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