@all

Remember you can get your A1 repaired here.

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Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

@Interesting:

Please excuse me. I thought you are Eddie.

@Elwood:

You should shout it louder!

No, it's not eddie, Having spoken to interesting about this, it seems very much a genuine offer to help the Amiga Community. Also, to put a stop to what appears to be an underhanded scheme on ANN and Moobunny to get OS4 running on another platform through dubious means.

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No cause is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it.

This is very promising news! I have already PM you, Mikey, about my dead A1G3XE-mobo, so i hope it can be fixed while getting myself a MicroA1-C! Thank you!

Excellent news!

Er Dude, It's not me doing this, it's "Interesting" I just put the news item up for him

- My life is hectic enough as it is, without taking more on at the mo!

Mikey C

_________________
No cause is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it.

@all

Well, "grey markets" appear when there's lack of first hand supply, no? Nothing surprising here, I'm afraid. What to do to avoid it?
1) Announce new forthcoming products, e.g. ACK boards, or a 1.3 GHz G4 Megarray board, or a mystery device; heck, even a SharkPPC This has been done in the past (see above) and it only helps in the short term.
2) Deliver what the (small) market asks for.

Simple, huh?

_________________
La fortuna � cieca. La sfiga ci vede benissimo.

Sorry Mikey Thank you, Interesting! It's very...Interesting!

Interesting, i have PM you personally about my dead A1G3XE-mobo and i hope you can help me, as i live in Norway. I have my dead mobo at home, and it doesn't matter where it gets sent, as long as it can be fixed however

I have PM you my address and private email-address you can contact me at. I hope to hear from you soon

Your faithful

Helgis

Quote:

No, it's not eddie, Having spoken to interesting about this, it seems very much a genuine offer to help the Amiga Community. Also, to put a stop to what appears to be an underhanded scheme on ANN and Moobunny to get OS4 running on another platform through dubious means.

Reading between the lines looks like someone is trying to make some form of PCI emplant board with the A1 U-Boot on for the PEG.

_________________
A1200T 603e 330Mhz - Mediator TX OS4.1 F.E.
CDTV 8MB Fast, OS3.1, SCSI, MicroSD SCSI & CD32 FMV
X5000, X1000, A1XE with OS4.1F.E.

@JurasssiC

You got it and there are people who can easily fall for it.

@ Kronos

Yawn...

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Thomas, the kernel guy

"I don't have a frigging clue. I'm norwegian" -- Ole-Egil

All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Hyperion Entertainment

Quote:

This is all on the up and up and honest! This an OS4 support project. No games here!

I strongly advise against sending this person your motherboard. There is only one company currently capable of repairing A1 motherboards (as elwood pointed out): Amigacenter.

Capable, as in "has both the technical expertise AND the technical documentation".

Also, you cannot transfer a licence from one motherboard to another.

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Amont Informatique
http://www.amont-info.com/

Amont

By all means shoot the messenger, but please shoot the right one, have you seen this thread?
CAUTION! clicking on the link above could be detremental to your sanity,

_________________
No cause is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it.

@Kronos
Quote:

But if for example you have a burned SB, you would need to find someone who could diagnose it, has the tools&skills for doing BGA-repair and a source for the chip. Add shipping to it, and your easily above 200$, with no guarantee thats the SB is really all that was broken.

But isn't that exactly the point other people are trying to make here?

If someone set themselves up saying "I will repair your A1 for $200", and people might pay perhaps $350 (half price) for the fixed board 2nd-hand, it kind of implies the scrap board is "worth" $350-$200 = $150. And that's assuming pessimistic numbers.

Of course, if you really have totally roasted your A1 so the entire PCB looks like charcoal then yes, $35 is fair enough. But how many "broken" boards are really that bad?

>But how many "broken" boards are really that bad?

I can tell that a lot of people in this thread have never ever tried to solder, much less unsolder some of the components on an A1 motherboard.

Sure, there are some faults that can easily be fixed, as long as the fault is known. Blown caps come to mind.

However, usually the fault is *not* known, and even if you are someone who has the knowledge and expertise to track things down to a particular fault (very very hard in something as complex as an A1, and very very time consuming work for someone very highly qualified, and thus expensive), chances are, you won't be able to do anything about it. Unsoldering BGA chips is pretty much not gonna happen. Unsoldering SMD chips can be done, but you need to be very very careful not to overheat and kill more stuff around the dead chip, nor to lift tracks or pads off the board. And even assuming you managed to get the dead chip off the board cleanly, and assuming you actually have a replacement chip, you have to have e a steady hand and some experience to solder the (rare) 1.27mm spaced SMD stuff, a steadier hand and more experience for 1mm spaced stuff, and almost God-like powers for 0.5mm and smaller spaced stuff.

So, after spending hours tracking down what is at fault, more hours tracking down a supplier for the part, then paying through the nose for single quantity parts, shipping and handling, then renting time on some SMD rework station and spending hours unsoldering, resoldering and checking each and every solder joint twice, you get to switch on the board and HOPE that things work. No guarantees. No promises. Not even reasonable expectations.

Most if not all of those steps involve engineering knowledge far beyond the average person. People with that knowledge and skillset have hourly earnings between $40 and $80 when in regular jobs, and close to twice as much when consulting. To even know whether a broken board is "really that bad" will cost you triple figures. To get any SMD chip reworked as a result of the diagnosis almost certainly takes you past the cost of a brand new Pegasos, if not that of a hypothetical brand new A1.

There is a reason that things don't get repaired anymore, and it's that most time, a new item is being produced by fast and cheap machines, whereas repairs require slow and extremely expensive human labour. It's simply cheaper to replace a broken item than to fix it; That is not a bad society-pervading attitude, but just an effect of highly streamlined production processes.

To use a banal example --- SMD resistors. The 0603 version, which would be the largest you'd commonly find on motherboards, are 1.6mm long, and 0.8mm wide. In the factory, these come from big reels holding 5000 or more, and such a reel can be had for A$21 (i.e. about A$0.004 per resistor), cheaper if you are in the business and buy lots. Machine loading costs about A$0.002 per resistor.
The smallest quantity I have been able to source locally is 100, at A$0.028 each. That's $2.80 if you just need one, or a hundred. Per value. If you do a lot of these, you can hand-load one onto a board in about 10 seconds --- which is between A$0.10 and A$0.40, depending on who does the hand-loading. Let's for the heck of it assume there are 100 resistors on an A1 board, with 20 different values --- that's A$56 for the resistors, about A$30 for soldering them on, another A$20 for removing the old ones... A$106 (or about US$80) just to replace the resistors. And we haven't taken into account yet the risk of shorting something, which means you spend as much time again with a multimeter. And that's for something trivial.

>But how many "broken" boards are really that bad?

[If this shows up twice, I am *really* confused by AW's scripts. Right now, I am only mildly confused....]

[EDIT: Sorry, I was indeed confused... double post]

Last edited by umisef on 04-Jul-2005 at 01:47 PM.

Hi,
is there a specific reason, why this news item disappeared from the homepage
but is still available as direct link and in the Newsfeed and in the news archive ?

_________________

Sorry to cut your tirade short, but a friend of mine had a board go dead on him and our Amiga dealer found the problem, fixed it himself, and then gave the board reworks *all for free*

He gave his time/tools for free. All we had to do is pay shipping. I think it's fair, we meet half way. Everyone is happy.

_________________
Amigarevolution.com

>our Amiga dealer found the problem, fixed it himself, and then gave the board
>reworks *all for free*

Good for everyone involved.

Just out of interest, what *was* the fault? And what percentage of dead boards do you expect to suffer from a fault that a dealer can not only locate, but fix?