General view regarding A1200 maintenance

[Overflow]

Since Ive taken the A1200 out of storage, and upgraded it the last year (also planning a future Vampire), ive started to worry about the "survival" of the motherboard.
My PSU gave in last week (ordered a new one from Mechy), and since I noticed www.retroservice.no providing repairs/maintenance in Norway, I ponders if there is any preventive maintenance that is considered "mandatory"?

I see the issue of capacitor replacement being discussed.

Anything else?

[Daedalus]

Not really. Generally the caps are the only things that actually decay. In general the surface mount technology used is very reliable - the only socketed chips that may become loose or have contact issues are the ROMs.

[rockape]

Hi Overflow,

My Hints and Tips are:

Remove the Motherboard tinplate top cover this will help with cooling.

My A1200 desktop cases are held together with BluTak (no Screws) this allows me to check the internals without too much fuss. For example checking that the ROM Chips havn't crept and caused a bad connection.

Get a Floppy Disk Cleaner Disk with Isopropyl Alcohol so you can keep the Floppy Drive Heads clean.

Clean the Acellerator edge connector with the Eraser of a Pencil, then use Isopropyl Alcohol to finish the job.

Be aware that the Power and Drive Light cables can easily become detatched from their mounting Board inside the top half of the case, a drop of Solder will solve this.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Michael

aka rockape


Founder Member of The Lincolnshire Amiga User Group aka LAG

See http://WWW.lincsamiga.org.uk/

[Amiga1992]

I think recapping them is a good idea, I recently moved away from Europe and before I did I sent all my machines to my favorite Amiga doctor for recapping (A1200, CD32, A600s...), this way I assure those capacitors will be good for another 20 years at least!