Subject: Re: new computers... Finally!

From: "ninajane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Apr 2 01:38:00 2003

Hey (i dont know ur name)

                                    I have an Amiga 500+ with an A520 adaptor.
When i tuned it to my T.V. it just stays dark blue, but says there's a signal.
The animated hand thing doesn't even appear! Help! And I don't have the poster
about the connections!!!

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From: "TeoZ" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Apr 2 01:43:33 2003

The ports are labeled.

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/a520.html

On the side there is audio in and video out
On the end there is RF out.

If your TV has RCA jacks for video input then connect a set of stereo rca
jacks to the audio on the back (red and white colors) of the a500 to the tv
and connect an rca from the video out (side of a520) to the yellow video
connector of the tv.

If your using the screw on RF type connector of your tv :

The stereo sound out of your a500 needs to be connected to a y splitter to
the one audio connector on the side of the a520 (yes its only mono now)
You then use the RF out at the end of the A520 to connect to your tv in the
RF screw on connector. You can do this by using a RF switch like the ones
the old atari 2600's used to use, or get an adapter that has the cable tv
type screw on connector on one side and an rca type plug (female) on the
other.

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From: "Witchy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 4 12:09:09 2003

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On
> Behalf Of ninajane
> Sent: 29 March 2003 21:36
> To: [email-masked]

If your screen stays blue you have a fault in one of the custom chips
(AGNUS, PAULA or DENISE) so it's repair time! Also, if it's a 500+ you'll
have version 2 ROMs which have an animated floppy disk, not the old 1.3
'badly drawn hand'.

cheers

--
adrian/witchy
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the online computer museum
www.snakebiteandblack.co.uk - monthly gothic shenanigans

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Apr 7 12:37:50 2003

> > When i tuned it to my T.V. it just stays dark blue, but says

Have you tried plugging into a monitor?  Do you _have_ a compatible
monitor (probably not if you are using it with a TV).

It's not clear to me if the problem is with your CPU or with your A520.

> > The animated hand thing doesn't even appear! Help! And I don't
> > have the poster about the connections!!!

The "hand" wasn't animated.  It was a simple still picture of a hand
holding a disk.  Later ROMs (2.x) used an animated diskette inserting
itself into a floppy drive.

> (AGNUS, PAULA or DENISE) so it's repair time!

I don't recall ever seeing blue.  *Green* was the one you saw most
often - typically caused by the Agnes chip working its way out of
its socket (later units had a small spring-steel keeper over the
top of the chip).  Green meant that something was wrong with accessing
CHIP RAM (*most* often a bad/loose Agnes, but not exclusively).  The
other common color was gray/white which just meant that the lowest level
stuff worked, but it wasn't loading/running OS code.  I have seen Red
and Yellow, but they aren't very common.  Black, of course, with no
color shifts at all, means that nothing is happening (bad PSU, bad CPU,
bad ROM...)

> Also, if it's a 500+ you'll

That sounds right (I never had a 500+)

Is is possible that the "blue" you are seeing isn't really a true "blue"
(as in it's a black screen with the colors/brightness turned way up; or
more of a deep blue, almost maroon, which could be the 2.0 background
color with no disk image/text on it?)  If it's a primary, saturated,
bright blue (bluer than the desktop of a Windoze machine), then it might
be a signal from the ROMs that something is wrong.  A darker, muddy blue
is probably something else.

If, for example, the Denise chip is bad, or the external network that
converts its 12-bit color bus to analog signals is bad, or the A520 is
bad, perhaps it's a white screen with only the Blue component showing.

Describe how the power LEDs flash - that tells a story, too.

-ethan

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From: "Witchy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Apr 7 23:41:02 2003

> Behalf Of Ethan Dicks
> Sent: 04 April 2003 20:31
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: new computers... Finally!
>

I got this from every web page I found mentioning boot screen colours, for
instance:

http://www.amicue.org/TechStuff/amigaboot.html

and

http://www.nyx.net/~rdavis/AmigaHints2.html#BootColor

> is probably something else.

I got the feeling the signal was auto-tuned with a modern TV so the picture
would be as good as it could get; there's nothing to stop the custom chips
dying after nearly 17 years existence - these are CBM related chips we're
talking about :)

cheers