Acill's Amiga Repair Thread

[Acill]

I have room to accept new work if anyone is interested. Please send a PM and let me know what you are looking to have done.

[Acill]

Another 4000D saved! This one came in with some serious damage from leaking caps. I had to remove several surface mount chips and test the traces, repair and replace quite a few chips and the tiny SMD caps and resistors. Please remember to open up your systems and look at them! If you never had a recap done you are due for one. Its not an IF it needs it. They all need it if it was never done.

[Acill]

Things have slowed quite a bit but I am still here working! The next couple of projects are a bit tedious. I have a Blizzard 1240 and an A3640 on the way in to get upgraded to 060. I also will be starting my own CSPPC upgrade with a rev 6 in it. I plan to do the 3rd oscillator socket mod to it and see if I can get the Rev 6 to run at as close to 80Mhz as I can.

Now if those three 060 processors just show up from overseas!

[Acill]

My a3000 should get to you today for a little work

I see it is in the area, that will take a bit of time to get complete. I am getting things ready for Amiwest and have a TON of work related travel the rest of the month as well.

[Acill]

Started on the upgrade of this Blizzard 1240 to 1260 with a Rev 6 tonight for Wayne. Just waiting on the Rev 6's I ordered to come in and it will be done in no time! All the prep work will be completed tonight or tomorrow.

Enjoy!

[Acill]

Some more progress on the Blizzard 1240 upgrade. Everything is complete with exception of the 060. It should be here later this week and get installed over the weekend.

What you see here is the regulator installed, jumper wire moved to power the regulator and output 3.3V instead of 5V and the 040 to 040 selection resistor moved over to the 060 position.

[Acill]

This adapter arrived back today here : one track is cutted, won't work for sure...

Hopefully, it's an easy repair !!

Didn't look that deep into it since he said he would return it to you. I knew it had something wrong. Good find!

[Acill]

This 1240 is now a 66Mhz 060!

[Acill]

Busy night,  another 040 to 060 conversion. This time it's a 3640  at 66Mhz!

[Acill]

Will running that 3640(now 3660) at 66mhz make the motherboard run at 33mhz? Probably the limit of what it can do...

Or is the speed independent of the 25mhz clock running the mb

The speed does not make the MB run faster, only the CPU from my understanding since you set the clock jumpers for accelerator to EXT on the A4000 which uses the oscillator on the accelerator instead of the one on the board. This makes the crystal on the 3640 run at full speed as well instead of the half speed the usual 040 runs at. This is the fastest the 3640 will run however stable. The CPU on it in another accelerator can run as high as 100Mhz I've seen. Cosmos is the better person to ask about this version of the upgrade though. He designed it from what I understand. I just built it from the parts he supplied and soldered it all together.

[Acill]

I always though EXT means the MB is running based on the external CPU board clock...Is this the same case on a A3000?

I honestly dont get what magic they do with that EXT jumper. The 3000 one acts very strange too. I know you have to have it set of the CPU card uses its own oscillator, but other times you dont use it as if using an A3630.

It could be running at 33 in this case yes, and I know with the 3640 conversion the best I have ever seen them go with a rev 6 is 66. Its sad since that CPU can go to 100 easily. I have my CSPPC running at 85 for example and its very cool to the touch still.

[Acill]

I just got word that I will be traveling for work Monday the 19th for 3 weeks. I have a few boards in getting work done, but as I have mentioned in the past things can go slow at times. If you are waiting for a board and havent heard from me directly before this posting I wont be able to complete it before getting back from Amiwest.

[Acill]

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.

love these comments!

[Acill]

Some very early Amiga work before catching my 6am flight to Norfolk. Happy to say this recap went fast and trouble free. I couldn't sleep so this one gets out before I left saving the owner two of weeks of waiting now. I did the PSU conversion to a 190 watt ATX inside original case too. It's powering this 500 for a final test before packing and shipping home.

[Acill]

@Acill
Are you going to be accepting items at Amiwest2016?

Yes,  but I may start slowing down due to the lack of working complete machines of my own to test completed boards I receive to work on.  Depends on what I can pick up at show.

[Acill]

I recently did a recap on a 1200 that before I worked on it I tried to see if it would turn on to rom screen. I was told this board worked and just needed a recap. Being a bare board I had no good way to test,  but this one just gave me a suspicion to hook it up to a monitor for a moment and see. All I got was a black screen. Not having a keyboard or drives I just assumed I wouldn't be able to test further. We'll against my better judgment I did the recap since it was a very clean board with no sign of leaks or damage. Turns out the owner now tells me it doesn't work.

I've been to trusting g up to this point.  If I receive any boards from now on that do not appear to boot before I start I will contact the owner and return  it with no recap being done unless specifically told to move forward. I can't be held responsible for things like this and need to protect myself and not risk being accused of anything. I hope everyone understands and feels this is fair. Please let me know if this is out of line. These systems are old and the is high risk work at times.