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From: pete@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Three Bombs on Boot (Help!)
Message-ID: <656674212.2152@minster.york.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Oct 90 09:30:13 GMT
References: <SM3%$%$@rpi.edu>
Reply-To: pete@minster.york.ac.uk (Pete Fenelon)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England
Lines: 24

In article <SM3%$%$@rpi.edu> onders@obee.ipl.rpi.edu (Timothy E. Onders) writes:
>My ST is being flakey.  When I turn it on, the screen is blank, the drive
>starts spinning, and after about a second, three bombs come up.  Sometimes
>it makes it all the way to the desktop before bombing, but very rarely.
>Anyone have any ideas before I shell out sever hundred $$$ for a professional
>to take a look at it?
>					-Tim Onders
>					onders@ipl.rpi.edu

My ST occasionally does this at embarrassing/irritating times! It's quite old
(almost 4 years) and it's travelled around the country a lot... I suspect a
chip has worked itself slightly loose. Giving the machine a vigorous shake or
dropping it a few inches always gets it working again... my machine only
usually fails in the first couple of days after I've moved it; it works fine
the rest of the time!

I suspect that it's one of the ROMS -- there was a day when if I put a TOS
disk the machine bombed;  if I put Minix (which makes minimal use of ROM
after the ST has loaded the boot sector) in it works perfectly!

Must get it fixed properly though - I suspect this is just a matter of
checking all the ROMs and RAMs are sitting there firmly.....

	Pete Fenelon (pete@minster.york.ac.uk)