Is Vesalia for real?

[Geraldine]

Hi there Amiga folks!
This is my very first post, so hello to you all! I must say, this looks like a very busy forum, which is good!

The title of my thread may seem a little strange, but is this German company Vesalia for real, as in, do they actually exist? Are they a good reliable outfit? The reason I ask what might be such a stupid question is, that after a long time in storage, I want to resurrect my good old A4000 desktop, but it has a burned out '060 on it's Cyberstorm Mk3 board. Also, I want to upgrade my 4000 with 3.1 ROMs and OS3.9. Anyways I have repeatedly emailed Vesalia about a new 060 chip and the ROMs and OS and got no reply. So has anyone bought anything off them recently? I just want to be sure they are still trading before sending for these items.

Also while I am here, does anyone know someplace in the UK who are quite handy with a soldering iron? Gonna need to get a new 060 fitted on the the Cyberstrom and I am a bit afraid to try it myself!

Any advice would be welcome, thanks!

Geraldine

[cosmicfrog]

yes they are for real

good luck with the rom as I think they are all gone

[prowler]

Hi Geraldine, and welcome to EAB!

I can confirm that Vesalia are very much alive and trading and are very nice people to do business with.

If you order from them and pay by PayPal, you will not have to make payment straight away. They send you an invoice by email, which confirms what they have in stock and the full price including shipping to the UK.

If any item is out of stock, for example because another customer just beat you to the last remaining item (and that has happened to me!), they will let you know when they are expecting new stock to arrive.

When you receive the invoice, you still have a chance to amend your order by deleting items or requesting that other items be added. Then they will send another invoice until everything is as you want it.

Their English is excellent; you won't need to speak German, but they won't mind at all if you do.

I have not tried emailing them without actually discussing an order as I have described, but I have always found them very helpful, and any promises they make regarding securing further stock can be trusted.

[cosmicfrog]

Now that you have found the right place to be, perhapse some ppl round here can sort that 060 out for you

[Geraldine]

Hi
Thank you very much for the reply. That puts my mind at rest at least. As for the ROMs, I can only hope. But why don't they reply to emails? If they can't read english, cant they use a Google translate instead? Oh well here goes! Okay..... thats all the stuff ordered. Looking forward to playing Naplam again after 10 or so years. Now keeping everything crossed!

[rkauer]

Amigakit (UK) is nearest to you and they have some A4000T ROM chips available. You just need to place the Workbench.library on the Workbench's LIBS: drawer and you are sorted.

I also strongly recommend you to check the barrel battery inside the 4000: they leak and can destroy the motherboard. Remove it as soon as possible.

BTW: welcome to EAB!

Oh, and another hint: www.amibay.com is UK based and the site is a buy/sell site and those ROM appears there very often.

[Geraldine]

Hi rkauer
Thanks for the advice. My battery seems okay and is still surprisingly keeping time after all these years (tested it using the original 030 board), but perhaps you are right. Its easy to remove after all. As for the Workbench libs, If I replace that on the floppy disks, can I use my original Workbench 3.0 disks as a base for the install of OS 3.9? Sorry if I seem stupid, but its been a while, it will all start coming back to me, honest!

[cosmicfrog]

I think so but all Info you need is at amiga kit + they post on here as well

can`t see any roms for a4000 at amigakit

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...x.php?cPath=25

[asm1]

Hello Geraldine!

I've just ordered two sets of 3.1 ROMS from Vesalia for my A1200... they were shown as "in stock", five minutes ago. You can use your WB 3.0 disks as a base for 3.9 although you will need the KS 3.1 roms (I think)

A fellow Scot! which bit of Renfrewshire are you in ?

Welcome

Andrew

[Geraldine]

Hi
I know you need 3.1 ROMs for OS 3.9, but will it matter to 3.9 if it finds a 3.0 Workbench.library installed on the hard drive when I go to install it? And yes Andrew the ROMs showed as "instock" when I placed my order and I stay just outside of Paisley. lovely town that it is!

[asm1]

3.9 won't care what is on the hd it will completely overwrite whatever it finds

[Nikolaj_sofus]

Originally Posted by Geraldine

Hi
Thank you very much for the reply. That puts my mind at rest at least. As for the ROMs, I can only hope. But why don't they reply to emails? If they can't read english, cant they use a Google translate instead? Oh well here goes! Okay..... thats all the stuff ordered. Looking forward to playing Naplam again after 10 or so years. Now keeping everything crossed!

I've been writing them a few times and they seem to have a very agressive spam filter.
You can always call them, there english is very good.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Geraldine

I want to resurrect my good old A4000 desktop, but it has a burned out '060 on it's Cyberstorm Mk3 board.

What happened?

Originally Posted by Geraldine

Also while I am here, does anyone know someplace in the UK who are quite handy with a soldering iron? Gonna need to get a new 060 fitted on the the Cyberstrom and I am a bit afraid to try it myself!

No soldering required. The 060 on Cyberstorm MKIII is socketed. Take great, great care removing and replacing the 060 as the socket is very VERY fragile and costs £150 to re-work.

[Geraldine]

Hi Alex
What happened was one of those incredible accidents that only ever seem to happen to me! A small bit of insulation tape wrapped around a cable near the CS board unfurled with the heat inside the case and fell onto the 060. Of all the places it could have fell! . Anyways it fried itself into the top of the 060 and created a hotspot = dead CPU. Thankfully the rest of the board was untouched. All this hassle for a centimetre wide bit of tape! This happed over 10 years ago and the 4000 has been in storage ever since. I couldnt find anyplace were I could get another 060 until now.

Socketed!?!, are you sure? I will dig it out and check. I was sure it was surface mounted I do remember sending it to Analogic Computers, all those years ago, and they proclaimed it was the 060, everything else checked out.

Thanks once again for the great advice guys! I knew there was other Amiga users out there, I just never thought the community would be so alive after all this time! Great!

Incidentally, I also have other "Miggys", a 500+ (1 meg expansion with 1.3/2.04 ROM switcher), a 1200 (with 030 and 8 megs of fast RAM) and a CD32. Plus a ton of games, utilities, cables, external floppy drives and PCMCIA, IDE CD-ROM drives I had forgotten about. Why did I hide all this stuff away? Guess I felt pretty sickened at the time that the 4000 was dead with no apparent way to fix it.

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by alexh

What happened?


No soldering required. The 060 on Cyberstorm MKIII is socketed. Take great, great care removing and replacing the 060 as the socket is very VERY fragile and costs £150 to re-work.

Why the heavy cost, what's the technology used, surely it's just PGA?

[fitzsteve]

Hi Geraldine, welcome to EAB!

Your CS 060 is well worth fixing, they're very sought after these days. Thats a very nice collection you have there

Have fun and enjoy the nostalgia trip you are about to embark on

Also just to mention I've also used Vesalia and I was very pleased with their service, was the only place I could find an unusual SCSI cable I was looking for...

Steve.

[zipper]

Is the socket sitting on BGA?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Geraldine

Socketed!?!, are you sure?

Yup. You'll be able to get a replacement MC68060RC50 with mask E41J (the best) for under £50 delivered

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=320514079777

Under £30 delivered if you go for an older XC68060RC50

Originally Posted by Loedown

Why the heavy cost, what's the technology used, surely it's just PGA?

It is not through-hole. The PGA socket itself is surface mount. Very difficult to replace. I believe that Anthony Hoffman and JJB both charge about £150 including shipping to replace them.

Originally Posted by zipper

Is the socket sitting on BGA?

Erm, kinda. It is a surface mount socket.

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Hi Geraldine, welcome to EAB!

Your CS 060 is well worth fixing, they're very sought after these days. Thats a very nice collection you have there

Have fun and enjoy the nostalgia trip you are about to embark on

Also just to mention I've also used Vesalia and I was very pleased with their service, was the only place I could find an unuaual SCSI cable I was looking for...

Steve.

Oddly enough, the typo was funny, but yes, getting SCSI cables here in Australia is quite tough

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by alexh

Yup. You'll be able to get a replacement MC68060RC50 with mask E41J (the best) for under £50 delivered

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=320514079777

Under £30 delivered if you go for an older XC68060RC50


It is not through-hole. The PGA socket itself is surface mount. Very difficult to replace. I believe that Anthony Hoffman and JJB both charge about £150 including shipping to replace them.


Erm, kinda. It is a surface mount socket.

If you look at everything around it, lots of plastic which doesn't like heat, probably has to be literally smashed apart and then each pin individually desoldered, pads cleaned up and then each pin resoldered, without a better picture I am just surmising.