Broken A4000

[TotalCAD]

Hi, can anyone help me?? i took my A4000 apart (again) to clean it. but now i have a big problem! my comp wont boot at all! my floppy is pulsing?? and wont load anything or activate the light! my computer just seems dead! nothing is working at all! can anyone give me a clue? I have an A4000 with a 60gigHd PPC200mz060 and 120mg ram(well mostly i have 111 coz a second after bootup it looses some??) think thats the ppc board? i use a 52speed cdrom and a picassoiv board and have onboard scsi card GVP. i have taken this Amiga apart b4 but this time something has gone very,very wrong!! please,please help!

[Lo]

Hoya! Calm down and reassemble it a couple times?  :crazy:

[Argo]

Okay, deep breath! ahhhhhhhh.

Will it boot in a basic set up? That is Just the A4000, no HD, No PPC200Mhz060, no 120 Meg RAM, No CD, No Picasso IV, No GVP SCSI Card. Just the bare A4000. Do you get the insert disk screen? Install and use the Picasso if you don't have a 15 KHz monitor. You won't be able to see the boot screen per se, assuming your monitor don't pop up a frequency out of range message, but you should see some jumbled mess that is purple with some blinking white stuff (Hand insterting disk). That would mean the the A4000 itself is fine. Note what the floppy does. Is it still doing the same thing? Is it hooked up correctly? Nothing turned around coneected backwards...

If this works, shut down and install one item then boot. Repeat. Stop if there is a problem.

[xeron]

@Argo

Well, if he doesn't have a cost-reduced motherboard, he'll have to have an A3640 or similar handy if he wants to try and boot without the PPC..

[TotalCAD]

at this moment nothing works at all, the fan comes on, on the power supply, the ppc fan turns on. thats it, when i turn the amiga on, i hear the hd spin up, then the cd light flashes once and then.......nothing. thats all it does. i tried removing everything and turning it on and still nothing. i think the power supply might be faulty.

[Markus_Bieler]

- Look at the CPU-card. Is the Cyberstorm in the correct position?
- Does the keyboard-led flicker.

Markus

[TotalCAD]

will have to look at the cyberstorm to see if its fitted right, but the keyboard ligh comes on (caps lock) comes on and off when pressed.

[Will-i-am]

I have just been thru a similar problem with my A4000T. I couldn't get it to boot from anything, so I disconnected everything but the floppy and got it to boot from that. Then I added the dh0: and booted from that. I got the second HD to show up but still can't get the CD drive to be recognized. That's weird since I'm running os 3.9 which was installed thru that same CD drive. It claims the CD is mounted but can't read anything placed in it, and when it first boots up it asks for volumn ENV: to be placed in any drive. I cancel that requestor, sometimes I have to do that twice, and then the thing boots up okay. My Cyberstorm is nice and firmly plugged in, the CD drive flashes it's light at me, but no CD drive and I can't get rid of that request for volumn ENV: I haven't changed the startup, except when I got rid of IDEFix, but the CD worked fine after that. It wasn't until I tried adding that 2nd HD that things got weird.

[ShadesOfGrey]

I have a similar problem with my 4000D.  Basically, it won't boot for anything.  The only signs of life I can get from it are the floppy light flashing and a green screen (that sometimse flashes three times) if I pull the chip RAM before turning the 4000 on.  I have thought that it might possibly be the PSU.  But I more inclined to think that the motherboard, or something on it, has died.

If you do get your 4000 to boot.  Let me know what you do so I can try it on mine.

[TjLaZer]

Remove everything including the Zorro riser card.  No floppy drive, HD or anyting.  Just MB and CPU card.  The insert disk screen should come up in like 15-20 seconds.  I just did that yesterday when I was testing my 4000 for a RTC problem.  Was surprised the thing booted w/o the riser card.  In the testing I got the dead machine syndrome and reseated the CPU a few times and finally it worked.  Just try that and see whats up.  My last dead 4000 was from Chip Ram, so if you can swap out the 2MB Chip Simm for a 4MB one.

[Rigger]

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=390

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=389

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=388

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=387

[Noster]

Hi

@Will-i-am

> ... I can't get rid of that request for volumn ENV: I haven't changed the startup..

You must. There should be the following lines in your S:startup-sequence

C:MakeDir RAM:T RAM:Clipboards RAM:ENV RAM:ENV/Sys
C:Copy >NIL: ENVARC: RAM:ENV ALL NOREQ

Assign >NIL: ENV: RAM:ENV

If the requester comes up asking to insert volume ENV: that indicates that the according assign is not made.

> ...but the CD worked fine after that. It wasn't until I tried adding that 2nd HD that things got weird...

Do you have a original A4000T with SCSi-controller ?
Do you use SCSI or IDE devices ?
If you use IDE, are the master and slave jumpers correct ?
If you use SCSI drives are the Id's of the drives are unique and the SCSI-bus correct terminated ?

Noster

[TotalCAD]

ok, my amiga now works, the problem was with two 32meg chips on my ppc board. they were from a local computer shop and never really fitted right, i removed them and it started up, but i have no hd light anymore and my diskdrive is still not working, i removed everything from my case, then put it all back together on bit at a time.