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So anyway got my "Untested" Speccy +3 today and not real happy Jan.

I don't have a PSU or video cable yet..probably a good thing.

 

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I noticed this rattle inside the machine so I opened it up.

 

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Wow, nicely attached RF modulator.....

 

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Then I noticed a little burn mark on the 40077 IC

 

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Turned it over and...@!#@!#~!

Not happy at all. I did ask the seller if this had been opened. I paid way too much IMO...but that's the gamble with "Untested" :(

 

Well this ones going to be a interesting repair.........watch this space.

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Lets hope mate. I need to test the CPU and Roms. If they check out there's hope if not it means the whole board is fried and every component will need to be replaced. Looking at the bottom of the board somebody has done some previous work

 

I found the NOS Amstrad ULA 40077's from Mutant Caterpillar Games in the UK HERE much cheaper than getting them from Ebay. They seem to have a lot of nice stuff for sale.

Also got an original PSU coming.

Edited by Arcade King
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Let me know if I can help out, I have a working one of these.

 

Thanks mate will do.

I've tested the Roms and CPU and check out fine which is good news. I'm just trying to get a reference on the ULA so I can determine what component is connected to the burnt pins.

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A bit more progress.

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Close up of the removed 40077 ASIC (Click to enlarge)

For prosperity sake I've numbered the ASIC to make it easier for myself (and others). I couldn't find this information anywhere on the net.

The pin I marked GND is where the burnt area was. When I removed the chip this pin (90) fell off <_<

I'm going to assume somebody managed to short the +12 to ground. I'm not sure if +5 would be enough to pop the chip but then again it depends how bad the PSU is. If it was decent there should be a cutoff to protect against shorts.

 

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Gave the connectors a clean with the fiber glass pen.

 

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Socketed the Rams.

 

Now I just have to wait for the replacement ASIC.

I'm going to poke around a bit more on the TEA2000 colour encoder and anything else the 12 volts is connected to to see if there's any shorts.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Update.

Finally got the ULA and belt for the floppy last week so I could finally join the Speccy club.

The short version.

 

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New ULA's (one spare)

 

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Process of soldering the new chip in.

 

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Clean up.

 

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Installed updated and enhanced roms and made myself a RBG cable to suit my 1084s

 

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Turned on and :D

 

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Gave the drive head a clean and installed new belt on the 3" drive.

 

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While I was trying to work out the ins and outs of the Speccy +3 I found a problem where when I went into 128k basic and tried typing a program the computer would reset when you hit enter. I replaced the ram and the machine worked perfectly right down to loading and saving on the 3" disk. I'm not sure which ram was faulty I just couldn't be bothered swapping them out.

I made myself a ear/mic cable from an old 3" Aux to RCA stereo cable I had lying around so I could get sound and plug the mic end into my phone/laptop to load games into the computer. Worked great. No idea how people managed to use the 48k version of the basic, I found it frustrating lol.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of the games running due to some other bits turning up and my focus turning to another retro computer which you can see under the Spectrum in the last shot. I'll get back to this after I've had my play with my new favorite ;)

 

Repair log on that machine coming up soon if anybody is interested.

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Awesome, a great machine to save! Is that the 130XL that was on eBay au a few weeks back? I was very tempted, rarely seen in the Southern hemisphere.

 

Yeah it was mate. You're right you never see them come up here.

I still have my XEGS from when I was a kid but always wanted a 65/130XE mainly because it looked like a miniature Atari ST and its compact size :D

Of course the thing was faulty and the keyboard mylar was stuffed so I've had to repair it and ended up buy a NOS keyboard. Looked like somebody had split something inside over the keyboard. I did try buying a new mylar but the seller was a pain to deal with and really hurts my brain to think about. Last week my replacement keyboard came so over the weekend I've been getting into my Atari, learning all about system, loading disks etc, using Spatados X. When I was a kid we only had Carts and nobody sold tape or disk drives let alone games at the time :(

I've bought a Atari XF551 and 1050 disk drive and upgraded the rom for the XF551 and got the Happy mod coming for the 1050

Several years ago I bought a SIO2SD and Ultimate 1 Meg which I transferred to the 130XE. Its been so long since I updated the Ultimate, the new firmware looks fantastic.

 

Anyway enough of my prattling :) so much stuff to play with :D I feel like a big ol kid again. I'll put up a repair log of the XE when I sort out a few things. I made a S-Video cable out of a C64 Composite and went to play some Ultima III last night only to find it was in black and white :( I've been doing some research and looks like its because with s-video you loose the colour artifacting you'd get with composite or RF.

If anybody has any information please let me know.

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  • 3 years later...
  • 4 months later...
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Just a quick update to this thread. I pulled out my +3 for my retro computer thread. I've never really sat down to test it properly, at the time I had no 3" disks or the DivMMC future.

Plugging the DivMMC future in the back the machine would crash with garbage on the screen. After an hour of probing around the motherboard I swapped out the Z80 and success.

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Bad Z80 on the right.

I've read that the M1 on the Z80 can be be easily damage and considering how the ULA had the arse blown out of it I shouldn't be surprised.

I was also able to verify the disk drive was working using my HxC Floppy emulator set up as drive B. Using the command copy "b:" to "a:" I was able to successfully transfer a .dsk image to a real floppy and run the game off it.

Very happy to know this machine now works 100%

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