I got ripped off on a dead Amiga 4000

[wawrzon]

@ceaser: just to content you i have always got the 4000s i bought to work except one that was clearly stated to be non working. they not always turned out to be in a physical condition i expected them to be and quite a few didnt fire up on the first try, so i was frequently already blaming the seller, but eventually all of them are in service by now.

[ceaser]

nevermind he's talking to me again. heh

Yes I got a hold of him again now.  He's a former Commodore store owner he states.  So hopefully he knows what to do.  I was getting green screen error but now getting white.  going to try to reseat the cpu card more gently maybe it's in too far.  i guess white is cpu problem.  messed up.  dark grey seems to come often enough too.  it has 2 psu's and they wire together in a very strange way.  the secret was to plug in the main one before you plug in the additional "dataflyer" psu.  then they sync and both turn on only when you push the power button.  it seems to like having those both hooked up like that.  and if you plug in the additional psu before the main, it'll grey screen and the additional stays on.  no switches on the back of course
so yeah i'll get it going.  the hardest problem is to find out what's broken.  if it's the motherboard then it wouldn't be showing these error report screens, common sense would dictate.  so there's a chance.  what choice do i have? there's lots of computers under my stairs that are pieces of crap and they'd work if i wasted a good HDD on them.  But this computer is actually cool.

[ceaser]

it looks white when the brightness is up high.  it's really the green.  almost sure of it.  so i'm going to bed now.  done 4 tonight

[wawrzon]

the cpu card should go all the way in. sometimes i hear the contacts oxydate and should be cleaned otherwise causing problems like that. never did it myself and do not think that it is frequent.

it is a very strange box you got there, looks a little homemade so the technical solution might not be perfect. why dont you diconnect all that second psu stuff in the first place. i really dont get what this is for anyway.

[alexh]

The colour codes are AFAIK not hardware codes. A white (i.e. nothing) screen is the default colour which comes up and the CPU (running the Kickstart ROM) changes it.

They are built into code within the Kickstart ROM.

If you are getting colour codes other than white then your CPU is working and so is (some of) the Kickstart ROM.

[Tension]

Green Screen indicates a problem with Chip Ram.

[Darmaster70]

This may be of some help to you.

http://home.arcor.de/r69/amiga/A4k-HW3.html

[ceaser]

This may be of some help to you.

http://home.arcor.de/r69/amiga/A4k-HW3.html

The guy who sold it to me thinks it's the U261 RAM clip that's bad.  That's the first one in the sequence, so If you had all the RAM in you have to take them all out before you can get at the U261.  He's had the clips upgraded so it snaps firmly in place with metal clips but it IS consistently doing a green screen.  A few times I got the light grey like it's going to use the HDD to boot to workbench (3.0 is what's on it), but it doesn't.  Maybe it almost gets past the chip RAM test and then just has enough time to go green before crashing.  That page is great though.  I'm going to use it as a reference thanks.

[ceaser]

it is a very strange box you got there, looks a little homemade so the technical solution might not be perfect. why dont you diconnect all that second psu stuff in the first place. i really dont get what this is for anyway.

It sure looks homemade but I think it was actually sold like this!  It's the A4000/040 as opposed to the more commonly seen(I guess, none of these computers besides maybe the A500 is common) A4000/030.  It doesn't sound like this one is any more dependable unfortunately.  I guess A4000 is a really cool but really unstable computer.  But yeah the big high case is because there are 2 daughterboards (see ebay listing # at very beginning for pics if you haven't already), 1 is 3 ISA and one weird I think it's called "graphics express" slot or something.  then it has another daughterboard that plugs into the top of the 1st one that is 4x Zorro III slots!  It has extra metal props and stuff to keep the case from stressing on the top of the 2 daughterboards too much as well as another strut in there between the 2 daughterboards.  I don't like having this thing open at all because you have to actually remove some of these important support struts to have it open.  There's nothing really supporting the top daughterboard with the Zorro III slots ATM it's only anchored by the slot it goes into in the bottom daughterboard, which I think is also a Zorro III slot but not sure.  The bottom daughterboard is also the thing actually labelled as the "highflyer expansion card."  Like the case says.  This was sold as a productivity workstation and they sold very few of them.  I don't remember which site I was looking at but it was showing figures of how many of each Amiga sold.  I think they sold a few thousand of these and I don't know how many they made.  It's not an everyday computer though.

[terminator4]

@ceaser

Open the claim, call your visa if you don't get money back.  The machine should work, even if shipped and packaged properly.  If you get it fixed you can always close the claim.
is this the auction #: 170350466586???  from photos you can see battery leakage.
if not pls post auction #.

Just because some dude ran a Commodore dealership means nothing to me.  I've seen plenty of those guys and some of them are "as clueless as a  blonde".

[amiga4ever]

ceaser: and after your visa chargeback, be sure to return his Amiga too.

[Firedawg]

The guy who sold it to me thinks it's the U261 RAM clip that's bad. That's the first one in the sequence, so If you had all the RAM in you have to take them all out before you can get at the U261. He's had the clips upgraded so it snaps firmly in place with metal clips but it IS consistently doing a green screen. A few times I got the light grey like it's going to use the HDD to boot to workbench (3.0 is what's on it), but it doesn't. Maybe it almost gets past the chip RAM test and then just has enough time to go green before crashing. That page is great though. I'm going to use it as a reference thanks.

@ceaser,
 
Have you broke the machine down to just the power supply connected to the mainboard, processor, and memory (testings one bank with a different stick each time)? This will give you a base configuration to start your problem solving. The Chips on the mainboard could have come loose during transport, especially if the computer was not properly packaged, so reseat them if necessary. I have been there and done that and each time I have found the problem at the processor and the memory level, and never found a chip problem on a recently functioning computer. Thats just bad luck if it happen to you.
 
The Dawg

[wawrzon]

@ceaser: the first clip you talking of is chip ram. if you already reseated it the other thing is you could try to replace it with some other 2meg module. now and then i had too look really hard for one that works.

otherwise just give it back then and get a regular a4k. from my experience they are very dependable.

[motrucker]

ok we're getting some kinda luvin now.   White screen then flips green and stays...

This is a chip RAM problem (usually). Try re-seating the chip RAM simm. May be that simple. It may seem like a big job, but I would take all of the cards out, clean the connections and re-install. Same with SIMMs and any socketed chips.
Hope it comes to life for you. I'd bet there's a good chance though...

[ceaser]

@ceaser

Open the claim, call your visa if you don't get money back.  The machine should work, even if shipped and packaged properly.  If you get it fixed you can always close the claim.
is this the auction #: 170350466586???  from photos you can see battery leakage.
if not pls post auction #.

Just because some dude ran a Commodore dealership means nothing to me.  I've seen plenty of those guys and some of them are "as clueless as a  blonde".

Nope that isn't the auction.  It's at the very very beginning of this post the auction number.  I'm still not at all made up on wanting rid of this and there's lots of chance it could work so nobody get too concerned about anything plz.  If I can't fix the box I don't want to keep the box.  I know it's a cool box if I can, but yes of course.

[TheMagicM]

have you gutted it and just hooked up the bare necessities as stated earlier in this thread?  man, i hope it works... looks like a very nice system.