

I don't suppose there is any way to repair this?

[mvansickle]

You know, I just realized my wife's brother here in town builds his own electronic devices (pcb from scratch, etc) as a business and could probably repair the traces on the board in his sleep!  *slaps forehead*

What is involved in removing the battery so he can do the repair?  Do I just need to cut the metal clips holding it to the motherboard?

[mvansickle]

Well the board got worked on for almost 2 hours without success so far.  The vias around the math coprocessor were all damaged but the traces everywhere look OK.  We tried putting wire in the vias and soldering on both sides but no luck so far.  There is damage underneath the ROM vias as well so that's next, but we're done for today.  I'll keep everyone posted, and hopefully there will be a happy ending to this saga.

Thanks everyone for your help so far!

[mvansickle]

Anybody know a place that still services these?  If we can't get it to work, I'm going to want to ship the motherboard out to an expert.  Recommendations?  Thanks in advance!