Learning from your own mistakes is priceless, learning from others' mistakes is painless as well. It's all to easy to edit our mistakes these days, and nobody learns from that.
Good job. While I was watching I was thinking “That board doesn’t look that bad to have all those problems” But now you know a lot more about the board then you would have if it worked. I just bought a rough 2000 on eBay that I hope I can turn into my dream machine.
As you know, I have a 2000. Mine had a very, very rough life. Mainly due to lack of time right now, but also my lack of skill and patience, one of my amazing Patreon’s volunteered to take a look. We’ve been working our way through it for the last few weeks. This video is giving me serious déjà vu. Even using an unknown 500 to test with 😂 Nathan has now replaced (what feels like) nearly every socket due to either corrosion of physical damage. We’ve found a bad cpu, a bad agnus, and bad ram.
Here was the damage/repairs: 1. Battery damage - 2 repaired traces 2. New 68k and rom socket from corrosion 3. One (out of 32) bad ram chip (discovered by piggy back method) 4. About a dozen capacitors replaced in areas suspected to be at fault 5. Bad Paula and/or Denise Socket. 6. CPU with broken pin Here's the troubleshooting repairs/replacements 1. 13 x logic chips socketed (tested good in RCT pro) 2. Agnus socket replaced 3. CIA sockets relocated 4. Power supply recapped 5. Main board power caps replaced And because fuck it...... 1. Buster and Gary re-socketed We got there in the end 😅
Hey Aaron, I've been catching up with a lot of your videos, I'm a FLOSS Weekly viewer. This type of hardware work is alien to me and I've enjoyed watching and learning something. Cheers!
I do like a happy ending. A massive thanks - all those hours spent troubleshooting must have been frustrating for you but it resulted in 45 minutes of great entertainment for us. Also, have you ever made a video talking about your background? You know a lot about electronics if you can build your own power supply, where did you learn all your skills?
Awesome. Great find and you fixed it in the end, so that's cool. My original Amiga 2000 was in storage for 20 years or so before I unloaded my storage of Commodore stuff and like an idiot I completely forgot about the battery. Much like yours, I had to replace the CPU socket. I did a similar cleanup and it worked. However, a year later it was broke again because the corrosion under the solder mask kept creeping. Then I had to replace the ROM socket. To stop it I had to remove the solder mask everywhere that green corrosion is and then get down to the copper. I then put a coating on and sealed it with no green corrosion remaining and it stayed working. That stuff is insidious and just keeps on destroying until you remove every bit of it. Anyway, great video series so far. Subscribed.
There is a PC card you can plug into the 2000, as well as scsi cards. This took me back to the 80s when I bought my first Amiga 500. I upgraded mine with a 4meg 030 card, fat Agness mod etc. 20Meg HDD, 14 inch clip on touchscreen, graphics tablet, noisy dot-matrix printer 😬 it was quite a sexy little machine. I didn't buy my first PC until 1993, a 386 running Windows 3.
Very nice videos, and an absolutely awesome find on that Amiga 2000! That DKB Wildfire board is /very/ rare indeed; I'm glad it's in the hands of an electronics-savvy owner! I'm really looking forward to when you boot it all up! FWIW, I recommend buying the latest version of P96 from IComp (for the Picasso II card), and AmigaOS 3.2 (with hardware ROM).
The Kickstart ROM weirdness is because of the fact that later Kickstart chips don't work on earlier revision A500 motherboards because of a wiring issue (there's more to it, and it's fixable, of course). Also, the later Kickstarts check for more devices, so are slower to boot. Under some circumstances, excruciatingly so.
@@RetroHackShack Another thing to keep in mind about Kickstart ROMs for your future path into the Amigas: The A500 rev. 8 motherboard has a 42-pin socket for the ROM, but all released ROMs come in 40-pin packages. The chip *must* go towards the bottom so that pin slots 1 and 42 are left vacant, not the other way around. Mis-installation will kill the chip, but probably won't hurt the rest of the board. Ask me how I know, and I'm probably not the only one. 😄
Just FYI on something that might be confusing. On the oscilloscope testing. The picture of the 68000 CPU and the CPU on the board are oriented differently. The pins on the left side of the picture are actually the ones being tested.
Congrats on the repair! I still think the A2000 mobo will continue to corrode under the solder mask. 26:05 hey that A500 RAM expansion probably has a VARTA battery in there! Ugh. 17:49 there is a long delay when no floppy is connected. wait longer.
The PCB Mounted on the IEC (Kettle Lead) mains input socket was very nicely identified by my New Fave Tuber R.H.S. as the mains voltage spike and R.F. filter suppression Circuitry.. I am not saying a word about the one built onto the transplanted PSUs PCB as my post was beginning to sound like the Greased Lightening theme. Overhead filters , Dual Mains RF Suppression. Ohh Yeah.. Etc Etc.. So I Re thought and shut up for a bit :) But 2 mains filters won't hurt in the slightest Nylon mount might though. (My previous Comment) Cheers all the best and TTFN 😄
Congratulations on fixing the Amiga 2000 motherboard :D at least you did not fry anything on the motherboard :) I was allso hoping that you did try the Kickstart 3.1 rom when it booted with the Kickstart 1.3 rom, But games with the 68060 50 cpu is at the most just too fast but if the cpu card can switch over to the 68000 cpu then you can run the same games like on Amiga 500, but if you can install a scsi harddrive and a scsi cdrom drive you can install Amiga os 3.5 or Amiga os 3.9 :) the Picasso II card will allso work on Amiga os3.5/3.9 but you may need drivers I can't remember you can allso play mp3 128 kb/s stereo with no problem on 68060 50 Mhz you just need a player ;) like Amiga Amp or somthing else with mp3 plugin
I suspect that you found it already, but just in case: The ram expansion in A500 usually has a varta battery. Also I believe the "long" post/boot time for your A2000 is because the floppy drive is not connected, it has to timeout on waiting on it before it can finish the init sequence.
Hi again.. I might tend to edge a bit of caution with the isolating idea regarding the nylon posts as most of the ground and zero volt rails of SMPTs may rely on those connections to complete loops to the other screw connection areas.. Maybe hardwire all off the connections together solder looping the related screw terminal holes together then make a good connection to that ring between the case then to ground.. The blue high voltage capacitors sometimes filter electrical noise using those grounds and the last thing you need is spurious voltage spikes on the negative / zero volt rails. I Might be wrong but Try scoping between mains EARTH to the nylon insulated copper board eyelets.. What situation may arise if a filter cap went low ohm.? Would the computer crash or could the zero volt raise above the 3 volt CPU.? Rule of Thumb = Ground Anchors Should Never Float. Cheers and TTFN..
IF I was to do this, I would cut the ATX connector off and use Trifurcon Molex crimp pins part # 08-52-0125 (Mouser #:538-08-52-0125) and Connector Housing part # 09-50-8141 (Mouser #:538-09-50-8141) or reuse the original. Then just cut the wires off at the PCB you wont use. I suggest the Waldom Crimp Tool W-HT-1919 for the pins. The Trifurcon pins give you 3 sided connectivity vs one sided on the regular pins. When I do things like this with inexpensive parts, I usually buy 10x ea to have them in future projects. Just my two cents though. Ed Krzycki over at Great Plains Electronics also carries all of these items with no minimum purchase.
I assume you had to flip the "tick" jumper on the motherboard as well? The A2000 provides a synch to the AC 50/60Hz but can be overridden. (My A2000 is a rev A board so all the jumpers are different to the later jumpers) I also decided to replace the PSU with an ATX in my Amiga. I haven't got as far as yours yet :-)
@@RetroHackShack Oops! Must have missed it. Spent the whole vid after you started customising the PSU thinking "I hope he's aware of the tick jumper! I hope he's aware of the tick jumper!" :-D
Your Amiga 500 looks like it is a rev 5 board. Your Amiga 2000 looks like it is a rev 4 board. For rev 3 or 5 A500 and for rev 3 A2000 boards, kickstart 2.04 and above must have pin #1 jumpered across the top of the IC to pin #31. This is why the kickstart 3.1 works in the rev4 A2000 and not the rev5 A500.
By the way, I have an industrial automation card worth 10k, a Honeywell that has a number of quite powerull FPGAs and a Motorola 68040 SE *and some RAM* I wanted to try something else with it like repurposing the FPGAs + CPU in place with creative FPGA firmware but am not that versed in FPGA and would need a PCI slot on my PC so not really. As such I will trade this beast for a full Amiga desktop (Not the 500/600, the 1200 only if "towerized" or with some nice addons, 2000s will need to know the system, 3k 4k no questions asked as long as it's the full system not missing custom chips)
Checking for resistance or ESR as well as visual are three ways to detect a bad capacitor. Did you know this does not test for a capacitor that is leaky, which also would call for replacement. You have probably seen or subscribe to his channel. Take a look at this video from Mr. Carlson's Lab he has a project that checks for leaky capacitors, if they are leaky then they need to be replaced as well. ua-cam.com/video/LhovRIM5xAo/v-deo.html
I would have used a better PSU than a codegen, those things are cheap and nasty firecrackers just waiting to go bang. That 400W sticker is a lie, lucky if that thing is 250W.
@@RetroHackShack Understandable, but I wouldn't trust the PSU as far as I could kick it - don't risk the Amiga 2000 with it - codegen was everywhere in cheap PC's in Australia (where I'm from) back in the day until people wized up to them. I've had the damn things go bang pretty much in my face several times (used to do PC repair work for people) definitely find something better or grab that other PSU you mentioned in the video. The fans in Codgen PSU's are always really loud and terrible sounding too, though they sound mostly OK if not attached to something as you found out.
I thought something similar about the Watts of the new PSU.. Just from the look of the dimensions of the parts used in the psu, it doesn‘t look if it even has more power than the original one.? I was also a bit worried about seeing the hole for the switch drilled and knibbled after the elektronics was built in.. I‘d be worried these metal parts cause a short by falling inside the housing at the electronic parts. 😬 Also it‘s always recommended to exchange all electrolytic caps in the psu if one cap already leaks.. just a matter of time till the others follow.. and then you need to disassemble everything again.. Also I don‘t get, the motherboard wasn‘t cleaned first from dust, corrosion and maybe reseating and deoxy the sockets .. that should be the first giving you a chance to exclude the one or other problem ☺️ Anyways congratulations on getting it working!!! I‘d love to get my hands on a Amika 2000 again and maybe upgrade it with some options we got today! ✌🏻😎
Love your content! What's the story behind the injury on the palm of your hand, is it work related/cautionary tale?
Thanks. I had trigger finger and needed surgery to fix it. It's my third one ☹️
Learning from your own mistakes is priceless, learning from others' mistakes is painless as well. It's all to easy to edit our mistakes these days, and nobody learns from that.
💯
Good job. While I was watching I was thinking “That board doesn’t look that bad to have all those problems” But now you know a lot more about the board then you would have if it worked. I just bought a rough 2000 on eBay that I hope I can turn into my dream machine.
Thanks
As you know, I have a 2000. Mine had a very, very rough life. Mainly due to lack of time right now, but also my lack of skill and patience, one of my amazing Patreon’s volunteered to take a look.
We’ve been working our way through it for the last few weeks. This video is giving me serious déjà vu. Even using an unknown 500 to test with 😂
Nathan has now replaced (what feels like) nearly every socket due to either corrosion of physical damage. We’ve found a bad cpu, a bad agnus, and bad ram.
Holy Moly! Now I really feel lucky. Mine feels like a walk in the park compared to yours.
Here was the damage/repairs:
1. Battery damage - 2 repaired traces
2. New 68k and rom socket from corrosion
3. One (out of 32) bad ram chip (discovered by piggy back method)
4. About a dozen capacitors replaced in areas suspected to be at fault
5. Bad Paula and/or Denise Socket.
6. CPU with broken pin
Here's the troubleshooting repairs/replacements
1. 13 x logic chips socketed (tested good in RCT pro)
2. Agnus socket replaced
3. CIA sockets relocated
4. Power supply recapped
5. Main board power caps replaced
And because fuck it......
1. Buster and Gary re-socketed
We got there in the end 😅
Was the power supply faulty? Or did you just replace those caps for good measure?
Hey Aaron, I've been catching up with a lot of your videos, I'm a FLOSS Weekly viewer. This type of hardware work is alien to me and I've enjoyed watching and learning something. Cheers!
Awesome!
I do like a happy ending.
A massive thanks - all those hours spent troubleshooting must have been frustrating for you but it resulted in 45 minutes of great entertainment for us.
Also, have you ever made a video talking about your background? You know a lot about electronics if you can build your own power supply, where did you learn all your skills?
Thanks. I haven't done that yet. Maybe I should do one for my patrons.
Awesome. Great find and you fixed it in the end, so that's cool. My original Amiga 2000 was in storage for 20 years or so before I unloaded my storage of Commodore stuff and like an idiot I completely forgot about the battery. Much like yours, I had to replace the CPU socket. I did a similar cleanup and it worked. However, a year later it was broke again because the corrosion under the solder mask kept creeping. Then I had to replace the ROM socket. To stop it I had to remove the solder mask everywhere that green corrosion is and then get down to the copper. I then put a coating on and sealed it with no green corrosion remaining and it stayed working. That stuff is insidious and just keeps on destroying until you remove every bit of it. Anyway, great video series so far. Subscribed.
Awesome. I plan on treating this the same way once everything is working.
I like things like your 'dramatic reenactment'. They are funny, and you do them well.
Ha ha. Thanks!
@@RetroHackShack It's what makes a good video an entertaining one.
I laughed at the drill!
There is a PC card you can plug into the 2000, as well as scsi cards. This took me back to the 80s when I bought my first Amiga 500. I upgraded mine with a 4meg 030 card, fat Agness mod etc. 20Meg HDD, 14 inch clip on touchscreen, graphics tablet, noisy dot-matrix printer 😬 it was quite a sexy little machine. I didn't buy my first PC until 1993, a 386 running Windows 3.
Congratulations on fixing your Amiga!
Thanks
Great work all round.
Thanks!
Very nice videos, and an absolutely awesome find on that Amiga 2000! That DKB Wildfire board is /very/ rare indeed; I'm glad it's in the hands of an electronics-savvy owner! I'm really looking forward to when you boot it all up! FWIW, I recommend buying the latest version of P96 from IComp (for the Picasso II card), and AmigaOS 3.2 (with hardware ROM).
Thanks! I'll check into it.
I like the troubleshooting, it's very interesting. Thank you!
Thanks
The Kickstart ROM weirdness is because of the fact that later Kickstart chips don't work on earlier revision A500 motherboards because of a wiring issue (there's more to it, and it's fixable, of course). Also, the later Kickstarts check for more devices, so are slower to boot. Under some circumstances, excruciatingly so.
Cool. Thanks!
@@RetroHackShack Another thing to keep in mind about Kickstart ROMs for your future path into the Amigas: The A500 rev. 8 motherboard has a 42-pin socket for the ROM, but all released ROMs come in 40-pin packages. The chip *must* go towards the bottom so that pin slots 1 and 42 are left vacant, not the other way around. Mis-installation will kill the chip, but probably won't hurt the rest of the board. Ask me how I know, and I'm probably not the only one. 😄
Nice work mate. Nice work.
Thanks!
Just FYI on something that might be confusing. On the oscilloscope testing. The picture of the 68000 CPU and the CPU on the board are oriented differently. The pins on the left side of the picture are actually the ones being tested.
I prefer Elliot from E.T.’s “it’s working! It’s working!” ;)
Ah. I forgot about that one. Maybe next time.
By the way, no floppy causes a LOOONG wait for the boot screen.
Congrats on the repair! I still think the A2000 mobo will continue to corrode under the solder mask.
26:05 hey that A500 RAM expansion probably has a VARTA battery in there! Ugh.
17:49 there is a long delay when no floppy is connected. wait longer.
Very nice video. COMMODORE AMIGA FOR EVER!
Thanks
The PCB Mounted on the IEC (Kettle Lead) mains input socket was very nicely identified by my New Fave Tuber R.H.S. as the mains voltage spike and R.F. filter suppression Circuitry..
I am not saying a word about the one built onto the transplanted PSUs PCB as my post was beginning to sound like the Greased Lightening theme.
Overhead filters , Dual Mains RF Suppression. Ohh Yeah..
Etc Etc.. So I Re thought and shut up for a bit :) But 2 mains filters won't hurt in the slightest
Nylon mount might though. (My previous Comment)
Cheers all the best and TTFN
😄
@22:02 look lifting Gary's leg worked!
Congratulations on fixing the Amiga 2000 motherboard :D at least you did not fry anything on the motherboard :) I was allso hoping that you did try the Kickstart 3.1 rom when it booted with the Kickstart 1.3 rom, But games with the 68060 50 cpu is at the most just too fast but if the cpu card can switch over to the 68000 cpu then you can run the same games like on Amiga 500, but if you can install a scsi harddrive and a scsi cdrom drive you can install Amiga os 3.5 or Amiga os 3.9 :) the Picasso II card will allso work on Amiga os3.5/3.9 but you may need drivers I can't remember you can allso play mp3 128 kb/s stereo with no problem on 68060 50 Mhz you just need a player ;) like Amiga Amp or somthing else with mp3 plugin
Thanks for the tips!
Amiga face it. Resistance is futile! :D Good work!
great stuff. did the cards work
I suspect that you found it already, but just in case: The ram expansion in A500 usually has a varta battery. Also I believe the "long" post/boot time for your A2000 is because the floppy drive is not connected, it has to timeout on waiting on it before it can finish the init sequence.
39:56 Rev 5 Amiga 500's need a jumper wire on the Kickstart 2.x and newer chips to work.
Hi again..
I might tend to edge a bit of caution with the isolating idea regarding the nylon posts as most of the ground and zero volt rails of SMPTs may rely on those connections to complete loops to the other screw connection areas..
Maybe hardwire all off the connections together solder looping the related screw terminal holes together then make a good connection to that ring between the case then to ground..
The blue high voltage capacitors sometimes filter electrical noise using those grounds and the last thing you need is spurious voltage spikes on the negative / zero volt rails.
I Might be wrong but Try scoping between mains EARTH to the nylon insulated copper board eyelets..
What situation may arise if a filter cap went low ohm.?
Would the computer crash or could the zero volt raise above the 3 volt CPU.?
Rule of Thumb = Ground Anchors Should Never Float.
Cheers and TTFN..
IF I was to do this, I would cut the ATX connector off and use Trifurcon Molex crimp pins part # 08-52-0125 (Mouser #:538-08-52-0125) and Connector Housing part # 09-50-8141 (Mouser #:538-09-50-8141) or reuse the original. Then just cut the wires off at the PCB you wont use. I suggest the Waldom Crimp Tool W-HT-1919 for the pins. The Trifurcon pins give you 3 sided connectivity vs one sided on the regular pins. When I do things like this with inexpensive parts, I usually buy 10x ea to have them in future projects. Just my two cents though. Ed Krzycki over at Great Plains Electronics also carries all of these items with no minimum purchase.
Thanks for sharing that.
I did something siliar to my A4000 but I had to scrap the case for the ATX power supply and mounted the bare board and a fan on the back of the case
It is taking that long because you do not have a floppy drive connected. Always connect the FDD.
Kickstart 3.1 or any 27C400 EPROM will not work in a A500 with a rev.5 board, without an adapter :)
Thanks
I assume you had to flip the "tick" jumper on the motherboard as well? The A2000 provides a synch to the AC 50/60Hz but can be overridden. (My A2000 is a rev A board so all the jumpers are different to the later jumpers)
I also decided to replace the PSU with an ATX in my Amiga. I haven't got as far as yours yet :-)
Yeah. I mentioned that.
@@RetroHackShack Oops! Must have missed it. Spent the whole vid after you started customising the PSU thinking "I hope he's aware of the tick jumper! I hope he's aware of the tick jumper!" :-D
Great, great work!
One tiny tip: perhaps you should replace the fan with a Noctua fan. This replacement fan that you've installed is a bit loud ;)
Yeah. It was quiet outside the case, but when mounted it became much louder. Plus I think the bearings are shot.
Love the series. Genuine question: why don't you just repair the damaged traces instead of running longer bodge wires all across the board?
If I knew where exactly they were broken that would be possible, but it would be a lot more work and time.
@@RetroHackShack oh, I see. I thought broken traces were visible, since the battery of death affected a limited area on the board.
microsoft class of 1980 is this referring to msdos?
Nope. The logo one the shirt I made is the one from 1980. It is also my favorite logo they had.
Your Amiga 500 looks like it is a rev 5 board. Your Amiga 2000 looks like it is a rev 4 board.
For rev 3 or 5 A500 and for rev 3 A2000 boards, kickstart 2.04 and above must have pin #1 jumpered across the top of the IC to pin #31.
This is why the kickstart 3.1 works in the rev4 A2000 and not the rev5 A500.
Cool. I will have to try that and see if it works.
the 500 board is not moded to take the 3.1 rom chip so it would not work
Thanks
By the way, I have an industrial automation card worth 10k, a Honeywell that has a number of quite powerull FPGAs and a Motorola 68040 SE *and some RAM*
I wanted to try something else with it like repurposing the FPGAs + CPU in place with creative FPGA firmware but am not that versed in FPGA and would need a PCI slot on my PC so not really.
As such I will trade this beast for a full Amiga desktop (Not the 500/600, the 1200 only if "towerized" or with some nice addons, 2000s will need to know the system, 3k 4k no questions asked as long as it's the full system not missing custom chips)
3.1 kickstart won't work in that A500 revision .. you need at least revision 6 or actually make a light modification to the 3.1 chip
Thanks
One thing that I don't like about PCBWay is that it manufactures in China. But, you get what you pay for.
Checking for resistance or ESR as well as visual are three ways to detect a bad capacitor. Did you know this does not test for a capacitor that is leaky, which also would call for replacement. You have probably seen or subscribe to his channel. Take a look at this video from Mr. Carlson's Lab he has a project that checks for leaky capacitors, if they are leaky then they need to be replaced as well. ua-cam.com/video/LhovRIM5xAo/v-deo.html
How is this possible? I can hear the high voltage when his CRT is running, either that or my mom's watching TV.
Oh no. I hope I didn't leave 15k noise in the video.
@@RetroHackShack eithet that or I just have good hearing. Seems only noticeable when the CRT has no imput signal.
Sorry about that. I can't hear it. My ears are too old.
@@RetroHackShack No probleme.
I had a DKB Wildfire 060 board, but the repair tech at Mr. Hardware never returned it. Sigh.
I would have used a better PSU than a codegen, those things are cheap and nasty firecrackers just waiting to go bang. That 400W sticker is a lie, lucky if that thing is 250W.
It's what I had.
@@RetroHackShack Understandable, but I wouldn't trust the PSU as far as I could kick it - don't risk the Amiga 2000 with it - codegen was everywhere in cheap PC's in Australia (where I'm from) back in the day until people wized up to them. I've had the damn things go bang pretty much in my face several times (used to do PC repair work for people) definitely find something better or grab that other PSU you mentioned in the video. The fans in Codgen PSU's are always really loud and terrible sounding too, though they sound mostly OK if not attached to something as you found out.
I thought something similar about the Watts of the new PSU.. Just from the look of the dimensions of the parts used in the psu, it doesn‘t look if it even has more power than the original one.?
I was also a bit worried about seeing the hole for the switch drilled and knibbled after the elektronics was built in.. I‘d be worried these metal parts cause a short by falling inside the housing at the electronic parts. 😬
Also it‘s always recommended to exchange all electrolytic caps in the psu if one cap already leaks.. just a matter of time till the others follow.. and then you need to disassemble everything again..
Also I don‘t get, the motherboard wasn‘t cleaned first from dust, corrosion and maybe reseating and deoxy the sockets .. that should be the first giving you a chance to exclude the one or other problem ☺️
Anyways congratulations on getting it working!!! I‘d love to get my hands on a Amika 2000 again and maybe upgrade it with some options we got today!
✌🏻😎