User avatar
RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 9:39 am

Greetings!

I wanted to share some pictures of a repair I finished the other day. This spotless looking Amiga 3000 I snagged on Ebay. It was listed as working but without any internal pictures. Since the "Buy It Now" price was low enough to be sold quickly and I spotted it within minutes of the listing, I instantly purchased it for myself.

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It arrived well packaged but before even powering it up I removed the lid to find exactly what I was expecting, the dreaded leaking battery.

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Fortunately the damage wasn't as bad as others I've seen online, and other than the battery spot the motherboard looked as clean as the rest of the system. So I got to work removing all the damaged solder mask, lightly sanded away the corroded copper, and carefully patched any broken traces and vias using thin strips of copper tape. The backside of the motherboard got a little cleanup too, but besides needing a few traces tinned after clearing away small blistered spots of solder mask, it hadn't suffered any serious damage.

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Once all the damaged connections were patched up and verified good, I sealed everything up with a thick protective coating of UV cured solder mask and replaced all the corroded components with new replacements. Denise and the RTC chip got new sockets too. Finishing the job with a handy AmigaKit coin cell holder made for a nice touch!

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The result? It works! All it needed was a slight adjustment to the scan-doubler trimpot to clear up some jitter when it was cold, but other than that it worked perfectly right right away.

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And testing the RTC circuit after being off for an hour, it seems to be keeping time just fine too...

There is some very interesting professional audio, video, and presentation software like SuperJAM, DCTV, DPaint, BT2, and a bunch of other stuff installed on the original 100 meg hard drive. It looks like it was used at a medical school in Ohio until about 1995, so I suspect it sat somewhere in storage since then.

So now the system is completely repaired and I am happy to have a 2nd and VERY nice looking Amiga 3000 to add to my collection.

Hopefully some A3000 fans will enjoy these pictures, it was a fun repair and satisfying to see this nice system repaired back to perfect condition again.

Regards!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 9:50 am

@RogerWilco486 that is a FANTASTIC repair, and welcome to the site! Loved looking at those pictures and reading through your journey. Congrats!

I have an A2000 that died of a similar fate, although the battery damage doesn't look nearly as bad as yours did prior to your repair. Regardless she won't boot anymore.

Luckily, I have a 2nd 2000 that I've almost completely maxed out (using mostly upgrades of the era). As such the other 2000 has been mined for a few parts. Not much. Some day I'll get her back up to speed. Your post gives me hope!

User avatar
RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 11:03 am

Thank you for the kudos!

Yes, I think in the case of an Amiga 2000 the close proximity of the CPU to the battery makes them more susceptible to being rendered dead from less severe damage.

I imagine if you were to remove the 68K socket you'd find small breaks where traces meet the plated holes. Unfortunately that tiny area of exposed copper is not protected by solder mask and usually where the break occurs. Not a difficult repair though...

I hope you're able to fix it some day!

User avatar
Mr.Toast
Roseville, CA

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 12:55 pm

Very nice work! It is quite a thrill to get these old gals back up and running.

I was at AmiWest show this year and did some on-the-spot work for a 3000T board. Man, that is a beast of a board in terms of size. Battery was located darn close to the FPU area and there was a fair bit of trace damage. I ended up running some kynar lines to get it up and running but he really needs to have a lot more cleanup work and corrosion mitigation. Sorry I didn't get pics of the damage and repair work but he provided me with a few photos taken while I worked on it.

In the end, we got it working but without further mitigation, that board's days are numbered.

It was only a limited amount of time (few hours at the show) to work on it. I really hope he follows up with some more extensive bench work.
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User avatar
RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 1:53 pm

Wow what a daunting task to accomplish in just a few hours, and on the spot no less! You must have nerves of steel.

Hopefully they heed your warning and and follow up with more through treatment a you suggest. Amiga 3000Ts are rare enough and from what I remember of mine the battery was positioned pretty high up the board so I imagine gravity could really work ensure the leakage spreads much father than on a horizontally orientated motherboard like the desktop machines.

Perhaps someday if demand is high enough someone will make replica A3000 and A3000T PCBs similar to the A1200, A4000, and A500+ boards that are available...

User avatar
piper_flatline

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 4:04 pm

Nice job on the repair and battery replacement! I'm super new at soldering and electronics, and even though I'd love to, it makes me nervous thinking of tackling something like this. I know I should try to figure it out because I imagine a lot of "working" systems I might pick up in the future are going to need repairs along these lines. Every post like this is another one I can look at and say, "see, it's not so bad, you can do it!" haha :)

User avatar
obitus1990
USA

Posted Fri Nov 30, 2018 9:18 pm

RogerWilco486 wrote: Perhaps someday if demand is high enough someone will make replica A3000 and A3000T PCBs similar to the A1200, A4000, and A500+ boards that are available...
Someone is already working on the ReAmiga 3000 board...John "Chucky" Hertell. Same guy that did the 1200 ReAmiga.

VERY nice job fixing her up.

Where can I get the thin copper tape you used, and, how do you use it to repair vias?

User avatar
RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Sun Dec 02, 2018 8:26 am

The copper tape is from a big roll I purchased on Amazon that I use for my amateur radio projects. It was pretty expensive, about $50 USD, but now I have a lifetime supply of it.

As for repairing the vias, I simply cut a thin strip to feed through the holes and carefully tacked to the traces on either side of the board. Worked like a charm, and the tape is thin enough that with a little "contouring" with a component leg before tacking in place, the holes still accepted components once it was time to reassemble.

User avatar
Dynamic_Computing

Posted Sun Dec 02, 2018 8:53 am

Wow. Great job on that! I salute your skills on fixing those darn traces. I have two A2000 boards with the same issues with the battery - All fixed, cleaned and re-socketed but still no love. I have been dreading have to fix the traces I know must be broken, but your story gives me hope again.

User avatar
Acill

Posted Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:32 pm

Very well done! I remember when you got that 3000 and asked me about it. I am happy to see you were able to get it done yourself and working beautifully.

I think its time for us here in the US that do all this work to start collaborations and get things going full speed in the US. What do you think?





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