Zorro III not working... :(

[DarrenHD]

Ok, one of my A4000's has started to not recognize Zorro III cards. It will recognize Zorro II cards, but they don't work.

I have:

-changed buster chips with a known good rev-11 buster: no change
-tried three different A4000 riser cards: no change

Is it possible that dead or dying CAPS could cause this? Everything else works on the system and it will boot with no cards installed on the RISER, or with some cards forced to Zorro II mode.

If I put a Zorro III card on the RISER the machine gurus at startup and the power LED blinks.

I'm wondering what is causing this!!

[FOL]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

Ok, one of my A4000's has started to not recognize Zorro III cards. It will recognize Zorro II cards, but they don't work.

I have:

-changed buster chips with a known good rev-11 buster: no change
-tried three different A4000 riser cards: no change

Is it possible that dead or dying CAPS could cause this? Everything else works on the system and it will boot with no cards installed on the RISER, or with some cards forced to Zorro II mode.

If I put a Zorro III card on the RISER the machine gurus at startup and the power LED blinks.

I'm wondering what is causing this!!

I got same problem with A4000T. I bent a few pins in 3 Zorro slots, they ended up slapping off.
I ended damaging print and now no cards are recognized.
It was all the pulling cars in and out that caused my issue.

Id check the daughter board connector.

Where you say you put a card into the riser, you dont mean without the daughter board? If so, thats not a good idea.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by FOL

I got same problem with A4000T. I bent a few pins in 3 Zorro slots, they ended up slapping off.
I ended damaging print and now no cards are recognized.
It was all the pulling cars in and out that caused my issue.

Id check the daughter board connector.

Where you say you put a card into the riser, you dont mean without the daughter board? If so, thats not a good idea.

I checked all the pins, everything looks good. Cleaned contacts as best I could with some Isopropy Alcohol...still no luck

I don't know why it doesn't work

[FOL]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

I checked all the pins, everything looks good. Cleaned contacts as best I could with some Isopropy Alcohol...still no luck

I don't know why it doesn't work

Does the machine work fine without any cards?
Does it work fine with just the rise (daughter board) in there?

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by FOL

Does the machine work fine without any cards?
Does it work fine with just the rise (daughter board) in there?

It works fine with or without the daughter card, and with the Deneb (forced into Z2 rescue mode) it works, I can see the DenebInstall directory.

however in normal Z2 mode the Deneb doesn't work (won't come online).

Although it does show up in early startup.

With a zorro III card installed machine power LED blinks 4-5 times when I power the machine on... and sometimes I saw guru 80000004.

[Loedown]

I started getting those sort of Guru faults before I changed the A2000 PSU to an ATX style, random ones and similar type problems.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by Loedown

I started getting those sort of Guru faults before I changed the A2000 PSU to an ATX style, random ones and similar type problems.

That machine (4000 Desktop) is in a TowerHawk tower case using the power supply that came with the Towerhawk tower. I guess I could try to swap out the power supply...but that would be weird...since it appears to be powering the machine fine otherwise.

The cyberstorm PPC and CV PPC work fine. I can boot into OS4. It's only the Zorro cards that are not working properly...still think it's power supply?

Small recap:

changed buster, didn't fix
changed backplane (riser), didn't fix
cleaned contacts on zorro cards and backplane, didn't fix

So problem must lie elsewhere...

Possible: change power supply?
Anything else??

[FOL]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

That machine (4000 Desktop) is in a TowerHawk tower case using the power supply that came with the Towerhawk tower. I guess I could try to swap out the power supply...but that would be weird...since it appears to be powering the machine fine otherwise.

The cyberstorm PPC and CV PPC work fine. I can boot into OS4. It's only the Zorro cards that are not working properly...still think it's power supply?

Small recap:

changed buster, didn't fix
changed backplane (riser), didn't fix
cleaned contacts on zorro cards and backplane, didn't fix

So problem must lie elsewhere...

Possible: change power supply?
Anything else??

Worst case, I would say track damage through leakage, unless you had caps replaced already.

[Loedown]

Failing PSU would give lower voltage / ripple, so capacitors would be the next likely cause, anything pertaining to the Z3 bus / power.

[mech]

Start with the PSU,it could be the extra zorro card load is making it fail.
reseat any motherboard ram,chip ram simm making bad contact can cause all sorts of oddities.

Try this guide, it has some good info on troubleshooting the zorro bus:

http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/a4000hard/excrdnot.html

Mech

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by FOL

Worst case, I would say track damage through leakage, unless you had caps replaced already.

I've looked at all the caps and they appear ok, but that is just with naked eye - but I don't see any signs of leakage.

I can try a different PSU to see if it makes a difference.

Darren

Originally Posted by mech

Start with the PSU,it could be the extra zorro card load is making it fail.
reseat any motherboard ram,chip ram simm making bad contact can cause all sorts of oddities.

Try this guide, it has some good info on troubleshooting the zorro bus:

http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/a4000hard/excrdnot.html

Mech

Reseated chip ram, no change
checked all other socketed chips (there aren't many), pushed them in firmly.

Will try another PSU and report back.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

I've looked at all the caps and they appear ok, but that is just with naked eye - but I don't see any signs of leakage.

I can try a different PSU to see if it makes a difference.

Darren



Reseated chip ram, no change
checked all other socketed chips (there aren't many), pushed them in firmly.

Will try another PSU and report back.

Ok, it's not the power supply. Swapped PS with known-good-working PS and still had the problem.

So to re-cap:

With any Zorro III card inserted at power on machine power LED will blink several times, machine will guru with 80000004.

Remove all cards, machine boots OK.

Put in Deneb (forced to Z-II) and machine boots, and the Deneb works too with DenebZ2usb.device ...



Strange. Zorro III not working, Zorro II working.

[SpeedGeek]

Before you replace the PSU just check the +5 Volt supply with a DMM. Also there is PAL on the motherboard which selects Zorro 2 or Zorro 3 cycles by decoding the CPU address. Finally, SuperBuster uses CPU clock and Clock 90 for Zorro3 cycles and 7Mhz and CDAC clocks for Zorro2 cycles. See the A4000 Schematics for more info.

P.S. Caps tend to fail when they are over-heated and would be most likely to cause a problem when the PSU is under heavy load.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by SpeedGeek

Before you replace the PSU just check the +5 Volt supply with a DMM. Also there is PAL on the motherboard which selects Zorro 2 or Zorro 3 cycles by decoding the CPU address. Finally, SuperBuster uses CPU clock and Clock 90 for Zorro3 cycles and 7Mhz and CDAC clocks for Zorro2 cycles. See the A4000 Schematics for more info.

P.S. Caps tend to fail when they are over-heated and would be most likely to cause a problem when the PSU is under heavy load.

Since it's not the buster chip, not the backplane (riser), not the power supply, it must be something else on the motherboard. Visual inspection of caps appears to be good, I don't see any leakage. So maybe its a dead PAL chip? Something beyond my ability to repair I think :-(

[source]

have you had any success?

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by source

have you had any success?

Not quite yet but I hooked up a 1084S monitor and now I can see that I get a Yellow screen on power-on...then the flashing power LED, when a Zorro III card is installed.

A couple of times it has booted with the Deneb in Zorro III mode, but when I tried to bring the Deneb online the software crashed.

But the yellow screen must mean something...just not sure exactly what.

[alexh]

Possibly bad traces on the motherboard / daughter card which are only involved in Zorro III transfers?

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by alexh

Possibly bad traces on the motherboard / daughter card which are only involved in Zorro III transfers?

Not sure, swapped the daughter card, no change. Motherboard looks to be in good shape, battery is new and there was never any leakage there. All caps look good.

But it *is* old hardware, so who knows. I took out the chip ram simm and cleaned the contacts on it (was some black residue that came off), but that didn't make a difference. I will try a different chip ram simm and see if it makes any difference. I will also re-seat the cpu card, as in the centre of the FAST slot connector there is a small 1-3 mm gap so it looks like it's not fully pressed down. There is some play under the motherboard so when you press down the CPU card it doesn't 100% go into the socket.

Otherwise the system boots fine into OS 4.0, so the CPU card is making enough of a connection to get that far.

[source]

I seemed to have solved my zorro problem. I tried swapping of daughter cards. I even pulled out a known working mobo to make sure the cybervision was working. This am I pulled out buster and cleaned the contacts as well as the socket. It now seems to work. I can now get deneb working in dma mode. The cybergraphix card now works. I now have come across the same problem with os3.9 bb2 and cybergraphx. After installing the bb2 I am not able to see any of the cybergraphx screen modes. some say it is due to an incompatibility between cgfx3 and os39 but i installed cgfx 4 and the same problem. I have not installed any of the v 4 patches. I also installed the bb2 rom tag that on istallation says t may not be compatible with some configurations. Tomorrow i will attempt with the patches and without the bb2 rom tag. I know this is a little off topic, but insight into dissappearing screen modes would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[zipper]

You need the latest CGX4 patch to get the screenmodes pop up with bb2.