Help, dead Amiga 1200!

[GreggBz]

I think I might have killed my 1200.
I was finagleing with the hardrive connecter, trying to mount a laptop hardrive adaptor backwards so that it would allow me to plug in a 3.5" hardrive without hacking up a cable.  I was connecting the adaptor to the MB and then plugging a 40 pin IDE cable into that.
You know one of those plug your laptop hardrive into your desktop adaptors...

It worked initially, and then it just stoped. I played genetic species for a while and it started locking up..

I then disconnected the hardrive and booted up.. just fine, but it still kept locking up periodically. After a few more times, I started seeing red screens on bootup. So, I thought it might be a ROM problem. I reseted my ROMS and that didn't help. Now, it won't even start up at all.
I get nowhere. No clicking drive, no kickstart screen nothing just black. The capslock key does blink once, like it should but nothing else.

What's wrong? Do I have bad rom chips?? argh.. I love my amiga dearly and would hate to see it go..
Any Sugestions?

[Ilwrath]

Hmm...  May I ask a question of you?  Why do you think it is ROM related?  The RED-screen is not an error that shows up too often.  It *IS* listed as a ROM error, but, personally, most ROM related issues I have seen in my experience generated yellow screen errors.  While RED screens were usually more difficult...  :-(  (In fact, only machine I ever saw a consistant RED screen error on had multiple problems caused by a power surge)

Some thoughts...  This laptop HD adaptor you hooked up backwards.... Did you make sure you had it hooked up to the right pins, and that you weren't still passing power from your A1200 mainboard to your HD cable?  Also, make sure that the adaptor isn't shorting power to a ground?  Or that any pins on the A1200 mainboard are shorting together?  Or that the adaptor is shorting against the metal RF shielding?  The A1200 passes power in it's laptop-style connector, and shorting that power could have disasterous side-effects.  Correcting the short may or may not cure your problems.

[Ilwrath]

Oooh... Looking over my old notes... One more thing struck me.  Check to make sure you didn't jar your keyboard connector loose!  It's a strange connector for that ribbon cable, and a single flash of CAPS lock can sometimes denote a keyboard interface failure.  (Though that typically wouldn't generate a black or red screen failure) It's worth checking on.  

[GreggBz]

I've made sure the keyboard connector was attached well.
No luck.

I'm wondering if it's my power supply. It spent a few years running a 5.25 inch hardrive and a apollo 030 card. Perhaps it's given up.

However, if I disconnect everything and hit the power button I get the same results. The whoe thing has me frustrated..

Looking at error colors online brought me to the conclusion that a red screen error was a result of bad roms. Can I take the roms out of the mother board and power it up to see what happens? Is there any way to troubleshoot this?

[Quixote]

:-( Well, if you get the red screen with the ROMs out, and a black screen with the ROMs in, then they are probably okay.  If you get a black screen all of the time, the trouble may be with the video chips, or circuits related to the video chips.

:-? Can you see or  smell any burned circuits or components?

;-) Try hooking up the RCA video out and seeing whether you get a signal there.  Other than that, in your place I'd move each component , in turn, to a known good system and determine which ones were ruined that way.

[GreggBz]

This all started with intermitant lockups, and a red screen on startup. Hmm...

Roms in, black screen.
Roms out, black screen.

Does'nt look good does it?

No ozone smell or burnt things.

[DaveP]

Sounds like you are screwed to me. The only
time I had this problem was solved by taking off
the accelerator card ( which was screwed and shorting for some bizarre reason ).