From: jimd@panix3.panix.com   
      
   Having had a lot of trouble getting hard drives bigger than 4 gig   
   to work on a TT030, I thought I would try a Compact Flash card,   
   which does not draw much current, and to my surprise, I still had   
   bus problems.   
      
   This problem has been getting worse, and having worked as a   
   failure analysis engineer, I thought I knew what the problem was,   
   and I was right, one more time. I went into great detail the   
   first time through, but the process is easy and quick.   
      
   Five lengths of number 26 stranded wire, or metric equivalent, in   
   two colors, about 18 inches, or metric equivalent. Strip one end   
   of each, for a half inch (12 mm) twist together, and tin. One   
   color gets laid across the bottom end of pins 1 to 3 of the bottom   
   of the power connector, and soldered to them. The other color   
   gets laid across the bottom ends of pins 5 to 8. Avoid pin 4,   
   which is -5 v.   
      
   Pins 1-3 are +5, pins 5-8 are ground. The empty pin is at the   
   other end.   
      
   The free ends of one color, mine was green, and leaving one   
   spare, were connected to the plus ends of bypass caps   
   geographically closest to the SCSI chip, the TT memory socket,   
   the back ST memory socket, and the front ST memory socket.   
      
   The free ends of the other color, mine was black, were connected   
   to the ground ends of those bypass caps.   
      
   When I did this, for the first time, I measured resistance   
   between caps and socket pins, and found that the closest had the   
   least resistance.   
      
   The cap ends, after measuring, using a DVM with a semiconductor   
   setting, to see which end was closer to power or ground, were   
   marked with two different colors of paint pen, although anything   
   that does not interfere with soldering can be used. After that,   
   the solution went fast.   
      
   This is all done on the bottom side of the board. Having done   
   this, everything seems to work fine, and I have a DVD writer and   
   one ZIP drive on the external bus, and they both work. There is   
   no sign of anything wrong now, and if the printer port fouls up,   
   I have a set of spare wires for connecting to a bypass cap in   
   that area.   
      
   If you look at a TT030 motherboard, you will see wide power   
   traces disappearing down very small plated through holes. If they   
   were not heavily plated, a little bit of corrosion, and a lot of   
   power is lost, and things that drive the bus do not get enough to   
   drive it to full voltage. If I had designed that board, the holes   
   would have been much bigger, and the plating thicker.   
      
   I have not loaded this machine to its historical full, which was   
   a DVD writer, two ZIP drives, one tape backup, and a scanner, but   
   will get to that, and if on the slight chance that does not work,   
   I will find how to fix that. And I will report on how to do that.   
      
   I use a windoze machine at work, and do get work done, but for   
   personal purposes, a TTM 195 monitor on a TT030 is the perfect   
   tool.   
      
   This done in pico from MiNT 1.15.12.   
      
   Jim DeClercq   
      
      
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