A600 woes!?!

[demonblaze]

Hi I've recently bought an A600 from a car-boot sale with an A500 and 1084S Monitor. The A500 and monitor works peferctly (was a bargain for £40 considering it also included the 512kb expansion) but on switching on the A600 all I gets is a black screen whilst the leds all light up and seem to 'stick'. No noises or anything really. Any ideas?

[amigakit]

Is it equipped with a hard drive?

Can you hold down left mouse button when booting to go into the Early Boot Menu?

We can provide A600 repairs if you have no luck.

[Dagon]

Check if it has still its rom inside. He could have ripped them off, you never know

[demonblaze]

Thanks for all the feedback. Tried the A600 again with all the psu's I have (was worth a shot  :-P ) but zilch. When I turn it on, the power light comes on and so does caps lock but it makes no attempt to do anything else. No floppy drive clicking or purple disk screen. But I'm gonna try and open her up later when it's safe. In the mean-time any other ideas? Thanks

[demonblaze]

Just opened up the case and according to the motherboad I have a revision 1.5 machine. All chips seem to be there and unfried although... a chip marked 4.433619 KDS 2E (it's silver and is near the top left of the motherboard)was a little elevated compared to the rest. Could it be that a solder connection is broken on the left side? I see 2 looking fine on the right? And could this be the trouble?

[adz]

demonblaze wrote:
Just opened up the case and according to the motherboad I have a revision 1.5 machine. All chips seem to be there and unfried although... a chip marked 4.433619 KDS 2E (it's silver and is near the top left of the motherboard)was a little elevated compared to the rest. Could it be that a solder connection is broken on the left side? I see 2 looking fine on the right? And could this be the trouble?

Sounds like an oscilator rather than a chip, try exerting a little downward force on the kickstart chip (the only socketed chip on the board), it may not be seated correctly.

[Hyperspeed]

Isn't the black screen reporting a missing CPU?

This is the A1200 warning colour, maybe the 68000 is not sitting
properly in your A600.

Another problem could be the machine's SCART plug isn't in firmly in
the back of the display or something simple like that.

[demonblaze]

I'll check the kickstart chip and see what happens as for it being scart, it's definetly not. The power and caps led come on together and there's a single click of the drive but that's it. Dosn't even run through the start test which made me think it could be the kickstart chip. Can anyone tell me where I can get another 2.05 chip? Preferabily one which'll let me install a HD bigger than 40mb (v37.500) and you mentioned about it being socketed... that means if I was to replace it, it would require no soldering, right? Thanks for all the help  :-D

*Update* I checked the chip to see if it was sitting right and it seems to be. Maybe the chip is just dead and if possible how could this happen?!?

[Hyperspeed]

What makes you think it's the Kickstart chip?

The custom chips will still notify you of a component failure such as bad ROM by outputting a red screen to your display.

I once had a hilarious problem with my X-Box whereby the screen would only display in black & white in RF/Composite modes. After arranging for Microsoft to collect and re-deliver it 3 times, with them totally baffled (and costing them £60 with Securicor), I found out my TV's battery backup was dead and had forgotten the colour settings.

Obviously I didn't mean to cause Microsoft all this hassle and expense. Hehe

Maybe you should get another cheap A600 and swap ROMs to see, at least then you'll be able to eliminate suspicions and have a machine (with accesories!) for spares/sale.

:-)

[demonblaze]

Well for one my tv works with all my consoles and other amigas (not to mention that it does the same with my 1084S monitor) and secondly because the power light comes on and sticks... it should flash first as the operating system goes through various tests. And if it was bad CIA chips then surely it would boot up so far and then give me an error instead of a black screen. As for the x-box well, I've got better taste in consoles than that buddy  :-P . Heh anyhoo I'm gonna send my A600 to Amigakit when I've got the cash so as to support someone who still supports the best lines of computers ever built  :-D

[Doobrey]

Hyperspeed wrote:
Isn't the black screen reporting a missing CPU?

This is the A1200 warning colour, maybe the 68000 is not sitting
properly in your A600.

Nope, there is no error screen for a missing CPU..what would the startup code in the ROM run on to test for it?

But as for why it ain't booting, could be any number of things.
Faulty cpu/kickstart or one of the custom chips.
Something shorting out or a damaged trace of the motherboard,maybe the previous owner jammed something in the PCMCIA port and bent some pins together?

The ROM could be checked by putting it in an A500 or A2000, but as everything else is surface mounted there isn't a lot you can do except grab the A600 schematics and spending an evening with a multimeter checking for blown resistors and ferrite beads,dead capacitors and making sure power is getting to the right places.

[scuzzb494]

Hi

I had an A600 with very similar problems. Thing is if I left the computer for twenty minutes or so it would fire up and run just fine. I would then switch off and dead in the water. You could try taking the floppy drive off and checking to see if the cable undernieth is fitted properly, these can cause this kind of problem, particularly if the cable has been reconnected the wrong way. Capacitors can cause probs on the A600 and I would guess its either a dead chip or a capacitor. The machine was probably faulty when you got it so no way of really knowing.

Anyway I simply got another motherboard for mine and it works just fine now.

Check out the following three pages from my site which will show you the inner workings of the A600. Not much help, but great fun in the end..

http://www.scuzz.org.uk/amiga/amiga_scuzz93.htm

http://www.scuzz.org.uk/amiga/amiga_scuzz94.htm

http://www.scuzz.org.uk/amiga/amiga_scuzz101.htm

For the whole site check out...

http://www.scuzz.org.uk/amiga/a_amiga_inframe.htm

scuzz

[Hyperspeed]

demonblaze: I bought my X-Box in the blissful knowledge that Microsoft made a significant loss on all consoles sold in order to make the profit on games. I buy the games second hand.

:-D

I only got it for Jet Set Radio Futur but despite it being a lump of a machine it's a very good bit of kit (700Mhz Pentium, GeForce 3, 64MB RAM, 8GB hard disk).

The bizarre thing with the X-Box is only now is a console capable of having an operating system hacked onto it by coders and emulators etc. put on it. Even though people were doing much more with the CD32 SX1/SX32 nearly a decade earlier!

As for the A600 problem, yeah it would make sense there's no CPU-missing screen. The thread I read before must have had their wires crossed.

:-D

Wizard Developments (aka Compute!) had a dedicated setup to check for faults and I think there are machines or software that can immediately pick up on some lost signal or timing problem. Maybe AmigaKit.com has diagnostic software to avoid you spending the evening with the multimeter!

:-)

[demonblaze]

Heh I hope Bill Gates gets the pineapple when he's in hell (Little Nicky quote there if you didn't know  ;-) ) But yup I'm gonna try and raise the funds to send it to amiga kit. I could always buy another motherboard and fit myself but I'd like to support the community. Thanks for all the help though. Now all I need is a set of some workbench 3.1 (Escom) disks to reformat it's hard drive as mine dissapeared when I moved house lol. If it's not one sodding thing it's another... at least my cd32, a500 and monitor is working perfect!

[fragment]

demonblaze wrote:
Just opened up the case and according to the motherboad I have a revision 1.5 machine. All chips seem to be there and unfried although... a chip marked 4.433619 KDS 2E (it's silver and is near the top left of the motherboard)was a little elevated compared to the rest. Could it be that a solder connection is broken on the left side? I see 2 looking fine on the right? And could this be the trouble?

That oscillator only has two legs and is bent to save space, so it is normal that it feels a bit loose.

When I turn it on, the power light comes on and so does caps lock..

Does it blink or just stay on forever? If it stays on, it could indicate a problem with the keyboard.

Why not try using that ROM from your A500?