Hi all,
does anyone know if the Rombo ROMBox was available as a kit? I have one in for repair / restoration and as well as the fact that it looks like it was stored in a leaky shed by the sea for several years, it also has some mistakes on the PCB (soldering mistakes, not the actual PCB tracks) as if it had been put together by a beginner, which I doubt could have happened if it was only sold as a finished product. The Wiki page is unfortunately rather sparse to say the least.
Bryce.
Hi, IIRC I saw one quite a longer time ago, but don't remember much wired on it. I may be wrong though.
Not sure what you mean with "wired". It's a standard ROMBoard of the time: 50way connector, ribbon cable, PCB with 8 ROM sockets, 4 or 5 ICs, a few capacitors, a diode, resistor and a DIP switch to enable the ROMs. On this one two ROM socket pins weren't soldered at all and the ribbon cable wasn't fitted correctly so some wires didn't ever make contact.
Bryce.
Got any pictures?
I don't beleive they were available in kit form. The boards never had silk-screen on the ones I've seen.
I've seen a few which have been modified to have ram (usually 2x6264) in one of the sockets for rom software development.
I've almost completely striped it down now. What exactly did you want to see? The inside of the socket pins are "furry green", so they all need to be swapped. The pins of the components are also all very corroded, so I've decided just to strip the entire board and rebuild it with new parts. I can stick it under the microscope and take a picture if you're into pictures of furry green contacts? :D
Bryce.
Edit: Here you go... No amount of cleaning will save this.
[attach=2]
You said it had some soldering mistakes, if you'd posted pictures or descibed them I would have checked on mine.
How does it compare with the pictures on the Wiki?
Well if these mistakes were on yours, yours would be non-functional too, so I doubt they are the same. I've also noticed that the device pictured on the Wiki uses all 74HC ICs, whereas the one I have here is all 74LS.
I've also noticed, yours has a different brand of socket and a different brand of DIP switch.
Bryce.
If you have the board completely stripped down, can you take some pictures of both sides. I had most of the circuit mapped out, it would be good to check it aginst a board without the chips in place.
My board is all HC.
Edit: The earlier picture are not my rom boards, they were a friends when they were sold on ebay (I only found out he'd sold them after the event)
Yeah sure, I'll take some pictures.
Bryce.
Today I had some time to strip the board down. Here's some hi-res pictures of both sides. These were taken after the first IPA treatment.
[attach=2]
[attach=3]
There's quite a bit of track damage, but nothing that can't be fixed. Unfortunately the board seems to have been left somewhere to corrode away. The pins of the ICs etc were all in a serious state, so the PCB will be populated with brand new parts and look like new when it's finished.
[attach=4]
[attach=5]
Bryce.
Fair play on doing the repair. Its a lot of work for something not particularly valuable and could easily have been scrapped by the owner.
I see this as more of a restoration as a repair, but no piece of retro hardware should be scrapped just because the owner only sees the financial value. Luckily the owner of this looks further than just a number.
Bryce.
Gesendet von meinem Motorola DynaTEC 8000X mit Tapatalk 2.
How long will it take until people will have the same attitude about floppy discs? Just wondering. :)
So, all soldered back up, fully socketed with proper turned, goldplated sockets. All new parts except for the resistor array because my supplier sent me the wrong part :( but the old one works fine still.
Haven't had a chance to test it yet, but there's no reason it shouldn't work.
Bryce.
Looks better than new. :) Now put Maxam and X-DDOS on it. ;)
It is better than new :) The original used the cheapest crap sockets they could find. Modern capacitors have also much better specifications than 80's parts.
Bryce.
Cleaned the pins on all the EPROMs and gave it a go... All working as expected.
[attach=2]
Some of the EPROMs seem to make the CPC crash, but that's probably just still dirt on the pins that I missed or they may need to be reprogrammed.
Now on to the Britannia :)
[attach=3]
Bryce.
Quote from: Bryce on 09:08, 13 May 15
Some of the EPROMs seem to make the CPC crash, but that's probably just still dirt on the pins that I missed or they may need to be reprogrammed.
Bryce.
Maybe... but you're using Utopia. This one is not that much compatible to other ROMs (therefor I don't use it any longer, its functions are a part of FutureOS anyway). So before you think about bad contacts or dirt please check how the ROM combinations will work on the neat and nice MegaFlash. So you can be sure if it it hardware or software. Just an idea. Good luck. :)
Thanks for the tip. I just installed all the EPROMs as they had been installed when I got it, so I was assuming that combination worked.
Bryce.
Quote from: Bryce on 19:15, 13 May 15
Thanks for the tip. I just installed all the EPROMs as they had been installed when I got it, so I was assuming that combination worked.
Bryce.
Well, you got a good point there. :)
Moving on to the Britannia... I thought I'd post this in the same thread as both belong to the same person.
This Britannia isn't a happy bunny and isn't going to be easy to diagnose. There has been major repair and modding done to this board in the past:
[attach=2]
Those blue wires are a mixture of bridges across damaged tracks and changes to the layout.
Broken track repair:
[attach=3]
Deliberate circuit change:
[attach=4]
Mixture of both:
[attach=5]
Not that I had the schematic of the original anyway, but undocumented mods make it much more complicated. The orange around all the other solder joints is a sign that they were probably all re-soldered at some stage.
Bryce.
Well that went quicker than I was expecting. I found a few dry joints on the blue wires, gave them a reflow and things started happening - It would allow the CPC to boot with no ROMs installed. When a ROM was installed it still crashed, but that turned out to be a case of "CC" = Crusty cable. Swapped the flat cable and header connector (they usually fall apart if you open them at this age) and (almost - The original BCPL ROM seems to be dead) all is back working.
Time to get back to Gryzors MiST mod...
Bryce.
Just a moment to thank Bryce on his quality workmanship.
Aboslutey brilliant turnaround and items are now safetly back with me.
Very happy days!! :)