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A600 Upgrade Troubleshooting


English Invader

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I'm in the process of upgrading my A600 for WHDLoad.  I've plugged in the IDE CF and some 4MB fastram (there was already some chip ram in the expansion slot that the previous owner installed).  All I'm getting on boot-up at the moment is the purple disk screen but I can see a red LED light coming through the case so presumably the IDE CF is making some kind of connection with the board.  I've tried switching the master slave jumper on the IDE CF but still the same result.  I believe it's connected properly but on close inspection some of the motherboard's IDE pins are still visible and I've tried pressing the connector down with a bit more weight but it's not making a difference.

 

The IDE CF is a pre-prepared one from Amiga Kit and the instructions say that they recommend a KS ROM of 37,500 or above (mine is 37,300) but "recommended" is not the same as "incompatible without it" so in theory the IDE CF should still be working in some fashion.

 

The only thing I can think of to do is to pull off the IDE CF and reconnect it but I'm worried that one of the pins on the other side is going to go crack the moment I try that (my life lesson for future projects from this is that IDE is a real PITA).

 

Please help.

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Hmmm... The A600 (and A1200) IDE port isn't particularly easy to see with the shielding in place when you're trying to line things up, and since they cheaped out and used unshrouded headers for the connector, it's easy to misalign the connector. If you can see IDE pins, it's definitely misaligned as there are no extra pins on that port. You need to remove it, straighten the damaged pins and try again. Ordinarily, broken pins won't happen unless they've previously been abused (e.g. by being bent from misalignment or corroded by capacitor leakage - a common issue on the A600), but with it misaligned there's no point in keeping it connected anyway - it'll never work like that.

 

For reference, there are three Kickstart versions I'm aware of that the A600 shipped with: 37.299, 37.300 and 37.350. The .299 doesn't support IDE or PCMCIA at all, the .300 version introduces the drivers for those ports, but there are some anecdotal reports of issues supporting some devices. The .350 (which is what I'm guessing the 37.500 is referring to) version appears to be a relatively reliable and "finished" release, which is why it tends to be recommended.

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Thank you for your help.  I've reconnected the IDE CF and the Amiga Kit screen has come up so that part now seems to be fine.

 

I'm less sure about the Fastram though.  The first couple of times I booted up there didn't seem to be any problems but I got a couple of system failure screens (one yellow, one black) the last couple of times and everything booted up fine as soon as I removed the Fastram.

 

The seller I bought the RAM from provided an isopropyl alcohol swab to clean the outside of the CPU before connecting.  I tend to be wary of cleaning solvents and only use them as a last resort but it looks like this may be a necessary measure for the system to pick up the RAM.  The only other scenarios I can think of are that the RAM was DOA (which I doubt - the seller has a good reputation and provided detailed instructions for the RAM's installation) or that I've inadvertently damaged the RAM through inexperience.  At the moment, I'm just relieved that I didn't damage my Amiga.

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Isopropanol is no problem for circuit boards. It's commonly used for cleaning PCBs in industry, and most components are designed to tolerate it, and I'm pretty liberal with it after doing any repairs on PCBs. Use it on the CPU's contacts - the A600 wasn't designed to take expansions in that way, so fixing them on top of the CPU is a bit of a hack. It does work however, provided the CPU legs are clean and the socket to fit over it is good quality and modified to suit (typically with a notch out of one corner and with the top surface of the socket machined down almost to the top of the contacts). If it's not modified, that will prevent it from fitting properly and cause issues, such as creeping up or popping off the CPU over time.

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  • 4 weeks later...

My fastram seems to be properly installed now - at least it appears to be connected to the motherboard and the AmigaKit screen is booting up and I'm not getting a yellow or black screen.  I'm planning to install the WB through the PCMCIA slot.  I've put the HDF file for 211 on a CF card and put it in the adaptor but the AmigaKit install wizard isn't picking it up.  Do I need to format the CF card through UAE or anything like that for the Amiga to recognise it or is HDF the wrong file?

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The PCMCIA slot requires drivers to read compact flash cards. I'm not familiar with the install wizard you're talking about - call me old-fashioned, but I generally just install using the standard floppy disks ;) Check your boot partition, and see if there's a file in the Devs/DOSDrivers directory called CF0 or similar. It uses compactflash.device for the device driver and fat95 for the fat32 filesystem, and both are needed to read standard, Windows-formatted CF cards. If you don't have them, you'll need to get them on your machine somehow. If you do, it's possible that your CF card simply isn't compatible. Compatibility is hit-and-miss with them sadly.

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