ACA500Plus Issue

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.
  • Hello, I have an NTSC A500 Rev5 and have had an ACA500Plus for a few months now, everything has been working great until tonight. Tonight I decided play around with VistaPro until it crashed the system, after I rebooted everything appeared to work fine however SysInfo will not open, I double click on the icon and it does nothing, strange. So then I decided to try and do a fresh install of Workbench on a clean CF, the system goes through the normal install routine but then when it's time to reboot it will not boot from the fresh CF, it will just hang on a black screen. I tried 4 other CF cards and all will complete the install but then not boot into Workbench. The strange thing is the original CF I was using before still boots into Workbench just fine. What could be causing this?


    Robert.

  • What could be causing this?

    Sounds like the CF cards do not store what's being written to them. Unfortunately, there's a lot of fraud going on with flash media - I've been a victim myself quite a few times. I suggest to test *any* flash media (USB sticks, CF cards, [micro]SD-cards) for the correct size before you use it, no matter how legit it looks or feels:


    https://fightflashfraud.wordpr…ting-fake-capacity-flash/


    h2testw is Windows-only. If you're a Linux user, this is your go-to page:


    https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

  • I do have some cheap ones I've tried however I also have some legit SanDisk cards that were purchased in the store. They all appear to install Workbench just fine but then fail to boot. I've used the auto installer function numerous times in the past and it has always worked fine until tonight. Also strange that SysInfo will no longer run but every other program will.

  • I'm going to try cleaning the contacts when I get home later. I did unplug the unit and then plug it back in and got an e0 error with a exc27 error on screen. I unplugged it again and reseated it and it was again working but still not booting Workbench from the new installs. I have an original power supply which I've inspected and found caps in good order.

  • Visual inspection is good for a first impression, but if you have radial types, the goo might leak without being visible. With increased ESR and lower capacity, the regulation part might start to oscillate, which also makes the 3.3V side of the regulator on the ACA500plus oscillate. Chances are high that one of the CPLDs suffers a latch-up in such a case.

  • Well after some extensive tinkering I've found that the trap door ram card was causing it. I suppose since I have an OCS Agnus I can leave that out for now until I upgrade that chip. Thank you for making an awesome product and your prompt replies to this post.


    Robert.

  • Thanks for the feedback - don't dump that trapdoor expansion just yet, as it still may be a power issue. Rams are most sensitive to ripple, as they are essentially analogue parts with their single-transistor-single-capacitor design per bit cell. However, they're also the first parts that show signs of ageing, so you can't say for sure what the cause is unless you have a known-good PSU (which is hard to find, as there are no known-good PSUs on the market).

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