A1200T + BPPC (Resolved)

[alexh]

I have to say that looking at the photographs of your BPPC you can see that it's had it's two crystals replaced AND the Zero Ohm link jumpers (clock multiplier settings) changed sometime after it was sold (i.e. neither are factory issue)

Pressumably these mods were to overclock both the 040 (33MHz) / 060 (66MHz) and PPC (266MHz).

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/giorsign/overclock.html

 Just looking at the soldering work you can see it was not done to.. lets say.. "the highest" of standards. Not only did they not clean up all of the PCB resist with some alcohol afterwards, you can see where they accidentally melted part of the plastic on the top of SIMM socket with the soldering iron when they were doing the mod :-)

[nyteschayde]

I wished I had known it was overclocked from the get go. Effy never bothered letting me know that he was selling an overclocked accelerator. These things are super picky about being touched let alone going under the torch so to speak by an amateur.

Sigh. I suppose someone will point out what I have found after receiving the card; which is that they never made a 68040 @ 33Mhz, 603e @ 200MHz model. I also noticed after the purchase that the fan on the 040 was added.

As far as the voltage goes I am still trying to find my multi-meter. And finally as some have inquired about the Mediator/Voodoo situation in my A4K it seems that it has something to do with the MMU.

Karlos mentioned it may be an incorrect 040.library since the voodoo started working when I used the following two commands

cpu >nil: nocache noburst nodatacache nodataburst
cpu >nil: nocache noburst datacache databurst

but not when I use

cpu >nil: instcache instburst datacache databurst

Thats all for now. The BPPC still creates a black screen whilst the A1200T without the BPPC works fine. The BPPC does the same with or without RAM and never lets me into either the early access ROM menu nor the ESC BPPC menu.

[alexh]

nyteshcayde wrote:they never made a 68040 @ 33Mhz, 603e @ 200MHz [/b]

Reading the multiplier settings on your board photo, "1010" it's a 4x clock with a 66MHz crystal, that's ~266MHz as I read it. The only way you'll know for sure what speed the board was originally would be to remove the heatsinks and read the ratings off the chips. But I wouldnt recommend doing that.

nyteshcayde wrote: I also noticed after the purchase that the fan on the 040 was added.[/b]

040's need heatsinks and fans, they are significantly hotter than 060's.

P.S. Please dont bin it, or take a hammer to it in disgust. I still feel that Effy wouldnt sell you a dead board and it's more likely an incompatibility issue.

[nyteschayde]

I have not given up yet nor will I just toss it away. I know even if I cannot get it up and running somebody else can. I have not completely decided that its Effy's fault yet either but if it turns out to be I doubt I'll get my money back and that makes me sad.

Effy has some standing here at A.org and many people seem to know him. I hope that the product turns out to be a working unit. I am just not having a lot of luck at the moment with this.

[ckillerh3]

Note the tag line "Too Much Caffiene".
Relax please :  )
I know you've spent some good money
on your accelerator and A1200T but
half the fun (I find) is tinkering
with the parts until you get them
to work.  There is always a great
feeling of accomplishment when just
by moving a jumper, or soldering in/out
a cap, that the system wakes up and
you're greeted with the friendly boot-up
menu.  Hang in there and keep tinkering.
Lots of folks here to help and offer tips
also.  Don't feel like you're alone !
You'll get to the other side for sure.

[Effy]

About the BPPC, of course it is overclocked as there is no 33 Mhz BPPC sold as you can find on The Big Book, that´s the first place where I look for information when I am not sure about a product. The PPC used to run at 160 Mhz and had a four hour 100% processorload for testing and it worked like a dream. There have been reports about other 160 Mhz PPC´s that have been overclocked to 225 Mhz and still worked very well. The 68040 used to run at 25 Mhz and is now clocked at 33 Mhz. It may survive with a big heatsink but the best thing with an 68040 is indeed always to add a cooler, even on an 25 Mhz one.
The card was working when I sold it to you for 215 Euro including 128 Mb Simm + 64 Mb Simm and including 19 Euro shipping to the USA so from my point of view this was not a high price for a good working BPPC card. I have seen many higher prices being asked at AmiBench and even at Ebay. And just for the record, I am not the type of guy who sells broken cards, there´s no fun in doing that, at least not for me ...

[alexh]

For me the fun bit is looking at Effy's girlfriends boobs on his adverts :roll:

[Robert17]

Effy is a well respected seller within this community, and I'm sure he didn't knowingly sell a defective unit. Amiga items aren't getting any younger, it took me almost 2 months to get my CyberstormPPC working properly, with the help of people here, so just be patient. FYI it cost more than $500  :-P

[AmigaMance]

For me the fun bit is looking at Effy's girlfriends boobs on his adverts

HEY! He is married! :-P

[Effy]

No I am not, I have a steady girlfriend which is in my eyes similar to marriage  :lol:

[nyteschayde]

@all

Hmm I thought I set a mostly positive note in my last post but it has been taken the wrong way. Let me reiterate in bold this time; I have not given up yet nor will I just toss it away. I know even if I cannot get it up and running somebody else can.

All in all I think I am doing as well as can be expected of the situation. I am very thankful everbody is here. Granted my life is very busy and I don't really have a lot of time to be dealing with this extra headache but getting my A4K to work with the mediator/voodoo solution has improved my attitude somewhat.

I am well aware of the age of Amiga parts given I got my first Amiga in 89. I had to do a fair amount of soldering on the A500 I had back then too but I had taken a long break from using Amigas outside an emulator until fairly recently and have become quite spoiled by building modern PCs.

I greatly appreciate the advice and knowledge presented by the folks on A.org which is why I came to you guys with my problems. This whole transaction was a big collection of assumption (Effy's part) and lack of general knowledge of AGA and PPC Amigas (on my part). Those things coupled with lack of communication set the stage for a very sour taste.

I am doing my best to make the situation a good one which is why I mentioned that if in the end I find I have a bad part I will be sad. (<--- Notice the use of the word sad rather than mad).

I am looking for the giant reset button for the various attitudes of all including myself on this thread so that I can progress and figure out if I am capable of fixing this board or if I must cut my losses and find someone who can.

Remember that there are no Amiga repair facilities left (to my knowledge) in the United States where I reside. And the Amiga community here is at least half what it is in Europe; and we all know that isn't much.

At this point it looks like I need to do the following things:

1. Check the voltage on my power supply
2. Remove my mobo from the case, turn it over and desolder the two capacitors.

If I am missing something please let me know. I would like to go in with as much knowledge as I can before hand. Although slow I have tried to provide pictures along the way the whole time.

[CLS2086]

Yes you missed that :
0 - Clean the expansion connector with a special electrical contact cleaner, Check the motherboard if any track were cut, check the speed jumpers and the quartz if they are well solded (the cause have broke with the transport...). For the 68040 you can also try to resold it.
(My BPPC 060 gave me a similar trick after a long time getting hot).

 :rtfm:

[nyteschayde]

Which connection was bad? See my next post to see that the timing fixes had already been applied to my board.

[CLS2086]

The 68040/68060 connections might be bad like mine were.

[PulsatingQuasar]

@nyteschayde

Do you have it running now?

If no, what are you going to do with it?

On a note. BlizzardPPC's seem to simply work with me in 1D4 motherboards without the fixes.

[nyteschayde]

No nothing works. Seems "my next post" never posted. Anyhow, I tried a second motherboard and both motherboards do not need the fix. I don't know what I am going to do with it. I have a 300+ USD paper weight.

Both motherboards work fine without the card and deliver a black screen with the board.

Out of ideas here.