#Amiga 4000 Dead – HELP
8 messages in this thread
I have an Amiga 4000 that is less than one year old. It is equipped with
18 meg of memory, a Toaster 4000 board, a GVP 40008 SCSI controller, and a
DPS Personal Compnent Adapter card. The system has functioned perfectly
until two weeks ago when it suddenly refused to boot. The floopy drive
was not recognized and the monitor screen remained completely black. I
could hear the fan running and the internal IDE HD appeared to run but
that was the only sign of life. I determined that the monitor was not the
problem by attaching the monitor on my A4000 to my A2000. The monitor
performed without problems.
I took the A4000 to the local Amiga/Toaster dealer from whom I had
purchased the package. He diagnosed the problem as a faulty internal IDE
drive and replaced it. When I brought the computer home, it booted up
fine but would not recognize the attached SCSI drive. After a few minutes
the screen froze and I had to reboot the computer. These problems
repeated several times. I was never able to get the SCSI HD to be
recognized and finally the computer would not boot at all. I took the
A4000 back to the dealer. He has worked with it all week but cannot even
get it to boot up. He tells me that he has called "all over the country"
trying to find anyone who will accept an A4000 for repair. SMG will not
even accept the machine informing him that they "have no parts and don't
know when they will get any". Several other repair centers echo this
sentiment. Some say send the computer but they have no chance at
repairing it "until parts become available". My dealer appears to have
given up.
Can anyone suggest a possible place to send this A4000 for repair? I am
willing to spend several hundred dollars if necessary to get it fixed, but
I am not willing to put off work that needs to be done on the indefinite
hope by a service center that they will get parts one day.
I appreciate any advice or suggestions from anyone.
Tom
Thomas,
I can see your house from here … sorry, part of an old joke. Can you
be more specific as to what you can and cannot do? Can you boot from
floppy if you disconnect the SCSI controller? The IDE drive? Any of the
other boards? This stuff takes time but could help you isolate the real
problem. How about power supply voltages under load?
DJ
Eulogio,
The A4000 is at my dealers and has been for the last two weeks while he
has tried to find some repair center in the U.S. that will even accept it
for repair. Here is what happened. The computer had worked fine for
about 11 months. About two weeks ago I left it running for a few hours.
Three programs were running: Toaster 3.1, MediaEditor, and T-Rexx Pro.
When I cam back the cursor was frozen and nothing could be done. When I
attempted to reboot, all I got was a black screen. I could hear the fan
running and the internal IDE HD appeared to also run for a moment as
determined by its LED glowing for a few seconds. The monitor screen did
not show any colors –just remained black. I noticed that during bootup
the internal floppy drive light did not momentarily light up as it was
polled. Inserting a disk in the floppy drive did not result in any sign
of life from the floppy drive. That's the entire story on the symptoms
exhibited by the system.
Thanks for your help and interest.
Tom
Thomas,
Just to cover all bases, have they tried reseating any socketed chips and
the memory SIMMS, boards etc.? I know I've had to in my 4000.
DJ
Eulogio,
I have asked my dealer to try reseating all socketed chips including the
cpu chip and to reseat all boards in the A4000. I am away all next week
on a business trip. When I return, if he has not been able to repair the
computer or find a place to ship it to for repair, I intend to get the
unit from him and I'll personally carry out the suggestions you have made.
Thank you for taking the time to offer help on my A4000 problem.
Tom
Thomas,
another thing to add to that list is to clean all the circuit board
edge connectors with a Q-tip and technical grade alcohol (not the
super-market stuff). Also pull all connectors and reconnect them. The
reason for both these steps is that oxides can build up on connections and
cause them to malfunction.
Let us know how it goes. We might be able to come up with something.
The Four Seasons of Southern California:
Fire, Flood, Earthquake, and Riot.
Tom,
My 4000 occasionally exhibited your symptoms (black screen, no boot)
after transporting it. I'd open the case wiggle everything and it would
boot. It has not happened since I installed my Warp Engine. I must have
had a loose CPU board to motherboard connection.
…Warp Engine Engaged…
-Paul-
Paul,
I'd have to agree with you on the CPU board problem. I've run into that
problem myself on a couple of 4000's. It seemed like the board didn't seat
very well on it's header…
-Jim
MOS via Autopilot & Amiga