pls help resurrect this abused A1000 + DKB Insider 1 mb expansion - edit -** WORKING!! **

[zombie10k]

Hi all, I am a longtime amiga fan since 1986 and recollecting all my amiga's I had years ago. I recently bought this A1000 from ebay and it was very poorly packed. The box arrived in terrible condition and the amiga case was only held on with 1 screw. Both jumpers were broken off the DKB insider and some screws rattling around inside the power supply.

I am determined to save this system and hoping some of you can help. I found some info regarding the 3 jumpers needed to hook up the DKB to the A1000.

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=990

The expansion has three jumper leads, a black, a red and a third of unknown colour, which should be connected as follows:

1. The Red lead should be clipped or soldered to Pin 14 (4th pin down, counting from the right, on the rear side) of the WCS daughterboard at location P6

2. The Black lead should be clipped or soldered to the ferrite bead at FB43 at location E9 on the motherboard

3. The third lead should connects the ground of the motherboard to the card. Mount the round lug-end of the lead to the screw located at A1 (left of C141) on the motherboard. Connect the other end of the clip to A2 which is located underneath the WCS daughterboard.

No problem with 1 & 2, I resoldered the connectors back onto the DKB. I am a bit confused with #3 though (it was disconnected when I found it). If you look in the one photo, the ground loop was attached to the motherboard at A1, but I am nervous to connect the other end to A2 on the daughtercard, mainly because there is a '+' and worried I would be grounding out something I shouldn't be.

Does anyone know why the memory pins on the daughter card are soldered together? This was like this when I opened the system.

Any advice or comments would be most appreciated. I really want to save this system. (I had one just like it back in 1986, so many memories)

thank you all!

[Plaz]

mainly because there is a '+' and worried I would be grounding out something I shouldn't be

They're not specific in their instructions about the ground jumper at A2, but it would make much more sense to connect the black ground clip to the opposite side of A2, not the "+" side. Ground to Ground. The other clip instructions seem ok.

Does anyone know why the memory pins on the daughter card are soldered together? This was like this when I opened the system.

They made a mistake in the artwork of this board and corrected it by adding the jumper (stitch) wire. Looks like they forgot to supply power and ground to those chips. Much cheaper to add the extra wire than to throw out batches of cards and start over. Common practice even today.

I hope you can get it going again. Any other damage that you can see?

Plaz

[zombie10k]

Thank you for the reply. I was thinking the same thing in regard to the connection at A2, but looking at the back of the PCB, I was hoping to see those two traces run off in different directions.

The original owner claims it booted but the mouse didn't work. I have a few spare amiga mice to check, hopefully it's as simple as that.

Unless someone else with a DKB insider jumps in, I'll go ahead and put it together this weekend to see what happens.

thanks for the help, wish me luck in saving this great computer.

[Plaz]

In the second photo you can see the ground plane inside the layers of the circuit board. The neg side of the cap connects there.

It's common for the microswitchs inside old amiga mice to give out. It's normally an easy solder task to pull another switch out of an old pc mouse and replace it. But since you already have spare mice, hopefully that will do it. If no mouse works, then I'd look closely at the solder joints at the 9pin mouse connector. A rarer problem is a bad ttl chip that ties the mouse to the rest of the circuits. I'd have to dig out my old documents to help you there, but I'm betting on the spare mice. :-)

Plaz

[hardlink]

What great circuitboard photos, I think these are the best I've ever seen. Too bad everything on the big book of Amiga hardware is not this quality.

[zombie10k]

This is great news, everything works perfect after I put it back together. Getting the floppy connected with the DKB in place was a bit difficult, but no problem.

so glad not to see smoke when I flipped the switch.  :-D

This is a real blast seeing this 23 year old computer back in action loading WB 1.3 from floppy. Slow, but fun nonetheless. I have several other amigas, but the A1000 is the original and needed to be saved.

Is there any chance I can run WB 2.04 or 3.1? I am a little rusty and don't recall the aftermarket rom options for the A1000.

Also, would it be possible to use my GVP A530 with the A1000? I know the connector is reversed, I used to have an old Supra HD sidecar on my 1000 many years ago and it worked great.

Any hints, tips or thoughts are appreciated!

[Plaz]

Wow, that's the cleanest internals in an Amiga I've seen in years. :-)

Great to see it running. I sent you a PM about putting a 3.1 rom in there. I see you have a nice monitor too. There's an effort to build "cheap" scan doublers again to mate classic Amigas with better resolutions. Check this thread....
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=47197

Plaz

[Krusher]

This is one pristine looking Amiga, I love it  :-D Looks brand new!