A1000 will not boot up

[dparrott]

I have an A1000 that was working fine 6 years ago before it went into storage.  I just pulled it out and fired it up and all it does is flash it's red light every few seconds.  The disk drives do not run.  Ideas anyone?  Could it be the df0 drive?  I have an extra df1, can I replace the df0 with that?

Dan

[yakumo9275]

whats its battery condition?

[dparrott]

How do I find out?

[Terse]

Not the battery - the A1000 has no battery.
Not likely DF0: either. You would see the kickstart prompt.
The most common thing of all may just be parts working loose.  Check out the memory expansion that you have in the front of the unit under the removable middle plastic cover next to the floppy drive.  If this is loose it could be your problem (maybe remove it completely to rule it out)

If that's not the problem, some of the socketed chips may have worked a little loose and need to be pressed back into place.  This is a bit of a chore because you have to take off the cover and RF shield.

[rkauer]

 Red screen means bad ROM.

 If you have a kickstart ROM on your A1000, it is loose from the socket. Take it out and reinsert. Problem solved.

[Paul]

After all these years since production, and six years of sitting, it could be the power supply has given up, due to some bad capacitors.

Paul

[da9000]

I second Rkauer's suggestion. It's also the easiest and the first you should try (also push down other socketed chips as well).

[dparrott]

I pushed down all of the chips and checked the connections, nothing seems to be loose.  I don't think I have a kickstart rom cause I used the kickstart disc to start it.  

[Kristian95]

Check whether the PSU still delivers the correct voltages... check whether any of the capacitors have leaked... this might all have happened.

[motrucker]

I often wonder if anyone actually reads these posts before offering advice!
Since a stock A1000 has NO ROMs, this can't be the trouble. The 256Kb front RAM expansion could have a corrosion issue where it plugs in - this will cause problems. Also check for corrosion at every plug in the computer, and clean well.
Also a good idea to check PSU's output with a good multimeter.
If it worked OK when it was put away, it should be close to working...
 

[dparrott]

I have a second A1000 that also used to boot up, although the df0 stopped reading disks.  Can I exchange power supplies?

[rkauer]

 You can pretty much swap anything between two identical Amigas...

[JimS]

motrucker wrote:
I often wonder if anyone actually reads these posts before offering advice!
Since a stock A1000 has NO ROMs, this can't be the trouble.
 

Technically, there are ROMs in the 1000. When the 1000 was released, the Kickstart wasn't stable. So they came up with the WCS daughterboard. The ROMS on the 1000 are just enough to load a kickstart image from floppy into the WCS.