Miggy as ticking junk?

[mikele]

I feel really disappointed with my Amiga's lifespan. After over decade of using WinUAE decided to buy my first Amiga model - A600. It was March this year, powered it on like 5 times, because got A1200 in meantime. After getting chipram and fastram upgrades for "Junebug" it appeared that it has that nasty boot with CAPS LOCK on syndrom. It takes several seconds to even respond to reset key combination, then it boots fine from CF. After using it for some time it's impossible to reboot the system - all I get is black screen with caps lock on. I am 90% sure it's capacitors issue. Heard it's pain in the.. neck to replace them in this model

My ESCOM A1200 is probably next to bite the dust. So that questions the satisfaction of owning "the real thing" and the value of Amiga hardware, considering its prices. Is A500 more durable and easier to fix?

[john1979]

If you're not comfortable with recapping your 1200 just send it to amigakit to do. That way it's not such a big deal.

On the whole I found Amiga hardware to be fairly durable, try to just use your 1200 without thinking whether it will break tomorrow, you will get more pleasure from it that way.

If you want some unreliable C= hardware try the 1541 disk drive. I've had two break on me already. Horrible things.

[jimbob]

Yeah it's a bit tricky to do all those SMT caps if you've not done it before but worth getting it done to keep your machine alive. And, are you still using the same PC for WinUAE that you were using ten years ago? Maintenance free?

[Codetapper]

10 years ago? My A1200 was made in 1992. Who is still using a PC made in 1992? PCs die far quicker!

[s2325]

I think lifespan of old PC and Amiga is similar but people like to dump everything when power supply of their PC die, it's easier to change external Amiga power brick.

[john1979]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

10 years ago? My A1200 was made in 1992. Who is still using a PC made in 1992? PCs die far quicker!

My PC at work is around year 2000, still in daily use. It's one of those socket A ones too. For some reason a lot were built with terrible caps.

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

Who is still using a PC made in 1992? PCs die far quicker!

I was using a dual Pentium MMX 233MHz system as a fileserver until a year ago, or so. Switched it out, not due to performance, or reliability issues, but simply due to storage tech having changed. It was cheaper to build a S-ATA system then to continue using adapters and stuff. System was based on a Pre MMX era motherboard, a ASUS P54NP4, which i believe was in production around 1993... PC's doesn't die quicker, cheap electronics do. With the current PC market being geared towards making short-lived, low priced stuff rather then quality products, new stuff gets a shorter lifespan.

Originally Posted by john1979

For some reason a lot were built with terrible caps.

A few asian factories were pumping out "highend" capacitors to the market. Sadly, the electrolyte used was a bit of chemistry magic, and the recipe wasn't their own. Perhaps putting it overly blunt, someone stole the recipe, and got something wrong with the process when it comes to how it should be used, and the result was leaking capacitors that had a very short lifespan. There was quite a bit of noise about it at the time.

[amiman99]

Originally Posted by mikele

...My ESCOM A1200 is probably next to bite the dust...

I have Escom A1200 since 1995 or so.., it's been working fine since then.
I usually play with it few days a week and no CAP issues, I'm pretty sure Escom Amigas are better built.

[Damion]

Have a few ESCOM boards here with no visible cap leakage, yet. All of my C= 1200's, and 600 motherboards, had it to some degree or another, and were replaced. (Done oodles of 3640's for a friend, too.) In fact, I bought a few 600 boards as spares that were basically obliterated from the cap leakage.

The older models generally had good quality Japanese caps, from what I've seen. Not to say they shouldn't be replaced, but I've only done it as a preventative measure in the ones that were heavily expanded with accelerators, zorro cards, etc. Never had a dead A500 or A2000 motherboard from capacitors. A good A500 is still as reliable as they always were IMHO.

The SMD caps aren't too bad to do, anyone good at electronics repair should be able to order the parts and replace them easily. (I'm no expert and was able to do them perfectly, with a little practice!) There are quite a few around these parts who would gladly handle the task for you I'm sure.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by john1979

My PC at work is around year 2000, still in daily use. It's one of those socket A ones too. For some reason a lot were built with terrible caps.

My main PC is still a socket A. Though it's like one of those old warships thats had every scrap of timber replaced over the years. The way it is now, it would have been a monster back about 2003, haha, still fine for almost everything. I don't do serious programming or heavy video/image processing or play the latest games so I simply don't need the horespower. Once in a blue moon I want to use someting that requires SSE2 but that's it.

Paying £500 for an A600HD months before the A1200 came out was an early lesson in moores law for me, I am innoculated against early adoption and quite happy with old cheap hardware.

I'm still amazed that any microelectonics works at all. I mean these hairless apes, just a slice cleverer than me, can arrange matter just so, it's really incredible. But they are just like any other machine in this way, they will reveal their weak spots after time or neglect. The amiga chips might last centuries for all I know but the caps only a couple of decades.

[bdb]

I have a CBM 8032 with 2 sets of Dual (floppy) Drives, plus a 4022 printer; a CBM Colt PC II, a Vic-20, a couple of C64's plus a couple of C128D's and two A4000T's. They all work fine. The ticking junk is stuff poorly stored or badly put together (NiCd batteries, ageing caps, etc). The guys who designed them were brilliant, the ones who ran Commodore turned a diamond into fecal material.

[mikele]

oh quite a relief to read your comments about ESCOM A1200's decent quality and longer lifespan. It's funny how we take these old computers' working condition for granted after all those years.