Another rescue to do!

[RobertB]

Today I talked to Peg B. from the Palmdale/Lancaster area of California.  She wants to give away her Amiga 1000 set-up that has not been used in 20 years.

(snip)

It might have to be on the second weekend of February or the third weekend of March.

Well, she couldn't make it to any February get-together so I'm going to try for next weekend.
    In the meantime, on Wednesday I picked up an A3000 from local user, Richard H..  The hard drive in the machine is failing, and it's experiencing motherboard/power supply problems.  I've brought with me to the Bay Area as I go to Amiga engineer R.J. Mical's dinner party tonight, and I will give it to Duncan M., TOGA repair technician, who will also be at the party.  Then the plan is to pick up the repaired machine during my Spring Break.

          Another long-distance trip,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          The Other Group of Amigoids
          http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
          http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

Well, she couldn't make it to any February get-together so I'm going to try for next weekend.

It looks like a go.  She is going to come down to Castaic where we are having Saturday's SCCAN meeting.

...I picked up an A3000 from local user, Richard H..  The hard drive in the machine is failing, and it's experiencing motherboard/power supply problems.  I've brought with me to the Bay Area as I go to Amiga engineer R.J. Mical's dinner party tonight, and I will give it to Duncan M....

Duncan opened it up at the party, but he was leery of it, because the old battery had leaked over the motherboard.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          The Other Group of Amigoids
          http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
          http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

She is going to come down to Castaic where we are having Saturday's SCCAN meeting.

When I arrived at the SCCAN meeting yesterday, I found out that she had gone to Castaic on Friday night in order to beat an incoming storm.  She left the A1000 with two medium boxes of A1000 goods on the doorstep of Joe M.'s house.

Duncan opened (Richard's A3000) up at the party, but he was leery of it, because the old battery had leaked over the motherboard.

Duncan has checked over the system and could not find any power problems with it.  The only thing that we can think of is that Richard lives in a rural farmhouse and that the electricity coming into the house is not clean, i.e., of low quality.  The acid from the leaky battery has been cleaned up with no major damage to the board.  He's imaged the drive so that Richard could have another copy just in case the drive mechanism goes bad.  The two floppy drives were bad, and Duncan will replace those.  Also he will install Workbench 3.1.

          Heh, I should give Duncan my A3000 to go over, too,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          The Other Group of Amigoids
          http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
          http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

     I just talked to Charles from Los Angeles.  The last time I contacted him was back in the early 2000's, and at that time, he gave away some of his Commodore collection, which included a Spartan (which I showed at a Vintage Computer Festival).  Well, now he wants to give away the last of his collection, which not only includes Commodore but things like S100 and LNW computers.  He still has to gather the materials together, but it looks as if I will pay him a visit in late April or mid-May.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[RobertB]

Duncan has checked over the system and could not find any power problems with it.  The only thing that we can think of is that Richard lives in a rural farmhouse and that the electricity coming into the house is not clean, i.e., of low quality.  The acid from the leaky battery has been cleaned up with no major damage to the board.  He's imaged the drive so that Richard could have another copy just in case the drive mechanism goes bad.  The two floppy drives were bad, and Duncan will replace those.  Also he will install Workbench 3.1.

Here are the specific repairs that Duncan did --

"Both floppy drives have been rebuilt and they work, though the eject button on the leftmost one is very wobbly and does not stay on very well. There's not much I can do about that, as A3000 eject buttons are total unobtainium (several people on the internets have resorted to reproducing them using 3D printers)."

"I did manage to successfully upgrade it to Kickstart 3.1, and the hard drive has been replaced. I even managed to make the new hard drive mimic the old drive's directory structure/partition layout. All of the old files/programs have been restored and should be working. I also threw in a couple of extra programs and of course a ton of games. The new drive is 4GB, big enough to hold just about every piece of Amiga software worth using/playing."

"The old hard drive has a very strange problem where it would show up on every SCSI ID simultaneously when plugged in. It would work fine this way (couldn't plug in anything else though), and it seems like it's been that way ever since the machine shipped. It doesn't look
like the owner ever owned a CD drive or had one plugged in so I'm throwing an ugly-but-functional one in for free."

"The motherboard, it turns out, has a defect where turning on termination power on any SCSI device will cause the machine not to boot at all. This is apparently a common defect on certain early revision A3000s, and I kind of want to leave it up to the owner whether he wants to fix it or not because fixing it would require taking apart the whole computer completely apart again. (I've already done it once, and pulling apart an A3000 to get to the motherboard is very time-consuming). I've already changed out the suicide battery for a cordless phone battery."

"I've also swapped out the PCB inside the keyboard, as it looks like the keyboard was acting up on an intermittent basis (the caps lock light was flashing/staying on, indicative of a problem with the keyboard controller). It should be working a lot better now."

          Picking it up tomorrow,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          The Other Group of Amigoids
          http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
          http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

I just talked to Charles from Los Angeles.

(snip)

He still has to gather the materials together, but it looks as if I will pay him a visit in late April or mid-May.

I am tentatively scheduled to meet Charles this Sunday at 2 p.m..  He has some of his things together but not all.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[RobertB]

     Charles cancelled out on the meeting, because he had to visit his wife in the hospital.  I'll have to reschedule, or he said he would mail the goods to me.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[RobertB]

     A few weeks ago our club received a SUV-load of goods from a gentleman in San Jose.  This Sunday I'll get to see what there is!  Our treasurer, who has been storing it in his garage, wants it out.  I know of another club member who has the storage space.  Guess who gets to store the load!

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          July 28-29 Commodore Vegas Expo v8 -
          http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[RobertB]

I know of another club member who has the storage space.  Guess who gets to store the load!

He took away the boxes of goods on Sunday.  Before he did so, the members picked through the goods to see if there were any interesting ones.  One member picked up a few VIC-20 game cartridges.  I got a Data-20 16K Video cartridge with power supply for the VIC-20.  One day I'll have to visit the storage in order to study in detail all of the goods we received.

         Truly,
         Robert Bernardo
         Fresno Commodore User Group
         http://videocam.net.au/fcug
         July 28-29 Commodore Vegas Expo v8 -
         http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[RobertB]

Duncan opened (Richard's A3000) up...

Duncan has checked over the system and could not find any power problems with it.  The only thing that we can think of is that Richard lives in a rural farmhouse and that the electricity coming into the house is not clean, i.e., of low quality.

In late June or early July, I returned to Richard's house to pick up his A3000 again.  He complained that in the middle of a document, it lost all power and that when he tried to reboot it, nothing happened.  I gave it to Duncan again, and he ran it for hours and hours.  Everything was all right!  Then I used it for hours and hours at the July 28-29 CommVEx and at this month's FCUG meeting.  Everything was fine!  Yesterday I returned the A3000 to Richard, telling him about the bad electricity in his house and handing him a refurbished uninterruptible power supply.  The UPS only cost him $10 from CommVEx!  Well, when he saw that the UPS needed a ground, I told him to attach a wire to the ground lead and string it to a metal plumbing pipe in the house (his house not having grounded outlets).  He even got a VGA flatscreen monitor from Duncan... no more having to use his CRT VGA monitor.  He paid me back for buying him the UPS and gave a small donation for next year's CommVEx.

          Hoping never to fool around with that A3000 again,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[RobertB]

Charles cancelled out on the meeting, because he had to visit his wife in the hospital.  I'll have to reschedule...

For the second weekend in a row, I'll be in the Los Angeles area.  If I have time and I can arrange it with Charles, I'll try to swing by his place.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[RobertB]

If I have time and I can arrange it with Charles, I'll try to swing by his place.

Heck, I ran out of time.  Well, I'm in the L.A. area again on Saturday, but I will be busy at the SCCAN meeting.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
          http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

If I have time and I can arrange it with Charles, I'll try to swing by his place.

O.K., it looks like a go!  I contacted Charles tonight, and I'll be visiting him this Saturday.  He has moved, and his garages of stuff were whittled down to a few boxes.  It seems that the S100 computer (a classic computer older than Commodore) is gone.  However, he has saved me some C= hardware and books/brochures.

          We shall see!
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[RobertB]

...I returned the A3000 to Richard, telling him about the bad electricity in his house and handing him a refurbished uninterruptible power supply.

At last month's TOGA meeting, Duncan told me that Richard contacted him again, and again the A3000 was giving the same problems.  Sigh!  I told Duncan that if Richard does not clear up the electrical problems in his house, the A3000 will never work normally.

          I wash my hands of that A3000,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          The Other Group of Amigoids
          http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/

[RobertB]

I contacted Charles tonight, and I'll be visiting him this Saturday.  He has moved, and his garages of stuff were whittled down to a few boxes.  It seems that the S100 computer (a classic computer older than Commodore) is gone.  However, he has saved me some C= hardware and books/brochures.

After spending last night in Bakersfield, I traveled to Los Angeles, fighting through the I-5 traffic.  I finally made it to his upscale retirement community at 1:30.  I went into the wrong complex, went back outside, called him on my cell phone, and was led to the correct building.
     I hadn't seen him in 10+ years.  Though most of his goods had been thrown out by those who moved him to the retirement home, he still had a crowded apartment with papers, camera gear, boxes of stuff, and more.  He gave me a pair of 1571s, a pair of VIC-1541s, an Excelerator drive, external p.s.'s, a bag of manila folders filled with C= paperwork, some program cassettes, a few disks like Chartpak 128, and even an external Apple disk drive to be used with a Spartan (see below).
     We talked as I had lunch at his place.  The subjects ranged from his classic camera gear (Speed Graphic and more), his late wife, his health, the Hollenbeck retirement community of which he was now a part (many Japanese lived there), and equipment like the Spartan Apple II+ add-on for the C64.  I asked him if the external Apple disk drive could also read C64 disks when connected to the Spartan; no, it was just an Apple drive.  I told him about the Spartan which I still had (and which he had given me 10+ years ago); the Spartan power supply was still being worked on by Matt Bingenheimer of Oregon... however, the last time I contacted Matt was 3 years ago!  I should contact Matt and see what is happening with that p.s..

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug