koshman
Member
Hi,
I'm putting together a nice A500+. Got a trapdoor expansion to 2MB Chip, TF536 with a CF card reader, 3.2.1 ROMs etc.
The board itself I obtained relatively recently and it seemed to work fine on brief testing when I got it. Only later I found out it had very weak and staticky audio so my first thought was caps needed replacing.
Because I only had a bit of time I did the bare minimum and replaced five caps around the audio connectors. I tested afterwards and yes the audio was back to normal volume levels and crystal clear and I was happy.
But later when I had more time for a proper test I found the machine was unstable - typically it worked fine for about 5 minutes (or 1 demo) and then I got error. It wouldn't boot back up after reboot and even turning off and on again did not work. If I let it sit for 15-20 minutes it would boot up and behave the same as before - 1 demo, error etc.
After trying a few days later on top of the instability the video output started turning yellow while running, then back to normal, yellow again etc., like color cycling.
My plan now is to finish the recap and hope that will fix it. But because I haven't seen the issues prior to the partial recap it makes me wonder if I screwed something up when I was working on it - I'm pretty bad at soldering though it is quite difficult to break anything when just changing through the hole caps. I'm guessing I might have damaged one of the old caps on the verge of dying already while handling the board and just accelerated its expiration...
The board had the barrel battery replaced for coin cell prior to my purchase and some damage is visible on the PCB, my conclusion (and wishful thinking) is that it's just cosmetic...
Do you have any tips? I guess I'm just nervous finishing the recap might not solve this...
The machine runs on a new PSU (I tried 2), uses regular RGB out, TF536, ROMs 3.2.1, boots off a CF to OS 3.2.1. Also I currently don't have 030 library installed which I understand may cause some instability, but I don't think it would behave this way.
Thank you!
I'm putting together a nice A500+. Got a trapdoor expansion to 2MB Chip, TF536 with a CF card reader, 3.2.1 ROMs etc.
The board itself I obtained relatively recently and it seemed to work fine on brief testing when I got it. Only later I found out it had very weak and staticky audio so my first thought was caps needed replacing.
Because I only had a bit of time I did the bare minimum and replaced five caps around the audio connectors. I tested afterwards and yes the audio was back to normal volume levels and crystal clear and I was happy.
But later when I had more time for a proper test I found the machine was unstable - typically it worked fine for about 5 minutes (or 1 demo) and then I got error. It wouldn't boot back up after reboot and even turning off and on again did not work. If I let it sit for 15-20 minutes it would boot up and behave the same as before - 1 demo, error etc.
After trying a few days later on top of the instability the video output started turning yellow while running, then back to normal, yellow again etc., like color cycling.
My plan now is to finish the recap and hope that will fix it. But because I haven't seen the issues prior to the partial recap it makes me wonder if I screwed something up when I was working on it - I'm pretty bad at soldering though it is quite difficult to break anything when just changing through the hole caps. I'm guessing I might have damaged one of the old caps on the verge of dying already while handling the board and just accelerated its expiration...
The board had the barrel battery replaced for coin cell prior to my purchase and some damage is visible on the PCB, my conclusion (and wishful thinking) is that it's just cosmetic...
Do you have any tips? I guess I'm just nervous finishing the recap might not solve this...
The machine runs on a new PSU (I tried 2), uses regular RGB out, TF536, ROMs 3.2.1, boots off a CF to OS 3.2.1. Also I currently don't have 030 library installed which I understand may cause some instability, but I don't think it would behave this way.
Thank you!
