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From: spworley@athena.mit.edu (Spaceman Spiff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Random A500 reboots
Keywords: A500 reboot fix
Message-ID: <1990Aug14.192824.12994@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 90 19:28:24 GMT
Sender: spworley@athena.mit.edu
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 30

I'm having a problem with my 1MB A500. My machine is a wonderful
piece of hardware, but has one intermittent bug. Occasionally, with
no warning, the machine does a warm reboot. This is NOT a guru, it
just reboots. This problem is obviously annoying, but sometimes becomes
especially bad. The machine can reboot every five seconds or so.. in
otherwords, it reboots WHILE its booting, then re-reboots, then 
re-re-reboots, making the machine unusable. The problem is very 
time dependant... The machine might be fine for two weeks, then 
start acting up with a reboot an hour or so. On the worst occasions
(twice so far) I get the 20 reboots in 2 minutes problem. Then again,
I've had 20 hour ray-traces without a peep. 

My attempts to solve this problem work somewhat..  opened the case and
reseated all the chips ('cept Angus which I just pushed on.) I also
measured the outs of the power supply, which were fine. Reseating the
chips solved the problem the first time- Last night it zammed out
again and reseating didn't help at all. After 2 hours, I gave it
up. This afternoon, I turned on the power and its working fine!!
[I'm using it now] I have a surge suppressor into the supply, so
glitches probably aren't 

Anyway, I'm looking for help. I could bring it in for servicing, but
its not a problem I can demonstarte easily. Soon I'll get my A3000,
but until then, any suggestions what do do with my 500 are appreciated.

                         Thanks!

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Steve Worley                                         spworley@athena.mit.edu
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