Hey Adrian! Seeing an entire video on the cork-board Amiga really made my day -- sorry it managed to bite you on its way home! I guess I got lucky avoiding the 'spines'. 😅 As for the history -- I picked it up in a thrift store around 2009-10. While I always told myself I would eventually restore it, it actually did spend about a year as-is as art on the wall of my own 'digital basement' workshop. After that, it lived in the back of a closet in various residences until it made its way into your hands. It's so wonderful to see it brought back to life in the end.
That’s awesome! So about 13ish years ago from a thrift store. Amazing! There was a comment from another patron that the GVP SCSI controller on it is also a super desirable and expensive card, so the $2 you paid is even more of a steal!! Now if only we knew why it was dismantled - maybe somehow the original person who made it will watch this video.
Back in 1989 I took an introduction cause in computers, And the instructor had something like this on the wall where he would point out the individual parts of the computer, He also had one with an Apple computer.
@@adriansdigitalbasement Probably because something was shorted under Agnus, you made it pop out at 15:00 when you put agnes in. Watch closely as a bit of copper flies from under the upper right part of the socket to the left leg of FB101. I sure hope it fell off when you turned over the mainboard to fix the connectors!
@@adriansdigitalbasement The video corruption on the first boot attempt was the Workbench floppy text not getting painted onto the floppy label. Very interesting that it's a multi-layer graphic and not just a bitmap.
As an Amiga service center tech in Hollyweird, I have a great story to tell about chips on the motherboard. So, one day a production assistant walked in with one of the A2000's that I had built for a TV show. He told me it had a "Green Screen" (Green screens on an Amiga meant that the "Super Agnus" - a 2 meg chip had come loose in its socket). So, I removed the cover and the Micropolis gigabyte hard drive that I put in all Video Toaster systems. I then using my many years of experience with Amigas picked up the system about six inches off my bench and dropped it! The PA freaked out and tried to grab it, I held him off, told him to watch and learn from my years in college, etc.... The system of course was worth around 10 - 15 thousand dollars. I put it back together and plugged it in and it worked perfectly! The PA stood there with his jaw hanging open and I calmly handed him my $150.00 one-hour minimum shop rate bill! Yes, you can reseat all the chips by picking it up and dropping it - just be sure you remove the hard drive!😁
I once toppled a coke-bottle onto my A500… I was quick enough to disconnect power and avoided damage. Just placed the entire A500 in the dishwasher and dried it propperly before powering it up again. The amiga is still alive on the bench in my attic :)
Another trick I like to use when removing hot glue or similar is to freeze it with freeze spray or dry ice. It typically shrinks a little and comes away cleanly even from fragile wires.
That's why hot glue sucks for electronics work and why electronics grade silicone and chloroprene rubber glue exist. also never ever use common construction silicone for electronics it's uses acetic acid to cure you want something rated for use on PCBs. Personally I like the Chip Quick self leveling clear, it's good for reinforcing caps or wire to board solder joints, anything that can break off in a high vibration environment (and it's not too hard to get off later)
Easy method for removing hot glue, isopropyl alcohol breaks the bond between glue and surface, but does not make a mess and disolve the hot glue, just spray some at the edge, lift a bit and spray again, comes clean off easy.
13:50 You don't just grab the chip with the tool and wiggle it out. This tool is specifically designed to pull the chip out straight to avoid bending any pins or pulling out the socket from the PCB. You squeeze the plastic grip piece together, it's a flexure designed to convert your squeezing into push/pull action against the plastic part of the socket.
I think someone might have used it as an educational thing to show a classroom how a computer worked. Showing all the components open like that really helps visualise each aspect to a class. Perhaps when the hardware died they threw it out, or perhaps it was always not working and just used it as a visual aid and the tutor threw it out when it became obsolete
At my vocational training we had an entire cars electrical system broken down on a wall in a similar way, was actually useful for learning what CAN does and doesn't see.
11 месяцев назад
I also think it was hanging on a wall of a classroom and the teacher was pointing components just like Adrian did on the beginning of the video.
My theory is that the original owner bought a PC or a Mac and instead of selling the his old Amiga he made a wall decoration out of it, except for the hard drive, which might have been transplanted into his new machine.
I'm thinking someone loved their Amiga so much that they decided to frame it when it became obsolete. Which is a very forward thinking thing to do, since nowadays people tend to frame Motherboards and such.
@@rockapartie k. I'll take your word for it. Although I never saw this kind of things being common back in the day and would argue that since tech has become much more common, doing things like it are a more mundane thing.
@@AltimaNEO People still do this, I've seen a few poor Gameboys deconstructed like this. It really is dangerous to the device for numerous reasons, so it's a real shame to see.
So when I saw the deconstructed Amiga my first thought was: Oh, great project for a Checkmate 1500 Plus case. Then when Adrian mentioned a future project, I REALLY hope it's such a case because with it you can even put that Zorro SCSI board in it and have a big box A500. Great video!
"I don't want this to become an A2000 troubleshooting video".......*proceeds to troubleshoot A2000 issue* love the videos Adrian, glad to see you brought that old art project back to life!
I don't know exactly what the mystery cct board is (at 4:37), but the chip is used to generate telephony pulse or tone sounds. So, probably part of a phone/fax/telex machine.
Given that, my first guess would be that it's a method for the computer to auto-dial a telephone number without using an actual modem. Quite possibly, it was intended to use the cassette drive interface as a single-duplex modem?
Interesting to see the frozen Kickstart hand at 12:27. The floppy + hand is actually a 412 Byte vector drawing with a few "fills". The grey fill of the shutter failed due to the garbage lines interrupting it. (see a slomo de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickstart#/media/Datei:Amiga_Insert_Workbench_(animated).gif )
What I always do to check the side of a cable is to identify the GND and go from there with the multimeter, usually works without a problem. Otherwise Google images can in fact help. 🎉
I am so glad this Amiga has been given a new lease on life. Seeing it powered up for the first time in 20 years or more was a thrill, despite the corruption. Some components seem to need a little shock to the system to wake them up after decades of slumber.
That's the wet capacitors, they need to be powered every now and then, maybe twice a year. Even if they come back that's very likely more self-healed scars inside.I think Adrian doesn't particularly like replacing them until they fully fail.
2 things I'd like to say Adrian. 1, I'm super happy and excited for you that you can now spend your time solely making videos and content for the world to enjoy. Thank you. 2 this Amiga looks like it may have been a high school project or something, and if that's the case, pretty darn good job!! (I'm just at the very beginning so we'll see)
I have to agree with some people here that say that it was likely used as an educational piece to show off various technology components, most likely because it wasn't booting anymore. However, no one knew or cared enough to fix it before. Great work as usual tracking down the problem. Always a pleasure to watch your methodical approach.
The scratch on Agnus probably comes from the retaining clip, which is no longer present on this 500. Most of the 500s I've come across had retaining clips on the chips to help against the well-known "Amiga height sickness"
Oh damn, seeing that X-Copy interface did a number on my brain. I was thinking I have seen that before and then all the memories of copying my friends games came flooding back. Amazing!
What would be really cool is if you could fit it in some sort of acrylic case that could be hung on the wall and still have an accessible floppy drive slot. You could mount it right below a LCD monitor and put the keyboard in an external acrylic case that mounts below it. The keyboard could have an extended cable and can also detach from the wall to a usable loation. Then you have a piece of art and a fully usable Amiga 500! Great video, as always. Oh man I could totally see this. Just need to know a good CNC contact that works with acrylic.
I wanted to add that I was at a San Jose CA Vintage Computer Fair many years ago and I had the fortune of talking to the original developers of the Amiga 1000 where they showed the prototype wire wrap boards they used for testing.
You can get rear defroster repair paint. It is designed to fix when the rear defroster lines on your car get cut or damaged. Paint it on and the trace is fixed.
I have used conductive paint to fix several Model M keyboard membranes after fluid damage. It's a bit tricky to use on fine tracks, but it works. If you end up bridging tracks,you can scratch it off with a sharp object.
@@KrozMcDIn the case of the Model Ms,you have to open up the inside plastic case by cutting the plastic rivets, open out the membrane, repaint the tracks, reassemble and then drill and bolt the inside case. It's a bit involved, but works.
@@KrozMcD Yes if it is in between layers you would need to do something like paint the entire trace, or very carefully cut the top layer and then paint it. It is often easier to fit in than a bodge wire. I have used it to fix car clusters that use membrane boards vs hard pcbs.
ok, I took a quick look and it seems no one noticed. In the scsi card, you have the rom version 4.5, meanwhile the site you went to check for info, it's 4.15. Maybe you can upload your version to the site to have another, more updated version. I am just at 8min in the video, sorry if you mencioned it later
The needed soft reset on the A2000 is due to a hard drive that starts too slowly, the system is up before the hard drive is ready to respond to it. Just live with it, a lot of my friends including me had this problem when we used old drives on, in these days, modern machines. Those were the days...
Bloody Man got some Really Cool mysterious Amiga Computer Parts and is Putting in the Work at the Basement . Well worth a $2.00 Investment , the thing gots spines :) QC
There is a trick to boot from external drive under Kick 1.3 or lower. It's called boot selector. Its pretty cheap to build it yourself. All you need is two sockets for CIA chip and a double-switch. The whole trick is to change connections of SEL0 and SEL1 lines from the U8 CIA chip to the motherboard. If SEL0 of the CIA chip will be connected to the SEL1 line on the motherboard and SEL1 to SEL0. The external drive will become DF0 and internal will be identified as DF1. I've built such a device in late 90s and it worked like a charm.
In our electronics class in grade 10 - we had some exploded machines. We had a BBC Model A for example. It had all of the components labelled and such. They were mounted like this.
the only electronics / computer class we had in grade 10 was how to make a news letter on a apple 2gs.. this was in 1995 btw. At least the school was able to build a huge freakin stadium for football games..
Wow I have never seen an amiga 500 looking like this, this is going to be the most unique commodore amiga 500 that I ever seen, more over that the fact that this thing works and looking like this, that is the most shocking and wonderful. I don't know how I describe this but, it's just a beautiful piece of art of electronics and ingenuity of all man kind.
After watching your excellent repairs & renovations I am often tempted to try it myself. Fortunately I can suppress this & live happily with my collection of more modern computers & tablets. Minor repairs I can happily do myself!
I would like to see a video about updating the Retrotink 5X to the latest FW, you could do a before and after test of the issues you experience now. And as a bonus, you get an updated Retrotink 5X.
I remember watching a documentary on those chips. The Gary was a Gate Array chip. It's awesome that they named all these chips. Just shows the love and dedication that went into the making of this board.
That brings back memories... bought an Amiga 500 new at the PX when stationed in Germany in 1988. It kept me entertained until '96 when I built my first 486. Good times!
A "deconstructed" Amiga like this on a cork board would be an amazing project if you could turn it into a stealth "functional" computer, with a similar flat presentation style. I suspect you could hide many/most of the connections by soldering to points on the underside and routing the wires through and behind the cork board, so that it would look like the bare unplugged board was somehow driving a nearby monitor and could be used with a seemingly disconnected keyboard and mouse... spooky! Would be a fitting tribute to the state you received the system in.
Great content as always! I used to be an Atari ST/STE guy and now trying to learn some Amiga. The system I never had as a kid. It's kind of confusing with all "Kickstart" and chip versions. But I guess it's never too late to learn.
Great video Adrian! A cool find to be sure. A note on the keyboard cable: The color sequence is the same as the resistor color chart. Some keyboards do have the Yellow wire but it doesn't do anything. Probably was a cost saving measure to just leave it there rather than pay for a "custom" configured cable. Love all your repair videos! Keep up the good work and keep the iron hot! 😀👍
17:18 I don't know about plugging in the floppy drive power connector backwards, but forgetting to plug it in toasts both the floppy drive and the mother board. I learned that the hard way.
Cleaning that keyboard, brings back a memory from 84. A kid had bumped over and soda which, poured in to their C=64 Keyboard. They said they turned it off right away, and let it drain in their sink. After a week, they tried it and said it did not work right, thus they brought it to me to repair it. I took it apart and a lot of it had dried all over, yet it was sticky. The plungers were sticky too, I told them it may be a lost cause, but I would try. It was all apart, I put the keyboard, mother board, keys, all in my dishwasher stopped the drying cycle and washed it, I washed the sugar out of the case in the sink. I got it back together, and It worked great after that. I left it running a memory test for 3 days on my bench, and gave it back to them a few days later. Really cool what a simple dishwasher will do. No, it was not yellowed, as it was so new. I stopped repairing Commodore computers about the mid 90s. Well good luck with that keyboard as well as the Amiga 500.
I've had some success repairing broken traces on keyboard membranes using conductive silver paint meant for repairing car rear window defrosters/defoggers.
I have been meaning to get one of those pens -- I should give that a try -- it might work in this case although the left shift to the keyboard controller is about as far of a line to draw as possible LOL!
@@adriansdigitalbasement The membranes I've worked on either had bare traces or traces that could be fairly easily exposed using a knife, so the exact location of the damage was quite easy to find using a multimeter. It was then just a simple matter of painting over the crack or missing section.
I have a weird Amiga. It's a rack-mounted Amiga sitting inside a large sit-down arcade unit called the Battletech Tesla Pod. The Amiga was used for the graphics, there was another board (PC if I remember right but can check) that handled game logic and communication and 2nd screen, and a smaller controller board that interfaced to all the controls and a ridiculous array of flashing lights and 7-segment displays.
Dude, with regard to proper orientation of the non polarised connectors, as a double check I'd buzz out the ground on the boards on both sides as in check with your meter that the gnd planes of each do connect to confirm orientation.
14:10 - Yeah, I remember I first worked with this type of package in 1990. Some of the outer legs would splay open! !5:22 - This step is where some really goof.The chip has to be level on all FOUR corners before pushing it into the socket! *Good job* !
I think it was for education, my parents use to teach at a technical school, and I saw lots of thing like this made by/for the students when I was a kid.
I have a framed deconstructed gameboy color here, I just got that online but I love the look of something like this. even better that you could get this thing to run!
I was in Berlin with a German friend who was often teasing me about being a repressed Brit. Then I realised we were outside the KitKat Club & told him I had bought tickets as a treat for us. Suddenly he appeared to be quite repressed himself.
Adrian you are absolutely an inspiration to me... Thank you so much for this video which I watched eagerly as I am trying to renovate my childhood amiga. I love your channel.
Something I have been able to do for some.membrane keyboards: "Wire Glue" It's a paintable conductive carbon solution that lets you bridge small gaps in traces on membranes without needing heat. Overall, this was an awesome video!
Lack of icons after entering DF1 Arkanoid disk means there are none .info files (icon files). Can't remeber if WB1.3 had show all files option in drop down menus, but from 2.0 it was available. Still you could launch CLI from WB and ran those games manually (even by booting copied disk you did end in CLI and launched it this way).
CAIG should really be sending you a free lifetime supply of dexoit! You've got me addicted to the stuff, which is tricky because I can only source from overseas 😂
@@adriansdigitalbasement I have a hard time buying dexoit (not popular in Asia?) until I got from Amazon, and I use it for audio before I realize Adrian use it for computer!
@@adriansdigitalbasement I'm using an alternative called "KONTAKT 60" by "Kontakt chemie", which is widely available in europe, and seems to work extremely well.
adrian i think its a old phone modem , we use them alot to connect to local net when play against each other over the phone line and the start of the video looks like a teaching board we had in Randers Data Club in Denmark, back in the days where we had a clases about amiga and machine code programming, we used a dead Amiga 500 for the board as a show and tell tool :) My love for the amiga is so great i had an amiga 500 , amiga 600 and an amiga 1200 :)
I just did a great Neuhaus deconstruction project while looking this new vid: I carefully deconstructed a box of Belgian dark chocolate I brought with me from the (Wire)SharkFest in Brussels into their paper and metal sheet packaging as well as the chocolate squares. I'm afraid my art piece has somehow become incomplete...
Iceland Calling, I would guess this was a school project from a machine that was not working. I really enjoyed the process of troubleshooting these machines. Thank you for your effort in sharing this type of content.
Thats a mod'd Honeywell keyboard. I used to repair them and then discovered them in the Amiga. They were/ are the best from that era. I have recently replaced the chip section with an Arduino.
For that hard drive controller card you can cut a piece if acrilic to fit. It would strenghen up the card but wouldnt short out any of the connections.
The mystery device is definitely some sort of telephone device. The W91312 chip on the board is a tone/pulse dialer chip. Too bad the history of the art project has been lost to time. Nice to see that the board itself is working. Perhaps it was turned in to an art project because some of the other parts other then the main board weren't working.
Great Adrian, somewhere I´d have a old Amigha 500 plus HD laying in dust, love how you brought live back to that bundle of spare parts ! Going to put it into a secondhand case ?
I've had the exact same problem with the keyboard. I changed the membrane and everything. In the end what fixed it was to resolder the pins to the keyboard controller as in the video. I think it's a very common problem.
A2000 keyboards are so expensive now. I wish somebody would reverse engineer the MOS6570 so we could get some after-market keyboards. I have to use one of those PS/2 adaptor dongles now, and it's so janky.
If I recall correctly, Kickstart 2.0 allowed to select a different boot drive on startup if you pressed down both mouse butttons before powering on the computer. Kichstart 2.0 ROMs ar compatible with the A500 (switched to it on mine from 1.3 back in day). I'm not sure, if you could use the ROM from that A2000. So it might help to switch to a newer ROM when troubleshooting problems with the floppy drives in the future if possible. As a side note: in general, prices in the EU always include taxes (VAT) and vendors are required to tell you what portion it is of the total amount. Not sure if there are any axceptions for international customers. Doing business between EU and the US has become a nightmare in the past years.
Always weird to think that there was a time when these weren't cool retro collectables. At some point 25+ years ago, an Amiga 500 was basically nothing more than an obsolete computer destined for e-waste. I guess like some Core2Duo or Pentium 4 PCs are now. Too old to really be useful but not old enough to be desirable. And instead of throwing it away, someone decided "Eh, might as well just glue it to a cork board and mount it to my wall." Mental.
On the A2000 if you have the accelerator card plugged in you definitely want to favour memory on that since it's directly connected via a 32 bit bus - the CPU will need to use the 16bit system bus to access the SCSI controller memory. 4MB on each will max out the Zorro II space fine.
you can use that hard drive controller with more than just that one disk on the card . i have mine with a longer ribbon cabel conectet to a cdrom drive and the harddrive
