3.10 C OS CRASHING ISSUE...

I have 3.10c on my MPC. It has worked well for the past five years (since I got it). Sadly it's been having weird seizures as of late...certain disks cause my MPC to reboot and in some instances neverending looping of rebooting. Additional problems are corrupting disks (disk is internally corrupted...three letter name not matching error). The weirdest thing I experienced was having the MPC load successfully and then playing on the pads for a good five minutes only to have it stutter out and reboot. I bought some floppy drives for cheap so I'm going to try swapping them out and see if that's the problem. My instincts tell me it might be worse, though. Anyone else experienced this?

Wow that's some strange shiet. I bet Rohan could give you some insight.

FORKS222 wrote:I have 3.10c on my MPC. It has worked well for the past five years (since I got it).

Most of these machines have been chugging away for many years.

FORKS222 wrote: Sadly it's been having weird seizures as of late...certain disks cause my MPC to reboot and in some instances neverending looping of rebooting. Additional problems are corrupting disks (disk is internally corrupted...three letter name not matching error).

The MPC60 OS will freeze with a system error if the software/ram gets corrupted in a non-favorable way.

Loading as you describe and then re-booting sounds like a current overdraw causing the power supply to trip/restart.

Maybe a short circuit in the floppy drive ?

Disconnect the floppy drive.

Start the machine.

Record some fresh samples into it.

Sequence them up.

Any joy ? ( apart from not being able to save or load )

FORKS222 wrote: The weirdest thing I experienced was having the MPC load successfully and then playing on the pads for a good five minutes only to have it stutter out and reboot.

Intermittent continuity on power harness lines ?

Or ......

Failing power supply.

FORKS222 wrote: I bought some floppy drives for cheap so I'm going to try swapping them out and see if that's the problem. My instincts tell me it might be worse, though. Anyone else experienced this?

A collection of problems all appearing at a similar time points at a failing power supply.

Pretty common on old units. ( of any type )

Power supply probably needs overhauling.

The other internal connectors could all do with a DEOXIT clean to enhance their continuity.

IE: Board to board interlinks and expansion RAM socket.

There "could" be other more serious problems.

My hunch though is the power supply. ( maybe with the help of the floppy drive )

There is a scanned PDF copy of the service manual available for download at the MPC60 yahoo group.

Good luck and let us hope its not some thing too serious. ( faulting CPU system RAM for instance )

Rohan.

FORKS222 wrote:I have 3.10c on my MPC.

Wow... I have 3.10d & 3.10e... really wish there was some diagram pointing out just what the additions were to warrent a letter change in the OS...

download the new os 3.16 form mpc3000.com and leave the floppy in your MPC ..it will boot with the new OS which fixes a bit of bugs...

MPZ60 wrote:download the new os 3.16 form mpc3000.com and leave the floppy in your MPC ..it will boot with the new OS which fixes a bit of bugs...

Huh? Did I miss something the OS 3.16 that Rohan made works in a MPC60?

MPZ60 wrote:download the new os 3.16 form mpc3000.com and leave the floppy in your MPC ..it will boot with the new OS which fixes a bit of bugs...

Nice thought; however ......

3.16 is for the MPC3000 only.

No 3.16 for the MPC60 ......

Rohan.

mpc3000le wrote:

MPZ60 wrote:download the new os 3.16 form mpc3000.com and leave the floppy in your MPC ..it will boot with the new OS which fixes a bit of bugs...

Nice thought; however ......

3.16 is for the MPC3000 only.

No 3.16 for the MPC60 ......

Rohan.

That's what i thought. I thought i was trippin'.

Well, finally, after working almost non stop I got a nice break...only to NOT be able to use my MPC 60. I disconnected the floppy and POOF, the MPC boots up fine. I plug it back in and BAM, everything's effed and nothing loads. I also called FORAT. They told me that the MPC 62's are prone to having power short outs because of faults in a floppy drive. But only the MPC 60 MK II's. Which means when I get my disk drives, life will be good again. Additionally, FORAT told me that finding power supplies is HARD (as has been mentioned on here)...they end up repairing the power supply...someone would make some $$ if they mfg'd some quality power supplies for the 60 and 3000...hint hint.

Hopefully this helps somebody.

Ugh...nevermind. My MPC is totally f*cked. OS won't even boot. I'm sad. Shipped to FORAT.

FORKS222 wrote:Ugh...nevermind. My MPC is totally f*cked. OS won't even boot. I'm sad. Shipped to FORAT.

I have no doubt that Bruce will ship it back in a working state.

Good luck.

Rohan

Just got an MPC60 mk1. It was sold with a blown floppy but everything else worked fine. I even tested the unit before purchase. The unit would fire up as normal, no lights from the floppie and everything else worked fine.

However, suddenly the floppy woke up from the dead and crashed everything. Tried to reboot but the light would come in from th the drive and a blank screen would appear. Rebooted again and a black screen came up. Took off the floppy, tried to reboot, no luck. Again a full black screen. Reconnected it on the unit, no luck.

Rohan, any insight to this? I hope a new floppy will do the job, however based on your suggestings it should have worked fine when I unplugged the drive from the unit.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

man its either the floppy drive and that cable or the power supply.

I have 2 MPC 60II's that both did the same thing and Bruce cleaned up the PSU on one and its works great and I replaced the floppy on the other and it works great too.

Cost me $220 for the PSU fix and about $40 for ship so about $270 all together. Expensive, but not as nerve racking and you won't have problems for a good number of years.

You can find the floppy drives for $11 on Ebay...some seller out of mesquite texas but I don't remember the user name. I'll search and post when I find him.

Well, based on the usual assumption that the drive is causing the problems, it should have booted normally when I took it off. But that's not the case. And now I'm thinking that maybe it's the 3.10 chipset. But the strange thing is that the godamn drive came back to life suddenly. Can anyone find any cheap drives on ebay? Damn, I ain't gonna throw away 150 bucks that easy for a floppy...

I just realized I never posted an update. I sent my MPC to FORAT and they fixed it...the problem? Power supply had to be repaired. It works fine now...150 bucks.