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Author Topic: Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?  (Read 2040 times)

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Offline mingleTopic starter

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Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?
« on: December 01, 2008, 12:03:32 PM »
Hi,

I now have my nice shiny A1200 and today picked up my Phase5 Blizzard 1230IV card. It has the SCSI interface and 2 x 16MB SIMMS installed.

The card was installed in another A1200 and was working fine. When I put it into my other machine and powered up, I got a black screen with small flickering blue lines (for a few seconds) then a software failure error.

Then, with horror, I noticed that the edge of the motherboard shielding was shorting out all of the pins on one side of the SCSI controller chip!

I powered off immediately, had a good cry for a few minutes, then removed the card. I fixed the shielding and cursed its name to the heavens. Then put the card back in.

It booted okay, but only one of the SIMMS was recognised. I jiggled the SCSI card and tried again and it showed the full 32MB of RAM this time.

All seems well, but sometimes (if I move the A1200 around) only one of the SIMMS is recognised.

Is this flaky connectivity common with these cards?

Also, would is my disastrous first attempt at using the card (and shorting the pins on the SCSI controller IC) likely to have stuffed my SCSI card? I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, so I'm hoping I haven't fried anything...

I've almost stopped blubbing now!

Cheers,

Mike.
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Offline AndyFC

Re: Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?
« Reply #1 on: December 01, 2008, 12:58:36 PM »
When electrics go because of a short, or they have burnt out, surely it would be permenant, rather than intermittent? Sounds more like a poor electrical connection.
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A1200 in DIY Tower. 3.2 ROMs (softkicking 3.2.3), OS 3.2.3, CF card, CD RW and IDE to SD adapter running off the internal IDE port (using the A4000 4-port IDE adapter from Amigakit), Pistorm 32 lite with Pi4/2GB/Emu68 or Blizzard 1230-IV, with 32MB 60ns RAM and 50MHz 68882 FPU.
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Offline bloodline

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Re: Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2008, 01:56:14 PM »
I would say you got lucky and didn't break the board, but the intermittent problem is caused by the age of the connectors...
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Offline J-Golden

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Re: Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2008, 04:50:48 PM »
Quote

bloodline wrote:
I would say you got lucky and didn't break the board, but the intermittent problem is caused by the age of the connectors...


Agreed.

Get some contact cleaner and clean the A1200 first and see if that does the trick.

If you had no problems in the other A1200, then it a good bet you have a little oxidation on the conectors of this MOBO.
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Offline Amigaz

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Re: Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2008, 05:18:29 PM »
Quote

J-Golden wrote:
Quote

bloodline wrote:
I would say you got lucky and didn't break the board, but the intermittent problem is caused by the age of the connectors...


Agreed.

Get some contact cleaner and clean the A1200 first and see if that does the trick.

If you had no problems in the other A1200, then it a good bet you have a little oxidation on the conectors of this MOBO.


Agree, had problems with my Blizzard 1230 MKIV recently when I installed it in another A1200 I have...it didn't boot up so I cleaned thre CPU connector on both the card and motherboard with CRC Electronic Cleaner and PRESTO! it then booted and runs like a swiss clock  :-D
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Offline rkauer

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Re: Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2008, 10:17:11 PM »
 True SCSI controller chips are smart enough to not burn when a short circuit occurs.

 I don't know if the SCSI module of the Blizzard is a true one or made in a CPLD chip (like the Apollo). If the second is true, there are high chances of a busted SCSI controller.
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Offline mingleTopic starter

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Re: Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?
« Reply #6 on: December 01, 2008, 11:10:21 PM »
@rkauer,

The controller is a Qlogic FAS216...

Hopefully this is a TRUE SCSI controller???

I haven't had a chance to test the SCSI, but later today with be the moment of truth! :-)

Cheers,

Mike.
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Offline mingleTopic starter

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Re: Blizzard 1230 IV disaster!?
« Reply #7 on: December 02, 2008, 04:34:55 AM »
It's alive... IT'S ALIVE!!! :-)

Seems to be working fine. I installed the SCSI Utils and AmiCDFS and hooked up a SCSI CD-R drive and all went well...

I think I can now breathe a sign of relief!

:crazy:

Cheers,

Mike.
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