new version ACA500plus E5 error code when external Gotek plugged in

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • Hi Jens,


    My A500 Rev 6a with ACE2 and ACA500plus/ACA1233n gives me an E5 error with weird green horizontal lines on boot whenever I plug in my external Gotek drive to the Disk drive port. When I remove it, everything works perfectly well.


    Ideas ?

  • There's no direct connection between a drive on the floppy connector and the CPU/RAM subsystem. The only connection I see is power supply; what kind of PSU are you using?

  • I am using an RT-50B, but I did try with an original A500 PSU, and I get the same problem. If I remove the ACA500plus completely, I get a full green screen on boot. If I remove the external gotek it all works fine.


    Could the ACE2 be the source of any issues, since a green boot is an Agnus or RAM related issue usually ? I did run a full mem test on the 2MB chip ram using SysTest and everything checks out okay.


    I'm a bit at a loss here.

  • I am using an RT-50B

    That's no good for the Amiga. I am aware that there are commercial sellers that believe this is OK, but we've had multiple support cases where this PSU chassis has been found to be the root source of the problem.

    If I remove the ACA500plus completely, I get a full green screen on boot. If I remove the external gotek it all works fine.

    Looks like the power consumption of that thing is already a problem for the MeanWell chassis.


    Could the ACE2 be the source of any issues, since a green boot is an Agnus or RAM related issue usually ?

    I doubt that - since your computer works normally without Gotek but with ACA500plus, you know that ACE2 is not the problem. Trust me, the MeanWell PSU is your problem - please retire that.

  • In that case, please make more tests after re-capping the original PSU. We did have negative reports with Gotek drives ever since the ACA500 came out in 2013, and I never had the chance to investigate that. If you have some electronics knowledge, it may be worth a try to insert an inductor into the supply line of the Gotek drive, so pulsing power consumption does not fire back into the host system. That's just a shot in the dark, but the best "educated guess" I can provide.


    Please also understand that official product support ends here - you have successfully shown that our products work fine with the A500. Only if an extra component by a third vendor is added, you have trouble. I'd like to hear what the vendor of the Gotek drive has to say, especially about power consumption and power filtering.

  • Update to this situation, in case anyone get a same weird issue pertaining to a boot green screen and/or computer hanging when an external floppy is connected:


    I swapped the CIA chips odd <--> even, and voila everything works as it should. I assume this means that my Even CIA has an issue, which I will swap out with a "new" one.


    My question is, what could have possibly failed in that...

  • My question is, what could have possibly failed in that...

    If it works after a swap, you don't know which one is defective. As to "what failed" - there's many possibilities. CIAs can issue an IRQ (2 or 6, depending on the position), they can block the address- or data bus, or they can simply cause high power consumption by enabling too many drives (motors/steppers) at the same time.


    If you find that the Even CIA was defective, I'd recommend to build a buffer that goes between the Amiga and the Gotek drive.


    Thanks for your report - this may solve it for others, should it really turn out to be a defective CIA chip (and not a coincidence).

  • Jens,


    thanks for your report. The interesting issue is that this particular computer is my childhood one. At the time (read late 80s early 90s), I had purchased an external floppy disk drive that worked great with my system with a 512k memory expansion and a 50MB external hard drive in the sideslot.


    I remembered now back then that at some point during the mid 90s, the external floppy drive stopped working, basically as soon as you'd plug it in, the motor was constantly on. At the time, being a kid, I just didn't know how to work with electronics so I left it at that.


    Fast forward 20 years where that computer just sat at home while I was abroad, I decided to get back into the A500 and purchased the ACA500plus to make it more accessible today. It's now that I tried again to plug the external floppy again, and of course the same issue happened, so I decided to throw the drive away and replace it with a Gotek. Lo and behold, the Gotek gave me the same issue, but at first I didn't put 2 and 2 together (when I started this thread).


    Now that I know that the issue was "fixed" after swapping CIAs, I guess that floppy drive was good all along, and I dumped it for nothing.


    Just thought I'd give you the full history behind this.

  • Just in case you don't remember after the next 20 years: It may be worth putting a sticker on that CIA chip, so you don't jump to conclusions when you try something on the parallel port next time :-)

  • The last reply was more than 365 days ago, this thread is most likely obsolete. It is recommended to create a new thread instead.