Flashing red caps lock light on a500

[amigafan1200]

I have a flashing red caps lock light on a500 keyboard.
What does that mean?

[chiark]

How many times is it flashing? (Check the stickies, too)

[amigafan1200]

It is flashing all the time.
However when I changed power supplies it stopped flashing.
Does the constant flashing occur because of low power voltage to the amiga keyboard?

[Angus]

Originally Posted by amigafan1200

It is flashing all the time.
However when I changed power supplies it stopped flashing.
Does the constant flashing occur because of low power voltage to the amiga keyboard?

There was certainly a virus or two that used to cause this, might be worth doing a sweep of all your recently inserted floppies, and checking if they are write-protected. Anti-virus software is available on Aminet.

[rkauer]

Low or bad power on the +5V rail can cause a lot of misbehaving on any Amiga.

For bad power I mean ripple, which in turn is caused by bad capacitors on power supply and near power connector on the Amiga.

Originally Posted by amigafan1200

I have a flashing red caps lock light on a500 keyboard.
What does that mean?

Heh have not heard of that problem in a while.. Very common issue with A500. Usually was caused by a bad 8520 chip, there are two, in the A500.

Since most were socketed, if you can located some good ones, replacing them will most likely solved the problem. Note that you should replace BOTH of them.. Usually when one goes, the other is at the least weakened and will most likely fail on you. For those that do not know, this problem is caused by plugging in a mouse or joystick with the power on and getting a static 'hit' in the port.

*note* One thing you can try first though is to unplug them and simply plug them back in.. Once in a while the sockets would relax and by re-seating the connection would be made with all pins again.

BTW, I was the Commodore Regional Technical Manager late 80's early 90's before leaving and starting a 3rd party developer of Amiga stuff... We saw this problem more times than anyone can imagine. I remember talking to dealers, support centers and user groups daily about this! It was the number one problem by far with all Amiga systems from that generation.

Oh one last thing.. if you open the case to do this, MAKE SURE you are static free!!!! Amiga is VERY easily damaged by static.

Also if this does not do the trick, then most likely it is either a power issue OR one of the main chips is bad. The main CPU 68000 could also give this symptom when it went bad so I would start there IF the 8520 chips are not the problem.

Malakie