User avatar
leighb2282

Posted Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:54 pm

Hey Folks, Yesterday I received an A1010 external floppy drive, I plugged it into the A2000 and now my A2000 refuses to boot.

Connecting my tv up to its mono component I see a white screen the 'resets' itself after a short period of time, the reset corresponds to the power light blinking 6 times quickly and then staying on for longer when the screen reset happens, what what I've read this may be due to some sort of boot issue? meaning it can't find a boot source?

I have removed all the upgrades to my A2000 leaving it totally barebones and it still does not boot, i've tried pressing all chips down into their sockets and while some did the usual popping and creaking after being left alone for so long it did nothing, I even tried pulling the PSU connector on the motherboard and replugging it in in the vain hope that it would reset something but to no avail.

Did I just brick my A2000? the floppy drive works in my A1000 (I tested it afterwards) but unfortunately, all of my ADFs to actually make a legit copy (bought from amigaforever) of Workbench 1.3 for the A1000 are on the (you guessed it) A2000's hard drive.

Any troubleshooting help here would be really appreciated otherwise the for sale section may suddenly be rife with spare A2000 parts ;)

User avatar
EzdineG
Springfield, MO

Posted Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:41 pm

You most certainly didn't brick that A2000. If it uses Kickstart 1.2/1.3, that white screen and blinking LED are telling you it's making it somewhat through the boot process.

Did you plug in the floppy drive with the A2000 powered on? Perhaps one of the CIA's / PAULA are blown.

By "removing all upgrades" did you also try unplugging the hard drive controller to see if it eventually went to the "insert Workbench" screen?

It can surely be saved. If you have access to a DiagROM, you could probably even boot to it and see exactly what the problem is.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:43 pm

Oh no!

Did you happen to plug the drive in while the powe was on? I’m away from my computer but my first thought was a CIA chipbgoing bad, which can be flaky and kind of sensitive.

Plugging in the external shouldn’t zap things - it was made for those expansions.

I feel like I had a similar issue with one of my machines at one point. I’ll try to scour my notes when I get home.

Hang in there!

User avatar
leighb2282

Posted Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:50 pm

EzdineG wrote:You most certainly didn't brick that A2000. If it uses Kickstart 1.2/1.3, that white screen and blinking LED are telling you it's making it somewhat through the boot process.
It's a rev 6.3 board (ECS chipset, Kickstart 2.04 by default) so I don't know if that makes a difference, it does feel like it is cycling to try and find something bootable.

EzdineG wrote:Did you plug in the floppy drive with the A2000 powered on? Perhaps one of the CIA's / PAULA are blown.
The power cord was plugged in but the machine itself was NOT turned on.
EzdineG wrote:By "removing all upgrades" did you also try unplugging the hard drive controller to see if it eventually went to the "insert Workbench" screen?
I removed EVERYTHING (the A2091, the GVP 030 Accelerator, the A2052 RAM board, taking it down to literally jsut the floppy drive and the motherboard, still no dice.
EzdineG wrote:It can surely be saved. If you have access to a DiagROM, you could probably even boot to it and see exactly what the problem is.
Unfortunately no Diagrom available to me, I took a quick look at all the large and small DIP chips and nothing seemed out of the ordinary visually.

Part of what makes this so frustrating is I literally last night moved across from my PC the Kickstart1.3 and workbench 1.3 images fresh from Amiga Forever with the intention of replacing the crappy ones I found online for testing and they are now on a dead machine hehe.

User avatar
EzdineG
Springfield, MO

Posted Sat Mar 17, 2018 3:42 pm

Take the Paula and a CIA chip from your Amiga 1000 and try them in that machine. First try replacing the CIA into each of the CIA sockets, and if that doesn't work try the Paula.

That would be the first thing I'd do. ;)

User avatar
leighb2282

Posted Sat Mar 17, 2018 4:52 pm

Will switching the Paula even work? they are different revisions (Rev4 in the 1000, Rev7 in the A2000,

I'm also reluctant to actually pull apart the A1000 after i've just gotten it working ;)

I might just end up ebaying 2 new 8520A chips and an 8364R7 rather than pulling my only other working Miggy.

Thanks for the next step to troubleshooting though!
EzdineG wrote:Take the Paula and a CIA chip from your Amiga 1000 and try them in that machine. First try replacing the CIA into each of the CIA sockets, and if that doesn't work try the Paula.

That would be the first thing I'd do. ;)

User avatar
icbrkr
Particles! BBS

Posted Sat Mar 17, 2018 5:38 pm

Where abouts do you live? I might have extra parts lying around here that I could send you.

The revision of the chip shouldn't matter too much if at all - maybe minor corrections in the chips or just a manufacturing process.

User avatar
leighb2282

Posted Mon Mar 19, 2018 1:21 pm

Hi Am located in the USA (West coast)

I was just going to grab a Paula and a CIA from Ebay (its probably a good idea to have spares anyway especially as these machines are not getting any younger!)

Is there any difference in terms of Manufacturers? I see CSG brand (commodore's own?) as well as MOS branded, Is there actually a difference in brand?

Thanks!

icbrkr wrote:Where abouts do you live? I might have extra parts lying around here that I could send you.

The revision of the chip shouldn't matter too much if at all - maybe minor corrections in the chips or just a manufacturing process.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:06 am

leighb2282 wrote:Is there any difference in terms of Manufacturers? I see CSG brand (commodore's own?) as well as MOS branded, Is there actually a difference in brand?
My understanding is that there is not a difference since MOS was owned by Commodore. Towards the later years Commodore branded some chips CSG and others MOS. AFIK, they were all the same. Amiga's were more likely to have CSG branded. They had more then one factory producing chips and some stamped CSG, Commodore Semiconductor Group. The wiki page for MOS shows variations of SID chips and others with both MOS and CSG but they are exactly the same chip.

User avatar
Crazyeights

Posted Wed May 02, 2018 7:04 pm

Did you try and hold down both mouse buttons while powering up to see if you get an early boot menu? I think this is OS2.x and later only though. Good Luck! I'm sure you'll get it going again. There are LOTS of smart and helpful people in the Amiga community :mrgreen:





Return to “Hardware”