Ide-Fix Express BURNING!!!

[Ral-Clan]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but from your description in this post and the last post (where you fried your scan-doubler) it sounds as if you are connecting and removing hardware while the Amiga is still powered on.  If so then you are really asking for it...

[Daniele]

I have changed PSU too and the miggy do not wanna boot with the IdeFix hooked.If I boot only with a 2,5 HD it boot. And of course I did these things powring off the Amiga.I don't wanna burn the 2nd Idefix I own and eventually another mobo! because it happened that a flame form the cable from the gayle chip reached the idefix and burnt it!

what can I do to not make any other damage?

[AmigaMance]

@Daniele
 Check if your Amiga and any devices connected to it, (Monitor, modem, etc) have a proper ground wire.
 If you're getting a small electric shock when you touch the metal case of your Amiga, you have a ground problem.

[DoogUK]

Another good tip is turn it off before you plug/unplug anything from it.  :-)

[alexh]

It looks to me like you were using non-keyed cables (always a hazard with 2.5" cables which have power). It looks like you had the cable staggered by 1-pin (or worse flipped) and wired power to ground.

[actung_bab]

l have never had one burn like this u must shorted something
remember the ide 2 1/2 are powered via the cable u must have the cable with red stripe to pin one.

in saying that l have done same thing, l cant work out why u got short unless the board touched the 1200 mb

[Hans_]

I had a similar problem once, but without an IDE-Fix (or similar) board attached. What happened was, I had a homemade VGA monitor adaptor and a monitor that had trouble syncing occasionally. I managed to short something in the VGA adaptor (by being stupid), and bang, my A1200 went dead. The Short 2.5" ribbon cable to the hard drive looked exactly like the one in your photo. I had someone else look at it, and he got it working again, but for some reason an accelerator couldn't be connected anymore (more damage somewhere). Fortunately he had a replacement that worked with my accelerator.

What's strange is that a fault in a non-related part of the machine caused the cable to burnout like that. I never really investigated further as I was just happy to get it working again.

Hans

[Schoenfeld]

the defect looks very familiar - since you provided more pictures to me in private eMail, I also know which trace exactly is burned on the bottom side of the IDE-fix board. It clearly indicates that the harddrive (or cable=>short) has pulled way too much power. I am assuming that you have made a wrong connection (as someone else in this thread noted: staggered connection), and made a short.

The picture of your burnt scandoubler also points at a defective or overloaded power supply. A dead MACH chip normally doesn't crack it's package like yours - there's some serious noise required on the +5V line to cause a latchup (which requires burning the latchup-protection of the chips!). You should check proper grounding of your in-house wiring, as this can cause bad noise on just about everything.

Jens Schönfeld

[Daniele]

@Schoenfeld

I forgot to tell you that I saw smoke on the express adapter of the ide-fix as something burning was coming from the gayle chip adaptor to the express adapter and from that went to burn the ide-fix board.

Now I am very scared to use the gayle chip adaptor because I have the fear that this was the cause of my problem.
Now I have changed PSU.
The strange thing is that the Amiga do not boot anymore with ide-fix express while it boots without idefix express with HD only.

Let me know please

[redrumloa]

Schoenfeld wrote:
there's some serious noise required on the +5V line to cause a latchup (which requires burning the latchup-protection of the chips!). You should check proper grounding of your in-house wiring, as this can cause bad noise on just about everything.

Yes! I have seen houses, especially older houses, with NO ground at all! Check it or have it checked!

[countzero]

Hans_ wrote:

What's strange is that a fault in a non-related part of the machine caused the cable to burnout like that. I never really investigated further as I was just happy to get it working again.

Hans

I have a theory. When you short circuit something, 5v and GND lines all through the system heat up. And the 5v and gnd lines on the cable are just next to each other. Eventually they melt the plastic and touch each other, forming another short circuit.

[countzero]

btw, a little tip for everyone ... when you're powering up your amiga, don't let your hand move away from the PSU quickly. In the case of a short circuit, the PSU starts to shake because of immense power output. If you keep your hand over it, you can actually feel it and turn it off quickly. If you can act quick enough, you may actually save your system (if you're lucky).

[Damion]

Daniele -- looking at the picture of your IDE cable, I did the exact same retarded thing as you. (It's OK, we all have these moments sometime in life. In my case, I had a big fat Spaten Optimator and decided it would be "fun" to re-arrange the inside of my miggy a bit nicer. Bad idea!)

Fortunately, I flipped mine off quick enough and avoided damage to the IDE-Fix Express board (still operates 100% reliable, 5.0 mb/sec raw read with an overclocked Apollo 1260!).

Afterward, I had similar strange symptoms (IDE not working with Express adapter connected).

After repairing the broken trace underneath (around the IDE port area IIRC) it's worked flawless ever since.

Hope you get it working!

[AmiJIm]

Hi there,
hot chip means that it is burning.
The psu is to blame.Or maybe a bridge along the voltages lines.replace your psu.it's time to make that ATX PSU mod.

[Hodgkinson]

I agree about the staggered pins. We fried a HDD or RAM (Can't remember which) in a PC once by accidentally having a floppy drive connector staggered one pin to the side. Strange how it took stuff out that was seemingly unrelated.
(As far as PC floppy drives are concerned, they don't seem mind a reversed floppy connector - I have two Sony FDD's in my XP tower as A: and B: that can only be used with a un-keyed floppy ribbon 'cause the crazy floppy drives have the keys in the wrong place for normal cables - With a normal cable the LED's on the front of the drives just stay on all the time...)

Hans_: Here's an idea re the VGA short...The HDD cases are usually grounded, in your case via the ribbon cable. On the A1200's the shield is grounded, but it’s grounded via a few low-ohm resistors if I remember rightly. That makes your HDD the lowest resistance path to ground in your miggy for any voltages placed on the shield, so if a power rail (The 23pin D video port contains power rails...)  somehow touched the edge of one of the D connectors or some of the screen at the back of your A1200,
(And the case of your floppy drive wasn't grounded) then that would probably explain why the cable fried itself. :crazy:

[AmigaMance]

 Just experienced the same problem last night!  :-(
 I heard a subtle *chaff* sound and my Amiga 1200 reset by itself. Unlike Daniele's case, i don't see anything burned. But exactly as Daniele said, my Amiga doesn't boot anymore with the IDE-Fix adapter plugged in. With or without the Express.
 The warranty is still valid. I contacted AmigaKit about it and he told me to send him Both circuits for inspection, which i will asap.
 If i remove the adapter and connect the IDE cable directly to the port of the motherboard, my Amiga boots as normal! It was logical to assume that the IDE-Fix adapter went bad, but from the Daniele's report i see that it could be the Gayle chip?!!

 How can i see if the Gayle chip is ok or not? What are the symptoms of a defective Gayle chip? As i said there is no visible sign of damage. Please let me know! :-(