Amiga 600 recapping + destruction
Tonight's the Night!
Tonight I'll re-cap my Amiga 600! Spoiler: It won't end well. :-(
My 600 is in a rough condition: It's dirty and yellow. It was in storage for 20 years but was still working when I tested it 6 months ago.
Upon further inspection I noticed that there's a green acid spill on the quartz and IDE connector. And worse: One of the caps (above keyboard connector) fell out on it's own. I'm not sure what caused the green goo thing, but I was able to scrub it off with Isopropanol.
So here's my plan:
- desolder all existing caps
- clean the board
- add the replacement capacitors
- spoiler: cry
I bought the capacitor pack from Amigakit, but I had to hunt after the invoice, so I don't really recommend them.
There's multiple methods to remove old caps. Heatgun, solder iron and the cutting method. I picked the last path because I do believe it adds the least stress on the solder pads.
1-2-snip!
Very fast progress!
Three additional caps fell off when I touched them without any force... Maybe I should just shake the whole machine.
Now, to remove the non-surface-mounted caps, I need to fire up the solder iron, straighten out the little legs and de-solder them from the back. This took me a lot longer than anticipated.
Done!
The remaining pads are in a very bad shape. Lots of oxidation and dirt.
Some removed caps are bad (1000μF), some are fine (470μF). Besides the fact that caps fell out on their own, replacing them was a good call.
I de-soldered the remaining metal legs and gave the board a good scrub.
Here's some oxidation below a removed cap. Yes, I was too lazy to remove the keyboard connector and that's why I got burn marks now...
Everything is clean now, the difficult part is done! Or so I thought.
Time to add the new caps! I make quick progress until...
Shit. :-(
So what now? Pulling a trace from the mainboard is way above my skill level.
Help?