Broken CyberStorm 060 Mk II (in A4000)

[DanielAllsopp]

Hi all,

My A4000 with CyberStorm 060 Mk II has suddenly stopped working!

It's appeared as two different faults, starting a couple of days ago: first the machine would startup as normal, rainbow initialisation from the CS but it would then jump into the Early Startup Menu, with a red background and a 'Defective' message on one of the three boards in there. The two which were working were the CV64 and Ariadne II (from the Manufacturer ID).

I left it that night, came back to it the next day and the machine won't even get that far now. I get a black screen, a quick flash of white, and then nothing. I can reset the Amiga with the keyboard and I get the same again.

I've unplugged all of the peripherals, the boards, the IDE and Floppy Disk, swapped SIMMs, no SIMMs, checked the jumpers below the board (both set to INT) but still nothing.

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks,
Daniel

 

[fitzsteve]

Keep pressing the Caps lock key and see if it eventually (after about 10 presses maybe) stays lit, this points to a CPU startup issue. Check and report back.

I guess you don't have another CPU board, even an A3630 to try? (To rule out a Motherboard issue)

What is the Motherboard and PSU condition, are they re-capped?

There are some general basic maintenence things you can do. If Buster is socketed remove and clean the pins, socket and re-seat.

Remove and re-seat the Kickstart Roms, Clean the CPU and the Busboard Slots.

You should also clean the Zorro slots (but for your tests you should not have any Zorro boards installed)

Cleaning is best done with IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) and Toothbrush.

 

[DanielAllsopp]

Thanks for the reply

Just tried your quick test with the caps lock key, and I get no solid light after probably about 20-30 presses, everything continues to work as normal.

Unfortunately, I don't have a different CPU board to try with; it came with the 060.

The motherboard isn't re-capped, the PSU is an ATX one with one of those adapters from AmigaKit. It was working fine before with this PSU, but I wasn't going to necessarily rule that out. I just don't have another to test it with right now.

Buster is indeed socketed, so I'll try cleaning that, as well as the kickstart ROMs. I have a lovely big can of IPA, and a toothbrush all ready to go

Update:
Changed over the 3.1 ROMs with the original 3.0 ROMs and I do now get a solid caps lock light on the keyboard.

 

[fitzsteve]

Maybe someone locally can loan you an A3630 to test it with, I'd send you one if I had it spare but only have my WE040 in my A4000.

Let us know how you get on with the Buster and CPU slot cleaning, also check the Crystal on the MkII isn't loose, maybe re-flow the solder on the legs of the Crystal if you know what you're doing (if you don't know how to solder please get someone else to do it!)

 

[DanielAllsopp]

Well, here goes with my update, and I can report it is good news!

First, a confession (or two); I don't think the CyberStorm 060 was actually at fault, ahem, I didn't see the rainbow on the screen because the bloody SCART cable wasn't in the back of the TV correctly! Major embarrassment! Also, I didn't have the ROM's in the correct way in my previous post, so flipping those around got me up and running again.

Anyway, after fathoming that out, I still had my red screen appearing on the ESM.

So after removing and cleaning and drying out the Zorro cards, daughterboard, ROMs, Buster, CPU (even though it was working at this point, can't harm it) and anything else removable, with IPA, I slowly started putting things back into place; one at a time.

Buster, original 3.0 ROMs and CPU went in first, followed by 32Mb at a time right up until I had a full 128Mb RAM and a 060 working nicely.

Scandoubler, no problems there.

Next, the daughterboard, still no problems.

Ariadne II in next, yey, still no problems.

CyberVision64... BINGO. Red screen of death. Seems I confused the CV64 and CSMkII because I only checked the Manufacturer ID, but not with the Product ID. Double-d'oh!

Luckily, and I have no idea why I do, I have 2 spare daughterboards with my A4000, two from '92 and one from '93. I currently had the '93 one in. Why not, I'll swap them out so I put the other '92 one in, same problem, so I didn't hold out much hope for the third and was ready to concede that the CV64 was bust. But no, the third daughterboard gave me back my CV64, and Ariadne II so all is, hopefully, now well!

Short version: CyberStorm was fine, SCART cable was half hanging out, daughterboard was defective, new daughterboard in and everything is fixed!

Thanks to you all for the suggestions, and offers of help with this. I now have my lovely A4000 back and sitting next to my A600 and A1!