Removing a mighty sonic board

[wietze]

Ola, I recently became a (humble) owner of an atari falcon. I found that it currently has a mighty sonic board (32mhz cpu and up to 32mb fastram).

Im still a total falcon noob, and am wondering how easy it is to remove this board.

Any ideas?

[frank.lukas]

Not so easy ...

There are two pins from the original CPU lift off and 9 wire solder in the Mainboard. Take a look into the DOITF030 ...

[arf]

Ola, I recently became a (humble) owner of an atari falcon. I found that it currently has a mighty sonic board (32mhz cpu and up to 32mb fastram).

Im still a total falcon noob, and am wondering how easy it is to remove this board.

Any ideas?

If you’d like to remove it, I'd like to buy it.

[wietze]

Not so easy ...

There are two pins from the original CPU lift off and 9 wire solder in the Mainboard. Take a look into the DOITF030 ...

Would this imply I need to get a new 68030 cpu to replace the old one?

Desoldering the wires seem something that is achievable.

[frank.lukas]

To disable the original CPU you have to lift off CPU pin 16 and lift off pin 17 too and put pin17 to GND.

To activate the old original CPU you have to resolder CPU pin16 to the Mainboard CPU16 pad and CPU pin17 do the same ...

[wietze]

To disable the original CPU you have to lift off CPU pin 16 and lift off pin 17 too and put pin17 to GND.

To activate the old original CPU you have to resolder CPU pin16 to the Mainboard CPU16 pad and CPU pin17 do the same ...

Yup I looked into it. It seemed to be under some glue, and the cpu is not socketed, so this seems to be a challenge. I hope to find someone that can do this with a steady hand in the coming time

[Ayreon]

http://wiki.newtosworld.de/index.php?title=Mighty_Sonic_32 and https://archive.org/details/GE-SoFt_Mighty_Sonic_32_RAM_expansion_for_the_Atari_Falcon030_German_undated/page/n3 here's a bit more info with photo's. It's in German though.
By the way.. many thanks for the surprise. My wife loved the flowers

[Rustynutt]

Actually, unless you are upgrading further, the Mighty Sonic is a nice accelerator, especially the alternate ram. As long as it's working properly Like the Afterburner, difficult to use without using an external keyboard.
Agree, reattaching the CPU pins isn't the easiest of solder jobs.

[m0n0]

Make sure to put in healthy RAM cardriges. Also the RAM Slots pins must be in a good condition. What to do, if one of the pins is broken?

[wietze]

Hi there guys, a little follow-up. The mighty sonic board is removed, and the falcon is still operational

However, I seem to be having something thats bothering the bus (I think) because GEM Bench is giving me these results:

RAM Access: 63%
ROM Acces: 51%

The waitstates for ROM and RAM are set ok (1 for ROM, 0 for RAM).

Any suggestions as what to look/try next?

gembench2.jpg

[joska]

I would start by confirming that these numbers are correct. Have you tried Nembench?

[wietze]

I would start by confirming that these numbers are correct. Have you tried Nembench?

All I did so far was run the benchmark and ask a confirmed correctly working falcon to run the same benchmark. It ended up the same, albeit having numbers of ~100% at the RAM and ROM states.

I will follow up on your suggestion and run Nembench tonite, again both on mine and on the correctly working stock falcon.