Hardware status check

[looren]

Hi !

Seen several videos on youtube recommending to replace batter/capacitors on the Amiga motherboards so I opened up my 1200 the other night to have a look.

Besides rust eating away on the shield, to me everything looks pretty OK but then again I know little about electrical stuff. I snapped a few photos. Am I correct, or do I need to start thinking of servicing the motherboard?
http://www.dumpt.com/img/viewer.php?file=h8pcqu5j37ti5awc1qwd.jpg
http://www.dumpt.com/img/viewer.php?file=cobsxekhuet8ng0dy9ya.jpg
http://www.dumpt.com/img/viewer.php?file=5dmd6pkn8c14smja3lkv.jpg
http://www.dumpt.com/img/viewer.php?file=ygmxvl9mwd6uzs5vctm1.jpg
http://www.dumpt.com/img/viewer.php?file=7oh7ummwsbotr9y6oemq.jpg
http://www.dumpt.com/img/viewer.php?file=jehrwnovng1wlvd3621b.jpg
http://www.dumpt.com/img/viewer.php?file=x8291scez3e6vp7lmog6.jpg

Also, am I correct in that there is no type of battery attached to the motherboard?

[slimf]

Its hard to tell from the photos, but the board looks filthy :-)

Ive done some recapping of Amiga boards and sometimes you cant see the leaking till you take the caps off. The liquid is literally sitting under them out of sight doing damage.

In your case, C21 looks real bad.. But the mobo looks dirty in lots of other areas. I would be taking all the caps off the board, cleaning the entire board and replacing with new caps.

I would say there is damage under the IDE port to, as there appears to be corrision on some of the legs..

IMHO this board needs a reallllly good clean and recapping.

[looren]

Thank you for your input slimf

Yeah, the board was quite full of dust when I opened it. What looks dirty is just thin layers of dust a bit out of focus and overexposed from the flash of the camera. I dusted the worst off, but didn't want to touch the board to much since I don't have any anti-static tools.

I'll have a look on Google to see if there are anyone in Europe that might be able to repair and clean it up a bit.

[looren]

It seems Amigakit offers services for repair. They also have service for floppy, and I noticed it was mighty dirty to so 71 eur for replacing capacitors and cleaning up the floppy seems okay.

They also have "A4000 / A1200 / A600 Audio Repair"
I have not heard of any common issues with audio for 1200, or am I mistaking?

[jltursan]

As a rule of thumb, your A1200 (or A600) must always need a recap sooner or later, mostly sooner. When it starts to show some kind of failure can be hard to repair; so its much better to prevent this.

If any of your caps has a subtle green coat in the solder pads, it's time to do the recapping.

[Rob]

It seems Amigakit offers services for repair. They also have service for floppy, and I noticed it was mighty dirty to so 71 eur for replacing capacitors and cleaning up the floppy seems okay.

They also have "A4000 / A1200 / A600 Audio Repair"
I have not heard of any common issues with audio for 1200, or am I mistaking?

I'd recommend you agree a timescale for the repair with Amigakit before sending them your hardware, just to make sure there is no unexpected delay.

If you need the job done quickly and Amigakit are busy with other work, you could try Cosmos, he offers the same service for replacing the caps and reckons he can turn the job around the same day he receives the board.

[QuikSanz]

@looren,

Any audio issue would be a cap problem so no worries.

[looren]

jltursan; That was my understanding to.

Rob; Excellent, thank you very much for the tip. Is this the guy you are mentioning? http://leblogdecosmos.blogspot.se/
TBH, I would prefer not to send it to Amigakit. Evey time I talk to them, it seems like they only read 20% what I write and almost always only answer the first question (never follow up questions).. Just, very frustrating.

QuikSanz; In other words, the audio-caps should be re-capped as well just be on on the safe side?

[QuikSanz]

Yes, they will change them all out anyway. nothing "old" will be left.