Fixing Blizzard PPC BVison card for Amiga: history
Few years ago I ordered quite cool video card for my Amiga 1200. It was BVision made
by DCE computers, descendant of phase5. Everybody
knows that A1200 is not designed for expanding, so engineers need make miracles to
place some hardware inside this computer... I placed video card inside, at last
managed to install needed software to enable all new video modes. Everything was
working fine until I opened few windows- I noticed some artefacts "under" the
windows. Also when I opened high-resolution true color windows I get lots of vertical
line with flickering. Also some 3d demo windows had same errors. I was quite
disappointed. I needed to send the card back, but shipping cost will kill me... I
noticed when I touch the card these points move, change color and etc. Also when I opened
many windows with 3d gears for testing and noticed that first 2 windows were without
errors, when next 3 with errors and all other windows without errors... That
indicated some corrupted memory. I was very upset and my new "computer" was sgi
without such defects, so I placed my old Amiga on shelve for quite a long time.
After a year I decided to "kill" my Amiga. I disassembled it and examined video card.
I noticed that RAM chip had few pins not touching the PCB... Quite a shame for DCE as
they call themselves as "professionals in SMD...". Using my soldering iron I soldered
some of these pins. It was quite hard because solder tends to fill gap between RAM
pins. After soldering I assembled computer and after boot I noticed that image is much
more better, but still some RAM corruption is noticed. I repeated my soldering steps,
assembled computer and what a disaster! Almost all screen was full of lines, points
and other crap. I managed to screw everything... I suspended my "amiga repair
project" for few months. After few months I examined video card and find that I managed
to shorten about 5 pins in video RAM. I was working for about 2 hours with my
soldering iron, needle and other small and sharp objects and cleaned errors. After
joining all my amiga parts together I received clear sharp screen of my workbench.
After intensive test I noticed that there left one more error in my work, but I don't
have any stamina to start over. Now I have Amiga with BVison with very hard to find
video RAM corruption. In short, I can use computer again! Thanks to Texas Instruments
chip engineers that they made such fool proof chip.
But after playing with high end Windoze computers and low end ancient SGI computers I
can say only one thing- this Blizzard/BVision computer is very slow and crap. Maybe
it is software problem (wb4.9), but windows in workbench are extremely slow...
©2002 by Savel