Desperate in Texas

[Heiroglyph]

As some of you know, I've got a TON of Amiga's and parts.  The problem is that I have yet to get a stable one built.  (well, there was one that is now gone, but that's a long sad story...)

What makes these systems go randomly bad with age?  No battery leakage on the ones I'm mainly trying.

Bill P. even knew how much trouble I have had and was nice enough to send me an awesome system that was no longer in use, but it is also suffering from old age since it was last used.  The Warp Engine 040 has ram errors if memory is installed and it seems to heat up and get progressively worse to the point it won't even boot from floppy.

What are you guys doing to keep them usable?

Is there anyone in the San Antonio area that would be willing to take a look in exchange for a boatload of Amiga hardware?  4000T's, bunch of 4000D's, 060 cards, 040 cards, PCI backplanes, I've got a pretty serious load of systems and good (well, costly...) parts I'm willing to give up if you can solve the problem.

All I want is a stable system (no hardware failure reboots, no disk errors) that I can develop on, but I just can't seem to make it happen.

[Heiroglyph]

True, I have shifted focus from systems to system.  When you're swapping parts long enough you're eventually on the next one

I'd really like this E-Box cased 4000D to work.  I think it would be the best overall system, even better than the 4000T's since it has the Mediator PCI in it.  I'd have to use the Prometheus in the T's to get similar expansion.

The hangup is that I have an 060 and an 040 desktop CPU cards of questionable quality and (to my knowledge) a good one of those massive Quickpak 060's that won't fit in the D.

I hate to drop $600 on one of those "new" GVP 060's when I'm not sure my motherboards are good.

[Heiroglyph]

I goto SA every time a Hurricane hits Houston.  If u remind me next time maybe I give u a visit

I would be going inside the loop in the northern half.  Izzat close 2 u?

Extremely close if you mean 1604, not far if you mean 410 but outside that loop.

Wow, I wonder if I know you from Houston?  I was there for about ten years.

You're welcome to drop by even if it doesn't involve the unstable system.

Is it bad to hope for a natural disaster?

[Heiroglyph]

Cool, another semi-local!

I'm trying not to just buy a new one.  Amigas don't get much better than the parts I have available, there's just something I'm missing or a common factor like maybe dried out caps.

Still trying to get in touch with Cosmos but I guess he's been busy.  I was going to send him some stuff and order new caps for a few motherboards.

[Heiroglyph]

@heiro
Two thoughts: As you mentioned the caps, and have you tested the power supplys?
I too, have a power tower with everything, the power supply was way too small...and old.

I bought a 4000 to atx power adaptor from amigakit and a 450 wattatx power supply. stable again.

My sad story,
michael

Thanks for the suggestion, but yes, after it acted strange I replaced the laughably overrated 300w with a known good (from PC use) 550W Antec.

I didn't see a difference but I felt better about it.

Hey, at least your story has a happy ending!

[Heiroglyph]

This was amazing timing!

I just got the remainder of a super secret local Amiga stash.  It was all going in the trash when cleaning out the warehouse and I went into panic mode

My wife will kill me when she gets home, but by God I saved them from destruction!

I wasn't in time to save to two A3000s that he thought weren't worth keeping though

So far I've picked up:
2 A4000T motherboards, one marked "bad 8520"
4 A4000's, mostly bare, no case tops
4 A2000's, motherboard and lower case
1 A2000 with bridgeboard (286 maybe?) and Flicker Fixer (lightly tested, seems good)
1 A2000 with CBM 030, GVP SCSI and some kickstart ROM switcher (drive barely spins, but seems functional)
1 CBM 030 for A2000
2 DataFlyer SCSI cards, in box (new?)
1 working 1084s
uncounted number of untested 1084's
1 1950, but I need an adapter to test it with
1 Toaster 4000
2 Toaster 2000's
Stacks of keyboards and misc. parts
and more stuff I don't even know yet.

I'll be keeping one of each model when I find them to be stable.

The rest of it I'm donating to good homes.  It will be shipping cost (including packing material) + $10 for my trouble, as is no guarantee, for any item.

Or pick up in person for free.

I'll post in marketplace what is available once I've got mine out of it, but don't you dare buy them to sell on ebay!

[Heiroglyph]

Come on down, it's turning into an Amiga warehouse over here.

So to update, one of the 4000T's runs but I haven't been able to check for disk errors or reboots yet because I've got no OS installed.

I think I've still got a SCSI drive specifically for a 4000T somewhere around here if I can find it.

[Heiroglyph]

Texas here also.. about 2~ hrs from san antonio.

if i could get away i would definately help!

nice load of machines u found!

mech

We Texans should set up a place to meet.

Maybe one weekend we could get together at my house and pick through all this stuff before I have to ship it out.  I'd really rather give it out locally.

I'm still going through parts but I've kind of become stuck on the 4000T.

[Heiroglyph]

Your place sounds really cool and I could make that trip.

I said my place just for the free stuff.  I've had to make multiple trips to get it and I'm still going back.  It's more than one load even with a truck or SUV.

I can't do it anywhere for about two weeks though, I've got my nephew staying for a while, but when it happens I'll be there.

[Heiroglyph]

Do you have any A3000D mainboards or parts?
I have an A3000D case and no mainboard.

None yet, but I'm still searching and sorting.  There were two but I didn't get there in time.  R.I.P.

I might still have a floppy drive with the right button on it from my old system and probably a 3640 CPU card, but that's about it.

Edit: I'm sure I've got several Buster 11 chips if you find you need one.

[Heiroglyph]

Heiroglyph, I think I agree with you, somewhere in San Antonio would be a great first meeting as you have all that equipment that you want to thin out.  Let us know a good time for a visit and maybe some of us can make the trip.

I've already told my wife about it and she's up for it, I just need to get past the nephew visitation thing.  She's planned a lot of activities for us while he's here.

I'll talk it over with her and see what we can do.

So maybe a weekend like a Saturday two to three weeks from now?  Anyone opposed to alcohol?

[Heiroglyph]

I finally got what seems to be a stable system.  I'm pretty sure it was a mixture of bad hardware.  At least motherboard, possibly CPU card and RAM in various combinations.

I swapped parts until I felt that I had a stable A3640 and A4000D, then installed OS3.1.

I ran this and replaced parts until it seemed rock solid. (took three motherboards...)

Then I installed the Warp Engine 3040 in that system.  This still seemed good even with 64MB RAM on board.

At that point, I felt cocky, so I put all the Mediator parts in and although they weren't used, it didn't make it unstable.

Then I replaced the 1.2GB IDE drive with the original 2GB SCSI the system came with and that also seems good.

So far I've copied 2GB of data (roughly the whole drive) back and forth between SCSI and IDE drives with no apparent data loss or lockups!

Woo Hoo!

I've got a good base now, so I should be able to tell when any given part is bad.  Next up, the 060 card!  I hope it is good!

I plan to use better SFS and CF drives instead of FFS and ancient IDE/SCSI once the hardware seems 100%.