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      /  Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
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Hypex 
Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 13-Jan-2018 15:40:05
#1 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

Over the years owners of the almost infamous A1 machines have reported of their machine dying. I thought my machine had gone the way of the dodo many times when my HDD packed it in, my battery died and when my RAM went bad. Starting as as unstability and usually ending up in the A1 black screen of death.

However, in all cases, I was able to discern the problem and rectify it. But, this is not the same for everyone. In a lot of cases peoples machine just packed it in for good. Now I wonder, why?

IIRC, I bought mine in 2004. So right now, it is 14 years old! The average PC would hardly last that long while still be fully working.

I keep wondering why mine is still in working order and yet others are broken. Is it over clocking? Is it replacing the CPU with a better G4 and over clocking? Bad PSU? Trying to solve instability by setting the clocks to a non standard timing?

It's been a number of years since I got my machine to be working stably. And I did by making sure I had it at standard settings. Mind you, I started off with a G4 that I broke in a cleaning accident, which was replaced with a G3.

But it keeps on going. Sure it's a bit slow and I avoid using it for browsing "real" websites. But it still works.

Last edited by Hypex on 13-Jan-2018 at 03:43 PM.

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portarinos 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 13-Jan-2018 16:00:27
#2 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 13-Mar-2008
Posts: 135
From: Volos, Hellas

@Hypex
Don't push your luck mate

If it works, enjoy it while it lasts. Seriously now, while i still like the idea that back then they helped the "Amiga saga" go on, i think that these motherboards were highly problematic and buggy so it was and still is a hit 'n miss thing. The more powered versions can still deliver a decent AOS4 experience though.

_________________
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NOS A1200 (Powered by V1200, CoffinOS r.58)
PowerMac beast, MorphOS 3.15 (registered)

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daveyw 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 13-Jan-2018 19:05:09
#3 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 6-Mar-2011
Posts: 276
From: New Zealand

@Hypex

Replacing the awful stock Thermaltake CPU cooler probably greatly extends life and stability; it certainly did for mine.

_________________
---------------
AmigaOne X5000 P5020 2Ghz, OS 4.1
AmigaOne XE G4 800mhz, OS 4.1
A1200T 40Mhz 68040, OS 3.9

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Amigo1 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 13-Jan-2018 19:35:14
#4 ]
Super Member
Joined: 24-Jun-2004
Posts: 1582
From: the Clouds

@Hypex

Mine has the same age as yours and it's still working.
What I did, was changed the cooler to a better one and increased the clock to 933MHz.

I changed the battery 3 times in 14 years. And I have a good PSU.

I really wondered how good the XE performs, since I was using mainly the x1000 s of lately and I could not remember the XE being so speedy..

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newlight 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 13-Jan-2018 20:50:09
#5 ]
Super Member
Joined: 10-Sep-2007
Posts: 1935
From: Somewhere in Spain

@Amigo1

I have one on another house on the northen Spain.It has serious problems:My Amiga One XE was passing serious "phases" when I received back from AmigaStore.eu on October last year's 2017.I replaced my broken G3 CPU with a G4 800 Mhz (same speed) from Torgeir Amiga user from Norway.Well I tested and tested the Amiga One.At first times it didn't powered up the monitor screen then I leaved the floor setlement it was putted and moved to a desk.Then the machine almost powered on every time and various ones it entered/booted into Workbench but it was very unstable usually:Then I removed one of the 512 MB DIMM memory cards and left one inserted.Then I powered the Amiga One and I was able to do multitasking without freezes for about 5 minutes.I loaded AmigaAMP,played some tunes,XMAME with my fantastic X-Arcade double I was able to play Spy Hunter fantastically fast and furious.But after that the machine returned to be unstable.

So now after reading your posts I think how can I increase the clock speed to 933 Mhz?

Is it easy with this to give stability to my Amiga One?

I have a great Zalman cooler on the CPU.

And I have great illusion on this machine still because is my first Amiga NG I ever had.

Help me with me Amiga ONe XE and I will be grateful.

_________________
AMIGA 500 1.5 MB ACA500/ACA1232 accelerators
AMIGA 500 German
CD32 unexpanded
Amiga 1200 Tower on AmigaKit since years
AMIGA 1300 030/50 Mhz/32 MB WB 3.9 with lots of games&demos
AMIGA ONE XE G3 PPC 800 Mhz/1 GB RAM/RADEON 9250 128 MB/SATA CONTROLLER

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Paul 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 13-Jan-2018 21:05:10
#6 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 7-Mar-2003
Posts: 627
From: Michigan

@Hypex

I think I got my XE in January or February of 2003. It's been in and out of three different cases in that time. It's had one additional power supply replacement. At various times it's had anywhere from 512 MB to 2 GB memory. I think I replaced the optical drive once or twice. It currently has 2 1TB SATA drives. The only thing that seems to be unstable about it is the USB2 card I have in a PCI slot. And that seems to be an issue with the OHCI AND EHCI drivers.

With all those changes and additions, it's still the original motherboard and G4 @800 module. Some say I'm just lucky. Maybe. But I think these boards (not counting the SE's) are under-rated.

That being said, it's getting to be a little slow by today's standards. I'll get an X5000 as soon as I can sell my hobby car.

Paul

_________________
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The Young Frankenthousand A1-XE G4
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tonyw 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 2:55:00
#7 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3240
From: Sydney (of course)

@Paul

Not all XE's had the same level of success. The Articia Northbridge was a little weak in the bus drivers department, so reliable memory was a bit hit 'n' miss sometimes. If you were prepared to try several different DIMMs (or if you were just plain lucky), you could get a combination that worked well. Most people could only get a single DIMM to work well, two DIMMs usually made the machine unreliable.

The original CPU cards didn't sit straight on the motherboard because of the wrong length spacers, which led to intermittent CPU connections sometimes. Add the VIA DMA bug and the lack of USB terminations in the VIA Southbridge and it's no wonder that some people gave up on the machine.

I had three over the years. I sold one, gave the others away when I upgraded to my X-1000. Only one of them failed - the one that I had upgraded to a 1 GHz CPU some ten years earlier. Only the "new" CPU failed, the rest of the board was still working fine.

As the first (non-Mac) PPC motherboard on the market, with the first PPC Northbridge, it ran really well. Perhaps not as well as had been hoped, but well enough to maintain the market and inspire the design of later machines with newer components.

The fact that there are 15-year-old machines still running, with internal clock speeds more than a hundred times those of the Classic Amiga mobos, says a lot for the design.

_________________
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tony

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

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Hypex 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 8:41:01
#8 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@portarinos

What luck am I pushing? Do you think I tempt fate by speaking about how my XE is still working?

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Hypex 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 8:42:05
#9 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@daveyw

Actually my G3 still has the standard fan on it.

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Hypex 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 8:52:06
#10 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@Amigo1

That's funny how you increased the clock speed. I decided to keep the G3 at 800Mhz. I already made the mistake of fracturing my G4 after I cleaned the CPU and fan up one time. Now I had planned to over clock it or even clock it you could say to 933. But I made a slight mistake when screwing it all back in as it was slightly off alignment but just enough to cause a fracture. After that I decided not to play with the replacement. I screw around with lots of things but I just got a bit OCD after that. And was afraid to even think of over clocking again.

As to performance, well the X1000 beats my XE hands down. I tested my Stargus port on my XE and it looked a tad slow but playable. On the X1000 I loaded it up, ramped up the resolution and it was still wickedly fast compared to the XE. But when it comes to booting my XE whips my X1000 ass! Gone in 60 seconds it is. My X1000 is 60 seconds behind my XE from cold start to Workbench.

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Hypex 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 9:03:51
#11 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@newlight

You want to make sure your machine is really stable before you start to over clock it. Or you can make it worse!

For a stable XE I recommend the following recipe.

1. Good stable PSU. You don't need the best. But a good standard one will be good. 500W or similar rating I think.

2. RAM. I have sticks that are server grade. They meet the ECC and registered standards the board is meant to have.

3. Standard clock settings. Not slower FSB. Not faster CPU. Your FSB should run at 133.

4. Good battery.

Your XE should be stable if it meets the criteria listed. I got mine stable this way. A lot of people dropped the FSB to 100 in order to increase stability as did I one time. But I found in the long run it made no difference. And that is a sign something else is wrong.

Once you machine is stable the way it was meant to run you can think about over clocking. But don't over do it. These machines are rare!

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Hypex 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 9:15:18
#12 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@Paul

My XE has been through a similar situation with PSU and memory. I did test a VIA USB2 card but I found the OS4 EHCI driver too buggy and had to pull out the card as it couldn't transfer. Linux had no trouble. I dropped in an NEC USB2 card and it played nice with that.

Once you have it all set up and stable yes it can be a bit under-rated. But they were a hard machine to use at first. Compared to the "real" thing.

A friend has an XE he hardly uses these days. I turned it on, no screen, then found the battery needed replacement. I loaded Linux on it, but it acted very strange with file errors and other things like ramdisks going missing. I found out one of the RAM modules has turned bad. IIRC it had 2GB max so pulled the 1GB sticks out and found one stick was bad. With the good 1GB it ran fine again.

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Kronos 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 11:31:03
#13 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2553
From: Unknown

@Hypex

Quote:


IIRC, I bought mine in 2004. So right now, it is 14 years old! The average PC would hardly last that long while still be fully working.


Well given the number of TeronONEs that already failed one could argue that yours isn't average either.

Bout PC:

2001 AthlonXP bought for Amithlon -> working
1999(?) Dell Laptop -> even the battery is still good
200? AresOne -> working


_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

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newlight 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 13:03:21
#14 ]
Super Member
Joined: 10-Sep-2007
Posts: 1935
From: Somewhere in Spain

@Hypex

I would take note and practice all you appointed here on my Amiga One.But remember it's out on my hands now is on León (Spain)

_________________
AMIGA 500 1.5 MB ACA500/ACA1232 accelerators
AMIGA 500 German
CD32 unexpanded
Amiga 1200 Tower on AmigaKit since years
AMIGA 1300 030/50 Mhz/32 MB WB 3.9 with lots of games&demos
AMIGA ONE XE G3 PPC 800 Mhz/1 GB RAM/RADEON 9250 128 MB/SATA CONTROLLER

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OldAmigan 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 14:32:50
#15 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 25-Dec-2003
Posts: 681
From: Dumfries, Scotland

@Hypex

I've had loads of HDD failures with mine. A couple were down to a dodgy IDE cable, though.

I've tried replacing batteries, running with only one RAM stick, removing everything except the video card. Oh, and I can't get it to boot using either an AGP card or aPCI card in the 66MHz IDE slot.

I eventually bought an IDE DOM module, as they don't have moving parts and should be harder to break - I thought. It ran stable for quite a while.

It's now locking up at random, particularly if I'm using a browser, any browser.

On a warm reset, it tells me there are errors reading particular sectors. These come up once it starts reading the kickstart modules.

At that point I have to switch off and leave it for a while.

I haven't got round to re-installing the sound card yet, so it isn't that.

I'm torn between getting an X5000, waiting for Tabor or buying a Vampire and getting my A1200 going again.

Last edited by OldAmigan on 14-Jan-2018 at 02:34 PM.

_________________
Fred Booth
========================================
A500, A600, A1200 c/w Mediator and 030
AmigaOne and OS4.1
Mac LCII, G4 Powermac running OSX + Amigakit and MorphOS 3.0
Dell Mini 10 Netbook running IcAros and AmigaForever+Amikit+AmigaSys
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portarinos 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 15:16:49
#16 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 13-Mar-2008
Posts: 135
From: Volos, Hellas

@Hypex
Just a manner of speaking, nothing more nothing less i suppose.

_________________
Vanilla A500
NOS A1200 (Powered by V1200, CoffinOS r.58)
PowerMac beast, MorphOS 3.15 (registered)

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number6 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 15:21:58
#17 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 25-Mar-2005
Posts: 11540
From: In the village

@thread

Advice Wanted: Overhauling an AmigaOne G4

#6

_________________
This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

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tonyw 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 22:11:51
#18 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3240
From: Sydney (of course)

@Hypex

Quote:
I already made the mistake of fracturing my G4 after I cleaned the CPU and fan up one time. Now I had planned to over clock it or even clock it you could say to 933. But I made a slight mistake when screwing it all back in as it was slightly off alignment but just enough to cause a fracture.


Heh. That's the CPU board you gave me - I had ACube perform the 1 GHz update on it, which lasted many years before it died.

_________________
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tony

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

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PR 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 14-Jan-2018 23:39:04
#19 ]
Super Member
Joined: 1-Sep-2004
Posts: 1961
From: Suomi-Finland

Works fine after in a long repair.

Great Thanks to Gentle-eye Boogie and the factory it was.

(not used in a while)

When new (2004) worked very stable, fast. SB Card and Sil and Rad 8500. Then switched to 9250 and 933Mhz from another XE that had a better cooler. Only 512 But still quite enough.

In Repair undusting and some layer crack or something don't know. Here it sit's. Waiting for the browser and other normal stuff for 14 years.


Fast. 4,1. Well that's about it today. Using Opera pc and the older Migas.

Some day there will be something to boot for.



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Morphix 
Re: Why do the AmigaOne XE machines die?
Posted on 15-Jan-2018 1:58:59
#20 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 10-Aug-2009
Posts: 449
From: Greece

At the end of the day, we love AmigaOne XE.

I used to have in my hands the first ever board that has the USB / IDE fixes applied on it. Sold in here by Steven Solie himself. I jumped late on the train it was 2008 or 2009. Have spent thousands of hours with this machine, under various configs -PCI cards, catweasel etc-.

It was unstable. I have tried various ways to improve stability and somehow I managed it.

I also tried Linux in it.

Hypex was always there to share advice in various XE topics :)))

The mobo simply died in my hands one day. I sold it as faulty. And decided not to look back on XE again.

But...

One and a half year later I bought another AmigaOne XE.

This XE was a stock machine. No PCI cards, nothing.

I just set up it and installed FE on it. Not a single crash since now.

Have only changed graphics card -I had a better one compared to the one installed-and PSU -it died after an electricity cut, it was old anyway-.

No crushes. Perfect stability. Simple lack? Do not know. since the machine is working ok I have not added anything extra. I am using it mainly to listen to music.

I think that all machines like Pegasos 2 / AmigaOne XE die through the years due to the northbridge. Both machines has very sensitive northbridge. I think that this was the reason of death for my first XE and I have lost two Peg2 mobos thanks to northbridge.

Yes the same old story, oe day the blakc screen of death, no matter the actions.

Of course all the other stories you have shared with CPUs etc are cases of failutre but as Hypex have said there are recover-able.

Also at the end of the day I think that many of the instability problems on the amigaOnex -micro and XE- were due to the previous versions of Amiga OS4. We got to face it that this OS got no memory protection. Thing sin FE -on a general stability opinion- are much better on the XE.

I got 15 year old PCs that still working properly. Wish that it was the same in NG systems that in many case there were victims of bad hardware manufacturing.

also I got the Sam 440EP which still works strong after almost a decade.

If your XE works, simply take care of it and leave it as is :)

If you got lot of PCI cards on it then you already know that it matters where to put what. If possible work with onboard USB off, use a single RAM stick and good PSU.

If all those machines die one day we must insist of asking for new and dedicated -PPC architecutre? No problem-, but cheap / affordable hardware, made by new components, able to but all the Amiga oriented Operating systems and Linux, so that we an keep our going hobby going without having to pay thousands of euros.

My and my little XE salute you!

@portarinos and newlight: Cheers :o)





Last edited by Morphix on 15-Jan-2018 at 02:02 AM.

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