I have an A2000 that is having some very strange symptoms. I wonder if any Amiga folk (or hardware gurus) have any ideas that might help solve this?
Here's what I know:
- Motherboard rev 4.3
- GVP G-Force 030, 68EC030 @ 40 MHz, 16MB RAM. This also serves as an Impact Series II SCSI controller, which controls the internal SCSI hard drive.
- Drive that came with the machine was a Seagate 3.6GB drive.
- I've pulled the old battery, which was leaking, although the leak damage didn't look extensive.
- KS 3.1 ROM
When I boot the machine the screen is black. However, if I wait for a very long time (like, enough time to go eat dinner and return) it can eventually seek a floppy and either 1) show us the famous "enter your WB disk" or 2) boot from a WB floppy if one is in the drive.
By the way, when it is sitting there with a black screen every couple of minutes you can hear the HD being hit, cycling, then stopping. Sounds normal. LEDs work, too.
If I boot WB there are no drives mounted on the desktop. If I run HDToolbox it does not see any hard drives.
OK, so first I checked to make sure the G-Force was seated. Then I pulled and reinstalled all of the expansion RAM in the card. Then I removed the hard drive, and used a backup Quantam drive (much smaller, less than 400 MB).
Using the smaller drive produced the exact same results. I pulled all of the RAM off the card. Same results.
So then I pulled the G-Force card, and installed an Impact A2000-SCSI+8 card to drive the hard drives instead, fearing the G-Force might be toast (or the card slot itself). I put the Impact card in a different slot. This eliminated at multiple variables (slot, RAM, card, not to mention the accelerator processors on the thing).
But the different card, and different hard drive produce the same exact results.
If I wait for, well, forever, I can use the floppy and use the machine for floppy-only use. There is probably a jumper on the motherboard somewhere dictating the order of operations. But this machine has to use a hard drive. It's kind of a waste otherwise.
All of the cables are firmly seated, too. They appear to lead to the SyQuest drive (which also can't mount disks), floppy and hard drive. I suppose I could remove the SyQuest from the equation and see if that matters.
Any ideas, guys? It's like the motherboard refuses to hit hard drives. Oh - but it does recognize the RAM and processor on the G-Force, even though it does not play nice with the hard drive. I think the G-Force is OK.
Is this motherboard fatally ill, or am I dealing with something fixable here?