A3000d - Zorro mysteries

[spyros1973]

Hello to everybody. Recently, I've been facing some mysterious behaviour with my A3000 computer and I will appreciate any help towards solving it.

The little baby is a 9.0 revision machine, with SuperBuster 7, MDAC 2 and Ramsey 04. It was equipped with an A3640, 2MB Chip, 8MB FAST in ZIP form onboard and another 8MB in a Zorro card. The machine has an internal SCSI 2.1GB WD disk and it runs OS 3.9

Recently, I bought a Picasso II and a Hypercom 3z (fast serial & parallel port card)... and the problems begun.

Basically, connecting any of the 3 cards alone to the machine works fine. Connecting two of them, results in some of them not working. For example, connecting the Picasso and the Zorro RAM card results in the Picasso not working (Picasso96 can't see the board to attach the settings to). Changing the Picasso to segmented memory mode makes no difference.

Connecting the Hypercom card and the Zorro RAM card to the machine disables the Zorro RAM card (without in being reported as defective in the early startup menu).

Connecting the Picasso and the Hypercom results to the Picasso not being "seen" by the machine.

Removing the A3640 and setting the mobo to work with the on-board 68030 changes nothing.

So, that's the mystery... Any ideas?

Spyros  :-?  :-?

[freak]

I think that your problem is the memory addressing space of the ZorroII bus.  IIRC ZorroII can only address 8MB of ram.

The PicassoII and the Hypercom 3z are both ZorroII cards and they will allocate some space within the ZorroII memory.

If your RAM card is also a ZorroII card then it probably uses all 8MB of ZorroII space and it will not get along with any other ZorroII cards unless you can remove some memory from the card.

I don't know why the Picasso and Hypercom cards don't get along.  I have never owned these cards but I guess that the PicassoII card probably takes 1 or 2MB and the Hypercom 3z probably takes less than 1MB.

Try running ShowConfig with each card separately and that will tell you how much Zorro memory each card is using.

[artman]

If I remember rightly, any graphics card in the A3000 must be in a certain slot to work correctly, like the one closest to the mobo I think.  Just grasping at straws so to speak, trying to help.  Best regards...Art

[spyros1973]

Thanks for the suggestion. It's something I have already trying (it's obvious I was desperate ) - I tried all possible options, but nothing worked. I tend to believe it has something to do with the SuperBuster chip.

[spyros1973]

If the problem has to do with the Zorro II memory addresing, I think that the problem would appear only when using the Zorro RAM expansion. Then again, I'm almost clueless in this situation, so I wouldn't know.

I'll try the ShowConfig approach and post here the output, trying to find a solution.

To be honest, as I previously said, I tend to attribute the problem to the SuperBuster chip - I think I should try to find a rev 11 chip to solve "mysterious" Zorro problems. I tried my luck at softhut.com, but they are out of stock at the moment.

Thanks for the suggestions in any case,
Spyros

[MrZammler]

Geia sou Spyro,

I guess you have already tried all the obvious stuff, it's a mystery why these cards dont work...

My 3000 worked fine with superbuster 7 and a Picasso II and an X-surf II. I have since upgraded to buster 11, but that would only be required if there was any DMA board installed.

Have you tried messing with any jumpers on the mobo?

Anyway, sorry I cant really help, but if you need a fellow A3000D Greek owner to test/discuss, let me know (i'll be hanging around #amigahellas too).

[Framiga]

Hi spyros1973

which A3640 revision model?

and the ZorroII mem card, uses DMA? if yes, its the SuperBuster 7 the problem

Good luck :-)

[nex4060]

to my knoledge, only some zorro3 cards might have a problem with the super buster v7. All zorro2 should work fine.

which version of the 3640 card do you have, since there are all sorts of problems with the older versions.

[spyros1973]

The 3640 rev is 3.1, but I also made some testing after removing it and working with the onboard 68030 - still the same results.

Another thing that puzzes me with the machine is that when the Picasso is not connected and I run in ECS 640x512 mode, I see some icon corruption when double-clicking on icons (=the highlighted icon appears corrupted). This problem disappears when I use the Picasso, probably indicating that some chip RAM is faulty? Can these problems be connected?

Another thing that isre ported to cause problems with some Zorro cards is the ob-board SCSI controller. I haven't located  the proper jumper to disable it but even if I did, I wouldn't have a hard disk and thus an OS installation to test the machine's behavior!

MrZammler - I'd be happy to meet another fellow amiga user (even though I mostly belong in the "Amiga nostalgists now"). Visit my site at www.paraschis.gr for my contact details.

[MrZammler]

spyros1973 wrote:
Another thing that puzzes me with the machine is that when the Picasso is not connected and I run in ECS 640x512 mode, I see some icon corruption when double-clicking on icons (=the highlighted icon appears corrupted). This problem disappears when I use the Picasso, probably indicating that some chip RAM is faulty? Can these problems be connected?

MrZammler - I'd be happy to meet another fellow amiga user (even though I mostly belong in the "Amiga nostalgists now"). Visit my site at www.paraschis.gr for my contact details.

Hmm, try pressing down on the chip mem chips make sure every other chip is correctly seated. What's the status on the battery btw?