Hi All
I obtained an old nextstation mono that had not been powered on for two decades. After replacing a dead power supply (thanks to Rob Blessin) it starts up. Things go wrong during boot, however. The first time it seemed to get pretty far but got stuck looking for something on the network. However, now I'm unable to get it booting at all. In the rom monitor, when I type bsd or bsd -s, I get "Exception #2" or "Exception #3" with varying memory addresses. Also when I power down and answer the ROM monitor prompt "really power down?" with yes, it sometimes powers down and sometimes doesn't, showing a similar Exception #2 or #3 instead, so that I have to pull the plug to power down.
If I understand it right, these exceptions could be related to bad ram. However I am skeptical about this. The machine had four 1MB simms and four 4MB simms. I've tried all arrangements, using only the 1MB's or only the 4MB's, and different orderings, and I get the same error every time. Could the problem be somewhere else? Any help appreciated because I have no idea how to proceed.
Have you tested the hard drive in another system/ have another to test with?
Thanks. It turned out that removing the battery for a minute did the trick, although I don't understand how PRAM settings could have led to these exceptions. I actually had the system running for a while, but now a new problem has popped up: booting gets stuck at "waiting for drive to come ready". I'm afraid the hdd is toast :-(.
Quote from: tr49 on May 22, 2020, 04:50:20 AMI actually had the system running for a while, but now a new problem has popped up: booting gets stuck at "waiting for drive to come ready". I'm afraid the hdd is toast :-(.
Sadly, for hard drives that are almost 30 years old, the time has come to die. I advise you to buy a scsi2sd adapter and for years you won't have any boot problems :-)
Quote from: krazycat on May 23, 2020, 06:29:09 AMSadly, for hard drives that are almost 30 years old, the time has come to die. I advise you to buy a scsi2sd adapter and for years you won't have any boot problems :-)
Thanks. I'm trying to figure out which adapter to get. Would this V5.1 one work?
https://amigakit.amiga.store/product_info.php?products_id=1264There's also a more expensive V6 which is advertised as having better performance and "superior noise resistance to deal with poor termination and poor cabling" but I wonder whether this is an issue when used in a nextstation.
The v5.1 should be fine. I don't think you'll see any benefit from the V6.