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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: freqmax on April 01, 2009, 02:42:31 AM
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As Amiga computers been around a while now.. what parts or components break down first?, and most frequently (top5)?
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1) PCB Batteries.
2) Floppy drives.
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What component inside the floppy?
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freqmax wrote:
What component inside the floppy?
The moving ones.
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Much depends upon how you care for it. If you aren't religious about powering down before adding or removing peripherals, you will eventually destroy some custom chips. This is fairly serious if your machine uses newer surface moount chips.
Keyboards and mice have a finite life. I try to press gently on the keys (I'm not a fast typer), it seems to help.
Hard drives, I like to have multiple identical HDs (and partitions) and back them all up to each other.
Plastic parts seem to turn yellow if exposed to clensers (409, Windex, Fantastic, etc), sunlight, sticker glue, and smokers. Oh, and fog machines, grin.
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My heart...
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@bloodline,
Nice one! :-)
Personally, I've had no end of issues with PSUs. My first A500 went through a couple of them.
Same with an old A2000 I had...
Mike.
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the most problematic part of the floppy is the head. it may get dirty or go out of alignment. or simply wear off.
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The Molex connectors in my towers. 99% of the problems come from bad joints, there are many handfuls of them in both of my towers, slowly degrading and needing a twist every now and then - mostly making some of my HDs not to spin up or behave intermittent. SCSI cables also get loose sometimes.
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The first thing that stopped working on my A500+ is the Grand Slam hard drive controller (so not really part of the A500+). Next is the keyboard :(
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For me, Amiga is robust if we compare it to PC...
Here my breakdown list of my A2000 (I cross my fingers and touch some wood part :))
breakdown year after the purchase between parenthesis...
- clock battery (7)
- monitor (14)
- keyboard keys (15)
- mouse switch (15)
- floppy (21, but working after a strong dust removal :lol:)
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For A1200s, and especially A4000s, the audio capicitors.
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Power supply for me on an A2000 :)
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As mentioned, careless use of the ports blows the CIA chips... That was far and away the most common cause of trouble back when these puppies were new.
Nowadays, so many issues also depend on the model. A few common ones I see all the time:
A1200's often have Alice video corruption issues. (Heat? Pure white?)
A1200's blow power supplies.
A4000D's suffer bad caps, especially in Audio and on the 3640 board.
A4000D's can have delicate SIMM sockets.
A500's have floppy drive issues. (though, in fairness, this may just be due to how often they played autoboot games... :-P )
And, of course, as stated... LOOK OUT FOR NiCAD BATTERIES!
They show up all over Amigas, and are deadly.
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Inside the first year I had to replace the whole motherboard of my A1200 after the mouseport failed.
I have a vague memory of a technician visiting the house and getting into the gubbinz.
That's why my Amiga has two warranty stickers on the base :-)
Come to think if it, I wonder if the original motherboard was different to the one I have now (it's a 1D-4)?
AndyC
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TV Modulator (and composite output)
Mouse buttons (well worth getting a PS2 mouse adapter)
Finally, the real time clock (MBX1230 XA)
The motherboard also has a Wang sticker on it but I can't imagine why I sent it in to repair for.
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xeron wrote:
For A1200s, and especially A4000s, the audio capicitors.
My a4ks audio is buggered, and so is one of the CIAs cos all I can print is gibberish.
nightmare
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I'm asking partly due the Minimig project. Ie what models and parts should be re-implemented first. And what parts or designs are likely to fail first.
Seems the list can be broken down as this:
0) Battery leakage (Real time clock)
1) Mechanical parts (floppy, kbd, mouse, connectors etc..)
2) Capacitors (Power supplies, audio)
3) Heat dissipation (Alice, various chips)
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CIA chips
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On my A3000 desktop.. the power supply fails every 4 years!! its getting extremely hard to find a competent tech to repair it.. so I bought 2x spares from ebay :-)
And the A3000 keyboard, the on board cpu has failed on 2x keyboards now :-( I can not find anyone local who can repair them.. and postage and repair costs make it prohibitive to send away.
Az
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Azryl, The onboard cpu should be easily replecable!
Find a keyboard that works, document (and publish) how it works. Then program an AVR/PIC to do the same job. Much easier to replace.. ;)
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I have two A1200s with iffy serial ports.
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I've been using Amigas since 1986. Head alignment of the floppy drive(s) should top this list - specially if copy protected games are used a lot!
Obviously the battery has a finite life - but that is usually about 5 years.
Most other parts depend on how well the system is treated and maintained.
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On the a4000 there seems to be alot of problems with battery leakage. The fix replace it with a new NiMh or at the very least remove the old one.
The power supplies also seem to dye alot. Its easy to make one out of a standard ATX PS.
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The only two things absolutely guaranteed to fail are the batteries and the Amiga trademark owner.
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the bank. i.e. my wallet.
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caps..replace them NOW :idea: