Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    My Amy just got sick tonight!  Her display is corrupted with vertical 
    lines about a centimeter apart, and she won't accept a workbench 
    disk.  Tomorrow I'll give Five-D a call.  I'll let you know what 
    happens.

    (Now I'm stuck with a VT220 - no mouse, no color, no music - I'm sad,
    sad, sad.) 

    - Cliff  :-(

    A friend of mine had an internal floppy stop working after his warranty
    had expired.  The technician at Memory Location said Commodore wouldn't
    supply the parts to repair it, instead, my friend had to buy a
    replacement floppy drive! OUCH!

    
    Actually, nobody repairs floppy drives any more, at least not at
    the dealer level.  Floppys have become such commodity items that
    it would be like repairing a digital watch.
    
    I'd be surprised if Apple or CBM pay much more than $50 or $60 for
    a drive.
    
    Ed.

RE: .1

>    My Amy just got sick tonight!  Her display is corrupted with vertical 
>    lines about a centimeter apart, and she won't accept a workbench disk.

	Mine had a similar symptom except that the garbage raster lines 
	where horizontal and seemed to come and go to lesser or greater
	degree over, say a 20 minute period.  We thought it was temperature
	related but couldn't prove it.  Then thought it may be power supply
	joltage wavering.

	Anyway, ended up taking it in to the shop where we bought it. 
	They tested it and could not get it to act up.

	As it turns out, the problem has gradually gone away of it's own
	accord!  My guess is that someone in the neighborhood was using 
	some kind of power tool that put a bunch of noise on the house
	circuit.  My next step would have been to buy some kind of 
	line filter from Radio Shack.  But alas, not needed so far.

	Here's keeping the ol' fingers crossed.


Bruce Armstrong in Colorado Springs...

    Re .1

    Turns out it was Denise.  The symptoms were a reverse-video boot 
    screen degraded by vertical lines about a cm apart.  The workbench 
    disk wouldn't load either.  At first they thought it was Fat Aggie, 
    but she wasn't the culprit.

    The bill came to $97 - $30 for the labor (a flat fee), $60 for 
    Denise, plus a few bucks for the state.  A Fat Agnes would have been 
    another $70.

    I don't know how Five-D's rates compare with other places, but their 
    service is great.  This is the second time I've been there - the 
    first time was a sick C64 - and both times they stopped what they 
    were doing, popped the skins off, found the problem, fixed it, 
    buttoned it up, took the money, and sent me on my way.  Can't beat 
    that!
    
    - Cliff

    Re .-1
    
    I should add that there was another guy at Five-D who was having
    problems with his A2000.  His SCSI board and his memory board
    wouldn't work together with his rev of the motherboard, so he had to 
    upgrade if he wanted to use the add-ons.  Commodore would give him 
    $250 for his old board against $400 for the new board.  Also, his 
    power supply was gone.  I didn't keep track of the details, but the 
    whole thing was gonna cost him about $450.  He wasn't smiling.
    
    - Z
    

    Where is Five-Ds?  I don't have a problem at the moment, but it would
    be good to know of a place like that just in case.  Is it in MA/NH?

	Paul

    D-Five's address is 19 Crosby Drive in Bedford, MA, on the same road
    as Digital's Bedford training facility.  It's in the basement of
    building 19A.  There's no sign at the road, just a boulder with a
    "19" on it.  The phone number is (617)275-8892.

    Crosby Drive is at the intersection of routes 3 and 62.  Mitre is on 
    the corner.

    D-Five charges a flat $30 for labor on an Amiga, $20 for a C64/128,
    plus parts.  They also do warranty work.  I paid by check.  I don't
    know if they take plastic. 

Re: .6  (Out of date motherboard)

Did you overhear any other information about this.  I once had a list
of motherboard changes from 4.1 (I think) up, and the boards were
supposed to be functionally identical (the changes were due to various
cost reductions being made).

I have heard rumors of some people being sold early dealer demo units
(version 3 boards), which did have have some known problems along those
lines.

But then what do I have to worry about?  My SCSI interface plays well
with my (mostly unpopulated) 8 meg board :-).

    The specific problem was bus incompatability.  I don't know which rev
    was the one that had it.  You could give Five-D a call if you had a
    question.  The people I talked to seemed to be very generous with
    their information. 

    - Cliff

    My Amy got very sick after a person to remain nameless moved the
    case in such a way as to wiggle the power cord loose (she's a '500).
    I pushed it back in without shutting the power off (I know, pretty
    dumb).  Amy tok a hit in the chips, and my nice graphics games looked
    scrambled.
    
    I took it to a guy in Andover, I can't remember his name, but he
    does the work for LCA Computer and Video in Norwood.  I took her
    to him directly, and he had her fixed in a week.  Warranty was still
    in effect.
    
    The only other problem I had was once when Amy was shut off for
    a few days (I usually leave her on all the time).  When I turned
    her on, I got a visit from the you-know-who-ru.  I reasoned that
    if I kept re-booting, the board would reheat, expand, and 
    electrical contacts would be restored.  Sure enough, every time 
    I rebooted we got further before another meditation appeared 
    (with a different number each time).  After the sixth time, everything
    was OK, with no problems since.

    My 2000 died yesterday :(

    My son tells me it was on but idle when it spontaneously rebooted.
    This reboot was apparently successful, bringing up workbench from the
    hard disk.  The mouse tracked ok, but don't know if keyboard worked.
    Thinking something was wrong, he tried ctrl-a-a, which did nothing.
    Then he powered down the cpu and hd and started over.  The hd cycled
    up, and the fan in the cpu came on, but it made no attempt to boot - no
    access to the floppies and the monitor remains black.  That is how it
    remains.

    I presume some component died.  Is there anything I should do before
    taking it for service?  I haven't had time to open it up yet.  My
    electronics skills are negligible - I was thinking of checking whether
    it might work without the OverDrive hd controller tho this would seem
    to be a longshot.

    We can't live long without Ami at our house!

	Paul

    my 2000 has been a D-FIVE Associates in Bedford MA for almost 2
    months now.  The power supply blew and killed the floppy drive too.
    Most of the time has been spent waiting for CBM to ship replacement
    parts.  Grrrrrr
    
    Pull the harddisk controller, no sense risking that while you test
    to see what failed.  Maybe it's some corrupted file on the harddisk,
    like the disk-validator that dies when it tries to use it.
    
    -dave

    re .13:

    I'm sure the problem isn't with the disk itself.  I am running with
    KS1.2 roms and the system never accesses the floppy, and it doesn't
    matter if the disk drive is powered down.  Just seems vaguely possible
    that a malfunctioning controller might hang the bus or something.

	Paul

    Try unplugging the keyboard and plugging it back in.  Your problem
    sounds more serious than a malfunctioning keyboard, but it _might_ be
    that, and fiddling the keyboard can't hurt.
        John Sauter

    How about if you step through the sequence again ...
    
    	power up and describe exactly what you see and hear from
    	the screen,drives,fan etc...
    
    	When you power up make sure no disk is in df0 until you get
    the hand with the disk....whatever you call that silly thing.
    
    

    A cigar to Mr. Sauter!!!

    I never would have believed it, but reseating the keyboard cable cured
    it.  I never would have thought that would prevent it from booting on a
    power up, but live and learn.

    Thanks John!

	Paul

    re: .17--I don't smoke, but your praise is very much appreciated.
        John Sauter