ScuzzBlog: Diaries February 2021Entry 25th February 2021: Post 1: Amiga 2000 - Dead in the water NOT !!Amiga 2000 - Dead in the water NOT !! Some while back now I did a feature on an A2000 that I had stored in its box with a system failure. Basically she was dead in the water and displaying a black screen and no boot. This I believe was my first A2000 and first battery removal. I sense I did not remove the PSU/floppy cradle and whilst removing the battery I did not clean up properly and missed the CPU legs. Over the years the legs have corroded and failed. Today I decided to take the A2000 out of the box and have another look. Not an easy task as the box was behind a stack of tubs. But I struggled and eventually extracted the Amiga 2000. Sure enough the computer wasn't displaying anything on the screen. I had a fiddle with the CPU and then got a white screen. Then a broken white, and then a red and then a green... BINGO ! CPU failure. So I knew what I was looking for. I had resisted taking out the CPU cus in the past I have completely found broken legs on the chip and broken socket receivers. But she wasn't working so I just jumped in. Man was the socket a mess. Took me a good while to clean up and I wasn't able to remove all the green but I scraped out most of it. I used alcohol and cocktail sticks. For the chip legs I even sanded the metal to try and bring the shine back. What I found was the last four spring metal tangs inside the socket were less than rigid. The end one looks broken. However I had kinda cleaned off enough of the receiving connector to have half a chance of making a sound contact. Failed !! Nothing. Just a black screen. Time to spread those legs. This time I expanded the legs on the CPU chip as wide as I could and then placed the right hand legs in tight against the socket. Then I gently eased the left hand legs in, placing pressure on the right hand set to allow the legs to drop. It's a tricky technique but the aim is to get the legs springing out and forming a tight grip on the socket connectors. AND THAT WORKED... Incredible. Multiple boots and disk insertions and she fired up every single time. I used the disk that I had been using on the A3000 and discovered a rogue program on the disk called SCION a genealogy program. Also the loading of the SHELL threw up a load of garbled letters. Sadly the keyboard appears to have lost the delete function and some of the letters stick. I used 1.3 but those stuck keys persisted so my usual comment about the date isn't quite right. But you get the idea. I dug out another 2.04 disk but someone had customised it to change the palette. There was no red visible. So I fired up R-Type II to check and all the colours were working. She was working way better than on the A3000. And so the computer is working. Irrespective of the problem, part of the retro challenge, when you hit issues, is to identify the problem. It is very frustrating having a computer with a problem that you cannot determine. So knowing what is wrong just makes life a whole load easier. In this case someone would need to de-solder and replace the CPU socket. And so the label on the computer records an issue but also states the date the computer was last working. So when I put her away today I could rest easy.... Amiga 2000 - Dead in the water NOT !!
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Last updated 25th February 2021
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