Okay, small extra info on the A600: 1. The Kickstart ROM's are working, I actually tested them in another Amiga. 2. The broken off Pin, I am not sure, could be, I reinserted it badly, maybe it was just dodgy enough. The pins are pretty thin anyway. 3. It had no RF shield to begin with - this is how it came from Ebay 4. I "stole" the CF card so it's an HD only in name now :) 5. I compensated for that putting in the broken RAM expansion. ;) Hope it can become a trusty part of your collection.
Great job Jan =D The reset circuit on the 600 is definitely prone to leakage issues. I remember MsMadLemon having a problem with something around there too - possibly the 555 itself.
Hey Jan, you made my day too! It was the exact same cap on my A600 with a black screen. I replaced it with a non SMD version because I didn't have one. Works great!
Yes, it definitely makes a lot more sense from today's perspective. Again a machine that was marketed incorrectly back in the day. Commodore should have made it the low budget A300 they had initially planned and it would have made more sense I guess. :)
Absolutely love your content, sadly my A600 was working until there was like a sweet smell coming from the capacitors, now I have no picture and a lit cap lock key! So got new capacitors on order for the beast hehe! :)
Sometimes it's possible to lift up the warranty sticker to get to the screw hole, and then stick it back down so it looks like nothing happened. Then again, with something that's been out of warranty for over 25 years, it doesn't matter anymore.
So great to see you. working on an A600. I got my first one last summer --- and I haven't recapped it yet =/. I can't wait for the actual recapping video. Great stuff!
HI Jan, your video prompted to take a look today at my neglected A600HD because there is a ram expansion in there, I was sure it was one without the RTC but I was mistaken (A601) so my Amiga (and the ram expansion) booked for me some TLC time for itself!
Jan Beta it was really horrible to see but once Treated with vinegar and brush it got much better, I need to find or create my WB disks to find out of the expansion is working, the ram section at least, the amiga itself has no damage and no apparent cap spill but a recapping is on the way for it, and also a CF HD adapter, pcmcia, you know, you maybe stop only when it’s done :)
To switch between 1.3 and 2.05 there was a software that did this called relo-kick. That instead of doing this sort of hack this had done. Hate to see all sort of switches on a amiga, even a A600/300.....
Yes, but relo-kick is not as compatible as a real KickROM. It uses parts of the RAM to store the KickROM and pretends it to be located at the ROM's position in memory. Works fine for some games though.
@@JanBeta Okey I did not know that. remember I did use relo-kick since I could not get "galaga" to load with 2.05 so thats why I needed this software and worked great for me.
Ohhh that fishy smell in Amiga 600 board’s. Yes you are Absolutely right, all Amiga 600s should have a recap job. Ive been very unlucky with my A600s, but not the A1200, interesting to know if commodore used two different type caps. Congrats with the repair buddy, allways nice to save Amigas Best regards
Thanks! Oh, all the A1200s from the era I have seen had leaky caps, too. Maybe the models that were produced after Commodore's demise had better capacitors though. I have only worked on the older models as of yet.
Wow, I mean I agree that you should change all the capacitors on old computers like this, but wow can't believe the fix was that easy, I will keep that in mind for future reference, love to see what happened to the expansion board so I will watch out for that then.
It was an educated guess more or less. I read about the little cap being a common fault and smelled the fishy electrolyte so it was one of the first things I tried. SMD caps from that era are literally all bad so they (or corrosion caused by leakage) are always suspects.
Nice... i just sent away my a1200 for repair, it got a similar issue, black screen then reboots (no Kickstart screen). If I removed the rom it just sat on a black screen (no reboots), so yeah... might just need a recap.
@@JanBeta We'll see I guess, I saw now obvious sign of leaks but I learned that you don't always see it. Only thing I saw some green corrosion on one of the IDE pins which's a bit weird?! Anyway, thanks for a great RU-vid channel.
i remember moding one of those for a friend . we pigibacked 2 or 4 extra ram chips on top of oryginal ones with i belive chip enable lines routed to the 2 pins on the ram expansion port and it worked great i wonder why people did expansion the "easy way" when just pigibacking 2 chips leaves you entire expansion port empty for something else
@@JanBeta the fun part was my friend owner of the amiga told me what and where to solder, provided ram chips i was only the person who knew how to solder things in this case and i did it in a different way than i was told anyway :P because otherwise keyboard would not fit. i remember putting more ram chips on a stack next to a keyboard, since both ram chips were connected to full memory bus and there was continuity between all data and adres lines on both chips my friend was kind od shocked and did not belive it would work, but it did, workbench showed all installed ram just fine
Hi Jan! I just recapped a fully working A600 (to extend its life) and now I'm getting a black screen and no bootup at all. I also replaced that 10 uf capacitor again just in case but I get no signal. The power led turns on, but not the drive led so I guess it's not starting up for some reason. I measured the voltage on pin 3 of the 555 and it stays up at 3.5V. I did the same measurement on a working amiga 600 and the same pin shows a voltage peak then goes to zero. Any idea what could be the problem? I think I did the recap correctly (already did it successfully on another a600 and 1200) and on this special PCB all the pads were really in good conditions and clean. Thanks in advance for your time and your awesome videos :)
You might have a bad 555 timer IC, they do break occasionally. Maybe worth a try to replace that. The reset line on the 555 should go high for a second and then go low, as far as I remember. It is then inverted by a logic chip and fed to the processor, should go from low to high there and stay high so the system is active.
@@JanBeta Thanks Jan! Tried that, and also the new 555 unfortunately stays up with the voltage instead of going down. Any ideas? At least I can rule the 555 out. Thanks in advance :)
I really like the A600 - it's a really neat little system, inside and out. =) A friend gifted me one many years ago, before he emigrated to New Zealand. I'll have to get it out and have a play. Well, after your recapping video.
I love the form factor! Back in the day, I thought these were pretty useless because I already had an A500 but nowadays it's really cool to have such a compact Amiga. :)
My A600 got water damaged and the caps are a little leaky. The power LED doesn't turn on. It only shows a solid purple screen at boot and the light on the capslock is turned on constantly. Any idea what could be broken?
Been wwtching these amiga repairs, waiting for my GoTek to come over and finally, see my 500 fully working. Tho my case needs some work. Epoxy kit may do it. And retrobrighting after.
If it hasn’t been recapped, leaky capacitors can cause all kinds of problems. I think the reset circuitry is rather similar to the A600 so that might indeed be the problem. There are other points of failure that could cause it (like bad contacts on the RAM for example). Recapping is highly recommended for all Amigas that have SMD electrolytic caps, I’ve not seen a single one where the capacitor were no problem.
Oh, I didn't fail at fixing it. I didn't even try. I have 2 working ones and found this "known broken" model for cheap on Ebay and thought I donate it to Jan, so he finally has a 600. I actually relieved it wasn't something unfixable.
Thanks Jan, I have a few 600 1200's to recap, with various faults, I let you know if I have success, does any one have stock codes and values for replacement capacitors, as I need to buy in bulk, must be high quality, cheers Jan
Here's a very handy site with capacitor lists with part numbers (you can just copy+paste the numbers into the search function of electronics suppliers): www.ikod.se/repairs/capacitor-lists/ Used it to order caps for the full recapping of this machine. All Panasonic long life, high temperature caps.
The circuit is the same, I think the layout is a bit different on the A1200 so it's not quite as common a problem. But the capacitors are very likely to be leaking if you haven't replaced them yet. Definitely look into doing a full recapping, all of the machines from the era I've seen so far had leaky capacitors.
I think in the A1200 the circuit is basically the same but the layout is a bit different. Definitely worth a try. And definitely look into recapping the whole machine if you haven't done that.
Yes, these machines work with multilayer ceramics. I did a full recap with ceramics on my A1200. However, I would no longer recommend doing that as the characteristics (and especially the timings) are slightly different with ceramics vs electrolytics. You may run into problems with certain accelerator cards etc. Replacing this particular cap with a ceramic should work without any problems though, as it's just a delay for the reset.
Sure, it's a pretty standard 5V/12V/-12V PSU. You can make one or get one of many that are readily available and put a cable with the correct connector on it. Even the 5 pin square DIN connectors are available again as new parts these days. :)
@@JanBeta Thanks! I'm looking for some tutorial to make one, or maybe you could make a video where you build one of them like the c64 psu you built some times ago!
Chris Shaw Definitely recap the A1200. I don’t believe the A500 caps are prone to leaking like the A1200/2000’s. I had mine recapped but I was a tad too late as my mouse input was affected due to leakage. And don’t think that if you haven’t turned on the Amiga in 20+ years then there’s less of a chance of a leak. Don’t risk it, get it recapped so that you don’t have a much bigger headache later on.
Yeah, I totally agree with Andre. All the Amigas from the A600/A1200/A4000 era I have seen with SMD electrolytic caps had leaky capacitors. Definitely replace them. The Amigas with through hole components are fine most of the time. Obviously the caps are old and it would be a good idea to replace them anyway but most machines I saw still had okay caps.
uuhh.. Jan Beta with an Amiga 600 repair. nice ;) A600s have crap build quality VS Amiga 500. But they are nice little retro computers with some nice and compact whdload possibilities
@@JanBeta I have recapped 3 Amiga 600s. All A4000/A1200 and A600s should be recapped immediately. Luckily mine did not have any damaged pads yet. Even though there was some leakage. Looking forward to your next A600 video
Die Präzisionsfassungen gibt es auch als Stiftleisten, habe ich für den switchless c64 switcher schon erfolgreich eingesetzt. Sonst sollte dem kick switcher nicht viel fehlen. Ich möchte jetzt auch nen 600er, so klein und 2mb chipram mit ram erweiterung ist doch was ....
For those of us that do not know German.......... The precision sockets are also available as pin headers, I have already used them successfully for the switchless c64 switcher. Otherwise the kick switcher shouldn't be missing much. I would now also like a 600, so small and 2mb chipram with ram extension is something ....
Habe den KickSwitcher jetzt tatsächlich ohne neue Stiftleisten wieder eingebaut. Der hat so wenig Luft nach oben, dass es schwierig ist, da irgendwas anderes einzulöten. Werde das aber auf jeden Fall mal im Auge behalten.
If the capacitors haven't been replaced, those are definitely the main weak point in the A600s. All the Amigas from the era I have seen so far had leaky electrolytic SMDs.
Mh, maybe they are the original screws after all. Never seen black screws in any Amiga so I just assumed they were put there by a previous owner given all the mods that have been done to the machine.
@@Hagledesperado The screws on this one were just a wild assortment of nonstandard screws. I think there was not a single original one among them. my other two A600's have silvery screws.
hello jan theres 3 to 4 electrytic cap neeed replacing near rf output module bwack made a video on this a while back are u a genious i think u have talents get a job in electronics company theres heaps in germany yuo make better money than here just idea i know your gettting bettter bye ross sydney
