Hyperion Entertainment Message Boards

Lately, my MicroA1 seems to have contracted some serious issues. I'm not able to boot into OS4 anymore. I'm seeing these issues:

1) When I switch on the machine the HD drive motor often doesn't start
2) Even when it starts, there is still no VGA signal

I've tried to remove all peripherals including HD and DVD ROM but still I get no VGA signal.

In some rare cases after trying lots of times, however, there sometimes is a VGA signal and the system starts booting into OS4 but the VGA signal usually goes away again while OS4 is loading its Kickstart modules so I don't even get into OS4. The VGA signal also often goes away while in U-Boot.

Any ideas what's wrong there? Anything else I should try? Are there any companies left which can repair those old MicroA1s?

Sounds like a hardware failure on the graphics card.
Do you maybe have a replacement to test?

Raziel wrote: ↑Thu May 28, 2020 7:19 pm Sounds like a hardware failure on the graphics card.
Do you maybe have a replacement to test?

Erm, you do know it's a MicroA1... there's no graphics card but it's onboard

You know what?
I was thinking about that while writing my answer, i just couldn't get my head around if the Micros had onboard gfx chips or not.
Obviously they have and my memory is failing me...sorry.

Are you able to hook up a serial to see where it stops?

Raziel wrote: ↑Fri May 29, 2020 1:51 pm Are you able to hook up a serial to see where it stops?

Erm, there is no serial port either...

There is a header for the serial port which you need to connect onto. Any standard 9 pin socket on a ribbon will fit iirc.

Simon

@softwarefailure

@Rigo is right

See also here.
Not much of help, sorry, but at least you should be able to get a cable and read out serial from a pc...

Just a thought: Since it seems power is failing intermittently, could it be as simple as the plug from the PSU to the motherboard (I assume the µA1 does have that ) needing to be reinserted properly?

Tony just posted about that being a frequent problem on his Sam, but I guess it could happen on most machines.

Best regards,

Niels

@ SoftwareFailure

If anything else fails and you're in a mood of tinkering with hardware, I could send you my MicroA1-board which stopped being useful many, many moons ago and since some time after I became the proud owner of an X5000, which unfortunately is in storage.

P/M me if you are interested. I think the processor of my board has called it a day, but I'm far from sure...

Regards,
OldFart

@OldFart: Thanks for the offer! I'll try to get some serial output first but I might come back to you if all attempts fail.