Expert: Gregory Donner - 2/25/2005

Question
A2000 with 2091 controler was working fine till I started adding another HD. Now I get a greenish yellow screen and it won't boot and I can't seem to find the info on screen colors which I 've seen before and even with the one original drive it does smae thing.

Thanks in advance,
Wendell

Answer
Hi Wendell,

Here's what I found on the startup colors; I hope these help! I found them on the NewTek troubleshooting pages:

http://www.newtek.com/support/tech/faqs/amiga/vtf/system/colors.htm

Amiga system will not boot. Screen flashes colors or keyboard lights flash.

You may notice that when you turn on or reset your Amiga a few different colors flash by. These actually mean something. Here you go:
Red    Bad ROM
Yellow    CPU Exception Before Bootstrap Code is Loaded
Green    Bad Chip RAM or Agnus (check seating of Agnus)
Black    No CPU
White    Expansion passed
Grey    CPU Passed

Constant white is failure of CPU.

Or as taken from the Amiga 4000 Service Manual:

Passed Test
Light Gray    Initial hardware configuration tests passed.
    Initial system software tests passed.
    Final initialization test passed.

Failed Test
Red    ROM Error - Reseat or replace
Green    CHIP RAM error (reset AGNUS and re-test)
Blue    Custom Chip(s) Error
Yellow    68000 detected error before software trapped it (GURU)

The system performs the following test sequence:

  1.

     1. Delays beginning the tests a fraction of a second to allow the hardware to stabilize.
  2.

     Jumps to ROM code in diagnostic card (if found)
  3.

     Disables and clears all DMA and interrupts.
  4.

     Turns on the screen.
  5.

     Checks the general hardware configuration.

     If the screen remains a light gray colors and the tests continue, the hardware is OK.

     If an error occurs, the system halts.
  6.

     Performs checksum test on ROMs.

     If the system fails the ROM test, the screen display turns red and the system halts.

Keyboard
One Blink    ROM Checksum failure
Two Blinks    RAM test failed
Three Blinks    Watchdog timer failed
Four Blinks    A short exists between two row lines or one of the seven special keys (not implemented)


Greg