What is your worst Amiga hardware experience?

[HomeLate]

Yes, the Furia can be a pain to get running in an A600. It took me several days to get mine running and I ended up with a Samsung SD-Card, a SD-Adapter from Lotharek and KS 3.14. It runs fine now but my A600 is the least used Amiga in my collection. I've yet to update the Furia to make it work with KS 3.2.x.

Next, getting a Mediator to work in an A4000. This took weeks and in the end I had a incompatible Radeon 9250 gpu (which was included in the Mediator purchase). After Googling I found a 100% compatible Radeon which made the Mediator work.
I never got a NIC-card to work but my X-surf works without issues in Z2-mode. I also got a Spider-USB card which sort of worked, but would crash during large file transfers.

I ordered a ZZ9000 to replace the Mediator in December and it should arrive in April. This will be my next adventure in A4000-land.

 

[fragment]

Delfina Flipper in the clockport on a desktop A1200.

Very fiddly to fit in the case (although I'm pretty proud how I built a bracket for mine) and the drivers are bad and you could only play a few MP3 files before the whole card (and often the computer) hang/crash.

I owned one 20 years ago though and I think nowadays there is better knowledge what is the perfect combination of driver versions to get it more stable. Very frustrating card but I still oddly regret selling mine. The Prelude clone in my A4000 now is much better.

 

[imqqmi]

Some sound learning experience there. I have a Coanto 3.X rom 3.X Workbench A1200 which the Workbench was transferred from the Amiga Forever system install.
workbench.library was moved from rom to SYS:Libs in Cloanto's OS 3.X installation. Is that what roms you're running? Squeezing workbench.library into SYS:Libs with powerpacker? are you running a floppy only system? Were you able to download 3.X OS from Cloanto independently? TIA

I got my license from the terrible fire accelerator card through amigastore.eu, but it didn't include the WB3.1 install disks so I took that from tosec. And those ADF files don't include the workbench.library file. Hence the powerpacker hack. I have a CF card as hard disk and that doesn't need the powerpacker stuff but since it's installed from the same disk I just left it like that. I can easily run ppundo and put it as it was originally intended.

 

[Akiko80]

I've had a few disasters all my fault. I think the first was about 20 years ago. At the time I wanted to have a killer A1200 with BlizzardPPC, BVison card, Elbox FastATA, and CD-ROM drive all mounted inside the original case. I ordered I think was FastATA MKIII from AmigaKit, when it arrived I installed it as I believed per instructions, turned it on and there was a puff of smoke, traces were burned on the FastATA, and the A1200 motherboard was completely dead. I did reach out to Elbox and they offered to repair the FastATA board for free, I didn't take them up the offer, but to this day I still think it was very decent of them.

My next disaster a couple of years later was a CSPPC card I wanted overclocked to 60Mhz. As I recall the crystals on this card are soldered, so I sent the card to JJB (Amiga Centre) in France for overclocking, he installed the new crystals and also soldered on two little mounts so I could switch the crystals about depending on the desired overclock. He posted the card back, but unfortunately during shipping the new crystals fell out of their mounts and were laying loose in the box. These new crystals he installed looked worn and had barely any visible writing remaining on them, and as they could be fitted both ways I couldn't tell which orientation was correct, I took my best guess and of course the card showed no signs of life. I sent the card back for repair and he said it was fixable, but for some reason it would now only recognise 64MB of RAM Max and there was unfortunately nothing he could do to resolve it. I had a second CSPPC card by this stage, so I when it was returned I sold it on eBay as partially working, but in hindsight I do regret not double checking the prognosis.

A few other things, but these are the two that stick out most.

 

[Aeberbach]

Fred Fish Disk #25. It contained Hack, the first Roguelike I ever played and I was obsessed with it. Unfortunately it also had a bug that resulted in a corrupted floppy and I must have taken the 30 minute bus ride to the computer store to copy that disk again around 80 times (before there was a later release on FF#62, without the bug).

 

[JHanna]

The Micronik A1200 Zorro busboard, circa 2001.

My eye is twitching even thinking about it.

 

[darefail]

About furias on A600..
I never had any problem generally. I have always used these blue white cheap CF cards from china.
But had a problem with the plcc socket. It was advertised that it is so tight, that you can even lift the motherboard. Not mine.. If I turned the m/b upside down, the furia was on the table I had to use spacers and screw it on the m/b.

 

[attic636]

My first attempt to get my A1200 into a tower case failed. Back in the 90s Eagle computer offered a tower kit
for A1200 or A4000 desktop at an Amiga fair in Cologne. Later at home that Eagle tower turned out to be a simple,
big PC tower including a power supply with cut off cables.
Nothing else was included, prepared or provided to specifically get your Amiga system into it - no manual,
not even a sheet of paper except the high invoice.
So, that Eagle tower was just a sturdy piece of steel (you could even sit on it), but useless for my purposes.
After a few years in the cellar it went to the garbage dump.

2nd bad experience was a double expansion port adapter for my old Amiga 500. Basically, it was a Y-shaped
PCB piece without any extra parts like resistors or capacitors on it. I connected the double adapter to the
expansion port, put my Action Replay MK III freezer module on it, switched on my A500... and disaster!
The Y-shaped port fried my freezer module. It simply became hot and stopped working - although it was the only
device connected to the double expansion port.
Fortunately, there was still warranty time left for my Action Replay MK III freezer and I could send it back to
Dataflash company for an exchange.

 

[attic636]

The Micronik A1200 Zorro busboard, circa 2001.

My eye is twitching even thinking about it.

What a pity. I still own an A1200T with Mikronik's Z2 busboard and it works so far. What went wrong with yours? Was it a Z2 or Z3 board?

 

[fitzsteve]

I had a Z3i busboard add the rare scan doubler but I could never get it to work with an A1200 accelerator and CV64/3D. I was told that they work better with an A4k accelerator, in the end I swapped it out for a Mediator and ended up getting an A4000 and used the CV64/3D in that.

 

[JHanna]

What a pity. I still own an A1200T with Mikronik's Z2 busboard and it works so far. What went wrong with yours? Was it a Z2 or Z3 board?

Think it was the Z3. Never played nice. Barely worked at all. With hinsight it was probably an A1200 timing issue. But the internet was young and I was a kid.

 

[cloverskull]

I've had a few disasters all my fault. I think the first was about 20 years ago. At the time I wanted to have a killer A1200 with BlizzardPPC, BVison card, Elbox FastATA, and CD-ROM drive all mounted inside the original case. I ordered I think was FastATA MKIII from AmigaKit, when it arrived I installed it as I believed per instructions, turned it on and there was a puff of smoke, traces were burned on the FastATA, and the A1200 motherboard was completely dead. I did reach out to Elbox and they offered to repair the FastATA board for free, I didn't take them up the offer, but to this day I still think it was very decent of them.

Interesting. I recently had a Fast ATA MKV do essentially the same thing! The rest of my computer was fine afterward (thank god, including my BPPC), but the really odd thing is that it was working fine for a period of time and then all of a sudden at one powerup the cable connecting the two boards together started burning. I have no idea what caused that but I've been leery of these boards ever since.

 

[Boing-ball]

Interesting. I recently had a Fast ATA MKV do essentially the same thing! The rest of my computer was fine afterward (thank god, including my BPPC), but the really odd thing is that it was working fine for a period of time and then all of a sudden at one powerup the cable connecting the two boards together started burning. I have no idea what caused that but I've been leery of these boards ever since.

I’ve not had any of those Elbox FastATA cards go at the speed they are reputed to go up to… Have had MKII, IV and V. I do know they are power hungry… But never seen one burn through a cable

 

[cloverskull]

Yeah, it was bizarre. Worked fine until it didn't. Maybe there was a solar flare

 

[Akiko80]

Yeah, it was bizarre. Worked fine until it didn't. Maybe there was a solar flare

As I recall this particular adaptor is held together with actual cable ties. I still don't know what happened mine that day as everything looked spot on, although loosing a whole motherboard did put me off the A1200 for two decades, but thankfully there is other solutions to try now.

 

[matt020]

I bought an Amiga 4000 as a birthday present to myself. It was A LOT of money. Waited almost 2 weeks for shipping (we are isolated here in West Australia), and it arrived! Box opened, plugged it in.... and black screen.

"Devastated" does not fully describe how I felt.

 

[ElectroBlaster]

Bought an original Checkmate 1500. The owner had created a customized external box with the A500 and A590 power supply inside a very nice custom
metal box. Pictures showed it running. When I got it and plugged it in, I went to get some stuff and left the room. Five odd minutes later the PSU box began smoking the house out!
My other half went nuts screaming at me. The PSU then melted knocking the mains out before I could yank the power. The stench was insane lol.
The RIFA capacitors had had enough and exploded leaving me with stinky house, dead machine and an angry wife! lol.

Another one was swapping a PC for an A1200. Why would you moan about that? well the A1200 was fine or so I thought!
At the time I was all in the moment and couldn't wait to get another Amiga, showed the PC working. I tested the 1200 by turning it on quickly, loaded a game and was happy!
It was pretty much caveat emptor I should have been a bit more wary and made sure it was 100%. I still have that A1200 and I never actually got it fixed, I found that by fitting an 030 card it would be fine, without an 030 it is flakey as hell!

 

[Deleted member 9116]

"The RIFA capacitors had had enough and exploded leaving me with stinky house, dead machine and an angry wife! lol."

These caps.. Had a 2000 going down on me like that. My wife was too scared to touch the burning, smelling 2000, whilst I was taking care of other stuff on another floor of the house. The smell quickly told me the story.

 

[Jameson]

Had to update this thread with my new number one POS Amiga expansion - all hail the Wicher 500i, a card so badly designed, finicky, unreliable and useless that it makes me look forward to the next Furia card I come across.

 

[Damion]

Sounds like I dodged a few bullets! The Wicher was out of stock by the time I got around to it, and I've considered the Furia a time or two.

Most hair-pulling for me was the Delfina Lite. Tried every software combination possible and couldn't eliminate the random crashes during MP3 playback. Just when I thought I'd nipped it, boom.

I eventually figured out it was the default OS screen blanker. If I set it to blank only (no animation) or simply turned the monitor off (no blanker), it'd stream net radio for a week without crashing.

Once the mystery was solved I sorta lost interest, that system's been packed up for over ten years now...