My tale of Amiga woe!

Hi there guys, I'm a longtime lurker here as I've been trying to get myself a new Amiga setup for quite some time, having owned several from around '90 to '95 (500, 1500 and 4000/030).

My story began with a bid on eBay for a very nice clean 1200 which I won but somehow got lost for several weeks in the post and eventually arrived. I still had no monitor but to my surprise my mum had my CM8833-II in her shed and it still worked when I got it several months later. A couple more weeks pass as I track down a suitable cable, and it's finally time to turn on the A1200.

It is a base machine with an 80mb HD. To my joy it immediately booted into WB3.0, and I had a browse around the hard disk. Everything seemed to be working great.

I then tried a floppy (a good, newish one.) To my disappointment, the floppy drive screeched terribly and the computer seized up, I had to switch the it off.

Since then I have not been able to get it to boot. When switched on, it goes immediately light grey, with the floppy light lit. The caps lock key doesn't work.

I fiddled around inside, taking it apart a couple of times, tightening everything. Tried booting with the floppy disconnected - same symptoms only no floppy light.

At one brief point as I jiggled the HD cable the HD light came on, and suddenly caps lock also worked and I was able to reboot (normally I can't.) This didn't last long and now I'm back to grey screen, floppy light if connected, no audible HD.

If anyone has any advice for attempting to fix it, before sending it back to the vendor, please let me know as I'd really rather not send it back through the post again!

Thanks so much,

Jasper

[8bitbubsy]

Sounds to me like the floppy drive cable and HDD cable has got bad contact on their plugs. I suggest you get new ones and check for any corrosion on the floppy/IDE pins on the motherboard (also check for loose/dried/cracked solder joints on the bottom of the PCB where the floppy/IDE headers are.

[FOL]

Remove the HDD and Floppy and keyboard, then try booting to kickstart screen.

If it boots to the kickstart (3.0 = 10 secs, 3.1 = 40 secs), then atleast you know the machine works.
Then turn off and add the HDD, see if it boots. If it does, add the keyboard. If that works, then add the floppy.

You need to do a process of ilimination. If it doesnt boot with nothing connected then you got problems.

Does it have an acellerator or ram expansion?

Hi guys. No luck when connecting one by one or individually, but it did boot suddenly out of nowhere when left after that for around 20 mins. From there WB and the games on the HD work fine, and it even reboots with the three finger salute and loads WB again immediately. Turning it off requires the wait again though...

The floppy is obviously gone, but is something else up? The board looks spotless and the machine's in great nick. Does anyone know if the machine ought to boot from HD if the floppy is unattached? If so, there's some problem that's separate because I'm pretty sure the HD is fine.

Was wonderful to play a couple of games on the CRT screen for the first time in around 15 years, I just wish I could get the old software I wrote (still on floppy only) to load!

[Allen1]

I would say the small surface mount capacitors are probably on the way out or leaking (look for dull colouring around them) or maybe the kickstart Roms need re-seating. Failing those options it may me the power supply isn't giving enough output.

Realistically I would be looking for signs of capacitors leaking, including the ones in the floppy drive area. The only other option would be a dry solder joint as 8bitbubsy mentioned

The 1200 can still boot up from the hard drive if the floppy drive is disconnected OK.

An update on my 1200...

The machine also started booting fine, I think it just needed to be warmed up the first few times out of storage. I've been able to play some games via a CF card and that's made me very happy!

Floppy was still horribly broken, though. Today I fitted a new floppy from Amigakit, and it sounds much better. Disks appear in WB, the light sounds and the three clicks to read a disk all seem as I remember them. Problem is they all show up as the dreaded DF0:????. Even a brand new disk with ADF software on it which I'm pretty sure works.

Any ideas? I tried all other reversing-cable combinations, but none of them worked... It seems to be in the right order, but it's like all the disks are unreadable which somehow I don't think is true (they're in pretty good condition.)

[fitzsteve]

Hi Jasper,

The A1200 shouldn't need to be warmed up, I'm guessing the Capacitors have failed as suggested by Allen1.

I would advise getting the Motherboard serviced there are a couple of people on these boards and Amibay who might be able to help.

Hikey & Cosmos for example. Or I imagine you could send it off to Amigakit.

Good luck,

Steve.

Oh dear, I now wish I'd paid the asking price for a new AmigaKit one... Already put £70 for the machine, another £20 for the drive, and £20 for a cable which brings it close to the same price, and it still doesn't work...

What I meant by warmed up is that the first two or three times I tried it it didn't boot for quite a long period, but now I switch it on and the 80mb HD boots immediately. So it does work great, reads CF and HD fine, besides the drive picking all disks up as DF0:????. Perhaps the floppy controller caps are wonky, if it has caps on the board? I dunno, it all looks so clean with no sign of leakage or corrosion...

[Arnie]

Have you tried formatting a blank floppy disk?

[roy bates]

have a look at the solder joints and see if they are going a dark grey(instead of a shiny silver colour),thats the caps leaking.also i take it that your harddrive is the original one as its 80mb the drive may be on its way out,maybe.

[Stedy]

Jasper,

Do you have a multimeter and are you afraid to use it?

You may have a power supply issue. My excellent guide will help you:
http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/am..._supplies.html

As others have mentioned, the supply capacitors could have gone, long term storage kills electrolytic capacitors.

Ian

Hi there Stedy. I'm at the 'open things up and rejig' rather than the 'get the solder out' level of competence with hardware unfortunately!

I've had words with the guys from AmigaKit, and they say it's may well be one of two things - one of the CIA chips or the Paula. As the other parts of the machine are working, and the drive behaves as if it is working other than the seeking (from observing the lights, the clicking and the movement of the heads when opened up and powered) there's a chance one CIA is out where the other still works. This apparently explains long boot times, in some sourced I've read. I guess these symptoms can probably indicate capacitor failure too, even if the board looks clean to me.

Either way the upshot is I probably need a new main board, so the machine was sold to me as working when it had a fundamental fault. I saw a rev 1D on eBay the other day but I figured I'd look on here first as my last eBay purchase was this 1200!

Can you change a main board without solder or special drivers? It looks simple enough (I took the floppy apart.) And if anyone has a board they're selling or know of one from someone reputable, please let me know by all means!

[NovaCoder]

Yep it's very easy to change the board (even I can do it).