by Dario on Amiga, Repair

AMIGA 500 Rev5 Green Screen Repair

Got this Amiga 500 Revision 5 computer in a non working state. Initial problem was a black screen. Upon reseating the AGNUS chip, the machine showed a green screen. Green screen usually means bad RAM, first thing I tried was to burn an EPROM with DIAGROM and fit it in the ROM socket with an adapter for revision 5 motherboards. DIAGROM was unable to show me something on screen via the RGB video output, so I connected another computer to the AMIGA with a serial cable. With this method the output of DIAGROM was that the chip RAM was bad, the problem is that we still need to identify which ones are the bad ones, there are 16 RAM chips soldered to the pcb. Read More >>

 
by Dario on Amiga, Repair

Commodore 1702 Monitor, missing color

1702 Monitor had picture but no color.

First thing to check was that the Commodore 64 computer itself wasn’t the culprit, so I swapped it for another video source and the problem continued. I’ve noticed that touching the switch in the back that selects between FRONT and REAR inputs had some effect and the color was present for a brief moment, but then it fade away leaving just a black and white screen. Both REAR and FRONT inputs had the same issue. Read More >>

 
by Dario on Amiga, Repair

Amiga 1200 faulty CIA fix

Got this A1200 that was working fine except for some random crashes. Upon performing the Amiga Test Kit, it showed a fault in a CIA timer. The 1200 has smd components, that means you need a hot air station to remove some chips. The following pictures shows the removing process of U7. Then I added a PLCC socket for the new CIA ic. Machine fixed. Read More >>

 
by Dario on Repair

Microdigital TK95 Repair – No video

I got this TK95 machine in a non working state. If you don’t know the TK95 is a computer clone made in Brazil of the famous Sinclair Spectrum computer. Read More >>

 
by Dario on Amiga, Repair

AMIGA 2000 repair: Mouse not working

Mouse directions didn’t work on the Amiga 2000. The mouse was fine as it was tested on another machine. Another mouse was plugged in the Amiga 2000 and it didn’t work either. Read More >>

 
by Dario on Amiga, Repair

Restoring an A1200

I got this Amiga 1200 really dirty. It’s stock, no fancy accelerator cards or any extra RAM. It comes however with a 40mb hard disk. Read More >>

 
by Dario on Arcade, Repair

Bootleg Arcade PCB Repair

This is a cheap and easy arcade pcb repair I did without much knowledge.

I got this Mortal Kombat bootleg pcb with some problems:

  • Sound was horrible
  • When turning the volume up the pcb resets
  • Both BLOCK buttons where constantly pressed down
  • Some graphic glitches

    • Read More >>

     
    by Dario on Amiga, Repair

    Resurrecting Amiga 2000

    I got this A2000HD from a very nice guy that used it for video production back in the old times. The machine wasn’t in the best shape, it came partly disassembled and very dirty. Read More >>

     
    by Dario on Floppy Drives, IBM, Repair

    IBM PS/2 Model 25, Floppy Drive Repair

    I got this nice IBM PS/2 Model 25 with a non working Floppy Drive. It also came with an after market Hard Drive and HDD controller.
    Upon firing this thing up, I’ve noticed a horrible sound, it was the hard drive read/write head scratching the plates. So the HDD was unrepairable for me.
    What I did was remove the HDD and try to repair the Floppy Drive. Read More >>

     
    by Dario on Commodore, Floppy Drives, Repair

    Replacing the head on a 1541 disk drive

    I have a bunch of these 1541 drives for the C64 and C128, two of them weren’t working. Every time I tried LOAD "$", 8 it gave me a FILE NOT FOUND error.
    At first I thought it was a dirty head, but in fact the head was busted, I had to replace it. Read More >>