Post by 888 on Mar 9, 2022 22:20:40 GMT
I've recently managed to get hold of a 30 year old Acorn A3020. This machine was the successor to the BBC micro range of machines, but had an ARM processor running a RISC operating system - very advanced for the time.
As with pretty much all of the old Acorn ARM machines now, this one had the standard hardware problems. Mainly, the soldered in rechargeable bios battery had deposited its alkali chemical internals over the motherboard.
This one wasn't as bad as some. After replacing the battery, the motherboard took some very careful cleaning with a fibreglass pen, then vinegar - to neutralize the alkali, then IPA to clean away the acidic vinegar.
There doesn't appear to be any permanent damage on the PCB tracks or any of the legs on the chips - I was very lucky.
The keyboard didn't work, but it just needed disassembling and a clean - it was full of 30 years worth or dust....yeugh!
I had to buy a mouse adapter for it, because it originally used a Quadrature standard 3 button mouse, which are now hard to come by, old, expensive, and usually faulty - in their roller ball goodness. 
With this adapter I can run any modern USB mouse.....even wireless,
I've also fitted a 1GB IDE flash card, as this model has a hard disk interface fitted. The system can only use a 512MB partition, but that is more than enough for this machine.
So far its working really well, and am enjoying playing around with it.
