Latest update July 28, 2011

 

A3000 Part DUEX :

Today part 2 of the exciting A3000 saga. I know what you are saying "2 A3000 teardowns in a week?" well technically, I also had a ton more Amiga stuff to go through, plus I touch on the A1000 also, but I will go into that another day. Because I was selling these things on Ebay and Amibay, I took a ton of pictures with my crappy i-Phone so I am showing you some of the most important ones, because, quite frankly the PITA time it takes to re-size everything in Photo shop is a huge time killer.

So, these A3000's were done in tandem, using one machine to test the other, and though a lot of blood (from cutting myself on the chassis), sweat (no AC and it can get awful hot in my Apartment) and tears (yes, 2.xx roms wanting a "A3000 Super Kick start disk, when you don't have one) is enough to make anyone cry.

This second unit, (at first) appeared to be a much better unit than the first. It had a full 16 megs of RAM, what appeared to be a 230 meg hard drive, and version 2.xx ROMS softkicking into OS 3.1. Great! a fully functioning, bootable unit. I then tested the floppy drive to make sure it actually read disks. The ONLY thing this was missing was the little exterior drive bay cover. I suspect at one time, this unit also had 2 floppy drives.

I then proceeded to tear it down, not only to inspect it further, but to make sure it had no battery damage. The battery was still installed, but no fuzz or leakage had occurred.

Also, I wanted to boot this baby up and see the specs. You can see by the screen shots, the OS drive was only showing 32 Megs and a full 16 megs of Ram. No other partition was showing.

I also could visually see that the physical drive itself was an IBM 1Gig. (1040 Meg) Drive, so I knew that re-formating and re-installing needed to be done later.

With this information in hand, I then jumped into tearing the whole thing apart. I also wanted to know if this had the INT2 mod also. Sadly, like the other unit, it did not.

An interesting note. This had the exact same mylar sheet as the A4000 under the board. I wonder if this was original -cost saving measure by Commodore or what. After all its just a sheet of mylar.

Keyboard, Case, Mouse.

I then proceeded to clean up the Keyboard case and mouse. Same kind of boring pictures as before, but because I did the Keyboard and mouse at work, I shrink-wrapped them so they would be clean for the new owner.

Yea, I know, a lot of boring pictures ..

I then used this chassis to test the other units floppies, and the 320 meg drive. But, with the 2.xx ROMS, I couldn't do anything with it.

At this point I got pissed. Softkicking into 3.1 probably made sense to someone 20 years ago, when 3.1 ROMS were expensive and scarce, but today makes no sense.

I make it no secret that I am "stockpiling" parts and ordering them for my A3000T, so I grabbed the 3.1 ROMS I was saving for it and put them in the Unit. After all I can always (and did) order another set from E-bay at anytime.

Now, I could get things done, and did. I then put the chassis back together.

The first thing I did was format and install 3.1 on the small 320 meg drive for the other unit, for at this time, I did not know if I could find another floppy drive for it.

Everything went as smooth as could be.

Next, back to the IBM drive. Reformatted it and install OS 3.1.

You can see from the above photo, that all 1033 Megs were recovered.
Now, to format and Install.

Ok, be patient, we are almost done now. Lets do a Configuration now to see if everything is ok.

Looks good, now to put everything back together and one last shot before boxing up. Notice the correct case screws also.

And we are out of here...

....next, the A1000....

 

July 27, 2011

The 3000's.........

Last Sunday (July 17,2011)A good friend decide it was time to start thinning his Amiga Collection and gave me the first haul of it. The 3 main things were 2- A3000 and an A1000 Unit. I am a bit hesitant to mention who this is, because a certain person probably will try to thieve more stuff from him, but most know who it is. Also, this person is very wise to the thieving ways of a certain individual and would probably refuse him anyway's. (yes, I am still ticked that he STOLE the A4000 right out from under me, may he rot in hell for all eternity.. ok, I am done)

A3000's

I have spent the last week, trying to sell these on Amibay, but no bites there, so right now, the are up on ebay. I have spent the last week carefully stripping these 2 units down, and cleaning everything. Including the keyboards and mice.

The first Unit.

The first unit I grabbed was probably a parts unit. It had the battery removed with no damage to the Mother board. It had 2 floppy disks, NO hard drive, 3.1 Roms and 12 megs of RAM. I then proceeded to strip this unit down for cleaning and discovered that both floppy drives were completely dead. I then grabbed a 320 Meg hard drive, and stole a floppy from an A2000, and rebuilt this beast.

During the final teardown, I wanted to check if this board had the INT2 mod done to it. Sadly, it did not.

I then proceeded to clean the shell, Keyboard and mouse. I won't boar you with the over 100 pictures I took, Just some key shots.

The keyboard, I took to work one night, and I popped of all the keys and scrubbed it all down meticulously. I did not like how the cord was yellowed, and I did accidentally break a slider. It's a good thing that I have spare parts keyboards and fixed it up on Sunday morning. Also, someone had spilled what I guess was Coke or Pepsi on the keyboard years ago, it caused some minor corrosion on the circuit board, so I also replaced it.

I then proceeded on to the mouse. After the mouse was all cleaned, I shrink wrapped it, ready for shipping.

I then scrubbed the outer shell with bleach and water,

Once the outer shell was all done, I gave it all a final assembly. The A2000 does indeed have the same model of floppy drive, but a different button. Tried as much as I could to change it, the top micro-screw just would not give on the floppy drive. I suspect the factory glued them in, so I had to settle with it looking a bit dorkky.

I then tested it all out with Bubble Bobble. Tomorrow, unit 2.....