Amiga 500 intermittently reboots for no reason!

[meega]

circlip wrote:

ED: meega, I found a little yellow sticker that fell out when I opened the A500 up again. it said "A500 P" and then a serial number. What's the difference between an A500 and A500+ ?

The ROMS, the custom chips, and the keyboard itself. That's about it. It allows more chip RAM (1MB standard, and another 1MB can go in the trapdoor), and offers some more video output modes from the Enhanced Chip Set (ECS). Does the A500 have a battery-backed real-time clock as standard? A500+ does. It also uses Kickstart/Workbench 2 (ROM and disks), and is mostly backward compatible for software - especially if the programmers actually followed the rules.

[Darklight]

Another Aussie, and a Sydney sider too  :-D

If you can spring for another 500, it might be worth grabbing a working one and experimenting on this one - they're usually not too expensive on eBay.  You can never have too many Amiga's  :-P

Send me a message sometime if you need stuff, I may be able to help, I've still got my A500 since new in the 80's  :lol:

[meega]

Is that it in your avatar?

[circlip]

Meega, we were right before, it's an A500, not plus. Don't know what that sticker was about.. it had A500 and a serial number on it.

DrDekker, yah.. Denise is a cheap one on ebay, she looks like a good purchase.

Darklight! How are you mate? I might actually be moving to Briz next year... but hopefully I can stay here. My mum actually said "Well, what do we do with your Amiga? We might not be able to bring it with us." Even if I toss the monitor.. my Amiga will come along, I'm NOT about to leave it behind! Even if it has to sit on my lap for the trip up!
Money is a bit tight for me atm, so even if I have to get stuff piece-by-piece, like I'm doing, it's the only way for now. I saw an Amiga in Vic for about 60 bucks (excl shipping, PSU, monitor, cables (but I've already got those)) and I just can't do it. Next year maybe when I have some cash, but not now, and I'm impatient to really start using it.

I pretty much got the whole lot "as-is" for 30 bucks, which was a steal, buying each piece (A520 Mod, PSU, two joysticks, monitor) would've been painful, some ppl on ebay are selling each thing seperated.

Well next week or the week after, I'll try Denise. See how she likes her new home. ;-)

[Darklight]

@ circlip

I can totally sympathise with that - I've spent far too long as a student  :lol:

Don't move to Brisbane - I guess it's alright though - as long as it's not Melbourne, it's always raining down there anyway  :-D  I'm in Western Sydney (out near "Penriff"), and there's not many people around these days that have anything to do with Amiga stuff.  I know there used to be Amiga User Groups, but I don't know whether they still do anything.
You might want to occasionally check out 'Weekend Shopper' in the Saturday Telegraph - I've seen A500's for $10 in there a few times.  None for a while, but you never know.  Other than that, the Salvos are always good  :-)

[circlip]

Darklight,

Yeah.. I love Sydney. Brisbane isn't too bad though, but not much to do there. We got all the shops, pubs, clubs, everything here, and our George street is bigger than Brizzy's Queen street mall. I don't know how they do with such a small strip of "city".

Well I'm out on the East Hills train line, (yeah the one with the stops for the airport). Not bad out here, but boring. I've been skulking salvo's and other op-shops, trying to see if anything turns up. I once bought a Playstation 1 for 3 dollars, and it wouldn't load a disc, so I got a guide online to adjust the trimpots and it worked!! I've got my sources for games for it too, which is cool.

I'll have to check the Saturday Telegraph paper then, it's interesting some of the things you find, huh? Another man's trash is another man's treasure. :-)

[DigitalQ]

The blinking Caps Lock LED gives it away.  You have a flaky power supply.  I've been through this before.  The A500's power supply was weak to begin with, and now is really showing its age.

What I did was to measure the voltages on each of the pins when it was plugged in and on, then traced each pin to its respective wire.  I then cut the wire from the power supply going to the A500, and spliced it into a PC power supply.  That is what I did to resolve the blinking caps lock LED and intermittent resets.

Bear in mind that a bad power supply can cause other damage to your Amiga, so it really is in your best interest to get something beefier.

[circlip]

Thanks guys...

I've bought a keyboard and Denise chip, and will test these out.

DigitalQ, if these don't work, I'll spring for a PSU.

Anyone have any tips on removing and rplacing a chip? I figure it's pretty nasty to attack it with a screwdriver, right? ;-)

Circlip

[circlip]

Hi everyone.

I have tried changing the Denise chip, and also replacing the keyboard. Both were tested 100% working before sold to me.

I think it might be the PSU giving me problems, as someone mentioned earlier. I'll try that next.

Thanks,

Circlip

[rkauer]

circlip wrote:
I have tried changing the Denise chip, and also replacing the keyboard. Both were tested 100% working before sold to me.
I think it might be the PSU giving me problems, as someone mentioned earlier. I'll try that next.
Thanks, Circlip

 Like I said before, those originals PSUs are prone to fault. Use a peecee AT or ATX instead.

 Don't know how?

 It's easy: look at Amiga Hacking Zone, by Ian Stedman.

[mbueler]

Hi,
I got a few unused A500 psu`s if you want to pick 1 up fell free too.
i`m in sydney(2207)

[circlip]

Hi guys, thanks for all the help. It was just a faulty PSU. Everything is working ok now, and I have workbench 1.3 now too.

Thanks to the Amigan friends in Sydney, you guys rock!