I liked seeing Mark's new heated tweezer tool, perfect for plucking off those pesky leaking caps. Great job on saving another A600.

@RMCRetro

Жыл бұрын

Thanks Richard!

In awe of Mark's skills as always. I let some blue magic smoke escape this week in my own misadventures. Nice to see how I'd like to do things if I had steadier hands, better eyesight, the right tools and knowing how to use them! Well done.

Another satisfying watch. There's something almost therapeutic about watching caps being replaced. In other news, it's two weeks until my first visit to the cave. Can't wait.

@RMCRetro

Жыл бұрын

Awesome I’ll look forward to your visit!

@cryptocsguy9282

Жыл бұрын

@bobbus did you go to the cave ? :p

@bobbus_74

Жыл бұрын

@@cryptocsguy9282 I certainly did and it was just as awesome as expected. I'll definitely be going back for more visits.

It’s in better shape than the one I have on my ‘next to do’ list. I literally think everything is either broken, leaking, corroded or rusted. Always nice to see Mark at work on a project.

Nice close up shots showing the snipping of the capacitor leaving the legs behind. Haven't seen that technique before.

Another beautiful Amiga back in action.

Not to split hairs, but this is a very fundamental point: in a capacitor, electrons don't flow from cathode to anode, as stated in the video at around 7:50. When they do, the capacitor is leaky (electrically leaky), allowing DC to pass through, which is not what capacitors are supposed to do. The 'windings' (I know what you mean) are there just to create a field differential between cathode and anode, but in an ideal capacitor no electrons pass through. Capacitors are designed to hold the field differential and NOT allow charges through the electrolyte.

@bloombergwhistleblower

Жыл бұрын

Probably Mark just used the phrase "electrons flying from a cathode to an anode" for dramatic values. But we all know electricity is a field with an induced current between the line and an applied electro-magnentic force phased by 90 degrees - in fact, physically speaking, electrons hardly fly at all. Nice one Mark! :)

That was some really nice macro photography.

Camera work was amazing!

+1 for the camera work

The camera work on the closeups is fantastic on this video. It's so clear what's being done, really educational as well as interesting 👍

Always enjoy seeing Mark in the cave. I hope he's doing well. The same goes to you as well Niel.

This repair nicely illustrate the saying "you can never have too much flux"! 😄

For desoldering smd integrated circuits I use "chipquik" smd removal kit, it's extremely easy to use, no protective tape needed and a very fast operation, so no chance to blow the ic by heating too much with heat gun.

@joerhorton

Жыл бұрын

30+ years of working with electronics and I have never seen that before in the U.K. Will get some now!

if I were to visit the museum I'd want to see one specimen in stock, working condition and along side it another specimen that has been modded with all the latest retro hobbyist improvements - including CPU accelerators, memory expansion, but especially storage and display solutions and even products like Fuginet for connectivity options to the modern world

@krashd

Жыл бұрын

So an Amiga next to a Frankenmiga?

@TheSulross

Жыл бұрын

@@krashd yeah, and perhaps a third one would be a modern Amiga work-a-like (but the problem there is choosing which one - I like these boards made by a Canadian company but they can never keep them in stock for very long - probably chip supply issues)

A600 is prettiest of Amigas and probably of all keyboard cased pc-s.

Well done for saving that A600 👍👍😁

ahh.....The Wild, The Weird & The Wicked my first Amiga in 1992 ! Prior to that I always lusted over one playing on the Amiga 500 in my cousins houses. I love the 600, to me it was the best and let's be honest, it's aged very well. Mine has a Vampire in it now ;)

I like that cutaway technique, I've never seen it before.

I enjoyed this video, great work gentlemen

Always great to see a computer saved from the scrap heap. Nice one.

That heated cap remover looked like a steam punk villains prosthetic hand attachment!

Great video! Many good tips, including tools. Thank you very much!

Two Amigas in two weeks. It's mid-year Christmas!

Reminds me of when I did my Amiga 1200, which was actually my first time working with SMDs. Surprisingly, it went well, and now I wish I had taken that machine with me to Japan lol

@systemchris

Жыл бұрын

Near impossible to find in Asia, the opposite of the x680000

You can tell right away it's going to be a great episode when Mark shows up! Thankfully it was a relatively easy repair, not one that left him questioning his life choices.

Amazing what can be done today to repair an old computer. Wish it was possible back in the day!

I love watching these repair videos and the trash to treasure but they also make me thankful my wife bought me an A500 mini :)

The 600 was a beautiful machine..

@cryptocsguy9282

Жыл бұрын

@Dave Parky yeah I agree the physical design is lovely , shame that the updated OS and lack of a numberpad made it partially incompatible with a lot of A500 software

my a1200 just lost one speaker output and I figured it was bad caps. I assumed it was beyond my ability to fix, and watching this proved my assumption right

Capacitor controversy? I don't think so. Sharp cutters seems to be a way to avoid using too much heat.

@Breakfast_of_Champions

Жыл бұрын

It's an interesting alternative to hot air, didn't know this technique before.

@JaimieVandenbergh

Жыл бұрын

The controversy is the method we *didn't* see - grabbing the SMT cap and twisting it off. This got popular thanks to some idiots on YT a few years back, and is often fatal for older boards. Maybe it works fine on boards younger than 10 years, idk because I don't have any of those :D What Mark did is still a mechanical risk, on older and leak-damaged boards there's sometimes very little strength holding the pads onto the PCB substrate any more. So it's a choice of risks: temperature vs mechanical force. If you have steady hands and very sharp cutters, and the solder is corroded to heck, then cut as Mark showed here. Chipquik may also be a solution, if the corrosion is low enough to allow it into the solder without excess heat. All old PCB repairs need a lot of delicacy.

Probably Mark just used the phrase "electrons flying from a cathode to an anode" for dramatic values. But we all know electricity is a field with an induced current between the line and an applied electro-magnentic force phased by 90 degrees - in fact, physically speaking, electrons hardly fly at all. Nice one Mark! :)

Them heated pliers are amazeballs!

PCB repair looks so complicated damn. Mark is so good at it

Great Duo, nice video!

Another excellent Mark Fixes Neil’s Stuff.

Love these video's - more of this RMC!

love these videos guys..amazing stuff..they are joy to watch :)

Great episode! Loved it!

Nice video, always good to see an Amiga 600 resurrected. Mine also had leaky caps, but a pro replaced them for me and now it’s good as new. Still playing on it regularly.

A600! My first amiga :)

Just absolutely wonderful. I wish every endangered machine had a Mark to save it.

That was a great technique for getting those super leaky smd caps off! Well done!

Nice work, as always.

That was surprisingly satisfying!

Instead of using the hot air gun on the SOIC, you can bend up a piece of thick copper wire so it sits on the legs, put extra solder on the chip's legs, put the wire on it, and then heat the wire using the soldering iron. It's much faster and you don't have to tape everything down and you don't risk overheating stuff either.

Really interesting video as always, great video and can't wait to check out THE CAVE in a few weeks. :)

Nicely done

A great idea to remove the keyboard connector saves it from damage and makes it easier to work on superb work .

Heated tweezers? We are living in the future!

What excellent tools you have ;)

Amazing Bro...

What a masterful job.

I picked up an immaculate boxed A600 WWW pack. Only issue was the caps. Once I’d got that done, it runs like a dream now. I wasn’t brave enough to tackle it myself though 😂. I sent the motherboard off to Retro Passion. It’s the best Amiga for gaming imo thanks to its compact size and affordable expansions. I just need to get a Ram upgrade and WHD load installed.

@cryptocsguy9282

Жыл бұрын

@Game Racer I love the physical size of the A600 but I don't own any amigas (I use and emulator ) & a lot of commodre fans prefer the A500 because it has the numberpad & can bundled with an older version of Amiga OS which more games are compatible with.

Cracking tan, Mark!

Excellent guys!

Great job guys.... Another Amiga saved 👍

Cool vid as always..

Poor old 600. I really fancied one, but discovered PC instead. 386 and 486 FTW.

I really need to send in my A600 and A1200 before the caps destroy them. I'll never get round to repairing them myself.

Thanks for reminding me that my CD32 hasn’t been recapped yet. I’ll get it sorted.

@P5ychoFox

Жыл бұрын

...and when I say sorted, I mean by someone competent (not me).

That's the first amiga bundle I bought 👍

6:24 the red substance is just SMD glue... You can see dabs of it under every component on that side.

There does exist 500 ºF epoxy (made by Permatex) to repair pads with copper foil. (I don't know what the shipping to the U.K. would be like, though.) I've been able to use it to save a through-hole pad that I almost bent over on a Macintosh 128k. It works really well against the heat of a soldering iron.

Thanks guys. I need to do this myself. Not exactly looking forward to it, but I do have all the tools. Let's see what happens.

@cryptocsguy9282

Жыл бұрын

I subed to your channel :)

@misterretrowolf1464

Жыл бұрын

@@cryptocsguy9282 Thanks!!!

Good job, but you could rebuild the pad for C304. It's doable.

ever thought of doing a soldering class at the cave

Useful tips there. Last month I was trying to replace a capacitor in a Humax PVR and ripped both pads clean off the board> I did mange to repair it using wire in a similar way to what Mark did here, but what I anticipated taking ten minutes took me two hours using work microscope. On interest do you use magnification when working on things like the IC ?

I have a working A600 and a working A1200 but for how long who knows, I should probably carry out an inspection if these cap issues are so bad.

12:33 If you have a A600 that doesn't work and you can't fix it, why not take the keyboard out, leave the F keys on and cover the hole left by the keyboard with a plastic cover and put that monster joystick on the A600 case. Then put a raspberry pie in it, install Amiberry and you get yourself a nice A600 arcade joystick plug N play. I thought of 3d print a case like that but its too big. Maybe PCB Way have big enough printers. I´ll check it later.

Another excellent video Mark, maybe given all the parts you have now you could make a real franenstien system in a clear case to show just how extreeme you can go with unlimited resources?

Riparazione e metodo perfetto

Under the resistor is glue not corrosion.

I always hated the way ribbon cables were never folded neatly from the factory. Anyway, great video as usual.

Nicely repaired but I do worry about that cap with the missing pad. I couldn't see a via under the resistor that was removed just a track that looked okay, the red gunk that was cleaned of was just glue that was used to hold the bottom side components on for a wave solder process as appose to solder paste and reflow. That way both the SMD and the PTH components are soldered together, all the bottom side parts will have two red glue dots under them.

@pipschannel1222

Жыл бұрын

Exactly what I was thinking: If you look closely you'd see that every SMD component on that side of the board has that red goo on it. It's glue. Not very unusual for SMD components ;-)

@RobA500

Жыл бұрын

@@pipschannel1222 I use to assemble boards using just the process I described, so it’s all very familiar to me.

Are they Jimmy Cricket's soldering tweezers?

Man, heated tweezers! That's more toys I'm going to need

@nickolasgaspar9660

Жыл бұрын

Two solder irons can do the job.

@TheCurlyP

Жыл бұрын

@@nickolasgaspar9660 yeah that's how I do them, picked that up from GadgetUK, I do love funky tools though

You’ve got loads of Amiga’s, but I don’t recall seeing an A1200 - you must have one, surely?

That tweezer solder tool looks great for SMD stuff!!! What is the make and model, please. Oh and what temp for that small stuff. The snipping the can off so just the legs are showing is brilliant!!

@JaimieVandenbergh

Жыл бұрын

You can do similar by dual-wielding two soldering irons, if you don't want to spend on a competent tweezer tool.

@KLund1100

Жыл бұрын

Thanks everyone! But I would like to see if I could get the same Tweezer Solder unit. It is not a simple G-search. I have not been able to find a quality item.

One question. Which caps don't have to back on if you remove that RF Modulator?

It is so refreshing to hear British guys saying solder rather than American guys saying sodder. Drives me mad.

I've not seen the inside of a rotten capacitor, before now. It's disgusting, thank you.

@hjalfi

Жыл бұрын

Non-rotten ones are actually _more_ disgusting due to have had less capacitor juice leak out.

Also known as a nut spinner and just the tool you need to disassemble an IBM Model M Keyboard!

@plan7a

Жыл бұрын

[Regarding the Nut Spinner] Oooh! That sounds really painful! Just saying! (LOL).

Weirdly I have an A600 with a little capacitor running diagonally over the U12 (although broken on mine now as it looked corroded), but I didn't see that here. Reason I'm asking is because my joysticks all pull to the left when I push up, all games, all joysticks.! Could that be something else?

Suddenly I have an inkling for eating some packs of 'Quavers' I wonder why that is? [Hint the clue is on the Amiga packaging!). (LOL).

I thought that read detonated

Great Video as usual but one question: Is there a way of replacing the pads if they are gone due to corrosion or removed by accident? I have never removed any by accident just for the record.

@MrDuncl

Жыл бұрын

You can get SMD pad repair kits but I guess that wire Mark used is equally effective and far cheaper.

@alanhaynes4576

Жыл бұрын

@@MrDuncl Thanks for that information as I don't need just now but may do in the near future.

Will Mark repair for the general public I have an A1200 that needs capping (it is in full working condition but never capped from new)

I often think about trying to repair my battery leaked A500+ and recap my CD32, but seeing this sort of video makes me think it's well outside my soldering skills.

@Mamiya645

Жыл бұрын

I have hands and fingers that really did not age well but Louis Rossman repair videos gave me the confidence to get back into repairs and renovations on a PCB level, and now I'm building custom microphones. You can do it too! Pick up something from a thrift store to practice on and get an acceptable set of tools and chemicals, and a good workplace. And maybe a ring-light with optics to properly enlarge what you're looking at, age did really not go well at my eyes but I'm still working as if I was reading from a script that's on the other side of the room :D

Do the sorts of longevity problems that exist with these vintage caps exist in modern caps as well? Which is to say am I likely to have similar issues with hardware I buy today in 20 years or has the cap technology changed since the 90's?

@DenebTM

Жыл бұрын

From what I've heard, there's some problem with the eleoctrolyte formulation used at the time that causes early SMD caps to reliably fail the way they do, and newly manufactured ones should be far more long-lasting. But I _could_ be confusing that with the more well-known "capacitor plague" of the early 2000's - capacitors are usually rated for a useful life of around 15 years, and with these often well-loved machines going on twice that age now, maybe it really does just come down to old age. However, I think it's safe to say that capacitor manufacturing has improved since the 90's, and modern replacements can be expected to last longer.

I quite liked the compact form factor of the A600 but it was a strange product. It cost more for Commodore to make than the A500+ and didn't have any significant advantage.

@frankowalker4662

Жыл бұрын

The A600 had the disavantage of no number pad, which quite a few programs relied on. :)

@squeakonline

Жыл бұрын

@@frankowalker4662 yeah like perspective effects in dpaint 3. Later 600s came with a commodity tool to emulate a number pad

@cryptocsguy9282

Жыл бұрын

@Paul Patrick Amiga600's only advantage is the PCMCIA slot which is probably what made it more expensive, not as useful nowadays and never caught on in popularity during the 90s but people thought it might. at the time

Are the replacement capacitors made the same way as the orignal ones - will they spill their guts in another 30 years?

@AltCutTV

Жыл бұрын

That remains to be seen, in 30. ;) Or you could instead use solid state capacitors now. (no fluids)

@cryptocsguy9282

Жыл бұрын

@R good question

Man so awful what leaks do to the surrounding areas with the "festering underneath". :P

Where can you get those hot tweezers?

@plan7a

Жыл бұрын

At a 'Hot Tweezer' shop? Sorry, just kidding!

Mark is my favorite :P jk, Neil is O.K. too :D

@RMCRetro

Жыл бұрын

I’ll take that! Thanks for watching

Can someone give me some advice on storing old gear? I cant restore at the moment but have an A2k and A600 in the garage, I know the 2k had a battery leak and I brutally chopped the battery out a decade ago, but the corrosion wasnt dealt with. The A600 was working, but hasnt been looked at in 15 years. If I take them apart, can I spray them down with WD40, contact cleaner, varnish anything to prevent them rotting away from the inside?

@AltCutTV

Жыл бұрын

Just use IPA and a brush. WD40 and similar may not be directly harmful to the board, but since it has also has lubricating components in it, so long term secondary reactions can't be more unpredictable. Then just store it in even temperature (so garages usually not optimal) to avoid constant condensation cycles. For a single sided component board it may also alleviate leak damage by storing it upside down.

@robertbeighter6336

Жыл бұрын

@@AltCutTV Thanks, this weekends project I think - I didnt realise A600s melted too.

I wish people would pay *me* in Amigas.

While kapton tape won't melt until high temperatures, it's not very good at keeping the components behind it cool other than blocking the direct heat. That said you also may never in your life heatstroke or unintentionally reflow a component using kapton tape haha. I personally use foil tape but that's just being paranoid.

How do you remember where the long/short screws go?😆

@krashd

Жыл бұрын

The three short screws are for the very front of the Amiga where the machine is thinnest, if you place a long screw in one of those holes and tighten it it will burst up through the front of the case leaving a mystery bump. As some amateur repairman did to my A600 in 1994 when I had a wonky mouse port.

@JaimieVandenbergh

Жыл бұрын

Piece of paper. Sketch the Amiga. Put the screws on the paper in their right places.

Do A600's take a HD direct?

@RMCRetro

Жыл бұрын

Yes they have a built in ide controller