So the PSU in your beloved A3000 is getting hot and you admit that it's time you did something about it before any damage is done and you are left without a computer. What to do now you may well ask. You basically have four options.
Buy a RISC PC, RiscStation or Mico.
Send it to Reflex or your local dealer.
Buy a new PSU and fit it your self.
Or you could totally re-house your computer.
If you decide you want to re-house it then this is the page for you. I will try and give as much detail as I can within the time I have available to write this but will also attempt not to ramble on at a tangent. I have included some photos in an attempt to make the document more usefull but let's face it I'm not going to win any awards for photography. I'm sure I can get them looking a bit better when I get round to re-scanning them and when I have more time. Untill then you will just have to suffer!
Still reading? Well if you are determined to go ahead with this then fair enough. To pull this off you should be competent in all things practical and know how to handle computer equipment properly paying special attention to static. The A3000 is fairly indestructable but there's no point testing this out deliberately. By the way any damage that results from any one reading this page is there own fault. I take NO resposibility for what people do to there own machines and offer no guarantee as to the fitness of these pages for any purpose. They are intended to be used as a guide so that you are aware of some of the pitfalls I encountered so you can avoid them. In other words, you fry it, your fault, I don't want to know about it.
I had to replace the PSU in my machine but as a student I couldn't afford a new one and as luck would have it when I moved into a student house I found an old ICL 386 in the cellar. I spoke to the land lords agent and was given permission to swipe it. I think choice of case is of upmost importance. I was forced to use this case as it was the only one I had and I couldn't afford anything elce but if these constraints don't apply to you then choose cairfully. A good choice of case will determine how well the whole project turns out. The problem here is that the A3000's mother board is exceptionally wide, I turned it round so all the connectors were down one side. This causes it's own problems which I will go into later and if you can find a case that is wide enough (or tall enough in the case of towers) then I would recommend that path.
You should always have a back up of your data if you have a hard disc and remember this project could toast your computer. I can not stress enough how important it is for you to be compleatly comfortable with the idea of messing round with the internals of your machine in a big way and the fact that you could do irreperable dammage.
First you need to tare the old PC out of the case. You are more than welcome to jump up and down on it whilst singing loudly if you want. I saved the hard drive out of the case I found. This is another good reason for doing the transplant, you can use larger form factor drives and have more than one. The IDE card I had possesed two rows of holes that I soldered an IDC header into to allow me to use this drive as I didn't have an adapter for the high and low density connectors. This was very straight forwards and gave me some much needed extra storage space.
Since my case wasn't wide enough I had to work out how to make it all fit. The best way is to measure the mother board, cut a piece of paper to the same size and draw it's key features on like where the RAM expansion sticks up and where the expansion card lives. Also worth noting is where the reset button is. You could wire this up to the one on the front of the case if you were feeling adventurous but I just left a hole when I blanked off the connector holes in the back of the case as I wanted the use of my machine back as soon as possible.
Spend some time orientating the piece of paper in the case to achieve the best possible position. It is important to bare in mind where the feet of the case are inside the case and if they have screws they must be securely insulated to provent shorting and your mahine turning into skip fodder. Also make sure the power leads from the PC's supply will reach the spades on the mother board or be prepaired to lengthen/replace them.
When you are happy with the position of the board then you need to transfer the positions of the mounting holes on the board onto the floor of the case. Take care doing this as it is critical. Bare in mind that the origional case was plastic and most PC cases are metal so you will need to use either plastic stand-offs or as I did nylon nuts, bolts and washers. With transportation to and from Uni in mind I thought screwing the board down would be my best option as I was worried that the vibrations from a 300 mile car journey 6 times a year could cause the board to part company with stand-offs. If using nuts and bolts then you will need to buy extra nuts to use as spacers from the bottom of the case, stand-offs will do this by definition. Remember to put fixings through the holes that also hold the RAM expansion if fitted otherwise it will waggle about and get damaged. If your board is mounted sideways you will have to be cairfull of how the lid slides on so that it won't interfear with the connectors and remember that you will some how have to try and get the holes you are going to hack in the side of the case to match the connectors on the board which I didn't quite manage to do as you may be able to see from the photos. Some of them had to be enlarged in the requisite direction to allow connection, oops!
Once you have the mother board in position and the holes cut in the case (if required) then you need to mount your drives. I swapped the cheap and nasty floppy that was in the case already with the Citezen one from the A3000, just a matter of a couple of screws. I disconnected the internal 60MB hard drive from the IDE interface but left it screwed to the card as I decided it would be the safest place and it also acted as an emergency back up if my other backup provision failed. I had a pair of Conner 540MB hard drives mounted in the case, one where the PC manufacturer had intended and one taped in where a CD ROM drive should have been (there wern't any spare mounting rails to do it properly). A new IDE cable was made of the requisite length to accomodate the new drives.
This is about the clearest photo of them all (pitty it's upside down) which shows the layout within the case.
The mouse was a bit of a cheat as I couldn't get the required informaion I needed to wire up the " Alt Mouse " set of solder holes. I had an old knackered mouse and chopped the cable off it, plugged one end into the old mouse socket and soldered the wires on the other end to a slightly hacked-a-round piece of PCB from the PC that had been used for the PS/2 mouse. Then a new 9 pin mini DIN was also soldered to the PCB and screwed down so I could plug the mouse into the socket that had origionally intended for this purpose. I soldered onto the area that carried the legend " Mouse " which lined up nicely with the keyboard diagram on the exterior of the case when screwed in position, Doh!
This step is really in the wrong order but I've left it untill last since it causes the most aggrivation. What do you do with the keyboard? If you can afford an Acorn keyboard from an A5000 or such like then this isn't such a problem. On a grant I couldn't. You can locate some info on the " Alt Kbd " part of the mother board and wire the new keyboard up to that. If you don't have one of these hanging arround then you will need to cludge and bodge like only Micro$haft know how. Unsolder the keyboard connectors from the mother board. Solder enough 40 way ribbon cable to the mother board where the connectors were to reach the expansion card blanking plates at the back of the case. Solder the other ends of all 40 wires onto a chassis mounting IDC header. Hack a whole in one of the expansion slot blanking plates, screw the IDC header onto it and screw the whole assembly to the case. Crimp a 40 way IDC socket onto a suitable length of cable (decide how far you want your keyboard to reach). Strip, tin and solder the other end of the ribbon cable to the connectors you took off the mother board, plug the origional keyboard back into there connectors (now on the end of the cable) and then tape the whole lot up to avoid them comming loose. If like me you prefer your keyboard to be at an angle get two wodges of blu-tac and stick the bottom edge of the keyboard to a ring binder (you can keep your " Welcome Guide " in the folder to remind you of what it used to look like;->
If you can see through the blurr you can see the IDC header for the keyboard mounted in one of the blanking plates. Also note the small hole near the bottom for the reset button.
If you have done all that sucessfully it should now look like this:
And if you really like the new badges on the front download them, print them off and stick 'em on.
If you are shocked by this computer mutilation then click here and see some nice soothing pics of my unmollested RPC.