Amiga 500 Plus boot help

[iowtheme]

Hi all

Just bought a A500 Plus of ebay

( Amiga is working but internal drive refuses to load any disks. )

So I have rerplaced it with a working drive BUT it will NOT boot the drive, and I have test it with Gotek floppy drive and that does not boot to

I do have two more A500 plus but both only show white screen so I dont know if these can be repaired so I bought another one so I am back to square one.

does anyone know what else I can try to get the main drive booting

thank all

[Amiga1992]

Two things to pay attention to:

- Make sure you plugged the floppy data cable the right way.
- If you are using disks, make 100% sure the disks aren't bad before blaming the drive.
- If you are using the Gotek, do you have it flashed with the Cortex Amiga-compatible firmware?

[iowtheme]

hi Akira

flashed with the Cortex Amiga-compatible firmware ( 105a yes )

Make sure you plugged the floppy data cable the right way ( YES )

The drive what came with the amiga is completely dead, I have test it with my A500
the drive in the A500 I took out of to test in the A500 Plus

[Amiga1992]

Ok now that we discarded the obvious (always the first step ) we could get into the more specific.

- Have you reseated all chips that lie on sockets on the motherboard? Especially the CIAs, as one of those is responsible for floppy drives working (the one next to the floppy connector).
- Did you check the motherboard for battery leaking damage?
(if not replaced, the battery must be replaced immediately to avoid leaking, if it didn't happen already)

Here's a pic of the motherboard for reference: http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.co...s_rev8a1_2.jpg

[iowtheme]

Akira the battery as be rerplaced with NEW CR3v battery and in the past it has leaked from what I can see on the board but it looks like not too bad a leak.





Have you reseated all chips ( YES )

I only received it this morning 11-5-17

[iowtheme]

I have now test with my spare A500 Plus floppy drives and I am getting nothing from any of the drives and no click click sound

[Amiga1992]

Well battery leaking could be a problem, can't see much from the pic, but it's worth investigating.

Your second suspect here would be the CIA chip close to the floppy drive. Perhaps you can swap a known working one, but if there is a problem with the motherboard because of the leak, and there's a short, you don't want to ruin a working CIA. So not really sure how to proceed from here.

Let's try one more stupid suggestion first: have you tried with different data and power cables for the floppy drive?

[iowtheme]

Yes I have tried three date cable and still the same result

Can I take all chip from a STD A500 and put it in to the A500 plus ?

Will a external drive work ?

[idrougge]

You can't swap every chip, but you can swap out those which have anything to do with the floppy, since they're identical in both machines.

By all means, try to use an external drive; the A500+ will boot from it as well, unlike Kickstart 1.2 or 1.3.

If you have a multimeter, I suggest you go to amigapcb.org and select the A500+ schematics, click on each pin of the floppy connector and follow the traces backwards.

[Amiga1992]

I guess if your CIA is fucked, an external drive should not work either, right?

[iowtheme]

Ok Akira now test it with external drive getting nothing

At boot up option only show DF0 and no DF1 when external drive is connected.

look at http://beta.amigapcb.org/# thank idrougge but this is looks very complicated I only know the basics.

I think I have bought a dud A500 Plus and it was a fair bit of money

[Amiga1992]

From your description it sounds to me at least one CIA is damaged.
Maybe this helps? http://www.gamesx.com/wiki/lib/exe/f...ice_manual.pdf

[idrougge]

Try to swap over the 8520 CIA chips from a working A500, as well as the Paula.

Use a flat screwdriver, insert it in the socket under the chip and twist it around its axis. Repeat on the other end of the socket.