Tear Down - How do you open the Ace's Case?
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The Jupiter Ace's case is a white plastic case measuring 210 mm by 190 mm and 35 mm high with a rubber keyboard. There are two edge connectors at the back of the case, one of which looks just like a Sinclair interface. You will also find four sockets around the side of the case one jack socket for the power, one RCA (phono) socket for the UHF out-put to a normal television and two for connection to a cassette recorder. The case unfortunately is of poor quality, resembling that of the ZX80 and its held together by plastic rivets.
The case was vacuum formed Styrene, and feels like a yogurt pot with age it may have become discoloured and brittle so be very careful. There are five rivets holding the two parts of the case together and another three rivets inside holding the PCB to the bottom part of the case. The rivets are known as expansion rivets they have two parts the rivet and peg. It's not very difficult to open the Jupiter Aces case if you are careful all you need is a wooden cocktail stick! Do NOT USE a metal spike as you may damage the rivet pegs.
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  Rivet close up you can clearly see the rivet peg in place.  In this image you can see the top case rivet holding the two parts of the case together, also one of the three rivets inside that fix the PCB to the bottom part of the case. You can see how the peg expands the rivet.
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To open the case use a wooden cocktail stick to push all five rivet pegs into the case. You can then carefully tease and pull the rivets from the case. Make sure you collect the rivets and pegs out of the case they are very difficult to replace.
  
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When all the rivets are out its best to open the case from the left side, carefully bend the top part of the case over the power socket.  |
The rivets that hold the PCB in place are circled in red, the top one is just under the heat sink. 
Close up of the rivet located under the heat sink.
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The rubber keyboard mat has four location studs which slot into the PCB holes circled here in yellow. Now with all the rivets removed DO NOT HANDLE THE PCB BY THE HEAT SINK, handle the PCB by its edges.
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When you come to put your Ace's case back together make sure the rivet peg goes into the rivets the correct way. The smooth finish end of the rivet peg is the one that pushed home in to the dome of the rivet.
 You might find it easer to slightly push a rivet peg into a rivet before you fit it in place near the heat sink, then push the peg home.
I hope that has been useful to you? I wanted to include as many images as possible. It may seem that I have made a simple task of opening your case seem very difficult but I have opened a number of Ace cases and have see a few badly damaged ones you only need three things, a wooden cocktail stick, time and patients. Once you have your case open why not send us some images so we can check the dates on the chips, check for PCB mods and the issue number. Please send them to - postmasterATjupiter-ace.co.uk [replace the AT with @] |