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Zeus 68040 board suddenly FUBAR in my A2000

July 3, 2016, 5:51 pm
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(Starting a new thread here since my previous threads are probably/hopefully unrelated to this issue)

So I've spent this weekend extracting my old Amiga 2000 gear from a storage locker after ~8 years away from the hobby. I've got an A2000 with Rev. 6.2 motherboard, Indivision ECS FlickerFixer, dual floppy drives, a bunch of random expansion boards, a Progressive Peripherals Zeus 68040 CPU/SCSI board @ 33MHz with 16 populated RAM slots and an on-card 40MB SCSI drive, etc. Lots of nice gear to tinker with!

Since it's been nearly a decade since I sat in front of this rig, I've been working my way up from bare-bones: I stayed up till ~3am today getting the old leaky mobo battery extracted and cleaned up, getting two floppy drives installed and configured properly, getting the 40MB SCSI drive mounted to the Zeus board formatted and loaded with a fresh copy of Workbench 3.1, etc.

Earlier today I was making slow-and-steady progress toward getting an internal SCSI CD-ROM drive chained to the Zeus board, but I was going in circles and opted to take a nap (staying up till 3AM is harder than it used to be).

Nap complete, I just came back to the A2000, only to find it dead. Specifically, the machine powers up when I flip the switch but I get no disk activity, no flopping-seeking, etc., as long as the Zeus board is inserted. The machine behaves normally if I remove the Zeus board.

FML.

I've spent the past ~hour reseating the Zeus board, removing it's metal bracket (the one that faces out the rear of the chassis) in the hope it was catching the case and causing the Zeus to not "sit down" fully into the slot, etc.etc., and I'm stuck. The '040 CPU gets very warm when the machine is powered up, and it seems like the three-finger ctrl-Amiga-Amiga keyboard reset is doing something (based on flickers on the display and the sound of the Zeus-mounted SCSI drive going through it's power-on chatter), but otherwise it's KO'd right now. AARHGHGHGHGHGHG.

I found this thread where the submitter describes something pretty similar, but without any resolution shared: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=35192

Any tips or suggestions on what to do next? The Zeus board is apparently rare/uncommon enough that there just isn't a ton of info about it, and I'm really scared that I somehow killed the most valuable part of my whole setup.
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Mega Midget Racer in A500 w/ cpu socket IDE

July 4, 2016, 3:04 pm
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Does anyone know if a Mega Midget Racer will let an IDE interface to work in the 68000 socket?

It's the one sold by kipper2 without the memory.

I've tried a couple of other accelerators, but they all disable everything else installed in the 68000 socket.
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A1000 Capacitor list

July 5, 2016, 3:35 pm
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Does anyone have the capacitor list for the A1000?
I can't seem to find one anywhere on the Net

thanks
-b
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Where to source 23-pin Amiga to BNC RGB cable?

July 6, 2016, 10:39 am
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I have just purchased a Sony PVM-14M2U CRT on eBay ( PDF of the Sony manual ) and intend to use it only my Amiga 2000 '020 to replace my recently deceased 1084S. I also plan to use it with a C64 I am going to turn into a PAL machine, shortly.

For the Amiga, I need a 23-pin to three BNC (RGB) leads. I would rather not build it.

Can someone advise? Thanks.



bp
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My A2000 restore. Mobo Resocketing fun

July 6, 2016, 1:06 pm
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Apologies in advance that Google photos won't let me do in-line images. Lots of PCB porn in the links.

I was pleased to get my old A2000 up and running with a new CF drive, as discussed here. The rig worked but only because the accelerator card did. When pulled it out and tried to boot with the stock configuration I just got a green screen. A cursory inspection showed corrosion around the barrel battery, of course.

I tried to pull out the battery and the both sides of the holder snapped off. Well, now I can see the damage easier! Obviously, there was corrosion around the battery but I didn't see any spreading around the CPU socket.

The next step was to pop out the CPU. Uh, oh. Very pretty copper rust on some of the socket springs. Surprised that the holes close to the battery were okay but, still the socket has to come out. When I started poking the little spring clips they simply crumbled.. Ugly! The chip pins had some oxidation on them but I simply scraped them off a bit.

Now I have been soldering since I was 12 but I probably haven't soldered since I was 12. Taking apart old television sets to get out the giant capacitors for fiendish experiments was my specialty. I am very grateful for the YouTube videos that gave me the confidence to take a crack at this.

De-soldering 64 pins is a pain in the butt, but a cheapo solder sucker is a miracle worker. As the YouTube videos show, add a bit of fresh solder then pop the sucker on it. At first, I didn't know how to purge the solder from the syringe so I started digging into the nozzle to get it out. Yes, NOW I know that you push the plunger all the way down and a pin pushes it out. Good example of how the obvious is not so obvious to a rank amateur. After a couple hours, success!

Now let's look at what's underneath.. Nasty. The holes closest to the battery have surface corrosion but seem structurally okay. Again, using the helpful tips from those who have gone before. I swabbed up the mess as best I could, first with vinegar then, after drying, with isopropyl. Looks a little bit better now.

From the photo it looks like some of the corrosion has bled across traces. Most of that is an artifact of the lighting. Still, I checked for continuity across all the at-risk traces and found none. Then I checked to make sure there was continuity from the socket holes to where it's supposed to be. All good.

Finally, I soldered in a new CPU socket and the coin battery holder from AmigaKit. Boy, that was so much quicker than desoldering. Like biking up a hill then flying down it.

Finally, let's pop in a 3.1 ROM and fire it up. Yay! Now to put in a "modern" 3.1 environment with my old desktop tools and audio/graphic workstation.

Thanks to everyone on the boards for sharing their experiences or I could not have succeeded!

Epilog: Back in the day before the crazy case mods became a thing in the PC community, I blinged my A2000 case in my own modest way. There is this spray paint called "Fleckstone" that gives a faux-granite finish. I thought it looked way better than putty. What do you think?



P.S. Some extra tips that apply generally. For noobs, by a noob.
1. file off the lip on the plastic power supply connector. The connector holds firmly to the mobo without it. That sucker holds on tight! Slipping and trashing a capacitor when trying to pull it off is a real risk. Multiple reconnections during repair and testing are much easier now.
2. Invest in a cheap USB microscope or make one yourself from an old webcam. I could not clearly examine the traces without it.
3. Apply flux from a syringe before soldering. I am familiar with rosin core solder but applying flux separately was like night and day. Soldering 64 pins was greased (literally) lightning!
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300Gig SCSCI Hard drive Install Question - A2000

July 7, 2016, 8:01 am
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Dear Amiga Colleagues

I am in the process of adding a new SCSI HD to my A2000 and thought this would be an easy process. I purchased a new SCSI 300Gig drive and assumed I could prep/format this drive with the HDToolbox. However, I am not sure how to prep the config file for such a drive (assuming I can even use such capacity). Any ideas how I can get this drive to work?

The drive specs are below:

Cheetah 10K.7 SCSI ST3300007LW/LC


Drive capacity 300.0 GByte (formatted, rounded off values)
Read/write heads 8
Bytes/track 556 (average, rounded off values)
Bytes/surface 50.5 Gbytes (unformatted, rounded off values)
Tracks/surface (total) 90,774 Tracks (user accessible)
Tracks/inch 105,000 TPI
Peak bits/inch 658 KBPI
Internal data rate 470 - 944 Mbits/sec (variable with zone)
Disc rotational speed 10,000 r/min
Average rotational latency 3.00 msec

Current Specs:
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A2000
WB 3.1, - 40.42
Kickstart -40.63
Picasso II
Blizzard 68060 SCSI-II DMA Controller 68060 @ 50 MHz
3x AD516 Sunrize
Hydra Ethernet Card
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Soldering station, scope, etc. recommendations?

July 8, 2016, 9:59 am
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I just got out of a three-day soldering workshop and now feel much better about doing work on my Amigas.

I used a nice AmScope and JBC soldering station. I even got to experiment with soldering tweezers.

Using those nice tools was an eye opener, being able to see and being able to work cleanly are great. I'd like to invest in some new gear, but the JBC stuff is top-end and I wanted to check and see what might be equivalent.

What setup are you all using to do work?
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why is my FPU not showing up under plain WB3.1?

July 8, 2016, 8:01 pm
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so my A4k still in pieces trying to get my RR working with X-Surf100 and just fiddling around when I noticed my FinalCalc spreadsheet wasn't loading up anymore??? turns out OS3.1 doesn't show an FPU on Cyberstorm MKIII anymore?
I know the 060 has a full CPU as I was running a full version of Lightwave via my toaster running very fast with no issues so figured I'd reinstall the CS-MKIII drivers from Phase 5 and still no fpu??
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Gvp impact a3001

July 11, 2016, 8:16 am
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I have an A2000 with a GVP A3001 card. This is the card that has the IDE controller that doesn't work with drives with over 1024 cylinders. Since I've never found a drive to work on the controller, I use a GVP HC+8 SCSI controller.

Would I gain any benefits (or is it possible) trying to use the IDE controller connected to an IDE CF adapter+CF card for a boot drive?

I've looked around and some of the CF cards in the 200MB - 400MB range have cylinder counts below 1024.
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ACA1233 25MHz of 40MHz with 128MB fastram

July 11, 2016, 1:25 pm
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I am hesitating in buying an accelerator card for my Amiga 1200.

I will have to decide between an ACA1233 25MHz of a ACA1233 40Mhz with 128MB fastram.

I only play games (WHDload) on my Amiga 1200. Which one of these accelerator cards will be the best choice considering the price difference between these two? Price difference is 80 euros.
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Ratre's Auto Switch with Indivision AGA MK II-CR

July 11, 2016, 10:35 pm
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I just installed Rattes switcher in my A4000T. It works great BUT I use DVI on my Radeon 9200 through my mediator and DVI through the Indi as well. Rattes comes with a cable that goes from the indo to the switcher and from the switcher to the output on my Radeon. I do have VGA on the Radeon so I decided to wire everything up and see how it looks through the VGA output on the Radeon.

Issue came up. Screen doest display correctly. Its to far down and its wide. I have a feeling this is due to me setting everything up through DVI and not VGA.

Has anyone tried one of these using a DVI to VGA adaptor? I went and pulled it all out to return my amiga back to using two monitor inputs and the built in monitor selector, but the switch was nice. If my screen modes work the same passed through the radeon to the Rattes I'd go back to it. I dont want to mess with P96 Mode to fix the monitor adjustments again. I hate that crap!
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Catweasel MK3 Flipper on AmigaONE X1000

July 12, 2016, 9:00 am
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Hi good folks. :-)

So, i've put my CW3Flipper in my X1000 and connected an AmigaKit floppy stastion for A600/1200 to it.

I've tried both a 1-1 cable, and a cable with 3 connectors with a twist.

If i then mount DF0, i get nothing. If i mount DF1, i get nothing. BUT if i mount TD1 AND df1, and then "diskchange df1", the disk appears.

I of course get the standard read error message as well.

I've tried rebooting after each try to eliminate and separate what drive to mount, but it seems i need to mount both td1 and df1.

Also, should i set the prefs to ready or diskchange? And should i put this drive before or after the twist?

EDIT:
Ok, i moved the floppy before the twist, and changed the prefs to reflect it was now disk 0, set it to diskchange, rebooted, then mounted df0: nothing. mounted df1: as well, and with a "diskchange df0:" the disk shows. But only after mounting BOTH df0 and df1.

Why is this? will i HAVE to do this to get it working? Also, are there a way i can make it quiet about the read errors and discover the disk by itself? In the prefs, it's a setting "noclick", doesn't this mean the station searches for a disk automatically?

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4000T Replacement Tower!

July 12, 2016, 5:43 pm
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SCSI to Flash adapters + pre-loaded ECS WB?

July 12, 2016, 6:59 pm
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I have an A2000 '020 with a spinning SCSI disc. I purchased, 8 years ago, a SCSI to CF adapter that did not work properly. Massive headache.

Can someone point me to a SCSI to Flash adapter that would work with my GVP SCSI+8 card?

Also, is there a source for a 4GB CF card to use with that is pre-loaded with a nice WB config? I see lots of eBay items like this but hard to tell. Anyone with such a setup who can respond or PM me, I'd appreciate.

I just purchased a Sony PVM to replace my dead 1084S and I have the cables coming to US from Europe to make it work. I want to get the system sorted before this.

Many thanks. 020 + WHDLoad is a great combo for ECS 2000.


bp
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Mega Midget Racer missing SRAM

July 15, 2016, 7:58 am
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So, I got the MMR I bought and was getting ready to install it and noticed it doesn't have any of the SRAM onboard.

Is this necessary? I read the manual and it mentions using the SRAM to load Kickstart.

Will this greatly affect performance with no SRAM installed?
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Questions on Amiga 500+ (plus)

July 16, 2016, 7:55 am
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Hi all,

Some time back I had purchased an A500+ to add to my collection.

Recently, while testing out both a 1084S-D2 monitor and an Atari 520 STFM that I'm about to sell (wait, will I get booed for mentioning the Atari, or cheered because I'm selling it..? :roflmao: ), I decided to hook up the A500+ to it to play around, since the monitor purchase was faircly recent.

To my surprise, I got no image even though the Amiga powered on. To rule out the cabling, since the monitor has the D-9 connector and I only had an RGB<-> Scart plus a great little scart to D-9 RGB I ourchased on ebay, I decided to also try the monochrome output, and then also the CBVS output through the modulator, all no dice.

In addition to no image, the disk drive was not loading up discs as usual (or even doing its repetitive click in search for them).

I was out of time then, so I decided to call it quits and check another day. But I did start googling and saw that there was a huge chance that the battery had leaked and ruined my computer... :(

2 days back I resume playing around with it and opened it up. Looking inside it was great news / weird? News...

The great news was that the motherboard was imppecable and no visible battery damage anywhere... The weird news was... There was no battery... :confused:

Played around pushing the chips and some did make the "creak" sound as if they had gone a little more into the socket, crossed fingers and powered on... To my surprise this time it booted up fine! (Well, I had to suffer a little more, because first I got no image and thought it was still broken, but it turns out the cable I was testing it out with through the mono output was faulty, and inserting a disk I did see it load, so after a cable change I got the image too :laughing: ).

So questions...

Why does my A500+ not have a battery..? Is it possible that the original owner just removed it to avoid these exact issues of battery leaks?

What do you think/suggest/advice on my computer (based on what's inside that I will explain now) and using it in general? The whole purpose of me and my computers is just for gaming.

Here's what I found out about the unit from disassembling and testing, and that you can check on the screenshots to verify or correct me...

- Seems to be a "standard" A500+ with 1MB RAM
- It has an additional 1MB of expanded RAM though the trap door expansion (should I worry one simm is a different bramd memory?
- Kickstart ROM is 2.04 (is this bad..?)
- It also came with an additional device that looks to be an HDD + RAM combo board with both these in an enclosure to connect through the side slot
- HDD seems to be 50 MB
- Extra RAM seems to be another 2MB of "fast" RAM

Appreciate your replies and comments/advice on using this machine.

Thanks!

Attached Images
File Type: jpg image.jpg (14.4 KB)
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A500 chip ram upgrade?

July 16, 2016, 9:41 am
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I saw this listed on fleabay recently. I have the proper revision motherboard the seller states is required (A500 Rev 6a), and am considering purchasing the kit to upgrade the computer to 1meg chip ram (well, I would send it to someone like Acill to do it, if he feels up to it). Is there any reason to NOT do this?

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CHEAP! & FAST SSD for your real Amiga 1200!

July 16, 2016, 5:01 pm
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Adaptec PCI UW SCSI Cards in Mediator

July 17, 2016, 9:54 am
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I just received my UW PCI SCSI card compatible with my Mediator. I have the driver as well for it. Questions is, can this be used to boot my system disk or does it only work as a device for non bootable disks once the system comes up from another drive connected to the CSPPC or other internal SCSI device?

If it can boot, how does it know to use it before the driver is loaded from devs?
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Mega Midget Racer Issues

July 18, 2016, 1:35 pm
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Well, finally got the MMR in and have been playing with it.

First problem, the DRAM board fails! This occurs both when the kipper2 RAM board is installed and when it's not. No matter what I do, DRAM fails.

Second, Sysinfo doesn't seem overly impressed. I run Sysinfo and it doesn't show much of a speed improvement. cpu is a 68030 20MHz. Sysinfo shows just a little speed increase over a stock A500.

I'm thinking I'm losing a lot of the advantage of the MMR with the dead RAM board. It's the ZIP version so all the chips are pre-soldered in, so not a whole lot I can do there.

Any suggestions from anyone?
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