Amstrad Mega PC - Retrobrite and Repairs | Trash to Treasure (3/4) 

Thank you for watching. You can enjoy 75% off NordVPN at nordvpn.org/RMC - Thanks NordVPN for your support and thank YOU for watching today. Neil - RMC

in the future, re-galvanizing corroded steel is actually very easy via electroplating. just need a ~6V@2A power supply (a 6V battery charger or bench power supply), a chunk of zinc to use as an electrode, some copper wire, a tub big enough to hang the steel piece in, and some epsom salt as an electrolyte. before starting, make sure the steel is very clean; use nitrile gloves while handling it, clean it with fragrance free dish soap and a nylon brush to remove any dirt or oils, and then with a metal cleaner and scotchbrite pad to remove any oxidation. otherwise you could end up with dark spots or peeling zinc. hook the positive lead of your power supply up to the zinc electrode, and the steel up to negative with the copper wires hanging it. make sure to move the work piece around as the plating is more-or-less 'line of sight.' just don't let the electrode touch the work piece! with a thick enough plating, you can buff the zinc to a shine and clear coat it. 😺 I replated the rusty EMI shielding and IO ports on my Macintosh Quadra 610 that way.

If ever you want to print the decals, the scrip font is "Mistral". Nice job!

Yes, as many of you seem amazed by seeing that seasonic PSU, seasonic manufactured that kind of compact PSU for many pc manufacturers, for example epson highly integrated 486's.

337V is peak-to-peak voltage of AC waveform. 240V is RMS (root mean square) value of ~339V p-t-p. These big capacitors in power supplies are usually rated at 385v-400v because of this. Using lower rated capacitor will result in fireworks.

The Alan Sugar cameo was pretty grate.

Glad to see Alan helping out again.

Your channel is one of the best on RU-vid. Greetings from Brazil!

I bet the swindon museum would probably rather have the cleaned and upgraded one instead. its so much better!

Nice to hear Alan is with us again :)

Handy having a light for the homegrown & reteobrighting ☺️😝

Brilliant job. It really turned out great. Love the series on this machine very much!

So sweet! It’s always so rewarding watching your restorations.

I saw this back in the day in my local PC shop....I was using a home built budget 286 at the time and this monster was over £1000...way out of my price range but oh....what a machine.

I love these videos, thanks for putting them together. I always wanted a Mega PC when I was a kid. I had to make do with another one of Alan's creations with that weird analogue joy stick.

Wow! What a difference in colour... I’m going to have to have a go at retrobriting! Great work restoring this machine!!!

Love those restoration videos mate !

Looking good! And glad you were able to get more Sugar Beat in at the end, as is Amstraditional.

Great instalment of the MegaPC refurbishment. Looking forward to the final part. :)

looks absolutely amazing Neil, Great work!! Hope Alan is getting paid for all this voice over work!

Excellent work Neil! The indoor retrobriting really did the job! I’m glad you mentioned adding an FPU and upgrading the memory at the end too. Looking forward to the final instalment.

11:50 "...in a spare PCI slot." :D

You are the only You tuber I trust when it comes to sponsors, I'll have a look.

Always in awe of your extravagant retrobriting setup. I just chuck my bits into a clear plastic tub full of peroxide and check on them every so often to give them a poke!

Very satisfying to watch. Thanks for making the series.

Great job! That old machine looks gorgeous.

Excellent job with the retrobrighting and metalwork!

Awwww I'm gonna miss Monster Joysticks with their genuine Sanwa arcade parts, and 1ClickPrint.com (for your photos on canvas, acrylic, gifts and more)

Loved this series - especially as I actually owned an identical machine. Strangely, I never used it to it's full potential - only ever used it as a pc! I know it came bundled with a lot of software and games, all of which elude me, apart from the excellent Prince Of Persia. Thanks for a wonderful series Neil.

I have a pc magazine from back in the days advertising that system, very poche. Love your smooth bgm.

Awesome video Neil !

I'm totally loving this series. Gongratulations, man!

Outstanding series. Looking forward to part 4.

It looks Amazing! Cant wait for part 4...

Nice to see a Seasonic PSU in that old system. And it still works well despite the age of it's capacitors. These PSUs are built to last. I have one in my PC that's over 6 years old, still going strong. There was absolutely no need to recap your power supply although doing so definitely didn't hurt, considering the age of those caps. Those ADDA fans are indeed quite noisy, even the 80mm ones.

Another great video and excellent work, so nice to see these machines cared for and that Alan seems a smart chap, he should audition for the apprentice.

Can't wait for the final part of the series, this looks amazing!

Great job! A lot of work went into this. One quick point... you could use a bit of Roxul (also called Rockwool) to dampen the PSU sound (up to 40-60% - maybe more). It's also fireproof and non conductive. :)

You weren't kidding about those puns were you mate! 😆 I'm really enjoying this series Neil (and Alan), great work 👍

Great video series RMC. Well done on the retrobrighting, worked great.

Amazing work! ☀️

Very nice result!

Have to say this is a fab channel full of retro info which i enjoy breaks up my day keep going i look forward to more intresting videos. unfortunately I did not find a solution and restoring boxes that the retro computers come in anyway cheers Neil fab video

Bravo! It looks great

I really enjoy your presentations/videos and just like you as a person from how you carry yourself :) (Alan is ok too)... Newly subscribed!!

Oh fantastic :) thank you very much Neil, hope you're well!

Thanks for the vid Neil. Great watching. Who is doing the Alan voiceover? Hilarious.

Very nice work!

Been looking forward to this 🙂

With the heatwave across europe and had tons of sunshine here in ireland i think this is the week or two to do retrobrite outside :)

Looks like a pool were they keep sharks! Great video!!

Just wanna say i think this channel is awesome.

A Sega Saturn with a GPS... Ever heard of the Hi-Saturn Navi ?

The Amstrad looks in much better condition now. Sir Alan...not so much. 🤣

Looks absolutely amazing, makes me wish I had one 😘👍

At the end the Museum calls and tells you that you do a restoration on that machine too

That machine looks so nice

The best upgrade you could do to that bad-boy is feeding it either a 386dx or finding one of those make-it-486 style upgrades..

I'm in Germany and I would kill for 2 weeks of clouds and rain. It's so hot...

Grate video, thanks!

Another great video thank you!!!! Such awesome content! I also have that same 1000W grow light!! :)

That’s is looking fantastic! If you ever get really bored and want to restore my Amiga microvitec multisync monitor let me know😉

In all honesty I wish this episode was longer so I did not need to wait for a part for. Bloody love your videos and this one was super cool I mean combining my first ever console with a PC man I wish could buy one today but yeah sadly they are rare.

Neil, I really know you're making A Great Video for retro gamers! =-)

great retrobrite setup

Great Retrobrite and Renewal :) QC

I bet when Mrs ManCave wants to make a delicious vinaigrette dressing for her summer salads she is clean out of luck because Neil has been stinking up the house using it all to clean all the rust off his tat. 👍

Yes! I'm early to another MEGA vid! This also means I'm off work! Woohoo!

Amazing job Neil ;)

If you want to stop it from yellowing after retrobrighting get some high quality car wax and apply it to the plastic. It will reflect uv light and act as a replacement for the original protection the plastic had. It will slow down the yellowing process substantially.

Seasonic power supply? That is awesome. Didn't see that coming.

Great job :-)

Damn that looks great, hard work but worth it.

Cool indoor RetroBright process. @8bitguy will be impressed !.

You can measure a voltage across two points in any circuit and it is always completely accurate, no problems (well, if the meter is in order). Measuring singular component values (in example measuring resistance of a resistor) in a circuit might not give correct results because of the other components. The large cap is rated for 400V (the max voltage you can put at it's pins), the capacity is something else. Shorting a "loaded" cap with a screwdriver will most likely damage the cap itself before the other components.

When you Re-Capped that VPN did you use Panasonic?

From some others' experiments, it seems that UV light is the most important parameter in retrobrighting. In fact, UV light alone seems to work perferctly fine.

The professionally recommended method of discharging caps is indeed to use a high value resistor and not a dead short. This avoids accidents and unintended damage/injury.

Brilliant!

doin' some restorin' assumin' you want some gamin'

This was a thoroughly enjoyable journey. Would recommend Noctua fans, they have a full range including 60mm.

Looks mint

I'm pretty sure that pure UV would work better than a full-spectrum light

7:25 this looks like a party pool

I really hope one day the real Alan comments on one of these videos. Not that I'm suggesting the real one isn't already in the videos.

Did you change the airflow direction on the PSU fan? Looked like it from the mounting - any thought behind it?

I think there do exist cooling fans that have built-in thermistors to control their speed based on ambient temperature. They're not exactly accurate but they are kinda neat and you wouldn't need a fanspeed controller for it.

As a power supply Reviewer i feel triggered :D this should be one of the oldest Seasonic PSUs I've seen so far. Today they are well known. Great how you renew it and how you demonstrate how dangerous it is. People somehow don't believe that. Apropos Dangerous in the USA probably a teenager died after an electric shock by opening an PSU. So you can not often enough point the dangerous out. nice restoration BR Thomas

Neil, one thing, not sure if you thought about that or not, but just in case, maybe you want to consider placing some aither aluminium or a black foil bellow the bath to bounce the light up in the case of the AL foil or heat up in the case of a black one. I used a black plastic inside a bath like yours to heat up the water inside when exposing to direct sun light and it helps raising the water temp for a couple of degrees.

If there's room, chopping out the punched fan guard and replacing with a wire one would improve the air to noise ratio

You could also add 1 fan (or maybe 2) to the psu.. Then you could keep the RPM even lower (and keep it even cooler)

Those Brits with their Amstrads..

oh I'm so glad you didn't spraypaint the metal!

Looks like you could retrobite it outside with the weather now...!

I use neat supermarket bleach in a ziplock bag and leave it on the window sill.... works great!

Which VRAM did you use and where did you source it? It's the final upgrade I've never had much success in sourcing. This series has been absolutely incredible, I've been very impressed. I'd like to recap mine but I don't dare!

Waiting for the part 4 AAAAAAAAAAA

As a big fan of your YT channel, I especially love your Amstrad Mega PC with other Sega MegaDrive, NEC PC-Engine and (of course) Amiga related videos. It's pleasure to see in details parts of this Amstrad Mega PC because it was very, very rare in my country (France) and is impossible to find today. Just a question/suggestion: I wonder if it's possible to make the MegaDrive part region free with a switch as with a regular Model 1 Sega MegaDrive? Did you check about this possibility? Because I don't remember you speaking about that in the previous videos (maybe I'm wrong). And thanks a lot for your great videos.

That little vent sounds like a vacuum cleaner ...

When working on the PSU, had you considered replacing it with a pico one with adapters to change connectors to AT and molex? Would that have even been possible?