exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I have had a nightmare last couple of days, and was testing TF330s it on my trusty old CD32 , but it broke with a problem with the mouse pointer disappearing and artifacts on the screen and the composite output was lost and that made it unusable, I thought I had shorted something as I had to push one board harder than usual to fit, anyways I broke out the second CD32 and was testing another TF330 when calamity !, I had the same problem with the pointer and graphic artifacts !, so that was number 2 CD32 was broke too:(

So after some thinking I honed in on the RGB to scart cable I use which is like all the ones sold on Ebay, being that the cable goes into the hood and is rather loose, so opened it up and yep it was a mess inside with wires shorting by the looks it had and shorted something out on the CD32s

Cut a long story short I aint no board expert but I methodically checked the composite circuit back to Lisa and Alice chips as I was still getting the RGB ouput on the riser, not having a Scope i used a Logic probe and saw there was no CSYNC out of ALICE pin 80 and it also deals with some of the AGA graphics and mouse sprite

So I have ordered two ALICE chips and lets hope its that

Moral of this story is if you value your retro hardware then always check those RGB cables, and what I did was open the two I had and checked them and resoldered the connections inside the hood and used heatshrink tubing to keep them secure and wound more tape around the cable where it enters the hood So there is no play when you clamp the hood down

It's good advice, and for me, I have given up buying cables on eBay now and either make my own, or get them from somewhere like Coolnovelties:https://Coolnovelties.co.uk who make a decent cable, and I've recently been made aware of RetroGamingCables:https://www.retrogamingcables.co.uk/ who seem to be getting a good rep.

Hope your Alice replacements do the trick.

Ouch =/ This is one of the concerns I have with some of the older risers. No isolation on signals =/ I hope that fixes them both - let us know!

rubber_jonnie wrote: 11 Feb 2021 09:18 It's good advice, and for me, I have given up buying cables on eBay now and either make my own, or get them from somewhere like Coolnovelties:https://Coolnovelties.co.uk who make a decent cable, and I've recently been made aware of RetroGamingCables:https://www.retrogamingcables.co.uk/ who seem to be getting a good rep.

Hope your Alice replacements do the trick.

These were both from coolnovelties :) check the cable see how lose it is going into the hood, I just wound insulation tape around it till I could just about close the hood around the cable so it good and secure with no movement

supaduper wrote: 11 Feb 2021 09:55 These were both from coolnovelties :) check the cable see how lose it is going into the hood, I just wound insulation tape around it till I could just about close the hood around the cable so it good and secure with no movement

order up some heat shrink insulation.. or i'll post you some.

Thanks for the offer Steve but will not need any as I have a drawer full of the stuff lol

Here is a pic of my fix, look a the free play of the cable going into the hood on the left and my fix on the right, that cable aint moving anywhere :lol:

DB23 cables breaking internally is inevitable unfortunately, especially if you are plugging and unplugging them regularly to test cards or different Amigas. I've had a few go more than once but fortunately I haven't had any catastrophic damage (that I am aware of!) caused to anything else from the cable breaking.

With these cables I now attack them with hot glue as a preventative measure. Don't bother using the glue gun as everything cools down and solidifies too quickly to make a decent job of it. Instead cut up a hot glue stick and melt it in position with a hot air station. Obviously finding the correct temperature here is important as we want the glue to melt sufficiently but not the connector hood!

We are dealing with this hood design :

Open cable hood by removing the two recessed screws on the flat 'grip' portion of the hood. Cut a standard hot glue stick into 8 roughly even discs and place three towards the rear of the hood in the clamp space. (Decent sized scissors work well to cut up hot glue sticks) Using a hot air station, melt the glue discs by choosing an appropriate temperature and air speed on your setup e.g. 110C and medium. Keep the wand well away from the target initially and slowly bring it closer until you see the glue discs starting to melt. Keep a close eye on the hood plastic for any signs of warping or melting, this shouldn't happen at sensible temperatures, but don't go crazy. Once the glue discs are fully and evenly melted replace the cable clamp into position in the hood. You should have around ten seconds to play with here as both hood and glue are up to temperature and will take a while to dissapate. This is the advantage of using the hot air station rather than the glue gun. Most glue guns will only just melt the glue and it will cool rapidly when applied. By the time enough glue has been dispensed the initial glue will have started to solidify, resulting in a mess. The hot air station is a much better approach. Place three more glue discs on the top of the cable clamp. Melt with hot air as before. Close up the cable, if you are not overly concerned about aesthetics you can add two more glue discs to the gap at the rear of the cable where it enters the hood. Carefully melt the inserted glue discs at a low temp, again using caution not to melt the hood. This should change the stress point of the cable and make it last considerably longer. It probably will still break eventually with heavy use but the failure should be inside the cable around the entry of the hood rather than in the hood itself resulting in shorts. If the cable does develop a fault in future it is easy enough to open the glued hood up, pick out the hot glue, shorten the cable by three of four cm, re-solder and reinstall.

supaduper wrote: 11 Feb 2021 09:55

rubber_jonnie wrote: 11 Feb 2021 09:18 It's good advice, and for me, I have given up buying cables on eBay now and either make my own, or get them from somewhere like Coolnovelties:https://Coolnovelties.co.uk who make a decent cable, and I've recently been made aware of RetroGamingCables:https://www.retrogamingcables.co.uk/ who seem to be getting a good rep.

Hope your Alice replacements do the trick.

These were both from coolnovelties :) check the cable see how lose it is going into the hood, I just wound insulation tape around it till I could just about close the hood around the cable so it good and secure with no movement

Odd, never had a problem with their cables.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 11 Feb 2021 22:19

supaduper wrote: 11 Feb 2021 09:55

These were both from coolnovelties :) check the cable see how lose it is going into the hood, I just wound insulation tape around it till I could just about close the hood around the cable so it good and secure with no movement

Odd, never had a problem with their cables.

Ignore what I said about Coolnovelties cables , I got mixed up :) they were another brand of cable

supaduper wrote: 11 Feb 2021 22:22

rubber_jonnie wrote: 11 Feb 2021 22:19

Odd, never had a problem with their cables.

Ignore what I said about Coolnovelties cables , I got mixed up :) they were another brand of cable

Okey dokey 😁