Amiga 3000 Boot Freeze

[mrtropicguy]

I’m attempting to restore an A3000 I recently acquired. After removing the battery and cleaning up a small amount of damage to the RTC circuit I was able to boot the board to workbench from the SCSI drive (amazing since it was so old).  I was also able to boot some floppy games.

I am now unable to boot without the system freezing up somewhere in the boot process. I’m unable to get anything from the hard drive to boot. If I try floppies I’ll usually get the intro or a crack screen to load then the process will hang or freeze and require a soft reboot or power cycle. It always seems to happen at the same point for any particular game.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I should try to troubleshoot?  I’ve tried removing the zip RAM and I swapped out the chip RAM.  I also tried using Denise, Paula, and CIA chips from a donor Amiga. I’m not sure where to go next. Could it be the power supply?  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[matt3k]

Based on your symptoms, most likely a virus.

One thing to note, I have dealt with many 3000s like yours.  I would plan on a failure related to bad traces/vias at some point within 6 months.  Make sure you clean the board well.

If you have the original pals order some gals.

[mrtropicguy]

The game disks boot fine in other systems so I don%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8217;t a virus would be the cause. Seems like maybe some kind of hardware issue but I can%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8217;t put my finger on it.

[mrtropicguy]

I%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8217;ve tried original game disks and some that were cracked copies which both work fine in other systems so I%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8217;m not sure how a virus could be the cause.  Seems like it might be related to the hardware somehow.  

Thanks for the cleaning tips. There was really only a slight bit of damage to the RTC circuit.  I cleaned the whole side of the PCB so hopefully I neutralized everything, but I guess only time will tell.

[mrtropicguy]

I’ve tried original game disks and some that were cracked copies which both work fine in other systems so I’m not sure how a virus could be the cause.  Seems like it might be related to the hardware somehow.  

Thanks for the cleaning tips. There was really only a slight bit of damage to the RTC circuit.  I cleaned the whole side of the PCB so hopefully I neutralized everything, but I guess only time will tell.

[mrtropicguy]

I did some research on the PAL chip. Looks like they should be easy to replace. Thanks for the tip.  Any chance these issues would be caused by bad PAL chips?

[don27dog]

Make sure you check the scsi termination.

[mrtropicguy]

Thanks for the tip. It was missing the termination resistors from the motherboard but it was booting fine without them before I started seeing the problem. I did manage to find a set of termination resistors but adding them didn’t resolve the issue.

[mechy]

Thanks for the tip. It was missing the termination resistors from the motherboard but it was booting fine without them before I started seeing the problem. I did manage to find a set of termination resistors but adding them didn’t resolve the issue.

will it boot completely from a clean 3.1 workbench or install floppy?

[mrtropicguy]

It still has 2.04 ROMs and I don’t have a set of Workbench 2 disks. That’s a good suggestion though. I’ll find a set and give them a try.