As an A5000 alpha owner (which I bought dead) I've been reading lots of A5000 resurrection threads. People recommend removing the IDE and FDC connectors to check underneath for battery damage and / or rot that has not been neutralised.
Interesting motherboard revision 192,105 normally 25MHz A5000's are 192,100 and 33MHz A5000s are 192,420.
Home computers got really complex very quickly in that decade. That PCB looks like alien technology compared to the ZX Spectrum 10 years before.
It's a pity Acorn weren't more successful - excluding the RISC cpu obviously
There's an A7000 on ebay at the moment - at a very reasonable price. They seem easier to obtain than Falcons/TTs for example. However they all seem to suffer with track damage so beyond my skills. I could add a bodge wire or two, but after seeing your seamless fixes it would make me feel 'bad'
chronicthehedgehog wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 11:38 am
There's an A7000 on ebay at the moment - at a very reasonable price.
I was under the impression that A7000's are not greatly sought after as they are not quite RISC PCs (don't have VRAM or upgradeable CPU) and they are not quite Archimedes.
alexh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 11:45 am
I was under the impression that A7000's are not greatly sought after as they are not quite RISC PCs (don't have VRAM or upgradeable CPU) and they are not quite Archimedes.
That would explain it. I don't know much about them tbh. According to Wikipedia they were an entry level computer so that sounds right
EDIT
Tbh, my knowledge of the Archimedes could be summed up in one word: 'virus'
Very nice, the battery damage is not too bad, at least visually.
I had to replace the RTC/Config IC and one of the 74HCT245s as well, so perhaps it's a known side effect of battery leakage. I definitely agree, you do need to continuity test everything to those 3 ICs as a minimum and just be aware that you can get corrosion failures down the line.
As for the IDE and floppy connectors, mine had bad corrosion on the pins and under the plastic shield, so I'd advise a very thorough review to see just how well they've held up.
It's definitely worth heeding what @alexh said about them.
As for the PSU I'd definitely check for leaky caps, mine smelled like a fish market as soon as I powered it on, and was ultimately very unstable. I suspect a combination of the electrolytic fluid, plus a very fibrous PCB that soaked up said fluid, and ensuing corrosion caused the PSU to need time to start up when loaded up. This was when I was using a real spinning HDD, so more load there too.
I've ended up replacing my PSU with a Meanwell one, the 5v is only able to deliver 4A rather than the 10A of the original, but I only have 2 installed podules and the hard drive is a BlueSCSI so ultimately power draw is pretty low and well within the PSU spec. My IDE drive is also solid state, a Transcend 128MB device, so low power draw there too.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
