Help an Amiga neophyte get his "new" A1000 up and running (KickStart problem)

[Frobozz]

Heya everybody,

A guy who works for my dad has been going on about how fantastic Amiga machines are for as long as I can remember, so when an opportunity presented itself to get ahold of one, I lept at it.  So here I am with a new Amiga 1000.  The guy who I got it from was kind enough to include a copy of Kickstart 1.3 with it, but I've yet to get the damned thing to actually boot up with it.  

I can't ever get past the Kickstart disk icon you get when you turn the machine on.  When Kickstart is being run after the disk is inserted, all I get is a gray screen and the computer just sits there (although it did flash yellow this one time and that got me very hopeful) - no prompt to put in the Workbench disk, nothing.

I asked my dad's employee what I ought to do, but as he as an A1200 he wasn't sure, so I turn to you, the Internet.  Does anyone have any suggestions; am I doing something wrong or is my Kickstart disk borked?

[FastRobPlus]

Can you confirm - is this really a Kickstart 3.1 disk?

An Amiga 1000 in its stock configuration will generally take a Kickstart 1.1, 1.2, or 1.3 disk.  So a 3.1 disk will not work.

A yellow screen on a 1000 during boot is a kind of error, but if it goes away and you don't see it again, it often just means that the memory became corrupt due to a to-quck power cycle.

[Frobozz]

Sorry, that was a typo.  It's version 1.3.

[FastRobPlus]

So it appears to be reading the disk (seeking for 20-30 seconds) rather than just looking over the disk and re-displaying the Kickstart prompt?

If so, you may well have a corrupt KS disk.

If it does seem to be reading in:
I'd guess in order of probability, it's either the KS disk, the drive, a poorly seated chip, or bad memory.

There are a former CBM authorized A1000 techs who might be able to chime in with more info.

The easiest t-shooting would be to clean the drive if you have a drive cleaner handy. Opening the box up and pressing all the chips firmly into thier sockets is also free and easy, if a bit time consuming.

If you can't obtain a known good kickstart disk, someone here can probably provide you one. I'm on the other side of the continent, but if you can't source one locally, I can mail you one (send me a PM mail.)

[Frobozz]

Okay, I'll try my hand at cleaning the drive.  Thanks for the help - I'll report back when there's something to know

[shaf]

It might be a bad CIA Chip also. If you cam PM me, I can probably get another copy of KickStart 1.3 out to you.

Rob is correct , try cleaning the Drive first, I usually disassembled the A1000 FDD and Cleaned the Heads with a Cotton swab and Isopropyl alcahol. Cleaning disks are a wast of money, When ther Drive assembly is open try checking if the motor gear is properly lubricated al;so, and clean out the dust on the sensors.


I did have to replace my internal drive on my A1000 after 8 years of constant use.

Cheers

Shaf

[shayes1981]

Didn't the A1000 need to do the kickstart thing first, then boot with a workbench disk after it loaded the kickstart into memory?  It's been probably 15 years since I did that, and then only for a short time, but it sticks in my mind you had to use two different disks to get the thing past the kickstart screen.

[FastRobPlus]

You are correct.  You get first a kickstart prompt, and once kickstart has loaded, the machine softboots itself and you get a workbench prompt. But I think the issue here is that we aren't getting past the Kikstart load to the Workbench prompt.

@Shaf

The 1000 has 2 CIA chips like every other Amiga right?  If cleaning the drive does not work, would it be worth it to try swapping the CIA chips in thier sockets?  That way, if one were bad, you still have a problem, but it would be a *different* problem, and it would confirm the problem is in the CIA chip?

[shayes1981]

Whoops - I missed the part about not getting a prompt  I think something like that happened to me too, but I can't remember what it was.  Oh well - I'm not much help!