CyberStormPPC refuses to work

[voxel]

Hi patrick :-)

The ppc seems to be fine :-) BTW,

What I see most on your pictures are Monstruous solders on the 200 pins motherboard connector!

I would not be surprised if your card have multiple cold solder joints all around it!

Amigalement,
Jean-François, Amiga ONLY since 1985.

[patrik]

@voxel:

The solders seems fine, they are just covered in lots of solder-flux residues because of inadequate cleaning after the soldering at the factory.

I actually cleaned them yesterday as it looked very unpleasing with all that flux. So if you want to see them they way the actually are, have a look at the link below:

Cleaned solders

If you want to see the original highres image, remove the '_small' part of the url.

Cheers!


/Patrik

[zipper]

Maybe a 20x magnifier lens could point some cracked/cold solder joints in the 200 pins or preferably under the 68k socket. Familiar job with some Eyetech video switchers and with my ex telly.
The cracks are usually invisible to bare eye.
Many problems disappeared as I warmed the solders with some flux.

[Acill]

I actually cleaned them yesterday as it looked very unpleasing with all that flux.

Looks good. My CS MK III is all covered in flux as well. What did you use to take it all off, and how did you do it?

[Jope]

I guess I should do that to my CSMK2 too .. it's sometimes very erratic..

There's just so many solder joints there.. :-/

[zipper]

Yes, a sd/flifi had just about 100; my Yamaha amplifier had about 200 to reheat - and it still works...
But my Clock cartridge is dead:(

[Framiga]

Hi Patrick

the 80% of CSPPC at DCE for repairs, has the same problem.

Those crap 060 socket :-(

Ciao

EDIT- great work :-)

what have you used to clean those flux?

[AmiGR]

All PPC chips are BGA. They have NO pins but balls of solder. They are soldered directly on the board.
Btw, I seriously doubt that the CSPPC uses  just 2 layers, the BPPC uses.... 11. (That's why the BPPC
pcb is so delicate)

[x56h34]

@patrik:

Glad to hear that you got it to work! :-) Such an expensive piece of hardware simply must work because the dissapointment level is very high if you find it to be defective, and I'm glad that you sorted out the problem. :-)

Great job on the cleaning. How did you do it?

[patrik]

@a bunch:

To clean away the flux I used circuit board cleaner (propanol), lots of these ear-pliers (plastic stick with a bit cotton in both ends) and some wooden tootpicks.

I first used a ear-plier to apply circuit board cleaner on the solder flux to make it softer. Then I used the tootpicks to remove the largest amounts of flux. After the tootpicks had done their work I used lots of ear-pliers with the circuit board cleaner to clean away the rest by dabing them on the solders. The board should be held a bit angled (cpuconnecter should be the lowest point) so the circuit board cleaner wont flow out over other parts of the card.

Even if you know this, remember to take electrostatic precautions and to be gentle when doing this.

@zipper:

I will use a magnifier on the cpuslot-connector solders next time I have the card outside the computer. The 68060-socket solders I am afraid I cant inspect as it is a surface mount socket .

@Framiga:

If so then the problems I have had with my card most certainly originates from the 68060-socket. It seems to work fine now, but who knows how it will work in a year. Are the solders just bad from the factory or is the socket itself failing?

If it would stop working, is it possible to get DCE to repair it nowadays? And if so, do you know how much they would charge? I am also very curious wether some other electronics company would be able to fix this... I mean, replacing a surface mount 68060-socket should definately not be something only DCE is capable of.

The rest (20%) of the cards at DCE, are their problems just various or does there exist other components on these cards which commonly break?

@AmiGR:

11 layer - phew, thats some layers! Must definately be the expansion-card for the Amiga to use the most sofisticated manufacturing technology.

@x56h34:

Yes definately. When I had tried everything I and lots of other people could think of and it still didnt work I was very very disappointed. But when it began to work, that disappointment turned the other way around .

I really hope that it will continue to work for some time, if not I'll send you a mail .


/Patrik