CTACS meeting for October 21, 2002

We convened at the library which has plenty of electrical outlets. That's good since we had an A3000, an A2000 and an A1200 out on tables.

This evening in attendance were President Charlie Boas, Chris Holcombe, Keith Sterzing and George Wyche.

I say at the outset that neither Keith nor Chris ended up at their goals for the evening; but there was real promise all the way up to closing time.

A3000

On Keith's A3000 we never could get it to boot up. The symptom is the machine has been taking longer and longer to boot up. The last success was after 40 minutes of monkeying with it and that was a month ago. The hard drive has been replaced twice out of desperation.

We reduced the SCSI chain to just the HD. It is terminated. The HD makes all the right noise upon powerup.
We removed the 68060 accelerator board
We removed the loose tower lock wiring harness which leads back to connector CN302. Anyone know how that motherboard connector is supposed to be wired?
We hooked up a Commodore 1084S to the 25pin "normal" video port
We measured the 12VDC and 5VDC at the motherboard
We found (shame on that repair place Keith returned it to twice!) a bent pin on one of the whatsit modules that was in effect floating and carefully restored its registration and reinstalled it. The modules look like large resistor packs. There are 8 of them in a field of sockets that remind one of the broad side of a car water radiator. What are those things?

All to no avail. He says that before he did the BIG upgrade to his system, it worked flawlessly (albeit at 68030 speeds) for a number of years. We conclude that the SCSI controller on the motherboard is the next most likely culprit. Anybody have a suggestion where Keith can send this machine to be worked on?

A2000

You'll remember that 2 months ago we disassembled Chris' A2000 and found a burnt landing from a power supply connector to the mouse connector. The metal had peeled away from the board and ceased having continuity at a through the board connection. So tonight

We made another stab at cleaning the motherboard in general
Cleaned around the through the board junction
Soldered a #22 wire through the eyelets on both sides and running a short ways along the peeled metal. We used a bit of soldering flux
We measured near by components for shorts and connection
Cleaned (while we had the chance) the inside bottom overwhich the mother board sits
Reassembled it making the "power" and "HD" indicator reconnections

When turned on it was obvious that SOME connector was still undone. Chris had forgotten to connect an interior power cable (not the one to the motherboard). Since time of running out he got it together again only to discover that the whole machine refused to come on now. Sigh. No time to take another look-see.

We all reconvened at Conan's for the PigSIG to submerge our troubles with a large Savage, 2 salads, a pitcher of beer and a coke.

Keith was telling us that his adopted children, Sergei and Tanya, had freaked out at the entrance to a Halloween Horror Show and wouldn't go in. We talked about how their Russian heirtage includes genuinely spooky folktales that ought to put anything they might see to shame. We talked about similar experiences from our childhood and brought us around to Halloween, costumes and Ren Fest.

Chris is contemplating taking his children to the Renaissance Festival but was of the opinion that it was too "adult". Having been in and attendant to that event forever, Charlie talked about how RenFest could be experienced on 5 different, somewhat mutually exclusive levels. He gave lots of advice about the size and cost and how to maximize a good first time experience.

We tipped up the last of the beer to our missing Vice Presidents Don and Bo musing about one probably still underworking and the other overworking.

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Last modified: 2012-08-05 13:48