Advice on faulty Action Replay MK III

[Svin83]

I don't know if this is something that's considered ok, but it's not about getting scammed at THE SITE THAT SHOULD NOT BE NAMED.

It's about me buying an AR MK III that doesn't work (online), and I would love any advice on troubleshooting.

To minimize risk to my A500, I inspected it before testing.

The board was full of corrosion, so I cleaned it well with rubbing alcohol and really hot water, then a corrosion stopper, then an electronics cleaner.
dried it good before testing.

I see that the slomo switch is missing, but I decide to test it...

I just get a black screen.

Does anyone have any advice on troubleshooting / fixing it?

 

[demolition]

Is your A500 stock with ½ or 1MB RAM? AR3 doesn't like most other expansions.
If the slomo switch is missing, then maybe it is stuck with the slomo setting on? Not sure if that should affect booting.

 

[Svin83]

It's converted to 2mb Chip, and full ECS... The first gen AR woks, so I believe there's no reason why the AR MK III shouldn't. I know that for using all the features you'll have to deactivate some of the chipmem before use, but the computer should get to the Kickstart screen anyway right?

And the slomo switch missing, I think that means that it's deactivated, since it's just a 3 position switch (also, the led is dark). But I'll try shorting the other pin in the switch to see if it boots

 

[BLTCON0]

It's converted to 2mb Chip

This never worked for me, it wouldn't even boot to the KS screen, not even with KS 1.3. Firmware here is 3.09, I don't know if 3.17 works any better (I've read somewhere it worked in an A500+ so I guess at least with 3.17 it's compatible with both the newer Agnus and KS 2.04 but I can't recall if the A500+ was equipped with 1 or 2 MB chip RAM. I've also read it's perfectly not compatible with the 68010).
Got fed up with trying to get it to work and moved it to a standard A500 with just a 2nd floppy and 512 KB slow RAM expansion, it works great there.
When I used the KCS Power PC board as the trapdoor RAM expansion, it seemingly worked OK but kept crashing upon issuing the 'info' command, so it doesn't like the KCS a lot either.

 

[Svin83]

But the original AR works... (not MK2 or MKIII)

 

[Toni.Wilen]

But the original AR works... (not MK2 or MKIII)

AR1 vs AR2/3 don't have much in common (except same plastic case!)

AR 1 has totally different hardware and software, AR1 had very simple freezer function, it was easy to detect and so on.. AR2/3 is much more complex and advanced and uses all kinds of tricks in hardware and software.

 

[Svin83]

I've noticed the chips on the AR1 are socketed. Can the roms be upgraded somehow? are there any hacked/improved versions?

 

[Toni.Wilen]

I've noticed the chips on the AR1 are socketed. Can the roms be upgraded somehow? are there any hacked/improved versions?

They contain AR1 software without any scrambling and can be "easily" updated but I don't know if there are any existing hacks..

btw, AR2 and 3 also have also following limitations:

- 2M real fast ram max
- 256k KS ROMs only. Only exception is AR3 with rom version 3.17 that also works with 2.04 ROM. Any other 512k ROM = boot crash.
- 68000 CPU only

I haven't tested 2M chip incompatibility yet..

 

[Svin83]

Too bad. Either stock a500 or no action replay mk3.

Could that hacked software version of Action Replay 3 ([FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Action Replay III (1993)(Datel Electronics)(AGA)[h PDX - Interpol][a][Action Replay 4 BETA][/FONT]) be made to work in something like the Zeus68k?
Or another hacked version of the software maybe?

 

[Toni.Wilen]

I just tested AR3 (3.17) + A500plus with 2.04 ROM and 1M chip expansion in trap door. AR3 appears to work fine. (I don't have older AR3 versions or AR2)

Interesting side-effect: with 2M chip AR3 F3 page "maximum" chip ram size box is disabled and 0.5M was selected. With trapdoor expansion removed, "maximum" was automatically selected.

Software AR3 is useless as a cartridge version but patching&fixing real AR3 ROM (and using it with Zeus) should not be that difficult.

 

[Monkeh]

I originally had a mk3 store bought from new with my 500+ with 2mb of chip ram as well which I used mostly to give myself extra gold with on Civilization, I was only 14 or so at the time tho .