HELP - No UBOOT (solved)

Help, tonight my A1 refused to initiate the monitor, a good indication that the battery is playing up. I removed the power cord and the battery, replaced the battery with a new one and then had trouble booting for a long time.

Finally the machine kicked in, I went to reset the UBoot setting to default and the machine froze, now when booting I only get a flashing cursor, no UBoot settings.

I can see the machine initiating my usb hub so something is happening.

Any ideas on how to get back into UBoot or am I stuffed. The only thing I can think of is to buy a pre-programed bios chip.

Any ideas gratelfully received.

ace

@acefnq

Have you tried taking the battery out then putting it back in again ?

@Jurassicc

Quote:

How about replacing it while you?re at it,

@acefnq

Check ATA cabling, floppy cabling, check that video card is it AGP/PCI socket, check RMA is in its socket, you can also try disconnect every thing you do not need, to try to exclude hw components from your problem.

@acefnq
Connect up the serial port to another computer and cut & paste what is happening to here and we may be able to be more specific. With serial output you can see if your memory is faulty or the gfx card is faulty or whatever. Without it you are totally blind if the gfx card is not being initialized.

Otherwise, you can just try removing the battery for say 15 mins, remove the power cable from the case and wait 15 minutes, then connect everything together again and see if that helps.

It may also be the gfx card has become loose or similar as well so press down on everything (use an ESD wrist strap to ground yourself first) and see if that helps.

I doubt your flash chip with uboot on it is faulty unless you've been messing with it.

@ssolie et all

Thanks for all your suggestions. I did replace the battery with a new one. It appears that my problem was yest again the battery holder. I have had it re-soldered back on to the MB twice already but the guys doing it say it is almost impossible to get a good connection, every now and then it seems to come loose and hence a bad connection. Removing the battery for 5 minutes reset UBoot, thank god, I thought I had killed the bios chip.

All up and running again, just installed my HP all in one printer/scanner under OS X using MOL and it works!

Thanks once again chaps. has anyone else had battery holder problems. My original one was only soldered in one spot and quickly fell off!

Cheers
ace

@acefnq

For you or anyone who need to go inside of computer case.

It is good practice to leave power cord connected and shut down power supply from button (back of psu). If you don't have button, then you need to disconnect power cord.

That way case stay connected to ground and you can be grounded via case before handling electronics.

This is easy and cheap way avoid electrostatic shocks.

I know that I repeat myself but with this ppl can keep their rare and bloody expensive amigas running longer time ...

@Mlehto
Thanks for the tip. I have just reorganised my desk and now can atleast turn the power off more easily.

ace

@acefnq

If you ever do break the U-Boot chip, I have here plenty of them, and the means to program new ones, so just yell.

@tonyw

Thanks Tony, just as well if there are updates to UBoot and it looks like Doug ain't in action anymore here in OZ. Everything is working fine again but I am still worried that one day my recurring problem is not going to be fixable. None the less I am having fun again.

cheers
ace

@acefnq

So are the MooBunny !!

@Mlehto
Quote:Of course, this only works as intended if you actually have a ground wire in your power cable and plug, <b>and</b> the power installation in your house does have ground connected all the way through. For instance here in Denmark, that is not very common, as we have had a requirement for HPFI(?) protection on all installations for many years.

Best regards,

Niels

@LiveForIt

Been down this road a few times myself. Taking battery out for a while then putting it back in is the only way to solve it (Flashing Cursor). I was told the reason once. Something to do with nvram contents being corrupt or failing a crc check.