A3000 Problems

[Hamlet]

Hi there,

I'm trying to revive an old 3000D/25 I had lying around. It seems to have issues, unfortunently.

The first one, and obviously the most annoying is that it's guru proned, most often while booting up a disk or starting wb from hd. When it's up and running it generally runs pretty fine. It often starts this way, ie. when I press power on it immediatly goes into the "Software Failure" mode. A couple of cold/warm reboots usually gets it going.

Another thing, dunno if it's related though, is screen garbage. Horizontal lines, much like when you overclock a gfxcard too high.


I've tried reseating most chips, daughterboard, taking out all zorro cards, etc... I also bought a pair of 3.1 roms for it since I thought that might be the problem, but no change.

A wierd sidenote that might be related, I cannot run the chips at 25 mhz... Yellow screens, not working well at all, etc... With J151 at 1-2 and J152 at 2-3 it runs, but only as well as described above.

[Framiga]

Hi Hamlet

probably a PSU problem.

Try to take the system ON for some hours.

Ciao

[redrumloa]

Alot of your post sounds like a possible PS problem except this:

Another thing, dunno if it's related though, is screen garbage. Horizontal lines

Try a floppy drive cleaning kit.

[adolescent]

Is it lines all the way through the image, or more random screen artifacts?  If it's random, it could be the A3000 U202/U203 PAL problem.  

[DoomMaster]

Buy an Amiga 2500 from eBay.  It is a much better computer then the Amiga 3000, much higher quality too.  You can usually get an Amiga 2500 on eBay for under $100.00.     :-D

[Amiga1200PPC]

But, does the A2500 have military grade chips?

[that_punk_guy]

Wishmaster wrote:
But, does the A2500 have military grade chips?

That's officially not very funny anymore.

[DoomMaster]

To Wishmaster:

Yes, the 68030 processor is a military spec chip and you can plug in the military spec 68000 processor, Custom Chips and the 8520s from the first run Amiga 2000 computers into the Amiga 2500.  Stop being a smart-aleck and LEARN !        :roll:

[Linchpin]

OooHandbags!! Gentlemen please!

Does mil spec really matter anymore? I think so not.

Never had em

Never needed em

I think i speak for 99.999% of us.

End of story :-)

[Tomas]

also check the battery... maybe it has leaked onto the board.

[adolescent]

DoomMaster wrote:
Buy an Amiga 2500 from eBay.  It is a much better computer then the Amiga 3000, much higher quality too.  You can usually get an Amiga 2500 on eBay for under $100.00.     :-D

I fail to see how your suggestion to buy a dinosaur like an A2500 will solve this persons problem.  Might as well tell him to buy an A500 then.

[Linchpin]

Do you really think the a2k is superior to the a3k?

[Hamlet]

Thanx for busting up the thread guys =). I already have a 2500UX, aswell as a 500, 1000, 1200 and 2000 so getting ANY machine to work wasn't the issue, just the 3000.

However, I got hold of a "A3000 burn-in disk" that reported something was fishy with my fastmem. Removing it solved the major moodswings, but it's still got some PMS issues. Very often when i cold-boot the machine it goes directly into "Software failure"... and I still can't run the machine at full chipspeed.

The battery looks whole, the PSU... dunno, guess I could measure it. Does anyone know if the 3000 get's that "sync" signal from the PSU as the 2000 does? If not it might be easier to install a PC PSU.

[adolescent]

Hamlet wrote:
Does anyone know if the 3000 get's that "sync" signal from the PSU as the 2000 does? If not it might be easier to install a PC PSU.

HwB says that there is in fact a "tick" signal on one of the pins like other big box Amigas.  

[adolescent]

A quick look on deja and it looks like switching J350 to pins 2-3 will enable internal tick clock source (vsync).  Therefore, you should be able to use a PC power supply then.