Did COMMODORE use Patchwires on Motherboards ?

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Hi there and happy Eastern I was just curious to know if Commodore ever used Patch Wires on there Motherboards.


SEGA for example used Patchwires for a long time on there Model 1 Mega-Drive/Genesis, but i never found a AMIGA Motherboard with Patch Wires UNTIL NOW-


Its a AMIGA 600 rev1.3 that have a patch wire on the bottom and the board is super clean. The Seller told me he have never done anything to it, so now my question..


do you know guys any Amiga Motherboards that used a Patchwire (or more than one)


Greeting and thanks for all infos

[grond]

Yes, they did. My early A1200 (Ithink rev 1B2 or something) has patch wire.

[Rotareneg]

Yes, Amiga motherboards could have factory installed mods. Here's an example of a factory installed mod on an A1200 board: https://imgur.com/a/DW0GPda

[johnnybarker]

My a2000 is full of them.

[Daedalus]

Yeah, patches were pretty common on Amiga motherboards. The 500+ for example had an error in the RTC are layout that was fixed by soldering one component to the leg of another instead of to the board. But you occasionally find patch wires in all sorts of things, not just Amigas. My old Atari 800XL has a few of them from the factory too.

[Torti-the-Smurf]

I never knew that ; very interresting Stuff ! Thank you Guy´s.

[ElectroBlaster]

I have a boxed Commodore A4091 scsi card that was part of a one-owner A4000D.

When unboxing it all. I noticed the 4091 was covered in patch wires, at first I just assumed it was the original owner who did this and would figure it out later on.

But upon research I found it was direct from the factory and was part of a kit the owner had bought with the A4000D. There was a Buster 11 upgrade included. All these upgrades were done direct from the retailer and I even have all the original receipts. Seems this kind of practice was normal for commodore, judging by others experiences with A500's etc.

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Interresting Stuff, like i said, i did not know about PatchWires on Amiga MotherBoards, never saw one; and i did see a few Amiga MotherBoards in my time

HHHHmmm; but how come that some Amiga 600 rev1.3 boards have a PatchWire and other 1.3 rev´s dosen´t. Stange, dont you think ?; or is there a simple explenation for that ?

[TjLaZer]

Yep I have a 1200 and 4091 with patch wires.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

Hi there and happy Eastern I was just curious to know if Commodore ever used Patch Wires on there Motherboards.


SEGA for example used Patchwires for a long time on there Model 1 Mega-Drive/Genesis, but i never found a AMIGA Motherboard with Patch Wires UNTIL NOW-


Its a AMIGA 600 rev1.3 that have a patch wire on the bottom and the board is super clean. The Seller told me he have never done anything to it, so now my question..


do you know guys any Amiga Motherboards that used a Patchwire (or more than one)


Greeting and thanks for all infos

Yes....Amiga 3000 revision 6.x has a long wire on the board...and they shipped it to customers

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Nice ! Please keep them comming. I find this kind of Stuff very Interresting.
I am still wondering tho why some boards revisions have PatchWires and some dosen´t, and i mean the same board revision. Like for example. A600 rev1.3. Any Ideas about that ?

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

Nice ! Please keep them comming. I find this kind of Stuff very Interresting.
I am still wondering tho why some boards revisions have PatchWires and some dosen´t, and i mean the same board revision. Like for example. A600 rev1.3. Any Ideas about that ?

Sometimes a bodge wire isn't to correct a problem with the board but a problem with a chip revision. Once the chip is fixed the bodge wire goes away.

Sometimes the design of the board is fine but a particular run of them had a flaw in the manufacturing run that needed a bodge wire.

In the 1980's manufacturers -- and C= in particular due to their lean-running nature -- would bodge every single defective board and chip they could to get it working. Manufacturing was so expensive that they would do this on an individual basis. If a run was all bad the same way, they'd apply the bodges en-masse. If an individual board failed QA it would go to the "repair" pile where it would be bodged if possible to make it sellable.

In the 1990's as manufacturing became more automated there were fewer one-off bodges, but they'd still save entire runs with a bodge where it made sense. C= held onto the bodge practice longer than most manufacturers since they had very slim profit margins.

Bodge wires are still common in very-low-end products from China where an enterprising individual will buy up entire bad batches of electronics and figure out how to fix them as cheaply as possible to get them at least semi-working, and then sell it in the domestic Chinese market, or overseas via wish/aliexpress

[Paisley_Pirate]

My A2000 Rev 6 that I am working on right now had several patch wires and a couple of resistors that had some interesting reworks - it still had several "rework" stickers in there .

I have seen this on several A500s over the years as well when I worked on them. I ought to take a picture of those purple rework stickers - the sad part is, I just washed them all off with alcohol during the clean up. But I think a couple of them are still on my bench - so I'll try to get it.