Problem with Amiga 1200 and BlizzardPPC

[cgutjahr]

neofree wrote:
I just powered it up last night using 1084 monitor and it booted up to workbench.  The display was flickery so I went to change the screenmode and it locked up when I double clicked the screenmode icon.  Before this, there are green garbled lines here and there whenever I double click on any icon and bring up a window.

I have never seen "green garbled lines", but BlizzardPPC problems are mostly caused by heat or insufficient power supply.

Check that the fan on the PPC still works. Remove the metal shielding from the PPC and remove any dirt that accumulated below it.

How do you power the whole setup? What kind of PSU, where do you feed power to the A1200 and/or the BlizzardPPC? I'd recommend to feed power to both the original power connector and the power connector that usually feeds the internal floppy disk drive (in the original desktop case).

Did the previous owner use the very same motherboard you are using now? Some motherboards won't work with the BlizzardPPC (or any other accellerator with a 68040 or 68060 CPU) unless they get the famous "timing fixes" applied.

This is a Rev 0 BlizzardPPC and the previous owner was trying to get a G-Rex to work with it but he couldn't make it work.  

A Rev 0 BlizzardPPC will not work with a G-Rex busboard, it needs a hardware upgrade (nobody performs these upgrades anymore, AFAIK).

I don't have ANY Amiga floppies (No WB, etc.)...  So where do I go from here?  Does it sound like damaged hardware?  Or does it sound like bad software loaded or problems because of G-Rex firmware?

Huh? So you *are* using a G-Rex? This is not listed above. Remove it, your system will not work with a G-Rex installed.

Besides ordering WB disks off of eBay, is there anything else I can try (software wise) that might revive the CD so I can format?

Boot without startup-sequence, and run HDToolBox from CLI (this only works if OS 3.1/3.0 is installed, OS 3.9's HDToolbox requires a lot of stuff to be set up before it can be used). Does it list your CD drive?

[cgutjahr]

neofree wrote:
Firstly, I'm not using G-Rex. But I've heard you can reflash your BlizzardPPC with a G-Rex firmware.

Not the Rev 0 boards. You actually *need* to reflash all (most) BlizzardPPC boards to use them with a G-Rex, but that won't make a Rev 0 BPPC work with a G-Rex.

I'm using an Amiga 1200 in Power Tower, whatever the original power supply is in a Power Tower,

That should be sufficient.

would have to check more about power issues when I get home.  

Do that. The setup described above is the absolute minimum to make my BlizzardPPC (same as yours) work reliably.

Yes, the small cpu fan is spinning.

That's good, but also check for dirt when you get back home. The fan simply moves air through a very thin channel below the big flat PPC heatsink. That channel gets easily blocked by dust.

Also, this happened within minutes of first use, barely any time for the unit to heat much.

Without a CPU fan, my BlizzardPPC/BVision combo survives about three minutes.

CD0 was found in the boot menu when

Okay, so your CD drive is probably installed correctly (cables, termination...).

Could you post the whole contents of your "CD0" file? It's just a textfile, perhaps something is set up incorrectly.

Is it even possible to boot OS3.9 from CD?

No. You have to create an "Emergency Disk" which is bootable and will 'boot' the CD afterwards.