Sold Amiga MERLIN 24 bit card

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ckultur

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Hi to all.

I'm selling a Merlin graphics card for the Amiga. The model is Zorro III and fitted with 4 megs of RAM (the max possible). This card was taken out from an A3000 and was working fine then (one year ago). I had it stored waiting for an A4000 to show up but seems that time will never come (economics suck)

Kindly note I'm attaching the info from the Amiga Hardware Database, so these photos are NOT of my card. Mine have to SIMMS of 2 megs each attached. If there is a request, I'll post some photos of my card here. The card has not been tested in 1 year time, so I'm selling it AS IS. There is no reason why it shouldn't work.. but you know... it's old hardware, so we better be cautious.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?product=merlin&company

The price is 99 Eur plus shipping anywhere in the EU

Best regards

ckultur
 
Interested too, second in line. (Plus I am in Malaga this week so would be able to meet!)
 
Awaiting then for "mover005" reply.
Obviously, "amigean" being so near to me is a must, and cost reduction for everyone, but rules are rules, so will wait for "mover005" response to the PM.

Best regards

ckultur
 
Fast payment received from "mover005". Card will go to Germany tomorrow.

Thanks a lot,

Best regards

ckultur
 
Sadly there are problems with this card I did not notice at the first visual inspection of the board either, so I will guess the seller did not know this. Passthrough doesn't work correctly, Picasso96 has problems recognizing this card. If you look closely in the lower right corner of the card, a few resistors are burnt. It already has been this way on the pictures ckultur sent me, I didn't notice it, I suppose ckultur didn't either. Do you have any idea how this might have happened? I am in contact with the designer of the card right now, I hope he can tell me a few things.
 

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I had a talk with the designer of the card, apparently this is something that happened with this card sometimes and he's not too sure what's causing it. These resistors are connecting the chip beyond it with +12V and -5V for power supply. The IC does the switching between the RGB-Video input on the Merlin (coming from the Amiga) and the Video output of the Merlin itself. In many cases if these resistors are burnt, the IC got damaged too.

Ckultur, I never got feedback from you even after I sent you feedback. Are you sure you didn't know anything about this? You said the card was working fine, with this damage (which also was already on the pictures you sent me) there's really no way this card could have been working fine. How did you test it?
 
I had a talk with the designer of the card, apparently this is something that happened with this card sometimes and he's not too sure what's causing it. These resistors are connecting the chip beyond it with +12V and -5V for power supply. The IC does the switching between the RGB-Video input on the Merlin (coming from the Amiga) and the Video output of the Merlin itself. In many cases if these resistors are burnt, the IC got damaged too.

Ckultur, I never got feedback from you even after I sent you feedback. Are you sure you didn't know anything about this? You said the card was working fine, with this damage (which also was already on the pictures you sent me) there's really no way this card could have been working fine. How did you test it?

Hi. Sorry I didn't saw the thread up and your problem. Please note I stated I had no way to test the card. As explained in the first post, this card was taken out from an Amiga3000 one year ago. That A3000 was working then and the video was connected by the "normal" video out of the A3000 to a 1084 monitor. I didn't noticed the resistors problem then or when doing the photos I sent you either.. other way, be totally sure I would warned about that. It is not the first time I encounter problems with old hardware (buying and selling), and that's why I clearly stated the card was being sold AS IS... just in case something goes wrong. I'm very sorry about that.

Best regards

ckultur
 
Ckultur, No.

You said:
Hi to all.

I'm selling a Merlin graphics card for the Amiga. The model is Zorro III and fitted with 4 megs of RAM (the max possible). This card was taken out from an A3000 and was working fine then (one year ago). I had it stored waiting for an A4000 to show up but seems that time will never come (economics suck)

When somebody says this I assume the card is working. The resistors did not burn up in storage.

Now you say:
Hi. Sorry I didn't saw the thread up and your problem. Please note I stated I had no way to test the card. As explained in the first post, this card was taken out from an Amiga3000 one year ago. That A3000 was working then and the video was connected by the "normal" video out of the A3000 to a 1084 monitor.

- Basically, that the Computer was working fine but you did not even see the card working, so how can you say in your original post that it was working fine when you took it out of the computer (and you obviously did not even test it)? You also did not state that you had no way to test the card back then, again, you stated that it was working fine. Which one of the two is it now? You see, I do not have an issue if you would say that you didn't really test the card, but then you can not go ahead in your first post and make a statement that it was tested, when it obviously was not as you now admitted to.
 
Ckultur, No.

You said:
Hi to all.

I'm selling a Merlin graphics card for the Amiga. The model is Zorro III and fitted with 4 megs of RAM (the max possible). This card was taken out from an A3000 and was working fine then (one year ago). I had it stored waiting for an A4000 to show up but seems that time will never come (economics suck)

When somebody says this I assume the card is working. The resistors did not burn up in storage.

Now you say:
Hi. Sorry I didn't saw the thread up and your problem. Please note I stated I had no way to test the card. As explained in the first post, this card was taken out from an Amiga3000 one year ago. That A3000 was working then and the video was connected by the "normal" video out of the A3000 to a 1084 monitor.

- Basically, that the Computer was working fine but you did not even see the card working, so how can you say in your original post that it was working fine when you took it out of the computer (and you obviously did not even test it)? You also did not state that you had no way to test the card back then, again, you stated that it was working fine. Which one of the two is it now? You see, I do not have an issue if you would say that you didn't really test the card, but then you can not go ahead in your first post and make a statement that it was tested, when it obviously was not as you now admitted to.

Hi. point taken. The A3000 worked and the video coming from it was Ok. I ASSUMED the card was working ok. Do you think I would like to ruin my reputation here selling defective stuff just for a quick sale?. No way. On the other hand... YOU ARE RIGHT... I supposed that, seeing the A3000 was working ok with the card installed... all was fine... Ok WRONG from my side. I never had a 24 bit card before.. so my fault here.

I had another sale thread where I was selling an untested A1200 030 board. Taking from this experience, I closed that sale today.

So, from this point on, and being a honest person.. I offer you a full refund and you send me the card back. I did a mistake ASSUMING the card was working as I saw the A3000 workbench screen and programs loading. Being so.. if you have any other option, I'm open to your suggestion.

In any case, I'm sorry about this.

Best regards

ckultur
 
I do not accuse you of selling a broken card with full knowledge, it wouldn't be a great scam because well, the card is broken, the person would notice it. I did not notice the burnt resistors myself, even after holding the card in my hands. They are easy to miss, so no blame here either.

I think I need to explain better what the current problem with the damage is, maybe somebody will also google for this problem and find this thread. (Thankfully Herr Riedel still supports this card and also shared the schematics with me, he is a very nice person and without him, this would have been a very difficult thing to figure out) The IC above the burnt resistors is basically just a very fancy video switch. Both the Video signal from the RGB-Input and the video signal from the Merlin are fed into it and depending on a signal the IC gets it switches one of the two signals to the RGB output. without this IC, there would be no video signal at the RGB output, because the signal in either case goes through the IC.

The IC takes two voltages, 12V and -5V. This flows through both the burned resistors from the picture. Apparently something goes wrong (I asked Herr Riedel and he does not exactly know why this happens, it happens with the Domino which has the same chip, too, he assumes electric potential differences between the card and the screen used) and the resistors (and usually also the IC) burns out. This doesn't mean that the passthrough is not working anymore, it means that the entire card is not usable anymore as it can't output a video signal anymore. On advice of Herr Riedel I tried replacing the resistors, but while the IC is not entirely dead, you don't get a proper picture anymore. It's all blue and fuzzy and it's just not usable.

So I'm not even blaming you in the damage of this card. It's a semi-rare occurrence but it does happen. It's fixable by either bypassing the entire IC with some soldering work (and completely disabling the passthrough part) or replacing the IC. (which is not easy to get as it is not made anymore)
So the card is not unfixable. It only is because I got help and did some investigating.

My only problem is that for the price I paid, I assumed to get a working part. I would not have paid that much for a card which is by all means defective. As you yourself admitted the entire thing was a little misleading, I would accept to keep this card as faulty for a little price reduction so I don't have a bigger loss through replacing the broken IC. If that's agreeable to you, just write me a PM. Again I did not mean offence and do not think any of this happened on purpose, it's just a dumb situation for both of us.
 
Hi Pal.

Thank you for your long explanation and words.

I take more importance on the "personal" side of this hobby than anything else, and I was scammed once on this same board, so I understand your points fully.

I decided NEVER to sell anything again without personal tests before, that's why a quit from sale the A1200-030 board.

In any case... your proposal on price reduction is reasonable. Please be so kind to PM when possible and I'm sure we will settle this.

Best regards

ckultur
 
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