Hi everybody,

I've got quite a few strange problems with my AOne. They seemed to get more and more with every update of OS4.

May i introduce myself a bit -
I'm quite a passionate Amiga user ("passionate" always, "user" whenever i find time), I got my first A500 back in 1987 and when that went belly-up due to a bad power unit, i bought myself an A2000 round Christmas 1990 (had to smuggle it 2 times from Germany to Austria, after finding out at home that the keyboard was broken, thanks to the EU that's not a problem anymore! :) )
That old and trustful A2000 was my main computer up till 1994, when i had to switch to a Windows machine - which showed me that computing can be NOT funny, as well. A few years later, i dusted off my A2000 and it's quite nicely expanded now with all kinds of bells & whistles and has found a nice place in my flat where it's mostly in sleep mode (i.e. switched off). Too bad it seems that there's never gonna be OS4 for it!

Nevertheless, i really got into the Amiga again at the beginning of 2003 (right in time it seems!) and instantly bought myself an AmigaOne when they got available. -- Too bad that point.design (the only Austrian Amiga shop left then) isn't anymore, Juergen Schober was such a great guy and even the fact that the shop was around 200 km from where i live, it was feeling like next door to me.

So here i am with my AOne and have very little time to enjoy it (much work, lovely family) but i try to get round to do something enjoyable with it.

However, there's a few things going on with my AOne which are maybe related to wrong VCore voltage or other things, i don't exactly know.

First of all, this is what my AOne's got inside:
CPU Motorola MPC 7441/7451 Vger
1 GB Kingston Buffered RAM, 1 module (memtester didn't find any errors in 20 loops)
Radeon 9200 Graphics Card in AGP slot
Soundblaster Live Soundcard
Sii0680 IDE Controller with both DVD ROM Drive and HD connected to it

disabled kickstart modules (i.e. commented out in kicklayout)
a1ide.device.kmod
sii3112ide.device.kmod
sii3114ide.device.kmod
sii3512ide.device.kmod
3dfxVoodoo.chip

UBoot settings:
All interrupts set to "level"
Internal IDE disabled

And here's an incomplete list of some of the things that happen.

DVPlayer (demo version, want to get this sorted out before i buy it) playing vob files either gives a crash that can be logged via GDB or just completely hangs the system. After 2 or 3 seconds, the image starts to get erroneous with a lot of artifacts in it. If there's already some sound to hear at that moment, it loops and shortly after, the system completely hangs. Another variety is that i get the "orange" recoverable alert, similar to the good old Guru.

DVPlayer playing an avi usually gets the Audio Subtask crashing after a few seconds. Sometimes clicking on "ignore errors" in Grim Reaper helps so that the audio (which is now out of sync with the still-running picture) takes pace with the picture again and everything works on. Sometimes, it also just hangs the system.

With MPlayer it's quite the same, i get arbitrary Grim Reapers or even lockups, only MOV files seem to be quite stable.

Lame: 8 out of 10 times (approx.) it gives Grim Reapers, almost always "Ignore Errors" helps to proceed encoding. (I use it from the command line.) However, the Grim Reapers can occur quite often during one file. Then again, encoding the same file another time may run through without any error at all. BTW, closing GDB gives the next Grim Reaper.

Themes: When I've activated the Acqua OS X or the Atez theme, strange things happen. E.g. if i open an archive with UnArc and unpack it to ( to RAM: or HD directory, no difference), the system completely freezes. Sometimes after 10%, sometimes after 70%, not really reproducable in a way that i could say "Archive x hangs at y percent". Doesn't happen with all archives, I can't even say that it's just with big or small archives, it seems completely randomly. The only "stable" thing about it is that it doesn't ever happen when i have other themes activated.

When i had the Acqua OS X theme activated, it also happened that just scrolling the contents of a drawer in a Workbench window froze the system. Again, never happened with any other theme.

Other software, like ArtEffect, runs without any problems. I didn't figure out yet if it's the 68k stuff that runs without troubles or if that's not of any matter.

I don't know, i'm quite helpless about this all.
Memtester works 100% ok, i even bought some new Kingston RAM. What i didn't do yet is fiddling around with the CPU / cooler, as obtaining a fresh CPU seems quite hard these days and i want to have tried every other possible alternative before i do something about it. The behaviour my AOne shows is also not dependent of how long the system runs. It's the same with a "cold" system as with a few hours of being switched on.

A few more similar things are happening on and off, my first bet would be core voltage, but you know - before i start to rip the cooler off the CPU i'd like to exclude all other alternatives as far as possible.

I don't know - if i had a clue of what to search for, i'd give a better description of the symptoms. Maybe someone can give me a hint of what to track down? I mean i'm quite a busy reader of this site (and an awfully lame writer, shame on me) but everything that i read and tried out didn't help yet.

Thank you very much for reading
Michael

@xo

Welcome on board..

Sorry, no help from me. some of the problems sound familiar tho so I'm sure somebody will help ya out.

_________________
~
Everything you say will be misquoted and used against you..
~

@xo

sounds like a heat problem to me... do you have a good cpu fan?...

_________________
AOS4 Betatester, Peg2, G4@1ghz, Radeon 9250 256mb, 1gb RAM.

http://www.asciiarena.com
http://www.uprough.net

@xo

It would be nice to know exactly which cpu you have and that we can only find out by removing the fan.

At least you can check the vcore settings, without touching anything else by looking at the dip switches j17 situated on the mb just below the PSU power connector on the mb. Do not confuse the vcore settings with the dipswitches on the cpu card.

A list of vcore settings can be found here: http://www.intuitionbase.com/static.php?section=notes Look closely and tell us what your settings are.

What speed is the cpu running andis your fan the std one delivered with the mb? Even at 800mhz the fan could be insufficient under load not to mention the plastic fasteners can easily break thereby not keeping pressure against the cpu as it should. Also some fans were attached with a gauze of some sort between it and the cpu which doesn't help the situation any.

All of these things should be checked and although the fan could be sufficient for most use )at 800mhz.) it is advisable to exchange it for something more robust.

_________________
Fixed A1G4XE 7455 RX933PC with fried CPU
Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
ESI Juli@ 24bit 192kHz Envy24HT
Sil 680 Ultra Ata 133 E-ide
SeaGate Barracuda 120gb 8mb cache

It also would be helpful to know whether it is an SE or an XE (eg is the CPU chip soldered onto the motherboard or is it on a daughterboard that stands about 5mm higher than the motherboard?

But I agree with SpotUp, it sounds like overheating mainly. If performance gets worse with time, that usually means heating problems.

As Steff said, you will need to check the security of the heatsink mounting onto the CPU. Some very early SEs had some "thermal tape" between the CPU and the heaysink, and it proved to be a very good insulator. Replacing the heatsink with a larger model and adjusting the Vcore voltage properly works wonders.

If you're not confident of doing the work yourself, then find someone to do it for you, don't risk breaking something.

_________________
cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

@tonyw

It is an XE, 7451 is a G4-cpu.

Agree that it sounds like a heat-problem.

@xo

at which speed is your A1 running?

Last edited by tomazkid on 24-Nov-2005 at 12:01 AM.

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@tonyw

Quote:

Some very early SEs had some "thermal tape" between the CPU and the heaysink, and it proved to be a very good insulator.

My XE had the thermal tape as well, so he could have it too!

_________________
Fixed A1G4XE 7455 RX933PC with fried CPU
Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
ESI Juli@ 24bit 192kHz Envy24HT
Sil 680 Ultra Ata 133 E-ide
SeaGate Barracuda 120gb 8mb cache

@thread

Hello again,
thank you all for your replies!

Indeed my AOne is an XE, the CPU sits on a daughterboard.
I haven't touched it in any way, it's like i bought it. System Information in UBoot says 800 MHz.

The DIP switches on J17 (right under the main power socket) are 1-on 2-off 3-on 4-off, JP17 is short, so that's a core voltage of 1,59V according to the user manual.

I still have the standard fan on the CPU, if there wasn't such a lack of CPUs I'd have already changed it, alone for the high annoying sound that it makes.
What i also forgot to mention is that i run Update 3 and to my knowledge have all the latest libraries etc. installed.

... well... This morning i came in (I brought the AOne to my office, as there's more supplies to check what's going on) and opened the case to re-read the DIP settings.
Then i did another few tests to see what's really going on when the system is still "cold" (and it's cold in here, somebody turned off the heating yesterday!)

I hardly can believe it myself, that's like an inverse "Murphy's Law" effect:
I activated the Atez theme, encoded quite a few tracks with Lame while unpacking quite a lot of archives, also some of those that usually hang the system.
Everything worked like a dream. (Well I hope it's not a dream )
... to the moment where I opened a vob file with DV Player, which worked a bit longer (~ 20 sec) than usual but nevertheless hung the system.

Anyway, that seems like a step into the right direction. And i could have sworn that it had nothing to do with the heat as it usually started to behave strangely right after switching it on.
And now while i write this, lame encodes and encodes.... :)

So it seems I really should have the courage to exchange that fan at last.

Guys you're geniouses... thank you all very much!

@xo

Quote:

The DIP switches on J17 (right under the main power socket) are 1-on 2-off 3-on 4-off, JP17 is short, so that's a core voltage of 1,59V according to the user manual.

I've got XE with 7450/51 too, and 1.59v works fine.

I had heat related problems few years ago (when running Linux, OS4 was yet to be seen back then).
The behaviour was sudden freezes/lock ups on my system.
Changing the cpu-fan to a better one as well as installing a few extra fans in the case fixed that.

A good test to see if cooling is ok, is to run dnetc-client, if cooled enough, your system should run non-stop for weeks.

If the problems doesn't go away after you've checked the cooling, the next thing to check is the memory-dimm, that can cause similar symptoms.
Some memory-dimms can appear to be 99.99% ok, but still fails under certain conditions.
(Got one of those myself)

to aw.net

Last edited by tomazkid on 24-Nov-2005 at 07:18 AM.

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@xo

before you changr hardware jumpers or check the CPU.

get a blank partition and reinstall OS4 from scratch and try a few OS4 progs.

DO NOT INSTALL YOUR "MUST HAVE UTILITIES"
NO DOPUS OR SCREEN HACK OR EXTRA UTILITIES

I stress this highly becuase some people come to my shop with Amigaone problems they tell me its a clean install. Yet WBstartup has twenty or more progs in it half of whcih were made redundant with 3.5

os4 is compatible with correctly written programs that don't hack or replace system libraries.

Some software programmers like to "gift" the world with thier "genius" ( Read REALLY stupid ignorant, should not code programmers ) and replace workbench libs or gadgets.
ImageFX will do this if you use the base installer so will certain Dopus versions.

thats why if you are having problems install ONE program and see if it works if you take a LONG cut and install your workbench pretty pack you are just wasting yours and everybodies elses time.

sorry buyt I get really worked up about this becuase I have spent weeks on the phone with certain idiots and thier problem was not AOS or thier hardware but some prog they must have running.

I had one moron for the last SEVERAL YEARS insisted that his Calander prog, The same one he has run on his machine since 1.3 was not the culprit with his database getting corrupted every now and then.

I finally fixed the problem when he came over again with his messed up Amiga bitching a fit.
he made the mistake of bringing his floppy with the program.

I erased his system removed his prog got everything working AGAIN.

He looked at me, kinda nervous like while he eyed his floppies on my bench.

I took the offending floppy and put it in the shredder.

He screammed and threatened to sue me for destruction of property.

I gave him a bill for my services with the retail price of the program subtacted from my bill.

I then Told him to get out.

He called and left a message the other day. Guess what he had several month's of no problems and everything was working fine until he had gotten ahold of another copy of his calender prog.
several day's after installation it ate his database again.

He now admits I was right all along and asked kindly if he could come down and get his system fixed again.

This time he will put the flopppy in the shredder.

Kgrach.

@all

Hi everyone,

i now changed the cooling of the CPU and what can i say... first off i almost lost all my hair when i assembled the thing back together and it didn't boot anymore, only a black screen. I felt myself like Mick Sutton described in his Tales Of Woe in TAM 18!

Only a day later i remembered that it's maybe the graphics card which wasn't properly seated.
That proved right, and now the A1 is running freakin' stable, i didn't experience a single crash yet! It feels like early christmas to me! :):)
Nevertheless, i'll for now leave the core voltage at 1,59 V although i've got an XPC7451RX800RE which should be powered @ 1,65V (according to Freescale docs) but as it is so stable i don't feel any need for further experiments.

BTW, also big thanks for the tip about certain software causing strange behaviour. That was actually one of the first things i tried, i removed everything but the bare bones of the system, nevertheless the problem persisted.

Thank you all for your valuable advice!
Michael

@xo

Is it stable now? If you want you can try running dnet for a while, it use 100% cpu.

Sadly most A1 had insufficient cooling or wrong vcore. After some modding ,my A1 is, since a log time now, stable as a rock and clocked to 1Ghz.

_________________
ikir

@ikir

Yes, it is absolutely stable now, at least all my "favourite canditates" for crashes run without any problem. The only thing i'll still do is build in a couple of new fans because i now know how important the cooling issue is.

The old Sunon fan always felt really cold when i held my hand near it, so i thought that the CPU wasn't really hot, anyways. But now when i watch a video or encode some mp3s, the new cooling unit on the CPU gets really hot, so there's a big difference after all.

I won't do any overclocking or anything else with it, i love the speed and everything of it, and i'm very pleased by the fact that an 800MHz computer can have such a great performance - but well, that's always been a brand feature of the Amiga, i suppose! :)

@kgrach

Hilarious, and oh so true ;)

@all

Maybe change topic? There was noone to help here ;D

_________________
Nicolas Mendoza

@kgrach

Quote:

I had one moron for the last SEVERAL YEARS insisted that his Calander prog, The same one he has run on his machine since 1.3 was not the culprit with his database getting corrupted every now and then.

You can in no way draw the conclusion that it's definitely the Calander prog's fault just by observing that the problem disappears once the program is not being used anymore. Things (like debugging) would be way too easy if it was always like that.

The problem could be it in various different places. Not just in the prog itself. Like in filesystem code. Or in DOS code. Or some device driver. Or in some external library. You would need to investigate that further. Just looking at whether problem disappears/appears when running/not running a certain program is not enough.

Telling him to not use the program anymore is of course still okay/a good idea, but "destroying" it??

@Georg

I normally don't mind people doing dumb things as long as they don't continue to pester me about the problem. Then I will occasionally snap, that customer was lucky there was no bloodshed involved.

The thermal tape is almost always a bad idea.
Exception is I had an Amigaone come in with so much heatsink compound on it the cpu was encased in grease to the board. The person must of followed the theory if a little is good, Tons is better.

I do sell some nice copper Heatsinks milled custom for the A1.
you need to specify the CPU module as each module is different so is the heatsink.

The original SE boards were shipped sans Heatsinks.
The XE boards were shipped with several different heatsinks as time went by.
The last heatsink Eyetech shipped with the GX modules was the only decent one.
All others are a disaster made worse by the fact many fans would bounce loose in shipping and the dealer and or endusers would reattach the fans without replacing the Thermal tape.
Thermal tape is one shot and cannot be re-used.

Also any dirt between the CPU and the Heatsink creates a hot spot that will kill CPU's

Kgrach