STE Freeze

[TGB1718]

I just managed to get my old floppy drive working in my STE it has been in pieces for quite some time, but I finally put it

back together and now have a strange problem.

 

Randomly, but not too long after booting it will freeze, no bombs, just move the mouse and it stops responding and I have to

reboot.

 

I have booted from hard disk and floppy and get the same result, floppy only was a plain formatted disk, no programs/accessories.

The odd thing is, when it was literally a bare board on the bench with the floppy and keyboard just hanging off I didn't see this issue.

 

I did manage to get UIP to connect to the network via USBEE, once connected, from my PC I could browse/transfer files with no lockup,

I'm sort of suspecting it's something to do with the keyboard.

 

Anyone seen something like this ?

[ojanhk]

I’ve had something similar recently on a Mega STE and I also suspect the keyboard or the 6850. One thing, though, I realized the machine is not actually frozen: if I wait long enough (a few minutes at most), it unlocks. Did you try to wait a bit instead of rebooting ?

[TGB1718]

11 hours ago, ojanhk said:

I’ve had something similar recently on a Mega STE and I also suspect the keyboard or the 6850. One thing, though, I realized the machine is not actually frozen: if I wait long enough (a few minutes at most), it unlocks. Did you try to wait a bit instead of rebooting ?

Thanks, will try that today

[TGB1718]

Found the problem, I re-seated all chips that were in sockets, no change, so decided to take out all the upgrades/fixes I had

applied, new low power CPU, floppy controller, TOS 2.06 ROM's. started with the CPU and it all started working, no

freezes, ran loads pf programs, re-booted from HD and floppy, no issues.

 

Put new CPU back in and straight away it froze, tried all the same booting, but it froze very quickly no matter what

I did, old CPU back in and it's fine again.

 

Low power CPU is brand new from Exxos, so waiting for a reply from him.

[ojanhk]

Very interesting indeed. I happen to have the same low power CPU from the same source in my Mega STE which freezes. I’ll try to swap with the original CPU over the weekend to check if it’s a similar situation. 

[TGB1718]

59 minutes ago, ojanhk said:

Very interesting indeed. I happen to have the same low power CPU from the same source in my Mega STE which freezes. I’ll try to swap with the original CPU over the weekend to check if it’s a similar situation.

Please let me know the result

 

Exxos just PM'd me, says I need to check these fixes first

I don't think all are required, but I have capped the PSU but the SIMM's need to be checked

 

https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585

Edited August 31, 2021 by TGB1718

[TGB1718]

Had an idea, before I did anything, I re-capped the PSU which was reading 4.79VDC, just inside the lower limit, however

after the re-cap it was still the same, so I adjusted the output to exactly 5.0VDC, then I made all the changes and fixes.

 

Today, I adjusted the 5V line down to 4.9VDC, replaced the 68000 with the low power one and it works, no hangs/freezes

had it on for several hours transferring files over NetUSBEE, creating floppy's to try getting USB storage working and it

worked without fault.

 

How strange is that ???

 

This time I'm going to give it a few days before I bolt it all back together