A1200 boots to a purple screen.

[stu232]

I've not used my A1200 for a few months but tonight when I powered her up I was greeted by a blank purple screen.

Eeeek....wtf??

[Phreaker]

I found this but no purple
http://wiki.classicamiga.com/Amiga_b...r_code_colours

[TCD]

http://home.arcor.de/rs69/A4k-HW3.html

Purple - Not an "official" color, but may be caused by bad ROMs.

[ajk]

I assume it's getting far enough to start drawing the 2.x/3.x "insert disk" screen, but crashes or gets stuck after setting the background colour.

[stu232]

Anyone got any ideas what I should check?

[cryton]

Have you tried re-seating the rom chip's. this has cured some odd faults for me in the past.

[ajk]

Try re-seating the ROM chips for a start. If you haven't opened up the machine earlier, they are the two long chips situated roughly in the front middle of the motherboard.

[stu232]

I already tried reseating them, I even tried swapping them over.

It's a 1D4 motherboard.

I have removed all peripherals, only keyboard is connected, CF-HD, floppy and accelerator are all unplugged.

[bebek]

purple screen - defect paula, alice or most likely corroded track, dry joint

[Loedown]

One could assume a dry joint / ROM problem because changing the screen colour before the animation of the disk into the drive in 3.1 would be one of the early commands in Kickstart, then if an address line is intermittent it will fail to complete the full ROM load.

[stu232]

I've ordered a new set of Kickstart ROM's, they should arrive tomorrow.

If it is not the roms then where would be the best place to start looking for dry solder joints?

I noticed that if I leave the purple screen on for about 20 seconds, I can hear a little 'pop' from the TV and the screen turns black.

I have stripped the board down to nothing, not even the keyboard is connected, should I have the keyboard connected incase that gives an error aswell?

[Loedown]

I would have suggested resoldering the ROM sockets would be the place to start, ordering new ROMs is highly unlikely to fix your problem.

[stu232]

I was going to upgrade the roms anyway mate, my current ones are 3.0 the new ones are 3.1

I'll reflow the roms sockets in the meantime.

Thanks for your help.

[Loedown]

Cool, nothing worse than wasting money on something that doesn't fix your problem.

[stu232]

I've resoldered the rom sockets but it didn't help. I fitted the upgraded roms and that didn't help either.

Now when I power up the Amiga, the screen is purple for about 3 seconds then it turns black.

[stu232]

OK, turns out I'm a fool and I didn't insert the new roms correctly, lol.

The Amiga is now booting ok and loading things from the floppy.

My new problem is that my internal CF HD is not being recognised, also my ACA1232 ram and cpu upgrade is not being recognised either.

[Johan1973]

Check your power supply voltages. And clean the expansion port (primarily this); It might have become dirty. I have found that using a eraser rubber, one that does not leave a discoloured surface when you use it on a paper, is good for gently rubbing the connection, to clean the metal enough to make contact. Then you can use a moist piece of paper just to be sure, let it dry properly, and then try again.

If that does not work, it is time to bring out the soldering station, the schematics, and starting fault finding...

[stu232]

It turns out that whatever caused the ROM's to go bad also made my CF go bad!

Using WinUAE I've managed to reinstall WB3.1 back onto the CF and all is well again.

Phew!!

ps, I did clean the expansion port with a pencil eraser and it worked great.

[Phreaker]

hey Stu232 how is the ACA1232 ram and cpu upgrade working now are you still having issues with that also. Wishing you the best

[Johan1973]

Originally Posted by stu232

ps, I did clean the expansion port with a pencil eraser and it worked great.

Told you, best method ever to safely clean connectors like that