Help unbrick my A1200?
Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 10:54 am
This is probably 99% user error.
First I’ll explain the state my Amiga is in..
I have 3.1.4 roms, it’s an A1200 with a IDE cf adapter for the hdd, and a PCMCIA - cf adapter for file transfers to/from my pc.. with an 8mb modern ram expansion. When I turn It on it waits for ages.. a minute or so, with a black screen before the kickstart screen appears - if the RAM expansion card isn’t inserted. If the card is inserted it doesn’t get that far, it’s just a black screen with a power light.
If the main CF (partitioned as dh0: and dh1:) is connected, it just does solid hdd light and never* boots. I can get half booted by messing about with floppies, but dh0: never mounts, just my dh1.
* I guess maybe it boots if I leave it doing it for an hour or something, I’m too chicken to try.
What did I do immediately before this? I made a copy of the 3.1.4 Workbench disk and changed its Startup Sequence slightly so instead of loadWB it ran xbench.. the idea was if I put the floppy in, xbench loaded, if I didn’t, workbench loaded. I wondered at first if maybe I messed up my WB install but now I think it’s hardware..
Even if I unplug everything, from the ide/cf card and revert to my old 3.1 kickstart roms, it’s still taking ages to show boot stuff. Currently I can’t get it to even the “hold both mouse buttons” menu when the RAM card is inside. I hope I haven’t damaged that, or the 1200’s motherboard. Without the card I can get the boot menu but I have to hold the buttons for ages as it’s hard to predict when it’ll appear.
Could the power supply be dying? I could have sworn it was recently a lot louder (Coil whine?) and now it’s silent.
The a1200 isn’t recapped.. I wonder if the power conked out while it was writing to the CFs.. I’ll make a full backup of the drives in UAE at least but what a downer.
Ed:
Oh boy.. I thought I’d check inside the PSU and there’s no obvious big sign of mess other than see-through what looks like puddle stains..? I was very careful not to mess anything up inside it.. and put it back together.. plugged it in again and the Amiga doesn’t even output any video signal at all anymore.. so I definitely need a new PSU before I do anything else. it does seem that literally every thing I do at the moment makes it worse so it’s probably for the best I’ve hit a wall, d’oh..
Could this all have been caused by a rapidly dying PSU? Why would a wonky psu make loading kickstart excruciatingly slow? Oh well.
First I’ll explain the state my Amiga is in..
I have 3.1.4 roms, it’s an A1200 with a IDE cf adapter for the hdd, and a PCMCIA - cf adapter for file transfers to/from my pc.. with an 8mb modern ram expansion. When I turn It on it waits for ages.. a minute or so, with a black screen before the kickstart screen appears - if the RAM expansion card isn’t inserted. If the card is inserted it doesn’t get that far, it’s just a black screen with a power light.
If the main CF (partitioned as dh0: and dh1:) is connected, it just does solid hdd light and never* boots. I can get half booted by messing about with floppies, but dh0: never mounts, just my dh1.
* I guess maybe it boots if I leave it doing it for an hour or something, I’m too chicken to try.
What did I do immediately before this? I made a copy of the 3.1.4 Workbench disk and changed its Startup Sequence slightly so instead of loadWB it ran xbench.. the idea was if I put the floppy in, xbench loaded, if I didn’t, workbench loaded. I wondered at first if maybe I messed up my WB install but now I think it’s hardware..
Even if I unplug everything, from the ide/cf card and revert to my old 3.1 kickstart roms, it’s still taking ages to show boot stuff. Currently I can’t get it to even the “hold both mouse buttons” menu when the RAM card is inside. I hope I haven’t damaged that, or the 1200’s motherboard. Without the card I can get the boot menu but I have to hold the buttons for ages as it’s hard to predict when it’ll appear.
Could the power supply be dying? I could have sworn it was recently a lot louder (Coil whine?) and now it’s silent.
The a1200 isn’t recapped.. I wonder if the power conked out while it was writing to the CFs.. I’ll make a full backup of the drives in UAE at least but what a downer.
Ed:
Oh boy.. I thought I’d check inside the PSU and there’s no obvious big sign of mess other than see-through what looks like puddle stains..? I was very careful not to mess anything up inside it.. and put it back together.. plugged it in again and the Amiga doesn’t even output any video signal at all anymore.. so I definitely need a new PSU before I do anything else. it does seem that literally every thing I do at the moment makes it worse so it’s probably for the best I’ve hit a wall, d’oh..
Could this all have been caused by a rapidly dying PSU? Why would a wonky psu make loading kickstart excruciatingly slow? Oh well.