Probelms with A1230 accelerator (memtest etc.)

[bx19rd]

 Hi, I recently baught a Viper 1230 accelerator and am having a few little problems with it, which I think are down to a bad simm, so here goes.

 I cannot get the Viper to work with a known 4Mb simm in it regardless of jumper settings etc. so I put this down to a bunch of incompatible simms, the 8Mb simm out of the Viper fails the memtest in a Amitek ram only board, so I baught another 8Mb simm which is again known to be working passed memtest in a Pentium 75, but this simm again fails in both boards strangly at the same address $60000 I think it was which is what is leading me to my confusion, surely 2 bad simms cant fail at the same place can they?

The first simm randomly and gradually getting started getting worse I was getting the "Early Statup Board Diagnostic" screen in red telling me the board was defective, with the new simm this no longer happens and the random lockups/resets have gone too.

The system has a CF/SD card and a laptop CDROM on a IDEFIX 97 board, the PSU is a 60W A500 unit that weighs a ton, I have checked the seating of the chips on the A1200 and the connections on the accelerator and all seems firm and nice.

Does anyone have any tips/advice?

Thanks

[DoogUK]

Well i know the cobra card which is similar needed a firware upgrade to use memory with 3.1 rom or you had to disable the mem. Maybe this is the case?

Yep i am right as its a rebadged cobra.

processor
68030 @ 28 / 33 MHz or 68EC030 @ 40 MHz, QFP
optional 68882 up to 40 MHz, PLCC
memory
one 72 pin SIMM socket accept 128 MB RAM
supports 1, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 MB SIMMs
optional SCSI 2 controller - Ferret ()
Qlogic FAS246
external DB25 SCSI connector
up to 2.8 MB/s transfer speed
the host card's firmware has to be updated
notes
battery backed up clock
needs firmware update for Kickstart 3.1, otherwise it works only with memory removed.



if ou download the ferret scsi controller software from amiga resource...apparently it contains the new firmware.

[bx19rd]

This is the card :

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=120

Seems its been rebadged by quite a few companies. I only have a basic A1200 at the moment, I don't have the 3.1 ROMs yet, just the old 3.0 ones.

Thanks for the help, I did not know the firmware needed updating, did not even know it had a firmware :p

[DoogUK]

As far as i know though..it was ok with 3.0 roms.

[bx19rd]

 The A1200 seems stable enough so far, not quite sure what else I can do now. The simm I think is compatible 60Ns, double sided, none-parity, none-edo, tin contacts, IBM made.
 
 The Amiga is actually usuable now, but I don't want a total random lock up.

 I reinstalled WorkBench 3.0 on a freshly formatted CF card too, not sure if thats helped though, thought it might be worth a shot

Edit :

 Nope now I think its duff, red screened on me while in WorkBench and now won't boot, black screen, and if it does I get the early diag screen screen in a nice red, im so p*ssed its been rock solid stable ALL weekend and the conferance it was meant to be at it tommorow it wont be there now.