A1200 issues

[GearCross]

Hello everyone,

Tried to fire up the old A1200 after a few months of hiatus and unfortunately it didn't go so well... I'd be most grateful for your help.

I have an almost bone stock system, just 8MB of fast ram, PCMCIA NIC and an 8bitDO M30. KS 3.0, running WB 3.1 and Arcade Game Selector.

First I'm greeted with a poor picture quality with quite a bit of horizontal banding slowly creeping up as seen in the following picture:



It displays much worse using RGB-SCART connector (as shown in picture), through VGA that banding is quite a bit subdued.

Then whenever I try to boot into workbench I'm getting a guru meditation error 8000 0004. If I try booting a game through AGS I get an 8100 0005 I tried removing the extras and booting bare stock.

From what I could find, 8000 0004 means "illegal instruction" and 8100 0005 is "Corrupt memory list detected in FreeMem", my guess is that the latter means messed up RAM.

Removing the 8MB of FastRAM it does boot up into workbench without any issues, but the banding remains... Is the RAM card shot?
I managed to boot sysinfo with the 8MB card by booting into Dopus and running it from there, it shows all the RAM and it does the "Speed" test fine, but I know that is not even remotely close to being a reliable indication of stability.

Or is it due a recapping? I'd do it myself, even though I can handle soldering with little issues, I don't trust myself to deal with some of the tighter spots like behind the keyboard connector and/or even removing those SMD caps. If so, is there someone I can send off the mobo to get it properly recapped?

Thanks.


EDIT: Small update. Setting the Fast RAM card to just 4MB the 1200 seems to work fine, aside the poor picture quality.

[solarmon]

Have you got the PCMCIA card connected?

If so, the is the classic issue with 8MB of Fastram in Zorro II address space and PCMCIA. Like what you have found, you need to be in 4MB mode if you need to use the PCMCIA card.

Are you using ClassicWB? As I have found that this can cause issues. Kickstart 3.0 should support 8MB Fast ram and I/O based PCMCIA cards, but I find ClassicWB crashes in this combo.

[GearCross]

No, first thing I tried was to remove the PCMCIA card. Actually the main reason for that is that I learned that KS 3.0 should work with PCMCIA I/O cards, which would be nice to update WHDLoad slaves. 4MB doesn't cut it at all, I'm threading on very thin ice.

It's not a classicWB setup, it's a simple 3.1 build with minimal stuff to save up on RAM. The only thing extra it has is the AGS for boot time game loading without having to get into WB. I've had this setup for almost a year now and it worked wonderfully, I did stop using the 1200 for a few months as I don't have a proper place to be able to have it permanently setup.

I did a few more tests. I can almost be certain that there's something going on the upper 4MB of RAM, as setting the card for just 4MB, it works fine; I plugged the NIC and went online and browse the internet. Also did a quick 10 minutes of gaming and no issues. Setting it back to 8MB and no PCMCIA and I'm back to getting errors.


I also got an 8000 0003 whilst booting a game through AGS.

So, in sum, using 8MB of RAM and no PCMCIA card I get:

8000 0004 upon WB starting up
8100 0005 and 8000 0003 booting a game on AGS

[solarmon]

Which 8MB ram card do you have. And what A1200 revision?

Check that your power supply is OK.

A recap is definitely recommended, regardless of any issues.


I had similar previous issue in the past and had to do a partial 'timing fix', but I had the issues even in 4MB mode:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=98149

[lilwshu]

I have a 1D4 1200 and Amigakit 8MB board and it is not very stable on my KS 3.0 A1200 when I use PCMCIA cards, I installed WB 3.1 myself from disks. If I run the Amiga Test Kit memory test with a PCMCIA card inserted I get errors so it does seem to clash despite being an I/O card.

[GearCross]

Originally Posted by solarmon

Which 8MB ram card do you have. And what A1200 revision?

Check that your power supply is OK.

A recap is definitely recommended, regardless of any issues.


I had similar previous issue in the past and had to do a partial 'timing fix', but I had the issues even in 4MB mode:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=98149

I actually have an expansion based on the Arananet one, built by Amigastore.eu. The timing fix does seem promising, though mine doesn't freeze, it outright throws me Guru's whenever I boot WB or a game.

I didn't quite remember where I got this WB distro, but now that I see on your thread mentioning HstWB, that's the one I have. I installed the "EAB WHDLoad Games AGA package" for it.

Checked the voltages at the floppy connector and I'm getting 12.3V and 5.1V, so it seems to be fine. I do intend to someday probably do an internal PSU mod as I don't really use the DF0.

Regarding the picture issues... I also just tried using a composite cable and they still show up. I'll try getting Amiga Test Kit and see what it says.

Originally Posted by lilwshu

I have a 1D4 1200 and Amigakit 8MB board and it is not very stable on my KS 3.0 A1200 when I use PCMCIA cards, I installed WB 3.1 myself from disks. If I run the Amiga Test Kit memory test with a PCMCIA card inserted I get errors so it does seem to clash despite being an I/O card.

I also have a 1D4 and even back when I got the NIC, I always switched to the 4MB mode as I had read everywhere that you needed to do that for it to work. I read yesterday that you could actually still use the PCMCIA in 8MB, as long as it was using KS3.0 and an I/O card, or with a patched KS3.1.


EDIT: Seems I do have a broken RAM board... It seems to be in the upper 4MB address space as suspected.




EDIT2: Did some further testing. There seems to be an addressing problem. I tested in 512K chunks from 0x600000 up to 0x9fffff and I get the same errors.

[solarmon]

Make sure you don't have anything in the PCMCIA slot when doing the ATK memory test, as it will fail like that.

[GearCross]

Originally Posted by solarmon

Make sure you don't have anything in the PCMCIA slot when doing the ATK memory test, as it will fail like that.

Nope, the tests were run without anything on the PCMCIA slot.

[solarmon]

Does ATK show any Slow ram? When the Arananet 8MB board was first release there was an issue with it giving out slow ram when in 8MB mode. It needed a firmware update to remove the slow ram.

[GearCross]

It shows as FastRAM, both on 4 and 8MB mode.

[solarmon]

Have you tried cleaning the expansion port connector and the ram card connector?

Have you just purchased the card recently? I would send it back.

[GearCross]

Yes, I did cleaned both with a cotton swap and some IPA. Also took the chance to give the motherboard a thorough look, but found nothing out of the ordinary. The top has just a bit of dust, the bottom is pretty much spotless. The region around the caps is also fine, no dull solder joints or visible electrolyte leaking out the caps.

I bought the card less than a year ago, so it's still under warranty, I can easily return it.

I wonder, maybe a dead CPLD on the RAM board?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by lilwshu

I have a 1D4 1200 and Amigakit 8MB board and it is not very stable on my KS 3.0 A1200 when I use PCMCIA cards, I installed WB 3.1 myself from disks. If I run the Amiga Test Kit memory test with a PCMCIA card inserted I get errors so it does seem to clash despite being an I/O card.

Even in 4MB mode? as the main test setup is using exact same hardware and works fine. I even have a 1D4 in my own personal 1200 (with 3.1.4 roms), that also works fine.