DIY: new cell for NVRAM chip

[DarkLord]

Just thought I'd mention this, for those who are like me, not very
technically advanced with a soldering iron...

I sent my Falcon MB to Alex Yu at ATY Computers here in the US,
and for about $40, he replaced the dead clock chip with a socket,
so that I can replace the clock chip/battery myself, anytime it goes
dead, from now on.

[samf]

Just thought I'd mention this, for those who are like me, not very
technically advanced with a soldering iron...

I sent my Falcon MB to Alex Yu at ATY Computers here in the US,
and for about $40, he replaced the dead clock chip with a socket,
so that I can replace the clock chip/battery myself, anytime it goes
dead, from now on.

That's great news Darklord. I didn't even know they were still in business!
BTW, where in the USofA do you live?

I live in Virginia and I think I'm the only Atari Falcon owner in my area.

[DarkLord]

Just thought I'd mention this, for those who are like me, not very
technically advanced with a soldering iron...

I sent my Falcon MB to Alex Yu at ATY Computers here in the US,
and for about $40, he replaced the dead clock chip with a socket,
so that I can replace the clock chip/battery myself, anytime it goes
dead, from now on.

That's great news Darklord. I didn't even know they were still in business!
BTW, where in the USofA do you live?

I live in Virginia and I think I'm the only Atari Falcon owner in my area.

Yep, Alex is still around. I keep him in business correcting all my mistakes.
He has a website, check it out sometime:

http://www.atycomputer.com/

I'm not all that far from you - I live in Prestonsburg, KY. There is another Falcon owner between us, I know for sure. His name is Barry Shortridge, AKA "Phantomm". He lives in Mouthcard, KY and we converse all the time. You'll see his posts in the Atari newsgroups occasionally. Really nice guy.

Catch ya later.

[[ProToS]]

a french article guide to nvram remplacement by Slyfox

http://christophe.bray.free.fr/informat ... /index.htm

[Dew-It]

just for those having trouble finding the chips at Maxxim

http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm/qv_pk/2680

cheers

karlm.

Thanks Karlm hope i get the the chips. Was'nt sure what to put there for a company, so I put Atari Repairs. How many pins is the socket?

[karlm]

socket? You'd have to solder in a 24pin DIL type, as you can see from the picture above, it's soldered directly to the motherboard.

cheers

karlm.

[Dew-It]

socket? You'd have to solder in a 24pin DIL type, as you can see from the picture above, it's soldered directly to the motherboard.

cheers

karlm.

Sorry
I meant how many pins was the ic, which you answered above. Which is 24. So when I need to change the RTC, probably won't even be messing around with a Falcon for another ten years, but on never knows. I would rather solder in a 24 pin socket, then a ic. Which Darklord had done to his Atari Falcon computer by ATY computer

[Dew-It]

I decided to have Alex Yu install the socket for me. Just to hard for me to remove a soldered IC on the mainboard of the Falcon.

[FatRakoon]

Can I just butt-in here you lot...

On the picture that ProTOS has so kindly offered us, on the right/hand side, we can see the wires soldered for the battery yes? - Which is Positive? - the top I am assuming.

Ok, whats the thing on the left of it? what is that component?

Sorry If I am missing what it is, but I just went to have a look at my Clock chip and I moved the top bit with my finger and thumb and it fell off????

Im not entirely convinced it was even connected?????

[retinal scan]

Can I just butt-in here you lot...

On the picture that ProTOS has so kindly offered us, on the right/hand side, we can see the wires soldered for the battery yes? - Which is Positive? - the top I am assuming.

Ok, whats the thing on the left of it? what is that component?

Sorry If I am missing what it is, but I just went to have a look at my Clock chip and I moved the top bit with my finger and thumb and it fell off????

Im not entirely convinced it was even connected?????

Hi there, it's my first post on here but I have some info for you FatRakoon -

The cylindrical object you see on the left of ProTOS's photo is the metal can containing the clock chip's crystal. This is connected to the rest of the device (lower part of the 24 pin package) by the very thin wires seen on the extreme left.

The stubs on the right of the chip are the battery + & - terminals, the old battery is/was housed next to the crystal in the upper portion of the package.
The terminals are indeed: upper +, lower -
I have just completed my version of this mod - which started off similar to your experience with the chip so far.

Unfortunately I think you may have ruined your chip by removal of the upper part of the package, breaking the connections for the crystal.
The battery terminals are OK to cut as long as there is enough copper to solder wire to for a new battery.

I started by trying to cut off the top 1mm of package as advised elsewhere for this mod. My chip package seems to be similar to ceramic so I had a lot of problems getting into the battery compartment. Long story short - I accidentally prised off the right hand side of the upper section, cutting the battery terminals completely. There was enough exposed copper fortunately to solder a couple of very thin single core wires onto them.
It took me 5/6 attempts to get the solder to stick, but eventually it worked.

Use a CR2032+holder, soldered to the other end of these wires, soldering directly to a cells terminals is difficult and could be dangerous.

As long as you insulate the conducting parts of the mod, you can secure the cell somewhere convenient.

I am waiting for my camera to recharge so I can upload the photos for you. I will see what I can do. (see http://www.atarimad.co.uk)

You may need to source yourself a new chip but for 11-12 GBP you can get a replacement DS12887 from Farnell - I can't say if it will work for you but it's worth a try!

Steve

[FatRakoon]

Hiya there mate.

Exactly 4 months eh?

Seriously though, I have ended up swapping the CHIP for a socket, and yes, I have sourced a pair of new Maxim Chips and they have done the job.

One small issue I have, is that one of the legs has bent over on the socket and is not actualyl soldered to the board at all... This has pissed me off, however, it does not seem to have affected it enough for me to worry about... In that I mean, that the year is NOT kept, but nor is a couple of things in the CT63 options... It wont save the boot order, so it always tried IDE1 then IDE0 and takes ages therefore to boot from SCSI, but these are all minor irritations - the year for example is somehting that Im sure we all have an issue with and there are other fixes just I dont have one myself.

Anyway, what I am saying is that its now done.

Many thanks for the info however.

[Dal]

Just ordered my free sample chip under the pseudo company name Daltech lol. I'll probably opt for soldering a socket, then installing the new chip. Once that's all working, I'll hack the old chip with the CR2032 mod so it's future-proof.

[Dal]

My DS12887A arrived today. I'll solder in the socket I got from Maplins tomorrow and plug it in and see how it goes.

[Dal]

I have removed the old NVRAM IC and soldered in a socket and plugged in the new DS 12887A. First boot up was fine - I ran a program to set the NVRAM settings and then rebooted. The reboot never succeeded....

I hear the usual pop from the speaker as it starts up, but I keep hearing the pop every 3 seconds or so. Seems like the initialisation fails and the Falcon is trying again. I left it for about 5 minutes and still nothing comes up. I pulled the Dallas chip out again and tried booting without it with the same result.

I'm guessing that I may not have done the settings correctly but I'm not sure if I can physically reset the chip. Have tried booting with [CTRL]+[ALT]+[UNDO] held down a couple of times but nothing seems to be working.

Ideas anyone?!?

[Desty]

The reboot never succeeded....

I hear the usual pop from the speaker as it starts up, but I keep hearing the pop every 3 seconds or so. Seems like the initialisation fails and the Falcon is trying again. I left it for about 5 minutes and still nothing comes up. I pulled the Dallas chip out again and tried booting without it with the same result.

"...Ohshitohshitohshit"

[retinal scan]

Hi Dal_1978,

Have you reset your NVRAM yet?
Boot from floppy to reset the chip, then you can configure keyboard language etc with CONFIG.PRG.

see:
http://www.extinct-micro.homecall.co.uk/falconmods.html

Hope it works for you!

BTW I just registered with Maxxim and ordered a couple of DS12887A's
Fingers crossed....

[Dal]

Hi Dal_1978,

Have you reset your NVRAM yet?
Boot from floppy to reset the chip, then you can configure keyboard language etc with CONFIG.PRG.

see:
http://www.extinct-micro.homecall.co.uk/falconmods.html

Hope it works for you!

BTW I just registered with Maxxim and ordered a couple of DS12887A's
Fingers crossed....

Oh Crap - I didn't run the resetnvr.prg BEFORE I ran the config.....
It won't even POST now so booting off the floppy is out of the question atm. If I seat the chip back in and power it up, is there a bridging technique I can use to reset it??

[retinal scan]

When I couldn't boot up from HD, I copied RESETNVR.PRG into the AUTO folder of a floppy (did this on my PC) and booted 030 using this. Why can't you boot off floppy?

Try this: Reinstall chip, put AUTO/RESETNVR.PRG onto floppy, also copy CONFIG.PRG+CONFIG.RSC onto root directory of floppy and power up.

I can't remember if I held down any key combination while switching on, but it's worth having a go with RShift & LShift, Alt+Shift etc.

Good Luck!

[Dal]

When I couldn't boot up from HD, I copied RESETNVR.PRG into the AUTO folder of a floppy (did this on my PC) and booted 030 using this. Why can't you boot off floppy?

Try this: Reinstall chip, put AUTO/RESETNVR.PRG onto floppy, also copy CONFIG.PRG+CONFIG.RSC onto root directory of floppy and power up.

I can't remember if I held down any key combination while switching on, but it's worth having a go with RShift & LShift, Alt+Shift etc.

Good Luck!

Can't boot off floppy as I don't even get the atari Logo and the memory check (this happens before the floppy is seeked). I will try it again without the HD connected though just to be sure. Will keep you posted....

[panos]

You can reset the NV RAM settings by the following key combination:

Left Alt+Control+Right Shift+Undo

This combination resets the NVRAM settings to factory defaults, but still you need the german utility NVRAM.CPX (or similar) into your \CPX folder in order to customize the system settings according to your needs.

Panagiotis
ATH/GR

[Dal]

You can reset the NV RAM settings by the following key combination:

Left Alt+Control+Right Shift+Undo

This combination resets the NVRAM settings to factory defaults, but still you need the german utility NVRAM.CPX (or similar) into your \CPX folder in order to customize the system settings according to your needs.

Panagiotis
ATH/GR

Ah I got the key combination wrong - will try that!

[panos]

It works on falcons with TOS 4.04 but it doesn't seem to work with TOS 4.01....Is there any difference? Can anybody tell?

Regards,
Panos

[Dal]

OK tried the NVRAM clear key combination and it still won't spring into life. It won't even attempt to seek the floppy so no joy using the program either.

I'm going to run wires from the new socket to the board and see if that works.....

[Dal]

SUCCESS!!!

I went over my soldering again and it has just fired up. The NVRAM Reset Key combination works and my Falcon is alive once more!

Thanks to all for the support.

[unseenmenace]

Glad to hear you're up and running