A1200 problems - fine yesterday, dead today

[StirlingAmigaII]

Hi, was hoping people could give me pointers for some initial troubleshooting.

Have an A1200 w TF1232 128mb RAM, currently running from an internal 32Gb SD card via IDE port.

Had everything running fine yesterday under Kickstart 3.0.2.

Swapped out the Kickstart ROMs to 3.2.2. Afterwards, everything still seems to be working ok (infact better than before in terms of start-up time, etc)

Now today I've tried plugging in a previously working CF card via PCMCIA adapter, and it seems to have killed the machine. Initially froze on WB screen, and reset. Came back one more time to WB, now is dead again. Hot-swapping the PCMCIA card seems to have been the trigger.

Now it powers on, no HDD (or FDD) activity, no video output, no response from holding both mouse buttons down. I can see the LED on the internal IDE SD card is on, but nothing else happens.

Any ideas?

 

[Buzzfuzz]

Take out the TF1232 and the SD, see if kicks to the kickstart screen

 

[miggymad]

Disconnect the A1200 from mains power, remove all add-on's then power it up again. See if you get any response such as the kickstart screen.

 

[fitzsteve]

It sounds like potentially one or more of the pcmcia pins might have bent or shorted something out, it might be worth having a tech look at it for you if you're not experienced with electrical fault finding.

Good advice as above is to remove the accelerator, floppy/hard drive and see if the board boots to a kickstart screen and go from there.

Note it might take a while to show a KS screen, especially without the floppy drive connected.

 

[StirlingAmigaII]

Ok, removing the TF card let me boot again, and now reinserting it, it's working again.

CF PCMCIA Card isn't showing up but I can work on that now I can boot again.

I'm wondering if inserting the PCMCIA card nudged the RF shield which bumped the accelerator slightly. Very strange.

Can I ditch the RF shield btw? Sick of screwing and unscrewing that thing.

 

[HomeLate]

You can ditch the RF-shield but I would keep it somewhere if you ever decide to sell your Amiga.

I have this all the time with my Amiga 1200 and a Vampire V2 if I put the A1200 somewhere else. If I just leave it on the desk, everything is fine.

 

[miggymad]

Check inside the pcmcia card slot to see if there are any signs of bent pins.

There is a possibility that when you hot swapped cards, you pushed a pin aside causing a short circuit.

 

[StirlingAmigaII]

Check inside the pcmcia card slot to see if there are any signs of bent pins.

There is a possibility that when you hot swapped cards, you pushed a pin aside causing a short circuit.

Pins are all good. I think I must've slammed it in too firmly and nudged the TF (to explain the original issue.)

As for why the PCMCIA CF is not being detected, I'm just going through down a rabbit hole of reading about PCMCIA CF0 incompatibilities with 3.2.2.

Would make sense since I only put those ROMs in.

 

[miggymad]

FWIW my CF cards and Sony PCMCIA CD-ROM drives all work fine with OS 3 2.2 ... So perhaps there is a software problem with your setup?

 

[Buzzfuzz]

The upper RF shield is not needed, this was in days of television broadcast with high powered transmitters, these days that doesn't exist anymore.
The bottom one is useful as ground.
The TF shouldn't come loose of inserting a PCMCIA, even if you baseball it in.

Is your board recapped ?