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[vk3heg]

Hi,

I have been in contact with a person that's selling his Amiga 3000. It's got twin floppy drives, 2meg CHIP and 4meg FAST RAM (ZIP chips), has the 25MHz full 68030, has a revision 9.0 motherboard and has KICKSTART 2.04 ROMs.

The only thing that I'm weary of is the battery

Battery view 1
Battery view 2

What chances do I have of the A3000 going up in smoke beacuse of the damage? Is there a good chance this is fixable?

[MrZammler]

!!!!!!!!!!

Not good.

There's no way to tell if the damage is big or small unless you clean this mess, or just test the miggy to it's full extend (flickerfixer, audio are the first to get worse from battery leakage).

[textory]

Hi vk3heg,

oh... oh... that doesn't look good. It was the same with the battery in my A2000. Of course I removed it and cleaned the board with isopropyl alcohol. Fortunately the corrosion was just on the surface of the board and did not affect other parts. The A2000 is still running without the battery.

Another thing to mention: The A2000 runs well without a battery, but I got no experiences with an A3000. If there's a hard disk in it there could be a problem.

Maybe this could be helpful: http://amiga.serveftp.net/battery.html

Good luck
Textory

[x56h34]

Unless it's a really good deal, if I were you, I would pass on this unit due to severe battery acid leakage.

[c64_d0c]

buy it and save the a3000 from death!... it shouldnt be a big problem if there is a damage, everything can be fixed...
________
Nexium Lawsuites

[Tahoe]

Depends on the price, I suppose. I would buy her, but then again I have repaired battery damage before.

Does she work?

A3000's run perfectly fine without a battery (answering a previous post) but some SCSI settings are no longer kept after a power-down. These are all optional settings, not interfering with normal operation.

[KThunder]

holy cow ive never seen one that bad! if everything works and is tested get it and remove that thing and clean it good.

[A3KOne]

Its shot man.

You can see the discoloration on the motherboard. Best case it would be flaky as heck. Worst case, it is totally shot (or will be soon), which is my guess. You will never get that crap out of the PCB.

That said...it might be worth buying for parts, depending on the price and chip revisions (buster, etc).

[beller]

Since I've had my hands inside my A3000 plugging in 25 zip chips yesterday, I'll add my two cents.

You don't say whether or not its running, but the discoloration on the motherboard looks pretty bad. Tell your friend to pull that battery now before it gets worse!! (all you have to do is rock the battery back and forth until the soldered leads break)

I've been running my A3000 without a clock since I got it from EBay and found the battery starting to go....nothing like the picture you have! The A3000 (cost me $200) has been running great for the last year and now, with 16 megs, works great on the internet!

Bob

[Tomas]

I hope that battery is removed fast :-(
It looks like a very big leak, but from the picture it dosent seem like it has spread much.

But if this battery is left on there, then the machine will for sure be doomed to death. If it is cheap, then i would buy it just to save it from the painful death

[Skyrunner]

That looks like a really bad case. Avoid this A3000 or buy it real cheap for parts. Buying it with hopes of getting it to work properly is just plain wrong.

[AmigaEd]

I've seen worse. It looks like from your photos that the damage is fairly well conttained to the immediate area of the battery. I've seen them with a contamination spread in a 4 inch radius around the battery and still worked fine.

Since you don't descrbe if it works or not, If the price is right I say go for it. Odds are you'll make out fine.

What I typically do is remove the battery, clean the contaminated area completely with a mixture of water and baking soda. Do this several times if necessary. Use a small platers brush or a small boar's hair brush to scrub around all of the components and in betweeen the legs of the ic's. Make sure you dry the area well. I then follow up by cleaning the area a few times with Isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs. Don't be affraid to flush the area really well with the water or the alcohol.

Get yourself one of those CR2032 batteries and a holder. These are the ones found on PC mother boards. Add a diode in series with the battery and you'll be ready to go. Directions and pictures on how to do this modification can probably be found on here or on Aminet.

Good Luck,
AmigaEd

[gizmomelb]

as the owner and seller of this machine, all I can say is:

"the sky is falling! the sky is falling!"

Have a look at my webspace for the original pics, as well as some movies I recorded of the machine working this morning.

http://craigwp.gallery.netspace.net.au/Amiga-3000

the following videos are available:

http://www.filefactory.com/get/f.php?f=7c05cdb7e05837e5da7c7506

8-1084s.mov = A3000 and a 1084S monitor showing operation from no power to operating workbench, with a close up of the 'fuzzy' battery.


http://www.filefactory.com/get/f.php?f=eb6d0d9eae2f35196e31e475

9-pool.mov = A3000 and 1084S monitor loading TEAM 17's ARCADE POOL from floppy disk from power off to play.


http://www.filefactory.com/get/f.php?f=69f3e1786d3833a6f2272f84

10-1960.mov = A3000 and 1960 multi-sync monitor showing the flicker fixer working.

11-sysinfo.jpg = a hi-res shot of the SYSINFO tool as it wasn't readable in the video above.


The videos are still loading (about 300MB in total) so give it about an hour and they should be finished. I've got to go out for the rest of the day, but I'll be removing the battery and cleaning the mobo tonight/tomorrow, so I'll post pics of the cleaned system then, for all the chicken littles out there.

[Tomas]

I've got to go out for the rest of the day, but I'll be removing the battery and cleaning the mobo tonight/tomorrow, so I'll post pics of the cleaned system then, for all the chicken littles out there.

I am very happy to hear that. I dont think you should underestimate the problem though, as i have seen Amigas dying completly from less of a noticable leak than this one. I think that you are very lucky that it didnt do much of an damage yet.

[irishmike]

To the original Poster: I wouldn't buy it for much even cleaned and repaired, the corrosion could be inside the PCB and even if cleaned, could still "sneak up" and kill the machine.

Just my 2 cents worth. Heck I am picky.