Acill's Amiga Repair Thread

[kirk_m]

I received my A3000 back from Acill today.  I had sent it in for a recap, battery area repair and adding a coin cell battery.   I also had him add a socket for the crystal oscillator for the CPU, and provide me with a 50MHz crystal oscillator.  My machine is a 16MHz version, and, just switching the jumpers doesn't overclock it, despite what everyone keeps bandying about here and elsewhere.  The machine won't even boot when the jumpers are changed to 25MHz settings with the 32 MHz crystal.  Well, after the 50MHz is put in, the machine boots right up, and software detects it as 25MHz!

Now I can use SuperBuster 11 properly (needs a 25MHz machine, regardless of whether you have a processor card added) with my BigRam and X-Surf-100.  There is a known malfunction of the X-S-100 when used on a 16MHz A3000 that also has a SuperBuster-11 in it, according to Jens.

Thanks, Paul, for excellent work again.

[kirk_m]

That's really a shame how some people take advantage of someone providing a good service.

[kirk_m]

Just got word after assembling the system it is working. Still learned a valuable lesson here.

Hopefully you were paid for your time.

[kirk_m]

Today I finished a couple of IDE header repairs on a set of A1200's. I had a couple owners want them different. One stock and the other using a box connector. I think I like the box connector over the straight header. These are also both recaps I did for those looking for a close in shot of something I've done.

The white tape and the improper diode isnt my work. Not sure why it was done, but I wasnt asked to fix it correctly as much as I wanted. I am thinking of doing it anyway just to make it right.

nice work...don't touch that part without permission, because you know you'll get blamed for a dead amiga by the owner.

[kirk_m]

Wow, I am amazed those little torn out sockets can be replaced like that!  Great job!

[kirk_m]

These are pretty amazing. If only there were a run of assembled boards in a quantity to keep the price reasonable....

The limiting factor was the chips...at least that's what they were saying on A1K with regards to ever doing another production run...well, that, and the grey-area legality of the whole thing

[kirk_m]

I wish they would release their work somewhere.  But I've started re-drawing the 2000 schematics in KiCad, was thinking someday maybe I could create a board from it.
What I'd like to do is replace the custom chips.  If the whole Amiga can be redone in an fpga when why not just make replacements for individual chips.

Their issue with releasing the drawings (besides the quasi-legality of the project to begin with) is that they don't want someone taking their hard work, done for free, and making money off it.  There was quite a stir yesterday over on A1K when one of their boards showed up on eBay (in Germany) with a price tag 4x the price the board sold for (and it was just a bare board, with ZERO parts included).  The example that is constantly cited over on A1K is that of the Cortex firmware.  That was released free...but, unscrupulous vendors capitalized on it and started flashing GoTeks with it for profit.  Now, the author of that software will not release any more versions or updates to it because of that.

[kirk_m]

Absolutely, 11o% fair....almost too fair, in pricing.  People who bitch about repair costs need to investigate what electronic techs charge by the hour for "reflow and rework" labor. That is, if you're able to find someone actually still capable of this lost art, and, willing to do
it.  Paul has done outstanding work for me, and is a
Priceless resource to the US Amiga community.  Shame on the whiners.

[kirk_m]

Where did you get a new board.  I've seen mention of a new A500+ board and now this one, is someone remaking boards for all the models?

John Hertell is selling them (the 3640 PCB only) on Amibay and Amiga Facebook groups.  His username on Amibay is Chucky.  

The A500+ board isn’t available for sale anymore.  Ordering ended back in November 2016, and all boards were delivered back in April.

[kirk_m]

Kirk's Amazing Blizzard 1240 now with a Rev 6 060!

Couldn't be happier with it.  Thanks, Paul.

[kirk_m]

I assume they mean the one with 15,000 members.  Look for it, you'll find it.  :lol:

Edit - the only downside to it is, unlike a forum, posts tend to get buried and forgotten pretty quickly.  And it's not like Facebook has search tools to help you find "where was that thread that had such-and-such an answer from two years ago", you know?  

Edit again - it's up to 17,972 members now.

Not ENTIRELY true about the lack of search function.  On the left side of the page of all facebook groups (when viewed from a desktop computer browser), there is a SEARCH bar for searching for topics/people/etc. within that group.

Not that I am a big fan of Facebook...I much prefer forums.