A3000T resurrection

[CrashMidnick]

Hi folks,

I make this post to show you when someone has "gold fingers", everything is possible...

The story :

I bought an A3000T recently and it was in very poor condition. To be honest, I was more interested in the parts inside rather than the miggy itself taking into account the price I paid for it (I will not say anymore as price driving is not allowed here). Inside, I have found :

- CS MKIII
- Picasso II
- Impact vision 24
- Toccata
- Vlab motion

I asked the seller about the battery condition and he said : "it leaked a little but no damage on the motherboard". In fact he did not know what I was asking for as he really did not know about Amiga in general. The Amiga was not his computer (he did not want to tell me where he find it).

Now the pics :












As you can see there was dust everywhere !! I decided to clean it up near the battery and remove it. Now... the bad news :





As you can see on the pictures, many tracks have been eaten by the acid (we are talking for about 11 tracks and more damages)... Oh my god, how could it be !!!
Well I have not the skills required to repair this so I decided to bring it personaly to Cosmos (He said "ho la la !!!" when he saw the MB) and took his soldering iron for the next 2 days.

The acid went everywhere : inside the tracks, inside the FPU, under the Kickstart socket, under the motheboard, inside the motherboard itself !! ...

Cosmos decided to resolder every single track, to put wires inside holes to have contacts on both sides of the mother board. Wires were : 0.0799 mm (40AWG) !!! The tickness of a hair or something less. Pictures are better than words :







To finish the work he soldered a new FPU and a new battery :





He did put some hot glue on fragile tracks and around the battery.

Now we had to test the A3000T... Fingers crossed.... Result :



It boots !!

At home :



It was my A3000T story, hope you enjoyed it. I just want to say a BIG THANKS to Cosmos for fixing this beautiful motherboard and his work is... just amazing... Never saw that before.

What's next ?

I have to paint the case as there are lots of scratches... and to find another front plate as it is in very poor condition. If I cannot find one, I will paint it aswell but I will loose the A3000T logo

I will post some more photos next month.

Thanks for reading and do not forget : only Cosmos makes it possible

 

[Kawazu]

Just amazing work Cosmos
I cant understand how ppl have can have the patience and such a steady hand to do things like this.

Would love to see if you find a color that match the original color exactly. I have some deep scratches in mine to

 

[CrashMidnick]

Have a look here : http://cosmosamiga.blogspot.com/2010/12/boitier-a4000d-ii.html

I did paint the A4000 case of cosmos (and mine too). The colour is RAL 9001, quite closed to original commodore colour, even better in my opinion as it is satined.

 

[merlinkv]

Awesome job Cosmos :wooha: :wooha: :wooha:

You're a Master

 

[thgill]

Cosmos has the mad skillz.

 

[Buzzfuzz]

Nice to see an A3000T live again.
Amiga-Digital is also doing one, but the damage their is a bit more extensive.
It's still a bit early to tell, but I already have offered my 120V PSU with transformer.
The thing is, this one had 40.70 roms in them, a myth for the 3000T.
But we are investigating the roms, if their legit, than we'll work on an image of the rom.
Strange thing is that this was also an NTSC board, and the case has a green and red light and seems to be original, so no hacking we guess.

As for my 3000T, the one from this summer, this has had it's INT2 mod done recently, thanks to Amiga-Digital, so I'll be working on that one too.
Lot of stuff to do in my vacation time, which starts tomorrow afternoon.

 

[AndyLandy]

The thing is, this one had 40.70 roms in them, a myth for the 3000T.

There's a non-zero chance that those are just A4000T ROMs that have been shoved in the A3000T. They might even work, but you should probably seek out an official set of A3000 3.1 ROMs as they're likely to be more stable and actually support the hardware in the A3000T. Certainly, I don't know if the SCSI support is the same between the two ROM versions.

 

[Paul_s]

Cosmos should wear a cape when carrying out repairs

 

[r0jaws]

Very nice work indeed! That is the kind of job I love to see.
Awesome stuff Cosmos.

 

[ClassicA]

Thanks Doc

Thanks Doc

If I still using Amiga today (and not only UAE...), it's because I found someone like Cosmos

He took care of changing the capacitors, fixing or upgrading all that needed his fantastics skills (for very cheap considering the time spent)

Many Thanks "cher Docteur Cosmos"

 

[Cosmos]

If I still using Amiga today (and not only UAE...), it's because I found someone like Cosmos

He took care of changing the capacitors, fixing or upgrading all that needed his fantastics skills (for very cheap considering the time spent)

Many Thanks "cher Docteur Cosmos"

I still believe in Classic : that's why I spend a lot of time on them. I think we have do nothing on Classic (in software & hardware)...

I have a lot of imagination and ideas : cannot wait to realize !!

 

[nikos.rizos]

Great job Cosmos...

 

[Geraldine]

A Great Work Of Art

A Great Work Of Art

I can certainly vouch for Cosmos's work, my CS MkIII is still going strong!

He doesn't just simply fix things, he is an artist and an extremely talented one at that

Lovely Miggy you have there CrashMidnick

 

[Buzzfuzz]

No, they are real 3000 chips, but their is a bug in the scsi support.
Their going to be read anyway to see what has been done to them.

There's a non-zero chance that those are just A4000T ROMs that have been shoved in the A3000T. They might even work, but you should probably seek out an official set of A3000 3.1 ROMs as they're likely to be more stable and actually support the hardware in the A3000T. Certainly, I don't know if the SCSI support is the same between the two ROM versions.

 

[mfilos]

Beautiful work as always Cosmos mate.
Your soldering skillis are an art

Nice to see such a rare mobo surviving!

 

[AndyLandy]

No, they are real 3000 chips, but their is a bug in the scsi support.
Their going to be read anyway to see what has been done to them.

Weird! I thought 40.070 was only released for the A4000T. I'd be fascinated to hear what you find out about those ROMs and look forward to a Hardware Pr0n thread in the near future!

 

[Buzzfuzz]

It seems to be quite a myth yeah, but after digging on the internet, Amiga-Digital read that they actually exist.
This is site in French that also says the same thing:
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/chipsetamiga.php

Also here is a bit said about the 40.70 3000 roms.
http://wiki.classicamiga.com/Kickstart_Roms_Explained

Weird! I thought 40.070 was only released for the A4000T. I'd be fascinated to hear what you find out about those ROMs and look forward to a Hardware Pr0n thread in the near future!

 

[AndyLandy]

It seems to be quite a myth yeah, but after digging on the internet, Amiga-Digital read that they actually exist.
This is site in French that also says the same thing:
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/chipsetamiga.php

Also here is a bit said about the 40.70 3000 roms.
http://wiki.classicamiga.com/Kickstart_Roms_Explained

Weird! I thought 40.070 was only released for the A4000T. I'd be fascinated to hear what you find out about those ROMs and look forward to a Hardware Pr0n thread in the near future!

Blimey. The number of subtly different Kickstart releases out there is mind bendingly complex. My A3000 has a 40.068 set, but allegedly there's a 40.063 version and now I learn theere's a 40.070 as well! Thanks for those links.

 

[CrashMidnick]

Thanks for all your answers mates, I will post some more pictures very soon

 

[CrashMidnick]

It is a bit frozen here in winter so cannot remove the paint of the case as I am using acid products and they need to be used outside. I will wait until end of february for that.

What have been done since its first boot :

- I have changed every single capacitor on the motherboard
- I have connected an scsi-ide bridge to the internal SCSI port of the A3000T
- Configured a little 030 WB (sysinfo find the FPU ! I was a bit affraid by that as most of the repairs have been done around the FPU)
- Ordered some zip ram to have 16mb fastram (hope they will arrive soon) as I prefered to use the CSMKIII in my A4000D
- Fixed a SCSI CDROM drive (not connected for the moment, I need to find a 50pin ribbon cable extender)
- I have connected a Picasso II (not configured for the moment because I do not have Fast 32bit ram)
- I have connected an A2058 just to be able to play some WHDLOAD demos and games.


What I can say is that the system is 100% working. The only thing that I did not test is the CPU slot... I have only a 3640 which is overclocked and it does not boot (I think is like the A3000D). I am missing a 74F08 chip, maybe it is the reason as well.