The Screw In Front Of Paula's House

[MiAmigo]

Decided to take a break from my epic battle with the stubborn A2000 in the workshop. As a matter of fact, I have forbidden myself from going back there for the next few days - until my newest Amiga monitor arrives, at which time I will finally proceed with installing 3.9.

In the mean time, I've been enjoying playing games on my new A500. (Since I'm temporarily a monitor short - I took the monitor from the A2K and am using it now on the A500). Even though its in pristine condition on the outside, the dust constantly peeking out from the keyboard made me want to open it - so I did.

Wow! There was a lot of dust in there - mountains of it! I could just barely see the casing around the keyboard, or the shield!

I got my mini-vac and air blower and got to work. It wasn't long before I realized  that I would have to also remove the metallic shielding to do a proper job of it, and that's where I ran into trouble with that inconveniently placed screw which secures the shielding - right in front of the PAULA chip.

Note To Self: Pick up a set of long neck magnetic torix screw drivers on the next trip to Ace!

Anyway, I eventually got the screw out, (which was much easier than getting it back in!), and found what appears to be an expansion card of some sort with what looks like a battery attached to it.

It was my understanding from the seller that this machine had no battery, and a bootup message concerning the absence of a clock battery would seem to confirm this. However, this definitely looks like a battery to me, on some type of memory expansion card(?). And it looks like it has a tiny bit of corrosion and leaking.

Now my question is: What exactly is this? If it is a battery on a memory expansion, will I have to replace just the battery, or then entire card?

??

[MiAmigo]

Good idea. I think I may just take it off, clean the area, and leave it off. Cost and availability-wise, is this a better idea than just replacing the entire card?

Or would that either A). Cost more/the same, or B). result in probably the same situation - a battery that still needs to be removed? (Unless there's a vendor out there somewhere selling brand new cards, I'd most likely be purchasing another used one from eBay.)

[MiAmigo]

it cost like $20 to $50 for a new replacement card, and most have the battery still on and leaking.  So if it works, definitely it is cheaper to repair this one!

Here are the new NiMh direct replacements:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=132


Amigakit has coin cell adapters for sale, they work great!  No leaks either

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1093

Simply fantastic. That was my very next question!

[MiAmigo]

I dug up Sysinfo on the internet and made a disk for the A500 on my A2000. Unfortunately, the 500 keeps saying that the disk is 'bad'. (Its an Amiga disk).

Also, even if I can somehow get the 500 to accept the disk - I think my WB version (1.3.2) is too low to run this app.

However, I did get a chance to run it on my A2000, and it gave me lots of info about that machine, including something I've been wondering about - whether or not my accelerator card's processor was dead! It seems to be alive and well.

The A500 will need across-the-board upgrades, including a new battery for the mem expansion, a new WB and kickstart, and some type of internal storage other than just the floppy drive.