Excellent. For reasons unknown to me the A1 boards eat batteries like we eat popcorn while watching the Amiga Inc. saga. Needless to say I have a few spare batteries around these days.
For reasons unknown to me the A1 boards eat batteries like we eat popcorn while watching the Amiga Inc. saga.
Two different things. The XE battery eating begins with a perfectly fresh battery, if Kurt Grach's theory on PCI leak holds water.
The Micro battery drain is nothing more than what sundown said. Once the CR2032 cross the threshold of 3 it drains more quickly (end of life). Think of it as a bezier curve or exponential loss if you will.
I don't understand this claim that PCI devices can drain the battery. There is no connection between the battery and the PCI bus, so nothing plugged into the PCI bus can drain ANY current from the battery.
I have just been measuring a spare XE board I have here. Although there is 3.02 V on the battery, there is no measurable voltage anywhere on the AGP, PCI or memory bus, and only 0.025 V on the Power Good pin to the PSU. The board was not connected to anything, it was on the desk with only the 3 V battery inserted.
If you short circuit (to ground) the Power Good signal on the AGP connector, the battery drain does not change from its 4 ?A. Nothing I can do increases that current from its negligible value.
So, either there are some motherboards out there with different wiring from this XE, or the claim is untrue.
Maybe I'll design a battery replacement that never goes below 3Volts, based on a bigger, higher voltage battery.
You still have the option of joining us in irc, where we often discuss this very topic.
#6
BTW: are there any specific circumstances that are required for the drain to occur? There are various bits and pieces of info flying about. One says that a soundcard should be present afair.
TIA, Jack
"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg
Short circuit some where, maybe water damage of some kind, look for white / greenish dust (verdigris) this caused by moisture, maybe wet weather as damaged your motherboard, this result in small amount of electrons form move negative current to plus current, and discharge your backup battery over time.
I have also noticed if you never turn off your AmigaOne your Amiga will not be able to recharge your backup battery?s, backup battery are drained / or will not be charged when you?re using your Amiga One.
(NutsAboutAmiga)
Basilisk II for AmigaOS4 AmigaInputAnywhere Excalibur and other tools and apps.
@tonyw I am no techo and the claim wasn't mine, have you got any ideas what may be causing it? My situation is different as you know as I have a dodgey solder on my battery holder and have had that problem since getting my board.
There are others however who do have battery problems, maybe they all have the dodgey solder job! -:) It would be nice to identify the problem as it is a real headache for some wowners.
I don't have any first-hand experience of a battery lasting only a short time. I have only had to replace mine once in its four year life.
There are many possible reasons for short battery life - Livefor it even suggested corrosion causing excessive drain. That is possible, so is corrosion in the battery holder reducing the output voltage through bad series contact. I have experienced that problem here, the battery was OK once I cleaned the contacts.
It has also been suggested that accidentally shorting the battery during installation can permanently damage it. If that is true (and I have no evidence for or against), then maybe those with short battery lives have done just that. It certainly would be easy to do if you tried to hold it with tweezers or pliers or something.
Then again there is the possibility that the real cause is something quite different - like, for instance, frequent access to the Static RAM that holds the U-Boot config variables. If something (A driver? Some 68k program?) is frequently reading the SRAM, then the supply current from the 3 V battery will increase (how much I don't know) and that could decrease the life of the battery. It's not very likely, though.
@LiveForIt
The battery is never charged by the AmigaOne, it is a primary cell.
Age of the battery seems often "irrelevant"... After a black screen, I changed my battery at a 3Cag meeting... Then everything was fine again... For JUST a few weeks !
So I changed it again... And it lasted a few more weeks... Before I had to do it again... But then it lasted a few months (and still do) !
They seem to be identical batteries to start with. I didn't upgrade my A1XE at all during that time (just some libs, apps,... Nothing major). I reckon these batteries are not always in PERFECT condition when bought... They might have spend too much time on the shelves !
Jerry
Defender of my A1XE-G4 / AOS4 Final Update ! Looking for a new toy ? Then try a GP2X...
@Thread Thanks to everyone for the support, and for not making me feel too foolish.
My "battery question" is this: I was rock solid before the July update, no issues at all. _Immediately_ after loading the new kickstart modules, I had a (apparently battery related) lockup. My machine continued to lockup until I reverted to my pre-update backup. At that point, the problem _completely_ disappeared, and I went back to solid performance.
This cycle was repeated twice for confirmation.
Now, a battery is obviously a hardware problem, but if I were on "the team", I would be interested in writing a bit of code to read all the CMOS into "shadow ram" and divert all further CMOS reads to there. Obviously there would be issues with CMOS writes, but I think it would be an interesting experiment anyway.
In any case, with the help of everyone here, I am up and running again, and I have a proper backup of my current UBOOT settings. We have also left a "trail of crumbs" for anyone later having the same problems.
Thanks to all, LyleHaze
Oh, on loading the PCI buss: even if the slot is empty, much of the "buiiltin" stuff is on the PCI buss anyway, it just doesn't have the connector.
Do you have any PCI cards installed? sounds like a funny question I know. there is a voltage leak somewhere in the A1 design Seems certain PCI cards drain the clock battery when the AMIGA IS TURNED OFF. I have seen certain Cmedia sounds cards kill the battery in no time.
I suggest you write to Kurt if interested, since he is the only one I am aware of who has posted this info.
Additionally, we have more threads than I can count on battery issues. Here are some of the relevant ones being discussed in this thread:
"My A1 is dead. Heeeeeeeeeellllllllllp!!!!" 2005, but contains some of the posts on the badly soldered battery holder on the XEs. Interesting to note the tremendous difference in battery life time reported by users. http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/v ... p?topic_id=14960&forum=33
Now, a battery is obviously a hardware problem, but if I were on "the team", I would be interested in writing a bit of code to read all the CMOS into "shadow ram" and divert all further CMOS reads to there. Obviously there would be issues with CMOS writes, but I think it would be an interesting experiment anyway.
I' ve got news for you: the battery and what you call the "CMOS" (which doesn't exist on the A1) have nothing to do one with the other. The UBoot environment variables sit in the NVRam of the Articia (try replacing the UBoot flash chip: the variables are still there). The battery OTOH, powers (because of a board bug) part of the VIA. If such power fails, the VIA beings to bitch out, the date being not kept is just one of the symptoms - the others, you experienced them in first person.
Well, my knowledge of electronics may be a bit outdated.
By "CMOS" I meant battery backed memory storage. Since all of my UBOOT variables were reset during the battery change, I assumed that they were stored in CMOS RAM. Had they been stored in FLASH, they would not have reset when the battery was changed.
In any case, there is still the open question of why the latest update requires a stonger battery than the previous one. With my apparently borderline battery, the problem appeared within moments of loading the new kickstart modules, and disappeared as soon as the previous ones were put back.
I think that is a clue that deserves further investigation.
Have a nice day, LyleHaze
Question: If the UBOOT vars are stored in NVRAM, why would they be lost on a battery change? By definition NVRAM does not require power to retain its contents. It sure looks a lot like SRAM to me.
The battery OTOH, powers (because of a board bug) part of the VIA. If such power fails, the VIA beings to bitch out, the date being not kept is just one of the symptoms - the others, you experienced them in first person.
Ah! At least, a reasonable-sounding explanation of why the battery causes so many problems.
In any case, there is still the open question of why the latest update requires a stonger battery than the previous one
I think it is purely a coincidense. The same thing would have happened if you turned your machine off for a day and tried to power it up again with the older software. I'm very certain this has absolutely nothing to do with software.
If it happened once, I could believe a coincedence. But after about an hour, I replaced the old pre-july software and the problem disappeared. Completely, and remained gone for many hours of heavy use. So the problem "appeared" during the very first boot after installing the upgrade, continued to cause a lockup within three minutes every time, then disappeared completely when the old software was reinstalled.
Now THAT would be quite a coincedence.
So I repeated the entire test, this time with a fresh download to make sure I didn't have a bad copy. Within two minutes of the second installation of the update, the problem appeared again, right on cue! I tested it about a dozen more times, with a lockup every time.
Then I restored the previous software, for the second time, and as soon as I rebooted with the original kickstart modules, the lockup problem disappeared again.
So, if you want to call that coincedence, there is nothing more I can do to convince you.
Speaking for myself, I'm sure it's not.
As a troubleshooter, I would find information like this to be VERY valuable, if I was interested in learning more about the problem.
Of course, if I wasn't interested in fixing the problem, then it would definetly be easier to blame it on coincedence.
Since I don't have access to the code, I'm done now. It's your call.
The battery OTOH, powers (because of a board bug) part of the VIA. If such power fails, the VIA beings to bitch out, the date being not kept is just one of the symptoms - the others, you experienced them in first person.
Ah! At least, a reasonable-sounding explanation of why the battery causes so many problems.
Chris
If one adapts rechargable batteries (3xAA=3.6V, they are pretty cheap, 2000+mAh each) with an adapter that plugs into 5 or 12V line of the PSU with proper diode (or whatever it should be, apologies for possible ignorance in electronics)? Or 3.6V will kill something? Anyone? Shouldn't be to complicated for DIY imho.
Jack
"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg
If your system is now stable with Final plus the July update, then it was a hardware (battery) problem. You can't expect software guys to worry about boarder line battery voltages, especially ssolie. I'm amazed that he gets up the nerve to take the side covers off his micro at shows.
I vote coincidence as well & I was a tech for 35 yrs. You didn't happen to measure the voltage of your old battery did you? A good idea is to keep track of that so you can monitor your new battery & have some idea when to expect/avoid trouble in the future.
Look, only one leg, count em, one! X1000/PA6T@1800MHz/2Gb/Radeon 4850
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Thanks for that, not that I delve much into Uboot, but it will help when the battery fails!!
