Help! A1200 BVision issue & possible 'start-again' upgrades

[RTID75]

Hello all.

At the end of last year I had the idea to retire two A1200 motherboards - one in my (perfectly working) PPC / BVision tower and the other in my 030 desktop. I bought two ReAmigas.

Full of enthusiasm, I stripped down my tower machine, swapped the motherboards and put it all back together.

To cut a long story short, whilst the PPC board worked, the BVision didn't on the ReAmiga. No RTG picture, even though it was totally happy on my Commodore motherboard. I have a spare, working PPC / BVision combo and tested that too. It also didn't work.

A little disappointed, I put my original motherboard back in and rebuilt. My disappointment turned to horror when I couldn't get a BVision picture with my original motherboard too. I have pretty much not touched the machine since but revisited couple of weeks ago hoping it might work. It didn't.

I have no idea what's gone wrong, but it's pretty devastating. If anyone has any idea I'd love to hear it.

On the assumption that something's killed my BVision(s) I need to update and am willing to spend decent money to get my machine back to where I need it.

I need speed (loved 060 & PPC), RTG and currently have internet connection via a wireless card into PCMCIA. I'd read up a bit and had been thinking of Icedrake, but does that disable PCMCIA? If so, what other options do I have to connect to wireless internet?

My intention really is like before, to have a high end machine that will do more 'modern' stuff with RTG and play  RTG games and go online and keep the 030 machine for full, original AGA compatibility. Both machines are back with their Commodore motherboards and the ReAmigas were returned.

Many thanks to anyone who can help or point me in the right direction!

[Boing-ball]

Sorry to read into the situation you are in. Unfortunately the Bvision cards can fail. I take it you had heatsinks on the main chips on the Bvision?

Only other things to think of:
- The Bvision is connecting correctly to the 603e ppc board?
- You have ample 5volt power supplied for BPPC and Bvision to function?
- Have you tried a berg power connector into the floppy power connector on the A1200 mainboard?

Apart from that cannot think of anything else. It is possible that the connection circuit on the BPPC card may have got fried. Had this happen to me with a G-Rex board on a BPPC.

[darksun9210]

something i found is that the connector between the bvision and ppc boards can "bend" slightly. this can happen if you over tighten the nuts and bolts - or seemingly over time with the force of the mounting kit, and lets face it, 1996 was a good amount of time ago. Resulting in giving you a good connection at either end of the connector, but the middle can be visibly seperated. if i ever put my bvision and bppc back together, i'd put a thin piece of something solid across the top and bottom of the cards as a load spreader that the nuts and bolts would then put pressure on - rather than the PCB material itself. spreading the clamping force across the connector evenly. i rememeber this would give me crashes and instability enough to drive a sane person to the brink.

i'd also make sure that all the big square chips on your bvision have heatsinks. there is what i guess a fat CPLD chip that's doing a lot of the PCI translation, this gets really hot too. if these chips are NOT getting warm, then we either have issues further down the pipe, or it's just not getting power.

i gave up with cybergraphics years ago, bascily when i could no longer put the original CD in as part of the install procedure. are you using cybergraphics or P96?

sorry to hear that you're having these issues, and i hope you resolve this soon. i would say please make sure that your powersupply is good - i used to run an extra 5volt line from the molex cable loom for drives to the 5volt of the floppy connector on the mainboard. hope i don't sound like i'm trying to tell you how to suck eggs!

good luck, please let us know how you get on if there is any resolution.