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Amiga Trump Card woes

S

sgifanatic

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2014
Messages
136
Location
Texas
I recently bought an Amiga 500 with a trump card and included hard drive. When I plug the trump card enclosure into the expansion slot and turn the Amiga on, I get a white display and flashing power light. Sometimes the light turns solid (red) but nothing ever shows up on the display. When I disconnect the Trump Card and boot via floppy, the system boots fine. I removed the cover on the Trump Card to see if it had the autoboot jumper, but apparently the one I have is an older model with no such selector. There are IRQ jumpers which I have now tried in all positions with no change in observed behaviour.

The drive does spin up, does the customary Seagate gr-gr-gr-gr-gr sound and then reverts to the usual whine. The power light does come on, however the disk light (green) never illuminates on the Trump Card. This may be because the Amiga is not making any disk requests at all given that it does not appear to be booting with the Trump plugged in.

I am attaching some pictures to show the version of the board I have. I would greatly appreciate help in debugging. I have searched extensively and other than the jumper advice, there doesn't appear to be much in the way of specific remedies, online.

WP_20141012_02_33_53_Pro.jpg
WP_20141012_02_33_59_Pro.jpg
WP_20141012_02_34_40_Pro.jpg
 
Bear in mind that KS1.2 can't autoboot, and KS1.3 can't autoboot from FFS formatted partitions.

If you have KS2.0, you can hold down some combination of mouse buttons (left? both? can't recall exactly) while rebooting and it will show you if the card is at least recognized during the autoconfig process.
 
Sorry, missed the part about the power LED flashing and white screen. Have you tried without the drive attached? Are you using an external power brick on the trumpcard?
 
geoffm3 said:
If you have KS2.0, you can hold down some combination of mouse buttons (left? both? can't recall exactly) while rebooting and it will show you if the card is at least recognized during the autoconfig process.
Click to expand...

I think it's Ctrl+D. But, as you already know, that isn't necessary yet.
 
I suspect that the power supply is too small for both the a500, trumpcard, and drive. I would disconnect the seagate drive and see if everything works.
 
Thank you all very much for the kind advice!

I removed the power connector from the hard drive, and also the data cable, but left the trump card plugged in. Same flashing red light. If I turn it off and on repeatedly, sometimes the power light on the Amiga will flash red and then keep flashing, other times it will go a solid red. In all these permutations the monitor screen stays white with nothing showing.

To answer the other questions, yes I have 1.2 and it boots fine from floppy. Note that the trump card I have has no jumpers whatosever for auto/manual boot options.

I have also tried holding down the mouse buttons to no effect.
 
Last edited:
I've got a trump card and an A500 somewheres... If only I could find them, I could try and replicate your problem.:(

You haven't eliminated the power supply issue though. If you have a PC power supply (one that won't turn off if a motherboard isn't connected), you can connect that in parallel with the hard drive's power connector. That will power the drive, the card, and the Amiga (partially) and in any case will compensate for any power supply deficiency.

Holding down the mouse buttons won't do anything for you with 1.2. There's no boot menu at all until 2.0. Are you sure a Trumpcard will even work with 1.2? It should, but I don't know for certain.

Have you tried the Zorro I <> Zorro II card by itself without the Trumpcard installed?
 
Thank you, again. I just experimented further along the lines of your question.

The Zorro I <> Zorro II card works fine when plugged in. The system powers up and boots from floppy.

Since the HDD power connector is actually situated on the ZI <> ZII card, I then connected up the HDD and rebooted. The system continues to work fine. The HDD spins up, the system boots from floppy. The only thing absent is the Trumpcard.

I then reseated the only socketed chip on the Trumpcard, plugged it into the ZI <> ZII card and left the data cable to the HDD disconnected. The original symptoms return; flashing power, no boot, white screen.

There is nothing physically damaged on the Trumpcard. It actually seems to be in pretty good condition. No visible cap leaks, blown caps or anything like that.
 
I would assume that if there's only one socketed chip, it's probably an autoconfig ROM. Try removing it and see what happens.
 
KC9UDX said:
I would assume that if there's only one socketed chip, it's probably an autoconfig ROM. Try removing it and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I removed the socketed chip, and the Amiga boots up via floppy now! I reconnected the HDD cable also.

Now, of course, the HDD doesn't get recognized post boot. Would you happen to know if this is a workable setup without the autoconfig ROM, and what I would need to do to see/use the HDD?

Thanks a ton for your help... really appreciate it!
 
Let me apologise in advance for the lack of carriage returns, I'm posting with IBrowse and for some reason CRs get lost.I may be wrong, but I don't think it will do anything at all without that ROM. And, you haven't really determined where the problem is yet. Either the ROM is bad, or the ROM is working and causing something to happen to the hardware that isn't working.The only way to continue is to try a different ROM, and to try your ROM in a different Trumpcard, and see what happens.Unless, of course, you are very lucky and the problem is corrosion at the ROM pins or socket!
 
KC9UDX said:
Let me apologise in advance for the lack of carriage returns, I'm posting with IBrowse and for some reason CRs get lost.I may be wrong, but I don't think it will do anything at all without that ROM. And, you haven't really determined where the problem is yet. Either the ROM is bad, or the ROM is working and causing something to happen to the hardware that isn't working.The only way to continue is to try a different ROM, and to try your ROM in a different Trumpcard, and see what happens.Unless, of course, you are very lucky and the problem is corrosion at the ROM pins or socket!
Click to expand...

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to use the installation media for the drive and see if it will detect that the hardware is there. If he doesn't have KS1.3 or better the autoconfig ROM may be of little use.
 
IIRC on my A2000 I had a KS1.2 ROM on it initially and it would behave similarly to what is described here if the autoboot jumper was enabled. That was a Xetec Fastcard Plus.
 
geoffm3 said:
I wonder if it would be worthwhile to use the installation media for the drive and see if it will detect that the hardware is there. If he doesn't have KS1.3 or better the autoconfig ROM may be of little use.
Click to expand...

That's a good thought. I often forget about anything pre-2.0. :D
 
I found the Trumpcard utils disk ROM image online. There appears to be a single disk only. I was expecting a driver disk and a utils disk, but anyway, I'll post the link and see if anyone remembers whether or not this looks right.

The next step is for me to connect up a PC with AmigaExplorer and write the disk. My first time doing a floppy image transfer. Didn't have a null modem cable. It's been ordered and is now on its way. I'll get an opportunity to try this soon as it arrives.

Thank you kindly, @geoffm3 and @KC9UDX, for all your help so far!
 
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