Archie A3000 inbound

[HigashiJun]

Been a while since my last post, but as always life comes in...

While giving my STE related issues and my Falcon project a break, I have received my new toy:

A3000.JPG (268.5 KiB) Viewed 10735 times

It took me a whole day to clean the beast (case, keyboard and motherboard) and make it more presentable.

While cleaning all this stuff, I noticed nasty solder joints under the ROM sockets (with some non factory bodge wires) and keyboard connectors, which I will definitely have to repair. I don't know what the previous owner did to this poor machine, but the board was sticky as hell at the places where the dirty solder job was performed.

A3000 bodges.JPG (525.93 KiB) Viewed 10735 times

And as expected, the keyboard ribbon connector is also starting to peel and thus have to be repaired.

I only hope to have enough time to deal with that newcomer as soon as possible.

[chronicthehedgehog]

Very nice. I'd like one of those myself. They seem reasonably priced at the mo as well

[HigashiJun]

Yes, when shipped inside UK.

Shipping outside UK is quite pricey.

[Badwolf]

Cool!

I've an A3000 which I played with extensively before I decided to make a Falcon booster (that feels like years ago).

I had to do some repair work around the battery (which is standard, alas) and I needed to replace the NVRAM chip in the same area (confusingly called the CMOS chip in Acorn world) before it would boot.

I rigged it up with a DE9 mouse port on the rear (connected to the conveniently placed spare mouse header, also down near the battery) which I wired as Atari-compatible using the right mouse button for middle, which solved the mouse problem (right mouse is hardly ever used in Acorn world and the mice are pricey as hell).

The keyboard is beautiful to work with, although mine is a bit chipped. I was hoping to do some software dev on it and got it all set up with internet access and a dev environment but the filesystem was so alien to me, I didn't get very far. I still hope to do something with it in the future, but there are probably literally a couple of dozen other things that need to be worked on first

Enjoy it! She's in much better nick than mine.

BW

[rubber_jonnie]

Do these have an on board battery? My A5000 suffered badly from a leaky battery.

[HigashiJun]

@rubber_jonnie

Yes, these ones have also an onboard battery.

Your A5000 related thread was really interesting.

@Badwolf

Good to know you managed to repair your machine.

Mine had the battery already removed, so there is no apparent leaking damage on the board.

I suspect other issues due to bad soldering.

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie

Yes, these ones have also an onboard battery.

Your A5000 related thread was really interesting.

@Badwolf

Good to know you managed to repair your machine.

Mine had the battery already removed, so there is no apparent leaking damage on the board.

I suspect other issues due to bad soldering.

No battery = good news

[HigashiJun]

No battery = good news

Yes indeed.

Here's what it looked before I cleaned it up:

RTC.jpg (364.83 KiB) Viewed 10709 times

[rubber_jonnie]

No battery = good news

Yes indeed.

Here's what it looked before I cleaned it up:


RTC.jpg

Nice, somebody did you a big favour when they pulled that out in a timely fashion.

[HigashiJun]

Nice, somebody did you a big favour when they pulled that out in a timely fashion.

For sure ! It saves a lot of precious time.