A2386SX bridgeboard problems

[murple]

I bought the bridgeboard countzero was selling, see:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=30396

I've been trying to get this damn thing to work... maybe countzero or someone else can help.

I put the board into my Amiga 2000. It was in there for about 2 days, I hadnt had time to install the software yet. Then last night, my computer began spontaneously crashing. Instead of booting, it gave me a red flashing screen, or sometimes it would boot and give me errors telling me that various system programs in C/ were not executable (!?!?). I was able to power it up and get to the boot menu (holding down both mouse buttons) and when I went into expansion board diagnostics and it said the bridgeboard was defective. I took it out and the Amiga is back to its normal working state, thank god.

Looking at the board, the lithium hack seems to have made the battery useless. Only one end of the battery (the side with the diode) is actually connected to anything. The other end has popped out and theres a cold solder joint where the battery should be connected. I dont see any tracings on the board there, so I hope the circuit board is intact. I'll have to see if I can find my soldering iron and try to repair that, although the lead on the battery doesnt seem like its quite long enough to go through the board. I dont think that this should be causing the problems though, because (in a normal full PC at least) the lack of a battery just means BIOS settings are reset to default every time power is turned off. Its something that needs fixing, but it shouldn't make the board nonfunctional.

I've pressed down on all the chips to make sure none are loose in their sockets. They all seem OK.

Does anyone know what kinds of things might cause the flashing red behavior and Amiga crashes this board seems to be related to? What are some useful diagnostics? I'm going to try testing it on my second A2000 because I dont want to risk it killing my main Amiga. I'd really like to get this thing working. Ive never had a bridgeboard before though and I'm not sure what kind of debugging steps give useful information.

I did some forum searches and I found a few posts where countzero said he thought this board was defective. I wish that had been mentioned in the post where he was selling it, as I probably wouldn't have dropped $160 on it then. However the listing of it for sale had some photos of it supposedly working, and he claims it worked for him after he ripped out some RAM ().

Anyone have any ideas, or did I get ripped off?

[murple]

What do you mean "Zorro 2 space problems"? I have 2 Zorro cards installed, so that means I have PLENTY of free slots. This card needs to be in one of the Zorro slots which are in line with the ISA slots, which is where I put it. I have nothing else using the ISA or Zorro+ISA slots. I will try it in my other Amiga with no other cards installed, but I'm not sure why that would make much difference.

Maybe the battery was fine when you sent it, but when I got it, there is only one end connected. The hole where the other end should go has some solder on it, but it is a cold joint and the battery is not connected to it. That should be easy to fix though.

Why did your old posts say it was defective? Just because of the RAM that you took out?

[murple]

The cards in my system are:

1 GVP G-Force 68030 accelerator/SCSI card, in the CPU slot. The manual specifically says it works fine with this bridgeboard.

1 OpalVision graphics card, in the video slot.

1 8MB RAM card. This is the only thing in the Zorro slots, until I added your card. I dont think that having 2 cards in there is going to max out the bus memory.

And I was referring to http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=30069 where it says "Commodore A2386SX Bridgeboard(this one may be defective)" and other posts where you say it just beeps.

If anybody has any idea how to try and troubleshoot this thing before I send it to the electronics recycler, I'd love to try and get it working.

[murple]

When I bought this computer, it had the 8MB Zorro card installed as well as several other Zorro cards which were all working. I removed the other cards because I didnt need them (stuff like serial and parallel interfaces) and was thinking of selling them on ebay. That makes me kind of skeptical that the 8MB Zorro RAM card means you can't use any other Zorro cards.

Like I said, I will try this in my other Amiga 2000 with no other cards. If it works in there, I will try taking the RAM card out of my main computer and put the busboard in there. If it shows up as broken in the other computer too, I'm just going to give up on it.

[murple]

Yeah the card was in there for at least 2 days with me using the Amiga normally, running all kinds of stuff. I was copying stuff from a different computer via disk to this Amiga last night, and in the middle of a copy, BOOM.

Come to think of it, I think the bridge board even showed up in the expansion board diagnostic as OK the other day.

Well, I'm still at work, so I'll see if it works tonight in a computer with no Zorro cards. If it works, cool. I'll see if I can repair the battery (I'm a bit worried because on the side where the battery clip isnt connected, the circuit board looks a little bit damaged/melted). If it doesn't work, I don't need a refund. I'll just throw it in the closet and consider it a lesson not to buy stuff from people on forums that I dont know. Hopefully it is just a RAM conflict and it'll work though.

[murple]

Well, lets see what happens when I test it out tonight. Hopefully you are right and I will get on here and post that I am stupid and the card works fine.

[murple]

Tell you what, if I can't get it working I'll give it to you for $15 plus shipping and packaging... lets say $20 if you're in the US, $25 if you're overseas.

[murple]

Well, I took out the RAM card, and I guess I'm an idiot because it no longer says "Defective"... but I'm pretty sure it said that when I put it in there a few days ago too. I'd want to have it in the computer for a week with no further crashes before I'm willing to say its fully working. It probably is good, since as was pointed out, the symptoms of having the Zorro bus maxxed out might be random crashes rather than an instant failure. And of course, the battery is still all screwed up too.

But I'm not leaving it in my computer yet. The main reason I wanted this thing was to make use of the fact that there's a program to let you use an ISA ethernet card with the bridgeboard that AmigaOS can see, and maybe throw on a PC floppy drive. I only have 1 SIMM on my G-Force accelerator, and I'm not going to sacrifice 8MB RAM just for an inefficient ethernet setup.

I'm going to have to get a real battery on there as well. Now that I'm home and looking at it, the side with the diode isn't even soldered in, and the other side (that was hanging loose) has a lump of cold solder on the back. I think I might have a spare NiMH barrel battery that I can use to replace the floppy little clip thing. I'll probably do that this weekend.

After I fix the battery, I'll try installing the software and putting the bridgeboard through some tests. If it doesnt work, my offer of $20-25 will remain. If it does work, I'll put it in a box until I can find some GVP SIMM. If I can't find memory in a couple months, or if I find a reasonably priced Zorro II ethernet card... I'll sell it for $50 and write off the $110 as "I'm a retard" costs. (This offer is directed at BinoX.)

[murple]

I'm looking at the battery on this thing now...

What's on there is a little watch battery clip containing a CR2032 battery. There's a diode of some sort connected to the + lead of the battery clip.

This photo of a board however has a 3.6V barrel NiCad battery on it:
http://amigahardware.mariomisic.de/download_photos/a2386sx_1_big.jpg

Is the 3V+diode equivalent to a 3.6V battery somehow? I'm trying to decide how to repair this. The way the battery clip was added doesn't seem like the best approach. The leads are too short to get a real good solder joint. I could solder long wires to the board, and connect them to the battery clip (perhaps on a small board of its own). If I do that, is the 3V sufficient, or should I look for a 3.6V lithium disc battery? Alternatively, I think I have a 3.6V NiMH barrel battery I could use directly on the board.

[murple]

The NiMH batteries supposedly don't leak, the older NiCad ones are the ones that start leaking.