ROMS????

[melott]

Help......
I have a problem..... I have an A3k SoftKick.
I bought an A3640 accelerator to get a little more
speed, then I found out that the board won't run
with my roms. So, even though I didn't really want
to, I bought 3.1 roms and replaced the Ver 36 roms.
Now heres where the fun starts..... I installed the
3.1 roms. The machine won't fire-up with the
3640 board (bad board ??). OK, with some disappointment, I put the machine back togather.
Now it doesn't acknowledge the harddrive. It can
see the external box with extra HD & CD Rom.
So...... I opened the external box and tried that drive
internally. nope...... Is it the roms?
I switched back to the old roms.....nope, didn't work.
I reseated the connections .. the drive was there.
So I connected the origonal drive... worked.
So I changed the roms again to 3.1 .. both drives
worked.
I started reassembling the machine again... drive
not working again.
I don't beleave it is in the connections...I've check &
rechecked them.
When I fire it up the HD chatters as normal and the
light winks which tells me that some part of the system
 is reconizing the drive but WorkBench isn't.
HDTools sais it isn't there but the system
appears to say that it is. I am very careful when
working inside the thing ...
It should work but doesn't.......
Anyone have any ideas ......
I kinda think its timing or something like that, but
thats only my uninformed guess
I hate fumbling around, as you can create new
problems (as I did) .

HELPPPP :-?
Mel Ott

[blobrana]

"-First debuted on the A3000T40 system, the 3640 is a 040 CPU    board for the 200 pin FAST connector on A3000/4000 systems.    It uses a 68040 with integral FPU and MMU, clocked at 25 Mhz.    Many revisions of the board exist, with varying degrees of    compatibility-some A3000 owners have installed the board   successfully in A3000 desktop models, but the general idea  is that Commodore found the 3640 too hot for the A3000.  They  can also be found in A4000/040 and A4000T40 systems, but the  A3640 addresses onboard RAM in a slower 030 mode, making  these machines slower in RAM access than the 030 models.  Some units may have shipped with crippled LC/EC040 chips..."

It seem to me the CPU and motherboard are on different clocks...a timing thing.
could be the chips overheating...

try it without the cd-rom connected.(!?)

http://www2.shore.net/~mdevoe/3640cutandjump.html

anyone else?

 :-?

[Herewegoagain]

Hmmm.  Just had my A3000 apart.  I'm running the 3640 in mine and it has always worked ok.  But as I recall, there were about 3 or so jumper settings that had to be made on the motherboard and they did have to do with timing differences when using the 3640.  There was also Buster rev11 (min rev9, I think) for it to work, and one other chip (Gary maybe??) that had to be Rev 7.  This is probably the root of all your problems.  I remember specifically that I had to change timing jumpers on the motherboard though.

Mine problems now are worse.  I just got the thing connected to the broadband cable connection earlier today and it worked great.  I had a couple of lockups with sucessful reboots.  Then it quit booting at all.  Just a black screen.  The monitor gets a sync light, but it never attempts to boot (no hd led activity).  A CTRL+A+A will reset as the hd reinits, but still a black screen and no attempt of disk activity.  I've gone all the way down to the mainboard reseating everything about 3 times....I think something in mine has finally died.     :-(

[Ilwrath]

@melott-
Hmm...  I never had good luck with the 3640 board in an A3000.  But, I was attempting to install it into a very old 3000, also.  (early softkick 1.4 machine that I had upgraded to 3.1 roms)  I never could get it to run stable, and most of the time it would hang in startup or earlier.  There are other things that need to be upgraded in an early 3000 for it to be able to take advantage of the 3640.  (Buster, DMAC and Ramsey, if I remember right.)

The hard drive that goes missing -- Personally, I'd check your internal ribbon cable, and make sure it's intact and doesn't have any breaks or bad connections.  Also, make sure you don't have anything grounding / shorting against the bottom of your hard drive.

@herewegoagain -
Well... It sounds like you know the drill...  Remove everything from the 3000 (zorro cards, etc) and try to boot it clean with a minimal setup, and then start adding back from there.  I had a zorro network card (x-surf, if it matters) fail in a 4000 that caused a very similiar set of error conditions.  Hopefully it's just an accessory that has died, and your miggy itself is ok.

[Herewegoagain]

Well... It sounds like you know the drill... Remove everything from the 3000 (zorro cards, etc) and try to boot it clean with a minimal setup, and then start adding back from there. I had a zorro network card (x-surf, if it matters) fail in a 4000 that caused a very similiar set of error conditions. Hopefully it's just an accessory that has died, and your miggy itself is ok.

Yeah, unfortunately, I know it all too well.  After I got it reassembled, I left out the CV64/3D and Ariadne II ethernet card, just to keep it minimal.  I even disconnected both hard drives in case they were causing a problem, but nothing.... I've had a similiar thing happen before, and reseating the daughter card usually takes care of it, but not this time.

[melott]

Well ...
 I did remove the A3640 card. I'm not sure it would
give me that big a boost that it is worth the trouble.
Anyway I did strip the machine down and test after
adding each part.
Forgetting about the A3640 card (its removed), the
system acts like the internal HD is there but WB
doesn't see it. The way it act, the SCSI is still working
because it activates the internal drive and WB sees
the external drive & CD rom, Icons come up.
I would think if the internal SCSI cable was bad then I
would not see the drive light acting as normal and hear it cattering like I nornally hear.
It seem that some how the 3.1 roms have something
to do with it. I've had this machine apart several
times and never run into this problem.
These roms are NEW (not used) so its reasonable
to assume they are OK. I'm just wondering if by
changing roms it threw off the timing some place
else.
Could it be that the drive is not validating???
Still looking
Mel Ott :-?

[Herewegoagain]

These roms are NEW (not used) so its reasonable
to assume they are OK. I'm just wondering if by
changing roms it threw off the timing some place
else.

I don't think it is possible for a change in Roms to interfere with timing.

Could it be that the drive is not validating???

So you cannot see the drive from Workbench, but what if you open up HDToolbox?  Does it see it attached at all?  Also, what version of OS are you running with the 3.1 roms?

[Herewegoagain]

WoooHoooo!  Just got my A3000 working again!  I'm posting this reply from Ibrowse 2.3 on my broadband connection.  :-D

Persistance with that 3640.  Oh, and yes you will see a difference with this card installed.  There are some benefits of having an 040 in there.  If you are using a card like CV64/3D (like me) then it will only work in ZII mode without an 040.  With the 040, it works in full ZIII mode.  Don't remember where I read that, but that's the way I remember it.

[melott]

WoooHoooo! Just got my A3000 working again!

What did you do to get it going???
Did you have to change any jumpers or what.
I checked Amiga-Hardware.com but didn't see
anything that needed to be changed.
When I plug mine in the machine does nothing.
All I get is a black screen. NOTHING .
Is this what you started with??
I still don't have the drive problem fix yet.
I just keep checking different things but
no luck yet. I'm just not sure where to go with
this.
Any other suggestions??

Mel Ott
 :-(

[Herewegoagain]

What did you do to get it going???
Did you have to change any jumpers or what.

Nope.  Mine was already running before but had just quit booting.  But one final reseat of the 3640 seemed to be what got it booting again.

Here is a link to a good article on installing the 3640 into an A3000, and possible issues.  It gives you the chip revisions you need for DMAC, Ramsey, and Buster (later not required, but recommended).  The thing I was remembering about jumper setting on the mother board had to do with if your system was originally a 16Mhz or 25Mhz '030.  The 16Mhz version required additional settings for it to work with the 3640.

There is also the issue of which revision of the 3640 board you have.  Rev 3.0 will not work at all, so it seems, but Rev 3.1 and 3.2 boards will.  I hope you find all of the info here to get your system running properly.


http://www.l8r.net/technical/t-a3640.shtml

[redrumloa]

@melott

Aaah the joys of an aging A3000, not:-(

A3000:
It's likely fine. Open it up completely with the power completely disconnected. After discharging any static electricity in yourself, press down on each and every socketed chip. If in doubt remove the chips with a proper tool and clean the pins, then resocket it.

A3640: IIRC look at the revision number. If it is rev. 3.0 you are screwed. If it is rev 3.1 or 3.2 it should work but IIRC requires changing of motherboard jumbers. A quick web search should find the jumper settings.

Good luck!

[TheMagicM]

do what redrum said....

the 3640 in a A3k was a tricky one for me.  I had a 3k 030/16mhz...my 3640 rev was 3.1 (3.0 will not work).... there are a few jumpers around where the 3640 plugs that needed to be fiddled with just to get it to boot..

http://www.amigau.com/natamiga/t-a3640.shtml

Just start with 1 thing..plug in the 3.1 roms, no HD, nothing..turn it on..see if it comes to insert floppy screen..then plug the 3640, fiddle w/the jumpers per the webpage..turn it on..etc.

[Herewegoagain]

After discharging any static electricity in yourself, press down on each and every socketed chip.

Ah... I forgot to mention this... Just assumed that because I do it everyone knows to try that.   :-P