My FrankenA3K- Daily log

quarkx

insane in the main frame
AmiBayer
Joined
Aug 11, 2008
Posts
2,430
Country
Canada
Region
Edmonton, Alberta,
Here is my latest project:
I call it my Franken3K
As you all know I got a big haul of Amiga stuff a few weeks back. In the midst of it all were 2 A3k's in pieces, but only 1 top-lid. The top was not badly yellowed, and the cover for the second floppy drive is still there. I did not know what was there and what wasn't. I had no clue if I could actually create a whole one from the parts there or not, they had tons of dust on them and were probably stored away in a shed or basement for years. The previous owner had said these were in a tower once. A Plastic tower not unlike the A1200 infinityv towers. I looked on BboaH and I could not find any info on a plastic A3000 tower system.
You will notice that there are 2 bottom chassis/ motherboards in the photos, the best way to tell them apart, is the curled sticker on the Paula chip. I deliberately left that on so I could distinguish between both.
Unit A: (with the sticker had a Warp engine (that I sold) and it was full of Zorro cards. A Sprectum RTG, a Ethernet card and the GVP I/O card. What was interesting is that there was no hard drive sled, power supply or any drives on either chassis. What was also interesting, is the Warp engine was just laying in there, not actually inserted in the socket. This unit just had 4 megs up zip ram, presumably, because the Warp had the extra ram

Unit B:
Just had a full 16 megs of Zip ram in it, otherwise completely empty,

I started to go through it all, then I paused to get the camera out and actually take photos. I should have been taking them the whole time.
I then pulled both batteries , they had not leaked badly, but were starting.
I then put the whole thing aside and started to pull parts for sale. I would leave the cleaning and sorting for day 2.

Not much usable photos on day 1, but it had not occurred to me until much later that there were/ are no cables or screws for anything. At this point I had also began to wonder about things like drives both floppy and hard drives, The sleds, and the power supplies.

I began to dig through the boxes and found a few floppy drives. One was still mounted on its bracket (no picture) , and the 2 sleds were located. One sled was cut up presumably for the tower system. At first I though it was for the warp drive, but the second sled had vent holes drilled in for the warp drive.

With all this, I knew that I was about 90% there for a nice stock A3K, but, as I am unemployed at the moment, I also know, that I can't afford to spend more than about $20 to make this complete. That includes things like cleaning supplies and such.

That's it for this post, next, taking apart and cleaning both motherboards- at this point I am dragging the tripod out and camera so there will be much more photos of the rest.
 

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Day 2
I knew I had to start this project and follow it through quickly, else it migh end up like my stack of A2000's here. So I knew for day 2, I had 2 goals.
1) remove and clean the 2 motherboards
2) Treat the battery areas and solder in the battery hacks from AmigaKit.

So, I grabbed unit A (the one with all the zip chips) and removed it from the bottom chassis. I thought I would use this as my base. I carefully dusted and cleaned the board, and flipped it over to check to see if it had the INT2 mod.- Nope.
I flipped the motherboard over and swabbed the area with vinegar, lemon juice, IPA, and then distilled water. I used a soft toothbrush to scrub the green off the resistor legs right behind the negative posts.
I then heated up the soldering iron. The negative side removed easily as expected, but for the life of me, the positive hole would not clear. I tried braid, suction and I finally gave up because I didn't want to scorch the board. (I found out later, I could try to add solder, the try to remove it again). I was almost ready to get a tiny drill bit and drill out the hole. LOL, a whole hour wasted on a 3 minute job.
I had the spare power supply on the bench and decided to fire it up to see if it would come up to a kickstart screen. At this time, I inserted the daughterboard and fired it up. I did not check for jumpers, SCSI termination, or anything (DUH!) nothing came up, so at this time I put the board aside and scrubbed down the chassis and the Mylar sheet.
The weather striping on the front was shot, so I removed it. I also noticed that this chassis was missing the tab with the screw hole to mount the front LED panel. The LED panel was run on an extra long wire and had hot glue on it. This would make sense if this was put in a tower. I had made sure I used a zip-lock baggie to hold all the screws, nuts and standoffs, so none would be lost.

I then Put this all aside and grabbed Unit 2 (remember the one with the sticker on Paula). I took another zip-lock baggy and proceeded to remove the motherboard. One the motherboard was out, I could immediately tell that this one did indeed have the warp engine in it by the “ghosting” of the dust on the Mylar sheet. I then scrubbed this and the chassis down with Windex. This chassis had one small flaw in it, the metal “Bar” above the card slots was a bit bent, this is pretty common.
I put the chassis aside and to work on the motherboard. I looked for the INT2 mod, and it was also not there, I couldn't understand this, but I read later that the Warp Engine 3040 doesn't need the INT2 Mod because it has the Little wire clip.
I then proceed to clean the battery area up and scrub the resistor legs, then un-soldered the holes. This went smooth as silk and really did take less then 3 minutes.
I then installed the battery hack from AmigaKit.
A small aside – I usually order a few of these battery hacks at a time, because I know I will need them.
I then made up my mind that I would be using this board, and then tried to sell the other last week.
I then installed the board back into the chassis and decided to call it a day.
The photos will start with unit A
 

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Day 2 unit B
 

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oops, I think I mixed the 2 units up in the day 2 post, don't worry though, day 3 is the last day I will be concentrating on the 2 units, After that its all just one unit I will be working on.:shhh:
 
Day 3.
Not many pictures from today it seems.
I will call today ZIP HELL DAY- for that’s what I did.
I deiced to fully populate the motherboard with Zip chips, or to simply put it, transfer 12 megs of Zip Ram from one motherboard to the other, carefully leaving the 4megs in place that they were on the other motherboard.
Now, if you have ever worked with Zip Ram, you will probably laugh at this next part (or cry).
I had seen Zip ram before, I had never had the “Pleasure” of actually working with the Demon spawned stuff.
First was removal, How was I going to remove these chips without damaging what seems to be paper thin, fragile legs. A chip puller wasn't going to do the job, so I got a small screwdriver out and slowly tried to slide it out. The damn thing popped out so violently, it actually bent the last 2 legs sideways.
Ok, so we learned that:

A) the holders that seat Zip ram are no going to give them up without a fight,
B) a flat head screwdriver is not going to work all that well
C) this is going to take forever if I do one at a time.

After, what seemed a hour of sweating and trying to straighten the pins, I then proceeded to stick it in the new motherboard. I then learned it take a lot of force to seat those baby’s just right. You also have to be look directly down overhead, or you may just miss a pin and mangle the bejesus out of a leg or two. You can tell if a slot looks kind of shinny, because that shinny pinhead looking thing is the mangled leg,
I tell you, it's times like this, I wish I had some money, because if I did, I would have went right up to AmigaKit and ordered some ZorroRam and have been done with it.

Well, I had to figure this out. It can't be all that difficult, otherwise Dave wouldn't have designed the board to use Zips in the first place. Yeh, think “What would Dave do? Try to channel your inner Haynie.
I slowly started to experiment and found the best way to remove them was gently rock them back and forth and eventually they would finally give.
Because I already mangled 2 chips, I then experimented on the best way to insert them, and “pop” them down- because they make a small popping sound when they are in place.
Once I was done, I had a very sore finger and thumb. I can see a guy building machines with these back in the day, getting blisters.

Yes, all and all it seemed like a solid 2-4 hours for just this, but hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.
 

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I Agree ZIP ram is evil, I have had 2 3000D's and my 3000T and have never been able to work with the stuff without bending a pin.

There were boards manufactured in the past that plugged in to the ZIP sockets, and let you use SIMMs instead, but I have not been able to find one for sale.

Is your RAM page mode or static column

Chuck E.
 
I Agree ZIP ram is evil, I have had 2 3000D's and my 3000T and have never been able to work with the stuff without bending a pin.

There were boards manufactured in the past that plugged in to the ZIP sockets, and let you use SIMMs instead, but I have not been able to find one for sale.

Is your RAM page mode or static column

Chuck E.

I really don't have a clue lol, I guess I should check into that. I was just transferring them from one Amiga to another,:picard

---------- Post added at 18:23 ---------- Previous post was at 17:23 ----------

also, once , not long ago DJBase made and sold the adaptors at http://www.amigaworld.de/hardware/simm-zip-ram-adapter/

its in german, but chrome does translate it.
lately, though people have reported that's its impossible to get an answer from him
 
The page mode ZIPs have part number 4400 and the Static Column ZIPs
Have part number 4402 If I remember correctly.

According to the A3000 manual you get a small speed up by using the Static Column ZIPs. If you mix Page Mode and Static Column the whole memory just runs in page mode and you don't get the speed up.

Chuck E.
 
3000 notes

3000 notes

Do the 3000D's boot?

Zip memory isn't that bad once you have a system to deal with them. Keep a flashlight and a magnifying glass handy. Place the zip on the socket, look with the flashlight to make certain the legs are all between the connector and push it in with a very slight side to side motion...

Be sure to thoroughly treat the boards as there are 3 layers in the board and the board may fail if corrosion is hidden somewhere. Also pull the denise and paula chips to look for green corrosion to be cleaned. Even if the battery didn't seem to leak much, this means very little. In my travels boards that seemed to have the least amount of damage failed much more often than boards with lots of surface damage. My theory is that it is better to see the damage and know where it is.

One other item, I really like the cell battery kits from ebay where the battery holder is a few inches from the board surface. This provides future buyers of the machine a good look at where the battery was and what the damage looks like. It also confirms users who state they have a clean motherboard..

Good luck... I'm going to publish my 3000D buyers guide shortly. Keep an eye open for it...

Matt
 
The page mode ZIPs have part number 4400 and the Static Column ZIPs
Have part number 4402 If I remember correctly.

According to the A3000 manual you get a small speed up by using the Static Column ZIPs. If you mix Page Mode and Static Column the whole memory just runs in page mode and you don't get the speed up.

Chuck E.

Looks like 4400 so all page mode

---------- Post added at 22:03 ---------- Previous post was at 22:00 ----------

Do the 3000D's boot? Matt
as to quote a famous BBC TV show "Spoilers!"
You will have to wait until I get there.:p
 
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DAY 4

DAY 4

Day 4
Here is where we start to slow down.
Before I actually start to build this beast up, I pull out my A3000 manual and slowly inspect the jumpers. The last thing I want to do is build this up, only to tear it all down looking for jumpers. The first thing I notice is one of the ROM jumpers is actually gone. I replace it, and start to make sure that it's set for the internal CPU and clock speed. Check. Re-check, and move on to SCSI.
God, I must be the only person in the world that absolutely hates SCSI. Now, I am not talking on how someone hates Mondays- I despise anything that has to do with SCSI. If I had Bill Gate's money, I would make it my personal goal to rid the world of any and all SCSI. The least I would do is make a Zorro card that has an SD card for a drive and a SATA connector for a CD rom,burner. Thus NEVER having to try to read a SCSI drive for the correct settings again.
It wouldn't be too bad if the manufactures all followed the same guidelines, but when you need a manual for a hard drive just to set up seventeen jumpers, because they had to be proprietary, really burns me.
Also, the A3000 manual refers you to a schematic page that is really no help when it comes to setting it up. So, because I don't know which terminator pack goes where and does what, the best information I can find on the web, says leave them all open. Because I wish to add a external CD to this, that seems like a wise move, but for testing and bringing up the board, I will have to dig up an external terminator pack to stick on the back. All this, and I still don't have the magic decipher ring needed to figure out my Seagate hard drive, so I will just have to pray it's set right (there are no terminator packs on the drive itself, just hundreds of Jumpers).

Next, After an hour of sitting there staring at the board looking for jumpers and their settings, I can the focus on putting the chassis back together. I find the Zorro slot “Cage” for the back, scrub that down, and I scrub down the plastic Zorro slot “Slots” (sorry, I don't have a good name for them, but chances are you know what I am talking about). I then mount the LED back to the front and plug it into the board.
Now, I have the jaunting task of digging through my many bins, tubs and jars of screws, looking for what I call “Commodore Screws”. If you didn't know, Commodore used a bigger screw than the standard one used now, a good clue is that it is usually dull looking and has a lock ring around it.
Like I had mentioned in another thread, it seems that these screws must break down and bio-degrade over time, or people must hoard them and cherish them like gold, because I have never got a big box amiga in with all the original screws in it complete. In the dozens of A3000's I have worked on over the years ONE , and ONLY ONE had the original beige case screws on the bottom sides. 99% have some modern screw that doesn't fit properly hold the top down and on (this also applies to all the A2000's I have had-NONE of them had original case screws holding the lid on.
These 2 A3000 only had the motherboard screws and one had the power supply screws on the sled.

I also hunted down the cables, I have tons of scsi cables ranging from 2 inches long to 6 feet, and it always bugs me how every A3000 has 10 times the amount of SCSI cable needed for this small box. The odds of anyone putting a second hard drive actually inside seem staggering to me, so why to you need a 3 foot SCSI cable with room for 2 devices on it? This leads to just more cable to Zip tie up and have jam somewhere you don't want it to go when you put the lid back on. It also increases the chance of it “Popping” off the motherboard when you put the lid on.
I opted for a 3 inch I Device cable, that was just long enough off of a Zorro card.
I then got to work looking for a Floppy drive cable, and all I could find were A2000 Cables. A2000 have a pin missing on the motherboard and the pin stuck in the cable. Instead of hacking something together I just went ahead and spent a few bucks foolishly and ordered a new custom cable from AmigaKit. That should be here in 2 weeks, but there is lots more to do in the mean time. I think I could have gotten away with a smaller length floppy drive cable though. I saw after I ordered it, that I could have shaved a few CM's off. I opted for a double floppy drive cable, even though I am only putting in a single floppy for now, I might decide later to put another in. 2 reasons, 1) I only have one floppy drive bracket for the sled and 2) I have the little cover on the case for the second floppy- You wouldn't believe how rare that little cover is. I believe just that alone is worth buying a 3D printer and selling little plastic parts like that.
The hard drive sled will be next episode, stay tuned.
 

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You must have infinite patience...
LOL, not really, there are days that go by, that I don't have the energy to even look at the thing, nevermind root through bins of screws looking for something that matches. My "Goal" is at least 5 minutes a day, but it seems like those 5 minutes turn into hours.
I have a few other customer related projects (a1200 tower and an A2000) that have just fizzled out, because they don't want to pay anymore money into it to get me motivated enough to work on them again. They have no problem with getting parts, but seem to think that my time is not worth anything to do it for them:picard

My next project will be an A2000 with the 060, I have 5 A2000's here that need attention, and I really have been procrastinating on those because I have re-built so many A2000's (you can see my other posts), putting in literally 40-50 hours in each, and barely selling them for what I invested in them in parts- sometimes even losing that investment,
maybe its a disease, but I am not ODC in any other aspect of my life, just computers
 
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Day 5
So, I had been procrastinating for a few days. Why not? I was waiting for a floppy cable, and I could probably grab a external SCSI terminator from AMICUE meeting if I waited. I did not get a Terminator, but seeds were planted there for something even much more exciting.
So, for the last few days, the chassis sat on my table almost complete. It was all bolted together, and all it needed was a few things, like the “S” clips on the daughter board installed, the floppy drive and cable hooked up and we should be good to go. It looked great.
I though I should makes my final checks, pull out my external CD rom Drive and give it a boot now, instead of finding out later that something was wrong.
First boot showed nothing on the screen, no flicker- just nothing. I could hear everything sounded fine, the drive was spinning etc. Then I noticed both LED's solid on the front, not good. I shut it down and inspected all the cables. Sure enough, the SCSI cable was on backwards on the motherboard side.
Flip it, and fire it up again. This time the LED's were normal, but some flickers on the screen, then black. Humm.
Try the Daughter board, remove and re-insert, nothing. Try the second daughter board, same result.


Ok, tear everything out. Go right back to the motherboard stage.


I then decided to check all the jumpers, They LOOK correct, I have included photos here, because someone will correct me if I am wrong. I then check all resources on the internet.
At this time, I decided to put the internal terminators in on the motherboard, and terminate the SCSI cable with no drive. Thus, taking the hard drive and all SCSI out of the equation.
Power on and black screen again.
Could some corrosion got under the Paula and Denise chips? This was also another possible culprit, so I pulled the 2 chips. At first glance, they look just fine, but closer look with a magnifying glass shows a bit of green corrosion a few of the socket holes.
Oh, Great! I am not sure what I would do if I need to replace those sockets, as there is not a competent and cheap soldering guy for thousands of miles around that would be willing to do this in the next decade. I mean I can do sort of small battery hacks, but this is way out of my league. At this point, I am thinking of cutting my losses and selling this complete, but AS IS- not working.


But before we jump to that conclusion, we will clean out, the best we can, the green stuff. There is none on the motherboard itself, unless its hidden under the sockets.
On Amibay, there is another A3000 restoration thread by a user named AndyLandy, his problem was not so similar, but I followed what he did. After all, it could not make things worse.
I got the REALREMON juice out and put some in a bowl and popped both chips in for a bath. There was no actual green on the legs of the chips, but you can't be too careful.
I then swapped the sockets liberally with the lemon juice. This took the green shine right off. Moped up the excess with a paper towel, the swabbed the area with distilled water then rubbing Alcohol.
I then let the whole thing dry and air out. Then I grabbed the chips out of the bath, swabbed down the legs, wiped them with a paper towel then Distilled water and rubbing Alcohol.
That's where I left it for the night.

Ok, tear everything out. Go right back to the motherboard stage.


I then decided to check all the jumpers, They LOOK correct, I have included photos here, because someone will correct me if I am wrong. I then check all resources on the internet.
At this time, I decided to put the internal terminators in on the motherboard, and terminate the SCSI cable with no drive. Thus, taking the hard drive and all SCSI out of the equation.
Power on and black screen again.
Could some corrosion got under the Paula and Denise chips? This was also another possible culprit, so I pulled the 2 chips. At first glance, they look just fine, but closer look with a magnifying glass shows a bit of green corrosion a few of the socket holes.
Oh, Great! I am not sure what I would do if I need to replace those sockets, as there is not a competent and cheap soldering guy for thousands of miles around that would be willing to do this in the next decade. I mean I can do sort of small battery hacks, but this is way out of my league. At this point, I am thinking of cutting my losses and selling this complete, but AS IS-not working.


But before we jump to that conclusion,we will clean out, the best we can, the green stuff. There is none on the motherboard itself, unless its hidden under the sockets.
there is another A3000 restoration thread by a user named AndyLandy,his problem was not so similar, but I followed what he did. After all, it could not make things worse.
I got the REALREMON juice out and put some in a bowl and popped both chips in for a bath. There was no actual green on the legs of the chips, but you can't be too careful.
I then swapped the sockets liberally with the lemon juice. This took the green shine right off. Moped up the excess with a paper towel, the swabbed the area with distilled water then rubbing Alcohol.
I then let the whole thing dry and air out. Then I grabbed the chips out of the bath, swabbed down the legs,wiped them with a paper towel then Distilled water and rubbing Alcohol.
That's where I left it for the night.
 

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more pictures
 

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Hello,

your board look good and i am sure i have read two time the same post :)
Seriously, you can check the diode near the external SCSI plug (on the motherboard) and, about the VGA output, put down the switch and act with a isolated screwdriver on the trimmer capacitor on the motherboard between Denise and Amber, then, if you see a disturbed picture, act on the trimmer resistor put on the rear of the cabinet.

Regards
Stefano
 
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If the screen is black you have a trace/via problem. I have a stack of 3k's with the same problem. If she isn't getting even to post then it isn't corrosion or scsi issues.

I'm not an expert... That said the only way I know to fix it is start testing off the schematics and see if you can find it. If you have a friend that can xray the board to look for flaws it may help. Again I'm no expert in Amiga repair, but if she isn't posting and getting through the basic init your dealing with a low level issue with broken connections.

I hope you prove me wrong!!!
 
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Day 6
Success! Sort of, in an off handed sort of way.
Ok, I started the day by re-seating Paula and Denise.
I then went to turn it on and nothing,just a black screen. Ok, on to the check list again.
Most web sites say that a black screen,no video is a simple “Fix”, after all, this board was showing no signs of not booting, just no Video signal.
Possible culprit is one CIA chip- but wait, if a CIA chip was gone, the keyboard would show it. But the keyboard only blinked once which looked normal to me (I really never paid any attention to a Normal boot on a keyboard).
Vibros suggested to try tuning in the Amber chip from the pot at the back of the machine. I spent the next hour or so carefully turning that pot bit by bit. With no changes on the screen.
By this time I was almost ready to start swapping the CIA chips with the second Motherboard, when I decided for sh*ts and giggles, to “test” this board again. Now that I had memorized all the Jumpers, I then turned my attention back to the other board. Sure enough, one of the CPU jumpers was set to ext, and the clock was set to “Tick”. I grabbed 3 terminator packs and put them on, and set the floppy drive jumper to DF0.
I then plugged everything in and turned on the power.
First a green screen, then to Yellow,..OK... we have not just a black screen, but actual colors, that's a good sign..
Then I noticed that one little (or big) thing was missing... in my haste, I forgot to put in a daughter card. Turn everything off, insert the card and hold my breath.....
below is the picture that appeared on the screen.....
Ok, so I may have gone a bit nuts at this point....
Now, I have another big job of starting from scratch and transferring everything over to the other board..next time.




It's a good thing that this board did not sell when I had it for sale 2 weeks ago..:)
 

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Day 6
Success! Sort of, in an off handed sort of way.
Ok, I started the day by re-seating Paula and Denise.
I then went to turn it on and nothing,just a black screen. Ok, on to the check list again.
Most web sites say that a black screen,no video is a simple “Fix”, after all, this board was showing no signs of not booting, just no Video signal.
Possible culprit is one CIA chip- but wait, if a CIA chip was gone, the keyboard would show it. But the keyboard only blinked once which looked normal to me (I really never paid any attention to a Normal boot on a keyboard).
Vibros suggested to try tuning in the Amber chip from the pot at the back of the machine. I spent the next hour or so carefully turning that pot bit by bit. With no changes on the screen.
By this time I was almost ready to start swapping the CIA chips with the second Motherboard, when I decided for sh*ts and giggles, to “test” this board again. Now that I had memorized all the Jumpers, I then turned my attention back to the other board. Sure enough, one of the CPU jumpers was set to ext, and the clock was set to “Tick”. I grabbed 3 terminator packs and put them on, and set the floppy drive jumper to DF0.
I then plugged everything in and turned on the power.
First a green screen, then to Yellow,..OK... we have not just a black screen, but actual colors, that's a good sign..
Then I noticed that one little (or big) thing was missing... in my haste, I forgot to put in a daughter card. Turn everything off, insert the card and hold my breath.....
below is the picture that appeared on the screen.....
Ok, so I may have gone a bit nuts at this point....
Now, I have another big job of starting from scratch and transferring everything over to the other board..next time.




It's a good thing that this board did not sell when I had it for sale 2 weeks ago..:)


Awesome Glen... I should send you my board to win over... :)

Congrats and good luck with selling it! I hope I fair as well the the WE 040 that is in route:).
 
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