A year or two ago (perhaps more?), I bought what I consider a strange Amstrad CPC464 from Ebay - A UK layout keyboard but grey keys and grey cassette deck buttons.
Anyway, after all this time, came to power it on and nothing but a black screen with white border.
I opened it up and immediately spotted that the rom chip was not original and socketed, and the GA was without heatsink. My feelings were this machine had been fiddled with previously.
Anyway, question: Should the gate array have a heat-sink installed? Its a 40007-4 (F8504)?
Sorry, no idea regarding the 40007 but the computer might not be as strange as you think.
As far as I know, after the cooperation between Schneider in Germany and Amstrad ended, they have relabelled the Schneider cases to Amstrad and since they couldn't sell all of it here, they sold the computers all over Europe. So it's not uncommon to find a greyish Amstrad CPC464. Also the keyboard in Germany always was the UK layout and had the UK ROM.
As far as I am aware, the 40007 always needed a heatsink. It will work without the heatsink for a while, but would probably fail if used for longer periods.
Bryce.
Quote from: eto on 13:02, 22 September 20
Sorry, no idea regarding the 40007 but the computer might not be as strange as you think.
As far as I know, after the cooperation between Schneider in Germany and Amstrad ended, they have relabelled the Schneider cases to Amstrad and since they couldn't sell all of it here, they sold the computers all over Europe. So it's not uncommon to find a greyish Amstrad CPC464. Also the keyboard in Germany always was the UK layout and had the UK ROM.
Yes, checking the board, it has Link 2 on board, but it has been cut, indicating a rebrand from Schneider to Amstrad
Still, it is a nice alternate version to have :)
Quote from: Bryce on 13:47, 22 September 20
As far as I am aware, the 40007 always needed a heatsink. It will work without the heatsink for a while, but would probably fail if used for longer periods.
Bryce.
And strangely enough, in my box of bits, I have a heatsink for a PC M.2 drive which, although is a bit bigger, is a great alternative
Yep it need. All ferranti [size=78%]ula need it. May die because heat, not only in cpc also in spectrum.
The f85 04 was the date of manufacture of the ula
year 85 week 04.
And your z80 was made more late in the 88, it use the same date system.
That year 88 match other chips date in the board....
So the gate array appears out of context....Maybe someone replace it.
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