Cursed

[Dannyboy]

Despite me being a member here for quite a while, I've never really had much to do with Amiga machines or hardware in general, apart from my Amiga CD32, which I've had for quite a few years now. However, some months ago my pal at work and I talked about replaying some om the old Amiga classics. We thought about playing them on the CD32 at first, but decided to see if we could get our hands on an old Amiga 500+, which was the machine we had back in the day.

A few weeks later I went to a local retrogaming market, and I was fortunate enough to find a 500+ in seemingly good condition. The seller was nice and the price was fair. Even so I wasn't sure about buying it, but my girlfriend thought it would make a better birthday gift for me than a pair of boxershorts and a selection of belgian beer. I couldn't disagree with that, and so we ended up taking the machine with us.

A few weeks went by and I finally found time to test the machine for the gaming evening my pal and I had been talking about for quite a while. I must admit I was quite excited at trying out a machine like this for the 1st time in 20 years. I could picture it all, the games we were going to play from back in the day, on this machine...Lost Patrol...Gods...North & South...The Chaos Engine...Toki...The Turrican games...Superfrog...just to name a few..it was going to be glorious!...but!

As soon as I flicked the switch the machine powered on but no picture came on. The power led was only blinking. I powered it off and on again. Still the same. Noooo! >_<

I read about the error and decided to open up the machine, to see if any of the chips had loosened themselves, perhaps during transport. I opened the case and pushed the chips, in particular the Agnus chip as thoroughly as I could. I powered the machine back on, and suddenly the machine booted up, and got to the KS screen, asking for a disk - Hooray! I thought to myself.

I quickly inserted a game disk and was welcomed by a loud, grinding noise from the floppy drive, almost as if it was complaining about being called to service after all these years. A few seconds it loaded before it cut out and the amiga went to a black screen and nothing else happened.

I decided to take out the drive, clean the heads and regrease the floppy mechanism, to see if it would help anything. After having a go with this for a while, I put the drive back in and tried booting the amiga up again. The drive sounded better, but alas when inserting the same gamedisk, I got the "Software Failure error" still. "Lets give it a reboot" I thought, and lets try a different disk. Perhaps it was just a bad disk."

So I powered down the machine, and turned on the power switch again and then...nothing. No screen, no noise, no light, no nothing.

The machine is now completely dead...or the PSU is, I'm not sure about which one it is. However this was just a rant about my first re-encounter with the A500+ hardware...and how I feel a little cursed....!!"#"=!="=")=#!)(=)!=!!!!!! >_<

 

[fitzsteve]

Hi Mate sorry to hear of your troubles, has the battery leaked in your A500+? this is very common and might need to go away to a professional to repaired, likly there will be some damage to sockets and traces around the battery area.

If you want to play just floppy based games go for a regular A500 as these didn't have leaky batteries and a build like a tank. nb. some memory upgrades came with a battery too so check those if you get a standard A500.

 

[Dannyboy]

Thanks Steve I was worried about the battery as well, but after opening the machine I could see that the battery had been removed already. Furthermore it doesn't seem to have done a whole lot of damage. I have just put in a picture of the board and a closeup of the place where the battery used to be. There's a spot around one trace that seems to be darker, but I cant say if the damage is just superficial.

 

[tbtorro]

OK, (against my better judgement as I have ZERO free time for repairs), if you can get the machine to Brønshøj I'm willing to take a look for you to see what the issue is.

Unfortunately many 'newcomers' or as I call them 'oldcomers' underestimate how much care and work must go into keeping some of these old Amigas in service and kicking. In these cases it's better to buy a serviced and fully tested setup from a reputable source, but of course some are unwilling to pay extra for these systems and end up with lots of hair pulling. It's like buying an antique car and expecting it to run smooth and problem free judged by the look of the chassis. Please don't take this above personally, you are not alone by far with this experience, but unfortunately there is still not enough (good and reliable) information source on how to keep these older systems in shape.

 

[Dannyboy]

No offense taken tbtorro I do acknowledge the value of purchasing serviced and well-maintained equipment, and I am very much open to paying extra for this. I get the feeling (and it's really not more than a feeling, because I have very little experience with Amiga machines to base this on) that this is even more so important with Amiga machines, compared to eg. consoles from the same era that I'm accustomed to - surely due to it being a computer, and as such with a higher degree of complexity/capability, and sheer number of components.

I appreciate your offer very much, and taking the time to reply - your help is most welcome At the moment I am unsure what the exact fault is - Perhaps it might be something simple, like an ailing power supply and a disk drive, but perhaps there's more to it.

I'll send you a PM

 

[8 Bit Dreams]

Get a Diagrom and see if it boots with it, then scan for ram issues and other tests for the start