mpmst1@unix.cis.pitt.edu (metlay) (08/20/90)
I have a novice/bonehead question about the RS-232 serial port on my Amiga
500, recently purchased from someone who was a little rougher on his gear
than I tend to be. The unit originally came with a serial port whose pin
#14 (I think; leftmost on bottom row looking at the port on the 500) was
pushed inward to about half the length of all the others. I took the 500
to a repair shop to have some bad keys fixed and the drives cleaned as soon
as I bought the unit, and they happened to fix the serial port pin while they
were at it, essentially for free.
When I got the unit home, I tried to plug in the homemade MIDI interface the
previous owner had included in the package, and heard a quiet *scrnch*. When
I took away the interface, sure enough, the pin was halfway into the block
again. The stupid female connector on the MIDI interface had a misaligned
socket for pin 14. After throwing the interface in my parts drawer (hey, 5-pin
DIN jacks are handy sometimes) and scraping up the money for a new interface,
I'm left with the problem of the short pin....
My question is as follows: how are pins on the serial port attached to the
guts of the 500? If they're crimped to the ends of wires, then it would be
a trivial matter to gently pull the pin back out to its proper length with
a pair of needlenose pliers, but if there was a solder joint that got broken
when the pin was pushed in then it becomes a job for someone with a better
soldering hand than I have. I don't want to open my 500 and poke around; I
need to know if it's fixable by me or if it should go to the shop again.
Also, can anyone tell me what pin 14 is for? I *think* it's the ground pin,
which would make it easy to test with an ohmmeter even if the 500 is powered
down.
Please Email responses; I don't normally read this newsgroup. And thanks in
advance.
--
metlay | "There's more to life than marriage,
metlay@vms.cis.pitt.edu | synths, and Traveller...but so what?"