Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Fidelity Excel Mach III design

Author: Alain ZANCHETTA

Date: 00:00:54 06/22/04


I bought a month ago my first Excel Mach III ; I had three problems with it
1. periodic resets during games forbidding to play a game lasting more than five
minutes
2. random display : when I turn the computer on, the display is OK but after a
few dozens of seconds, it displays something like 88:88, with a few segments
blinking randomly.
3. I have very often to try to turn it on several times before it accepts at
last to boot.

Pb.1 was solved by using another power supply, and pb3. is "acceptable" as it
always succeed to boot after a few tries.

Last sunday, I went to a friend of mine who is an electronic guru to see if he
could do something about the display. So we opened the Mach III....
And we were really surprise to see a lot of wires soldered on top of the main
board (a few wires were also under the board) : it looks really like an
home-made patch/upgrade of the computer !

So, I have the following question for our Fidelity guru(s) :
1) were all Mach III so poorly built ?
2) was there a "manual" upgrade from a Mach I or II version to the Mach III ?
3) or could individuals upgrade their computer by for example adding more memory
(some RAM chips where soldered one on top of the other) ?

Additionnal information (even if it does not prove anything) : the computer has
a clean Fidelity Electronics 6098 sticker.

Thanks in advance

Alain



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.