exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Now why doesn't that surprise me?

PhilC wrote: 06 Feb 2026 14:03

rubber_jonnie wrote: 06 Feb 2026 14:01

Seems like a bit too much over engineering for a desolder gun :lol:

@exxos likes Overkill remember. It's one of his middle names.... his other one is Dangerous.....

Very true.


:fire1:

ijor wrote: 05 Feb 2026 16:14 Excellent! Now since you can start using your new scope, I am very curious if your old scope was indeed lying to you or not :)

I did some quick tests last night. My idea was the clock is running faster due to glitches. Turns out, the original osc runs about 51.3mhz. So that explains the speed bump. So at least I was in the right ballpark. My old scope was to irratic to give a solid speed measurement. So I wouldn't have been able to figure it out without the new scope. Expensive experiment.

exxos wrote: 07 Feb 2026 12:40 I did some quick tests last night. My idea was the clock is running faster due to glitches. Turns out, the original osc runs about 51.3mhz. So that explains the speed bump. So at least I was in the right ballpark. My old scope was to irratic to give a solid speed measurement. So I wouldn't have been able to figure it out without the new scope. Expensive experiment.

Not sure I understand. Are you saying that the your supplier sold you the wrong oscillator, for all the ST536 boards ??? Isn't the oscillator 100MHZ? Or you mean the divided cpu clock produced by the CPLD?

ijor wrote: 07 Feb 2026 17:15 Not sure I understand. Are you saying that the your supplier sold you the wrong oscillator, for all the ST536 boards ??? Isn't the oscillator 100MHZ? Or you mean the divided cpu clock produced by the CPLD?

I have a original TF536 now, the 100mhz must be more like 102mhz. CPU clock is half that clock. I've changed brands of oscs probably twice due to parts shortages and difficulty obtaining the original. But I made sure they were better spec than the original. On a ST536 it's solid 50mhz. The TF536 is more like 51mhz.

The osc spec is either bad or maybe they are getting damaged during soldering which is causing the issues. No idea. I'll have to keep a better eye on it in the future.

exxos wrote: 08 Feb 2026 00:38 I have a original TF536 now, the 100mhz must be more like 102mhz.

The osc spec is either bad or maybe they are getting damaged during soldering which is causing the issues. No idea. I'll have to keep a better eye on it in the future.

Very strange. Not sure this could be a bad spec issue. Oscillator accuracy is measured in ppm (part per million), and I think the worse specs are 100 PPM. But you are getting 2-3% off nominal frequency! I think even very old and aged crystals, as we all have in our computers, don't drift that much from the original nominal frequency. Again, very strange.

New hose finally came..

The black (original) feels more like rubber than the new silicon hose. That one isn't as bendy, but its slightly larger and thicker wall. Its also a lot harder to compress than the black one. Need to find some time to swap the hoses over next...

Still need to fit the new hose.. will try and do that later toady.. Which is probably part of my problem of not being able to remove the solder :roll:


As the shifter kept popping out of my H5, I decided it was time to fit the ZIF sockets to the shifter & 1772, sockets were kindly donated :thumbup:

I mixed in the low temp paste, with lots flux, the soldering station was on 470c, 10 seconds per pain and the solder still in the holes :roll: and because I was impatient I decided to heat gun it out, which resulted in the socket melting before the solder :lol: :roll:


So yeah, clearly not my best work :roll: I think chopping the plastic and pulling each pin one at a time is the best solution,.

Also had to replace the master oscillator as it only output 32 MHz when it was powering up or powering down :shrug:

But got there in the end...


Originally I was doing this...


I also had a bit of a stack on the 1772 because I wanted to use a ZIF socket for testing the chips.. For some reason it was just always unreliable with that stack. I just assume too much ground bounce or something on it causing problems intermittently. But anyway I have the ZIF soldered directly into the motherboard now 8-)

Will make a start on the desoldering station now and clean it up a bit while I am at it. That will probably be all the progress for now, as I'm going to my girlfriends for the next three days, need to give my hands a rest, and substitute my hands pain for ear pain instead I suppose :lol: :roll:

The soldering station now serviced :D

There was a rubber washer on top of the station but no idea where that came from or even if it's part of the thing.. Could not find anywhere obvious where it should go to left it off...

Considering I haven't used it much since last time I took it to bits, and I put a new filter in it then, it was completely blocked again :roll:

The new hose was slightly wider than the old one, so the gun itself did not clump together fully.. Maybe next time I take it to bits I will drill the hole out a little bit bigger..

exxos wrote: 27 Feb 2026 15:33 The soldering station now serviced :D

There was a rubber washer on top of the station but no idea where that came from or even if it's part of the thing.. Could not find anywhere obvious where it should go to left it off...

Considering I haven't used it much since last time I took it to bits, and I put a new filter in it then, it was completely blocked again :roll:

The new hose was slightly wider than the old one, so the gun itself did not clump together fully.. Maybe next time I take it to bits I will drill the hole out a little bit bigger..


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Hmm, none of the guns I have have that black washer...

Had mine in bits last week, ended up getting a new one as the collar thread got cross threaded so I couldn't change tips.

I think that washer is from the threaded plastic part that screws onto the base unit, where the 2nd filter is, without it you may get poor suction.


So the back threaded plastic bit that the suction hose connects to.