With the Amiga 4000 Rev B boards approaching past 20 years of life they have started to show some serious failures over recent years. Much of this is caused by the battery used for the clock failing, which in turn leaks corrosives onto the board in an area with many vital circuits. This includes not only the clock but RAM, AGA mode capabilities and even the mouse control circuits.
Amiga 4000 motherboards from Commodore is getting older all the time
As a hobbyist repair technician I have come across some very bad looking boards sent in for repairs. Most of these can be fixed, but many take so much time that it has exhausted me to the point of not even wanting to take on the challenge any longer. I can think of several occasions of spending weeks repairing broken traces, cleaning up and replacing components and only finding another part had now failed from the work it took to make another repair.
What can we do in these situations? Commodore never intended these machines to be kept running for the time we have used them. They were not in the business of making a machine that lasted for so long. They built these to sell, and they sold a lot. When doing that you need to find the lowest cost you can. So they are not to blame here for the failures.
Amiga 4000 Rev B replica Campaign project is a great solution
Welcome to the Amiga 4000D Rev B replica project! This is my solution for this problem. As I was doing a repair one day and nearly had it complete, a new failure occurred that frustrated me so bad that I just gave up and called it quits on this board. I wasted over 40 hours of my time. It came to me that I could of replaced all the good parts from this board onto a new board in less time than I spent on looking for, fixing and testing repairs on the original. We don’t have any new boards though do we? Well this project intends to change that.
I chose the 4000 Reb B because it’s the most common of all 4000 boards in use today and the most common one that gets destroyed from leaking batteries and capacitors. This project will use my personal 4000D board in perfect condition and it will get dissected, traced out into PADS and Altium with 100% 1:1 recreation in mind. All of the project database files, gerbers, notes, manufacturing data and schematics will be uploaded to a public site for anyone to use once it’s complete. This will allow anyone that wants to have a brand new board made by any board house they chose to do that, freely and in any quality they wish. It will save time, preserve the Amiga 4000 and be a great resource for the future of our machines!
Now it is Your turn to make this Amiga 4000 Rev B replica Project Alive
How can you help? We need donations for this. Currently we have a GoFundMe project raising $5000 and its nearly complete. The first stage is done by the time you read this, but its cost me a lot more than I expected both in time and hardware. Please help and donate what you can. Even as little as $5 is of help with enough doing it!
Thanks for helping with this, and in a couple months’ time the first gerbers and info will be published! The next step will be a group buy of boards! Links to the project and donation sites are below.
Help the funding by entering GoFundMe.com website
For more questions regarding keeping this Amiga 4000D Rev B replica Project Alive, then please use acillclassics@gmail.com and even visit www.acill.com
Source
Paul Rezendes
