Kiwi Kraze is an NTSC game, but it was developed in Europe (by Ocean), so the cut-off screen is probably a bug that didn't get noticed. The European title is "The New Zealand Story", which is also the name of its original arcade release.
I already had the Field Found A500 when you gave me the deconstructed machine, so I instantly had in mint that part of it would go to fix this machine as I knew there was no way the keyboard or disk drive would ever work again.
I know it's an absolute mess, but I would 100% watch you try to get the field found monitor going! Based on the thumbnail I was hoping that's what this video was. Thanks!
I appreciate you showing both the ups and downs of your troubleshooting. Making mistakes and solving unexpected problems is where we learn for the next time!
Same. Cars are more my specialty and the parts cannon style of diagnosis drives me nuts. Adrian is excellent at showing us the best way to diagnose a problem and I love it.
I'm glad you kept the evidence of this Amiga's past. It is tempting to make it look new, but all new Amiga 500's were alike and had no story to tell. I'm an organist (not a particularly good one) and I see similar decisions made about old pipe organs. The restoration of one particularly large organ will preserve the many thousands of old cloth-wrapped wires and pneumatics relaying information from the console to the pipe chambers, even though the whole massive instrument now runs over a single Cat 5 Ethernet cable! So kudos to you (and to them) for keeping the fabric and history of the thing intact while restoring it to working order.
Thanks! Yeah I really do love it that the cases is a bit yellowed, but when you look at the back of the machine where the ports are, all the old rust is still completely visible.
While I don't think it needs to look pristine, I do think leaving the rust can cause future problems. Personally I think this would have been a good candidate for painting. Use rust remover on everything then paint it. It would be unique. I had this very issue on my C64. The cart port didn't work. So I sprayed de-oxit. It worked for a bit. Then it didn't. I used more it worked again......and then it didn't. And I couldn't get it to come back. So I replaced it. It works perfectly now. Way better than it did even with de-oxit. Also my U2+ cart had green sludge on it from the de-oxit. I cleaned that up a tried again before the replacement. Still nothing. So I think your experience will be like mine. You'll get life, but not a lot.
Rust stains on plastic can be removed with The Works toilet bowl cleaner. The same company also makes a lime scale remover which also works on rust stains. I used several bottles cleaning the rust stains on a plastic shower stall and a bathtub in a property where I used to live. Worked great. Just had to saturate paper towels and stick them all over and leave them over night (or longer).
40:00 Honestly, I'd really be more than willing to try and restore that keyboard. I would clean it up, restore that membrane with a silver pen, soak that rusty plate in evaporust before painting or plating it, do a full restoration on that PCB, etc. At least I think it would be fun.
It's been a real pleasure to watch the entire process of restoration of this amazing computer (I've been lucky enough to get back in the 90's) And your face everytime you sorted a problem was priceless.😃 A true passionate person Congrats sir!
The other test did tell you it found an error. @47:22 of your second video it stated "Bad Block start at $00C135F4" I was surprised you didn't see it in the last video. It made me super confused when you claimed the expansion was fine.
Yeah, I spotted that too, as did a few others. really surprised that this was not only missed,, but the comments about it also missed. oh well. Just more troubleshooting video. It's actually a little frustrating watching him _refuse_ to re-run the previous test, cause he (erroneously) believes it showed no error, thus why re-run it.
I know exactly what you mean by the computers that are the toughest projects can have the most meaning. One of my favorite computers is an Amiga 600 I acquired with significant capacitor damage. It was likely nothing to the levels you've worked on before, but I had to repair disintegrated pads and a few broken traces. When I finally got it working, it was a triumphant "yes!" moment.
I've never actually USED an Amiga. I have NO idea how to use one. I have no clue what games, utilities, languages, or anything the like. But I am so glad that this machine is back up and running 100%. :)
The Amiga was amazing for it's time. True preemptive multitasking OS, superlative out of the box graphics and sound. Would have made an excellent all around business computer as well as a games machine, but it was only marketed as a gaming machine, much to it's detriment. You owe it to yourself to experience one, if you haven't. They aren't even hard to come by, or expensive.
@@jeromethiel4323 I have enough Commodore hardware as it is, but what I do have is a MiSTer that does have it installed. I have it all maxed out for what the core allows, but once at the desktop, I grind to a halt. I ended up going from the 64 out to PC. I didn't get the privs to run Amiga (I was like 12 at the time, so, didn't quite have the idea of having a JOB or something). Been too busy as of late rebuilding a 486 and a P3 and rebuilding my NAS. When I get the MiSTer up and running again... Maybe
I realise hardware is your priority, Adrian (another great achievement BTW!) but there may be some urgency in dumping images of those disks you have for preservation. I don't know exactly what you have there but you're certainly not the only content creator who seems to have unique disks. I guess you guys are the people to go to to have disks 'dumped' on to from various sources! I asked Neil from Retro -Man- Cave if he would make some of obscure floppies he had too, but he's also a busy guy!
Thanks for the section on recognition of the Amiga's hardware functionality for the time it was developed (compared to other computers of the day). It certainly had some neat tricks for those using it in graphics/video work (by adding on a genlock for example, to get steady video output/overlays, etc).
As a musician I often think of songs from when we were young on hearing things you say in your videos. "Happy To Be Stuck With You" my Huey Lewis and The News is what came to mind today. (Edited a typo in the song title since you said stuck on for the part. oops.)
Back in the day, I used to have to tinker around inside my Amiga to keep it running or make mods. I had no idea what I was doing, no internet, no manuals, so it's fun to put some closure around how it actually worked. It's always fun to watch you bring these old computers, even though they serve no practical use today, they are part of our history. Rainbow Project and Kiwe Newzeland game (I forget the name), those where two I played for days. Thanks for the memories, Adrian.
And, once again, Adrian manages to surface the _Titanic._ Brilliantly executed, sir, and I hope this inspires someone to attempt fixing other machines like this. 👍
I really enjoyed this series. It’s great to see the process, including the mistakes. Not because I enjoy a bit of schadenfreude, but because it helps me to not feel quite so dumb when I make mistakes with my A1200! Thanks, Adrian.
Thank you, Adrian, for this channel. As an aged 8-/16-bit nerd, your videos are wonderfully entertaining and have a kind of relaxing effect for me too. It's exciting and instructive to watch you solve problems, even if you sometimes talk a little too much or when it comes to circuit theory, I quickly get lost (not everyone is an electronics specialist like you) … but that really doesn't matter: as I said, I think it's great to take a close look at old electronics - that you take a look - and I think it's fantastic that your channel exists. Grateful greetings from Germany! 😊
Hah the 2nd game you played was released in the UK as The New Zealand Story. Absolutely loved it and played it to death. Great to see it being played again and hear that oh so familiar soundtrack... Bravo on bringing a piece of vintage computing history back to life :)
When Adrian said Kiwi I immediately thought of "New Zealand Story". Thought it would be great if he played that. And voilà, when the music started, I had to grin so much. 😁
I had a little sideline of transferring video to DVD in the 2000s and I was on the lookout for a good second hand VHS VCR. I looked online, in second hand shops and asking friends and family. Then one day I was taking some E-waste to the dump and there I saw it. A Mitsubishi 4 head NICAM stereo VCR from the 90s, when they were still built properly (still a lot of plastic, but not too much). When I lifted it up, water flowed out, because it had been sitting in the open and it rains A LOT in Ireland. The heads were a little fogged and it looked terrible on the inside. I cleaned it up and tested it, it worked perfectly. This battered junkyard dog became my most used and beloved machine. It would play anything and never let me down. One man's junk...
Firstly, I love both your videos and the pure joy for both the process and the computers involved you infuse them with. I'm writing with a suggestion. Often in your videos, you'll say you're going to do something, then cut to after you've done it. When this happens, I often wonder how long that thing you did actually took. This video series was three hours long, but obviously you spent far more than three hours repairing the machine. What I'd love to see, is a graphic which fills in this gap in our knowledge of what you're doing. Something like 'TOTAL REPAIR TIME', which updates as you progress and by the end, informs the viewer just how long the whole process actually took. I'd love this, and I think it would really increase everyone's appreciation (sky-high already, no doubt) for the work you're actually putting in to each repair. Love your work, regardless.
Luv it Adrian. Well done! I remember downloading stuff from BBSs (Zmodem) while at the same time writing documents in Wordsworth back on my Amiga 2000 in 1988. That was something special. Even playing mod files, though they required too much memory most of the time. Amazing machine back in the 80s.
I approached the series thinking I would just skim across part 1, ended up watching all three end to end. Great work and some nice tips for my own work. Thanks for sharing.
This was awesome! - Thanks for showing the "stumbling" parts, I always find them as helpful as proper procedures. I really loved my A1000 with the 1084, and wish I'd never got rid of it. The pirating and demo/mod scenes were lightyears ahead of any other platform. Just a fun time.
Really enjoyed this mini series - had an Amiga 500 just after leaving college, so around ‘87/‘88. It’s good to remember just how truly advanced this machine was both in terms of the hardware, with those legendary custom chips, and its software: that amazing preemptive, multitasking, message passing OS… having, at the time, completed a degree in Computing, a message passing OS was leading edge at that time before we all regressed back to Unix and/or shifted to Windows. I could go on waxing lyrical about my (sadly, gone forever) Amigas for hours 😊 Great to see one returned from the grave.
I remember back in the mid 80s (pre Amiga I think) I once saw an IBM PC at an IKEA store here in Sweden. It was running some sort of demo and there was a short animated "video" (no sound though) of a baseball player hitting a ball. That short animation was close to photo realistic and just blew my mind. So you're totally correct about that image you showed. If you could get that displayed on your home computer back then you would hardly believe it.
Absolutely, the Amiga was an absoulte marvel for its time. When my father bought one, I had a circle of friends that came and see the "new computer" I replaced my trusty C64 with. I booted up "Blood Money", and the intro music played. They were convinced I was tricking them, and I hid a cassette player somewhere. Great memories!
I love your Amiga videos. Of all the machines I've owned since 1988 its the only one I miss. can't believe it was left in a field, I'd give anything to have another Amiga500
It's really nice to see that Amiga brought back to life! Good job Adrian! I would suggest for testing though to use some late developed demos because they need a perfectly working machine to run properly. These guys squeze the last bit of memory and hardware architecture to make these demos possible. One of my favorites when working with OCS/ECS Agnus Amiga chipsets, is The Black Lotus - EON. Give it a try and enjoy!
Heard an interesting fact today. The compute power in a modern day mobile phone is more than the power that was available to the first NASA mission to the moon!
Great work Adrian! I just enjoyed all 3 parts! It was fun to watch this! Its great to see this Amiga 500 working again! Great to see how you put yourself in that all! Keep on! 💪
Congratulations Adrian on bringing that A500 back from the dead! I Absolutely agree on your choice of preserving that rusty patina, what a story it tells!
Wish I still had my Commodore's. Started with a Commodore Vic-20, then C=64, Amiga 1000, then moved to a 500, a 2000, and finally a 3000T. The 3000T actually helped me complete a Graphic Design class in College. They used 2000's and Digi View. I had the 3000 and Digi View, so I didn't have to wait for time in the computer lab. Commodore put out some AWESOME computers...
Im just completing a Presario 433 (486, all in one deal) that must have been outside for some time. The bottom tray of the motherboard drawer was so bad... but worse was on the top shelf between the CRT power supply - I had to remove both side circuit boards, neck board, and a few other things and carefully remove the rust, treat it chemically, and repaint it. The reason for the computer not POSTing? Rust dust and nature got into the only fan in the system. Once I replaced that, it came to life - I'm just finalizing WFW 3.11's network card now on it. It's amazing how this thing still works perfectly (I even adjusted the pots to stretch the screen out while I was in there) and has a great, sharp image!
Honestly, the most impressive part to me was turning the stripped philips head into a flat tip to get it out. I'd never thought of that before, and it's pretty great. As for keyboards being tedious, I'm right there with ya'. I assembled a (modern) mechanical keyboard recently, and even though it's designed to be easily servicable, it was still a pain. Working on one that's in bad shape, and wasn't really intended to be serviced like that, sounds like a rather unfun time indeed.
Those 68 ohm resistors are there to match the characteristic impedance of the signal line (not to protect the processor in the event of a short, or similar). They are series terminators and are placed between the driver device and the com0onents that load the signal. Their role is to minimise signal overshoot and absorb the excess energy in the signal when it is reflected from the far end of the signal trace. In DRAM arrays like the one here, they are commonly used on the address lines and also on the control signals (RAS\,CAS\,WE\). The control lines sometimes use different values since the input capacitance on the DRAM chip is different between control and address signals. They are not commonly used on the data signals because they would only go to a couple of chips, and would not make sense where the signals would be bidirectional.
Рік тому+2
My 1200 had a slightly newer teac originally, but it didn’t had the hd pin (I do see the pads on the pcb). Also, I’m pretty sure 235f is not hd. I suspect teac used the same parts for 235f and 235hf (the hd drive). By the time they manufactured my drive, they figured out how to save that hd detect switch. Also the top cover is unique to the amiga, it has bigger cutout compared to the pc drives I have - so that’s worth keeping with the eject button if it is not completely rusted.
Lemon acid solved in water is usually really great to remove rust, drop rusty bolts etc in there and they will be rust- removed. Will probably work on plastic aswell.
These were the big strengths of the Amiga: Video, sound, parallel and serial port run independently in DMA mode. The CPU doesn't have to do the heavy lifting. But in the end that was the Amiga's drawback: the graphics remained in TV mode and couldn't quite keep up with VGA. The floppy remained a DD floppy and an HD floppy could only be achieved with additional controllers. In the end, Motorola stopped producing the MC680x0 CPU and the attempt to use PowerCPU ended in a dead end. The MC680x0 was still used in washing machines, but these were already reduced controllers.
Love the Amiga videos, always fascinating. I used a 2000, 3000, and 4000 but only exclusively for video toaster work at our local TV station. I never spent any time exploring the games or other options an Amiga could do. The magic Newtek did was amazing but it is equally crazy how much these machines could do natively for their time.
At "the time" it was only the 24 C= Amiga 2000's with Toasters running Newtek's Lightwave 3D could economically produce the show Babylon 5 . It use to take like 45 mins PER frame to render. ;) I still have a couple A1000's, an A500, and an A1200 along with the Programming manual, and several of the ROM Kernal manuals.
i'm almost certain my Commodore Canada A500 (1988 vintage) had a TEAC floppy drive. The disk eject button snapped and I got tired of using a screwdriver to pop my floppys out and took my A500 apart to replace the button. Not 100% but 95% sure it was a TEAC branded floppy disk drive, but this was nearly 35 years ago now so I could be wrong.
I now want to play Kiwi Kraze. I miss platform games. Maybe when I get time I'll get an emulator again. Just too busy. Great result with the FF Amiga. Happy you got there in the end.
i'm not sure what the design of the tab for the memory door is supposed to look like, but in my experience with such things, I think it might be a good candidate for a 3d printed replacement. those kinds of simple machines are typically pretty easy to model with something like tinkercad.
A fun idea to display the corroded/stained parts while retaining functionality would be to display this in 'exploded' form. In other words, use some stand-offs or other spacers to expose the lower case, RF shield, motherboard, upper case, and keyboard - all spaced apart so you can see the carnage. Lovely video and congratulations on the amazing repair! Cheers!!
I can't remember it word for word, but there's a funny quote from intel(?) about nmos vs cmos. for nmos "we had the zeroes, but the one wasn't very good, it was about a 0.8". then for cmos "the ones were really ones"
Each machine has a different purpose when it comes down to it. This Amiga will forever remind us of its weathered history as a survivor and therefore as Mater in Cars said, "...I don't fix these. I wanna remember these dents forever."
So awesome Adrian so wish i had your skills my Friend, i think its great the way you preserved it as it is, hats of to you my friend i hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
Great video. I’m really into old rusty stuff (Coleman Lanterns) and I suggest you try citric acid to remove corrosion. It works really well. Even that keyboard shield could be brought back to « decent » state. It works differently from evaporust.
It is wild what the Amiga was capable of when compared to its contemporaries. When I finished my Computer Science degree, in my Operating Systems class I covered the AmigaOS. I don't think the fact that there was a preemptive multitasking OS in 1985, years before OS/2 and Windows NT, impressed them as much as it did me. But then again, I grew up with an Amiga 1000. The ports of Marble Madness and Arkanoid were excellent. But some ports suffered, as many companies would port to the Atari ST first, and then just port that to the Amiga, and not take advantage of the Amiga hardware's power. You can see it in games like you showed in this video, but then play something that was made for the Amiga, like Turrican, and see the difference.
If you have an intact cover with a working tab you can make a cast of the tab in your glue, then place the broken cover in the mold. Super glue + baking soda works wonders for repairing plastic parts.
First time in my almost four years watching a video by Adrian that I didn't really like: for this whole series I was really waiting for you to finally remove that huge what appears to be a white battery-leak like oxidation on the capacitor array on the right side of the motherboard. Never happened. While I kinda do understand keeping the rust on the case - considering you coated it with a lacquer to prevent further spread - but this stuff is on the components that do carry an active electrical current every time the machine is powered on. Now, I'm now chemist, but I know well enough, that the first thing to do on a liquid damaged laptop is to remove the battery - hence the current - to prevent the further spread of oxidation. And while this particular machine no longer has any liquid, we still have already highly oxidated area that keeps getting actively energized, potentially worsening the issue through electrolysis over time. I might be super wrong about this stuff, but it really bugs me. Also, like others have mentioned, at least some components on the external disk drive and in the original power brick could clearly have had another lease at life. At very least as spares.
Great work Adrian, that's lovely Amiga 500! I completely agree with leaving the 'patina' on the machine, it's part of its history and gives it character. I have a wrecked Acorn Electron that I managed to salvage - including the ULA ripped out of it - and I like that it's a bit beat up but I've brought it back to life.
I experimented a lot and found the most effective for me is a few drops of glass cleaner, then put the disk in the drive and use it. I can only do one side at a time (otherwise the disk won’t spin, from the extra drag). But the success rate after 1-3 treatments has been 100%. I’m doing this on disks that have never been used, so media wear isn’t a problem. Anyway, nice to see your process - it’s so different from mine - perhaps I’ll use AmigaTestKit now instead of formatting and judging the speed of the format :)
Not sure I agree with keeping the rust, but it's yours to do with as you like. Rust is rust though, and i would at least try to neutralize it with something, or sandpaper it off. Pretty amazing that it works though, good job on saving this poor thing. It still will leave behind black rust scars and stains even when you neutralize it, preserving the "patina" as you put it.
I always like it how Adrian says: without further ado, let’s get right to it and then starts the video trailer
Kiwi Kraze is an NTSC game, but it was developed in Europe (by Ocean), so the cut-off screen is probably a bug that didn't get noticed. The European title is "The New Zealand Story", which is also the name of its original arcade release.
Awesome!
I wondered why that game looked familiar. Wonder if the cheat codes are the same...
Yep, I was confused when I saw it was called "Kiwi Kraze" I always knew it as "The New Zealand Story"
Why did they rename it? Americans at the time wouldn't know what a 'New Zealand' was?
@@chrisyboy219 Americans don't even know their own states lol
Glad that the field found amiga came back to life. It’s super cool to see the art project parts inside a functioning Amiga finally too!
I already had the Field Found A500 when you gave me the deconstructed machine, so I instantly had in mint that part of it would go to fix this machine as I knew there was no way the keyboard or disk drive would ever work again.
@@adriansdigitalbasement interesting
I know it's an absolute mess, but I would 100% watch you try to get the field found monitor going! Based on the thumbnail I was hoping that's what this video was. Thanks!
I appreciate you showing both the ups and downs of your troubleshooting. Making mistakes and solving unexpected problems is where we learn for the next time!
Same. Cars are more my specialty and the parts cannon style of diagnosis drives me nuts. Adrian is excellent at showing us the best way to diagnose a problem and I love it.
I'm glad you kept the evidence of this Amiga's past. It is tempting to make it look new, but all new Amiga 500's were alike and had no story to tell. I'm an organist (not a particularly good one) and I see similar decisions made about old pipe organs. The restoration of one particularly large organ will preserve the many thousands of old cloth-wrapped wires and pneumatics relaying information from the console to the pipe chambers, even though the whole massive instrument now runs over a single Cat 5 Ethernet cable! So kudos to you (and to them) for keeping the fabric and history of the thing intact while restoring it to working order.
Thanks! Yeah I really do love it that the cases is a bit yellowed, but when you look at the back of the machine where the ports are, all the old rust is still completely visible.
While I don't think it needs to look pristine, I do think leaving the rust can cause future problems. Personally I think this would have been a good candidate for painting. Use rust remover on everything then paint it. It would be unique. I had this very issue on my C64. The cart port didn't work. So I sprayed de-oxit. It worked for a bit. Then it didn't. I used more it worked again......and then it didn't. And I couldn't get it to come back. So I replaced it. It works perfectly now. Way better than it did even with de-oxit. Also my U2+ cart had green sludge on it from the de-oxit. I cleaned that up a tried again before the replacement. Still nothing. So I think your experience will be like mine. You'll get life, but not a lot.
"a good, honest Amiga" is a great way to put it. This thing is like a 70-year-old farmer who still does his work every day on his 1950s Deere tractor.
Rust stains on plastic can be removed with The Works toilet bowl cleaner. The same company also makes a lime scale remover which also works on rust stains. I used several bottles cleaning the rust stains on a plastic shower stall and a bathtub in a property where I used to live. Worked great. Just had to saturate paper towels and stick them all over and leave them over night (or longer).
Good to know. We have rusty water and inevitably have to clean rust out of showerheads and such every so often.
CLR is also very effective.
40:00 Honestly, I'd really be more than willing to try and restore that keyboard. I would clean it up, restore that membrane with a silver pen, soak that rusty plate in evaporust before painting or plating it, do a full restoration on that PCB, etc. At least I think it would be fun.
It's been a real pleasure to watch the entire process of restoration of this amazing computer (I've been lucky enough to get back in the 90's)
And your face everytime you sorted a problem was priceless.😃
A true passionate person
Congrats sir!
Minor correction, Adrian: The purpose of the series resistors on the buss are to reduce line ringing.
😁👍👍👍
great catch im sure her will appreciate it'
The other test did tell you it found an error. @47:22 of your second video it stated "Bad Block start at $00C135F4" I was surprised you didn't see it in the last video. It made me super confused when you claimed the expansion was fine.
Yeah, I spotted that too, as did a few others. really surprised that this was not only missed,, but the comments about it also missed. oh well. Just more troubleshooting video. It's actually a little frustrating watching him _refuse_ to re-run the previous test, cause he (erroneously) believes it showed no error, thus why re-run it.
I know exactly what you mean by the computers that are the toughest projects can have the most meaning. One of my favorite computers is an Amiga 600 I acquired with significant capacitor damage. It was likely nothing to the levels you've worked on before, but I had to repair disintegrated pads and a few broken traces. When I finally got it working, it was a triumphant "yes!" moment.
I've never actually USED an Amiga. I have NO idea how to use one. I have no clue what games, utilities, languages, or anything the like. But I am so glad that this machine is back up and running 100%. :)
The Amiga was amazing for it's time. True preemptive multitasking OS, superlative out of the box graphics and sound. Would have made an excellent all around business computer as well as a games machine, but it was only marketed as a gaming machine, much to it's detriment.
You owe it to yourself to experience one, if you haven't. They aren't even hard to come by, or expensive.
@@jeromethiel4323 I have enough Commodore hardware as it is, but what I do have is a MiSTer that does have it installed. I have it all maxed out for what the core allows, but once at the desktop, I grind to a halt. I ended up going from the 64 out to PC. I didn't get the privs to run Amiga (I was like 12 at the time, so, didn't quite have the idea of having a JOB or something). Been too busy as of late rebuilding a 486 and a P3 and rebuilding my NAS. When I get the MiSTer up and running again... Maybe
I realise hardware is your priority, Adrian (another great achievement BTW!) but there may be some urgency in dumping images of those disks you have for preservation. I don't know exactly what you have there but you're certainly not the only content creator who seems to have unique disks. I guess you guys are the people to go to to have disks 'dumped' on to from various sources! I asked Neil from Retro -Man- Cave if he would make some of obscure floppies he had too, but he's also a busy guy!
Agreed!
Thanks for the section on recognition of the Amiga's hardware functionality for the time it was developed (compared to other computers of the day). It certainly had some neat tricks for those using it in graphics/video work (by adding on a genlock for example, to get steady video output/overlays, etc).
I love your channel since you started UA-cam full time! This was a great project and it was awesome you got it working.
As a musician I often think of songs from when we were young on hearing things you say in your videos. "Happy To Be Stuck With You" my Huey Lewis and The News is what came to mind today. (Edited a typo in the song title since you said stuck on for the part. oops.)
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It looks like the only one perfectly working rust bucket A500 in the world! So awesome Adrian!
That's exactly the configuration I grew up with. It makes me feel so old to see it almost 40 years later looking like a geological find.
Back in the day, I used to have to tinker around inside my Amiga to keep it running or make mods. I had no idea what I was doing, no internet, no manuals, so it's fun to put some closure around how it actually worked. It's always fun to watch you bring these old computers, even though they serve no practical use today, they are part of our history. Rainbow Project and Kiwe Newzeland game (I forget the name), those where two I played for days. Thanks for the memories, Adrian.
Amazing when I first saw it in the box I did not think it would work again.
And, once again, Adrian manages to surface the _Titanic._ Brilliantly executed, sir, and I hope this inspires someone to attempt fixing other machines like this. 👍
Absolutely amazing, well done sir!
Great job Adrian. Nice Amiga 500. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands
This Amiga took on nature in a fight and survived (with a little help) and now has the battle scars to show off.
So cool to see love for the vintage computers like the Amiga 500! That poor thing was left for dead but you've brought it back to life!
Wow... that poor Amiga has been to heck-n-back! Glad to see it working again.
I really enjoyed this series. It’s great to see the process, including the mistakes. Not because I enjoy a bit of schadenfreude, but because it helps me to not feel quite so dumb when I make mistakes with my A1200! Thanks, Adrian.
Thank you, Adrian, for this channel. As an aged 8-/16-bit nerd, your videos are wonderfully entertaining and have a kind of relaxing effect for me too. It's exciting and instructive to watch you solve problems, even if you sometimes talk a little too much or when it comes to circuit theory, I quickly get lost (not everyone is an electronics specialist like you) … but that really doesn't matter: as I said, I think it's great to take a close look at old electronics - that you take a look - and I think it's fantastic that your channel exists. Grateful greetings from Germany! 😊
Hah the 2nd game you played was released in the UK as The New Zealand Story. Absolutely loved it and played it to death. Great to see it being played again and hear that oh so familiar soundtrack... Bravo on bringing a piece of vintage computing history back to life :)
27:42 With the right boot utility you can boot an NTSC A500 into PAL mode and then boot a game/demo. I can't remember the name of the utility though.
50Hz NTSC. ;) ISTR it was called palboot. I remember running a lot of the classic demos with it.
When Adrian said Kiwi I immediately thought of "New Zealand Story". Thought it would be great if he played that. And voilà, when the music started, I had to grin so much. 😁
Brings back so much memory, i had a friend who owned an amiga 500 back in the day, played the hell out of it for years. Would love to grab one today 😍
I love Amiga nad Amiga videos. Thanks to that computer I did found this channel.
I had a little sideline of transferring video to DVD in the 2000s and I was on the lookout for a good second hand VHS VCR. I looked online, in second hand shops and asking friends and family.
Then one day I was taking some E-waste to the dump and there I saw it. A Mitsubishi 4 head NICAM stereo VCR from the 90s, when they were still built properly (still a lot of plastic, but not too much).
When I lifted it up, water flowed out, because it had been sitting in the open and it rains A LOT in Ireland. The heads were a little fogged and it looked terrible on the inside.
I cleaned it up and tested it, it worked perfectly. This battered junkyard dog became my most used and beloved machine. It would play anything and never let me down.
One man's junk...
Firstly, I love both your videos and the pure joy for both the process and the computers involved you infuse them with.
I'm writing with a suggestion. Often in your videos, you'll say you're going to do something, then cut to after you've done it. When this happens, I often wonder how long that thing you did actually took. This video series was three hours long, but obviously you spent far more than three hours repairing the machine.
What I'd love to see, is a graphic which fills in this gap in our knowledge of what you're doing. Something like 'TOTAL REPAIR TIME', which updates as you progress and by the end, informs the viewer just how long the whole process actually took.
I'd love this, and I think it would really increase everyone's appreciation (sky-high already, no doubt) for the work you're actually putting in to each repair.
Love your work, regardless.
Luv it Adrian. Well done! I remember downloading stuff from BBSs (Zmodem) while at the same time writing documents in Wordsworth back on my Amiga 2000 in 1988. That was something special. Even playing mod files, though they required too much memory most of the time. Amazing machine back in the 80s.
It's Unbelievable. Congratulations Adrian.
I approached the series thinking I would just skim across part 1, ended up watching all three end to end. Great work and some nice tips for my own work. Thanks for sharing.
You are a very smart and talented perfect person, I came back to my childhood memories, thank you very much :)
This was awesome! - Thanks for showing the "stumbling" parts, I always find them as helpful as proper procedures. I really loved my A1000 with the 1084, and wish I'd never got rid of it. The pirating and demo/mod scenes were lightyears ahead of any other platform. Just a fun time.
Really enjoyed this mini series - had an Amiga 500 just after leaving college, so around ‘87/‘88. It’s good to remember just how truly advanced this machine was both in terms of the hardware, with those legendary custom chips, and its software: that amazing preemptive, multitasking, message passing OS… having, at the time, completed a degree in Computing, a message passing OS was leading edge at that time before we all regressed back to Unix and/or shifted to Windows.
I could go on waxing lyrical about my (sadly, gone forever) Amigas for hours 😊 Great to see one returned from the grave.
I remember back in the mid 80s (pre Amiga I think) I once saw an IBM PC at an IKEA store here in Sweden. It was running some sort of demo and there was a short animated "video" (no sound though) of a baseball player hitting a ball. That short animation was close to photo realistic and just blew my mind. So you're totally correct about that image you showed. If you could get that displayed on your home computer back then you would hardly believe it.
Absolutely, the Amiga was an absoulte marvel for its time. When my father bought one, I had a circle of friends that came and see the "new computer" I replaced my trusty C64 with. I booted up "Blood Money", and the intro music played. They were convinced I was tricking them, and I hid a cassette player somewhere. Great memories!
Dude thats an epic journey, Well done man totally great to watch and admire your persistance
Thanks for saving this box... I had big fun watching and listening to you.
I love your Amiga videos. Of all the machines I've owned since 1988 its the only one I miss. can't believe it was left in a field, I'd give anything to have another Amiga500
It's really nice to see that Amiga brought back to life! Good job Adrian! I would suggest for testing though to use some late developed demos because they need a perfectly working machine to run properly. These guys squeze the last bit of memory and hardware architecture to make these demos possible. One of my favorites when working with OCS/ECS Agnus Amiga chipsets, is The Black Lotus - EON. Give it a try and enjoy!
Heard an interesting fact today. The compute power in a modern day mobile phone is more than the power that was available to the first NASA mission to the moon!
You deserve a medal ! - I wish I still had my Amiga, so many happy memories, and sad memory made me throw it away
Great work Adrian! I just enjoyed all 3 parts! It was fun to watch this! Its great to see this Amiga 500 working again! Great to see how you put yourself in that all! Keep on! 💪
Congratulations Adrian on bringing that A500 back from the dead! I Absolutely agree on your choice of preserving that rusty patina, what a story it tells!
Great troubleshooting, reminds me of the fun I had working at TI doing repairs on TI-99/4A computers. We used the piggyback method all the time.
Wish I still had my Commodore's. Started with a Commodore Vic-20, then C=64, Amiga 1000, then moved to a 500, a 2000, and finally a 3000T. The 3000T actually helped me complete a Graphic Design class in College. They used 2000's and Digi View. I had the 3000 and Digi View, so I didn't have to wait for time in the computer lab.
Commodore put out some AWESOME computers...
Im just completing a Presario 433 (486, all in one deal) that must have been outside for some time. The bottom tray of the motherboard drawer was so bad... but worse was on the top shelf between the CRT power supply - I had to remove both side circuit boards, neck board, and a few other things and carefully remove the rust, treat it chemically, and repaint it.
The reason for the computer not POSTing? Rust dust and nature got into the only fan in the system. Once I replaced that, it came to life - I'm just finalizing WFW 3.11's network card now on it. It's amazing how this thing still works perfectly (I even adjusted the pots to stretch the screen out while I was in there) and has a great, sharp image!
Fantastic! All that functionality with only 1mb of RAM. Amazing.
Honestly, the most impressive part to me was turning the stripped philips head into a flat tip to get it out. I'd never thought of that before, and it's pretty great.
As for keyboards being tedious, I'm right there with ya'. I assembled a (modern) mechanical keyboard recently, and even though it's designed to be easily servicable, it was still a pain. Working on one that's in bad shape, and wasn't really intended to be serviced like that, sounds like a rather unfun time indeed.
Those 68 ohm resistors are there to match the characteristic impedance of the signal line (not to protect the processor in the event of a short, or similar). They are series terminators and are placed between the driver device and the com0onents that load the signal. Their role is to minimise signal overshoot and absorb the excess energy in the signal when it is reflected from the far end of the signal trace. In DRAM arrays like the one here, they are commonly used on the address lines and also on the control signals (RAS\,CAS\,WE\). The control lines sometimes use different values since the input capacitance on the DRAM chip is different between control and address signals. They are not commonly used on the data signals because they would only go to a couple of chips, and would not make sense where the signals would be bidirectional.
My 1200 had a slightly newer teac originally, but it didn’t had the hd pin (I do see the pads on the pcb). Also, I’m pretty sure 235f is not hd. I suspect teac used the same parts for 235f and 235hf (the hd drive). By the time they manufactured my drive, they figured out how to save that hd detect switch.
Also the top cover is unique to the amiga, it has bigger cutout compared to the pc drives I have - so that’s worth keeping with the eject button if it is not completely rusted.
Lemon acid solved in water is usually really great to remove rust, drop rusty bolts etc in there and they will be rust- removed. Will probably work on plastic aswell.
These were the big strengths of the Amiga: Video, sound, parallel and serial port run independently in DMA mode. The CPU doesn't have to do the heavy lifting. But in the end that was the Amiga's drawback: the graphics remained in TV mode and couldn't quite keep up with VGA. The floppy remained a DD floppy and an HD floppy could only be achieved with additional controllers. In the end, Motorola stopped producing the MC680x0 CPU and the attempt to use PowerCPU ended in a dead end. The MC680x0 was still used in washing machines, but these were already reduced controllers.
Love the Amiga videos, always fascinating. I used a 2000, 3000, and 4000 but only exclusively for video toaster work at our local TV station. I never spent any time exploring the games or other options an Amiga could do. The magic Newtek did was amazing but it is equally crazy how much these machines could do natively for their time.
At "the time" it was only the 24 C= Amiga 2000's with Toasters running Newtek's Lightwave 3D could economically produce the show Babylon 5 . It use to take like 45 mins PER frame to render. ;)
I still have a couple A1000's, an A500, and an A1200 along with the Programming manual, and several of the ROM Kernal manuals.
Really goes to show you how well things were built back then. Even sitting in the rain and sun all day for however many years, it still works.
49:08 awww you broke the clip. Crazy glue to the rescue then. 😋
I've thoroughly enjoyed this series, thanks Adrian for doing the seemingly impossible again!
Congratulations!! Brought back from the dead. This was a great series. Thanks
i'm almost certain my Commodore Canada A500 (1988 vintage) had a TEAC floppy drive. The disk eject button snapped and I got tired of using a screwdriver to pop my floppys out and took my A500 apart to replace the button. Not 100% but 95% sure it was a TEAC branded floppy disk drive, but this was nearly 35 years ago now so I could be wrong.
BRAVO! I can't believe you got that rust bucket to work! So cool!
Excellent series. Great job on the repair. Was so great to watch. Keep it up.
Great detective work! It's awesome to see these computers brought back to life.
I now want to play Kiwi Kraze. I miss platform games. Maybe when I get time I'll get an emulator again. Just too busy. Great result with the FF Amiga. Happy you got there in the end.
i'm not sure what the design of the tab for the memory door is supposed to look like, but in my experience with such things, I think it might be a good candidate for a 3d printed replacement. those kinds of simple machines are typically pretty easy to model with something like tinkercad.
Long but very nice and interesting video series about the finds in the field. Greetings from Germany.
Nice series! Very enjoyable and informative.
A fun idea to display the corroded/stained parts while retaining functionality would be to display this in 'exploded' form. In other words, use some stand-offs or other spacers to expose the lower case, RF shield, motherboard, upper case, and keyboard - all spaced apart so you can see the carnage. Lovely video and congratulations on the amazing repair! Cheers!!
aahh ha hah :-)) i LOVED your little look when you said, you might have to desolder all the ram chips from the expansion board - LOVED it :-))
This has been completely delightful. Thank you for sharing!
I can't remember it word for word, but there's a funny quote from intel(?) about nmos vs cmos. for nmos "we had the zeroes, but the one wasn't very good, it was about a 0.8". then for cmos "the ones were really ones"
Really cool video series! I even learned a few things too!
Really well made and interesting series of videos, so satisfying to see neglected items get a second life..thats the basic A500 setup i had in 92
Each machine has a different purpose when it comes down to it. This Amiga will forever remind us of its weathered history as a survivor and therefore as Mater in Cars said, "...I don't fix these. I wanna remember these dents forever."
So awesome Adrian so wish i had your skills my Friend, i think its great the way you preserved it as it is, hats of to you my friend i hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
Great video. I’m really into old rusty stuff (Coleman Lanterns) and I suggest you try citric acid to remove corrosion. It works really well. Even that keyboard shield could be brought back to « decent » state. It works differently from evaporust.
Great stuff, really enjoyed it.
Very impressed, saving this computer history relic from extinction !
It is wild what the Amiga was capable of when compared to its contemporaries. When I finished my Computer Science degree, in my Operating Systems class I covered the AmigaOS. I don't think the fact that there was a preemptive multitasking OS in 1985, years before OS/2 and Windows NT, impressed them as much as it did me. But then again, I grew up with an Amiga 1000. The ports of Marble Madness and Arkanoid were excellent. But some ports suffered, as many companies would port to the Atari ST first, and then just port that to the Amiga, and not take advantage of the Amiga hardware's power. You can see it in games like you showed in this video, but then play something that was made for the Amiga, like Turrican, and see the difference.
what great times it was when i got my first Amiga A500 computer. and what improvements over a commodore 64 or MSX.
So So cool! I will need to check my Amiga hardware to see what I have! Amazing series!
Great series. I enjoyed it.
If you have an intact cover with a working tab you can make a cast of the tab in your glue, then place the broken cover in the mold. Super glue + baking soda works wonders for repairing plastic parts.
First time in my almost four years watching a video by Adrian that I didn't really like: for this whole series I was really waiting for you to finally remove that huge what appears to be a white battery-leak like oxidation on the capacitor array on the right side of the motherboard. Never happened. While I kinda do understand keeping the rust on the case - considering you coated it with a lacquer to prevent further spread - but this stuff is on the components that do carry an active electrical current every time the machine is powered on. Now, I'm now chemist, but I know well enough, that the first thing to do on a liquid damaged laptop is to remove the battery - hence the current - to prevent the further spread of oxidation. And while this particular machine no longer has any liquid, we still have already highly oxidated area that keeps getting actively energized, potentially worsening the issue through electrolysis over time. I might be super wrong about this stuff, but it really bugs me. Also, like others have mentioned, at least some components on the external disk drive and in the original power brick could clearly have had another lease at life. At very least as spares.
Doskonała robota Adrianku 👍
Great work Adrian, that's lovely Amiga 500! I completely agree with leaving the 'patina' on the machine, it's part of its history and gives it character. I have a wrecked Acorn Electron that I managed to salvage - including the ULA ripped out of it - and I like that it's a bit beat up but I've brought it back to life.
I experimented a lot and found the most effective for me is a few drops of glass cleaner, then put the disk in the drive and use it. I can only do one side at a time (otherwise the disk won’t spin, from the extra drag). But the success rate after 1-3 treatments has been 100%. I’m doing this on disks that have never been used, so media wear isn’t a problem. Anyway, nice to see your process - it’s so different from mine - perhaps I’ll use AmigaTestKit now instead of formatting and judging the speed of the format :)
Great work and videos. really enjoyed watching the hole series and learned a lot 👍
All those Brilliant Memories !!!!
Not sure I agree with keeping the rust, but it's yours to do with as you like. Rust is rust though, and i would at least try to neutralize it with something, or sandpaper it off. Pretty amazing that it works though, good job on saving this poor thing. It still will leave behind black rust scars and stains even when you neutralize it, preserving the "patina" as you put it.
Lucky guy. You have multiple Amiga computers.
I wish I had just one.