Troubleshooting an unfamiliar machine ...

[macto]

I have two sets of documentation, which conflict in a couple of cases!  Okay, the second is just a sheet detailing the jumpers for a revision 3 board.  Does a part number 500025-03 suggest a revision 3 to you?  It does to me.

The differences between the board and the sheet are: CN15 (was on 2-3, should be on 1-2, listed as reserved, now on 1-2), J12 (was open, should be shorted, selects between autoconfig and extended RAM, left open), CN8 (was on 2-3, should be open (!), listed as reserved, is now open).  There is another thing worth noting, the card has a 68030 rather than a 68EC030.

My A2000 currently has the DataFlyer IDE and DataFlyer RAM.   WB 2.0.4 is being installed.  Hopefully that'll tell me whether it is the mainboard or GVP board which is causing the troubles.  At this point I don't know whether to hope that the 2000 or the GVP board is toast.  The 2000 would probably be easier to fix, but a 2000 is still a 2000 without the 68030.

[QuikSanz]

Hi macto,

Ok, first, that part # does not appear anywhere on my board. However on the back it has a sticker that states "4.10" also etched in there about 2" in from the external connector is "94v-0" now these should be the same as I think there was only 1 run of each model (speed & cpu). Second these settings are original, bought on consignment, came from a high school, original owner. I would suggest removing all other boards unless your HD is IDE. If you HD is IDE, see if you can get a hold of a SCSI one and connect direct to accel card. Much speed gains can be had by doing this. Try to keep as much off the MOBO as possable, you'll want that later when you want graphics card or ethernet. Don't worry, the 32 bit mem clears fast as it has DMA access to the cpu.

Now jumpers, I will only list jumpers that are ON or shorted. J4, J6, J2, J12, J9.
Now for CN's. I will indicate high and low positions with Zorro connector on the bottom.CN7= low, CN15= low, CN14= high. Inside the cpu "can". CN16= low, CN8= no jumper-N/A, CN17= Special white connector-jumper, do not remove.

One more thing. I remember with these boards there was a limit as to how much memory you can have total. It does not remap or readdress like newer cards, so you may still have problems with all the other stuff. I seem to remember having to remove 4Meg when I installed the Picasso IV card. Give it a shot and see what comes of it, Let me know.

Chris

BTW, Picasso IV, is a 4Mb graphics card with built in flicker fixer and scan doubler.

[macto]

My error, this is a GVP G-Force 030.  I discovered there was a difference when I went in search of a difference between our cards.  Notably, I cannot find a CN17.  The settings are remarkably similar though, so maybe you knew what I was really talking about ...

Anyhow, I will try the GVP card, with the jumpers corrected, in a couple of days.  It is a tight squeeze, and I'm afraid that too much flexing isn't good for it.  Besides, I want to figure out whether the problem is with the mainboard or the GVP card.  I won't be able to figure that out unless I try the system without the GVP card.

As for upgrades, the ethernet card sounds great.  I'm not sure about the video card.  The old monitor reminds me a bit of my old Apple IIgs, only the Amiga is much faster (even with the 68000).

[QuikSanz]

Hi macto,

If it is G-Force 030/40Mhz W/O scsi, then yes somewhat different. Combo means with SCSI. It will still speed up  processes however, it will not give faster HD handling. CN17 on my card is under the metal cover that is over the CPU & FPU, bottom left corner of CPU, Marked "MC68EC030RP40B". The FPU should be in the lower left hand corner of this shielded area.

Chris

Have you stripped it down and tried a game that boots from floppy for a while?

[macto]

Well, I do have SCSI.  On the other hand, I don't have the shielding over the CPU and FPU or CN17.  They must have had a couple of revisions of the board or similar products which were identified differently.

The CPU in mine has been replaced.  It is a 68030RC50B.  In other words, it is not the embedded controller version so it has an MMU.  (The crystal is still 40 MHz.)

On stripping her down: the basic problem is software.  Aside from what I mentioned above, I have Directory Opus and Textcraft Plus on floppies.  Everything else comes from Aminet and I don't know how to make bootable floppies yet.  My comprimise: to try running her with the DataFlyer board.  It's even IDE, so I cannot use the same drive.

Then there is the problem of which software to use: the problem appears to be associated with memory in some way.  I don't recall if I mentioned the error numbers popping up, when I was so lucky, they were 80000003, 80000004, and 81000005.  But it doesn't happen straight off, since the machine has to be up for a bit (warmed up, so to speak).  This is evident in the pattern of the crashes, and the GVP RAM diagnostics program bore that out: perfect results when the computer was just turned on, it failed when the tests were done about 1/2 hour  (or so) after it was turned on.  Of course the GVP program only tests GVP RAM, so I wasn't able to figure out if the problem hit the SupraRAM card as well (ie. is this a system wide thing).  The GVP program is also useless when the GVP card is pulled.  While a lot of little things were triggering the problem in OS 3.9, it is still consistent because OS 3.9 uses memory more heavily to start with.  All of this is what leads me to believe it is the GVP card.  On the other hand, I kinda hope it isn't the GVP card because all of the memory is soldered on to the board at this point (ie. I'm having problems with the SIMMs removed).

For what it's worth: the errors the GVP RAM diagnostics program was reporting seemed to involve a failure to flip certain bits (3rd or 4th, I believe).  The problem appeared to be very consistent.

This whole situation is frustrating.  I will tackle it a bit more in the morning.  For now, I need some rest else I'll be as bad off as my Amiga.

[QuikSanz]

Hi,

See part about mem limit on last post, do you have a scsi drive?

Chris

Type tommorow.

[macto]

Morley: I'm doing a sector scan with VirusZ on all of my floppies and the hard drive.  Nothing yet, but the scan is still in progress.  Granted, it is a fresh install seeming as I replaced the GVP card (SCSI) with a DataFlyer (IDE).  Then again, any infection would have to come from those diskettes or files from Aminet seeming as those are my only sources of software.

On to the more probable cause, hardware:

I've been running the system for about 12 hours without an incident.  This is with a base A2000, plus DataFlyer IDE, plus DataFlyer RAM.  The machine hasn't been given a heavy workout, but the serial port, RAM (via the RAM disk), and hard drive have been put to good use.  I downloaded some more generic RAM testing software and will try to leave that running for a few hours this afternoon.  If everything checks out, I'll plug the GVP back in and copy my existing setup over to a fresh SCSI hard drive (so that I can pull the IDE controller) and see what happens.  If that seems to work, I'll conteplate swapping the fresh SCSI hard drive with my old SCSI hard drive to see if the jumpers on the GVP were the problem.  Or maybe I'll avoid pushing my luck if everything works. ;-)

On hard drives:

I have plenty of SCSI units, ranging from 40 MB to 2 GB.  Before the Amiga, I was working with 68k Macs. :nervous:  All of those old Macs had a SCSI controller or two.  IDE drives are actually an oddity for me.

On memory:

What is the limit, and how would the problem manifest itself (eg. irratic errors, undetected memory)?

The with the 6 MB SupraRAM and the 16 MB GVP board and the 1 MB on board, the Workbench was consistently reporting 23 MB RAM.  I don't know if I ever used a quarter of that, but it was there for the taking.  There appears to be some sort of conflict between the SupraRAM board and the DataFlyer RAM card.

Seeming as this problem usually manifests itself after the machine has been running for a while, I'm assuming that there is some sort of thermal problem.  Perhaps it is a bad connection?  Perhaps the circulation is extremely poor and something is over heating (with the GVP board in, the machine is pretty much broken into two compartments, with most of the heat generating stuff (the majority of the RAM, the hard drive, the processor) being tightly packed next to the power supply.

Actually, the speed of this thing isn't too bad with the GVP board removed.  Much slower, to be sure, but I've seen worse.

[Lemmink]

From what I have read I think the GVP RAM-Modules have some contactproblems, or one of then is broken. See if the GVP-RAM sit tightly in their sockets. Maybe remove the RAM and clean the contact with pure alcohol useing a Q-tip.
Try running mit the GVP install but without RAM on the card (the first bank is soldered directly to the board I belive, of course you can`t remove that).
Maybe the RAM-modules are too slow, try deactivateing the burstmode, or nowaitstates with the jumpers. I will cost you a little bit of speed, but your system should be more stable after that.

Regarding RAM on ZII-Cards: The ZII Adressspace can only adress 8 MB, so the total of all the ram on all ZII cards should not exceede 8 MB. The GVP (and most of the other accelerators) put their memmory outside of the ZII autoconfig adresspace, so there is no problem.

[macto]

I was running the GVP card with the stock 4 MB for a little while, and still had problems.  I went through the jumpers, and the descriptions in the manuals really didn't say much.  In most cases they used the word "RESERVED", even though it is clearly there for a reason.  Other things, like "autoconfig address space" came up, but I'm not really sure what that means.  A lot of the (online) documentation I do find seems piecemeal, but that may be because I'm jumping into the middle of somebody else's mess.  (I would imagine that very few people would just have the assemblage of equipment I have dumped on them.  Rather they would build it up over time, as any sane person would do.  ;-) )

The autoconfig bit does answer one question: when I put the DataFlyer RAM and SupraRAM cards in, only 8 MB was recognised.  I guess that's why.  Likewise, using the autoconfig RAM jumper on the G-Force 030 card limited the system to 16 MB RAM (8 MB autoconfig on the G-Force 030 and 8 MB non-autoconfig on the G-Force 030, meaning that the DataFlyer RAM and/or SupraRAM would be ignored).  See, I am learning.

Anyhow, the system seems to be stable without that card.  For the time being, I'm going to set that card aside and get to know my A2000 a little better, both from a technical perspective and from the perspective of software.  Once I know how particular software behaves (ie. when it crashes and why), I'll tackle the GVP board again.  Until then, I'll have a mighty difficult time separating my mistakes (or those of other programmers) from the computers.

I would like to thank everybody for their help thus far.  The problem may remain unsolved, but I learned a lot and will continue plugging at this machine.  Sorry, the machine to my left.  While this machine has a G4, I'd be lying if I said that it was an AmigaOne.

[QuikSanz]

Hi macto,

The limit for extended memory is 16Mb, Chip mem does not count. Took a while to find the manual. All IC sockets should be filled. It's possible that the card has received a static discharge, Before you got it. That would be too bad an end for a decent accel card. If you can make sure the rest is good, there are lots of second hand ones around, some even at a good deal. Most folks seem to stick to AGA machines, aside from a faster bus there is no real upside to this if you use a graphics card, That is if you use the bus wisely. The A2000 has more expansion than any other and I've read that some nice towers may again be had real soon. Micro A1 and A2000 in one case anybody, talk about being versatile.

Chris

[macto]

I'm not giving up on the critter, I'm just setting it aside until I know a bit more.  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there is much on this card which can be fixed.  Besides the crystal, CPU, and FPU, the only socketed components are PALs.  You would probably need an identical card to swap those out.  Though I can also inspect it more carefully for physical damage and repair that, assuming that my hands are steady enough for surface mount.

As for the G3/G4 Amigas ... I originally got into Macs after picking up an SE to replace my dying 486.  Now the SE is another 68000 running at 8 MHz, so it isn't all that different from my A2000 with respect to performance.  I loved that machine because it was fun to use.  Of course, I upgraded with time.  Most of the 68k models were fun, but the jump to the PowerPC models took away the fun.

Now I can see the same thing happening here: the A2000 is fun.  It may be a virtual cripple compared to what I thought I had (ie. the unreliable GVP card), but it doesn't make much of a difference in my mind.  I learned a long time ago, there is no such thing as a slow machine if you use software which was written for it.  Well, almost.  In my case, making the jump to an A1 would risk tarnishing another platform in my eyes.  Then what would I be left with?  The Atari ST?   :evilgrin:

Granted, the A1 looks neat.  But I do believe that a serial port would be more useful than a parallel port.

[QuikSanz]

Hi macto,

Hmm, Sounds familiar. Was the SE the all in monitor type, B/W display? that was the first "PC" I used many years after some classes I took at the local collage when I was in JR High, BIG hard drives, I think they were called "cakes". Then I found Amiga.Most kids these days wouldn't even know what they were looking at, you old timer.

Chris

[macto]

That could have been an SE.  As for big hard drives, it depends upon what you mean by big.  I've seen big hard drives (30 to 60 cm diameter platters), and I've been told that there were even bigger ones.

After dealing with clumsy OSes like MS-DOS, and bloated GUIs like Windows and OS/2, the relative elegance of Mac OS 6 and 7 were a revelation.  While I won't go as far as claiming that the Amiga is a revelation, it is the first time I've seen preemptive multitasking in such a small OS.  I was beginning to think that such was impossible.

Then again, maybe I should check the disk and memory usage.  It is possible that WB 2.0.4 is being less of a resource hog than System 6, so maybe the Amiga is a revelation.   :-o

As for those kids who think I'm an old timer, just give them five or ten years and they'll know what it feels like. :lol:

[QuikSanz]

Hi macto,

"As for those kids who think I'm an old timer, just give them five or ten years and they'll know what it feels like."  

:roflmao:
 
The HD's I'm thinking of were 12" across and 6 disks stacked to about 6-8" high. That was back in the early 70's.

Chris