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Author Topic: A590 problem, advice would be appreciated  (Read 3529 times)

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Offline EffyTopic starter

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A590 problem, advice would be appreciated
« on: February 02, 2011, 11:48:01 AM »
First time this year I decided to hook up an A500 that I bought 2nd hand last year, with an A590 with original Western Digital XT hd. So I connected the two power supplies to the A500 and A590 and turned them both on ... but the A590 did not boot and the A500 gave me first a green screen and then a yellow screen. After trying several times to reconnect the A590, thinking it might not have been pushed hard enough into the A500 I decided that the connection itself was not the issue. So I tried to boot it all up without the power supply connected to the A590, thinking the power supply might be the problem, and to reduce power consumption I disconnected the Western Digital XT drive, both the data and power cable, so the A590 was supposed to boot without hd ... still the same problem, yellow or green boot screen colour. The A500 works perfectly without A590, no problem at all !!
Decided to look at The Big Book to see whether the jumpers at the back of the A590 were set correctly but they are all set to 1,  so that is not the problem. I may have plenty of Amiga's at home but I am still not technical minded enough to sort this out so that's why I am asking for advice :)
I know it looks like the A590 itself is busted and ready for the trashbin but it would be a shame afterwards to find out that it was so easy to fix ...

Offline Jope

Re: A590 problem, advice would be appreciated
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2011, 12:33:32 PM »
Quote from: Effy;611780
So I connected the two power supplies to the A500 and A590 and turned them both on ...


Is this just a figure of speech? The A590 does not have a power switch in its original power supply. Are you using the correct PSU?
 

Offline Amiga4k

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Re: A590 problem, advice would be appreciated
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2011, 05:39:34 PM »
The A590 is a hard drive controller which connects to the side expansion slot of the A500(+). It provides both a SCSI controller, and an XT controller. An XT Controller is the very old 8 bit IDE standard (not to be confused with ST506). Whilst it uses the same 40pin IDE cable that modern IDE controllers use, you cannot use modern IDE drives with the XT controller because they are 16 bit. You must use XT hard drives. These were only ever made up to about 80MB in size. The A590 was usually shipped with a 20MB Seagate SCSI drive by default or a 20MB Western Digial XT drive but the drive specifications are printed on the base of the unit.
There are several versions of the ROMs for the A590, Version 6 ROMs only allow hard drives up to 512MB in capacity. Version 6.6 and 7.0 ROMs have been reported to work successfully with drive sizes up to 9GB but you will need at least OS3.5 to use drives over 4GB.
DIP Switches
Switch 1   OFF: Disables Autoboot ROMs (Kickstart 1.2)  ON: Enables Autoboot ROMs (Kickstart 1.3)
Switch 2    OFF: LUN Disabled (One Drive at each address)   ON: LUN Enabled (Multiple drives each address)
Note: Some SCSI drives such as certain Seagate and Epson drives, respond to more than one logical unit address (LUN). Such drives will appear on the Workbench screen and the Hard Drive Preparation, Partitioning, and Formatting screen in HD Toolbox multiple times, at the same Address but at LUN 0 through 7. If this occurs, set switch 2 to OFF.
Switch 3
OFF: Short wait period for drive to spin up. Parity checking enabled
ON: Long wait period Parity checking disabled for message in phase
Switch 3
Time-Out Length: If you are using a SCSI drive that takes longer than 30 seconds to start up when you turn the system on, such as some seagate drives, you may wish to set switch 3 to ON. When the switch is in the OFF position the time-out period, the time between power-on and when the system checks the drive, is short.
Switch 4:     Reserved (e.g., don't mess with it!)
Jumper Settings
Note: The A590 is shipped with all jumpers set to 1 by default
JUMPER SETTING NOTES
JP1         1 = Amnesia          2 = 512K           3 = 1MB         4 = 2MB Sets the amount of RAM installed
JP3         1 = XT Drive          2 = SCSI Drive Set LED for XT or SCSI Drive
JP4         1 = Interrupt 2        2 = Interrupt 6 Note: Do Not Change
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Offline Zac67

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Re: A590 problem, advice would be appreciated
« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2011, 06:44:57 PM »
- possibly RAM was removed from the A590 w/o checking the jumpers - verify them and/or try amnesia; try w/ only 512K activated
- the WD XT drives are a PITA, dog slow, noisy and unreliable - get a decent, even small SCSI drive and you'll see the difference
- check the PSU connector's solder points: they tend to tear out; if internal 5V is unreliable the 500 won't boot
« Last Edit: February 14, 2011, 06:47:23 PM by Zac67 »
 

Offline arttu80

Re: A590 problem, advice would be appreciated
« Reply #4 on: February 14, 2011, 08:14:56 PM »
Also you may check if your A590 have "self powered" -hack, which would look something like this -->

http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/a590.jpg

If it does look familiar, you must have more powerful power supply on your Amiga 500 and ofcourse leave disconnected A590 power supply.
 

Offline Lurch

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Re: A590 problem, advice would be appreciated
« Reply #5 on: March 29, 2011, 07:53:36 AM »
Quote from: Jope;611785
Is this just a figure of speech? The A590 does not have a power switch in its original power supply. Are you using the correct PSU?



I know this is an old post but some A590 PSU's have a switch. I currently have one :-)
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