Can see Mediator in A4000 but will not initialise after mobo repair

[JohnFante]

I have a A4000D in a tower with CSPPC, Mediator 4000Di MK2, Voodoo 5, SB128 and Ethernet etc.

I have just had my motherboard repaired. Batteryholder needed replacing and I had some sound issues.

I have confidence in the guy who repaired the board and he has assured me that the board was fine when he shipped it. However I have a strange problem that I think is related to the motherboard.

When I boot my machine it sees the Mediator in the early boot menu. But when I try to load an OS that uses the Mediator it resets with and error (OS3.9) or goes into a endless loop (OS4.1).

At first I thougt it was a software issue since when I boot from the OS3.9 emergency disc it boots fine and goes to AGA as it should. There I can also see the Mediator in the sysinfo.

However when I try to boot from the OS4.1 install floppy/disc (that normally autostarts my Mediator graphics card) it also goes to AGA after an guruerror. But also here I can see the Mediator in sysinfo.

I have tried both with my normal Voodoo 5 graphics card and a Radeon 9250.

I have also tried with my CVPPC graphics card. When I boot from the emergency disc it boots fine and I can use RTG but when I boot from a CVPPC partition that has Mediator software installed for my SP128 and network card it resets endlessly.

It can of course be the Mediator that has stopped working but I must admit that I doubt it since it worked fine before and it is only a little under a year.

Any suggestions/advice?

[smf]

What happends if you try to list your pci devices, does it crash or does it give you a correct list of pci devices installed?

[slaapliedje]

I would try re-seating the Mediator.  I have had a problem where it just wasn't seen, took it all out, plugged it back in and it was detected again.  I'd also re-verify that the jumpers on the mediator bus board are set correctly.

slaapliedje

[smf]

I bought a second hand mediator some time ago and i had to take out all the mach chips, clean them and bend out the pins to get it working. Before that i had various problems, one of them was iirc that it would crash if i tried to use it and when listing the pci devices it found around ~40 devices.

[JohnFante]

I have tried resetting the Mediator (several times) since I have had that problem previously. It is not that this time.

Below you can find a link to a sysinfo screenshot. As far as I know that is the correct numbers for a CSPPC with a Mediator.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/139090/Boards.JPG

As mentioned before I think the problem is related to the repairs that has been made on the motherboard. My keyboard (original A4000D keyboard) does not work after the repair. I get different error codes. Two blinks, three blinks and solid light. But no reaction. Just dead.

Tomorrow I will remove the Mediator and put in my old Zorro bridgecard and see if that cures things.

Thank you for all your suggestions.

[JohnFante]

Well I think it is the Mediator that is acting up.

I replaced it with my old zorro bridgecard and now everything works fine.

Any suggestions on how to fix a Mediator? :-)

I do not think it is done with a cleaning etc. since it is only a year old. I think something is broken. But I could be wrong :-(

[mechy]

Well I think it is the Mediator that is acting up.

I replaced it with my old zorro bridgecard and now everything works fine.

Any suggestions on how to fix a Mediator? :-)

I do not think it is done with a cleaning etc. since it is only a year old. I think something is broken. But I could be wrong :-(

As suggested before,pop each chip on the mediator bridge and inspect/reseat the chips. sockets often develop contact problems like this.
worst case you may need to send the mediator bridge back to elbox and have it fixed.


Mech

[JohnFante]

Ok. I will try that.

I have a new problem however :-)

The sound volume is very, very low. I have to turn my speakers up to max to get just a little sound. The quality is ok just very low.

Sound was one of the things I had fixed and it worked fine yesterday. Maybe I have destroyed a soldering or something when I was fiddeling around with the Mediator.

It is not a PSU problem. I use a high quality PC PSU.

Any suggestions? As far as I remember low sound is normally a problem with one or two of the capacitors near the sound output.

[slaapliedje]

Just a quick suggestion, did you play with the mixer in Prefs?  

Funny story, I was getting all pissed off 'cause my sound wasn't working from my Amiga.  Well, I have a receiver connected to both my PC and my Amiga, and DVD/6Ch input is set up for the PC and CD input is set up for the Amiga.  I had it set to CD, but no sound was coming out, I was starting to get frustrated.. then finally figured out it was because I had turned off the speakers (it has the A or B set of speakers to switch between) I had been using my headphones through it, and forgotten to push the A button for that set of speakers again!

Also, and this may be a bit dumb, but do you have headphones plugged into it?  Would explain why it's really low, until you turn it up really high...  Yes... I've done that before too...

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

On the note of Mediators acting up.  Mine was acting up horribly last night, and at the same time my hard drive's partitions decided to take a dump.

The Mediator was weird though, the expansion board list showed it working, but my Zorram card was saying it was 'Defective'.  So I had to re seat it 4 times, and were testing out each of the PCI cards individually.  The Radeon card kept crashing until I put in the ethernet and spider2.  Weird stuff.  I didn't re seat the chips though, I just kind of pushed them in a little.  It seems to be working now, I just need to get the OS back up to where it was...

slaapliedje