Hello all,

On Saturday my MicroA1 refused to boot, giving only a black screen. I opened the machine a changed the battery, and after powering the machine up again I was greeted with UBoot screen. So far so good, but when I selected "try to restore settings" (or something like that,the screen went black again, with only blinking cursor appearing. Scared, I waited a bit and then powered the machine off and on again. Still no UBoot, black screen. I cannot type anything to screen since the machine does not respond to keyboard.

Any ideas what went wrong and how to fix this? Is the UBoot now somehow corrupted and if it is, how can I restore factory settings to it? I already tried taking the battery off and waiting for couple of minutes, but no luck.

_________________
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." (Groucho Marx)

@GrumpyOldMan

I've done the same myself. On my XE. Early on the restore function worked but after it just broke my settings. I can only suggest removing all power input, leaving it for a minute, and then remove the battery. Leave it for another minute just to be sure. And then put the battery back in and the power back afterwards.

If it still won't wake I don't know if powering on without battery will help to clear it. But also check the UBoot chip. It has a socket.

If you still are in trouble then check the cables. Check the RAM and perhaps give it a "hotplug" (with machine off) so that it's freshly inserted. If you still get no action then it's serial cable time.

@GrumpyOldMan (& Hypex)

On my AmigaOne XE I've had several occasions where I've had similar problems where something becomes corrupted & the computer will not reboot. Disconnecting power & removing the battery doesn't help UNLESS I leave the battery out for as long as 2 to 4 hours, after which reconnecting power & putting the battery back in solves the problem. I assume that the Micro A1 has similar non-volatile memory installed.

_________________
- BCP
AmigaOne X1000 & Amiga 4000

Amiga Response Crew Users Group
Indianapolis, IN USA

@GrumpyOldMan

I had black screens on my uA1 w/o booting and uboot appearing after long period my amiga was unused

I replaced the battery and had system working back again (had to reconfigure uboot settings BTW)


ps
as uA1 amigaOS user: do you run system freezes times to times (as I have) or AmigaOS4.1 is for you a stable system on uA1 ?

_________________
uA1 750Gx AmigaOS 4.1 u6
512 MB
SIL0680
HD 120GB + HD 20GB
DVDRom + DVDWriter
WNCE2001 wifi adapter
-----------------------------
AlexDran.net

@AlexDran

Quote:

ps as uA1 amigaOS user: do you run system freezes times to times (as I have) or AmigaOS4.1 is for you a stable system on uA1 ?

My old uA1c FX (now dead) is very stable no any freezes,using it every day minimail 10 hours (wookiechat,yam,diropus,sabremsn,owb,tunenet,newscoaster..) ...

Now have GX revision...and for now is OK no any freezes ..(using it last 3 days)

_________________
--

Amiga x5000 ı o2o ı 4GB RAM ı RadeonRX580 | SBlaster Audigy Fx - AmigaOS4.1 FInal Edition

A1200 sandwich :)

Croatian Amiga portal

@VooDoo

thank you for your feedback
I have to admit my system has never been stable; experienced random crashes and freezes (even if I'm not using it so often to deeply investigate). The system as never been safe for working for example

256 memory specification does not help but I know classic amiga runs such configuration as top w/o problems (as far as I know)

_________________
uA1 750Gx AmigaOS 4.1 u6
512 MB
SIL0680
HD 120GB + HD 20GB
DVDRom + DVDWriter
WNCE2001 wifi adapter
-----------------------------
AlexDran.net

@AlexDran

Only what is freezing my ua1c i OWB when flush memory :( but now have 512mb and situatin is much better...

_________________
--

Amiga x5000 ı o2o ı 4GB RAM ı RadeonRX580 | SBlaster Audigy Fx - AmigaOS4.1 FInal Edition

A1200 sandwich :)

Croatian Amiga portal

@VooDoo

I'm considering then an upgrade
what ram brand do you have installed (and / or have you bought it?)

thank you again

_________________
uA1 750Gx AmigaOS 4.1 u6
512 MB
SIL0680
HD 120GB + HD 20GB
DVDRom + DVDWriter
WNCE2001 wifi adapter
-----------------------------
AlexDran.net

@AlexDran

Cruical CT64M64S4W75.M16FD 512 MB SODIMM

I buy it on eBay..and this module is 100% working , before this module test 3 other but no one is working propertly..some crash or not booting..

_________________
--

Amiga x5000 ı o2o ı 4GB RAM ı RadeonRX580 | SBlaster Audigy Fx - AmigaOS4.1 FInal Edition

A1200 sandwich :)

Croatian Amiga portal

@VooDoo

is this the ram you are referring ?
Cruicial CT64M64S4W75.16F 512MB PC133 144-pin SO-DIMM

what do you mean no one is working properly (crashes or no booting), have you experienced problems with this module?



thank you again

_________________
uA1 750Gx AmigaOS 4.1 u6
512 MB
SIL0680
HD 120GB + HD 20GB
DVDRom + DVDWriter
WNCE2001 wifi adapter
-----------------------------
AlexDran.net

@AlexDran

Hard to find good module, on IntuitionBase you can find some info about working module for uA1c..

But this Cruical module is working 100% ok , no any crash or problem whit it !

_________________
--

Amiga x5000 ı o2o ı 4GB RAM ı RadeonRX580 | SBlaster Audigy Fx - AmigaOS4.1 FInal Edition

A1200 sandwich :)

Croatian Amiga portal

@VooDoo

thank you again
I will go for them !!

_________________
uA1 750Gx AmigaOS 4.1 u6
512 MB
SIL0680
HD 120GB + HD 20GB
DVDRom + DVDWriter
WNCE2001 wifi adapter
-----------------------------
AlexDran.net

@BCP

I have in serious situations left the battery out overnight. And also, I found that if a fading battery is causing "black outs" I can follow a small procedure which can bring it back to life. That is, power tower off, turn off at wall, wait 30 seconds and then wall power back on. Now tower power on and if all is well it comes back. Otherwise a new one should be made handy.

Last edited by Hypex on 08-Jan-2013 at 12:45 PM.

@AlexDran

Quote:

I have to admit my system has never been stable; experienced random crashes and freezes

I got this on my XE after my G4 was replaced with a G3 750 FX. System seemed fine otherwise, I ended up replacing the PSU and also memory as it happened. System has been fine ever since. Apart from other lockups due to programs or Linux.

So a replacement PSU may be in order, And setting the VCore to the correct voltage. I had tried to lower it before PSU change but it didn't really help.

As well as a memory check. Memtester on OS4 depot is good for this. If it runs for 10-15 minutes (from a boot shell) and you get an error in that time then you have a memory problem! Linux is also good for detecting bad memory. Simply boot a kernel and if it panics you know you've got trouble!

Last edited by Hypex on 08-Jan-2013 at 12:46 PM.

@Hypex

it would be the case probably to replace also case (and psu) with a smaller one
does someone can recommend me a mini-itx case not so expensive

I would like to lodge two 3.5 hd and two dvd reader btw

alex :)

_________________
uA1 750Gx AmigaOS 4.1 u6
512 MB
SIL0680
HD 120GB + HD 20GB
DVDRom + DVDWriter
WNCE2001 wifi adapter
-----------------------------
AlexDran.net

@AlexDran

You got Paypal ??? This one is tested in µA1, cheap and works without problems !!!

-> http://www.ebay.de/itm/120813245659?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.de%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_sacat%3D0%26_from%3DR40%26_nkw%3D120813245659%26_rdc%3D1

@all

I took the battery out and disconnected the uA1 power in the evening and in the morning put everything back - and now the machine boots to UBoot again - hurray! Thanks for the tip guys!

But it seems now that my HD boot partition has for some reason "gone south" (says something about invalid drive). It is a SFS partition so are there any good recovery tools for that filesystem? Can this problem result in from some bad UBoot setting (like HD block size)?

Booting from CDROM seems to progress to certain point but it cannot progress as the HD boot partition (DH0:) on the disk is unreadable. I am unable to skip it (there's only retry/abort options in the requester ) so the boot sequence gets stuck there.

_________________
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." (Groucho Marx)

@GrumpyOldMan

Quote:

Booting from CDROM seems to progress to certain point but it cannot progress as the HD boot partition (DH0:) on the disk is unreadable. I am unable to skip it (there's only retry/abort options in the requester ) so the boot sequence gets stuck there.

You may have to access the early start menu and select to boot from CD0:

@GrumpyOldMan

Good news on the UBoot front. Did you try to restore settings again? I'd also recommend a factory reset.

With your HD first check the cable again. And if it's on a PCI controller card make sure it's plugged in fully. A "slip out" can cause trouble as I have experienced.

The only UBoot setting I'm aware of that would cause trouble is setting DMA on hardware that can't handle it.

For SFS tools you can try PartitionWizard or SFS on Aminet:
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/SFS

But they really only offer salvage. I see no repair options.

@all

Finally, some progress! Yesterday my uA1 finally booted into Workbench. I checked the the HD partitions with Partition Wizard which claims they are all right. Everything seems fine except...

...the system is so unstable it is unusable now. Every program I try to run crashes the system in seconds. Symptoms are always the same - start the program, the HD light stays on, mouse moves but the window gadgets or desktop icons are not responding when clicked. Warm booting OS4 fixes the system. Rinse and repeat.

Sometimes an error requester pops up saying my boot partition is unreadable (though PW claims it is in order and I can move files in and out with Direrctory Opus (which also crashed when I then tried to move bigger amount of files at once)).

What could cause this? Is it a DMA problem with the hard drive or is the hard drive itself dying? I did not touch to those DMA settings yet.

_________________
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." (Groucho Marx)