Giving up.

[Hell_Labs]

So, I've decided I've had enough with the amiga. Why?

Because every single machine I've owned has been a peice of @#$!

Efika:

Ram was too low. Opening a single web page from a fresh boot would fill it entirely and crash it. Battery ran out, changing the (randomly generated !) MAC address and rendering the morphos keyfile useless. Plus the PicoPSU was buggered so badly you had no idea when you could actually turn it on and use it, and when it would just sit there as an affront to everything you've been led to beleve.

A1200 (first):

Ebay quasi-scam. was told it was working, loads of games, etc. Ended up with a horrible yellow thing that smelt of cat piss and had about 200+ non working magazine disks.

A500: same as above, was basically falling to bits. Looked good in the photos. Atleast it was only £25.

A1200 (second) + M-TEC 1230 8mb:

Bought from here. RF modulaor worked randomly. Turbo board completely died (red screens, then yellow screens, now black screens) tonight and no ammount of reseating, contact cleaning, praying, trying without ram, etc has helped. Probably going back on here.

A1200 (third) :

Got from a college that was skipping it. Covered in safety test stickers, yellowed, and had the college name scratched into it with a pin. Someone had nicked the screws holding the floppy drive in place, too.


Winuae is awesome. Dealing with real hardware (seriously, this is shockingly awful) isn't.

 

[macwhoelse]

Yeah, it ain't easy sometimes................but I love it
Long live the Amiga

 

[Hell_Labs]

It's been a consistantly bad experience. The fact £145 suddenly decided to kill itself because I dared to pick it up, move 3 feet and put it back down again is the final straw.

 

[Witcher1979]

Just bad luck I am afraid. I am sure if you look around you will find a decent machine that works. Winuae will never beat the real thing though.

Good luck in the path you take young padawan

 

[Peter]

There's no doubt - you have been unlucky.

It is becoming harder to find the right machine in the right condition - you also do need a bit of luck or have to be prepared to pay the right price.

Keep looking for an A1200 at the right price and build it up slowly - it takes time and money but hey tell me a hobby that doesn't...

Try racing RC cars - now that is serious money - every week!
I know - it nearly bankrupt me...

 

[dj.echo]

very bad luck

very bad luck

i have had a few doa amiga`s over the years some one shouls of told you about amiga kit i got a new old stock witch is tested for a week b4 shipping it out to you nice white amiga no cat pee

but all that you have put down is sign of bad users not a bad amiga

 

[Merlin]

@ Hell_Labs

I'm going to try and offer you the best advice I can in your situation.

At one time or another, we've all been there, whether it's PCs, Amigas, classic cars, etc., etc. Your new baby rolls over and dies and the panic sets in, followed by the urge to throw it out of the window and kick it down the street. I know, i have a wardrobe full of T-shirts from that scenario that has played out many times over the years.

What you need to do at this point is walk away, take a break for a couple of days and wind down. I have found that when you are panicking, you can't see the wood for the trees in the way and your whole reasoning gets screwed up.

Fortunately, you are amongst people who can help you, so if I were in your shoes, I'd take a couple of days away from the Miggy, then come back once you have recharged and start to work out what's gone wrong with a clear head.

You need to start from what you know to arrive at what you don't know, at least yet. Start with the basic A1200 and check that it all works without any accelerators or extra RAM boards added in, as this may be down to something like a faulty PSU or a blown cap on one of the main voltage rails of the motherboard and they can be sorted out without too much grief.

There's a wealth of knowledge and repair skills here that I consider second to no other forum out there that deals in retro kit like ours, so take advantage of that and get your accelerated A1200 back into the land of the living.

 

[Hell_Labs]

The 1200 I got from here is near perfect. But the time between power on an kickstart screen (or of course, booting from HD) has gotten longer.


Turbo card has been tested in my other 1200. Anyone want to have a go diagnosing it? I can't see any damage, contacts are clean, etc.

 

[PymerOne]

Dear Hell_Labs,

sorry to hear that aging of the amigas has worn you down.
Keep the memories.

Grtz, PymerOne.

 

[Merlin]

@ Hell_Labs

A longer startup time as you describe could be a symptom of a power supply about to go South. Caps can dry up or leak in these just the same as any other kit from that era and a slow ramping up of power due to a faulty PSU sounds like a good place to start. It could also be causing the problems with the Mtec 1230, as that will be putting more stress on the PSU.

Have you got another PSU to try? Can you look on the PSU and tell us what the power output quoted on it is? Is it a lightweight PSU or an older 'brick' version?

All of these questions are helpful information and will get us somewhere. At a push, an ATX PSU could be adapted into the A1200's PSU case and that would solve the power supply issue and take that off the table as a possible cause.

I'd put money on it being an iffy PSU, but let's work through it together.

 

[Witcher1979]

The 1200 I got from here is near perfect. But the time between power on an kickstart screen (or of course, booting from HD) has gotten longer.


Turbo card has been tested in my other 1200. Anyone want to have a go diagnosing it? I can't see any damage, contacts are clean, etc.

Did you try to reseat the roms on the motherboard? When I first got my miggy I had problems with stuff not working, reseated roms and never had a problem since.

Also I think its strange that 030 was getting warm with long boot times?

My blizz 030 is instant boot from hd/floppy and never runs hot, trapdoor is hardly warm at all. i wonder if that card has been going for awhile, if you do get it working i would stick a fan or something on that beast.

Good luck

 

[Templar]

So, I've decided I've had enough with the amiga. Why?

Because every single machine I've owned has been a peice of @#$!

Efika:

Ram was too low. Opening a single web page from a fresh boot would fill it entirely and crash it. Battery ran out, changing the (randomly generated !) MAC address and rendering the morphos keyfile useless. Plus the PicoPSU was buggered so badly you had no idea when you could actually turn it on and use it, and when it would just sit there as an affront to everything you've been led to beleve.

Efika is NOT an Amiga and never was. Although I still believe that Efika wouldn't exist.

A1200 (first):

Ebay quasi-scam. was told it was working, loads of games, etc. Ended up with a horrible yellow thing that smelt of cat piss and had about 200+ non working magazine disks.

That's not a reason to leave the Amiga scene. You didn't mention how much you paid, but you can have a mint A1200 if you search thoroughly.

A500: same as above, was basically falling to bits. Looked good in the photos. Atleast it was only £25.

See above.

A1200 (second) + M-TEC 1230 8mb:

Bought from here. RF modulaor worked randomly. Turbo board completely died (red screens, then yellow screens, now black screens) tonight and no ammount of reseating, contact cleaning, praying, trying without ram, etc has helped. Probably going back on here.

Plug a Blizzard 030/50MHz accelerator into your A1200 and you will fully satisfied. Guarranted!!!

A1200 (third) :

Got from a college that was skipping it. Covered in safety test stickers, yellowed, and had the college name scratched into it with a pin. Someone had nicked the screws holding the floppy drive in place, too.

See above from above.

Winuae is awesome. Dealing with real hardware (seriously, this is shockingly awful) isn't.

I never liked emulators. It seems that you really were unlucky in your quest for a good-working and clean Amiga. To buy a good & fully working Amiga you need patience, to find the correct one. Bying the first one you see on sight (let's say...) you will come up with these problems you mentioned.

Follow Merlin's advice and take a time-out. Your mind will be much clearer then.

Else I wish you good luck.

 

[Merlin]

@ Jimbo1979

The 030 getting warm could be due to the regulators on the MTec 1230 trying to suck more current from the motherboard than it can currently supply, due to whatever fault is in play here.

Let's see what wattage the PSU is and check the output voltages before we go anywhere else. If it still boots up slowly without the 1230 installed as Hell_Labs has hinted at, the 1230 isn't the root cause, it's just making the symptoms worse.

 

[Hell_Labs]

No spare PSU to try. Had one before I got rid of the a500 though. It's a crappy lightweight one. I don't have a soldering iron/multimeter/etc so I can't be messing around with ATX kit either.

 

[Merlin]

OK. Let me check my parts bins tomorrow, to see if I have a spare ATX PSU that I can kludge to convert it to an A1200 compatible one. In the meantime, can you get the info off the PSU as I asked for earlier?

The lightweight ones were not as good as the old 'bricks' for reliability IMO. They tended to be lower wattage units as well.

 

[tokyoracer]

To be honest chap, there's a hell of a lot of people here that would be more then happy to help out. Owning old computers (like anything "vintage") will require a lot of patience, you won't believe how much broken crap I have in my room but thankfully a good friend of mine has a real handy iron and hamless fists (both of which I don't have sadly).

It's never a bad thing to spend a few quid on a nice soldering iron and do some good practice. That's what I hope to do some day so I can at-least solder in some battery replacements and other amateur electronic tasks.

I do sort-of understand where your coming from but rather making a flame thread on why you think the Amiga is so s***, I think its best to exhaust your options first then come to a conclusion to what action you want to take.

I think many could have helped you out a lot (including myself, for the 500 anyway). One thing I will mention, you should expect a delayed boot when an accelerator is installed.

 

[Slayer]

If you're out you're out, go do something else... no worries...

AmigaOS4.x and its HW solutions will never die regardless of people giving up :-D

 

[AndyLandy]

When I first got an '030 accelerator for my A1200 (A DKB Cobra at the time), I had loads of problems with it. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. I'd spent a whole bunch of money on it (I won't get into price-driving, but most of you out there can guess how much an '030/40 with 128MB RAM goes for) and I was devastated. The thing had been more expensive than I was really comfortable with at the time, plus the aggro and wasted cash I went through trying to find a compatible 128MB SIMM! (I still have some useless 128MB SIMMs to this day)

After lots of grief and aggro, I pulled the card out and used some Isopropyl alcohol to thoroughly clean the edge-connector on the card and the trapdoor socket on the A1200. It worked flawlessly from then-on.

The moral of this tale is that oftentimes the hardware hasn't totally died, it just needs a bit of love. Sometimes it's just a good clean, sometimes it's a few pence of capacitors or new sockets. Sometimes it's best to ship it off to someone like Anthony Hoffman and get a kickass repair job on it, but it's rarely beyond redemption.

Good luck in your quest to resurrect yours, even if you decide afterwards to sell on anyway.

P.S. Take lots of hi-res photos of the card and post them here. We all love our hardware pr0n and someone might be able to spot an obvious problem.

:grouphug:

 

[Justin]

well my friend,
grab a coffee and read the following in full

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4776

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=7739

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=1453

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4416

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=2765&page=3

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=2529

https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=1549


I share your pain dude, but keep the faith, the people on here are good people and will help, long time it will be worth it.


cheers, JuvUK

So, I've decided I've had enough with the amiga. Why?

Because every single machine I've owned has been a peice of @#$!

Efika:

Ram was too low. Opening a single web page from a fresh boot would fill it entirely and crash it. Battery ran out, changing the (randomly generated !) MAC address and rendering the morphos keyfile useless. Plus the PicoPSU was buggered so badly you had no idea when you could actually turn it on and use it, and when it would just sit there as an affront to everything you've been led to beleve.

A1200 (first):

Ebay quasi-scam. was told it was working, loads of games, etc. Ended up with a horrible yellow thing that smelt of cat piss and had about 200+ non working magazine disks.

A500: same as above, was basically falling to bits. Looked good in the photos. Atleast it was only £25.

A1200 (second) + M-TEC 1230 8mb:

Bought from here. RF modulaor worked randomly. Turbo board completely died (red screens, then yellow screens, now black screens) tonight and no ammount of reseating, contact cleaning, praying, trying without ram, etc has helped. Probably going back on here.

A1200 (third) :

Got from a college that was skipping it. Covered in safety test stickers, yellowed, and had the college name scratched into it with a pin. Someone had nicked the screws holding the floppy drive in place, too.


Winuae is awesome. Dealing with real hardware (seriously, this is shockingly awful) isn't.

 

[skippy]

So, I've decided I've had enough with the amiga.

I know that feeling all too well buddy; I can tolerate the intermittent behaviour as this is to be expected with our older equipment, but not that feeling of being ripped off when paying in good faith.

Merlin coined it with "Walk away and wind down", by far the best advice.

When you're feeling in lighter spirits and perhaps wish to give those beloved computers a second chance I'd be more than happy to help you to try and get them back up and running where possible. If necessary you're welcomed to popped them in the post.

Good luck and enjoy the weekend.

Skippy.