Hyperion Entertainment Message Boards

Hello!
This is my first post here and my english is not very well; i have bought a AMIGA Sam440ep with 512 MB RAM and M9 onboard Graphic.
Everything works fine (Internet, DOpus etc.) but when i am going to play games like Tetricrisis4, SwampDefense, River Defense or cube (Egoshooter), the AMIGA suddenly restarts!
I can play sometimes minutes or a whole game with swamp defense, i have tested running snoopy in the background, but it cannot show any hint because the whole Amiga crashes suddenly.
For the game Cube the screen in the cave shows up very fast and i can go around some steps, but that was it, the same here.
First time i thought it could have something to do with the audio ahi, so i tried any mode like mono as well as stereo but that was not the clue.
Is there something wrong with the onboard graphic chip? Or has anyone the same problems?
I have OS 4.1 Update 4 installed. tried also back from Update 2,3 and 4. All the same.
Please if anyone has a hint i would be glad.

I started to have a similar problem with my Sam440ep a few months ago. I would boot the system up and start to use various apps/games and then it would reboot at random times. I was also able to replicate the issue under Debian (I have my Sam setup to dual boot) so it looked like a hardware issue. The way I stopped it occuring was by removing my DVD drive and my random reboots stopped.

This means my system was trying to draw more power than the power supply could provide, I have a dodgy DVD drive or a dodgy power supply. I haven't had a chance to play with the system yet to find out but once I disconnected the DVD drive my system has been stable.

I have the same problem with my Sam 440ep (the original model). It runs quite happily but resets sometimes without crashing or spitting out any information.

I have tried a different power supply but it still resets sometimes. I have also reseated the RAM and tested the backup battery without result. As a result of the resets, I now have two old system partitions that are unbootable because of corruptions.

The only useful thing I have found is that if I leave the lid off the case, it runs more reliably. The case has a small fan trained on the CPU and graphics heat sinks and the insides do get warm.

@spk1966
I had the same problem (spontaneous reboots) after I added a sound card to my SAM Flex. The card didn't fit very well and tightening the rear bracket pulled on the PCI slot and motherboard. I finally removed the card and bent the rear bracket so that the card would not put any strain on the PCI slot & motherboard. The problem went away. I had a similar problem a long time ago that turned out to be related to the CDROM power connector. Reseating it fixed the problem.

tonyw wrote:The only useful thing I have found is that if I leave the lid off the case, it runs more reliably. The case has a small fan trained on the CPU and graphics heat sinks and the insides do get warm.

If your Sam440 case is small or poorly ventillated, then it could certainly overheat! I know that I had such problems with my own very small case (I've since switched to a slightly larger case, which has better ventillation).