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.
images broken, links were removed
images broken, links were removed
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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images broken, links were removed
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!