The earliest Amiga 500 on Record? 

I had serial number #31. Which I loved because it was 11111 in binary. This computer was sent to COMPUTE! Magazine for review. I was an assistant editor for COMPUTE!'s Gazette. I asked Selby Bateman, our Features Editor, if Commodore would let me buy it instead of us sending it back. They did. It was the computer I used when working on the book Mapping The Amiga.

Hi, i work at a Company wich used to make the Moulds for the C64 and the Amiga Cases. A few Years ago they threw away a lot of the older stuff wich included the insert of a Mould wich was the Embossed Text on the bottom of your Amiga, wich i saved from the Trash. I never saw an actual Amiga with the embossed Text until now.

Top Tips. The 68000 CPU has some interesting features. Connect a SPST latching switch to the 68000s PAUSE pin, instant pause for ANY program. Ditto the RST pin and there used to be a hack taking a 14Mhz signal from somewhere near Agnus and then disconnecting the CLK pin from the CPU and then attaching the 14Mhz pin to it and doubling the apeed of your A500!!! God, i loved my Amiga!!

I got my Amiga 500 back in May 1987 in Germany. It had a serial number of about 6000. When I bought it, there was still no German instructions book available. It came with a US book and a coupon to get the German book afterwards. I sold it later to get my A2000. Now my oldest A500 is an early one with a number slightly above 10,000. It has still Kickstart 1.2 and the case is unaltered.

My A500 (bought by me in New Zealand, late '87) seems to have been built in the 26th week of 1987. Serial number HB4 001208; Externally identical to the one in this video, but the innards are a little different :) Mechanical "space invader" keyboard with C= key instead of the left Amiga key; White-on-grey C= logo instead of embossed plastic C= above the power LED; Revision 5 motherboard; "Chinon" branded floppy drive.

How nice it is to see a pro working with electronics, antistatic wristband and mat, there are so many pearl gravel mechanics (amateur mechanics as we call it in the DK) who had just messed around in the old Amiga.

I’ll never forget when I bought my first Amiga 500, was a glorious day!

Hi, you could point at another difference, the grey cursor keys! Only the very early A500 keyboards got those. Starting 2019 through 2022 I managed to have bought three 1987 A500, two boxed and complete (rev5 and rev3), one loose (rev3). One of the boxed A500, the most well preserved one, got these grey keys that I'd only spotted on the A500 manual. Great video, thanks and Happy new Year!

Wow, such a beautiful early example! Looking forward to seeing it brought back to its former glory 😁

Wow what a find. I look forward to seeing it work again.

Dave Haynie was the main designer of the A500; he's a *big* B-52s fan-to the point where the PC was submitted to the FCC as the "Model B52".

Thanks Jan for the videos. Have a great 2023!

Can't wait for part 2. Happy new year!

I think that's the first rev 3 board I've seen "cased" in over 30 years lol. The Gary is rare - has a bug which I talked about on a few videos in the past. Hope you had a good Christmas Jan! Have a Happy New Year!

This is our christmas gift! another quality video from you!

War ein Super Video Jahr 2022, Danke Jan, mach weiter so und einen Guten Rutsch in 2023!

As always a very entertaining video from you, Jan. Peter from Sweden

Wondeful piece of Art and History! ❤ Happy New Year Jan! 😊

What a great piece of history, I look forward to the restoration. Happy New Year!

Great video to end out the year. Thanks Jan. I can't wait for the next episode...

Today was the perfect day and time for watching the whole video, which I very much enjoyed. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a successful restoration of this beautiful machine. A happy new year to you and all the best for 2023, Jan!

Happy New Year Jan! You definitely have to get that old beauty working again!

Klasse! Das ist tatsächlich der älteste A500 on record. WOW! Mein Rev3 ist KW14 87 produziert mit Hi Tek Keyboard Chicken Lips und eingestanzten Gehäuse Nr. 18271. Die Boards wurden ja in HK produziert und die Gehäuse in Braunschweig und führen unterschiedliche Seriennummern. Ich denke tatsächlich, dass der hier vorgestellte Amiga also der 190. Amiga A500 ist, der fertigstellt wurde. Das ist echt schon was besonderes!!!

Wow such an early machine. Great to see how much care you're taking. Excellent video.

Thanks for all your videos. Looking forwards to next year. All the best.

Best Wishes for 2023 and Many Vids :-) Thank for this history moment !

What a sweet piece of history. Have a Happy New Year and see you in 2023!

Amazing job, I learned a lot with this video and enjoyed a lot. I am looking forward to see the next video. Thanks Jan and I wish you a very happy 2023.

All the best Jan. A happy new year indeed.

What a piece of history, thanks for sharing! All the best for 2023.

Interesting - I'm approximately 95.4186237% sure my (first) A500 did have the embossed logo, & I'm 100% sure it had a C= key. Unfortunately, I don't remember when it was originally bought (my parents bought it second hand for me in summer '87, but the seller included the original receipt) though.

Those old keyboards are so sweet. I remember being slightly disappointed when I got my first own Amiga in 1988, and it had the membrane key switches. But hey, that disappointment lasted for 5 seconds, then I was in total Amiga bliss. (Still am.)

I really enjoyed watching it. Happy New Year

I smiled when I saw the switch for the RAM upgrade. I installed mine in exactly the same spot.

Very cool! I the Caps Lock kinda stand out to me right away along with the bigger Shift keys. Also probably the video with the most use of the word Careful ever! :D Keep it up Jan. Best wishes for the new Year from Switzerland.

Brilliant piece of history. Looking forward to seeing it working with Turrican 2!

I could actually smell it when you opened the box. I will never forget the smell of my Amiga, the discs, the power supply, the monitor and all the other stuff. Crazy 🤔

Great find in an historic Amiga 500. All the best for 2023 Jan. Thanks for all your hard work!

Great video, happy new year!

Thanks Jan, Happy new year.

Super interesting Jan. I purchased the A500 in April of 88 but around the 99-2005 time frame I had several friends donate theirs to me. I am now going to check them out to see what Revs of the board I have, I wonder if there is a comprehensive thread or document on the various 500 systems that is thorough and all inclusive. (I’m in the US) I’ve seen some efforts but never anything definitive, maybe it would just be extremely hard given Commodores propensity to mix and match, lol. Regardless, thank you for this, I’ll keep an eye out for your follow up! The 500 will always be my personal soft spot, it was the first computer that made me realize that the possibilities were truly infinite.

This A500 looks very familiar: I also had one with the Commodore key on the left and the exact same 'silver' logo. I bought mine in June '88 in a shop called Bits&Chips, which was located on the Ceintuurbaan in Amsterdam, for halve price! Because it was a shop demonstration model that didn't come with a mouse....I mean: who needs a modern thing like a mouse when you are coming from a Schneider CPC464 before ;) BTW: about a year later I discovered that there was a memory expansion in it, which the shop forgot to remove before selling it to me :)

absolutely fascinating breakdown of this valuable part of computing history.. can't wait to see that famous 1.2 boot screen again. :)

Hi Jan This Amiga 500 rev.3 is fantastic! 😀 Happy New Year 🎆

What a wonderful machine! and well done presentation as usual. Jan, lets hope for a better and peacefull future 2023. Jan

Nice find... Happy New Year!

Really one of the legendary ones with Cherry keyboard. My 500 only had a serial in the 1 or 2 thousands, got it from a tiny but very active shop. I think most of these very early ones went to magazine reviewers and such to make the best impression possible.

Happy new year Jan!!

This is an amazing find, computing history and yeah, I was as enthused about it as Jan was. Also c an we all take a moment to appreciate the beauty of Jay Miners board designs, everything is neat, sectioned perfectly, symmetrical and I always loved to way he puts all his resistors in neat little banks.

I got my A500 in December 1987. Obviously it was a very early machine. It had the early keyboard as well. The keys were slightly different. The key caps had a different shape (shorter) and pressing the keys felt more tense than on all other Amigas i've been working with. I never saw another A500 with "my" keyboard until watching your video. It had the Commodore key and the solid Amiga-Logo-Key as well. The case felt "heavier" than the younger ones, and it had the grey-white Commodore logo as well. The power supply was different compared to the one in your video. The power-switch was in the center of the case. Some of my friends got their A500 at the same time - with different keyboard, case, logo, etc. I have to check, if I can find some old pictures.

That certainly is a nice find. I remember buying my Amiga 500 I’m the late 80’s. Sadly I swapped over to PC but the Amiga did get a lot of use. I’m looking forward to watching progress in this one. Regards Graham

Happy New Year!

Love watch your videos Jan all the best for 2023 :)

I definitely had a very early A500 model which my dad bought in Italy for my 15th birthday in August 1987. Il had exactly this keyboard with the "cicken lips" commodore logo button and the american layout. Il had the Kickstart 1.2 and actually had better compatibility than my friend's later model (kickstart 1.3). I sold it in 1992 to buy an A1200.... But luckily I found one more last year in France where I live and it is in a nice condition inside its box. I have to check the serial number.... ;-)

I remember getting my Amiga500 in 1987 with my "children savings", but it wasn't till July though, so I guess it was kinda old ;) I remember that it was July, because it was vacation, and I vividly remember the busride home, thinking that this computer would change my life. It did.

I have to look at mine in the attic; I bought it upon release in France in March/April 87. Workbench 1.2

Good luck with that one Jan. I wouldn't like to touch it - far too rare! 😆 Have a Happy New Year!

Hi Jan. FINALLY! Finally someone backs my theory that sub-10000 serial A500s have a) an early badge logo rather than chicken lips and b) a big label on the bottom rather than the thin sticker. I own a German A500 with a serial in the 4000s (and had a second one in the 7000s) which are like this one except two things: it has both the big label plus the molded „sticker“ next to each other. Obviously the bottom case was updated in between Stephane's A500 and mine. Also it has a Chinon F354E instead of this Matsushita. My #4000 board has the serial number 1680 and was produced in KW13. I think the top case was changed to chicken lips around serial 10000 and the bottom sticker was changed to the thin thing a little later, let’s say 12000. Both regarding the German end production. HK end production is different.

Nice Amiga and nice video. I like that you split it into an unpacking video and one or more repair videos. 30 minutes is the perfect length of videos for me. If it's one hour or more I have a hard time finding time to watch it.

This is very cool. Hope you can get it going with minimal repairs!

That's a nice specimen! Also notable on the really early rev 3 is that they has the Y1 crystal populated down to the left instead of the X1 oscillator above the kickstart. They should also have different feet than the regular white rubber ones. More like plastic, slightly translucent ones.

Thanks so much for your Videos.

Great info! I picked up my very first A500 a little over a year ago from an estate sale and it was identical to this model with the Commodore key, chicken lips badge (not embossed), and the mechanical keyboard. It has a higher serial # though: CA1003936. It's in good working condition but unfortunately did not come with the box. The Hi-Tek keyboard is by far the nicest to type on of all the Commodore models I've used so far.

Moin Jan, alles Gute im neuen Jahr, möge dein Content nie enden...👍 Fingers Cross 😉

I bought a knackered A500 from a car boot and it was serial number 600 and something and had similar keys. I cannot remember much but compared to my own A500+ it looked completely different and so I compared to my mates A500 and it was different to that. We decided it was a Frankenstein Amiga A500, but may have been an early run. It never got fixed and i sold on for spares and repairs.

I had such a machine, I found it in the early 2000s in Hungary in some electro-junkyard in an extremely sorry state. The case and keyboard was very broken and beyond repair already , but the mainboard was up and running. It had the chickenlips keyboard and Kickstart 1.2. Watched TRSI Megademo on it, because that worked with 512K... :) I had to give the remaining parts away when I moved to Germany about 10 years ago, along with a bunch of other stuff. Glad these are still out there tho'. Great find, thanks for sharing.

Great video. Thx!

Hau’oli Makahiki Hou (Guten Rutsch!), Jan!

I vote in favor of fixing the poor thing, even if that means some (little) deviation from the original "museum" condition. I wish a great new year, Jan.

I will definitely be watching out for part 2! I have an early Amiga 500 (serial number 342901) with the same keyboard that also doesn't work (go figure! lol).

This amiga is older than my c64.

amazing 😍

Oh, I thought I had an early one but this is a step further! Interestingly my enter key has the type in a different position, and all keys have the letters as far left as they could possibly be. Also has the c= key. Mine has a rev3 v2 board with the embossed case badge, commodore info on the back with a transparent serial number sticker. I understand its been boxed until I got it, its quite white compared to any other Amiga I've seen (paper white). Not as compatible with demos as later Amiga 500s even with RAM expansion. Some of the cutom chips & 68000 are third party. Mouse has no commodore logo underneath. Box is the same as yours. Wonder if any Amigas have that odd escape key that is in the box artwork?

nice work

Hi Jan, nice video!. Just a little heads up; the common language in Belgium is not just French, there's also Flemish. To put this in numbers: 60% speaks Flemish (or Dutch), 40% speaks French, and about 2% speaks German. Luckily I speak all three, more or less :-). As soon as they bring out TheA500 MAXI, I might buy one.

I got my Amiga back in December 1987 for Christmas in germany and it had surely the embossed logo.

Very nice looking early Amiga 500, and interesting to compare the details to mine, which is manufactured at 52nd week in 1990, according to the yellow sticker on the motherboard, and serial number in that yellow sticker is over 2 million. Serial number sticker at the bottom of the case is over 1,4 million, made in W. Germany, and mine has C= sticker, but with thinner print than the early one. My box image also has both Amiga keys, no Commodore key anymore, and box doesn't have any stickers. Oh yeah and my Amiga is Scandinavian version as I live in Finland.

Halo Jan, in 1988 I bought my first A500. The case is identical to the older one you showed in this video, same little C= square badge, same centered label on the bottom shell but it doesn't have the Hi-Tek keyboard. Furthermore it has a rev.5 motherboard with the buggy Toshiba Gary chip and what it seems to be a kludge fix for it but that it's not present in the rev.3 motherboard. Years later I bought other two A500s, they are quite similar, they both sport the Space Invaders keyboard and a rev.3 mainboard but a different plastic bottom shell. One is identical to the one of the Amiga you bought back in the day, the other one has the same little sticker in the centre showing only the serial number but it doesn't have the engraved / embossed information about the computer model, FCC information and other things. All three A500s were made in W. Germany. So, why I'm speaking about all these stuff? Because the strange thing is that the Amiga I bought in 1988 has a serial number that is in between the other two I bought later as numeric progression but from the cases and motherboards revinsions standpoint it is incoherent. The only thing I can suppose is that there were many assembly lines inside the factory and each one used the components they have in stock, serial numbers were of course in numeric progression but at some point there must have been upgrades in the components they used to make the computers, maybe not on all the assembly lines. This could be the reason why a computer with an earlier serial number sports components that usually were mounted on later production. I hope this little story will be informative to you. Cheers from one of your Italian followers!

Great video, waiting for the next episode. I have an earlier Amiga 500 boxed, with embossed logo, embossed information on the back, AZERTY keyboard, serial No. 89140. I'm living in France, very close to Belgium.

My A500 is from week 20 (on the yellow sticker) and has the exact same C= key Hi-Tek keyboard (date 8707), but without the caps on the 6570 keyboard chip. My case is also like yours, with the moulded info and just the serial No. on the sticker (38165 on mine). Also the moulded C= logo on the case.

Nice. I had no idea about the earliest Amiga badge as my early 500 has the chicken lips keyboard and embossed emblem. Also a mitsumi disk drive and Rev 3 motherboard and none of the chips are named as on later versions.

Interesting video and machine, i still get butterflies in my stomach looking at my A500... ❤

Thanks

I had one of those... I worked in the trade back in the day and got my hands on one of the first batch in the UK, a few days before they hit the shop shelves... I really wish I'd kept it... :(

I have a chicken lips A500 with the embossed logo on the case. It was sealed when I first got it. It has a rev.5 motherboard. Oh, and mine also has the same floppy drive as shown in the video here

If you have cleaned the Agnus socket and Agnus chip and it still doesn't work, have a look at EMI406 (right next to Denise). This is equipped with a 1 ohm resistor on these boards. It is often defective. It supplies U40 and U41 with 5 volts. regards botfixer

Received mine Christmas 87. Now I need a time machine

I like the "New! Now includes disk 'First Steps' " stickers on the Amiga boxes. 😀Even the one with the SN190 had it (in French). I guess the first 189 units were sold without the disk then? 😉 Quite telling, they didn't waste much time or employ marketing experts to design these boxes. "Just make a box, put the photo of the unit on it. And, ya, add a sticker that it even comes with a startup disk...". Done! 😆

I remember my college getting the amiga prototypes upgraded to 1MB on a workbench 1.2 .. we done a lot of programming projects on that we also tested the Amstrad PC with VGA prototypes at more or less the same time.. funny how we all mostly went out and bought news A500 after that .. I was still just developing on C64 and could not afford one until I waited for it to be more settled in the market .. actually i think the A500 we had only had 256K but upgraded to either 512 or 1MB cannot remember now

Hi, i found an amiga that has a sheet of red paper as insulation between motherboard and shield. usually the insulation is done with a plastic sheet. Can you tell me how your insulation is done?

We used to sell Commodore back in the day, and I can remember getting the first shippment of Amigas delivered to our shop. A huge stack of these white boxes with the picture of the A500 on it. 2 EPAL's full of these, like 50 or 60 units. By the end of the week they were all gone... I would advice against doing anything to this unit to fix it. There's lot of working Amigas around, but few that are this old and totally original. You should keep it that way.

I had a Rev 3 like this with no Video Sync at all...after replacing the factory *resistor* at EMI406 it worked perfectly..later models have a EMI filter here. At 19:33 in the video you can also see you have a resistor there at the bottom right of the picture - just to the right of where the bodge wire goes to the board

15:155 i heard that mechanics when you pressed that commodore key the first time already ... soundcheck would have been cool :) this dude should let someone clone the keyboard so we can make new mechanical keyboards :P i know there are others but the original would be awesome

This is an early A500 for sure. I own one with serial 538 I think and it has the same features including the fat logo and fat plastic case etc. Even the keyboard controller from 1986. So it seems like Commodore made At least a couple of thousend of this set-up. Also note the old school ”commodore” type set on the sticker.

Where is the Varta of death, no clock on rev 3? Happy New Year mate.

I had that model 0190 of Amiga 500 when I was a teenager. It was 100% identical to that one. The one I had had to have the floppy drive replaced in it though and I upgraded the ram to 512kb I think. I know I doubled the ram

I noticed there isn't a ground strap from the kb to the floppy drive. Is that a euro thing or because it's an early model. My ntsc chicken lips kb has a ground strap. Interesting.

The enter key is also marked differently to other international later keyboards. The marking are far left, but later it's in the middle

There's one of those with the C= logo and none-embossed badge on amigang website under the Amiga Mini page, sat with a mini on top :D maybe useful to try and find out the serial number etc for that one? :D

Niceee!