Date   : Mon, 15 Aug 2005 09:07:42 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: Issue 4 BBC B's

On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 09:47 +0100, Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 09:26 +0100, Littlefield Aaron wrote:
> > Can anybody please provide me with some information on Issue 4 BBC B's? I
> > seem to have picked up a feeling from somewhere that these aren't as
> > reliable as other boards, although I'm probably wrong here. How do they
> > differ from say Issue 7's?
> 
> The service manual (which you can download from Mark Usher's site) has a
> list of the significant changes between board revisions.  I don't think
> there's any reason why issue 4 boards should be inherently any less
> reliable than newer versions.

Not sure if there's a correlation, but early machines seemed to use crap
IC sockets which are prone to heat and corrosion-related failures. It
might be there was a change there between iss.4 and iss.7, although I
have a feeling it probably happened earlier than that.

Hmm, didn't the power rails/grounding change between the two versions
too, with the iss.7 being much better? That's probably only relevant if
you've got a seriosly loaded-up machine though.

cheers

Jules