another rusty A4000 restoration
- Thread starter lostrego
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Small update:
Well, some slow progress with this project, I want to share this, as I found it a bit strange.
I'm testing Various cleaning methods to wash and clean all zorro cards, so I tested cleaning with distilled water with my Xsurf, I've sprayed it generously with water and then brushing it with an old toothbrush and finally rinsed it generously with distilled water again.
I let it dry for a couple of days and then, when checked it, It came with this mess !!! :wooha:
Some kind of white filth residue (like sulphate or something alike) suddenly appeared, specially on the isa ethernet card. Thankfully It can be removed easily with IPA and again that toothbrush, but this weird thing intrigued me a lot. Perhaps I shoud avoid using water at all from now (even if it's distilled).
What I found strange is that much people use water for board cleaning, tap water and even dishwashers without this kind of problems at all. weird.
What do you think?
Perhaps It's some flux residue ?
Bye!
Well, some slow progress with this project, I want to share this, as I found it a bit strange.
I'm testing Various cleaning methods to wash and clean all zorro cards, so I tested cleaning with distilled water with my Xsurf, I've sprayed it generously with water and then brushing it with an old toothbrush and finally rinsed it generously with distilled water again.
I let it dry for a couple of days and then, when checked it, It came with this mess !!! :wooha:
Some kind of white filth residue (like sulphate or something alike) suddenly appeared, specially on the isa ethernet card. Thankfully It can be removed easily with IPA and again that toothbrush, but this weird thing intrigued me a lot. Perhaps I shoud avoid using water at all from now (even if it's distilled).
What I found strange is that much people use water for board cleaning, tap water and even dishwashers without this kind of problems at all. weird.
What do you think?
Perhaps It's some flux residue ?
Bye!
Nice machine!
The white residue sure looks like some impurities picked up or contained within the water. Maybe the original party that attempted the work used an improper type of solder or cleaning solution on the board. Some of the cleaners are not very friendly to certain types of boards.
The white residue sure looks like some impurities picked up or contained within the water. Maybe the original party that attempted the work used an improper type of solder or cleaning solution on the board. Some of the cleaners are not very friendly to certain types of boards.
Thanks, Brian!
Maybe, although I used distilled water I must admit that the vaporizer I've used Is one el cehapo chinese made vaporizer bottle, purchased at variety store for less than two euros.:roll:
And the container bottle of that thing is made from some terribly cheap and crappy tin can metal, my suspects are that this residue came from it. :blased:
Hi rkauer: I'd thought that too, but I found it strange because distilled water theorically must don't leave any residue (I think so, perhaps I'm wrong, long gone are that chemistry classes at high school
).However I've cleaned it with IPA the very same day and all is gone.
Looks perfect now.
Here goes another update of my (slow, I know) A4000 restoration project:
Once all mainboard reworks are ok and all zorro cards were all cleaned, now It's time to mess with the Zorro Daghuter Board or Zorro Riser Card, whatever you want to call it.
Well, this one (speaking about cards of this miggy) is the most ramshackled of all, with some scratches over the varnish on the rear side and even some copper corrosion.
Here is a closeup of one of the corrosion areas:
Well , taking in mind that I already have another -never used- spare riser (bought as a NOS part some years ago on the other bay) so, as I've nothing to loose, I decided to fix this and if something goes wrong, I'll have no worries at all.
Fisrt of all I removed all the old capacitors and them, following some wise advices at the AmiOracle section (thanks rkauer, and ZetrO), I scratched the old lacquer over the corroded areas and then give them some lemon treatment. 
Here is the result after treatment and cleaning of all the lemon juice:
As you can see the corrosion was only supeficial so It means that will be easier to fix, and yes if you look closer, that pic shows that I've forgot to scratch and treat two pins at the right, but this was done soon after, so no problem.
Then I've tested continuity and all seemed ok and, following the same advices told before, I've refreshed all the soldering on this areas.
When I re-soldered that pins, some excess solder lead runned over the exposed copper giving it an, at first, unwanted plating effect, but what at first I thought that was a mistake, turned out to be the best thing I could do, as the lead now covers all the copper and protects it better from moistures than lacquer does (some Beginner's luck here).
So here is a pic of the final result of this fixed area now, with new lacquer also:
Well , meanwhile and before applying new lacquer I've soldered new capacitors to it, I was not able to source those locally in Axial type form, so I've adapted those in more common Radial form (A.K.A. thru hole) just bending the rods to fit on their vias (just like I saw it somewhere, on Cosmos' Blog if I remember ok).
Here goes a pic of that area:
Summarizing it, here is the final result on the front side:
And a full view of the rear side with all things done also (note the shiny new lacquer):
And again, I Hope You'll like it, and thanks for watching!
Bye!
Once all mainboard reworks are ok and all zorro cards were all cleaned, now It's time to mess with the Zorro Daghuter Board or Zorro Riser Card, whatever you want to call it.
Well, this one (speaking about cards of this miggy) is the most ramshackled of all, with some scratches over the varnish on the rear side and even some copper corrosion.
Here is a closeup of one of the corrosion areas:
Well , taking in mind that I already have another -never used- spare riser (bought as a NOS part some years ago on the other bay) so, as I've nothing to loose, I decided to fix this and if something goes wrong, I'll have no worries at all.
Fisrt of all I removed all the old capacitors and them, following some wise advices at the AmiOracle section (thanks rkauer, and ZetrO
), I scratched the old lacquer over the corroded areas and then give them some lemon treatment. Here is the result after treatment and cleaning of all the lemon juice:
As you can see the corrosion was only supeficial so It means that will be easier to fix, and yes if you look closer, that pic shows that I've forgot to scratch and treat two pins at the right, but this was done soon after, so no problem.
Then I've tested continuity and all seemed ok and, following the same advices told before, I've refreshed all the soldering on this areas.
When I re-soldered that pins, some excess solder lead runned over the exposed copper giving it an, at first, unwanted plating effect, but what at first I thought that was a mistake, turned out to be the best thing I could do, as the lead now covers all the copper and protects it better from moistures than lacquer does (some Beginner's luck here).
So here is a pic of the final result of this fixed area now, with new lacquer also:
Well , meanwhile and before applying new lacquer I've soldered new capacitors to it, I was not able to source those locally in Axial type form, so I've adapted those in more common Radial form (A.K.A. thru hole) just bending the rods to fit on their vias (just like I saw it somewhere, on Cosmos' Blog if I remember ok).
Here goes a pic of that area:
Summarizing it, here is the final result on the front side:
And a full view of the rear side with all things done also (note the shiny new lacquer):
And again, I Hope You'll like it, and thanks for watching!
Bye!
Hi there, here goes another small update:
I've done some "peeling therapy" to my amiga In order to get the chassis prepared to be painted, as I want to preserve Its original look as accurately as I can, so I've removed Its stickers in the way as Merlin suggested me on another thread to preserve them and so re-attach them later.
Armed with a good hairdryer, an old ordinary knife with a blunt blade and lots of patience I started this removal procedure.
Before this:
And after ten minutes I came with this:
Removed all of them them just perfectly!
, even the smaller paper based one with that bar code, and they came off easier that I've supposed to, seems that a good hairdryer and taking It with lots of care are the keys for it.
So another step foward to the final result is done.
As an anecdote and to show you the rusty state of that chassis, here goes a sample that shows perfectly what once on glorious days was and how it is now.
Now as days are getting warmer and dryer Is time to consider doing some paint job to that beast! lets see.
Thats all for today folks, more to come.
Bye!
I've done some "peeling therapy"
to my amiga In order to get the chassis prepared to be painted, as I want to preserve Its original look as accurately as I can, so I've removed Its stickers in the way as Merlin suggested me on another thread to preserve them and so re-attach them later.Armed with a good hairdryer, an old ordinary knife with a blunt blade and lots of patience I started this removal procedure.
Before this:
And after ten minutes I came with this:
Removed all of them them just perfectly!
, even the smaller paper based one with that bar code, and they came off easier that I've supposed to, seems that a good hairdryer and taking It with lots of care are the keys for it. So another step foward to the final result is done.
As an anecdote and to show you the rusty state of that chassis, here goes a sample that shows perfectly what once on glorious days was and how it is now.
Now as days are getting warmer and dryer Is time to consider doing some paint job to that beast! lets see.
Thats all for today folks, more to come.
Bye!
Here goes another small update after being stuck for a while with this project, which is taking longer than desirable and is also becoming a bit painful...
Remeber those rust issues on the chasis? well, finally after considering several options to solve it I decided to treat that rust by using a tannic product made at my country called funnily enough "Oxi...no".
So after a bit of sanding the metal and treating rust with the above metioned product (sorry but no pics of this initial stage) I got a nice base to start painting with only black stains where once were those annoying red rusty areas.
So surface got ready to prime and primed It with a pair of coats of Zinc primer:
A perfect result, even more if you consider that the last (and the only one) spray paint work done by me was like 17 years ago on a bike...
Things where looking that good, with no drop runnings, no faults, nothing, just perfect!, but this perfectness was only a warning that the ominous things were just coming...
After letting it dry for some days and awesomed with my good results at this stage I continued with the paint work...
I used silver color metallic paint also on spray but the result was this:
Well, a bit of a FAIL here
, and this is present on virtually the entire surface except some few spots were the paint surface seems more or less correct...
As seems this is called "the chalking" paint defect and is well know on the world of the paint defects, the reason for that seems that I applied coats moving faster than supposed to.
oh:
So time to sort this mess, lets hope that some carefull sanding of the defective surface to flatten it, with fine grit sand paper (P800 or some such), and a repaint will work ok, so warning, n00b painter ahead again!
Continues to be funny, to say that, that things that are supposed to be harder to the Joe Average (like soldering, component replacing and that) are a lot easier for me to do than those DIY painful paint works.
Bye.
Remeber those rust issues on the chasis? well, finally after considering several options to solve it I decided to treat that rust by using a tannic product made at my country called funnily enough "Oxi...no".
So after a bit of sanding the metal and treating rust with the above metioned product (sorry but no pics of this initial stage) I got a nice base to start painting with only black stains where once were those annoying red rusty areas.
So surface got ready to prime and primed It with a pair of coats of Zinc primer:
A perfect result, even more if you consider that the last (and the only one) spray paint work done by me was like 17 years ago on a bike...
Things where looking that good, with no drop runnings, no faults, nothing, just perfect!, but this perfectness was only a warning that the ominous things were just coming...
After letting it dry for some days and awesomed with my good results at this stage I continued with the paint work...
I used silver color metallic paint also on spray but the result was this:
Well, a bit of a FAIL here
, and this is present on virtually the entire surface except some few spots were the paint surface seems more or less correct...As seems this is called "the chalking" paint defect and is well know on the world of the paint defects, the reason for that seems that I applied coats moving faster than supposed to.
oh:So time to sort this mess, lets hope that some carefull sanding of the defective surface to flatten it, with fine grit sand paper (P800 or some such), and a repaint will work ok, so warning, n00b painter ahead again!
Continues to be funny, to say that, that things that are supposed to be harder to the Joe Average (like soldering, component replacing and that) are a lot easier for me to do than those DIY painful paint works.
Bye.
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Moving too fast won't normally create such an effect. Spraying too close to the surface and too slowly will. At least 15 cms from the object at all times and it is always best to do a test paint on something else you are not worried about first to check the results.
Thanks for the hints Harrison, you are ok, maybe I was too close, at least on part of it, for sure lack of experience and patience are not the best combination fot this kind of works.
However I managed to wet sand the defective layer with grit P800 without reaching or damaging the primer coats, and now seems a correct surface to apply a new paint job.
Thing that I'll do when I have enough time to take it with more care and thinking twice every step.
I Hope It will be done ok this time.
Done the painting rework, looks much better now, only a pair of drop runs and minor faults, not perfect but good enough for me (sorry, no pics ATM).
This time that omnious "sand" alike defect on paint apeared again but in a lot less quantity and only on some small areas.:dry:
But I discovered that this defect can be corrected on the fly, just a matter of waiting some minutes until the paint gets dry to the touch but not too dry to stick those grains, then rub it with a soft cloth and these annoying grains come off easily.
Well, paint is curing now, next week I'll add two or three coats of lacquer and I hope that this job gets done.
The day of reasembly the mobo, all boards and finally get this A4000 running on its former glory is getting closer, at last!
PD: Next time I'll take it to a professional paint shop...
This time that omnious "sand" alike defect on paint apeared again but in a lot less quantity and only on some small areas.:dry:
But I discovered that this defect can be corrected on the fly, just a matter of waiting some minutes until the paint gets dry to the touch but not too dry to stick those grains, then rub it with a soft cloth and these annoying grains come off easily.
Well, paint is curing now, next week I'll add two or three coats of lacquer and I hope that this job gets done.
The day of reasembly the mobo, all boards and finally get this A4000 running on its former glory is getting closer, at last!
PD: Next time I'll take it to a professional paint shop...
Anothe quick update:
Paint Work if finished by now:
And:
Well, It took a lot of elbow grease to get done but final result looks more or less correct, perhaps this is not the best paint job arround the globe, that's for sure but keep in mind that the main purpose was to stop, cure an prevent further rusting rather than aesthetics.
At this point I'll take a two weeks holydays so I will stop this project during this time, but on this slow project several things have to be done like:
- Full recap of the original PSU (a must, as it seldomly refuses to start properly).
- Rust treatment and painting of the PSU case (oh no, those things again...) plus improving its air flow with some metal rework.
- Replacing fans with quieter ones
- Re-lacquering of the A4000's mobo and all cards.
- Replacing the rev.1 060 by a cooler rev.6 060 (mask 71E41J).
- Remove that ugly black ink from the front fascia a do some retrobrite treatment of all plastics.
And some other things such perhaps a recap of the toccata (is a really old card by now, near to 18 years old) and adding a CF reader or so.
So I promise that next updates will have more interesting pr0n than painting a piece of old iron boring drama.
See you, hope you like it.
Bye!.
Paint Work if finished by now:
And:
Well, It took a lot of elbow grease to get done but final result looks more or less correct, perhaps this is not the best paint job arround the globe, that's for sure but keep in mind that the main purpose was to stop, cure an prevent further rusting rather than aesthetics.
At this point I'll take a two weeks holydays so I will stop this project during this time, but on this slow project several things have to be done like:
- Full recap of the original PSU (a must, as it seldomly refuses to start properly).
- Rust treatment and painting of the PSU case (oh no, those things again...) plus improving its air flow with some metal rework.
- Replacing fans with quieter ones
- Re-lacquering of the A4000's mobo and all cards.
- Replacing the rev.1 060 by a cooler rev.6 060 (mask 71E41J).
- Remove that ugly black ink from the front fascia a do some retrobrite treatment of all plastics.
And some other things such perhaps a recap of the toccata (is a really old card by now, near to 18 years old) and adding a CF reader or so.
So I promise that next updates will have more interesting pr0n than painting a piece of old iron boring drama.
See you, hope you like it.
Bye!.
Hi to all again.
After a looong time with no progress at all with this project I'll post anothe small update, sorry for the slowliness but I'm currently involved in doing repairs, furniture shopping and so to what it would be my future home and this is a vast time consuming duty (and for sure a good headache maker too).
This time I come with a 20 minute job which consist In give my CS MKII a new fresh 060
So Let's start with this:
As you can notice this is a normal Cyberstorm MKII accelerator, this one came as 040/40 from factory, later (8 years ago or so) was upgraded to 060.
As a curiosity just notice that the black heatsink on that 060 came from and old A3640 card that I no longer have.
And here is the matter of this quick job:
An old and trusty revision 1 68060, nothing wrong with it really, as it ran fine overclocked to 66 Mhz since I got it.
Oh well, this one have a little "problem" with labeling, as it is labeled as an EC version and the fact is that it is a full 060, hence the reason of that marker pen spot over the EC letters.
But as those rev 1 060s run hotter and draw more power than modern ones I got my hands on one of these:
A mint revision 6 060 with 71e41J mask bought on the evil bay some months ago from one of those chinese used IC suppliers, probably scrapped from an old board from a Telco switch, PBX or some such.
Thankfully This 060 came in perfect shape, with no bent pins neither any other issue rather than some black paste over its surface, but this was quite easy to remove:
And also I've done some cleanup to the Cyberstorm itself, incredibly there was a lot of dust and grime inside the socket! what the f...
Well having this I decided to use the original golden heatsink that came with the Cyberstorm as seems better that the black one from the A3640, this was still glued to the old 040 that came with it (I kept it all this years):
And then with some silver heat compound and a pair of cyanocrilate glue droplets on two opposite corners to stick the heatsink firmly, ended with this result:
Well, that's it, It's running perfect and in fact it runs much cooler to the touch now, hardly noticeable when the cpu is idle.
Goodbye.
After a looong time with no progress at all with this project I'll post anothe small update, sorry for the slowliness but I'm currently involved in doing repairs, furniture shopping and so to what it would be my future home and this is a vast time consuming duty (and for sure a good headache maker too
). This time I come with a 20 minute job which consist In give my CS MKII a new fresh 060
So Let's start with this:
As you can notice this is a normal Cyberstorm MKII accelerator, this one came as 040/40 from factory, later (8 years ago or so) was upgraded to 060.
As a curiosity just notice that the black heatsink on that 060 came from and old A3640 card that I no longer have.
And here is the matter of this quick job:
An old and trusty revision 1 68060, nothing wrong with it really, as it ran fine overclocked to 66 Mhz since I got it.
Oh well, this one have a little "problem" with labeling, as it is labeled as an EC version and the fact is that it is a full 060, hence the reason of that marker pen spot over the EC letters.
But as those rev 1 060s run hotter and draw more power than modern ones I got my hands on one of these:
A mint revision 6 060 with 71e41J mask bought on the evil bay some months ago from one of those chinese used IC suppliers, probably scrapped from an old board from a Telco switch, PBX or some such.
Thankfully This 060 came in perfect shape, with no bent pins neither any other issue rather than some black paste over its surface, but this was quite easy to remove:
And also I've done some cleanup to the Cyberstorm itself, incredibly there was a lot of dust and grime inside the socket! what the f...
Well having this I decided to use the original golden heatsink that came with the Cyberstorm as seems better that the black one from the A3640, this was still glued to the old 040 that came with it (I kept it all this years):
And then with some silver heat compound and a pair of cyanocrilate glue droplets on two opposite corners to stick the heatsink firmly, ended with this result:
Well, that's it, It's running perfect and in fact it runs much cooler to the touch now, hardly noticeable when the cpu is idle.
Goodbye.
