Site news and revisions

• 27/2/24: Long time, no updates! Added more 1084S monitor service manuals to the schematics page.
  
  
• 18/5/19: Added instructions on how to calibrate the Amiga real time clock 32.768kHz oscillator.
  
  
• 12/5/18: Added references to AmigaKit.com for sources of spares.
  
  
• 17/7/16: Added IC datasheets for the Commodore video hybrid and OCS Denise. Thanks to Michael Z.
  
  
• 27/12/15: Added modification notes on converting A3000 power supply input voltages between 240V and 120V. Thanks for genny_flick for the initial explanation.
  
  
• 18/12/15: Several hours outage today while the copper line supplying the DSL internet connection has received repairs. This should hopefully remedy the intermittent web server unavailability issues which have been ongoing for the past year due to occasional line noise issues that were causing the DSL connection to drop.
  
  
• 17/10/15: Back again from a third year living and working in Antarctica. Amiga hardware repairs and support are resuming as normal.
  
  
• 2/7/15: Nearly three weeks later, Vodafone NZ has finally resolved the international access issues to my web server in Christchurch. Apologies to international users for the inconvenience and many thanks to the many people in America and Europe who helped with testing.
  
  
• 28/6/15: Since the 16th of June, many international users have been unable to connect to this webserver in Christchurch. My internet service provider has finally assigned someone who seems to know what they're doing to investigate; so with the help of a number of users in America and Europe providing trace logs, we're in the process of diagnosing the connection issues. Hope to have this fixed this coming week.
  
  
• 6/4/15: Added Commodore 1080A monitor service manual and schematic, thanks to Edoardo A for scanning the schematic sheets and making them available.
  
  
• 29/9/14: Departing for Scott Base, Antarctica, for another 13 months. All Amiga hardware work on hold until November 2015 when I return to NZ. Amiga support via Email to my regular address will continue as normal. Photos and comments available weekly on my online photo diary.
  
  
• 13/7/14: Fixed and removed various dead links throughout the site. Tools such as DeadLinkChecker make it easy these days.
  
  
• 13/4/14: Added many more datasheets and publications which I seem to have had for a long time, but have never added links to.
  
  
• 12/3/14: Added many new schematics, both scanned and regenerated. Thanks to Micha from AmigaWiki.org for the regenerated schematics which are accurate and text searchable. Also added index at top of schematics page to eliminate much searching and scrolling as the page has now grown significantly. Added detail on the many confusing A3000T jumpers around the the CPU clock area.
  
  
• 1/2/14: Fixed the inventory report generator where the currency conversion broke due to a recent change on the finance.yahoo.com server.
  
  
• 24/10/13: Returned from another 13 months in Antarctica, not sure why I keep doing it but I'm again settling back into normality. Open for Amiga hardware repairs as normal again once my tools and test equipment emerge from the freight systems.
  
  
• 28/4/13: Fixed loads of ancient spelling and typing errors in various HTML documents that I've neglected for way too long.
  
  
• 16/9/12: Away again for another 13 months in Antarctica, so all Amiga hardware work and parts orders will not be accepted until I return in November 2013. Technical support via Email will continue as usual, so feel free to drop me a message anytime.
  
  
• 7/5/12: Server offline for a few hours to resolve a dodgy memory issue, should be fine again now.
  
  
• 2/5/12: Web server has been offline for the past two days due to internet connection failure. ISP's network status page hadn't been updated since Sept 2010 and a call to their "help" desk gave a pre-recorded message to the tune of "we are experiencing high volumes of callers and can't help you now". Thanks for the grate customer service Mr Vodafone, I think it might be time to change ISP...
  
  
• 29/10/11: After returning to NZ from 13 months in Antarctica, I'm now settling back into normality. Should be able to begin processing Amiga hardware jobs again now.
  
  
• 29/5/11: Corrected a few points on the A3000 booting problems page that ended up being copied in from another source. Thanks to Hanzu for pointing these out.
  
  
• 28/4/11: Server has been unavailable for the past 24 hours or so due to some internet connectivity issues. Should be all OK again.
  
  
• 5/3/11: Looks like the server UPS is playing up, batteries might have to be replaced. There may be a few periods of server unavailability until this gets sorted out.
  
  
• 22/2/11: A large magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit central/eastern Christchurch city causing major widespread damage and deaths. Thanks for all the concerning Emails, though all of my relations, friends, work colleagues and home are fine. Fortunately I'm based in western Christchurch, which was far less affected. The web server was offline for approximately 16 hours because it turns out an earthquake victim stayed in my house and very kindly decided to power off my server. How thoughtful, that's really easy to fix from Antarctica. I don't mind people staying in my house, but I really do mind when they mess with my stuff.
  
  
• 1/1/11: Happy new 2011! Updated various HTML links to element14 (formerly Farnell) part numbers. Thanks to Iris Tan from element14 for providing the detailed change list, saving me much time and effort. Also took advantage of the new years break to write more working in Antarctica web updates.
  
  
• 21/12/10: Looks like the web server has been offline for a day or so due to the internet connection dropping in Christchurch. No thanks to you, Mr Vodafone; hope you get a dog turd for Christmas. You would not believe how un-fun that is to try and diagnose and repair from Antarctica where all I have is a very slow internet connection and a nasty windows box.
  
  
• 30/09/10: All Amiga hardware repair work and component purchases on hold while I'm working in Antarctica. Expecting things to be back to normal around November 2011. Emails for technical enquiries, support, etc, to the usual address still welcome. Replies may be a day or two later than usual.
  
  
• 04/09/10: Server has been offline for the past 14 hours due to the recent earthquake activity in Christchurch city. At least one hard disk drive has suffered possible mechanical damage in the quake, so this will be replaced in the coming few days. Intermittent short outages expected to follow when the server disk is replaced.
  
  
• 07/06/10: Re-wrote the schematics page for a fresh new look and many new additions, including schematics in PDF format.
  
  
• 05/04/10: Added real time inventory report with user selectable currency conversion.
  
  
• 12/01/10: Replaced some incredibly bad photos on the Battery Replacement page with some slightly better ones.
  
  
• 16/10/09: Updated various Farnell part numbers and web links which have recently changed.
  
  
• 15/10/09: Web server intermittently unavailable due to a system disk failure, the disk has been replaced.
  
  
• 12/07/09: Updated and added a few photos to the About Me page, so it's slightly more appealing now.
  
  
• 22/04/09: Added a few notes to the Floppy Drive Conversion page to clarify the fact that the Panasonic JU257 drives are fairly hard to get these days. Refer to the other suggestions on the page to best resolve your floppy drive woes.
  
  
• 03/04/09: Oops, accidentally broke the web server 4 days ago and only just noticed it now. I really must check these things more often....
  
  
• 25/10/08: Added notes on A3000 power supply repairs and common faults on A3000 Booting Problems page, A3000 hardware guide.
  
  
• 23/08/08: Added Cyberstorm mk3 socket replacement page.
  
  
• 23/07/08: Added information for sourcing replacement RP5C01 RTC on the RTC repair page, added additional detail and A3640 PAL upgrade information added to the A3640 reference page.
  Re-validated a majority of the HTML code on the site's main pages.
  
  
• 06/07/08: New Ricoh RP5C01/RP5C01A real time clocks for Amiga A4000 and A3000 are now available.
  Email me for more information, or to make a purchase of these parts.
  
  
• 16/11/07: Added some notes and JEDEC files for A3000 PAL/GAL programmable logic devices to the A3000 hardware guide.
  Cleaned up a few crappy old icon images.
  
  
• 12/9/07: More internet connection interruptions over the past day or two. Appears the combined uselessness of ISPs/telecomms providers was much greater than I anticipated!
  
  
• 9/9/07: Web server back online after internet connection outage for past four days. Haven't decided who is more hopeless, the ISP or the telecomms provider...
  
  
• 1/7/07: Wrote some documentation on A3000 non-booting problems; which includes common problems/solutions, boot colour codes and a detailed boot procedure description from Harry 'Piru' Sintonen.
  
  
• 6/2/07: Moved house and finally finished setting up Ethernet, telephone, etc. All web and FTP services should be back to normal now. Apologies for any downtime in the process.
  
  
• 31/12/06: Restructured the downloads page into sections as it was getting messy, added A500 technician training course notes.
  Also added the PDF MIME type to the web server, can't believe no-one had complained about that yet!
  
  
• 4/6/06: Added replacing SIMM sockets page. Also cleaned up various HTML code.
  
  
• 20/5/06: Fixed various broken links to external web addresses.
  
  
• 30/4/06: Tidied all the HTML code on the site (at least the stuff that I've written). The site's main HTML code should be a bit more HTML 4.01 Transitional compliant now.
  
  
• 17/3/06: Updated various texts on the A3640 capacitor replacement page, thanks again to Tony for keeping me in line.
  
  
• 12/3/06: Added A3640 capacitor replacement info and link to Amiga One reference.
  
  
• 5/3/06: Updated my ultra-blurry, ultra-crappy RTC photo with a decent one I found. Also fixed a wee typo on the audio repair page, thanks to Tony.
  
  
• 12/12/05: Finally back online after 6 weeks of ISP issues. Web and FTP server has been offline since 27/10/05.
  
  
• 3/12/05: Updated Testing Completed Job image in A3000 INT_2 modifications to clarify CPU connector pin numbering.
  
  
• 19/4/05: Fixed the A1000_schematics-IFF.LHA archive which was corrupted. Thanks to Jens Pesek for notifying me.
  
  
• 19/3/05: Fixed the way some of the internal site links are referenced for offline browsing.
  
  
• 12/2/05: Lots of new updates added to the web server, including revised RTC repair, new A3000 hardware guide, HTML version of A3000 INT-2 modification, lots of SMD soldering guides, audio stage repair, new sub-menus to categorise things for easier site navigation and more!
  
  
• 30/10/04: Added some extra text to the RTC repair page to make fault tracing a bit easier.
  Also fixed a few typos and added a sketch of how to do open circuit via repairs.
  
  
• 9/10/04: Oops, I accidentally enabled some system wide Arexx debugging which meant the web server was offline for 24 hrs. Should be working again now.
  
  
• 13/9/04: Added IFF Loader for download on schematics page. It's a Windows program to display Amiga IFF images. Thanks to the author, Steve B.
  
  
• 8/9/04: Fixed an error on the battery replacement page, correct battery part number is actually Varta 3/V80H and not a V80H. Thanks to Keith M for pointing this out.
  
  
• 1/9/04: Fixed a few broken links within site internal documents.
  Planning in place for expansion of technical guides, including SMD soldering, electrolytic capacitor problems and alterations to RTC battery replacement section to make it easier to follow.
  
  
• 25/4/04: Altered the ARexx web server script to fix a few small problems at the server end.
  
  
• 27/3/04: Added scolling text to index page to test some Javascript usage.
  
  
• 25/1/04: Added the nice PCB style "back" arrows, thanks to my good friend Danny de Waal.
  
  
• 18/1/04: Upgraded server main disk, apologies for any slow connections/loss of service during upgrade.
  
  
• 10/1/04: Added disclaimer text to the RTC battery replacement section, just in case!
  
  
• 10/1/04: Completed the RTC fault finding/repair detail section for component level repair of the RTC.
  
  
• 7/12/03: Added the initial parts of the RTC battery replacement section. Fault finding/repair section still to come.
  
  
• 2/11/03: Planning in place for "how to" clock battery replacement guide.
  
  
• 2/11/03: Added acronym list and datasheet sections.
  
  
• 2/11/03: Finally allocated time to add some new schematics to the archives.
  New schematics include A1000, CDTV, A500+, A1060, updated A3000 and lots more monitor schematics.
  
  
• 1/10/03: Some icon image changes. The site now looks slightly less "1970s". Now more of an 80s look.
  
  
• 14/9/03: Intermittent connection problems were traced to a faulty RJ45 connector.
  Things appear to be running normally again.
  
  
• Gave up on Apache as it was being a total piece of crap.
  Online since 25/8/03 with the gW3S ARexx web server ver 2.2.8!