Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: trip6 on July 22, 2007, 06:02:11 PM
-
Was just curious if anybody knew which chips run the hottest on an a500? Thinking about heatsinking...
-
Heatsinks are not required, else they would have been included in the original machines.
-
Hmmm... well, I know quite a few people heatsink some chips in older Commodores (64, 128, etc) as some chips on those werent originally heatsinked. Commodore 8 bits and Amigas were probably not designed with the idea that people would be using them for decades, since Commodore wanted customers to buy the newer machines every few years. Heatsinks may not be required for that kind of use, but as these machines age, its probably a good idea to do whatever you reasonably can to try and keep them working. While the Amiga chips may not get hot enough to need heatsinks, its not going to hurt anything to add them, just in case. I also wouldnt consider "if they were needed they would've been added originally" to be a reliable guideline... I've seen plenty of Amiga accelerators with 68030+ CPUs that get nuclear hot yet do not come with heat sinks.
Heatsinks are cheap and easy to get. Replacement Amiga chips aren't, since most of the time you have to buy entire systems to get them. And some day, the supply of working parts that people are willing to sell will run out.
-
Sooo the original question was not answered... which chips get hot?
-
actually back in the 80's many people even engineers considered a chip to be "inefficient" if it needed a heat sink. that was the case until the fast 486s and 040s came out and people realized that faster chips simply use more power and have to disapate heat more.
c128's had chips that really needed heat sinks. on your 500 the only ones that concievably would are agnes and denise. i have heard of agnes chips overheatind and causing display errors. mostly on 3000s though especially with cpu upgrades and no additional ventilation. most 500s dont need them unless you have a dying chip in which case replacement is preferable.
-
er, how about touching them to see? My guess is the graphics chip and maybe CPU, at least thats the case with A1200.
-
Some of you guys must be really bored. No chips on the A500 get hot. Does your Amiga overheat? No so why look for a problem. You could run a stock Amiga day and night and have no issues with heat.
-
so why is one of the common repair techniques to reseat chips. easy, the chips warm up and cool down while using and turning off the machine and over time they can creap out of the socket.
if you noticed though i told him that none of the a500 chips should need any cooling. i also mentioned that nonstock miggies are more likely to have a problem
-
Gotcha, thanks for the opinions... All opinions are welcome..