My Commodore A500+ restore project

[Duke]

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 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 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?

 

[Duke]

Yeah the CDROM I mentioned I had before was the A570 CDTV. Gotta love that caddy I don't think I've seen one around on auctions so far.

 

[Duke]

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.

 

[Duke]

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.

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.

 

[Duke]

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..

 

[Duke]

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.

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.

 

[Duke]

The boxes I mean come with their own PSU

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.

Nice progress.

Are you planning on a CF adapter for inside the HD+ expansion?

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





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

 

[Duke]

Yep I read and heard about that so will be changing it out, as I'm guessing the inside could be in a bit of a state if its never been opened

 

[Duke]

I took the case off to have a look underneath and its in good nick And a revision 8.1 which looks to be one of if not the last revision.

The battery looked fine at first glance but after a bit of cleaning and dust removal, I can see a bit of blue where it is corroding one of the chips near it - pics below:







I think its best remove the battery, clean it up as you suggested Mr Plow and replace with a new one the same?

 

[Duke]

Cool ok thanks.

The keys are almost back to being beige rather than yellow, they are taking a bit longer than expected but thats mainly due to the last two days being overcast. Tomorrow they should be done and ready to go back on - once I've cleaned up the backing to the keyboard. I found a container larger enough to keep the Amiga case under water with the solution so they will be out in the sun tomorrow. I'm just doing the top first and will then take the board off the underneath and do that part after.

Joystick hasn't turned up yet so chased up the seller.

A quick story from yesterday.. a good friend of mine who I knew had an Amiga when younger and also still had it / bought another a few years ago had a rummage through his loft and retrieved two A500+'s! With two boxes of games and some accessories. As mine is in bits at the moment we gave them a try on my set up as neither had been used for I think 10 years. Well, one came up with the red screen of doom after a few seconds which I've never seen outside of having a game loaded and the other erm... kinda blew up There was nothing on screen and couldn't hear the give away disk clicking so knew something was up, then after a few seconds there was a BANG followed by the smell of burnt electronics. We took it outside and had a look under the case but couldn't find anything a miss, every capacitor and chip looked fine and no black marks anywhere. Going by the smell, I think its the floppy drive thats gone but as he left me with both Amiga's then I will swap the FDD from the other into this one and try it again. One of them is quite yellowed but the other is in pretty good condition so will see what works from each and get one working machine between them.

Pics of his two -

 

[Duke]

Some progress today.. the joystick arrived - the same one I used to use and the retro bright results of the top half of the case are in....



This method seems to work well and results below from being out just in the sun today. It was a very bright and clear day. I used a slightly stronger mix this time, approx 75% Hydrogen Peroxide to 25% water.







And as you can see the results are stunning I did clean up the case to get the grubby marks and the sticker off before putting it out this morning. There is a very slight change of colour where the sticker was but its not really noticeable.

Now to take the motherboard out the bottom half and leave that out tomorrow..

 

[Duke]

Thanks all for the comments

Agree! It looks fantastic.

Duke, have you made any game purchases or salvage any from your youth?

You got to post pics of some retro gaming!

Not yet no, I wanted to get it all cleaned up first and then get some games going - I have two boxes borrowed from a friend to get me started so will get to that shortly.

Over the weekend I managed to retro bright the underneath and also the keys were finished so dried those off and then cleaned the underneath of the keyboard and put the keys back on. It took an age to do the ones which have that bit of metal and clip under them, there are about 5-6 keys which have that - i.e. the wider keys - but got there in the end. Some pics below.

Keyboard cleaning


Case bottom before retro bright compared to retro brighted top half


And bottom half now matching


And put back together, looking great






Its hard to describe just how well it came out and the machine is immaculate. If you took it out a box you'd think it was new. An extra benefit of washing all the plastics over (apart from the mobo of course ) is that its got rid of the previous owners smells as well. It wasn't that bad, but like anything thats probably sat in various houses and conditions over the last 30 years, it picks up a wiff a bit. All good now though.

So late yesterday I tried to then play some games but had some issues. As before when testing my friends Amiga, I got a burning smell again from the floppy drive. I pulled the power immediately and opened up the case and disconnected the FDD. I powered it up again with the top off and its fine with the FDD removed. I'm thinking it seems a bit odd that in both cases our FDD have got burnt out so I wonder if the Commodore external PSU brick is at fault here? I have the other two to try so I think tomorrow I will reconnect the FDD and try another power brick and see how it goes.
Its a bit weird as I've had it powered up a few times before when testing the HDD and it sat there fine for 5-10 mins

 

[Duke]

That is glowing! Now what games are you going to play?

I'm limited to the ones I've borrowed at the moment but going back the my favourites that would be Pinball Dreams/Fantasies, Zool, Project X, X-Out, Lemmings, Turrican, Lotus, Superfrog, Cannon Fodder, Alien Breed '92... thats just a quick list off the top of my head

Nice. Is the GVP the accelerator too? I had the accelerator and (I think) HDD with it.

No, just HDD and Fast Memory (which I don't think counts?). I'm not sure which game use the fast mem, I got it just as a way of having a HDD connection to later put in a CF card instead

Just need to get the FDD working and not smoking

 

[Duke]

Potentially daft one, but the FDD cable is the right way up?
(I seem to remember that although the connector is "keyed", a lot of Floppy drives tended to have keyways that allowed it to be inserted either way up anyway)

I doubled checked for my sanity and they are the correct way - both power and data are keyed. I think I will open up the FDD out of curiosity and see if anything obvious has gone inside and connect up the spare PSU instead and stand back...

 

[Duke]

Today I took apart the two duff FDDs. The first is the one in my Amiga, which didn't audible go pop, but just smelt bad after being powered on for a minute. The second is my friends one which is a different make and design drive.

On the back of the PCB you can see its burnt out.


And didn't take long to see this was the chip responsible.


This is as close as I can get in focus with my phone but shows the top has popped. I looked up the number on the top but nothing came up. Although I wouldn't have the skills to resolder something that small anyway.


And this is my friends one where I couldn't see anything blacked out but the surround of a capacitor dropped off when I took the PCB apart, exposing the inside. I'm guessing that is the problem and might be able to replace that.


I think for now I will get the HD working and get some games going whilst deciding how to proceed in fixing / replacing the FDD.

 

[Duke]

Hey, that would be great. I found a site with compatible ones so if you have moment to list the make and model of them that'll be cool.

 

[Duke]

I got my A500 now too! I'll put some pics up tonight if you don't mind. I need a new membrane though, and one key plunger is cracked and sticks. Works very well using one of those rgb sart to HDMI boxes, I mentioned

Nice, go for it

 

[Duke]

I’ve got a CF card and IDE adapter coming tomorrow. There are two common WB type setups to try and you connect the CF card to your PC first and format/partition it in WinUAE and can then attach it to the Amiga. This is easy with an A600 or A1200 as they came with an IDE header inside but as I have the HD addon, I can do it on the A500+. You can buy cards all done for you but it was £45 odd which seemed a lot, so trying it myself first for ~£15.


edit: gg Royal Mail, looks like it'll be Monday now

 

[Duke]

Time for an update.. Its been way to hot to be fiddling but I wanted to really get both the FDD fixed and whdload or ClassicWB working.

I've managed to get ClassicWB configured on my PC so just need to now get it on the CF card and then move it over to replace the HD inside the expansion.

For the FDD.. I bought a replacement and just tried it. The machine gave the same results as before - the boot screen came up (animation of the floppy disk going into the drive) and then after a second the screen would flicker on and off and the sound would buzz a bit and I could smell burning again so powered it off right away. The FDD has fried again. I wonder if its the PSU brick so tried my friends one and no joy, either its not that or the damage was already done to another FDD so doesn't make any difference. The smell is definitely coming from the FDD, it stinks. The motherboard and chips all look fine, nothing is burnt out or looks dodgy. I'm quite reluctant to power it on at all now in case it goes bang again or something

Annoying

 

[Duke]

Pretty much confirmed my PSU was dodgy. Now working with a different one, a quick test on the first game I picked out

Just need to put the keyboard and case back on, attach the HD back and leave it running with a few things to ensure its stable and working fine. Then onto finally getting the CF card loaded