#amiga3000t — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #amiga3000t, aggregated by home.social.
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New video! There's another capacitor issue with the Amiga 3000T from factory!
YouTube: https://youtu.be/MKnBJ2qgXF0
PeerTube: https://makertube.net/w/ktv6ZnGPs8uCxbrns6NYaN#Amiga #Amiga3000T #Amiga3000 #A3000T #Capacitor #VoltageRails #Commodore #Restoration #Schematics #Repair #Troubleshooting #VintageComputing #RetroComputing #RareCommodore
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New video! There's another capacitor issue with the Amiga 3000T from factory!
YouTube: https://youtu.be/MKnBJ2qgXF0
PeerTube: https://makertube.net/w/ktv6ZnGPs8uCxbrns6NYaN#Amiga #Amiga3000T #Amiga3000 #A3000T #Capacitor #VoltageRails #Commodore #Restoration #Schematics #Repair #Troubleshooting #VintageComputing #RetroComputing #RareCommodore
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New video! There's another capacitor issue with the Amiga 3000T from factory!
YouTube: https://youtu.be/MKnBJ2qgXF0
PeerTube: https://makertube.net/w/ktv6ZnGPs8uCxbrns6NYaN#Amiga #Amiga3000T #Amiga3000 #A3000T #Capacitor #VoltageRails #Commodore #Restoration #Schematics #Repair #Troubleshooting #VintageComputing #RetroComputing #RareCommodore
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New video! There's another capacitor issue with the Amiga 3000T from factory!
YouTube: https://youtu.be/MKnBJ2qgXF0
PeerTube: https://makertube.net/w/ktv6ZnGPs8uCxbrns6NYaN#Amiga #Amiga3000T #Amiga3000 #A3000T #Capacitor #VoltageRails #Commodore #Restoration #Schematics #Repair #Troubleshooting #VintageComputing #RetroComputing #RareCommodore
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New video! There's another capacitor issue with the Amiga 3000T from factory!
YouTube: https://youtu.be/MKnBJ2qgXF0
PeerTube: https://makertube.net/w/ktv6ZnGPs8uCxbrns6NYaN#Amiga #Amiga3000T #Amiga3000 #A3000T #Capacitor #VoltageRails #Commodore #Restoration #Schematics #Repair #Troubleshooting #VintageComputing #RetroComputing #RareCommodore
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Last thing on my list is figuring out why tapes will format, write and read... but fail to mount again if unmounted.
If I can cross that off, I'll consider this unit a success restoration-wise and move on to some other systems I have lined up... (including trying to wrap up on the #amiga3000t that I keep messing with intermittently).
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Well, my #amigaunix install via #bluescsi tape emulation is going nowhere. I've poked at it off and on for days now and been in an extended forum discussion that has also hit a wall.
Debug logs from the #bluescsi suggest that something goes to hell after the tape retension request from the installer, but I don't yet get why. #zuluscsi works for this as of recently with a port of the SIMH tape protocol, but I don't see signs that has been ported to #bluescsi.
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I spent a good chunk of the day trying to get #amigaunix to install using #bluescsi to provide a tape image. So far I can’t come up with an image or file-based tape config that will satisfy the installer. It usually flips out about some cpio error the second it tries to use the tape.
Not sure if my image lacks some nuance or if the BlueSCSI tape drive isn’t to AMIX’s liking in some obscure way. I can read from it in the shell if break the install script.
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Well, that worked nicely. Booted right up the image of the old drive on the first try. Fast, too.
I also have a pair of 40 pin #onerom units on hand, so I'll start exploring different Kickstart ROMs as well as fresh builds on new virtual SCSI drives.
I think I am also going to have to get serious about a battery for SCSI settings.
But tomorrow I think I'm going to see if I can get the #bluescsi to work with the old #amigaunix tape images to attempt an install.
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I finally had time to assemble my newest #bluescsi kit tonight for use in the #amiga3000t. The first thing I wanted to do was use initiator mode for fresh cloning of the original Quantum drive that is (somehow!) still operating in the machine.
It ran well but reports 25 sectors it had trouble reading. We'll see how much damage that does (if any of note) on the imaged version.
I should be fine either way: I imaged this drive ~20+ years ago using a Linux box and have backups.
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#px8 set aside while I await a replacement transistor in a few days. I've been eager to get back on the #amiga3000t, so resuming that thread tonight.
Regarding the thread: I found this original thread got forked. Probably something I did by accident. I'll admit #mastodon threads baffle me a little sometimes.
Linking the fork here for the sake of keeping all the related posts tied together, even if a bit messily: https://mastodon.halfpress.com/@halfpress/117045005947979132
But I will resume here on the original thread.
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Not sure how I’ve gone this long without adding a #gotek to my box of #retrocomputing tricks. Arrived today alongside the heavily #usps-delayed #BlueSCSI for my #amiga3000t restoration. I’ll dig into that tomorrow… got my head too much in the #px8 right now.
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Well, if I do any #amiga3000t #BlueSCSI stuff today, I’ll have robbed one from a NeXT slab. Thursday’s arrival got delayed to today which now appears to be misdirected to a few towns away that are never part of the route (same last three letters of the town name and only the difference of a single numeral 5 vs a 2 in the zip). 30 mins away, but I’m betting that adds days, especially being a Friday.
Remind me what the second word represents in “Ground Advantage” service…?
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@retrofan64 Just grabbed it - definitely a good one!
I found a cache of mods on my old #amiga3000t, one of which I remember super well:
https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=214414
I don't recall what is/was super popular or well known in the mod scene, so this might well be something everyone and his brother has already heard. Either way, it's still a classic to me.
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Today was going to be #amiga3000t #BlueSCSI day, but USPS looks like they will BS me again saying arrival today while it sucks wind at a distribution center just over an hour away until at least tomorrow. I think my faith in their reliability was based on the seemingly strict schedule or process they had for Amazon. But there is now an Amazon distribution center five minutes from us and the Rivian vans are rolling… so small shop USPS stuff is hit and miss on promise vs reality.
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Been collecting the obvious missing parts in my childhood #amiga500 in the background while restoring the #amiga3000t: floppy drive, missing tilde key, broken escape switch and power supply. Looking forward to digging into it once I clear the bench from the flurry of other items this past week or so.
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Have a very happy Amiga 3000T keyboard now. Everything from last night did the trick.
All non-working or keys needing extra pressure are now working and equally light across the board.
Awaiting the #BlueSCSI for the next major task. It’s on the way. I might borrow one from my NeXT slab if I get impatient (the NeXT Cube is sacrosanct and I shan’t be borrowing bits from its innards).
I could prep the drive images with my external BlueSCSI in the meantime, I guess.
#amiga3000t #retrocomputing -
After committing this latest bodge atrocity, I touched up all the black carbon pads with fresh carbon paint designed for the purpose. I’m letting that cure now and, tomorrow, will see if I’ve improved or worsened the overall functionality of my keyboard.
Should have the new #BlueSCSI board in a few days to tackle the next big improvement in the system.
On a related note, I am pondering options for best replacing the battery to retain the date and SCSI settings.
#amiga3000t #retrocomputing -
I lightly sanded healthy trace either side of that section using the fiber pen and exposed good shiny copper. That toned out on the meter nicely from either end to the sanded point closest.
After fighting for the umpteenth time with this coated fine wire I have, I just took some strands out of a 22awg wire, bodged it, painted it with mask and hit it with UV light. The span I had to bridge was in a conveniently open space.
Ugly? Exceedingly. Functional? Totally.
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Been off on other things for a few days, but I took time to revisit the #amiga3000t keyboard tonight. A few keys need too much pressure and the left Amiga key just flat wouldn’t work, even shorting the carbon pads directly with a piece of wire.
It took a while and the microscope to trace it to a pad clear across the board. I found a section of the trace that seemed unhealty with mottled black spots on it. Not sure why - no battery corrosion influence here.
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So a fun detour here from the #amiga3000t. My Dad pinged me last night while cleaning their basement and said he found this oddball computer he didn't remember them owning. Soon as I saw it, it came back to me: another of Mom's early computers. He dropped it off today.
It had a battery, so I decided to have a look inside first to see if it was already a goner. I separated two parts of the outer case and green/blue liquid was literally dripping down. I checked the battery.
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Back on the #amiga3000t later today, but meanwhile assembling all the parts that have finally arrived to upgrade my DIY solar and battery experiments out on the land we bought earlier this year.
Moving the PV array off the more limited EcoFlow MPPT, onto this Victron and into a 5KWh WattCycle battery I attached to the system a few weeks ago. Want to see if I get more efficiency, but also buying more headroom for more panels (that I am getting cheap second hand off a #solar field).
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Will end tonight reporting happy success for the day.
Audio issue resolved, so I reinstalled the monstrous motherboard in its 50+ lb chassis and hoisted it onto the bench.
I then spent the evening tackling the grinding, very much NOT working floppy drive. Turns out it's the coveted and rare Chinon FB-357A HD made specifically for Commodore.
I cleaned it, re-capped it and greased every rail and worm gear. To my great satisfaction, it's now working like a charm!
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So my caddy in the Toshiba CD-ROM drive doesn't have my uncle's Darwin CD (I'll look for that elsewhere)... it's had the March 1994 AmiNet CD in it for 30+ years.
At one point, the CD-ROM drive stopped working. I opened it up and the internal mechanism is impressive. The laser unit slides like butter and the whole thing is on internal shock absorbers. I cleaned the optics and it started working again. Might be flaky and this was happenstance. For now, it works. :)
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Historically, this A2065 ethernet card is interesting and I recall using it back in the day... but it's a gigantic pain to get into the machine without possibly damaging something and I don't know if it's healthy. So I think I will skip it.
I also realized why I had more than one card slot cover missing. In addition to the Picasso II board that's gone, I also had a SunRize Industries AD1012 audio board. Gut says it got "loaned" to the same guy as the Picasso. :(
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I feel like I can finally put the motherboard back into its condo-sized case where it'll be far safer.
From here, I need to address two other issues I've run into:
- some keys that won't respond without excessive force (and one not at all), but won't require motherboard tinkering
- the floppy drive is very unhappy, which I can also work on that outside the caseAlso:
- move to BlueSCSI once it arrives
- possibly buy and install the remaining 8 GB of RAM -
The fact the built-in speaker has to mix down to mono made it both handy and frustrating. The stupid monitor on the wall of my lab also only seems to honor RCA audio-in when paired with composite and ignores it on VGA. That sent me looking for ways to test more easily and I came up with using the meters on my USBPre2.
Success is seen here finally having TWO bars instead of just one for the 500hz sine wave (which I spent way too much time seeing on my o-scope).
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The addition of a small bodge wire on the back solved it all immediately.
I did learn a LOT while down the rabbit hole, though, so I consider this a worthwhile exercise in not seeing the obvious from the start.
One red herring in the middle was a Paula pin I bent that threw off previously working tests. The other misdirection was obsessing over how the #amiga3000t senses the left RCA to disable the entire built-in speaker circuit... but not the right RCA.
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Finally.
And the problem was, of course, vastly simpler than anything I was postulating and testing. It was in the vicinity of my suspicions from early on, but I neglected to do the one obvious continuity test that would have ended this last night.
There is, I suspect, a trace that goes under the big complicated RCA "tower" that was preventing the signal from leaving the EMI filter caps to the right channel RCA center pin on the far side.
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Ugh. Time to stop for the night. I don't know if something is degrading or if I touched something I shouldn't have while probing. I still have left channel and not right - same as before - but the voltages seem off now and the stable right channel sine waves I was seeing for hours aren't now.
There's only so long you can spend going in circles testing before something gets worse. :)
Ordered some replacement LF347N amps in case those are what went sideways.
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Oh, one other datapoint: FLTLEFT and FLTRIGHT signals branch off and end up on two pins in a card slot (CN451). That happens just ahead of the EMI filters, which precede the RCA jacks.
I see the sine wave just fine on left and right inside that edge connector. So I feel like I have it narrowed down to a bad EMI filter on right, or a bad solder joint on it or the downstream RCA connector.
Attaching an annotated bit of schematic here showing good/bad...
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So the diags tool generates a nice sine wave. I can see that on my scope all the way down the line through every amp until I get right in the vicinity of the two EMI filters and the actual RCA jacks. Continuity seems ok on the RCA jacks, but I'm going to resolder those pins as well as the three pin EMIs and see if something improves. I might swap the EMIs and see if the problem moves.
Due to the size and cables, I can't easily scope the pins on the back. :(
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I will note that I popped the Paula out earlier when I encountered this issue and ran a test on my BackBit Chip Tester Pro V2 and it immediately came back green.
So, if any potential issues related to this problem are in the scope of that test, I'm good...?
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When you plug in the left channel RCA, it turns off the internal speaker. But plugging in the right channel by itself does not do this, and I never get right channel audio on any output device I've tested.
I think I also found the right audio input on my 1084S-D2 isn't working. That, or I'm playing some self-defeating game with circuits that favor left channel for mono and won't do right-only.
Think it's time to put the o-scope on the amps and trace it back.
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Amiga 3000T Audio Repair Reveals a Factory Fault
#Amiga3000T #AmigaRestoration #JanBeta #CommodoreAmiga #RetroComputing #VintageComputers #AmigaRepair
https://theoasisbbs.com/amiga-3000t-audio-repair-reveals-a-factory-fault/?fsp_sid=9780 -
Amiga Tower Repair: Chris Edwards Tackles a Rotted A3000T
#Amiga #Amiga3000T #ChrisEdwardsRestoration #RetroComputing #CommodoreAmiga #AmigaRepair #VintageComputers
https://theoasisbbs.com/amiga-tower-repair-chris-edwards-tackles-a-rotted-a3000t/?fsp_sid=9343 -
Amiga 3000T Recap Continues in Jan Beta Part 6
#Amiga3000T #AmigaRepair #JanBeta #RetroComputing #AmigaRestoration #CommodoreAmiga #ElectronicsRepair #VintageComputers
https://theoasisbbs.com/amiga-3000t-recap-continues-in-jan-beta-part-6/?fsp_sid=5726 -
Amiga 3000T Teardown Starts as Jan Beta Tackles a Rare Tower
#Amiga3000T #Amiga #Commodore #RetroComputing #VintageComputers #JanBeta #AmigaRestoration #RetroRepair #Bridgeboard #Zorro #SCSI
https://theoasisbbs.com/amiga-3000t-teardown-starts-as-jan-beta-tackles-a-rare-tower/?feed_id=7097&_unique_id=69417128b77b2