A5000 - diving in at the deep end!

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, so power on DEL needs the RTC/CMOS chip in place to work according to Ian over on Stardot.

I'll try power on plus r later.

My A3000 was just blinky LED errors until a replacement CMOS chip was back onboard. No key combo would persuade it to show a screen.

Interestingly the chip was working until I started cleaning up the corrosion and then it stopped! They seem a bit flakey in general.

BW

Thanks, I have the original RTC chip, but it's a bit crusty so I may just frankenstein it on to see if I can get any more life out of it until the new one arrives and I can fit it properly. I need to be careful not to do any more damage to the PCB though, it's a little fragile.

I suspect that if it is just wired up, even without the RTC oscillator, it should work from having the CMOS available to the machine.

Both the RTC IC and missing capacitor from the RTC oscillator are on the way.

[stephen_usher]

Did you try hacking the RTC chip onto the board in the end?

[rubber_jonnie]

Did you try hacking the RTC chip onto the board in the end?

I didn't in the end as the legs looked pretty skanky, however the replacement parts arrived whilst I was at work today!!! :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

As I was in London for work today, I didn't get home until gone 19:00, but after chatting with the other half, headed up to the workshop to 'de-compress' at around 21:00 :)

I set to work prepping everyting, including making 2 new 'pads' out of flattened kynar wire for the I2C connections, feeding into their original connecting vias:

PXL_20220525_200006399.jpg

Shortly after this photo, pad number 8 fell off when I tried to tin it, a further victim of the battery leak!! Next the remaining pad for C153 then fell off when I tried to solder the new capacitor to it!!

Undeterred, I carried on and finished bodge wiring the damaged traces for the RTC/CMOS IC:

PXL_20220525_211148201.jpg

Then I checked that pin 8 had 5v as expected (it did) before adding in the new IC:

PXL_20220525_221113226.jpg

Bear in mind the IC is only 6mm x 7mm, so you can get an idea of the area I've been working in. It'll get a clean with IPA tomorrow in case you were wondering.

I powered on, but was still getting POST flashes from the FDD LED, so popped them into the decoder to find that they were normal status codes and the CMOS error was gone. Still no boot, and as one of the errors related to memory, I thought I'd try popping in the RAM expansion to see if it helped. Boy did it help!!

Suddenly I have Supervisor mode!!

PXL_20220525_213650286.jpg

I typed 'desktop' and hit return to get this:

PXL_20220525_214133020.jpg

And the FDD seems to have stopped sending me POST codes and is trying to boot. Hmmm, progress!! I like progress :)

So I looked up how to reset the CMOS on the A5000, and it is relatively simple, just hold down 'delete' on boot to clear. Floppy flickers again like it's trying to boot, and now this:

PXL_20220525_214432177.jpg

Attaching the mouse with no ball (See the earlier pic of a disintegrated pile of bits that used to be a ball!!) I manipulated the horizontal and vertical rollers and open the configuration panel:

PXL_20220525_215039776.jpg

Woo hoo, we have life!!! :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

So tonight I'm very happy with the progress, it really has made me smile :)

There is still work to do, as it does need a battery to retain the settings, however I do have some rechargeable CR2032s that might just fit the bill. If not I'll order in a proper replacement.

It's not seemingly detecting the HDD either, but that may either be some damage I haven't found/fixed yet, or possibly some configuration operation I've yet to do. Possibly even a dead HDD.

I'll settle for this though, it's a good start!

[Badwolf]

I'll settle for this though, it's a good start!

Great work, RJ!

If you’ve reset the CMOS, I think you have to redecalare the HD. I’ve never fully understood how those commands work, but the internet will provide, I’m sure.

BTW, with a bit of judicious wiring and a DE9 socket, you can use that Atari mouse there on the Archie. I’ve installed a port on the back of my A3000 in ST pinout bar the right and middle button pins are swapped as middle is more useful on the Archie.

The A3000 has a dedicated alternative mouse pin header on the board. Perhaps the 5000 does too?

I use it with my Smalliermouse (which was originally a BBC/Archie product) which is ST configured and then translated by my wiring back to Archie. All a bit daft :D

BW

[rubber_jonnie]

I'll settle for this though, it's a good start!

Great work, RJ!

If you’ve reset the CMOS, I think you have to redecalare the HD. I’ve never fully understood how those commands work, but the internet will provide, I’m sure.

BTW, with a bit of judicious wiring and a DE9 socket, you can use that Atari mouse there on the Archie. I’ve installed a port on the back of my A3000 in ST pinout bar the right and middle button pins are swapped as middle is more useful on the Archie.

The A3000 has a dedicated alternative mouse pin header on the board. Perhaps the 5000 does too?

I use it with my Smalliermouse (which was originally a BBC/Archie product) which is ST configured and then translated by my wiring back to Archie. All a bit daft :D

BW

Thanks :)

I just found a document that mentions declaring the HDD, so will have a look tomorrow, looks like it's done via supervisor mode.

Thanks for the mouse info, I will look into it.

[atari030]

Very good start, nicely done.

[stephen_usher]

That’s excellent!

To set up hard drives you go into the “Discs” control panel and increase the number of IDE disks to 1. I can’t remember if you have to reboot or not for the machine to detect the drive then.

[rubber_jonnie]

Very good start, nicely done.

Thanks 😁

[rubber_jonnie]

That’s excellent!

To set up hard drives you go into the “Discs” control panel and increase the number of IDE disks to 1. I can’t remember if you have to reboot or not for the machine to detect the drive then.

I'll give that a go later, though I think there may be a damaged trace somewhere as the drive spins up and down all the time. More work required.

I also think that the battery connection to ground is bad (+ is OK) so more digging there before I fit the battery, which I ordered last night.

We'll get there, just a little more work to do.

[stephen_usher]

The drive spinning up and down doesn't sound good. That sounds like a bad drive.

The problem will be getting a working RiscOS system and formatting it. I think the A5000's IDE sub-system is better than the A4000's in that it can handle partitions and drives larger than 512MB. You may have to hack something together using a Raspberry Pi running RiscOS and a USB-IDE adapter and do a bit of hacking.