Introduction:
This blog entry, is my story on how to bring back a broken lady. It is sort of dear to me, as the Amiga 500 was a machine that I instantly fell in love with, back in 1988 when I saw one for the first time in my life. I remember sitting there, and just admiring the case for a good part of the first hour. While someone just played games. I was mesmerized by the futuristic and new design. The machine was like any other computer that I have ever seen at that time. I was instantly in love. Now.... Looking at the state of this machine, I have come to the conclusion, that it is not possible to bring it completely back to stock and factory state.
The case was broken in multiple places, and it is quite yellow. So I have decided on stuff like giving her a new makeup. Some lipstick here and some rouge there... Yup. Talking about spray painting the old lady. Floppy drives are hard to come by as well, and in this case, it will result in a Gotek drive.
The machine is a Revision 5, model 3 (according to "Big Book Of Amiga Hardware"), and the keyboard was a red light model. It has Kickstart version 1.2, and OCS chipset. 512k of Ram and will be upgraded with an additional 512k of ram.
That all said...
Here is my story on my refurbishing of an old girlfriend. And I will be updating from time to time, when new stuff is done. Just don't expect any fast paced work, as I have decided to do it on as low a budget as possible.
Date: 2018-July-02:
As I have swapped a
working Amiga Tankmouse with a dismantled Amiga500 in bad shape,
then I have used the evening to get some life in the old lady.
(nope.. Not talking about dance hall party and martini)
The
first thing I did, was to power her board on. And wait to see what
chips became warm. Everyone, except Gayle became warm, so I unplugged
the board and took out all the chip from their sockets. Cleaned each
pins with cue tips and IPA. Then gave the sockets a little alcohol
and reseated each chips two times. Except for Fat Agnus, as I did not
want to take it out if I did not need to. Then came some life. More
accurate 9 short blinks and one long blink on the power diode on the
keyboard. Some googling revealed that it was indeed the Fat Agnus
that had issues. I took it out and one pin was badly corroded. It was
all black, so I scraped the pin, cleaned it with IPA and reseated
it.
Now there is life in the little lady.... So I
connected a floppy drive and inserted Budbrain Megademo. And it ran
with sound, stable image until second half, then it would crash. I
suspect it is because the Amiga has Kick 1.2 and not 1.3 like the
newer 500's. The bad thing is that my Rev.5 board will not start with
a Kick 2.1 (37.175) kickstart. Oh well... Need to get a 1.3 then or
just run some kind of burnin test.
Anyways...
As I
said. It is in really poor state. Board seems to work. It is missing
one joystick port. It has green corrosion on serial and parallel
ports, and the Audio connectors have some white corrosion kind of
stuff on them, preventing good contact with the audio cables. The
case is cracked yet can be fixed with some plastic-welding (Acetone +
abs plastic = glue paste). The RF shield will have to go. It can not
be salvaged.
The good part, is that I have 9 extra loose
serial plugs, that can be used for joystick ports. And things look
positive as of now.
Tomorrow, I will have a look at the bottom
part of the case, in order to clean it up. And then I will start to
take a look at the keyboard.
All the pictures are taken by
the previous owner of the machine…
Finished cleaning up
the board and gave the chips some more cleaning, before reseating
them yet again. Only thing to do, is a couple of new joystick ports.
One is missing, the other is really bad. I tested with a couple
of games, and it loads perfectly. Runs budbrain demo all the way
through. I ran systest. Ram, sound and video test OK. I really
think that I can pull this off, and now the old lady smells like a
pub.
It was time to fix the bottom case and the plastic
inlay, that goes between the bottom RF shield and the mainboard. This
cleanup really took some time. It was not battery acid, though it was
all rust from the RF shield. The shield was so crusty, that it had
gotten holes. They were not big, just tiny ones. I used warm water, dish wash soap and a splash of alcohol. Used a nylon sponge and to get
the last rust out that had buried it self down into the plastic, I
used a small stiff knife, to scrape it off. Before it was a train wreck, now it looks kind of decent. Still tiny traces of rust
left, so I need to fix that on a second run. I think it took me 3 to
4 hours or something like that. My hands are itching and are
extremely dry now.
The journey
continues. The old lady had her buttons cleaned and had them put back
on. When replacing the keycap's, I took notice that the Caps-Lock
diode is a red one. I was under the impression that they used to have
a green diode on the Caps-Lock. I know that the old keyboards used
green and red diode. And that Commodore at some point changed it to
green and yellow. Shure I know that the old chicken lips keyboard had
a red diode, yet those are rare keyboards, and they are the only ones
that had mechanical keys. So I am really surprised to find a rubber
dome (with springs), that has a red diode in the Caps-Lock
key.
Anyway... From nasty to acceptable. I really do not
want to take the entire keyboard apart if it is working. For now, a
good surface clean will do. Here in Denmark, they add something to
the rubbing alcohol, that makes one sick if one drinks the 97/98
percent proof rubbing alcohol. It leaves a kind of sticky residue,
and is perfect to clean keyboard springs in. I think it will prevent
more rust from forming. So I have used it to clean the springs. The
keyboard is dead. Tested it with systest. So now I have to get another one. I might
find another Amiga in bad shape, and see if I can put together one
complete system. After some time, I have made contact with a fellow
Amiga user. He has a working Amiga keyboard and he is willing to make
a swap with some hardware of mine.
So. What is exactly
wrong with the old keyboard, some might ask. Well. 1/3 of the keys
are working fine. 1/3 is all dead. The last keys will activate a lot
of keys at the same time. As an example. Then if I press caps-lock,
then every single key on the same horizontal row, will activate. I
have tested it with the tool called "systest". It is not
odd/even-cia, as there is no difference if I swap them. Is it the keyboard matrix or it is the membrane? If it is the membrane, then it does not
matter, as I will be getting that replacement keyboard anyway.
Date: 2018-July-05:
I been playing with
acetone. Yeah… Fun stuff, and good times.
Today I started to
weld the broken top part of the case. I am lucky, that it is only
small pieces of a half to one millimeter that are missing. The job
seems straight forward to fix. For this job, I am using pure acetone
and a tiny brush with natural hair. The way I am working, is to moist
the cracked surface, wait a tiny bit until the plastic is beginning
to dissolve,, and then press the parts together until it feel like it
is binding. Then it let it sit and harden. I have done two out of
three spots, were the case have been broken. When it is hardened, I
will use the old broken trapdoor cover, to make small rods to
reinforce the case from the backside, and make sure it will be able
to take stress in the long run. I will make ABS/acetone paste as
well, using the same plastic, dissolved to a paste in acetone. To
make a kind of plastic cement.
What I did not know, is
that the type of plastic that Commodore used, becomes a kind of
raspberry-jam-pink'ish color, when exposed to acetone. This means
that I have to do a paint job on the case. This is not a problem as
such, as I have thought about spray painting, if something goes wrong.
The pink'ish color are only cosmetic anyway. The good part, is that
the structure of the case have been fixed.
As this is the
first time that I do this at all, then of course the job is not
perfect. It is misaligned by a tiny bit, though it is acceptable,
when taking in, that I did it without any alignment tools or anything
like that. To me, it looks ok and passable. Case-work not done yet,
though I am getting there. Slow and steady…
The welding of the
case are now complete... Not the best job. It is after all, my first time
doing this. I added some
reinforcement rods on the back. The material that I used, was small
pieces of the trapdoor cover. Wich were broken years ago, and only
been held in place with tape. No loss, as a replacement can be found
on eBay for next to nothing. The finished repair job, is not the best
in the world. Going to paint it anyway. I just have not found any
colour that I like yet. Thinking about warm orange, earth toned brown
or some other kind of 70's palette of cosy color.
Regarding using pure
acetone. BE CAREFUL… This shit is hardcore. Use a well ventilated
workspace, and do not breath any fumes in, directly above the
acetone. Be aware that you never ever, overdo how much acetone you
use. It will dissolve plastic fast and furiously. Use a small fine
brush for the job, and make sure that you only moisten the surfaces
slightly. When pressing together, then only use as little force as
possible, or you will have plastic crawling out. And acetone will not
work on every type of plastic. The bottle I purchased my acetone in,
are made out of some kind of plastic as well.
Date: 2018-September-06:
More soldering work.
The Amiga500, was missing one joystick port, and the other was in bad
shape. It was rusty and green and had a white layer here and there. I
removed the one remaining connector/port, and cleaned all solder pads
up with IPA. Found some spare ones, that has never been used, and
soldered them in. I need to go over my work on a few of the pads, and
will wait until tomorrow, when there are more daylight. I will attend
the sound ports as well. I have two spare ones, that I can use. The
ones on it right now, are just too damaged.
Both ports are
working. I did a quick test setup, running "systest" and
used my newly build power cable this time. One step closer to a second
working 500 in my collection. Later this month, I
will be having a visit from that fellow Amiga owner. He will bring a
keyboard and an RF shield. Then we will test it out and do a little
trade with a C64 floppy drive that I have. Keyboards are not
that rare, though this is a Danish layout and they are rare, unless I
buy a complete unit.
Date: 2018-September-07:
Audio ports are now
changed as well... I still have to change the ports for external
floppy, serial and parallel. That however is a job for the future, as
I have no spare parts for those.
Next up, I need to find a new
floppy drive and I need to get that keyboard and the shield.
Finally.
I need to paint the case in some funky colour. Then I have brought an
Amiga500 back to life. One can actually see how bad the original
ports were in the picture below.
Date: 2018-September-16:
I found a cheap keyboard on eBay, for a little under 25 Euro plus shipping. Received it on Friday, and today I began to move the Danish key caps from the dead keyboard to the new one. It went well, and now I have a "new" and working Red-Light with danish key's. I was really surprised to find such an keyboard on eBay for the price. I was beginning to think, that I had to buy a later model, and de-solder the led's, in order to create a "fake" Red-Light. I guess I was in luck. Now the old lady is happy with a working keyboard, in really good shape.
First picture:
In the process of removing the old caps, from the dead keyboard.
Second picture:
The "new" keyboard, before caps being removed to be swapped with the Danish caps.
Third Picture:
The "new" keyboard with the danish caps in place. Indeed a Red-Light. :-P
Fourth picture:
All keys are working on the "new" keyboard. Testing with Systest. Sweet....
Fifth picture:
Time for a beer. Job well done.
Now I only need to get a complete shield, get a floppy drive or use a Gotek and finally paint this old lady in some nice good color. The restoration is nearing it's end. I have the original box as well, and the Styrofoam things. (minus the one for the TV modulator) And I am missing the original plastic bag as well. The box need some refurbishment as well. Though a paintjob will be something I attend to before fixing the box.
Date: 2018-September-20:
Today I got a hold on the bottom shield for the Amiga500. I did a quick inspection of the shield, cleaned it up, and straightened out what little that had bent. It was not that much, and the job was done in less than 5 minutes.
Something caught my eye. There was a sticker, and if I am reading this correct, then the shield is from a Revision5 system... Yup, the same as this one. Ultimately, this has no influence, on how the system is operating, though it is nice that it fits this way.
I did a quick cleanup, using some alcohol and began to reassemble the board and shield. However. I was missing some of the bolts, that goes onto the ports in the back. So I improvised a bit, and used some flat screws that are for CD-Rom drives and Floppy drives. They do not belong there, however nobody will notice, once the machine is being used.
Final task, was to refit the top shield, and make sure that everything was in order.
Yup... Looks decent and good enough for me. There are so much that I can do extra. Like painting some parts of the shield. Yet to me, I can live with the shield not being in 100 percent mint condition. It is an old machine, and though she looks better now, I want to keep her looking clean yet used and worn to some degree. No shame in showing your age, old lady. 😀
More to come, as I keep working on her. She is in dire need of a Floppy drive or a Gotek drive. What I will choose in the end, are still open to me. Most likely, I will go for the Gotek solution. As this machine has to go into the closet, and in some 15 or 17 years from now, I will give her to one of my children.
I need to get a trapdoor lid as well. And since I am going to give her some paint, then I can just as well go for a 3D-Printed replica. I need to source a mouse and find a power supplu solution. Finally I need to find a plastic bag for the machine it self. However. I do own a complete set of the manuals on my native language. The original box is water damaged, and unless I can find one in good or at least decent shape, then I will see if I can fix it up. At least just a tiny bit.
Date: 2018-October-11:
A couple of months
ago, I bought this replacement drive for an Amiga model 500, and it
was dead on arrival. So I had the shop ship me a replacement drive.
It took approx one month for the new one to arrive, from the day I
wrote them and complained. I will not disclose who they are, as I
think it is not fair for them, if other customers have had better
luck.
Yesterday I got this
replacement drive, in the mail, and I started to wonder if it will do
better in this project, than the Amiga500 I am going to upgrade with
a TerribleFire-530 accelerator (that machine already have a scan-doubler, and Kickstart switch with 1.3 and 3.1). And so I began
to mount the replacement drive in this refurbishing project of an
”Revision5-Version3” machine. And I ran into trouble’s with
these modded PC drives, once again. Damn it…
The problem was,
that once the machine is turned on, the drive clicks one time, and
then it will not boot any disks. If I turn on the machine with a disk
in the drive, then it will boot that disk.
As it turns out, the
drive is an Alps drive. And I have these converter cables, that turns
any PC drive into a fully working Amiga drive. Minus the drive speed.
Well… At least that is what systest will tell me time after time.
I still have to use
that original bracket that were attached to the original Epson drive,
so I cleaned that up, and it is ready for mounting under the
replacement drive.
So I took the top
cover and moved it to a regular PC drive, and reused the 3D-Printed
eject button. That way I can just use the converter cable, and I have
a fully working Amiga Disk Drive. Sweet…. I insulated the PCB that
are on the cable, and voilà … I have my (nearly) fully working
replacement solution. Nice.
First fit of the
drive seems like it was doing ok. It looked ok and worked ok.
Perfect…
There were one slight problem more. If I put on the top
cover of the case, the drive would make some horrible scouring
noises.
It turned out to be
the eject button that had too much material on it. So I heated up my
old worn out solder iron (yes, I have a newer one) and simply took
off some of that plastic. And after a couple of tests, the Amiga500
has a new drive solution that are working beautifully. The problem is
load time, and I need to take off additional material on the bottom
of the drive slot/crack on the top cover. Disks are scouring against
the cover, as the drive is mounted one to two millimetres too low. I
did take off some extra material on the metal shield on the drive it
self. This was to make sure that it was not the top cover pressing
down on the drive it self. It is not the most beautiful result, yet with the top cover on, it is not visible at all. Anyway… It is working, and I am happy
enough with the result.
Next up, I have to
make a replacement solution for the taps that usually keep the
keyboard from sliding down in the case. The original ones are broken
off. And then I have to find a power solution, find an extra mouse, a
new trapdoor cover and finally do a paint job of the case. It looks
absolutely horrible regarding that yellow plastic. And with a golden
replacement badge, and the right colour, it might actually become a
good looking old lady.
Date: 2018-October-12:
I started to rebuild the clips that normally keep the keyboard on the right spot. Without them, the keyboard will slide down, and the old lady will look like her teeth came loose. What I did, was to move the keyboard in place, carefully remove the top cover and mark the spot with a marker pen. Then I took a plastic lid, and cut out pieces that will work as replacement clips. I used some super glue to keep them in place.
Then I reached for the ABS "cement" once again (the one I made for welding the top lid back together), and carefully spread some over the plastic clips. Yet again, it does not look good, yet with the top cover on, the job looks decent and good. The blue colour will be of no issue, once I get to the point of having spraypainted the case. I think the result are good enough, and I am satisfied with the result. The keyboard seems to be on the correct location inside the case.
The cement have hardened over night, and I will put her aside for now. Trapdoor covers are easy to find, and not the most expensive. All in all, she is functioning now. Just need that little finishing touches now.
Date: 2018-December-08:
A couple of days ago, I received the last piece of spare part. It was the trapdoor lid/cover that I found on eBay. I chose a dirty one, as it was cheaper and I have no problem cleaning parts my self.
After some cleaning with a brush and soap water, were I used standard dishwasher soap. I used some standard alcohol to remove the last pieces of grime. And I had a decent cover or lid if you like. Looks ok for it's age I guess.
The same day I bought the cover, I found a second hand memory upgrade as well. It was only used by the seller, to check if it was working. So it is basically or practically brand new and was in box with the installation manual. So I decided to buy it for this Amiga. In other words, then it is basically what you would find in any teenagers room, back in the late 1980's. Or rather in every teenagers room, in the homes were teenagers had their own computer. Computers were still an exotic thing between 1987 and 1990.
So there I have it... A restored Amiga500 Revision-5, model-3 machine. With red light keyboard as it was originally sold, and only the kickstart upgraded from 1.2 to 1.3 and 512k extra memory. Just as gamers used to have their Amiga500. I will be adding more pictures in the future. Once I get that floppy drive raised 1 to 1,5 millimetre, and when I have painted the case a nice colour.
