My Commodore A500+ restore project

Duke

Duke

Duke

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Hi all,

I've mentioned in the Amiga thread that I used to own one when I was younger when about 10-12 years old. Previously I had a C64c. It was the Silca pack which came with a few games and over time was lucky my parents let me add in the extra 512K memory, second floppy drive (very useful for multi disk games) and the CDROM which bolts on the left side which was amazing. My brother had one as well and we had them linked up with a null modem cable for multiplayer games - I especially remember dual split screen 4 player Lotus!

I have no idea what happened to my much loved machine, I eventually moved onto a PC with Windows 95.

Anyway so there is the back story. In the last year I've been following more and more YouTube retro channels and watching loads of videos of various computers and consoles and always had this thought that it would be nice to have another Amiga 500+ again. I've tried various emulators over the years and found they took ages to set up and get working with each game and you didn't spend much time actually enjoying the games. If the C64 Mini was better then that may have scratched my itch for a while but sometimes you can't beat the real thing, you know?

So last week I hunted around and was toying either getting an A500+ which was untested/for spares and fix it or one which is working but is cosmetically not great. I chose the latter as I'm no good with a soldering iron and have no testing kits so although that'll be nice to learn, at least this time around I will just keep to simpler fixes.

Today the beast arrived. She is a dirty one alright :cool: For the sum of £80 I got a boxed A500+ with powerpack and RF modulator:









As you can see it will need a deep clean first including getting rid of the labels and stickers and other gunk - inside and out. The yellowing on this, especially on the keys, is particularly impressive. As I knew what was coming, I read up again on the best retro brighting methods and will be doing a post on that soon..

For now though I'm waiting on a mouse and cables to connect to a TV or monitor I don't yet have :p There are a surprising amount of things you have to think and get when dealing with an older machine. I'll update the thread once the cables arrive and with my screen set up.. there are loads of ways of doing it but have decided on what is generally the most straight forward and cheapest.

I have one other original thing on the way which isn't what I had before but does attach on the side expansion connector.. any guesses?
 
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Ah the days around your place playing on that - i had the atari ste and was so jealous of the 'miggy.. Best gaming computer of its time, leagues ahead of the pc's and parents that always got you guys the next best piece of tech that came out.
 
Yeah the CDROM I mentioned I had before was the A570 CDTV. Gotta love that caddy :p I don't think I've seen one around on auctions so far.
 
A number of years ago I was given a pile of Commodore equipment, a C64 and some Amigas with a huge amount a floppy disks. I also bought a boxed C64 on the MM some time ago. I should try them out soon.
 
Looks just like mine! I cleaned it a fair bit but it still needs a thorough going over, will keep my eyes on this! :)

Well I have the 500 not the plus, what's the difference there?
 
Not a huge difference, they tweaked some of the chips (to reduce the number and cost iirc) and it ran a later version of Workbench and Kickstart. I think you can run the later ones on the A500. Looking at the Wiki article, apparently they came with 1MB memory rather than 512k, except for early revsions of the A500+, but I'm fairly sure my original only had 512k and we put another 512k in the hatch underneath. Once I've got this powered up I'll check and see. I'm still waiting on a suitable TV to connect it to atm which is annoying. Once its tested and working then I can start to take it apart and clean it up.
 
If you can find one, get a kickstart switch board so it can boot both 1.3 and 2.04, solves a few compatibility issues.

Side expansion options... 8mb fastmem upgrade? Action Replay? Apollo A520 accellerator?
 
So a few things have arrived today, still a few more on the way...

First one is connecting the Amiga directly to scart without the modulator. I believe this gives a fairly good picture (especially compared to RF/aerial) and am currently trying to find an older 4:3 15-19" LCD to connect it to. After looking into it a fair bit, getting the required cables or boards to get VGA, DVI or HDMI is just £££, so I thought I'd start with this and see how it goes.

20180627_160742399_i_OS.jpg


Next up as the A500+ didn't come with a mouse, I found an original 'tank' mouse. Its in fairly good condition so just a quick clean up and a bit of retrobright..



And finally the mystery expansion is an A500-HD+ with 120MB HD 2MB fast mem (can take 4MB). I've decided buying all the original boxed games is great but will take up a lot of space, so can run them off this instead using WHDLoad which means the games look for the HD instead of the FDD (DF0, DF1). I might swap the HD out for a CF card reader to hold more later.
I looked at the various new accelerator cards, some which bolt on the side and other connect directly into some of the chips on the board but they were anywhere from £150-300 and more. They did have some additional functionality but I couldn't spend that (for now...). Pretty good condition.



...Oh and 5 litres of Hydrogen Peroxide for retro brighting all of this. The 8 Bit Guy on YouTube did a great video which I'll link to when going through that so will be using his method.

 
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I love threads such as this, watching items being restored back to their former glory. :)

My best mate owned an Amiga and I was always dead jealous! Playing games such as Sensible Soccer & Syndicate!

I have a couple of Dell's in the process of restoration and just the other day, found myself wondering about retro-brighting.

It will be great to see the results.
 
Today was test day for the retro bright, which I carried out on the safest object first, the mouse. It needed a good clean first, so I took it apart which was just two screws underneath and two holding the board in place inside and gave it all a scrub. It came up well and although it wasn't too yellowed it still was a bit duller in colour than should be.

I used the method that 8 Bit Guy used on his video here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZYbchvSUDY - skip to ~16m 20 seconds. I used the same 12% strength Hydrogen Peroxide and used a 50/50 mix with water in a small container and covered with cling film & sealed with tape. I left it outside for 5 hours which was mostly sunny but it did become overcast for the last couple of hours so could have done with more time and direct sunlight to mix with but I wasn't too fussed as it doesn't need it as bad as the A500+ case and one side of the expansion will need later.

Anyway onto the pics... before/during/after:









As you can see the difference is night and day. I would say most of this is done to giving it a damn good clean but the retro bright did bring the colour up a few notches.

I've just agreed a purchase of a 15" LCD which I'm going to pick up shortly so I can finally get this fired up and tested and can then start to take the A500+ apart and see what its like inside..
 
vanpeebles said:
Have you looked at those cheap metal box rgb to hdmi boxes! I use one for most of my retros and it’s excellent for the price.
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Yeah I checked those out however they draw too much power from the Amiga so are not recommended unfortunately.

Update from yesterday and today. I collected a 15" LCD for £20 and finally connected the A500+ up and it works! I then attached the HD to the side and switched to autoboot and Workbench loaded! So the disk is not empty :) There were a load of folders on there including 'games' but sadly they were empty - damn it! But its great to know the disk is working.



So today I decided to retro bright the case of the HD. The HD just has three screws underneath and the top of the case comes off. You need to then carefully remove the two cables - one for the switch and one for the fan from the board inside. The switch pops out of the case, the fan was glued in place so had to pull it off but it came off fine & just dabbed a bit of glue after when putting it back together again.

It was mentioned in the listing description that it had a brown bit down the side and they weren't wrong :) Apart from that the inside was clean and overall it was in good condition. I used the same method as the mouse but left it out longer and today was clear all day so a lot of UV got to it.





As you can see its a great improvement! There is a very slight amount left which doesn't show up in the photos but its 95% improved :)

And here you can now see just how yellow the Amiga case and keys are. The HD isn't quite as white as it shows there.



Next I will open up the Amiga - which still has its warranty stickers untouched - for the first time and see what its like inside. From the amount of crud that has fallen out already I think its going to be quite bad. I might pop the keys off tonight and leave them in the same tub and solution I used today and leave out tomorrow whilst at work again.
 
vanpeebles said:
The boxes I mean come with their own PSU :)
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Hmm not sure I saw those. I was happy in the end going the scart route as I only wanted a compact 4:3 screen and they all came with that. The picture is nice and sharp.

SupraWez said:
Nice progress.

Are you planning on a CF adapter for inside the HD+ expansion?
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Thanks :) Later on yes I expect I will. The HD is 160MB (thought it was 120MB) so will hold a fair amount of games but first I need to get my head around the software to get it working right.

Some more pictures below. I've taken some close ups of the general condition of the keys and case.







Now brace yourself for whats underneath :eek:





I'm going to wash the keys in usual soap and water as done before retro brighting the other bits and will then leave it out tomorrow and see the result when home :)
 
Wow, that is mega filthy lol. I’ll take some pics of my hdmi box tomorrow, you plug your scart cable in one side and the hdmi in the other. I’ve used it on everything from SNES, Megadrive, to Acorn Electron, BBCs and Speccys :)
 
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