ACA500plus button works sporadically

To exclude a hardware problem, the DisMo will show the duration you've pressed the button while the startup menu is open. This way, you can easily find out if the button itself is at fault, or if you just got the duration wrong.

Thank you for your reply Jens.

I tested it again while the startup menu is open and the behavior is still the same.

Sometimes it works and the DisMo displays the duration and sometimes the DisMo stays dark after the button is released.

Is there anything else I can do?

That sounds like the button itself has suffered damage. In any case, it's worth to investigate the hardware side. Is this a new card, or has it been used for a long time? Coffee spill? Evil cat?

The button is fairly easy to replace, and it's even a job that can be done by a hobbyist as the button is a through-hole part. Let me know where on the planet you are, what's the age of the unit and what your soldering skills are.

Yes it's a new card, I ordered it on 22.11.21 from your shop (order id 107910).

No coffee spill and no evil cat unless one visits me during the night while I'm asleep and messes with my Amiga

Ok that's good news. I installed a few console mod chips and did some other console modding, so if you could provide me with instructions, I guess I should be able to fix it on my own. I live in Switzerland.

The "clean way" would be to remove the DisMo by cutting through the silicone and just pulling it off. Then you can un-solder the button and replace it with a new one. Putting the DisMo back on is just reversing the process. The silicone used to glue it in place is the same as what's used in a bathroom (German term is "Sanitärsilikon" - haven't found a translation for that).

Since the silicone covers part of the button's solder spots, I would not dare to attempt cutting the button off and doing the swap without removing the DisMo and cleaning up the solder side first. That would be the "hacky" way, probably causing some bad smell in the shoop...

If you don't feel comfortable doing this, you could cut off the DisMo, remove the pins (store them on the ACA500plus side), and ship the DisMo in an envelope to us. This may pass customs without problems, and we could give it a full test run here after replacing the button.

Success

I replaced the button and now it works reliably every time I press the button, so there must have been some issue with either the button itself or some bad contact.

I was lucky to have one of these boards where the button was on the left side and therefore hadn't to bother with removing the silicone after I cut through it. Actually a nice side effect of the silicone is that it somewhat still "sticks" to each other after cutting through it, so there's still this 1-2 mm buffer between the two boards.

Dankeschön Jens