[comp.sys.amiga.hardware] BAD! Experience with 500... "About last night"

multi@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Chuan Su Kuan) (03/27/90)

Before, whenever I heared people anguishedly talking about their tragic 
experiences with the Amigas, a silly grin of its own mind will appear 
on my face saying "Never me!"   Well, last night, it happened...   


It all started when I tried to dial up the port selector to the main
frames and AtalkIII won't responde to any key strock.   I checked the 
phone, it's dead so I figued it to be an old classic case of bad wire 
connection and managed, eventually, to track down the source of a 
broken and SHORTED telephone line.   

No problem there except the part which you have to sit down on a chair 
for 1 1/2 hours reconnecting those tinny wires, all four of them.

I got through that, relaxed, plugged the finished 'product' back onto
its sucket, and "            ".    Yes, you guessed it, nothing happened,
AtalkIII remained unresponsive of the keystrocks and left me in a state of 
panic.     I rebooted the machine, took apart the supra modem (with the 
machine off, of course) and managed to break the prastic covering for the 
on/off switch during the process.   Finally put it back on and fliped the 
switches and "           ".

Still panicking, I checked the connectors in the back panel by wiggling
them lightly, and was stunned when loud squeaking sound coming out of the 
speakers as I TOUCH each one of the connectors.  Immediately, I turned off 
the machine, unplugged all connectors, seperated the Supra SCSI interface, 
which is hooked up to a Seagate 277N and 2 Mag memory board from MAST,
from the side expansion slot, and ..........  SHAKE the 500 as you would 
when making strawberry milkshakes.   


That does [did] the job, mystically.  


So that was the story of my A500's near death experience from last night. 


Anyone's got any idea why ATalkIII won't work [so was it ATalkIII that's
causing all that trouble? not likely as I did tried out other package 
with the same resultes] before the 2Mag Ram card was seperated from 
the 500 and the SHAKing operation performed on the machine?  
I would really like to find out what had happend so I can handle the situation
in a more civilized manner, not relying on some mystical magic to save the day -
and the $$$$.


All reply please E-mail to ksu@louie.udel.edu. I will post the summary if
there were enough interests.    Thanks.

-Kevin