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Acorn A3000 Gamble

mbliss11

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2022
Messages
193
Location
Maryland
If I were a character in Fallout I would have a decent luck rating. I don’t gamble or go to the casino but I have had wonderful luck with finding old treasures and restoring them to their former glory. I decided to add another one to the collection and this will probably test all of the knowledge and skills I have gained up to this point. Will also test my luck with its unknown state.

I imported an Acorn Archimedes A3000 from the UK and it came in today. These are notorious for having leaky batteries near the roms, rtc and keyboard ports. They can get very nasty and spread throughout the whole board and also eat traces. Mine definitely had a leaky battery but not a bad case. It didn’t make its way past the keyboard connector or the roms. Lucky again. I’m going to use this thread to chronicle my experience trying to restore it. First thing first - get the battery out and flush board with vinegar then clean with IPA.

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Mine definitely had a leaky battery but not a bad case.
If that is not bad for you, I wonder what would.

To me, that looks very bad. A huge amount of traces and vias are heavily damaged. Not saying this one can't be saved, but pretty much every component in the area shown in the picture must be desoldered, the pcb freed from the solder resist mask and traces carefully checked/restored.
 
If that is not bad for you, I wonder what would.

To me, that looks very bad. A huge amount of traces and vias are heavily damaged. Not saying this one can't be saved, but pretty much every component in the area shown in the picture must be desoldered, the pcb freed from the solder resist mask and traces carefully checked/restored.
Yea it will definitely take some work but I was just glad that it was isolated into that one specific area. I have seen several cases online where the acid has spread all over the board. I spent some time yesterday evening probing the board with my meter and there are definitely broken traces on the top side but should be able to repair. I’ll know more this evening when I get the rom sockets off and check under there. I am hoping to be able to keep the keyboard socket on as I don’t know how difficult that will be to source. The membrane on the keyboard was still in good shape when I removed I also have some conductive paint that I can use to patch if needed.
 
For the keyboard, I would go with this if you need to unsolder anyway:


I need to get one for my A3020 as well, as I have issues with some keys not working until I reseat the cables..
 
For the keyboard, I would go with this if you need to unsolder anyway:


I need to get one for my A3020 as well, as I have issues with some keys not working until I reseat the cables..
Oh cool will definitely keep that in mind!
 
Removed sockets and IC’s on the board. Unfortunately my rtc module crumbled while taking it out of the board. I ordered replacement. Will need to go through all of the traces and tone them out. Got some work to do now scooby

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Some more components off and lifted and now we can start toning and repairing traces. Will also need to source a new mouse port lots of gunk in the original one.
 

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Hi mbliss. Where do you source your RTC chips from? I own a few Acorn Arc systems and think they are a great peices of kit for the time :).
I just did an eBay search found a few for sale from a seller in Florida. I am hoping to be able to get this up and running again and see what arm can do :)
 
So did some pretty rough trace repair today but thankfully everything to the right of the one long trace repair I had to do all toned out and is in good shape. I cleaned off the traces with fiberglass pen. The real meat of the work was under the logic chips that feed to bottom row of keyboard insert. Had a lot of traces I needed to repair there and a few just completely remake.

The mouse socket and lower keyboard socket I soaked in vinegar for an hour and then soaked in ipa and all pins toned out and they cleaned up a lot nicer than I thought.

Just need to get rom sockets in and the new rtc chip. I’ll put sockets on this week, put a coin cell in with diode to replace battery and then look at the keyboard and power supply.
 

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Rtc came in yesterday so I was excited to get home from work today and throw the sockets on. I also added cr2032 holder and diode on the board. All chips are back in fresh sockets the board is ready for some juice.
 

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First power up with my bench power supply was black screen to my pvm via composite. Then I remembered reading that cmos needs to be reset once new battery is put in. I absolutely hate these keyboard ribbons they are a nightmare to get into the socket. I held down delete key and held my breath and turned it on….and she booted!!!! :) I couldn’t believe it!! There are some keys on the keyboard that aren’t working I’ll need to tackle that next not sure if it was my board patches or the ribbon. I’ll start with the ribbon first. And I need a mouse adapter. And I need to make a rgb to vga cable. And I should upgrade to RISCOS3

Anyway - super glad I have a booting A3000 :)
 

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First power up with my bench power supply was black screen to my pvm via composite. Then I remembered reading that cmos needs to be reset once new battery is put in. I absolutely hate these keyboard ribbons they are a nightmare to get into the socket. I held down delete key and held my breath and turned it on….and she booted!!!! :) I couldn’t believe it!! There are some keys on the keyboard that aren’t working I’ll need to tackle that next not sure if it was my board patches or the ribbon. I’ll start with the ribbon first. And I need a mouse adapter. And I need to make a rgb to vga cable. And I should upgrade to RISCOS3

Anyway - super glad I have a booting A3000 :)
Good stuff! Go for RiscOS 3.1. That was the most widely used and if you get a hdd fitted via the external expansion bus install UniBoot.

The Risc 3.0 manual is availble from Chis's Acorn site iirc.
 
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