exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

As i'm about to recap my falcon I thought i would take some (alot) of pics first just in case.

Bought from new at Atari Workshop in Windsor UK (94?), they did the sound mods and put in a PowerUp2 for me as well. Never really looked too closely at the PCB until now (had changed PSU long time ago to an external one) but there is some awful soldering on it and what looks as though U28 has been replaced so really not sure what actual 'mods' Atari Workshop actually did, pics below is before I attack it with my own soldering iron.

Some underside pics :

Closeups of some sections :

some awful soldering by factory or AW ? :

Anyone know what this is bodge wire is for :

jwd wrote: 18 Aug 2023 18:32 Anyone know what this is bodge wire is for :

That bodge wire is on all C-Lab Falcons. See this post where I found information about it: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=3809

The badly-soldered Crystal DAC is strange. I would hazard a guess? Perhaps it used to have a socket, but for whatever reason the socket was removed and the DAC was soldered directly. Perhaps to do with C-Lab. Perhaps the socket was faulty.

None of these mods are 'Atari workshop'. They're either 3rd party copies of C-Lab mods, or done by C-Lab. But the quality of the work seems very poor.

The Falcon has a 'thick' pcb and some capacitors are difficult to remove, specially the ones having the negative lead in a large ground plane. Don't start if you haven't got a decent desolder and solder station or you'll ruin your Falcon.

Just my two cents.

Steve wrote: 18 Aug 2023 19:54 That bodge wire is on all C-Lab Falcons. See this post where I found information about it: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=3809

The badly-soldered Crystal DAC is strange. I would hazard a guess? Perhaps it used to have a socket, but for whatever reason the socket was removed and the DAC was soldered directly. Perhaps to do with C-Lab. Perhaps the socket was faulty.

None of these mods are 'Atari workshop'. They're either 3rd party copies of C-Lab mods, or done by C-Lab. But the quality of the work seems very poor.

Yes, I can confirm my C-LAB MKI has it.

Completely agree on the quality of the solder job... If I were you, I would fix that ASAP.

Steve wrote: 18 Aug 2023 19:54

jwd wrote: 18 Aug 2023 18:32 Anyone know what this is bodge wire is for :

That bodge wire is on all C-Lab Falcons. See this post where I found information about it: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=3809

The badly-soldered Crystal DAC is strange. I would hazard a guess? Perhaps it used to have a socket, but for whatever reason the socket was removed and the DAC was soldered directly. Perhaps to do with C-Lab. Perhaps the socket was faulty.

None of these mods are 'Atari workshop'. They're either 3rd party copies of C-Lab mods, or done by C-Lab. But the quality of the work seems very poor.

Many thanks for the link, what i could gather from the posts is its factory fitted as one post suggests :

"wire is going from the ground pin of the transistor to the ground pin on U20 (AJAX chip). So I'm guessing the PCB was missing the ground line to Pin26 on U20."

So PCB fabrication trace missing on my revision board.

The DAC seems again C-lab mod as looks resoldered (albeit better than mine) in :

http://msx.fab.free.fr/mpc2/atari/atari16-32/c-lab.htm

Comment in one post : "Handselected" audio codec (A/D D/A chip).

Also : AD/DA converter from the HIFI range from this page :

https://techgur.com/de/falconmk2-htm/

So it seems the DAC was replaced for a better one, i wonder the specific reason for that?

I do remember when buying from Atari Workshop/System Solutions that they told me all recommended audio mods where done to all Falcons sold by them at that time, didn't really take much notice tbh but whether that was done at factory or by them who knows.

HomeLate wrote: 18 Aug 2023 22:43 The Falcon has a 'thick' pcb and some capacitors are difficult to remove, specially the ones having the negative lead in a large ground plane. Don't start if you haven't got a decent desolder and solder station or you'll ruin your Falcon.

Just my two cents.

Yep thanks for the warning, its why i had practised various techniques on recapping my ST's, the 'moo' gun with flux and new solder works a treat.

All caps done on the falcon, new Noctua fan, still boots :)

Now to do NVRAM, cleanup PowerUp2 display LED and possibly replace current clock patch with clock patch from the phantom accelerator that i got from @Steve i believe at the last Cyber legends event.