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RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Mon Jan 20, 2020 10:59 am

Last week I lucked out and spotted an Amiga 3000 setup on eBay for $100 literally seconds after it was listed-which I instantly purchased! Here is the sole eBay listing picture.

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It was described as a complete Amiga 3000 with 2 megs chip and 4 megs fast RAM, 50 meg hard drive plus a 100meg secondary drive. It included the original keyboard, pregnant mouse, tank mouse, an A2386SX bridge board, and a "thin net" (coax/AUI ports) Ethernet board. It's also the somewhat less common 16MHz variant. The seller said it had a dead power supply but was still a working system before that failed.

Well, the package showed up over the weekend and sure enough the power supply was dead. Unfortunately there is also battery corrosion damage to the motherboard as well as another leaking VARTA on the A2386SX bridge board as well.

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The power supply was an easy fix---two shorted switching transistors and a blown fuse. Fortunately I was able to rob a compatible (and more robust) pair from an old AT power supply and now the supply works as good as new again.

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And upon powering the old girl up for the first time...

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It works! I reconnected the drives and while it does boot to Workbench 2.1 it seems to be getting stuck with the "clock" mouse pointer which prevents me from going any further. I figure it's either something wrong with the OS or maybe all the corrosion near Paula is screwing with the interrupts. Rather than mess around I decided it would be best if I got the cancer batteries removed and "deactivated" the caustic goo to prevent further damage. I'll revisit the Workbench issues afterwards.

I've repaired many battery damaged 3000s over the years including a few of my personal systems, and my preferred regiment is soaking the area in Tarn-X, scrubbing with a toothbrush, then rinsing with warm soapy water. Tarn-X is mild acid that's a bit more potent than lemon juice or vinegar and works brilliantly.

As of now this is the current status of the motherboard and bridge board after a quick Tarn-X treatment to hopefully halt the damage until I get time to perform the repairs. With that done I can safely set them aside while I finish building my AA3000+ motherboard.

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That's all for now! For $100 I'm absolutely thrilled. This is now my fourth Amiga 3000 in my collection and by far the least I've ever paid for one-even back in the late 90s to mid 2000s when they sold for peanuts compared to today's prices.

Once it's repaired I'm looking forward to playing around with the bridge board. I've never owned one before so there is much research to do.

Regards!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Jan 20, 2020 5:49 pm

Incredible find. Congrats!

When you say it locks up with the clock/mouse, do you mean it stops loading workbench when it tries to find the clock? If that's the case you can just comment out the clock in the startup sequence. But now that I think about it, usually if it can't find a clock it's been told to look for it will eventually just pass it by and keep loading.

With all that battery damage, you might be on a bit of an adventure. Regardless, the fact you got the whole shebang for only $100 is AMAZING.

User avatar
RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 4:58 am

Thanks!

It's not that it locks up, it boots into Workbench but the mouse pointer never changes back from the "wait" clock symbol to the pointer. It just stays that way like it's waiting for something to finish loading. I'm able to move the mouse around but I can't actually click on anything. I booted without the startup sequence a bunch of times and commented out anything I thought might be the cause but it didn't help. A corroded Paula socket can cause all kinds of weirdness so it was either that or something loading up when it boots. I'll figure it out once I'm done fixing the motherboard. :mrgreen:

That damage isn't nearly as bad as one of my other 3000s where I had to carefully reconstruct a bunch of traces with strips of copper tape. In fact I think I posted on this site about that repair last year.

Fortunately in this case all the traces are actually still intact so if I get lucky all I'll need to do is tin them for reinforcement, doctor up a few ugly vias to ensure they don't eventually break down, and patch up the solder mask. Even the sockets cleaned up really nice from the Tarn-X treatment...which is good because those old TZT sockets Commodore liked to use seem to hold tighter than any new premium sockets I've tried.

Anyway, I'll be sure to follow up once I get it fixed up and back together.

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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 8:19 am

Holly Schmoley! Nice find I am for sure jealous of that. Well not really, I am happy people still find deals. One day perhaps I will finally find an A3000. I will probably have to trade my A1200 for one, LOL.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 9:21 am

I will probably have to trade my A1200 for one, LOL.
Man, that would be a trade I'd do in a freaking heartbeat, personally.

User avatar
RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 9:27 am

intric8 wrote:
Tue Jan 21, 2020 9:21 am
Man, that would be a trade I'd do in a freaking heartbeat, personally.
You'd trade a 1200 for your 3000? I've got a beautiful 1200 with ACA 40MHz 030, 128 megs of RAM, compact flash, etc I'd trade for your 3000 in a heartbeat.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 9:31 am

No no, what I mean is if someone would take a 1200 for a 3000, that would be a slam dunk for me. I'd take the 3000 every time.

That all being said, I've sold off all of my 1200's. I'm down to 1000s, 2000s and 3000s + 1 chickenlips 500. I'm pretty much set. Everything I buy Amiga-related going forward is probably going to be new/fpga toys. I love my classic hardware stack as it is right now. (That includes my 8-bits collection.)

I've wanted to do a walkthrough video of my collection, but didn't want it to look like bragging. But I'm pretty proud of it. It's a dream come true that I don't even remember dreaming! =D

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 9:33 am

By the way, RogerWilco, I tweeted your find yesterday and it kinda exploded with jealousy from around the world. Hah!

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RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 9:46 am

Hah that's funny!

I guess I better hurry up and fix that corrosion to set everyone's mine at ease. :D It really isn't as bad as it looks.

Here's some before/during/after pics for different 3000 I got on eBay last year.
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User avatar
RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 9:54 am

And in worse case scenarios I've also transplanted every component from a ruined board to one of Chucky's reproduction PCBs...
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