A500 Not Booting!

[K7HTH]

I upgraded an A500 to an A500HD and it worked fine for a couple weeks. I later mounted the drive (2.5") under the lid with screws and a Novia kit. Upon booting the drive did not power up at all. I checked the cabling of the drive and the AIDE2 board and all looked fine. Still no log on screen but gray with no floppy polling activity, the only indication this box is on is from the red power LED. So I disconnect the HD and the floppy seeks a disk while displaying request for a WB disk. So I insert WB2.1, the drive reads the disk, the screen goes blank and back to the welcome screen asking for a WB disk again. I use self-booting games, WB3.1, WB2.1 install disk with no success. I do not suspect the floppy drive because the system displays the same exact symptoms with DF1 as it does with DF0. Any suggestions for repair?

[Argus]

The problem probably rests with the AdIDE board. Make sure it is seated properly in the 68000 socket, since problems with DIP style sockets do happen (bad contacts). Also check the ROM chip and all the other DIP chips could stand a press down. Sudden problems like this could also be the 2.5" drive itself or the cable. You could try from scratch by reinstalling the original 68000 chip, try a floppy boot, then install the AdIDE board again and use the install software for it (perhaps there is a missing library that you need from the bootable AdIDE install disk). If the A500 works from the 68000 chip but not the AdIDE, it's probably a hardware problem on the ICD board.

[Jope]

Argus wrote:
then install the AdIDE board again and use the install software for it (perhaps there is a missing library that you need from the bootable AdIDE install disk).

No, it's totally autoconfiguring.

[K7HTH]

I removed the AIDE2 board from the 68000 socket and replaced the 68010LC8 chip in the DIP socket and pressed all the other chips down firmly; even replaced ROMS to 1.3. Powered up with no change in symptom, I still get the purple 2.0 ROMS/white 1.3 ROMS screen prompting for a floppy and no matter what disk I insert it is the same symptom. I even pulled out the drive from DF1 and installed it into the box as DF0. Same crap. AAAARGH!

[K7HTH]

OK, thankfully I have a spare A500 rev 6A mobo laying around that I can swap chips with and... to my pleasant surprise it was a faulty EVEN CIA (B) chip causing the boot failure! Life is good again. Thank you for letting me rant here, it helps with my trouble-shooting.

[Argus]

Well, the CIAs do go bad sometimes. The troubleshooting route seems to have worked for you. Having spare chips lying around is never a bad idea. Fortunately it's just a cheap CIA and not the ICD board. Congratulations. Btw, I understand that you can accidentally fry the CIAs if you hot-plug or unplug df0:, df1:, parallel or serial ports (the mouse and game ports are the only ones I believe can be hot-plugged, though I don't recommend it). You mentioned you had df1: configured. Perhaps this was the cause?

[K7HTH]

Yes, I recall hot-plugging DF1 saying to myself how neat Amigas are that all peripherials can be connected and disconnected like USB gadgets. Go figure, I learn something new every day here, thanks!

Although I got my system booting again my HD is still not working. I used a known defective drive that rattles to see if the AIDE2 was supplying power or not and found out the ICD board does power the connected drive. That tells me my drive is toast because it will not even power up anymore. So much for used drives on Ebay.