Expert: Gregory Donner - 7/13/2007

Question
Hi - is there anybody able to suggest what the problem might be with my Commodore Amiga 4000 computer. It was switched on with WB 3.1 active when the monitor screen went grey. I removed the SCSI board with SCSI drive, the CD ROM drive and tried again. The power light comes on but no disc activity from either the floppy or the built in IDE HD. Disconnected the HD and still the same thing - power light comes on (voltage from power pack to motherboard seems OK) but no disc prompt screen - just a grey screen. If there is a possible motherboard fault what next? Reluctant to bin what has been a good computer and which I was still using for video titling in conjunction with a genlock.

Answer
Hi Robin,

What's really odd about what you described is that the screen remains grey--not one of the common hardware error color codes (red, green, blue, yellow) that indicate where the problem is coming from (see http://home.nikocity.de/rs/A4k-HW3.html toward the bottom of the page for more details). Seeing as you've removed most of the likely problem hardware other than the motherboard itself, the only thing I could recommend is to check for any chips that may not be seated properly. If this doesn't do it, it may be possible to buy a replacement mother board from eBay.com, or have your system looked at by one of the following places:

If you're based in the US, you could try Software Hut (www.softhut.com) as I believe they may be the only remaining hardware repair left in the US. If you're in the UK, you could try AmigaKit (www.amigakit.com) though I'm not  sure if they repair or just sell Amiga items.

I hope this helps in some way!

Greg