Amiga Stash Wes

[RealHomer]

I just discovered my collection of Amiga hardware and software after having thought it was all lost 5 years ago when I went through a drastic downsizing and move to my current home.

My garage has been piled to the ceiling with everything that would not fit into house from the move.  I had sorted through about half of the garage a couple of years ago but it was filled up again after my daughter moved in and my ex dumping her storage unit's contents into my garage.  This summer I was determined I was going clean out the entire garage and toss out or remove everyone's junk so I could use the garage as a place to park my car (what a novel idea for a garage)

When I got to the back wall I was excited when I came upon all of my Amiga gear.  I was especially happy to pull out the A2000 which had been my main Amiga and a fairly loaded unit; 2mb Agnus, Picasso II+, Zeus 040 28 mhz, Opal Vision Board, Zip Drive, CD-R, other goodies plus OS 3.5.  Just a couple years before it had gone into storage I had sent the 2000 out to have the battery replaced with a lithium battery to prevent battery acid leakage.  I was pretty confident that the old 2000 would boot up when I plugged it in.

I was pretty disappointed when the screen remained blank after I turned it on.  I double checked the cables to make sure I had it set up right but nothing happened.  So I popped the case off to check that all the chips were seated.  I removed the floppy drives to work on the motherboard and found battery corrosion all over the board and a leaking barrel battery installed on the board.  Where was that lithium I had paid good money for, sigh....

Right now I have a rev 6A A500 that is working.  I have an ICD AdSpeed and AdRam unit but the 500 always ran flacky with them installed and  I only kept it to run old games and do simple video titling through a cheap genlock.  

I also have a couple AGA machines; an A1200 and a CD32 with a Paravision SX1.  The 1200 had been my main go to machine before I bought the A2000.  The CD32 was used in the living room attached to the TV as a games and karaoke machine when we had friends over to the house.  When I pulled the CD32 out plugged it in, at first it would only run with SX1 disconnected.  After cleaning the connectors which were oxidized I did manage to get the SX1 to partially work.  The RGB, floppy drive, AT kb connector work.  The hard drive boots up into 3.1 but occasionally I am getting hard drive errors.  The memory does not work on the SX1, when I enable the jumper for the memory the CD32 freezes and does not boot, when disabled unit boots just fine.  The memory is listed but is not accessible. I tried to use some add memory programs but they either freeze or nothing happens.

After the initial excitement and disappointment with the 2000 I am pondering if I should try to get my machines cleaned, updated and running again or not.  I had a lot invested in these machines but they are getting long of tooth and all of them now have some issues and TLC that needs to be applied to get themup and running again.  I haven't used an Amiga in a while but feel the bug.  Just debating if I should restore these units or set up a PC with AROS and Amiga Forever.

[RealHomer]

BTW, the title should be Amiga Stash Woes.

I thank the thread for the encouragement.  It was a little bit of a roller coaster and a downer to find that my Amiga's are in bad shape from neglect.  I think the course of action is to restore the A2000 and A1200 first.  First order of business is to clean up the 2000 and see what can be done.  The corrosion doesn't look extreme and it could be a case of cleaning up the board and possibly swapping the socketed chips one by one to see if I can get it to boot.  Of course I will need to trouble shoot the traces and see if they are bad and can be fixed.

Any recommendations on what chemicals to use to clean the board?  I have heard it should be cleaned with alcohol and that an anti-corrosive should be applied after all the work is completed for the restoration.

The 1200 was towered before but now is back as a desk top.  It needs a new hard drive I need to test it to make sure it is still working.  If it boots up I will send the motherboard off to be recapped and the PCMCIA port replaced(couple of the pins are problematic.

[RealHomer]

Dan, thanks for explanation,  I had read elsewhere to use ascetic acid and I wasn't sure that it was correct to use acid to neutralize "acid" damage.  Your explanation cleared it up for me.

[RealHomer]

Right, it is an older revision 4.2 that has been heavily modified over the years.  I don't even know what half of the mods are for. I have already considered about finding a replacement board or complete replacement 2000 or 3000 and salvage the Picasso, 040, 2mb Agnus, and the Opal board.

[RealHomer]

I unpacked all the Amiga computers now and started testing them one by one.

CD32 with SX1 runs but can't get the memory in the SX1 to autoconfig but it does show up under Showconfig.  I tried swapping out some simms to see if the one I had was defective but same issue, system locks if I set the jumper to autoconfig.  I searched Aminet and found Addmem program to add non-configured memory and as soon as I can connect my A1200 my broadband I will download and try it out.

A1200, I had this installed in a tower case that I sold when I picked up the A2000 way back in 1999.  I had all the parts packed away but I assembled everything together in the desktop case and booted it up.  The hard drive is dead but that wasn't unexpected because I had bought a new one before I tore it down from the tower because it was already going bad.  The new hard drive is formatted but I ordered a 4gb CF drive instead that I will install OS 3.5.  The 1230 XA 030 mhz with 128 mb of memory works like a champ.  The floppy is one of the rare Amiga HD drives.  I am considering changing it with an ADF floppy replacement drive.  Other upgrades I will add will be the Indivision AGA and a Wifi card for the PCMCIA slot.  I am going to keep the A1200 in the desktop, never was happy with the quality of the A1200 tower kits.  

A2000, removed the battery, too busy to tear it down and give it the lemon juice and ISP treatment right now.

A3000, this was dead when it went into storage.  Someone gave it to me with a A3640 and AMax II+ card.  It had battery acid damage that had been repaired and new battery installed. Lot of the traces had to be jumped and it was always quirky and finally died many years ago.  I kept it for a person in my old user group that managed to pick up a couple of A3000+ prototype boards.  He was going to install them and see if they would boot.  I don't know what happened to him or the boards as I lost contact with him.  I plugged the A3000 in and the power supply fan comes on but nothing else, as expected.

A1000.  I have 2, one of the with a broken case that is heavily yellow.  Plugged them in and both work but the one with a good case has a dead floppy drive.  I tried to use the old DD drive from the A1200, it works but doesn't align with the slot and I would have to keep the face plate off.  I swapped drives from the other A1000 but it is missing the button and the button from the dead drive is not compatible.  So for now I have to use a slot screw driver to eject the disk.  The good news is that the A1000 booted right up and I ran some old tunes and anims on it.  It is stock without any upgrades and not good for much more than decoration and playing tunes.  If the ACA 1000 ever comes out?

A500, darn I remembered after I unpacked it that I had given the AdSpeed and AdIde to my brother in law for his A2000.  I have the 4mb ram card and the daughter board that allows you to use an external floppy drive as df0: (its missing the floppy drives as I gave those to my brother in law too)  I can install the old dd floppy from the A1200 but same issue as the A1000, no eject button.  I may use parts from the A500 to try and trouble shoot the A2000 though.  I will still want to get the A500 up and running so I know the parts are good.

As much as I liked the A1200 and AGA I still preferred the big box A2000 with the Picasso, Opalvision, and 040.  I have a Supergen genlock and loads of video and graphics software and other goodies that I used to produce videos back in my Amiga days and would be nice to boot all that stuff up again.