A600: Spare A600 mobo recapped, serviced and replacing current

Since many years I had a spare A600 mobo from my really old A600 that had some cap issues (sound etc) plus some old hacks I did when I couldn't hold a soldering iron correctly :)
Since I didn't have much time my really good friend Leo (keropi) offered to help a bit.

After getting a cap kit from AmigaKit, he changed the caps but there were channels missing in audio... He checked and changed the audio amp chip (from a spare dead A600 mobo) but still no fix.
Then he decided to salvage Paula from the dead mobo and finally that was the problem!
Now my mobo is working flawlessly so I received it and tested it with great joy.

Since it was working perfect with my Vampire I decided to replace my current mobo (that has some audio issues as well, along with some RGB to scart issues (caps desperately needing change).

So new mobo got the following hacks

Adding 2 signals for the dual floppy header. I decided to add the wires under the motherboard for cleaner mod. You can check the previous mod here where I added the wires on the top of the motherboard.

Next it was the 2nd floppy LED wires that would attach next to the LED header. Previous mod can be seen here. A lot cleaner in this go :)

Here you can see Ratte's switch in RF modulator space, the ribbons for Native/RTG fold carefully and hot-glued on top of kipper2k's angled adapter and then going under Vampire.

And here you can see the whole unit ready to rock with everything on.

You'll notice in the previous pic that the old switch that I used for switching between Kickstart 1.3 and Kickstart 3.1 was removed as nowadays the kick resides inside the Vampire. Instead, I thought of putting a bigger switch I had (ON/OFF/ON) for switching between Ratte's switch modes (Auto/Native/RTG). It took me a LOT of time trimming and filling the switch in order to be able to fit in my A600 but it fitted like a glove once I was ready.

 

Some things that are missing (if someone knows my setup) are the following:

1. MAS-Player plus the internal MAS/Paula mixer: Yep it was removed for 2 reasons. 1st because MAS-Player is definitely obsolete now since it can only play up to 192kbit MP3 files while Vampire can play up to 320kbit without a sweat and with only consuming 20-30% of the CPU power (impressive shiz I tell ya). Another reason was that mixer lowered considerably the volume of both MAS-Player and Paula so there was no reason to keep it.
2. NMI header: Yep, Vampire doesn't have an NMI header, although we managed with kipper2k to trigger the INT7 so I might add such a feature in the future
3. Ugly HDMI to VGA adapter handing in the air: I sympathize I tell ya, but most that know me, know that there was not a single way I would leave that hanging like that :) Tbh, I'm waiting an HDMI amplifier plus a short 10cm HDMI cable to try putting all these inside as comfortable as I can to have the best possible VGA signal coming through the HDMI plug.

Stay tuned :)

A4000: Recapping CVisionPPC

As I showed in a previous thread some time ago, I changed one cap on my new acquired CVisionPPC that I got as faulty.



Thankfully... the cap was the problem that kept CVisionPPC from working on the previous owner.
Of course this replacement capacitor was only a temporary solution.

After setting up ClassicWB 3.9 and installing CGX4, AfAOS etc... I realized that I didn't pretty much liked the scrolling on screen. My 1280x1024 17" Dell screen worked just fine under my BPPC+BVision combo on my A1200 so it wasn't any issue with the Monitor.

Since my CVisionPPC has SMD electrolytic capacitors I thought of changing them with new tandalums since heat can dry them off pretty quickly. Also I realized that my previous CVisionPPC that I sold, as long as most pictures I saw over BBoAH and other forums had CVisions with tandalums as well.
I asked Cosmos if he had some (since here in Greece I couldn't find in my local electronics store any SMD component) and he sent me the required 7 caps that arrived today :)


So this is what the board looked like before the surgery (lol):



...and this is how it looks like after the recap:



It was a frightening experience for someone not as skilled in desoldering and soldering so small components but I managed to do it really smoothly.

Well there was only one way to find out if the surgery was successful... Fire it up and see what's coming :)

Result was SUCCESSFUL! Not only it looks a lot better but all the annoying scrolling and sizzling lines disappeared and the picture on my monitor is once more Crystal Clear!




Feels really good! And looks a lot better don't you think? :D