User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Jul 27, 2017 10:01 pm

Have you ever pulled the Kickstart (or similar) ROMs before? You may want to get a proper chip puller. Some folks just use a screw driver or something like that and work it slowly side to side.

I can tell you from personal experience that if you ever decide to remove the 680000 CPU, be freaking careful. Those legs are extremely easy to bend. Just pulling it out of the board can (and probably will) bend some. Luckily, they are easy to bend back. But once I removed one and it snapped out so suddenly I over-reacted and "bounced" my hand. The chip sank its legs deep into my thumb.

So there I was with a bloody thumb (and those legs are like needles) and bent chip legs on half the freaking chip. I was flabbergasted. I was able to fix the chip. But I never spoke of my ignorance in public. Oops.

For what it's worth, the KS ROMs are much easier to pop out.

User avatar
LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Fri Jul 28, 2017 4:08 am

I have a nice spring loaded IC extractor for the purpose. :) I've done chip pulls on other hardware before (on an old dead Atari 800 I had, I rescued all the main support chips from it (ANTIC, POKEY, GTIA) before it went into the bin).

I don't have any plans to pull the 68K out, thankfully! And the Vampire II is a snap-on board; it fits around the existing chip and uses its address buses to operate. Still juggling that or the ACA500plus, though, so an accelerator isn't an immediate purchase. I should easily be able to get the KS chip out (which reminds me; I should also post a couple of pics of the innards as well!); it looks like it was upgraded from a 1.2 or 1.3 KS to a 2.x KS but just in case the KS is bad, a spare is coming for it.

User avatar
LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Sat Jul 29, 2017 9:44 am

Here's a couple of snaps I took of the Amiga 500 as I was cleaning out the keyboard. I was surprised that it was not very dusty looking inside, but the keyboard was filthy as hell!
amiga500-kb-dirty.jpg
Here's the A500's keyboard before I got started pulling all the keycaps off.

(If you're curious as to why two keys look cleaner than the rest on this picture, it was because I was already testing out cleaning the keycaps in warm water and dish soap and seeing what a difference it made. Yes, I dried those keys thoroughly before reattaching them! ;) )

Here's the Kickstart ROM chip already in the Amiga:
a500-ks.jpg
The Kickstart ROM; it's 2.04. What's that wire for?

And the board revision:
a500-rev.jpg
It's a Rev. 5 board in there!

I cleaned the keyboard by filling a large tupperware with warm water and dish soap, then pulling off all the keycaps and placing them in the soapy water. Using a gentle dish sponge (no scouring pads at all) and my fingers, I cleaned all of the dirt and grime accumulation from every single key, changing the water a couple of times to throw out all the dirty water. Once the keys finally came out clean and not releasing any further dirt into the water, I rinsed off all of the excess soap with cool water, then spread the keys onto a towel to allow excess water to drip out. I dried each and every key by hand with a paper towel before reattaching them back to the keyboard.

As for the keyboard itself, I took 50% isopropyl alcohol, dabbed a lint-free cotton swab into it, and used that to gently go between keys, cleaning out any dirt and grime I could get. Once I was satisfied that no more dirt was being lifted off, I reattached each keycap in their proper places. I still need to maybe retr0bright the A500 case itself, but at least for now the keyboard looks much, much nicer than it did before.
Last edited by LambdaCalculus on Sat Jul 29, 2017 10:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sat Jul 29, 2017 10:11 am

That's a pretty stunning transformation between those clean keys and the rest - well done! I bet the assembled keyboard must look near-new now. In a weird way, I wonder if your keyboard's original grime somehow protected it a bit from UV contamination?

Looking good, man!

I hope to crack open my 1000 today and pull a couple pounds of dust and debris out of there. I'm not joking when I say I'll be wearing a paper mask this time.





Return to “Hardware”