Need help with an Amiga 2000.
 

This is my 1st post to this board so G'Day everyone. I'm hardly new to the Amiga but haven't sat in front of a working machine since 1994.

I came across a discarded Amiga 2000 today (model B2000 - CR)
, took it home and cleaned it up the best I could. Plugged in a keyboard and mouse, hooked it up to my 1084s via mono plug and switched it all on. Power came on, the hard drives turned over (there is an IDE hd I think and a larger type...scussi ??), but no kickstart screen. Just a blank screen that flickers very slowly and so does the red power LED.

I disconected the hd's, removed the 8meg expansion and the hd controller card and tried again. Same again. Does anyone know what might be the problem ? Is it fixable ? This was a dream machine of mine years ago and would love to get it to work now.

hmmm, right, first of all, some B2000's only have NTSC composite output so it would be best to try and find a proper rgb lead for the monitor...

try taking out the rom chip (bug long black thing in a socket - for the non techy) and gently run the legs on a bit if paper to clean them then put it back (making sure it's the same way round).

press any other chips in sockets down to make sure they are all in correctly.

does the screen flicker between two different gray levels (dark and medium)?

from the 'flickering' power light, it could be the cpu is naff, you would need an accelerator or new 68000 then, an accelerator would be better anyway :)

it could also be the on board 2Mb ram, in which case, find another B2000 and transfer all the free extras you've got into it...

thanks
 

Thanks for the advice Severin. On removing the chip, should I use one of those wrist grounding bands (should I earth myself?) because I've been told that touching a chip can destroy it due to static?

Also, yes the screen does flicker between two different levels (white to light grey actually).

Are 68000s still being made or are they only obtainable second hand?

About the output, theres a mono plug at the back of the machine so it should display in mono, shouldn't it?

Earthing... probably a good idea (specialy if your right handed), just hold a tap for 10 seconds or so and then DON'T walk on carpet...

boot colours are:

DARK GRAY: The initial hardware tested OK. the 68000 is running
and the registers are readable.

LIGHT GRAY: The software is coming in and seems OK.

WHITE: The initialization test have passed.


If something is wrong with your system, you may see the following:

RED: Error was found in ROMS.

GREEN: Error found in the CHIP RAM.

BLUE: Error was found in the custom chips.

YELLOW: If 68000 found an error before the error trapping software (GURU)
was running.


68000's can be got fairly easily & cheaply, but you might have to buy an old A500 to get one :)


Erm, mono stuff, erm, long time ago, can't remember much... my 2000 had a composite output, might have been labelad mono, i never looked, i only used it once while my monitor was being fixed, but the output was ntsc so I had no colour and vertical lines all across the screen :(

Thanks again Severin for the advice and all, but the dam 1084s just stopped working. I'm pretty sure its the on/off switch. Sometimes if I hold the button in real hard it seems to work until I release it. I haven't the soldering skills to repair it myself so fixing that little problem will have to wait till my wallet is fat with cash.

yep, it's a common fault on the 1081/1084/8833-II's :(

a quick way round it (and fairly easy, not much soldering skill is required) is to just bypass the switch (solder 2 wires across the switch tabs so it's always on or use a big blob of solder to link them) then just unplug it when your not using it. or if it is occassionally latching properly (may take alot of tries) don't turn it off just unplug...

Thanks again mate, I'll try that little trick once this net session is over.