ACA500+ not working

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.

    Hey,

    I just purchased an ACA500plus for my Amiga 500 rev6a 512/512(with a clock on it), PAL machine. I was excited to test it, but unlucky it seems there's a pb and I don't know which one.

    The powersuplly is powerful enough as I had also, an Oktagon HardDrive + Action Replay III plugged at the same time.

    But when I plug ACA500+, I have a blue screen (indigo blue ?), the digits on the 'mini screen' on ACA card is moving, it's like turning. After a few seconds, the digits turn into number (5,6 and 20). The number '20' stays for about 15 seconds and then it turn to all digits activated ('88'). At the same time, screen turn to indigo to light teal.

    Any hint ?

    Thanks.


    Here is the pictures of the sequence. I forgot to tell, when the screen changes color from indigo to teal, there's a short beep sound.



    ,







    Hello again,

    Just found the pb. My fault in fact.

    The pb was : When I plug too far (until I can't push anymore) the card on Amiga port, the ACA refuses to boot.

    I have no idea why, because I always plugged on max position other hardware (Action Replay or Oktagon) and never got pb.

    Anyway, I just pulled a little bit the ACA from Amiga port and now it works just fine.

    Case closed.

    I've had this problem on both my ACA 500 and ACA 500 plus. Turned out that when I cleaned the A500 edge connector with cotton buds and isoprop I could push my ACA 500/Plus all the way in again. So just clean your A500 edge connector. And maybe isoprop and and old toothbrush to clean your ACA 500 Plus connector aswell.

    Quote from turrican9

    I've had this problem on both my ACA 500 and ACA 500 plus. Turned out that when I cleaned the A500 edge connector with cotton buds and isoprop I could push my ACA 500/Plus all the way in again. So just clean your A500 edge connector. And maybe isoprop and and old toothbrush to clean your ACA 500 Plus connector aswell.

    Thank you for your advice :)

    Contact problems are the #1 cause for things not working on 30-year old computers. Sometimes the observations are decieving:


    A seemingly-clean gold contact may fail, because there's a tiny film of nicotine on it.


    If you push the unit all the way in and it doesn't work, you then make it work by pulling it out, you probably can't replicate the "not working" status by pushing it all the way back in.


    By pushing in the ACA500plus, you also flex the A500 board a bit, causing chips in their sockets to be moved a fraction of a mm (especially Agnus, the big square one). This may cause a chain reaction of errors that look like they're caused by the ACA500plus when in reality, the cause is all over the place. Finding and fixing this is part of the joy of retro computing :-)


    Jens

    Quote from Jens

    A seemingly-clean gold contact may fail, because there's a tiny film of nicotine on it.


    Jens

    Very true. My connectors looked clean, but the proof is in the pudding. After cleaning them all was well. Also, after using my ACA 500/ACA500 Plus on many of my A500s They probably brought with them contaminations from various Amiga 500s with dirty contacts.