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Myarc cards for sale/repair tips


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I have five non-functional Geneve 9640 cards.

 

For some time I've considered what to do with them. I am not interested in investing my time to fix them and have decided to offer them to the community.

 

I obtained the cards during the late 1990s when I temporarily assumed Myarc responsibility from Cecure Electronics. The cards came from Myarc and were never sold due to their inoperable condition. Rest assured these cards are not customer cards. You can read about the repair efforts in Micropendium articles from the period.

 

The cost per card is $50.00USD + shipping. This covers my investment. If you buy a card, you will need to source any missing parts yourself. Schematics are available on WHT. The cards will come with whatever chips are currently installed, untested with no warranty or guarantee of any kind.

 

Last but not least, Richard and I have discussed the future disposition of these cards. We will not accept them for repair. This is primarily an opportunity for those of you who want to own a card that you can learn from and/or repair yourself.

 

 

 

 

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I would just like to add to what the insane one has posted we really hope those that take on a broken Geneve have experience soldering/desoldering and tracing circuits point to point. For those that get a board and you find the PAL and/or gate array are fried please contact the insane one or preferably myself since I have the gate arrays and we'll make these limited parts available to you. I would make a suggestion and a tip to you all to just automatically refresh the power supply circuits with new regulators, electrolytics and don't forget the heat sinks. Standard practice is to replace the 16v electrolytics with 35v max. Take care when placing heat sinks that you don't contact a pad that may be close to the area of the heat sink. I have attached a pic of what a refreshed Geneve with the 64k fast RAM and video upgrade looks like to wet your appetites. ;)

 

2vskiol.jpg

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Swim makes excellent points above in his post. It reminded me to again mention that a case will be important to keep the Geneve from 'rocking' in the PEB. With that a few words of caution for any Myarc card:

 

If a Myarc card is placed into a hard shell case from TI, it is imperative that you remove or file down some of the nubs protruding from the inside of the rear case panel. It is very likely you will short out the card if this is not done properly. Also as Shift838 discovered, be careful with the heat sinks as they can rotate when tightening the screws, which can in turn short the regulator leads and fry the card. You all know that the smoke must remain inside the card. ;)

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I was asked privately about the chips included with the other four cards so I am going to share a portion of my response here for everyone:

 

The other sold Geneves are populated with a gate array, 9901, and 9995. The Video RAM was present. Beyond that, common missing chips are v9938, buffer logic chips, SRAM, and/or EPROM. Regulators and capacitors should be replaced. You'll need a 2032 battery/holder.

 

I say this respectfully: if you are not familiar with a Geneve and lack experience repairing boards of this type, my advice is to steer clear. If on the other hand you wish to use this opportunity to learn and can deal with the challenges, then go for it.

Edited by InsaneMultitasker
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