A3000 early spring clean

[anightin]

This weekend's project was a deep-clean of the A3000 kindly supplied by @cmorley as last month's ABUG.

Not too much to do as was already in great shape and a very nice spec.


Keyboard was first port of call:

Then the nooks and crannies:

Then I wanted to fit a remote battery (3.6v Li-ion with in-line diode) as I've seen too many machines with damaged boards to put this one at any risk:

Then a re-assemble and test:

I know I could have fitted the battery underneath but I wouldn't then have an excuse to pop the lid off now and again

[Tills]

I see the display is nice and big and square. Is that a SCART output which is being digitised (and upscaled)? What is the quality like compared to a direct SVGA connection?

One thing I wish I could achieve is to force my SVGA 800x600 resolution to be displayed per pixel on my TFT monitor. As it stands, the blurred, wishy-washy effect is not great — perhaps even inferior to that of my long-departed CRT monitor — but there doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. Still, there's no issue with headache-inducing flickering on LCDs at least!

[flaxcottage]

The BENQ monitor shown can probably display the A3000 modes natively without any conversion.

I have one on my A5000. MODE 12 displays correctly and does not give the letterbox display that one gets with the LCDGamesModes module. The inputs are limited, however. There is only a single VGA/SVGA connector and a 'retro' VGA lead is needed - modern ones do not work.

[anightin]

I see the display is nice and big and square. Is that a SCART output which is being digitised (and upscaled)? What is the quality like compared to a direct SVGA connection?

Yes the input is SCART.

The monitor I have however has DVI (correction) DisplayPort and HDMI inputs only.

I use one of these boxes to do the conversion and up-scaling:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCART-HDMI-T ... 0005.m1851

It also does a pretty fine job of Mode 7 too on the Beeb (RGB -> SCART).

The HDMI input is just a passthru but very convenient for swapping sources vs having to fiddle with the back of the monitor. When the Atom comes out to play its (Atom -> HDMI converter) goes straight into the HDMI input on the box instead.

[hubersn]

The BENQ monitor shown can probably display the A3000 modes natively without any conversion.

I have one on my A5000. MODE 12 displays correctly and does not give the letterbox display that one gets with the LCDGamesModes module. The inputs are limited, however. There is only a single VGA/SVGA connector and a 'retro' VGA lead is needed - modern ones do not work.

I cannot identify the BenQ on the pic, but I use a BenQ BL912 for the retro machines. It also has DVI input, which is very good when I'm taking my RPi as an Access file server with me in addition to any of my Arcs. It displays the PAL modes fine, but cannot display Multisync modes (18-21) correctly.

Don't know what a "retro VGA" lead is - I always used plain VGA cables with plain 9-to-15pin adapters on A3000, A3xx and A4xx without any problems.

Have fun
hubersn

[anightin]

I cannot identify the BenQ on the pic

It's a PD2700Q

[Tills]

I use one of these boxes to do the conversion and up-scaling:

Thanks for the link. Worth considering, particularly if it can handle custom modes (e.g., c. 850x650), which my iiyama Prolite 430 refuses to scale to the screen.