A4000d Died

[scuzzb494]

Hi... A4000d died tonight

I was reinstalling my Picasso96 software tonight and at the end the machine locked up. The mouse pointer frozen. I restarted and she booted fine but the mouse pointer was missing. I then switched off and switched back on and she was dead. The fan is going round and the hard drive tries to start but halts. Nothing on a PC monitor or the Microvitec. I removed the cards one at a time PicassoIV and Xsurf.. Then I swapped over the Cyberstorm.. But nothing. Just dead. Without the hd cable attached to the harddrive there is no floppy activity and no boot screen. Sad.

Any ideas.

[Tomas]

Can you please go into to details on what you mean by hard drive trying to start? Does it spin up normally? It could be the psu that has retired.

[bloodline]

Strip it right back to the bare metal... then add components untill you find the dead part.

[justthatgood]

Ouch that's gotta suck.

[guru-666]

don't think is dead, could be the power supply, you need to test that

[scuzzb494]

Hi

The machine has power from the PSU. The hard drive light comes on for its first boot sequence then goes off. Normally I here a slight nudge on the floppy at this point and then the hard drive boots properly and then the screen comes up with Workbench. However, having first spun the machine hangs. Dead on the screen. I have a Mistubishi on the PicassoIV and a Microvitec on the Amiga video out. I have a Cyberstorm MKII 040 with 132MB RAM. The machine has been fine all day. Except a slight problem with the keyboard connector. As I say I was simply installing Picasso96 and the mouse pointer froze. Then it disapeared, and then I got completely locked out. I have taken all the cards out and even disconnected the hard drive, But nothing. I have swapped out the Cyberstorm with a 3640 card changing the jumpers, and also tried the base 030 card. Still hangs after I switch on. I can hear the PSU fan going round, though I obviously can't say if there is a problem with it. Seems more likely a busted port connector or some damage to the motherboard. Dunno.

scuzz

[Shadow12]

Greetings,

That sounds so familiar to me... It sounds just like what happened to my A4000T. It powers on, the lights come on, the hard drives click to life..... and then it just sits there. I'm still mourning the loss of mine. So sorry for your loss.

You might try to hook up an Amiga monitor. When the system powers on it does a diagnostic. If something is found to be wrong it will change the color of the display (red,yellow,gray, etc). This will not display through your graphics card though, so you will have to use an amiga monitor connected to the 23-pin port. That might tell you what is wrong.

[AMC258]

Before you get too worried...

Hook up an Amiga monitor, in some form.

Go to the Early Startup, by holding both mouse buttons from the time you power on until you get the Early Startup screen.

See if everything is OK, then boot without the Startup-Sequence. If you can boot to a CLI and everything works in the CLI, you have a software issue.

[CLS2086]

Hi,

I can hear the PSU fan going round, though I obviously can't say if there is a problem with it

This means nothing... You can have a half dead PSU, i saw that also on my A2000 ! Check 'in load' the voltage.

You can still send your motherboard + CPU for repair at AmigaCenter (France). :rtfm:

[Argus]

Sounds like it could be a bad contact at the cpu fast slot. Try removing, cleaning the socket and reseating the cpu card. A bad contact will result in both power and harddisk lights coming on but no floppy activity and no boot. The mouse freezing on the last successful boot is also symptomatic. These things just happen sometimes as the pins in the fast slot oxidize or lose contact with the cpu card from the many heating cooling cycles. If the cpu card seems loose even when it's all the way in the slot, you can try *carefully* to slightly bend the fast slot pins inward ever so slightly so that the card makes good contact again. Believe it or not I just coincidentally had the same problem today in an A4000. I hadn't even touched the cpu card but was installing a Zorro card on the daughterboard and afterward on boot the mouse froze after a few minutes, then a black screen stared me in the face on reboot; no floppy activity but power and hd lights came on. I did the above fix and she's been working ever since. Good luck.

[scuzzb494]

Hi

Thing is I have swapped the processor boards over several times and used three differing boards all with no joy. All the cards work in other machines so no luck there. There really is a limit to the seating and reseating that can be done, and I guess I have resigned myself to the fact that the mother board is stuffed.

I have an A4000T with the same problem and have been working for a year replacing nearly everything to try and get that to work.

I will probably pack the mobo up and send to France.

' We need new kit guys !!! ' I do wish people would stop mucking around with virtual Amigas and concentrate on the classic kit... ( RANT ) sorry ..

scuzz

[bloodline]

scuzzb494 wrote:
' We need new kit guys !!! ' I do wish people would stop mucking around with virtual Amigas and concentrate on the classic kit... ( RANT ) sorry ..

scuzz

What do you mean? Virtual Amiga?

[Framiga]

@scuzzb494

if you didn't check it yet... try to replace the floppy drive cable and reseat the 28.xxx Mhz quartz which is not soldered on the mobo. (kickstart, SuperBuster chips and all you find around with a socket also)

[X-ray]

I had those same symptoms when my PIV was not properly seated. Did you try the machine with just a floppy drive and Amiga monitor?

[Shadow12]

Before you send it off, I would hook up an amiga monitor. As I said before, the mobo will do a diagnostic and tell you if there is something wrong and what that something is. If there is an error, it will not boot. Also if there is no hard drive attatched and there is no error it will display the clasic insert disk screen.

A colored screen means there is a hardware issue and an insert disk screen would tend to insinuate a software issue. Some hardware problems can be fixed @ home so try that before you send it off.