ScuzzBlog: Diaries January 2021
Entry 23rd January 2021: Post 1: Acorn A5000 woes - Dealing with boot failure.
Acorn A5000 woes - Dealing with boot failure.
I've had a troubling couple of days. Sadly the Acorn A5000 decided
to give up the ghost. Switched her on and I get a purple and blue
rectangle boot test and then a grey rectangle and a vertical line
which disappears in a flash at the top of the screen. Tried several
times and still no luck.
The general consensus of opinion was either residual track damage
from the removed battery or a general CMOS failure resulting in
the system not kickstarting the clock.
Was all a little too much for me to handle and yesterday I started
a daily blog but just gave up and drowned my sadness in a bout of
Hitman. As you do. I was quite miserable.
I woke today, surprisingly still alive ... I pinched myself and it
hurt so I did check. Anyhoo what to do with the busted A5000. Only
one thing to do and that was strip the bitch. No offence.
So I boosted the heating in the workshop and got the computer nice
and warm. I removed the six screws from the base and slid back the
metal cover. I then used a hair dryer to gently warm the main board.
I particularly warmed the hard drive, floppy and area around the
removed battery.
There are some on well known social media sites that would have
been pulling all the capacitors and ripping out chips and hot gunning
their way through endless board solder in an effort to replace all
and everything they could. Me, I take the view that she was working
only recently and so its just one thing that is wrong. When trying
to establish a fault it's worth taking tiny steps and generally only
one at a time.
So what had changed since the last time I used the computer. Only
the weather. It got much much colder. So I got to thinking she
needed a warm. And I was right.... When I fired up, the flash had
vanished and was replaced by very small oval dots scrolling round.
I kinda sensed they were very small words. I was about to switch
on and off and I paused... Instead I reset and surprisingly the
dots grew to lines and became words scrolling round. The words
read .... ' Same time next Wednesday '. No they didn't. They said
no keyboard.
I then had one of those Sherlock Holmes moments when I recalled
recently struggling to find somewhere to stack a pile of books that
I was researching and I remember temporarily placing them on the
A5000 keyboard..... I wonder?
So I hastily swapped out the keyboard (there is never one of any
item in this house... thank goodness) and like magic she sprang
into action. BOOM BOOM !! She's alive. Bells rang, choirs sang out
and the birds swooped and flew through cascades of chiming birdy
noise thingy stuff ... You get the idea. Alive !!!
There really is nothing like a warm computer on a cold day to make
all things well in the world.
I was quite happy as you could imagine. I now need to repair my
busted and bent keyboard and get this baby back to bed. Three days
of misery is enough for any man or duck. Mostly man but hey, what
what ever gets your motor running.
Back to the scuzz cave and three days of blogs to catch up with.
And the moral of this story.. never put anything on a keyboard
other than your fingers. And keep warm...
Acorn A5000 made by Acorn Computer UK 1991 utilising RISC OS3
The CPU is an ARM 3 32bit RISC running at 25/33 MHz.
RAM can be expanded to 4MB with a 2MB card.
The ROM chips can be swapped out and carry the OS on the system.
This computer has a 3.5" FDD for up to 1.6MB capacities.
She also has a Conner hard drive which since removing the battery
is needed to be configured each time you boot.
She is also a bloody nice computer.. I would so miss her.
Sorry for the scan lines on video. Old Acorn monitor
Makes the video flash so beware.
Those dots and the words they became.
The Acorn in action.
Manic Lemmings.
Acorn A5000 woes - Dealing with boot failure.
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