Saturday 27 February 2010

Beauty and the Beast


I whipped off the front Bezel and discovered the case opens like a suitcase. Drives in the top half and motherboard in the bottom half.

Once I'd familiarised myself with everything I followed the external keyboard wire across from DIN input on the side of the tower.


Over to where in connected to the motherboard of the Falcon. I got out the Multimeter and buzzed through the cable to check for continuity. There are only 3 wires so it didn't take long. Everything seemed fine. I buzzed the cable and that seemed fine too. So I unscrewed the external keyboard and checked inside. Everything seemed in very good condition so I decided to bypass everything and plug the keyboard directly into the Falcon motherboard just like it would have been in a stock case. I powered it up and bingo it worked fine. I put in a disk and it booted and I ran a quick demo. Ironically enough it is called AmigaDemo2 by Oxygene and you can see it running here. Sound was coming out. CPU was working. Keyboard and mouse working.


Inside the external keyboard was a small PCB with a DIN plug and a PIN header replicating the PINS on the falcon motherboard. I got the multimeter on the PCB and it soon became obvious that the numerous plugging and unplugging had worked the solder loose. I got out the soldering iron and just touched each solder joint gently. Tried the multimeter again and everything was good. Reassembled the case and the keyboard and tried it again. Success.

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