Crashing A1200 + Apollo 1230 Mk 2

[TCMSLP]

Hi All,

I have a sick Amiga A1200.  It randomly crashes, complete hang with a flashing power LED.

This happens once the machine has warmed up - booting from cold it remains ok for 5 minutes.

The machine is stable by itself, although a program I found 'amigatest' often fails tests.  Sods law I'm now trying to replicate this and I can't.  I have a feeling it used to say 'blitter fail' - but I need to confirm this.

The machine has a 2.5" HD fitted and is running from a heavy A500 PSU (although I used to power it with a PC PSU with the same issues).

At one point I believed it may have been a timing issue (I think from memory it's a 1D4 revision board?) so I applied a fix (a wire connecting pins of two chips together). This made no difference.

I've attached some screenshots of sysinfo and also a photo of the accelerator (68030 @ 50Mhz).

At this point I'm not sure if the A1200 or accelerator (or both?) are to blame.  Any clues or obvious things to check?

I hope to build this into a machine for basic online browsing - so keen to get it stable.

I should also add I've tried the accelerator with and without RAM, with various combinations of jumper settings - none make any difference to stability.

Any clues appreciated ...

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[stachu100]

It can be the problem with:
1) Turbo card (CPU) is too hot - most probably the case. Please install fan on 030 CPU.
2) Not enough power from PSU - try different PSU

[Cammy]

If you boot up into a fresh Workbench installation and leave the Amiga alone for longer than five minutes, does it crash? Or does it only crash when running software?

If you bump or bash the desk from underneath, does it cause the Amiga to crash? If so, it's possible the accelerator's expansion connector isn't clamping on properly. If this is the case, you can carefully bend all of the teeth inwards towards each other slightly about 1mm so it bites down on the A1200 edge better to form a more stable connection.

Also, if you remove your hard drive and boot up Workbench from a floppy disk and try the same programs, does it still crash? Sometimes a few extra devices in an A1200 can draw too much power for the PSU to handle, even the A500 one. I'd recommend replacing the hard drive with a cheap IDE-CF adapter and a 4-8GB Compact Flash card, which will boot faster and use less power than the hard drive.

It's very possible that your Amiga has some software or patches installed that are conflicting with the accelerator, so booting into a freshly installed Workbench should help eliminate that possibility. If you want to try this, make a new drawer in your boot partition called "WorkbenchOLD" or something and move the entire contents of the partition (except the new drawer) into this drawer, then you can install Workbench without losing your old setup, just do the same thing again and swap the installations around when you need to. If you keep it on the same partition, moving everything should be quick to instantaneous.

[TCMSLP]

This does still crash even when booting off workbench floppies.  It also seems stable when cool despite moving/knocking the accelerator.

I've also noticed some graphics corruption; I think I'm using a productivity mode (640x400?) and after a while I sometimes get a few lines of colour corruption.

Are 50Mhz 030's known to suffer from heat problems?  I'll raise the machine off the desk and fit a heatsink or fan to test this

If this does solve the problem, is there a heat conductive glue I can use to bond the heatsink to the CPU?  There's no space/holes to clamp a heatsink in the traditional fashion.

Then all I need is a network card and I should be up and running!

Thanks,


Steve

[stachu100]

I've also noticed some graphics corruption; I think I'm using a productivity mode (640x400?)
 
Have you ever checked temperature of IC's on A1200 board?
The artefacts mentioned by you occurs when temperature of the IC's is too high.
High resolution graphics modes are "very stressing" for AGA chipset.
 
So please switch to standard PAL resolution and I think your problems will gone.

[TCMSLP]

Interesting - thanks for that.

I'm running a higher res as it's one of the few modes my TFT can display.   I also hope to use this machine as a daily workstation so running any of the low res modes would be frustrating.

I'll do some further tests and maybe add some case fans - this should also help with cooling the accelerator.

Thanks again!

[Cammy]

Wait, there may be a way to stop the graphics corruption. It's caused by a bad colour palette of all things! If you have a pure black (0,0,0) or a pure white (255,255,255) in your Workbench palette, you will experience the corruption you mention. There is a quick fix for this on Aminet but you would be better off with an optimised, locked palette anyway.

Here is the patch that will automatically dim your palette so you won't get the corruption, it explains in more detail what causes it too -  http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/BitmapShades

And if you would rather fix the problem by using an optimised palette, which should help improve the speed and look of your Workbench, download and install FullPalette - http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/FullPalette22

And use this Palette preferences file with it - http://home.exetel.com.au/amiga/FullPalette.prefs

[TCMSLP]

Thanks Cammy - I'll take a look!

Also, can anyone tell me if my accelerator (http://www.track3.org.uk/~steve/DSCF3058s.JPG) with <4Mb RAM is PCMCIA friendly?  I've seen mixed opinions on this.

http://www.amiga-hardware.org/Apollo_1230_Mk-II states it *is* PCMCIA friendly, but the image shown is slightly different to mine (an optional second SIMM socket plus the connector for a SCSI expansion - mine lacks these - see my photo above).

This may explain a number of the lock-up issues (I often use a PCMCIA CF 'drive').

[TCMSLP]

OK, the problem is really apparent tonight.  I've been un-LHA'ing so perhaps the extra activity has caused things to heat up a bit.  However, it's been running fine for the past hour - it's only now starting doing this.  It also happens right after a reboot.

Take a look at this:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am73Zsn6ntA

This is now running in high res DBLPAL mode, and the same problem occurs with and without the accelerator connected.

Definitely seems like it's heat related - but should it be doing this with just a 2.5" internal hard disk?  Is DBLPAL enough in itself to heat the chipset this much?

Or - am I looking at a bigger hardware issue here?

Opinions appreciated

[stachu100]

Is DBLPAL enough in itself to heat the chipset this much?

Yes

[Franko]

OK, the problem is really apparent tonight.  I've been un-LHA'ing so perhaps the extra activity has caused things to heat up a bit.  However, it's been running fine for the past hour - it's only now starting doing this.  It also happens right after a reboot.

Take a look at this:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am73Zsn6ntA

This is now running in high res DBLPAL mode, and the same problem occurs with and without the accelerator connected.

Definitely seems like it's heat related - but should it be doing this with just a 2.5" internal hard disk?  Is DBLPAL enough in itself to heat the chipset this much?

Or - am I looking at a bigger hardware issue here?

Opinions appreciated

I'd suggest you disconnect everything from your Amiga including your ram expansion/turbo board. Then boot up without the startup sequence and wait and see if anything happens.

If all goes ok, then one by one add back your peripherals and wait for the problems to occur this should help to narrow down things a bit.

[rkauer]

This is related to bad/leaked/dry capacitors on the motherboard or a way too low voltage from the power supply, nothing else, nothing more.

Trying desperately to reduce power consumption gives no results (sacking the accelerator suffice to low the power requirements) just indicates bad capacitors.

 Do a search on this forum and you'll see the list of what is in need to be replaced.

[TCMSLP]

Excellent - thanks all!  This happens without the accelerator or any external devices connected and I've tried two different PSU's (including a 250W PC PSU) so I think I've ruled out that.

I'll replace the aging capacitors *and* fit some heatsinks and fans.

Thanks again for all your help.  I really want to revive this board - rather than simply replace it (probably with another board with similar issues...).


Steve

[Cammy]

You could try that palette patch before you go pulling the whole thing apart, but if you don't even want to try good luck! Your capacitors probably need replacing anyway, but at least it would give you a temporary solution.

Screenmode prefs, set to 16 colours in any mode that works, install FullPalette and try that palette prefs file, or install that patch and see what happens.

[TCMSLP]

I've not tried the palette patches yet - but the screen corruption is currently really bad.  I'll try them anyway but I don't expect them to help much

I've taken the machine apart and removed the metal shielding to help airflow.   I've also taken a look at the capacitors and noticed they all seem to be tantalum (?) except 3 which are standard electrolytic.  Could it really be these 3 capacitors at fault?  One (or two) are on the PSU side - so I guess it's a possibly.  Surprised to see all the others as tantalums though - this hasn't been modified in the past;  I expect many more.