DCE Cyberstorm 604e/060 board repaired to 060 only by French Amiga Center

[delshay]

due to lack of parts it`s not always possible to repair every card. here my Blizzard PPC memory & bvision stop working i then found the fault to be a cracked solder joint somewhere on the card. i say somewhere as it hard to see cracked solder joints.

i don`t know about the cyberstorm but you don`t have to disable the PPC processor on a Blizzard PPC.

it either works or it does not.

here i can remove the ppc processor(project 5)and the card seems to work fine without a PPC processor memory still shows up on workbench.

when memory stops showing up it`s a **serious fault**,it will effect Bvision/PPC processor and possibly the SCSI. the 68k processor will work fine without all three working.

but it`s hard to say if cyberstorm suffers from the same problem as a Blizzard card when memory stops working.


for the Blizzard PPC card if all four chips are cooled,if it starts to overheat it will give warning signs(crash or lock-up) even when overclocking. if you overclocked and you dont have right cooling see above post.

[delshay]

I always thought they crippled the speed of their 040/060 cpus on purpose to make the PPC seem more faster than an 060 than it really is.  Many people were fooled.

from my point of view i think it was a heat issue,if the card ran any faster you are going to run into problems. i can`t understand why their release a card without some kind of cooler with chips that ran so hot it can burn your finger. perhaps the card should have come with somekind of hazzard.

most componets that run at high temperture has some kind of cooling device.

with the right cooling iv yet to do permanent damage to a Blizzard PPC no matter how far i try to overclock it.

perhaps adding more cooler cost of card would be more.

cyberstorm are in towers,so has more airflow,but what about change in normal air temperture summer months this also appiles to the Blizzard PPC card.

[motrucker]

Ha:



FARCe.

That's a bit over the top - specially without knowing all the facts. This shop has a great reputation.

[Retro_71]

mr JJB's services of the Amiga Repair Center France are AWESOME and has helped many amiga hardware to continue living. I have sent him much hardware and always was pleased to get it repaired.
Surelly you pay a price for that but he might be the ONLY one to actually know/care/repair amiga hardware!
I am sure he did not charge you 190e to get a 060 accelerator without scsi/ram, surelly he told you of the risks and if you are willing to pay the price...? He is not a thief, and ALL the damaged csppc's I have known returned from him had only the ppc disabled and worked like a normal MKIII card. Yours is the first I see that has no scsi/ram !

Sorry BUT there is also ANTHONY in New Zealand and he just as good i have bought lots of things from him (chips) and i know people that have sent him broken boards and he has repaired them so Amiga Repair Centre France IS NOT the only place and i also suspect there are others who would do repairs.
But with all repairs there should be atleast a mention of what the problem is along with the price I find it hard to believe ARCF doesn't tell people what is wrong with their hardware and just gives them a price, Is this really correct?

PS. i cant find/remember Anthony's account name here in A.org but i do have his email address if anyone wants to talk to him instead of ARCF.

[Nlandas]

mr JJB's services of the Amiga Repair Center France are AWESOME and has helped many amiga hardware to continue living. I have sent him much hardware and always was pleased to get it repaired.
Surelly you pay a price for that but he might be the ONLY one to actually know/care/repair amiga hardware!
I am sure he did not charge you 190e to get a 060 accelerator without scsi/ram, surelly he told you of the risks and if you are willing to pay the price...? He is not a thief, and ALL the damaged csppc's I have known returned from him had only the ppc disabled and worked like a normal MKIII card. Yours is the first I see that has no scsi/ram !

No I am sorry but that would not be correct. He quoted diagnosis cost at 50E and then cost to repair at a maximum of 240E. He then started repairing the board because he said he couldn't diagnose without repairing it. He then told me the SCSI didn't work and the ram didn't work and it'd be 190E repaired as just an 060 card.

I was never given the option of just paying the diagnosis fee. I have all the emails to back this up. Since I agreed to pay for his services, I begrudgingly paid him for the repair - when I expected it to be a diagnosis fee of 50E to say, it's not worth repairing.

This statement from JRB after my initial inquiry sums up my experience with his repair service - "Humppff, you cannot do anything good by yourself, else take a look at the board ..... "

As I said, many others praised him - they must have been lucky.

[Nlandas]

Sorry BUT there is also ANTHONY in New Zealand and he just as good i have bought lots of things from him (chips) and i know people that have sent him broken boards and he has repaired them so Amiga Repair Centre France IS NOT the only place and i also suspect there are others who would do repairs.
But with all repairs there should be atleast a mention of what the problem is along with the price I find it hard to believe ARCF doesn't tell people what is wrong with their hardware and just gives them a price, Is this really correct?

PS. i cant find/remember Anthony's account name here in A.org but i do have his email address if anyone wants to talk to him instead of ARCF.

Well I can tell you this was the deal -

JRB - "Humppff, you cannot do anything good by yourself, else take a look at the board .....
A good idea would be to send it to me to the adress below.
Diag is 50 E including shipping.
240 E is a maximùum if repair is possible."

   He then started the repair anyway because he said he couldn't diagnose otherwise. Without my go ahead. Immediately, going from a 50E diagnosis to a 190E repair to 060 only.

   I just hope others shop around and if they still use JRB's services they are very clear with JRB that the don't want any repair done until he gives his diagnosis of what can be repaired. As others have pointed out 190E is a lot to just get back an 060 only card with no ram/scsi.

[Jose]

The other repair person mention above is Castellen I think. Used his services once, all good.
I've used the one in France too, didnt have a bad experience, though it was very expensive.

One thing to consider sometimes, is that somethings are not easily repairable, specially since I doubt these guys have any service manual from the maker of the card!

But this specific case you should have confronted him that you didn't say to go ahead and repair the card.
Hell, in the recent past I knew a few local services (Algarve here..) that didn't charge at all if they didn't manage to repair the equipment (TVs, VCRs, stereos, that kind of stuff..). They all charge for diagnosis nowdays, and the funny thing is that sometimes you're better served with old "do it all" repair shops run by very old and knowledgeable people than by the official repair services. As an example, I wanted to repair an old Panasonic stereo remote recently and the official service center charged me for the diagnosis, kept it for almost 6 months and then said they couldn't do anything about it. Took it to a local very old and small electronics shop and the guy repaired it without any problems!

[cv643d]

I sold my broken A4000 motherboard to him for 30 euro (broken floppy/serial), now in hindsight I should have wanted 300 euro

[Crumb]

IMHO he has stolen you 140Euros. If he couldn't repair the ram he should have warned you, and he should have charged you just 50Euros. You are not responsible of his lack of skills repairing hardware.

IMHO next time you'd better send it to Castellen (at least he's honest).

[delshay]

IMHO he has stolen you 140Euros. If he couldn't repair the ram he should have warned you, and he should have charged you just 50Euros. You are not responsible of his lack of skills repairing hardware.

IMHO next time you'd better send it to Castellen (at least he's honest).

remember he had to change the CPU to get the card to half work in-order to find the remaining fault(s). it takes time tracking down fault(s),and there are other customer also awaiting repairs.  

dont forget the board has some new parts which may not be wise to remove and pass onto other customers.


this is a question someone should ask ACUBE as if their only change/upgrade faulty PPC chips on PPC card,what happens if the CPU is changed and the card is still faulty.

how will your card be returned and what is the cost. will it have a new CPU still attatched?

[zipper]

PS. i cant find/remember Anthony's account name here in A.org but i do have his email address if anyone wants to talk to him instead of ARCF.

His home page with lots of Amiga info: http://amiga.serveftp.net/

[spirantho]

Have you tried manually adding the RAM?

I have a Blizzard 1230 MkII which doesn't autoconfigure the RAM, but if I use AddMem with the correct memory addresses, it works just fine.

In other words, boot with no AddMem - only get ChipRAM = very slow.
Boot with AddMem as the first thing in the Startup-sequence - Chip and Fast RAM = full 50MHz '030 speed.

You can find out what the memory addresses are by asking someone with a working CS-PPC. I have 128MB in mine - if it helps I can tell you the parameters you'll need to use to try and add the memory.

That's not to say it will work, but you have nothing to lose. Incidentally if you don't have any Fast RAM the PPC won't work, so it's just possible that using AddMem will give you a fully working CS-PPC.... I wouldn't stake anything on it though, and if it works I'd suggest buying a few lottery tickets as the same time as it'd be your lucky day!

[_ThEcRoW]

It reminds me of a case not too long ago of a user who had a problem with that guy regarding a ppc card. The guy in question claimed 200 eur in order to send back the card to him. Think about it, 200 for retrieving your own card!!!!!. Of course, the card wasn't repaired, it was the cost on diagnosis.
Very sad.

[Nlandas]

It reminds me of a case not too long ago of a user who had a problem with that guy regarding a ppc card. The guy in question claimed 200 eur in order to send back the card to him. Think about it, 200 for retrieving your own card!!!!!. Of course, the card wasn't repaired, it was the cost on diagnosis.
Very sad.

It sounds like I'm not alone then. It went from 50E diagnosis to 140E between emails.

Yes, I could have argued with him but I still wanted to card back.

-Nyle