ACA500 black screen

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • Hi !

    I have an ACA500 wich used to work fine, but as I got an ACA500plus later, it remained on the shelves for some years.
    I decided to plug it again, but to no avail: black screen, no boot.
    At first I though of bad contacts, so I cleaned both ACA and Zorro II contacts (but as it was ok with my ACA500plus, I assumed it wasn't Zorro II related)
    (ACA contacts on the pictures attached, seem OK though)

    I tried to look more closely to the card, to seek for something odd (bent pin, bad solder, rust or whatever).
    The only "odd" things I noticed are some strange soldering points, as shown with the red arrows on the pictures attached)
    But it seems to be the same on my ACA500plus, wich works, so I don't think it might do any difference...


  • Hi again, thanks for the informations !

    I put the de-brick jumper, now the Amiga boot up, but no access to the ACA500 menu...
    I don't know if there's a special procedure to access a minimal features menu ? or should it appear straight after the de-brick ?
    From the documentation, I somehow understood that the de-brick mode gives access to a possible re-flash, but I might be wrong...
    (from the menu, from the AUX CF, from a disk ?)

    Quote

    "All other functions of the card, such as CF cards, memory, CPU and expansion ports remain
    untouched. This gives enough resources to re-flash a garbled flash chip and bring the card back to
    life."

  • I put the de-brick jumper, now the Amiga boot up, but no access to the ACA500 menu...

    That's expected, but it's good news: The ACA500 itself is in working order, as the CPU on it is still alive.

    I don't know if there's a special procedure to access a minimal features menu ? or should it appear straight after the de-brick ?
    From the documentation, I somehow understood that the de-brick mode gives access to a possible re-flash, but I might be wrong...

    The manual says that you should make a recovery disk. That disk is the one you should boot from - it does the requried flashing.

  • Just browsing through the files of the ACA500 - it's been ten years...


    the latest menu only comes as the binary file, and I figure you didn't make a rescue disk. What you can do instead is to use the "flashload" tool from the older "ChipMap" archive with the new menu V1.11. These files together should make your rescue disk.


    If you have a chip programmer, you can directly flash the menu.aca file into the 29f040 chip (provided it's not dead). The chip is in a socket on every ACA500.

  • You're right, I didn"t make any rescue disks...

    Well, you mean running "flashload" (along with the "menu500.aca" file ver.111) on an Amiga will create a rescue floppy disk ?

    (I don't have a chip programmer, sorry)

  • Well, you mean running "flashload" (along with the "menu500.aca" file ver.111) on an Amiga will create a rescue floppy disk ?

    It doesn't create it, but if you make an Amiga-disk with both files in the root directory, you should be able to run the command, which in turn will load the menu.aca file and attempt to program it into the flash.

  • Hi Jens,

    I tried to flash the ACA500 with "flahsload" from CLI (with menu500.aca on the disk, of course).
    But flashload says "Couldn't load flash update file" ...


    I tried with "menu500.aca" latest version, and the one witin the Menu500_ChipMap.zip folder to see if it changed something... but still couldn't find the file !
    Maybe flashload is searching elsewhere ?
    Maybe it is designed to be an updater only, so searching "menu500.aca" on a CF card from AUX port ?? (I know you know better than me ;))

  • (I know you know better than me ;) )

    To be honest, I don't know better, as this is ten years ago, and that's about the time when I made the "initial flash" procedure. I'd have to dig deep in the eMail archives to find the tool that can write "any" binary file to the flash, but it may be easier to find the only ACA500 that I have left, make a rescue disk and provide that as an ADF file.


    Might take a few days, as I have to dig out the only card I have left and make that work. Maybe someone else reading this can help out faster?

  • Quote

    To be honest, I don't know better, as this is ten years ago, and that's about the time when I made the "initial flash" procedure.

    It makes sense ! ;)


    No hurry at all from my side, if you find the time one day that's fine ! :thumbup:
    In the meantime, I will look for someone able to create an ADF of the rescue disk, who knows...

    Thank you for your help ! Much appreciated !

  • Hi turrican9 !

    Thank you very much for your help ! I created a floppy disk with your ADF file, it loaded the ACA image, but ultimately there was a "Recovery image checksum error"... ;(
    Don't know if it comes from your disk or mine though, even if I used a brand new disk, to be "sure"


  • You're close - does the disk have a normal file system? If so, you could just replace the menu.aca file.


    By pure coincidence, we have a repair of an ACA500 on the desk right now. If that's done, I can also create a revocery disk and upload it to the Wiki.


    Jens

  • You're close - does the disk have a normal file system? If so, you could just replace the menu.aca file.

    I don't think so, it appears as a NDOS disk...


    By pure coincidence, we have a repair of an ACA500 on the desk right now. If that's done, I can also create a revocery disk and upload it to the Wiki

    That would be great indeed !!!

  • I will make two more images, using two different floppy disks. Convert them to ADF then upload the two new images again. I could also connect a Gotek to DF0 and write directly to the ADF.


    Edit: Here you go. Both disks had been formatted and verified Okay by xcopy in the past. I again made them from the ACA500 menu (create recovery disk). Then again used ADF blitzer to make an ADF for each of them.