karsh@trifolium.SGI.COM (Bruce Karsh) (05/10/89)
I recently added an Expansion Technologies 48mb disk drive and a Spirit .5Mb memory expansion to my Amiga 1000. I wound up with a case of the Amiga 1000 expansion flakies! The system would boot about 50% of the time and hang after a command or two. The rest of the time it wouldn't boot at all. Sometimes it would just hang, sometimes I'd get a blue screen, and sometimes I'd get a kickstart hand. So I installed the ground wire connecting the 4 PALs to the motherboard ground. I used a single piece of heavy gauge of wire which I soldered to each of the 4 ground pins (pin 10) on the pals at J, K, L & N. I fired up the system and was pleased to see that all was well. Well, almost all was well! Now my machine crashes about every 15-20 minutes. The symptoms are either the thing goes dead, i.e. it won't respond to input at all. Or I get a blue screen followed shortly by a kickstart hand. In both cases, I have to re-kickstart the machine. Besides the PAL ground wire, here are some other proposed fixes I've heard of: * Attach a separate ground wire from the 68000 processor's ground pin to the motherboard ground. * Replace the 68000 processor chip with a Motorola 68000 chip. * Replace the plastic 68000 processor chip with a ceramic 68000 chip. * Replace the PAL chips with ones manufactured by MMI. So, here are my questions: * Are there any other proposed fixes which I should be aware of? * Which proposed fixes work and which are witchcraft? * What is Commodore Amiga's official position about the Amiga 1000 expansion flakies? Do they acknowledge its widespread occurence? Do they have a detailed understanding or explanation of what is occuring. Do they have any service bulletins or repair recommendations about this problem? What do they expect their Amiga 1000 owners to do? -- Bruce Karsh karsh@sgi.com In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
u555917504ea@minnie.ucdavis.edu (0040;0000008360;0;340;141;) (05/10/89)
In article <32426@sgi.SGI.COM> karsh@trifolium.UUCP (Bruce Karsh) writes: >I recently added an Expansion Technologies 48mb disk drive and a Spirit >.5Mb memory expansion to my Amiga 1000. I wound up with a case of the >Amiga 1000 expansion flakies! ... > > * Attach a separate ground wire from the 68000 processor's ground > pin > to the motherboard ground. I myself have .5 megs on a spirit board, with a Cltd SCSI. I had the EXACT (and I mean exact) same problem. After hooking up the 68000 ground, the computer worked fine. (Only crashes every few days now...) Good Luck! -Bruce Rogers currently u555917504ea@minnie.ucdavis.edu _______________________________________________________________________________ Just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control....