Atari Falcon General Maintenance
The Atari Falcon030 has a main board, a plug-in memory board, an internal switching power supply, a floppy drive and an optional internal IDE hard disk in one case. Atari's Falcon030 Service Guide covers its disassembly, testing and parts.[1]
Warning: the power supply works from mains voltage. Unplug the mains lead before opening the case.
Disassembly
[edit | edit source]Atari's procedure (Section 4, pp. 99–101):[2]
- Turn the unit upside down. Remove the four screws in the square holes and the three in the round holes that hold the top case to the bottom.
- Turn the unit upright, lift off the top case, and unplug the keyboard harness at the right front corner.
- Remove the nine screws holding the shield and speaker assembly, and lift off the shield.
- For the floppy drive, turn the unit over and remove the three screws in the round holes; holding the drive, turn the unit back, unplug the power harness and ribbon, and lift out the drive and its standoffs.
- For the power supply, unplug the harness at its right front corner, remove the four corner screws and lift it out.
- Lift out the memory board.
- For the main board, remove the three screws at the front of the shield and board assembly, lift it at the front and pull it forward; then remove the six screws of the upper shield. The board lifts off the insulator and the bottom shield.
Atari notes that the board is convenient to troubleshoot in this state, with the keyboard and floppy drive reconnected beside it, and recommends retesting the computer once it is back in its case to make sure nothing shorts to the shield.[2]
Cleaning
[edit | edit source]Clean the board with isopropyl alcohol and a soft brush, and check around the axial electrolytics for leakage. Clean the cartridge port and the expansion connector contacts if they are used.
Power supply
[edit | edit source]The switching supply (C302866-001 for 117 V, C302867-001 for 230 V) provides +5 V and +12 V to the main board and power for the drives, 37.4 W in total. Atari's specification:[3]
| +5 V | +12 V | |
|---|---|---|
| Load current | 1.5–7.0 A | 0–0.2 A |
| Line, load and cross regulation | 5 % | 10 % |
| Ripple and noise | 100 mV p-p each | 100 mV p-p each |
| Set point | 5.05 ± 0.1 V at 4.0 A | – |
The supply accepts 90–129 V AC on US units and 198–264 V AC on European units, and should shut down within 20 ms on a short circuit.[3] Atari's own procedure for a dead unit assumes these voltages have been checked first.[4]
The case has a 12 V, 40 × 40 × 10 mm fan (Atari C302883, at J22); Atari's assembly drawing for its mounting bracket was revised by ECO 1604 in March 1993.[5] Keep it running and free of dust.
Real-time clock battery
[edit | edit source]The clock is a Dallas DS1287 (U64, Atari C398170-001) with an integrated 3.6 V lithium battery and crystal. It keeps the time, date and 50 bytes of configuration RAM while the machine is off.[6] The battery cannot be replaced on its own. The Atari Computermuseum describes the two ways round this: replace the whole chip, or cut the package open, remove the cell and solder on a battery holder.[7] Paweł Góralski describes replacing the module with a DS12887+ in a socket and resetting the NVRAM afterwards.[8]
Atari's diagnostic cartridge notes that if the clock battery has failed, its test menu may show fewer choices.[9] See Battery Refurbishment for general advice.
Drives
[edit | edit source]The floppy drive is a 3.5" 2 MB (unformatted) unit, Atari C303073-001. The optional hard disk connects to an internal 44-pin IDE connector.[1]
Configuration switches
[edit | edit source]Two 8-way DIP switches enable or disable hardware options on the main board. Atari's feature list calls them S56 and S57; section 2.1.9 prints U56 and U57, which the parts list uses for COMBEL and a 74LS74. On the first switch, segment 1 selects one or zero DRAM wait states and segment 2 a 32-bit or 16-bit video bus. Atari recommends not changing them.[10]
Capacitors
[edit | edit source]Atari's parts list gives 25 axial electrolytics on every main board, plus three electrolytics and three tantalums on boards with the video encoder. The list is on the Atari Falcon Capacitor Replacement Guide.
Related pages
[edit | edit source]- Atari Falcon030
- Atari Falcon Troubleshooting Guide
- Atari Falcon Capacitor Replacement Guide
- Battery Refurbishment
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Atari Corporation, Atari Falcon030 Service Guide, C303062-001, 1 October 1992. Hosted here as File:Atari Falcon030 Service Guide C303062-001.pdf.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Atari Corporation, Atari Falcon030 Service Guide, C303062-001, Section 4, "Disassembly/Assembly", pp. 99–101.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Atari Corporation, Atari Falcon030 Service Guide, C303062-001, Section 1.3, "Power Supply", pp. 4–5.
- ↑ Atari Corporation, Atari Falcon030 Service Guide, C303062-001, Section 3.3, "Troubleshooting a Dead Unit", pp. 67–68.
- ↑ Atari Corporation, Atari Falcon030 Service Guide, C303062-001, Section 7, parts list and assembly drawings.
- ↑ Atari Corporation, Atari Falcon030 Service Guide, C303062-001, Section 2.1.7, "Real-Time Clock", p. 24, and parts list (U64, C398170-001, "IC DS1287 DIP 24P .600").
- ↑ Atari Computermuseum, "Falcon 030", section on the clock chip. Community source.
- ↑ Paweł Góralski, "Atari Falcon 030 RTC replacement", nokturnal.pl. Community source.
- ↑ Atari Corporation, Atari Falcon030 Service Guide, C303062-001, Section 2.1.9, "Configuration Switch", p. 27.