Restoring an Acorn A3000

Twenty-odd years ago, my parents purchased the Webb family's first computer - an Acorn A3000.  This was big news at the time, and a ten year old Mark Webb lorded it over his school-friends in the playground with tales of 32 bit computing and 256 colour graphics.  Nothing dates like a home computer however, and five years later the useless old Acorn wass shoved aside in favour of a shiny new Pentium 100 PC. 

In a fit of nostalgia, I decided it was time to get the Acorn down from the loft and get it running for the first time in fifteen years. 

I knew there'd be some work to do - late in its working life, the A3000 developed a habit of hanging whenever the case got knocked.  In addition, I was convinced that the CMOS battery would have leaked all over the motherboard. 

While removing the case and keyboard for cleaning, the cause of the hanging issue was finally identified - the front of the motherboard was wedged above the clips that are supposed to hold it in place.  As a result, the motherboard was under tension and several of the ICs had become slightly dislodged.

The CMOS battery had leaked, but nowhere near as badly as I had feared.  The old battery was desoldered and the area around it cleaned with a water and vinegar solution.  A new CMOS battery was sourced from from APDL and soldered into place.  In hindsight, I should have attached the battery via flying leads, so if it has to be replaced again I won't have to go near the motherboard with a soldering iron.

With the machine reassembled and connected up to my Acorn RGB monitor, it was time for the first test boot:  Blue screen.  Pink screen.  Black screen with white dots whizzing from left to right - Oh dear. 

Cue frantic checking of soldering, wiring and prodding of ICs:  No difference.  Last resort - reset the CMOS settings by holding down Delete while powering the machine on.  Bingo!

Having tested that all the keys work and that !Paint is still !Paint, I decided the leave the machine and monitor on for a while to acclimatise to their new powered-on state.  I came back fifteen minutes later to a blank screen and a high pitched squeal.  My poor old RGB monitor had given up the ghost.  So here, in super-wide-o-vision, is my A3000 connected to a 40" Sony television:

Things I'd like to do:

• Get rid of the case yellowing using the method documented on the Retr0brite site
• Install an IDE mini-podule and CF card, then sort out the boxes of disks cluttering up the attic.
• Find a more suitable monitor.