User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Mar 09, 2021 8:07 pm

According to the tech:
The daughterboard isn't required with the earlier Kickstart ROMs or DiagROM. I believe Kickstart 3.0 and up does, however.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:25 pm

Thanks to the fantastic work of member @RogerWilco486, my A3000 is back home and good to go. I put her all back together again last night and she fired right up. (I hate that feeling of tightening all of the screws on a case, that sense of dread in my stomach on the first boot-up.)

We're back in the game! Thanks again, RW486

I decided to set her up next to one of my C64s for a change of pace this time, taking the place of my C128Dcr in the meantime.

a3k-aok.jpg
a3k-aok2.jpg

User avatar
A10001986
1986

Posted Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:37 am

That machine is running Kickstart 1.4, ie a mere boot loader. No zorro activity here. That's why it "boots" without the DB.

Edit: Ah, missed the postings inbetween...

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Dec 27, 2021 7:07 pm

Well, she's been running fine since March of 2021, but today when I powered her on she got sleepy again with another black screen. Could another CIA chip have blown?

I pulled two from a dead A2K spare motherboard I had in storage. I plan on pulling the A3K apart tomorrow to cycle through the CIAs and see what happens. Part of me really hopes this is all it is so I don't have to ship the motherboard off again. But another part of me almost dreads the CIA being the culprit again.

Because, what could be making the CIA(s) chip pop?
Attachments
CIA.jpg
The "donor organs" supplied by an A2K board.


User avatar
A1-X1000
Toronto, Canada

Posted Sun Apr 03, 2022 2:59 pm

@ intric8

so what happened to cause CIA's to lose the magic smoke?

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Apr 03, 2022 4:43 pm

so what happened to cause CIA's to lose the magic smoke?
Both of my A1Ks needed to go to the shop. One was due to the motherboard (REALLY long story - I'll fill you guys in when it comes back to me in the next 1-2 weeks but the TL;DR is it died rather dramatically). The other was to recap it's power supply, because both PSUs were potentially shaky and one seems to have contributed to the demise of a machine.

The 3000's internal PSU is an achilles heel, just like the battery areas around so many big-box Amigas all these decades later. And unfortunately there aren't any off-the-shelf replacements one can simply go buy or even any 3rd party folks out there selling after-market inventions. The market for the A3K is just too small, apparently. You have to pretty much custom-build your own. And you need to know what you're doing if you want it to work well and actually fit properly.

So I'm getting both of mine re-capped and load-tested before putting them back in.

User avatar
A10001986
1986

Posted Sun Apr 03, 2022 10:19 pm

Don't forget to have them replace all X/Y capacitors as well. Those make great smoke bombs.





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