Amstrad PC4386SX Some progress and some troubles
4This video was recorded the same day as the previous entry.
As of this moment the work on this machine is on hold, pending me doing the work and time. However I can tell you a few things which I wasn't sure about in the video.
The system requires a RTC battery to be inserted to correctly boot, regardless of charge and can operate just fine without the ISA riser card. All 4 SIMM slots must be populated to boot, so it is probably maxed at 8 Meg of RAM using 2MB chips, it has plastic only RAM slots (nice and stiff I might add so easily breakable). My system has it's original 80MB Amstrad stickered hard drive, which is a Sony built drive. As can be seen the floppy drive appears to be faulty, and the system will not boot if there is no floppy drive present. The BIOS also seems to crash and I can no longer control it however the clock still works.
After filming I took the PSU out and found the hard drive connector had rotted on one of the pins, so I'm going to have a go at soldering some new pins in place and splicing the cables together. Although I think I will test the hard drive in my normal 486, to ensure it works.
A day after filming my replacement clock battery arrived (less than 24hrs after I ordered it). The same BIOS problem is still with me, maybe it's the keyboard?
So on the agendea is to open up the PSU and check some of the caps are fine, repair the hard drive connector which is a small 3 pin affair not a standard molex, dissasemble the floppy drive to see whats going on, check the hard drive and possibly remove the motherboard to ensure the underside is ok.