Opening up the machine to extract the motherboard did mean that I had to disassemble the machine completely. It was doing this that I discovered that there were a couple of Zorro cards in there. Of course when I received the machine there was no software included.
The first card was a VLab 1.3. The VLab is a full length Zorro II, 24bit real-time digitizer. The card is capable of digitizing 30 full frames per second.
The second card was a Harlequin. The harlequin is a video card which has primarily PAL resolutions.
Now I’ve no idea where I’m going to find the software for these or even if I want to. (The donor A4000 has a Picasso II graphics card that I was planning on using). I guess it’s worth a go, after all if I come to sell them it’ll be nice to know they work and even better if I had some software to go with them!
The presence of these cards has made me wonder though. What indeed was the machine used for before I got my hands on it. There was nothing on the hard disk to indicate any kind of particular usage and that’s probably due to what looks like a recent fresh installation. There’s nothing but the OS on the HD.
There was another unusual thing was that the machine arrived with an Amiga 1000 keyboard complete with a cable modified to connect it to the A4000. (The A1000 had an RJ11 connector – not a min-din style that the A4000 has.) The A1000 keyboard feels significantly more robust that the original A4000 keyboard I have which leads me to the suspicion that this is probably a replacement to a broken keyboard. The mouse was original though (which was a shame, because it was pretty worn out!)
So what was this machine being used for before I got my hands on it… well it’s hard to say, but it makes you wonder. Was it being used in the media industry somewhere?
If anyone has any info or software to go with the VLab or Harlequin cards I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d let me know.
]]>Things didn’t look good when I finally opened the machine up. From the picture, you can see that the battery has leaked pretty badly. One of the memory modules removed from the SIMM sockets had suffered very badly with the contacts at one end dissolved completely!
Having removed the motherboard from the case the offending battery was removed with the aid of a soldering iron.
Once removed the motherboard was cleaned with some white spirit and then rinsed thoroughly in water. Placing electronics in water felt incredibly unnatural and I must admit I was more than a little dubious doing so. But I figured that the leaky battery had already done enough damage, it was going to be a case of kill or cure!
Obviously the most important thing is to make sure the motherboard is completely dry before powering it on again! Not wanting to take any chances, I left the motherboard drying for a couple of days.
The good news is, that following re-assembly, the initial test seem to provide some hope. The machine seems to work ok – it loads Workbench of the internal HD. I still need to check that memory works in the last two SIMM sockets.
My next problem is that the floppy drive doesn’t work, and I don’t have a replacement in the donor machine. So I’ve ordered one on the internet and just waiting for it to arrive. Only then can my
]]>