exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Well I wan't expecting things to go like this, but I powered my Archimedes A5000 on earlier, which I do to ensure all is good, except it's not. I'm not booting as expected and all of my customisation is gone. It's there but requires a disk boot to work properly.

OK, so I revert to a backup BlueSCSI image and that's the same. My SCSI disks are present, but not booting from disk, only ROM. I replace the CMOS batttery, do a reset and add the drives back, That's a nope. I shift the boot files to the IDE drive and tell that to be the boot drive. Doesn't work from my physical SCSI drive either. That's a nope too. WTF...

OK, so I stop work on the Archie and head over the the BBC B and install the 1770 FDD adapter kit:


Instructions followed to the letter and the machine boots fine and the DFS rom shows up, and I attempt to format a disk in both 40 and 80 track mode since the drive I have supports both via a switch at the back and I now have access to the FORM40 and FORM80 commands that I was missing before from the Cumana disk.

But I get this:


I tried both drives, both track settings and a different drive cable, but the answer is nope. Whilst I'm scratching my head, I hear screeching from the Archie, like it's in pain and I see this on screen:


And it's totally unresponsive. Bloody Acorns.

I don't think it's CMOS thats bad on the Archie, but I am wondering if it's bad RAM, so I may pull the RAM expansion and see what it does then. Need to swap some jumpers for that IIRC.

So the Cumana drives don't seem to be working, I get disk spin, and depending on the disk sometimes head step. I think I need to pull out a Gotek and try that with some BBC disk images, see if it's the drive.

Meh!

@rubber_jonnie have you got any known good disks?

Id clean the heads and then concentrate on getting them to read a good disk first. If they are teac drives like mine they will be a pain. Do drive 0 first which needs track zero set by moving the stepper ( two screes underneath) and then do drive 2 if it doesn't automatically read after drive 0 adjustment. Drive 2 on mine needed the head physically moved by listening the 3 screws and moving it slightly till it reads track 0 ok.

Also, again if it's a teac drive, they use a solenoid to pull the head assembly up and down. I've had one drive that that doesn't work on and that was giving fault 18.

@rubber_jonnie

Really sorry to hear that... :(

I'm pretty sure you'll find out what's going on though.

Oh, and BTW, I ended up selling my A5000.

It kept dying after each new repair and I was really fed up with repairing it.

I have no regrets since I primarly bought it for scavenging parts, but I don't know why decided to give it a chance and repair it.

Have pity on something and it will repay you...

:x

PhilC wrote: 28 Nov 2024 21:29 @rubber_jonnie have you got any known good disks?

Id clean the heads and then concentrate on getting them to read a good disk first. If they are teac drives like mine they will be a pain. Do drive 0 first which needs track zero set by moving the stepper ( two screes underneath) and then do drive 2 if it doesn't automatically read after drive 0 adjustment. Drive 2 on mine needed the head physically moved by listening the 3 screws and moving it slightly till it reads track 0 ok.

Also, again if it's a teac drive, they use a solenoid to pull the head assembly up and down. I've had one drive that that doesn't work on and that was giving fault 18.

Sadly I don't know if any of the disks I have (I only have 2) are good or not. I think I'll see if I can get some good disk images and see if I can use it with a Gotek.

I don't know what brand the drives are, they don't seem to have any labels on them at all, aside from a label on the flywheel for the drive, they are thankfully not belt driven but direct drive.

I will have another look tomorrow, but the heads are under a shield that isn't easily removed so hard to clean and I don't have a cleaning disk. What I did find odd was that the Greaseweazel had index problems and I had to fake it, though I did get an image but it wasn't consistent.

HigashiJun wrote: 28 Nov 2024 22:13 @rubber_jonnie

Really sorry to hear that... :(

I'm pretty sure you'll find out what's going on though.

Thanks :)

HigashiJun wrote: 28 Nov 2024 22:24 Oh, and BTW, I ended up selling my A5000.

It kept dying after each new repair and I was really fed up with repairing it.

I have no regrets since I primarly bought it for scavenging parts, but I don't know why decided to give it a chance and repair it.

Have pity on something and it will repay you...

:x

Well, the A5000 is repaying me with pain, that's for sure. I need proper time to look at it, the problem I have is that it's in an awkward place to work on, and it's bloody hard to work on it without dismantling quite a lot.

It's not the CMOS battery though, that's still good, I took it out and measured it. I think I need to pull everything and boot from ROM after a CMOS reset to see if it keels over after a period of time.

Wondering if the PSU, which isn't original, is struggling as it's only 4A at 5v, though from what I understand that should be plenty for the 2 podules I have in it.

The not booting with a drive that has opt 4,2 set on it is very odd though, and I tried both SCSI and IDE.

I know what you mean about it dying after each repair though.

@rubber_jonnie

Just a thought, I don't remember if you had a battery leak to deal with in your A5000, but I guess you have the corrosion completely neutralized with white vinegar or lemon juice.

If you fail to do so, the corrosion may still continue to destroy your motherboard.

That was not the case in my A5000 though...

HigashiJun wrote: 29 Nov 2024 00:26 @rubber_jonnie

Just a thought, I don't remember if you had a battery leak to deal with in your A5000, but I guess you have the corrosion completely neutralized with white vinegar or lemon juice.

If you fail to do so, the corrosion may still continue to destroy your motherboard.

That was not the case in my A5000 though...

The thought crossed my mind that I may have missed some, which is always a possibility with battery leaks, but I removed a lot of stuff and cleaned pretty rigorously before re-assembling. The fact that it's died over time is suspicious though.

The trouble is, as you know it's a huge pain to disassemble, and I don't want to get into another huge repair on it at the moment.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 29 Nov 2024 09:22 The trouble is, as you know it's a huge pain to disassemble, and I don't want to get into another huge repair on it at the moment.

I understand, and with all your projects in stand by mode, it's not an easy task.