kenh@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Ken Huisman) (05/18/91)
I have a problem with my clock in my A500 - This takes some explaining: I have been working on a program for a while. All it does right now is read in a bunch of stuff from a couple files, and initialize a bunch of windows and display memory. The arrays that the file data is read into are very large, and are declared dynamically since my Aztec C 5.0e didn't seem to want to handle really large arrays itself. Anyways, for a little while the program seemed to work, so I kept working on it and it stopped working, and crashed rather oddly. I removed all the stuff I had put into it since the last working version, and recompiled it. It still didn't work. Then I fiddled with it a whole lot, accomplishing absolutely nothing in terms of getting the program done, and not finding the problem. I had finally gotten to the point where it would work about 1/2 of the time I tried to run it (the _same_ object code!). I thought I must have been clobbering memory somewhere causing a crash, but I had carefully checked and couldn't find a problem. Now the hardware stuff comes in: I ran this program in another attempt to try to get it running, to no avail. This time, however, something really wierd happened. As it was reading the files from my A590 hardrive with a 52MB quantum, random dots appeared on the screen, then the screen went black and the computer just hung - no guru, just froze up. Upon reboot, I got the message "battery backed clock not found" - I had fried my little 512k ram expansion's clock. This happened about 2 weeks ago. Since I had bought another little expansion and installed it. I fried it _exactly_ the same way last night!!! My Questions: 1) This may sound stupid, but is it possible to fry hardware with a program? It seems rather a coincidence that I fried my clock while running a program of my own creation. Or perhaps the coincidence is that those are both the only two occasions where I get a long, extended burst of disk activity from my A590 (my quantum is really fast! :-). 2) Can someone please list for me probable ways to fry a clock? I'm guessing that there is something wrong with my computer that is causing these clocks to be fried. The first clock/ram board was the commodore model, and the second one was a supra, if that makes a difference. 3) Based on the answers to #2, would someone be able to give me a ballpark figure on a repair cost? I have been very dissapointed with my A500 since I bought it used last year (the warranty is long gone). It has spent more time in the repair shop than in useful service. I am considering just throwing it away if the repairs are too much. I have already spent over $800 repairing this thing in less than 1 year (including replacing a floppy drive and the cheapo hard disk that came with the a590 and died, and not to mention the $200 con-job from the "authorized amiga repair centre"). here is my system setup, so you can know what may be wrong: A500, 512k expansion in bottom, external floppy drive, A590 hard disk w/ Quantum SCSI drive and 2 MB of ram, 1084S monitor, Star NX-2410 printer, Best Data Products "Smart One" 2400X modem. I hope someone can help. E-mail would be preferred. Ken Huisman ersys!kenh@nro.cs.athabascau.ca kenh@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (same as first-> use if first bounces) Ken Huisman kenh@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca Edmonton Remote Systems: Serving Northern Alberta since 1982
johnhlee@CS.Cornell.EDU (John H. Lee) (05/21/91)
In article <cPi521w164w@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca> kenh@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Ken Huisman) writes: >I ran this program in another attempt to try to get it running, to no >avail. This time, however, something really wierd happened. As it was >reading the files from my A590 hardrive with a 52MB quantum, random >dots appeared on the screen, then the screen went black and the computer >just hung - no guru, just froze up. Upon reboot, I got the message >"battery backed clock not found" - I had fried my little 512k ram >expansion's clock. This happened about 2 weeks ago. No need to worry. The real-time clock can be "messed up" if a program writes random data to its registers. Your clock is still OK--it just needs a little help to straighten it out. Reset the clock with the setclock command: 1> setclock reset and that should revive it. Set and save the system date and time and the clock will be back to normal. Make sure you use either the WB 1.2, 1.3.2, or later version of setclock. The setclock distributed with WB version 1.3 has a bug and won't work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The DiskDoctor threatens the crew! Next time on AmigaDos: The Next Generation. John Lee Internet: johnhlee@cs.cornell.edu The above opinions are those of the user, and not of this machine.