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.
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.