New and Improved! New and Improved! New AND Improved!

Whatever happened to old and inferior?

Brand New A500+ - Part 1

My regular readers (hi Dad!) will know that I have had many A500+ motherboards pass through my hands. All of them were faulty in some way, caused by the liquid acid death, spilled over the board and components by the installed rechargeable battery. Many of these were Varta but my original A500+ (long since sold) had a GP battery. In any case, A500+'s die due to battery acid. 

In some cases, it's a simple repair. In some cases there is nothing else to do but harvest the parts and dispose of the board (sob!) at the appropriate recycling centre - check local listings.

But now, there is an alternative. How about a brand new motherboard? OK. Thanks to a most excellent chap called Rob, it is now possible to get a brand new motherboard for an A500+. And I have one. Specifically, I have a Rev2.1 board which is an usual, but surprisingly fabulous looking, purple. Previous versions were red (V1.7) and "baby shit yellow" (V2.0).

Phooar!!!

WARNING - INCOMING GUSH

This is a real thing of beauty. Removing it from the simple jiffy bag, it almost felt like I shouldn't solder anything to it. It's too smooth and shiny. The lines of the traces, the pin sharp markings on the solder mask. The colour. The COLOUR! It. Is. Awesome.

END OF GUSH

I was fortunate to get one of these from the first batch of V2.1 boards following a recommendation from the most excellent @game_whisperer. 

Although I have a new motherboard, it's not a simple case of poddling along to PC World to pick up a new set of ECS chips. Some things are still available new; resistors and capacitors are the same as they've always been so no problems there. Some of the smaller chips are also still available like the MC1488 and MC1489 for the serial port stuff and the 555 timer will be around forever, as well as the 74xxx logic chips. At a push, you could probably even find someone with DIP package 68000 processors too. But you'll need a donor board for Gary, Agnus, Paula and Denise. Also, the CIAs must come from a donor board, along with the power and video connectors. 

Strictly speaking, the power connector does not need to be harvested since the new board can take a standard round DIN socket rather than the irritatingly no-longer-available square type. This would require changing the cable on your Amiga power supply brick.

But the 23 pin D-sub video connector is a must harvest. The 23 pin version was unusual even in the 80's and 90's with the far more popular 25 pin connector being in much wider use, to the point that 25 pin connectors are still easily available. The 23 pin version is almost impossible to get now, unless you stumble across someone with some new old stock. Some suppliers will even sell a 25 pin connector which has literally had the end two pins sawn off to make it 23 pins...

Obtaining a donor board was simple. I reached into my cupboard and pulled out the board I repaired HERE. Sadly, although I got it to boot and it works, it's not very reliable. With the number of jumper wires it's not really suitable for selling on either. With that in mind, I have my donor board. 

It works - but not very well

More jumpers than a branch of M&S

In any case, the ultimate aim of this exercise, for me, is to have a fully functional, reliable Amiga A500+ that I can have as a daily driver and that I know will keep going for many, many years to come. To get there I intend to spend as little as possible. In other words, pretty much everything from my donor board will be transferred straight over to the new board.

Let's get on with it!

As luck would have it, I managed to get hold of a Duratool desoldering station. Something like this is vital if you're planning on doing any large scale desoldering project. It removed the power connector, video connector and other bits in sort order. 

And then I soldered them to the new board.

Video, Power and Floppy connectors in place..

With hundreds of components on these boards, I may be some time.

Stay tuned...