another rusty A4000 restoration

[rkauer]

The only odd thing on that 060 is the labelling: the latest 060 is MC68060RC50, not XC.

Anyway, congratulations! This is an awesome accelerator and will provide much more years of happiness to your Amiga and yourself.

 

[D.B]

but the mask of 71e41J means it is the last revision of 060 which was the coolest running 060 ever manufactured. Maybe they changed thier silk screening as some point of the 71e41J life cycle?

Great resoration work too. That chassis looks lovely.

 

[lostrego]

The only odd thing on that 060 is the labelling: the latest 060 is MC68060RC50, not XC.

Anyway, congratulations! This is an awesome accelerator and will provide much more years of happiness to your Amiga and yourself.

Thanks again rkauer , Well I'm not much into the 68060 labelling, in fact I dontbetwe know what are the real differences or implications between XC and MC designations, btw I didn't found it extrange as as I recall all 040s and 060s that I've seen were labeled as XC, however what seems clear is that it's a true rev. 6. as reported by Scout and seems to run a lot cooler under load, well at least to the touch, as I haven't any adequate measurement equipment as an IR thermometer.

Does XC mean some kind of handicap ?

but the mask of 71e41J means it is the last revision of 060 which was the coolest running 060 ever manufactured. Maybe they changed thier silk screening as some point of the 71e41J life cycle?

Great resoration work too. That chassis looks lovely.

Thanks D.B, It took some PITA undo and redo work (wet sandpaper is your friend ) to get that result, that's the advantange of being a (very) slow going project, done when I have a bit of spare time here and there, so I can do it camly.

---------- Post added at 19:22 ---------- Previous post was at 18:14 ----------

Well after a bit googling I've found answers to that questions, just take look to this 1999 product change notice from freescale about E41J Mask introduction and such:

http://www.freescale.com/files/shared/doc/pcn/945048375992collateral.html

As stated:

"Samples are available under part number XC68060RC50C. Samples will be limited to 10 Per Customer. To order samples, please contact your local Motorola Sales Office."

Well, seems that the very first batches of the E41J masked 060s were sold as Sample parts and got XC labelling prior to the "maistream" E41J mask MC ones, also stated here that the 68060 got its first designation as MC product line just under this E41J mask.

Well, it seems that I've one of a few "XC under E41J mask 060es" here, perhaps it may become some kind of a collector's edition, lol .

Bye.

 

[lostrego]

Hi all again.

After another long break with this project it was getting time to some update so here goes a monday update with some pr0n taken while I was half asleep (mondays kill me).

Well, I was running my A4000 all this past two months in a clumshy case-chassis-less manner so its whas getting time to take a determination and start to get this old pig going again.

So first, while I was assembling all together, noticed an ancient factory defect, of wich I was unaware during all those years (pic taken wit a "super plant" mode of a new camera ):

Those protuding pins from the audio conectors in fact impeded the mobo to seat properly, curious thing that I didn't noticed it until now, but nothing that a pair of ye-olde cutting pliers can't solve (another pic with super plant-slightly out of focus mode):

So once that issue got solved and taking it apart, there weren't more problems. Now a pic the 4000 itself all assembled with a new Ni-MH battery on it:

Well, and the are some nice goods waiting to get back into it:

Well, things are taking shape at last!:

Well, al least is looking a lot nicer than its previous state, isn't it ?

Not fired up yet since the assemby, so let's cross fingers an lets hope that none of those temperamental old machinery related isuess arose.

Next step will be a complete overhaul of the PSU (just waiting to some spares to arrive) and its case (oh noes! again removing rust, painting and all that! ).

Bye.

 

[fitzsteve]

Very nice indeed & great setup

 

[lostrego]

@fitzsteve

Thanks again

Actually it fired up, well it wasn't without a bit of previous panic moments, as at a first chance It booted on dark grey screen and nothing else, but after shaking the zorro riser and the CS a bit (the magic Amiga 4000 get it going, piece of sh**! touch) actually got it back to life and now is working like a charm.

 

[lostrego]

Another update, this one nearly costs me a faint .

Well, while I was happy with the above mentioned assembly, everything seemed perfect, The amiga saw all zorro boards on early startup and all was working ok and happy while I tested it on my old 1084S monitor, the ethernet worked ok, the picasso driver started ok, its screen modes where shown etc...

But whn I hooked one TFT monitor to the picasso's VGA output the problems arose...

First, and old "friend" of mine that I suppoused to be gone after all the cleaning and caps renewal: The native output thru the flicker fixer looked screwed, with jumping image, blinking colors and such, this behaviour was with this machine since I've got a picasso IV, usually solved with a dose of black magic that some of this old machines get us used to.

So after some black magic tinkering (mainly shaking the picasso a bit on this area ) I've got a stable picture under the FF (belive me, this procedure must to be done with this particular 4000 since more than a decade).

First issue more or less solved but this was not the end, no, whatever it could be it couldn't be on the easy way with this 4000.

Second: Every time I tried to launch an screen under a picasso mode, instead a nice RTG mode screen with loads of colors and all I got is this result:

Funny, isn't it?

This time there was no black magic, nor tinkering, neither shaking that cured this issue, tried almost everything, reseating the the picasso, also reseating the cybestorm and no results, at this point I was thinking that I've fried this picasso IV, ending with a card with no major use and life left than be one of the biggest flicker fixers know to man.
veractor:


I've also got dark thoughts and fears of doom, dryed solders and me facing with re-soldering 100 pin conectors (perhaps this was a motherboard conectors to the riser problem, who knows), and all that.

But when I was thinking on to how overcome this problem (yes, mainly looking in the sales forum for another picasso IV ) I recalled that I've got one spare daughterboard, bought long ago as a NOS spare on the other bay and then never used (remember, Picassos IVs an this 4000 never meet well, so that time I thinked about this as a possible solution). At this point and having nothing to loose I've decided to give it a try:


The NOS daughterboard is the one behind with those lovely NOS capacitors :

And fitted the picasso there (it costed me an arm and a leg as connectors were really tight):

So lets start this POS again, launch WB on a RTG screen mode and see what happens... and voilá:

And:

So now everything including also the native output thru the FF is stable and working 100% !!!

I think that this just deserves a big int:

Hope you liked this drama see you.

 

[salaxi54]

Splendid! We thank thee for the nice pics!

 

[BLTCON0]

The drama was good, the happy end was even better

 

[D.B]

@ lostrego

Real Amiga hardware on the ZORRO side. I love the way you resolved your problems on this side of things & you have just about the perfect setup for a Top A4KD without Elbox being involved.
Just hoof a CSMKIII in there & it's the Mutt's nut's for a pimped out ZORRO box.

fftopic: but....

If you want OS4, go buy those rip off how old PC based things that run it. Classic OS4/4.1 is not right & never will be. It's nice to see the older hardware still being supported, but the Emulation of 060 based programs is utter rubbish from my experiences. If you want to play Doom or Quake, go buy a DOS based 486 thing for peanuts, rather than huge £600+ events for a PPC card, that the 486 would cost for a few drinks. :dry:

The Die Hard amongst us will always want to have the real thing of course.

Wicked posts on this thread from yourself too. You have my sincere admiration & I just voted this thread "Excellent" to endorse the fact. :nod:

A full restoration project, with diverse issues & a final resolute finale. Simply stunning and a credit to you.

@ Mods

Does anyone feel it deserves a Sticky, perhaps with a thread Title Enhancement to reflect the oustanding acomplishment herein?

 

[lostrego]

@salaxi54 & @BLTCON0

Thanks for support!

@D.B

Thanks also for your kind words! , and about that you say, well my main purpouse with this project was making some justice to this A4000 as I don't cared very much about its state during those last years, but it stills there everytime the Amiga's addiction abstinence syndrome come .

Even considering its happy days of it as one of my main workhorse computers are gone (it was its role at least until 2005) rather than withdrawn my interest on it I've found myself still using it with quite regularity (powered on at least once a week, even now), so I decided than it earned its own reward by being there along all those years.

Also watching this forum and some blogs around of what was actually people doing with their amigas encouraged me to take a determination and start this project with a goal to give it the same healthy status it had on its glory days.

For the zorro and that, I always liked the classic side of the amiga so making it a pimped zorro box is also my goal.

Also say that I was never a big fan of PPCs (but I respect the people who still have and use it), when those cards where launch in the late 90s I found them expensive for the use you could give to them (remember those early PPC days with nothing more than some optimized small utilities like archivers and so on?).

Then in early past decade when PPCs were becoming more useful I simply had not the money to spend on one of these, and later by 2004 or so when I had enough money, my interest on amiga in general was declining (say no real PPC OS yet) plus a growing feeling of being a bit upset with amigas in general (and I consider that I hold there for a quite long time, much ex-amiga users that I know just being upset and withdrawn their machines in the late 90s).

Nowadays I recognice ther was much effort behind OS4 and Morphos and I'll like to give them a try but as you said paying those prices for a processor that has not more juice than a Pentium-II clunker is not a real useful option (at least not for me), I'd rather go towards more "modern" hardware like the x1000 and so on .

For sure Its nice to tell "hey I can run a 7 years old lo-res divx movie on that 18 years old computer" but sadly one have to be realistic on what spends his money.

With this I do not want to start a war (PPC vs. m68k users ), far for it, as I said I respect the huge efforts done by the PPC comunity side to keep them running and even today I still looking to them with a bit of healthy envy .



And well , this is no the end, there is a lot of work to be done so stay tuned

 

[lostrego]

Hi there amibayers, I'm back again with this never ending 4000 story.

Do you remember the first post on this thread and the pics of the PSU, didn't you ?

Well, todays post is about that PSU mess, if you ask me for a title for this post I'll call it:

THE HORROR, THE HORROR !!!


Well finally I got the enough courage to star the PSU overhaul, as I was letting that job by the "I'll do it tomorrow" way of not doing the things that I've to do. Lets star with some pics:

A short introduction, as you look in that picture you will probably say "hey it was not in that wrong shape after all" a 4.94 Volts on the +5V line with the amiga under load and all the zorro cards plugged is quite good for a nearly 20 years old PSU, but that was not that easy, as this PSU has some strange behavior (I blame cold solder joints for that) of ramdomly getting very obstinate to power ON, say you press the switch , a short pulse of power comes an then nothing, some times I've to press the switch on an off up to 20 times to start it.

The most weird thing of this is that behavior happens only on humid days, on dryer ones everything starts up at the first try.

Sometimes, when I want to turn on this 4000 I feel like trying to start a 30 years old car on a cold day with a clogged carburetor.

So time to mend it up, see below.

The horror itself:

So lets open it and see what's in there (nothing good for sure):

If you already think that it is a mouse nest, whait and see this other view:

Creepy, isn't it ?

So for sure this board is shouting for a good shower, and here it comes:

Well, the shower has no the enough pressure to remove all the sticky goo, so the next step a good bath under the tap:

Well at this point I poured it after with IPA all around to remove part of the water an then once the IPA got dry I dryed it with a hairdryer, now I'll let it for some days to finally dry all over (mind that I'm playing with 220V AC cicuitry so a good several days dryout is not a bad idea here).

After all I'll replace all the caps with good quality panasonic couterparts , solder refreshing and do some cabling renewal.

And meanwhile I'll have to fix its housing, the horror again:

Yes, Rust, again... :double:doubleicard

Hope you liked it, more to come someday.

 

[sjwaller]

Really liking this thread ... keep up with the great work ... it is inspiring

 

[lostrego]

Really liking this thread ... keep up with the great work ... it is inspiring

Thanks mate

I've almost finished the re-capping on the PSU and have done some fixes on the PCB (fixing a broken via/track on it and replacing some screwed components) , hope this night I'll able to do a first turn-on and do some testing with it it.

Also this afternoon I've done some works on the PSU cabinet, kind of a boring task like sanding it and then applying a first hand of rust treatment.

I'm quite tired now, some times I feel like I'm building it from scratch , hope next week I can manage to get all done.

After that there only will be left to do only some cosmetic things on it like doing retrobright and so on.

 

[lostrego]

Well after sourcing the PSU capacitors and after dealing with some damaged tracks an one broken via, i.e. a capacitor was barely sitting one of its legs on air, is surprising that it even was able to function, I finished the rework on it now.

For testing purposes I attached teporally a molex cable and plugged an old sacrificeable hard disk on it (these PSUs do need to have some load to start working) :

So I pushed the on button expecting some huge BLAM! and fireworks and not!

A success!

Look a those shiny new Panasonic caps!

However I feel a bit upset with the results as the volt readings were a bit low.

4.95 - 4.96 volts on the +5V line which is quite ok but expected something closer to 5 (considering the light load that a bare hard disk is)

11.38V on the +12V line, well I do not care so much about that measure as the +12V is only used for powering motors, fans and such so it is not as important as an strong +5V line.

Well that's all for today, sorry for no more decent pics but I've not around the camera that I used to take pics with, this time I used an older one that is worse for closeups and macro shots.

The project's end is becoming closer.

 

[lostrego]

Still going...

Some PSU cabinet rework pics (sorry, quite bad quality pics this time, a mix from phone cam & old poor digital camera icard).

After sanding, further cleaning and applying anti-rust product:

After 3 coats of primer, note that Zinc based primer is used in this project, remember that I'm dealing with rust, thing that I'll never want to see it again on my beloved 4000, not until at least twenty years from now or so. :dry: :

After all of the above I added a pair of coats of plain grey paint and Voila:

A bit better now, isn't it ? hehe.


The fan added there is a SanAce which claims epic air flow and low noise, well, next time I'll see if this claim is true, meanwhile the cabinet is hollow, that's for another update .


See you next time.

 

[lostrego]

Hi again, I've some updates:

Now I've finished the rework of the PSU and here are the results:

I have to say that while doing some test before plugging it to the amiga I've suffered from some panic moments due to a misbelief of me assuming that what really is the PWR_GOOD signal was a -5V rail but not so...

:deadhorse


Well, once I ruled out my mistake and once checked again that everything was perfect I decided to test it today and... :

IT'S ALIVE!!!


int:


PS: Also you can have a look now at the horrible old kitchen from my new home, sweet home.

 

[jamiem]

Really loving this thread .

I can't believe how good its looking already, desperate to see how your A4000 looks once it's finished.

Can i ask what colour of paint you used on the case and PSU? It looks more grey than silver? I want to paint one of my cases but I'm worried that it'll come out too silver, your's looks just perfect!

 

[lostrego]

@jamiem: thanks!

Well hard to tell the exact paints used as I've not them around, I'll have access to them tomorrow and I'll list them here (also their RAL codes if available).

Mostly they were from the CRC brand for the chassis and some local dealer own brand for the PSU itself.

I Have to say that for the PSU it was a plain gray paint, on some pics it looks like some silver hue but actually isn't.

And for the chassis I think that its good looks were purely accidental, as the first coats were silver paint but I had to correct some unwanted dust deffect (overspray mistakes I think) by sanding it and then redo with anorher coat of more plain grey paint, so the final result It's like a grey paint but with a silver translucent touch, quite nice I think, but was more like a beginner's luck than any intentional method.

For the chassis It helped also a lot for a good result finnishing it with a coat of clearcoat.

Hope it helps.

 

[Amstrad]

Awesome work:yourock: