Back after 28 years, bought a job lot - now what?

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Leon Besson

You have a 1230 accelerator that uses 32-bit memory. So no PCMCIA memory intrusion. The lower type,fast RAM expansions that only use 4 or 8MB RaM such as the Hawk, 1208 etc.. uses 24-bit RAM which after 5.5MB will cause PCMCIA intrusion on the memory area.

Thought the same as soon as I saw the 030, but apparently it's really not PCMCIA-friendly if you use more than 4MBs.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/apollo1230lc

BBoAH says the same thing. I guess that to save money they didn't bother with 32-bit memory even if it has a 030 on-board.

[Elmo Putney]

You are looking at the "lc" which I assume is low cost. Reading more I think the MK2 which is in my machine is in fact pcmcia friendly.

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Thought the same as soon as I saw the 030, but apparently it's really not PCMCIA-friendly if you use more than 4MBs.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/apollo1230lc

BBoAH says the same thing. I guess that to save money they didn't bother with 32-bit memory even if it has a 030 on-board.

The ram is 32-bit, the question about overlap with PCMCIA is about address space, but checking e.g. sysinfo, it's easy to see at which address the memory is mapped.


As far as I know there's no 68030 variant with just a 24 bit address bus, so why they would put the memory in 24-bit space (if that's actually the case) is interesting - maybe it's based on a board design for the 68ec020 or something..

[Jope]

The trapdoor's address bus is only 24bit and I guess they can get expansion.library to add the memory for them with the minimum of fuss if they implement zorro2 autoconfig.

[Leon Besson]

Originally Posted by Elmo Putney

You are looking at the "lc" which I assume is low cost. Reading more I think the MK2 which is in my machine is in fact pcmcia friendly.

The MK2 and MK3 cards are indeed PCMCIA friendly as I’ve owned both of those and PCMCIA worked without issue

Just remember to use PCMCIA CF or SD card adapters you need to install a couple of pieces of software first to make it work on Amiga OS. These are obtainable from Aminet.net;

Compactflash.device driver and CF0: mountlist:

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/CFD133

And a FAT16/32 filesystem reader/writer;

http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fat95

[Elmo Putney]

Great, thanks for the pointers.

The ebay seller just contacted me, shes found a scsi cd rom drive for it, so has posted it. This is the gift that keeps on giving.

I believe from my brief exploration of workbench that is on the internal drive that it is a squirrel pcmcia jobbie. I was wondering how I was going to read the ~100 cdroms that it came with.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Jope

The trapdoor's address bus is only 24bit and I guess they can get expansion.library to add the memory for them with the minimum of fuss if they implement zorro2 autoconfig.

Yep, thought the same. Why implement 32-bit memory properly if you can just connect it straight to the expansion bus and add it via autoconfig?

[Elmo Putney]

Re-cap kit ordered for the 1200 & 600, I've also ordered a pair of "solder tweezers" not specifically for my solder station but I'm sure I can hack them in to provide a good desoldering solution for the smd caps. I have hot air too but the tweezers could be quicker/neater. Just thought I should also recap the accelerator board.

[Leon Besson]

Originally Posted by Elmo Putney

Re-cap kit ordered for the 1200 & 600, I've also ordered a pair of "solder tweezers" not specifically for my solder station but I'm sure I can hack them in to provide a good desoldering solution for the smd caps. I have hot air too but the tweezers could be quicker/neater. Just thought I should also recap the accelerator board.

Nice Bromigo!

Check out SHG on how to remove SMDs

[ Show youtube player ]

[Elmo Putney]

I'm mostly ok with smd, have reflowed a few cpu's on laptops, replaced usb ports on phones and laptops, but mostly these were a "nothing to loose" situation. So I just thought the tweezers may be a good add to the toolbox.

[Elmo Putney]

New parcel arrived from seller today, a scsi cd rom, never seen anything like this before. It's a mediavison reno with perhaps a squirrel pcmcia adapter.
It seems to be a dual purpose device, a walkman cd player with battery compartment, then an add on module which provides a scsi interface....which you can put more batteries in....what the heck? Can someone confirm its a squirrel?

[Leon Besson]

Originally Posted by Elmo Putney

New parcel arrived from seller today, a scsi cd rom, never seen anything like this before. It's a mediavison reno with perhaps a squirrel pcmcia adapter.
It seems to be a dual purpose device, a walkman cd player with battery compartment, then an add on module which provides a scsi interface....which you can put more batteries in....what the heck? Can someone confirm its a squirrel?

Not sure Bromigo! Only way to know is to plug it in and try installing the Squirrel drivers.

[Elmo Putney]

Just have to keep telling self "re-cap first"

[Jope]

The black box that fits in the PCMCIA slot with the SCSI cable coming out is the Squirrel, the drive is some old portable CD drive that was designed to be also usable on the road when plugged into a laptop.

Hope the portable cd drive can be powered with a mains adapter, else it'll get a bit old to be swapping batteries in desktop use.

[jbenam]

I remember the Reno, I kinda wanted one when I was a kid It was a desktop drive that could also work as a stand-alone portable drive.

It could be powered with a standard barrel-tip power adapter.

The SCSI adapter looks like the one that came with my A1200. IIRC it worked with Hi-Soft's SquirrelSCSI drivers.

[Elmo Putney]

So this is probably more going to become a thread for me to remember what I've done and when.

So 1200 and 600 cap kits arrived and I treated myself to a new soldering iron a TS100 which is excellent.

After practicing on an old Dell laptop motherboard I thought I'd start on the A600 as consequences of cocking it up are lower than the 1200.

So a 30 year old virgin!




Old caps coming out ok, a few issues with the through hole one near the power socket resulted in the board getting a bit to warm, no harm done though.
It's actually nice working on something with old school full fat solder that doesn't require 350+ deg C


New caps fitted and cleanup:


What did I learn:

Through hole - a solder sucker is the best way to clear the holes out, solder wick is possible but you end up having a few goes and it all gets a bit hot.

Just snip the through hole caps off if possible.

Clean the board before starting - otherwise the flux glues the dust to the board.

the tabs on the motherboard shield need to be bent down in some places otherwise the case doesn't go back together.

[Elmo Putney]

So does it work?

No we have 2 issues.

1/ It wont boot from the floppy

2/ Missing green from the 23pin connector

The floppy issue appeared to be fixed after reseating and cleaning the connectors on the drive cables, but in my wisdom I thought now was a good opportunity to open the drive up to see what caps are in there to order some new ones. Looks like there are 3 that I need to order (It's a Chinon FZ-354).


I eventually got it back together but it would not boot again, checked cables etc...but nothing. After 2 or 3 disassemble/reassembles I realised this little board which I removed was actually responsible for track zero alignment, problem solved after messing around for a few hours.


The lack of green was more concerning, my meter showed that pin 4 on the 23 way connector (responsible for green) was pretty much at ground, and with no obvious pcb issues I was concerned a component had failed. I started tracing the pcb and with the help of amigapcb.org got back all the way to the cxa1145 with no obvious culprits. Then I spotted it:



A small amount of stray solder paste!



Problem solved after another few hours of head scratching....now feeling confident to tackle the A1200.

I also found a bug on the board.