@ ALL hardware engineers, tinkerer types.

I, have the lucky pleasure, of obtaining a A500+ with working GP battery for the clock. It didn't power on at first, so, I then purchased Diag Rom of Mr. Chuck Hertel and got busy replacing all the electrolytic caps and testing for voltages, etc.

Turns out, I also had a faulty 5v feed in from the original brick power supply (big chunky transformer version, not switch-mode)
Anyway, after replacing the faulty caps and power regulator, The 500+ boots into Diag ROM and I also find a blown CIA, so I replaced that and yup, she works. I can now get the original OS2.0 ROM to work and load games off the floppy etc.

So, I decided, why stop there! I have a Pi3a and PiStorm i'd eventually like to get going with all the Musashi / Linux USB benefits etc..

In any case, I decided to upgrade the ROM to 3.2 for the latest and greatest. (also tried 3.2.1)
The machine on the 3.2 ROM boots to the load screen, then, 5 seconds later, it just gurus to error.

I disconnect a 2nd drive, and it seems a bit more stable, but load anything, it crashes out again.
So, I pop in a version of 3.2.1 for 500 and, well, it's no better.

Ok. Maybe I missed something. I pull out all the chips and 1MB expansion and clean it all again, pop back in DIAG ROM and re-test. All OK
Pop back in the 1MB expansion and re-test again. All OK

Pop back in the 2.0 ROM and all works, I can play Hybris, load copy programs, copy disks etc.

Exchange the 2.0 ROM for 3.2.1 and again, it starts behaving badly. Downgrade to 3.2, same stuff.
I put back the 2.0 ROM and it works properly again.

I'm at a loss on what to think other than some sort of ROM library incompatibility.
All my ROMs are purchased. Hyperion stickers. I'm a little stuck on what to try next.

Have any of you ever heard of such things? got any suggestions on what to check next?
Will a guru med code help?

*Update

It seems I had 2 copies of the 3.2.1 ROM and, used only this, not the 3.2 version when trying different ROM chips.

Looks like the 3.2 Version works, albeit, seems very slow.
I can now run Prince of Persia so, it must be an incompatibility with ROM 3.2.1 changes somewhere.

Under 3.2.1
I sometimes can get the machine to start but it fails at this below error requestor pop up:
----------------------------------------------------
CON
Program failed (error #80000003).
Wait for disk activity to finish.
----------------------------------------------------

Rinse and repeat.
If anyone has seen this or is interested.

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It's not the question that's the problem, it's the problem that's the question.

@SHADES

Yes, there are no good reasons to install 3.2(.1) kickstart ROMs, especially if you wish to play old floppy based games etc.

After fumbling around with these new kickstarts, I went back to kickstart 3.1 on and instead use just LoadModule to load 3.2.1 kickstart modules. Using BootControl (aminet) to disable hard drive partitions and LoadModule REMOVE to unload modules, the system resets to diskless 3.1 “insert floppy” boot screen, more compatible with the old stuff.

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@kolla

Quote:

Yes, there are no good reasons to install 3.2(.1) kickstart ROMs, especially if you wish to play old floppy based games etc.

Thanks Kolla. I see!
Yes, sometimes, the disk animation stops working and I get a "guru" message, before a disk is even inserted!
I get maybe 3x clicks of the drive before it crashes

I am now on 3.2.0 ROMs and it seems to be more stable, although a lot of disk based games aren't working like they used to. That being said, I do have 2MB chip ram being a 500+ so, that too poses a compatibility problem, I would assume.

I wonder what it could be that broke floppy access?
Is that being worked on?

Last edited by SHADES on 14-Jan-2023 at 11:39 PM.

_________________
It's not the question that's the problem, it's the problem that's the question.