I find it interesting that David is still surprised people want to see restoration videos. I love most of his videos, but I think the restoration ones are my favourite. There's something rather relaxing about seeing old things you think are garbage being brought back to a working and presentable state.
They're one of my favorite things he does. They are fun to watch the first time, then they also serve as good background videos while doing other things.
Can we just appreciate the fact that David took an hour to properly clean a freaking mouse cable! That is what you call dedication, and I applaud you for that. Can't wait for this Amiga documentary!
I think that the A1000 is the most iconic in the Amiga line. I happen to have one stashed away for almost 40 years, scared to pull it and start crying. hehe
As much as I want to see the Amiga documentary, this guy has a lot going on; his house flooded, he built a new studio, and he is designing and distributing a game. To top it off his Mac Mini went boobs up. Still, I love restoration videos.
STRONGLY recommend sending that drive to Drive Savers if what's on that drive has important media for your documentary. They were able to recover 8TB of RED footage when my RAID G drive died during an edit containing 2 years worth of everything I'd ever filmed and they were genuinely so helpful even on the pricing when covid was hitting it's hardest. Nonetheless, glad to see you persevere and deliver great content! Hopefully that new M1 Mac mini will help a ton (I'm sure it will, it's insane), and hopefully it allows you to do more than before with your videos! Great job!
Drive Savers is an overpriced scam. Send it to Rossmann repair in NY. He has a big UA-cam channel and a good reputation and will take a lot less money.
Whoever owned this Amiga previously, clearly loved it and that's just heartwarming. Most of the time I see old computers and there's at least SOME sort of corrosion. Crazy cool how this was taken care of! Great vid dude!
It's just so soothing and calming to watch restorations of things from our youth with a retro soundtrack and David's calm, reasonable NICE voice. How the world should be.
UA-cam stopped showing me your vids since the video of the building of the studio... Now I'm back and so happy that I've got a bunch of videos to binge. This is my comfort channel. I absolutely love these restoration videos and the history ones too.
When retrobriting a larger panel and having to wrap it, would an ink roller distribute the gel more even under the wrapping? Just a theory I don't recall I've seen anyone attempt. 04:50 - Ahhh.. When mechanical keyboards were the norm and could take a beating.
The excessively retrobrighted badges don't actually look that bad! The colour contrast against the case looks good. If they don't go back, I don't think it's a big loss.
@@The8BitGuy Totally Agree! One question: I remember very well that my original 1986 Amiga 1000 top case was internally "signed" by Jay Miner and his team (and his dog too!) :-) It seems that your A1000 case doesn't have it this "feature". Am I wrong? Can't wait to see the full documentary...
I bought one of those M1 Mac Minis back in February. Definitely the best bang-for-the-buck Mac you can get, as long as you don't spend stupid amounts of money on the built-in storage. Upgrade to 16GB of RAM, yes. Upgrade from the base 256GB of storage, yes. But don't pay Apple for more than 1TB of storage -- external Thunderbolt 4 SSDs are cheap enough these days that it's just not worth the Apple tax on that internal storage larger than 1TB.
Same here. I have an A1000 stored away as well. The company I worked for in the late 80's was getting rid of it and gave it to me. I also have a C128D that I bought around the same time. Haven't dug either of them out for over 20 years now.
It seems it's Amiga season again, Adrian Black just posted a Tweet about figuring out the keyboard of a weird Amiga 500 :) What a coincidence! A little tip that might help with the UV light. Have a mirror under the piece if it's not too big: I mean the bag of keys in your case. If the bag is not tightly packed and the keys are spread out nicely somelight can go between them, hit the mirror and hit the keys from under too. Maybe it wouldn't help much here. Adrian talk about old foam that are disintegrating and sticking on the legs of his spare chips he's holding them in said foam. He said submerging the chips' legs in alcohol helped dissolve the foam. I don't know how gentle alcohol is to the rubber cable, but maybe submerging it would work here too (if you have some sort of fitting container that helps reduce the amount of alcohol needed).
Submerging the cable in alcohol would probably be a bad idea, since the process seems to have removed a layer or rubber already. Just rubbing like he did is probably the right thing for rubber.
@@benbaselet2026 well, it depends. It wouldn't melt straight away, so rubbing the cable with acetone, then rinsing it as soon as the foam dissolved could do the trick.
The Amiga 1000 was overengineered and built like a tank. I remember picking one up the first time, it was HEAVY, much heavier than I anticipated from my experience with the 500.
Great as usual! All retrobrighting and I enjoyed all of it. Sorry to hear about the Mac Mini though! Hopefully the new one will make things faster and easier for you though!
Sorry to hear about your data loss. I highly recommend running a Time Machine backup to your NAS, it's simple and forgettable, which is the best kind of backup IMO. Also, thanks for the restoration video! They might not be the most complex thing, but they're pleasant and satisfying and one of my favorite parts of this channel.
@@jmreagle His source files were on his NAS. The edit files were on the Mac mini. While that is a shame to lose, as long as the source files are available, you can always recreate what you were busy with. Something likely to happen anyway after restoring any type of backup. If you had spooled back a backup you created you would have known. While RAID isn't (and never ever should be considered) a backup, it does keep a pretty recent copy of whatever you were working on. But I don't know (or care) if this is an option in any Mac mini. I assume it isn't, because of the form factor. Besides that, sometimes it takes quite a long time to 'resilver' a RAID setup after a drive in the RAID gave up the ghost. So it might be even faster just to spool back a backup and do whatever you were doing for the second time. Doing something creatively the second time around goes way faster, as your mind is already made up and you'll have the narrative already worked out (for the most part). Oh, and before I forget: the tone in your post suggests that you do make backups. Did you test those? So, not a hash check, but actually spool it back onto a (similar) system? Because if you don't, I can tell you now already that when push come to shove, you will find out that the content you backed up will not work as you think it does. How severe that result is for you, I cannot guess. But unless you properly test your backups, at the most inconvenient moment you will find out that what you thought was a backup is nothing more than a useless pile of zeroes and ones on your NAS and/or SAN and/or Cloud drive and/or portable HDD and/or portable SSD and/or pen drive(s) and/or tape(s).
Time Machine backup would have been very useful, even if you don't keep your source files on the Mac. You could have bought an SSD, restored the whole thing from Time Machine, and been back in business. I recently went to an SSD on my 17" Mac Book Pro (similar vintage) but didn't need the time machine, just went off of the old hard drive via an adapter to the USB port, transferred without a hitch.
This is why I learn the hard way about backing up data onto another hard drive. Wish I cloned the 60GB contents to my 80GB before it went down hill on my Tualatin build and do a backup onto my laptop over the network.
And we'll be looking forward to that Amiga Documentary, no matter when it arrives. It's cool that you can get this restoration videos to fill in the wholes between longer episodes, it's always nice to see you do that. Thanks for another great episode! PS: Curious to see if you do something in collaboration with Dave's Garage.
Seeing that pristine A1000 certainly brings back memories! I bought one of the first ones (after buying the ROM kernel manuals and a book on "C"), and got one of the first "Insider" memory expansion cards from DKB. Was frequently on the Michigan Software BBS, and learned a lot from those guys. Met RJ Mical, Copper & Michael Bittner, and a bunch of other Amiga GURUs at the 1989 SIGGRAPH in Boston. I eventually wrote a bunch of articles for AmigaWorld Tech Journal, and published a periodic table program called Elements on various Fred Fish disks that helped pay for pizza money in college. Those were the days!
It's just so satisfying watching old computers comming back to their former glory. Looking forward to the Amiga documentary, I have owned the Amiga 500, 2000 and 4000.
The final result of this Amiga looks so beautiful, I love whenever people go through the trouble of retrobrighting old machines like you did. By the way, any progress on the CBM hard drive challenge?
Damn, my condolences on the lost data. That's always painfully frustrating. Looking forward to the documentary! And great work on the restoration here, of course.
Have you thought about using an ultrasonic cleaner for cleaning key caps? A friend of mine uses it to clean plastic buttons etc from 80s electronics. Seems to work great for him.
@UCuVsTSmGD9Ddr3JEJvEGtgw Only the core chipset was designed by Amiga. Amiga didn't have the case design, glue logic, timer system, or even the idea for the sidecar before Commodore bought them. The original Amiga design sketches had a "stacked module" design more in common with the Mindset computer. I'm glad they didn't build that monstrosity, as it was insanely ugly and impractical. If I remember correctly, Amiga commissioned Sanyo in Japan to build the machine, which ticked off Commodore big time as it was incredibly expensive. The A1000 used a lot of Japanese parts, rather than the Philippine parts Commodore usually bought.
These videos are your bread and butter, we love to see them, and it’s why I subscribed years ago and got me interested in repairing old electronics and vintage computers. You made it feel very accessible and like I could do it, and because of these videos I’ve saved a lot of old junk from winding up in the trash and learned about a bunch of stuff I never knew before. I want more of these kinds of videos, if anything.
The A1000 was a staple in my local cable tv days. Not only did we run the popular infochannel and scroll guides on them, they were also used to control rack after rack of playout decks. Amazing machines that could take a beating and survive the worst power surges
been running a M1 mini since it came out, your gonna love it! I replaced my 10 year old intel based iMac, you will have a better time as most of the cool software has been made native and runs even better. it also uses less power, doesnt get hot at all, its been one of the best computers I have ever bought, and I am old school, I started out typing in games on my TRS-80!
Wow, beautiful job restoring that Amiga. The Amiga was always my favourite computer to use. I owned an A500, A1200 and A2000HD. I miss those days. I used to run an Amiga BBS using TransAmiga BBS software back in the day.
I hope even those who voted for a behind the scenes restoration will enjoy this video and wonder how they could ever get to think missing it was a good idea. Really neat!
Always love to see the restoration videos with the music and whatnot! Just fits together so well! Thanks for the share David! Keep up the good work. Looking forward to seeing the Amiga documentary in 2022.
The Amiga was such a game changer in the computer world. I remember it was so advanced, nobody had ever seen graphics that good and it would be a few years before any other computer got close. Always like watching your restoration videos. Great to see the computer restored to its original glory. Great video as always.
love this! I had an original 1000 back in 1985. (and then a 500 and a 1200) Also worked with 2000's and 2500's with video toasters! Way ahead of their time compared to everyone else.. Hope you show the signatures on the underside of the cover next video!
That is super! I sure miss playing games on my friends Amiga 1000 and animating with D-Paint on my Amiga 500 ! Plus I love the history of Commodore and how Jay Minor designed the Amiga chipset, lightyears ahead of everyone else!
I love these restoration videos. David, I feel your pain re the hard drive failure! That must have been galling having to re-edit the whole thing but the results are just great.
I love watching your restoration videos. Going through and cleaning it on camera can document the history that a particular machine might have gone through, which is always interesting to me.
I am definetely pumped for the Amiga documentary. I have binge watched the other Commodore documentaries of your's twice at this point. So the suspense being left with this long-lasting Amiga cliffhanger is killing me. Go 8-Bit Guy!
Those UV lights are surely magical! Yes, they might be weak in comparison with the sun, but at least you have better control over them, and they can work 24/7, independently of the Weather! And the results really show how great they are!
Actually I think they pack more UV light per square inch than sunlight cus his first test with them went faster than it'd be with sunlight. His own words.
David, this has, I think, instantly become my favorite of all your videos. I have the same machine, a stock A1000, with the 256k expansion, in the styrofoam, in the original box, with Kickstart/Workbench 1.0 through 1.2, sitting about 20 feet from me in a closet, and I've had this for 36 years since it was purchased for me for Christmas of 1985 from BrandsMart in Kansas City (I was a persuasive and lucky 13 year old). I also have the Amiga 1080 monitor, an Amiga 1010 external 3.5" drive, and a Perfect Sound parallel port sampler (the white case). Some of these switched over to my A500+ years later (KS/WB 1.3). I've been debating either selling or restoring them for years now, and I think seeing this video is giving me the motivation to, once I clear out some space/time/money, to do the restorations. I'm sure mine is in equally yellowed and dirty condition, but seeing yours shining like a new dime gave me a feeling I hadn't felt since the early 90's. I have to wonder if all my floppies still work or if bit rot has set in. Maybe this will also encourage me to do something with the passed-around Apple ][e I inherited sitting in the same closet. Thank you!
David shows us his dead Mac Mini, explaining how it crapped out on him at the worst possible moment…meanwhile, the twice-as-old Amiga 1000 just quietly sits there running and demo-ing as if it was nothing special. It made me smile.
As they say, they don't make 'em like they used to. I have a ~31 year old IBM PC which still boots and runs like it did in 1990. In the intervening decades, I've had a couple dozen other computers, but that one just keeps chugging along. If I ever get into writing, I'll probably use that PC.
That’s actually a good idea! I was thinking about using an airbrush. To get a nice even coat. But a roller will properly work better. Good idea! Goes into the memory cabinet :)
Hey David, for the indoor Retrobright you might wanna consider not only submerging in water and using the UV light, but also adding a cheap sous vide maschine to keep the temp at maybe 40 degree permanently, or whatever the plastic is tolerating. That should drastically increase the speed in your submersion method.
Instead of a single purposes sous-vide machine, why not an immersion heater dipped into the peroxide tank. Put a temperature sensor elsewhere and either switch manually or with a thermostat outside the radiation zone.
The Amiga was my first computer back in '85, and I cannot describe the wonder that came from using one compared with MS-DOS computers that ruled at the time.
Man, I loved that computer! It completely blew my mind the first time. The 1000 and to a larger extent the later 3000 was my favourite computers of the era.
OMG I just realized right now that the "little TV" at 11:04 is the same TV used in the very first video ever on this channel, which was about modding an Amiga 1000 for S-Video output. Surely he *must* have done that on purpose, right?
I love the restore videos. Its just as interesting as restoring an old car to me and honestly from time to time I rewatch some of the older videos from time to time. I could be washing dishes and re watch a restore video or the part of the commodore documentary and such.
For cleaning keys, have you tried an ultrasonic cleaner? I've seen impressive results on grimy car parts, I wonder if it'd work for you here. Saves alot of mechanical work
Great work as always on the Amiga restoration! You're going to love the M1 once it arrives. I used a stock M1 Mac Mini for a while and eventually switched over to the M1 Macbook Pro. Both have been wonderful machines!
can't wait until the new Amiga documentary is done. it's a big chapter in Commodore history to cover and there are so many variations right from the Amiga 1000 to the CD32 (that are very rare but here in the UK easy to pick up)
Perfect. Having David restore an old computer to music from Anders is meditation for me. I simply feel more happy afterwards. That is a part of what we call Hygge here in Denmark 🙂
Who R U sir? A engineer, a electrician, a explainer, a coding master , a game developer, a reconstruction man, a vintage pc & component collector, a 3d designer, a musician etc. Love & respect from India Sir❤️
So sorry to hear about your data loss! I hope you'll start keeping Time Machine backups of your Macs from now on. Nevertheless, we're all glad to hear about the Amiga video(s) making progress!
Thanks for doing this video, the Amiga was the mythic computer that everybody wanted, but nobody I knew seemed to have (when I was a kid). Also, impressive that you were doing all your final cut editing on a Mac Mini from 2011 (even in 2021).
Back in 1990 over half the people I knew who were into computers bought Amiga 500s. A comparable PC setup would have been at least three times the price.
VERY satisfying restoration David, thanks for sharing this - and yes one of the many eagerly awaiting your Amiga Documentary! Simply because your previous Commodore documentaries were so good :D thanks!
For 20 years before becoming a UA-camr, I was in the IT consulting space. Backups and power protection were 1/3 of what I really sold, because SO MANY PEOPLE refuse to do them... David, I love ya man, but really? That was just an unnecessary event with the Mac Mini...
Thank you for sharing the restoration with us. I have seen all of your videos at least once. I have watched your restoration videos multiple times each. I love your commentary. It is one reason I prefer yours over most other channels that just show the process. I look forward to your next video!
Sorry to hear about the Mac Mini. I have a Mac Mini M1 and it is amazing. It has 16GB RAM. I edit in 4k and it works great. I had the same thing with my 2010 iMac. I used it for a long time but eventually it got to slow and would not boot. That’s why I got my Mac Mini M1.
It's the one I wanted for my collection. But it's too late now, not much chance of getting a good one for a sensible price, same with the CDTV. But I have two 1200s, a CD32, A3000 and A3000T so I guess I can't complain.
Hi David, first off all greetings from Belgium. I love your content! Thanks to your channel I've discovered a couple of years ago what retrobrighting is all about. I didn't even know this existed. I thought that yellowing on plastics was impossible to remove and thanks to your channel I've found out that it is possible to achieve the original color. Also amazing content about electronics as well. Because of your easy way of explaining things about the inside of a computer, how electronic components work, I've learned a lot about this amazing subject. Keep on doing what you're doing! And I will keep enjoying your videos! 🥰👍
We appreciate your efforts, not only to show the how and why of the topic at hand, but to give us the behind-the-scenes updates. Really enjoy all the different content -- never boring on this channel or 8-Bit Keys!
It's sad how the badge lost some of the color in the checkmark, other than that it's looking pretty fine, the innards are absolutely mint. Sucks these things cost so much now days, i'd like to get one eventually.. Edit: Just realized David probably didn't notice this because he's colorblind.
Sorry to hear of your Mac problem. Nicely done on this restoration -- you're an old hand at this by now, but you keep improving your methods and practices. I have learned a lot from you about care and feeding of retro equipment. Thanks again! I'm looking forward to your Amiga documentary.
Just discovered your channel - seeing the Amiga 1000 got my attention. This was my very first computer. I bought a used one in 1987 (I think) from a friend. It was an exciting computer for its time and I used it for several years until the Mac Classic came out. By then, I needed a more practical computer (read…with hard drive) so the Amiga got sidelined in favor of a Mac. But the Amiga with its color display and speed remains a great memory for me. Sadly, at this point, I don’t even remember what became of it.
It was very expensive to manufacture. The Amiga 200 and 500 were much more profitable for Commodore. Commodore also cost reduced the C64 with the C64c and the C128D with the C128DCR. They also did it with the VIC-20 when they switched to using the C64 keyboard and the C64 PSU.
That's why they were so much more expensive than the 64, even comparing their launch prices. And that price gap probably was what made adoption so slow; why pay $1000 for an Amiga when a Commodore 64 could be had for $200?
@@stevethepocket i remember my father sold the c128 in our family shop which cost twice the c64 in 1985 and nobody bought it to just run the same software.... the amiga arrived slightly later with the 500 which was the more popular model.
I just saw a commercial for auto trader that had your new studio background as a backsplash in the pitch man’s kitchen. Mr. Trendsetter!!! I also get great pleasure from restoration videos!
I find it interesting that David is still surprised people want to see restoration videos. I love most of his videos, but I think the restoration ones are my favourite. There's something rather relaxing about seeing old things you think are garbage being brought back to a working and presentable state.
that Vic 20 Restore video was incredible, i watched it many times
His videos started my path of restoring Commodore and similar stuff!
Agreed. The restoration videos are one the main calling cards of this channel. Those should never be done off-camera, IMHO.
Indeed, I watched despite having no connection to the Amiga. The only Commodore I've ever used was the 64, briefly.
Yeah, it's extremely soothing and relaxing, especially perfect after a long hard day
I'm actually more surprised to the fact that 98 people voted to not make a restoration video. These are David's best videos!
Dude! The restoration vids are like the golden goose eggs of this channel! If people are given a yes/no option, they are going to pick yes!
Yes
I'm surprised he didn't know that by now
@@eg1885 fr! this guy is the one who got me into tech repair in 6th grade. I'm now a jenior in high school
Definitely
They're one of my favorite things he does. They are fun to watch the first time, then they also serve as good background videos while doing other things.
Can we just appreciate the fact that David took an hour to properly clean a freaking mouse cable!
That is what you call dedication, and I applaud you for that. Can't wait for this Amiga documentary!
I think that the A1000 is the most iconic in the Amiga line. I happen to have one stashed away for almost 40 years, scared to pull it and start crying. hehe
As much as I want to see the Amiga documentary, this guy has a lot going on; his house flooded, he built a new studio, and he is designing and distributing a game. To top it off his Mac Mini went boobs up. Still, I love restoration videos.
and he got a roadkill NES
"his house flooded"
His carpet was damaged because he didn't turn off the water supply in the winter when he left his house.
@@Okurka. Don't spoil it for everyone, please wait until the action movie is released. It is going to star Tom Hanks in the lead role.
@@Okurka. on top of this drywall was damaged and leakes were found
Don't forget he's also still working on the Commander X16. Major props to David for being such a legend!
STRONGLY recommend sending that drive to Drive Savers if what's on that drive has important media for your documentary. They were able to recover 8TB of RED footage when my RAID G drive died during an edit containing 2 years worth of everything I'd ever filmed and they were genuinely so helpful even on the pricing when covid was hitting it's hardest.
Nonetheless, glad to see you persevere and deliver great content! Hopefully that new M1 Mac mini will help a ton (I'm sure it will, it's insane), and hopefully it allows you to do more than before with your videos! Great job!
This!!
Drive Savers is an overpriced scam. Send it to Rossmann repair in NY. He has a big UA-cam channel and a good reputation and will take a lot less money.
@@justanormaluser1535 THIS!! !
@@onerandomguy4832 they recovered 8TB of extremely important movie footage for 2 grand, I think that's pretty fair if you ask me.
@@AyStar you made a huge mistake by sending into data savers overpriced scam instead of Louis Rossmann
I will never get tired of watching old tech get spruced up
Whoever owned this Amiga previously, clearly loved it and that's just heartwarming. Most of the time I see old computers and there's at least SOME sort of corrosion. Crazy cool how this was taken care of! Great vid dude!
Maybe had a few accidental spills too, haha.
Something else that seems to be pretty common is DIY mods which are usually totally unnecessary.
Watching David go through the restoration and retrobright process is very ASMR. Love it! Excited for the Amiga series.
00:00 Title
00:11 *Introduction*
01:05 *Current Condition*
01:59 *Cleaning & Disassembly*
03:16 *Retrobriting Indoors*
04:16 Plastic Wrap Method
04:36 *Keyboard*
05:40 Keys
06:06 *Mouse*
06:37 Keys & Mouse (cont.)
07:08 *Disk Drive*
07:27 *Keys Reassembly*
07:55 *Overbrightened Badges*
08:14 *Retrobriting Top Result*
08:30 *Retrobriting Keyboard & Rear*
08:52 *Mouse & Keyboard Reassembly*
09:21 *Keyboard Cable Replacement*
09:43 *Retrobriting Bottom*
10:06 *Computer Reassembly*
10:57 Quick Test
11:27 *Before/After Comparison & Test*
12:00 Game Test: _Attack of the PETSCII Robots_
12:32 *Bad News:* Mac Mini, Documentary
14:44 *Outro*
It's just so soothing and calming to watch restorations of things from our youth with a retro soundtrack and David's calm, reasonable NICE voice. How the world should be.
Exactly
But I guess many of the missing bits are just pain and frustration!
So satisfying. It's like brain massage.
UA-cam stopped showing me your vids since the video of the building of the studio... Now I'm back and so happy that I've got a bunch of videos to binge. This is my comfort channel. I absolutely love these restoration videos and the history ones too.
At least he is restoring these computers and consoles so these can be remembered as what they look like new. Tho that computer inside looks clean
When retrobriting a larger panel and having to wrap it, would an ink roller distribute the gel more even under the wrapping? Just a theory I don't recall I've seen anyone attempt.
04:50 - Ahhh.. When mechanical keyboards were the norm and could take a beating.
The excessively retrobrighted badges don't actually look that bad! The colour contrast against the case looks good. If they don't go back, I don't think it's a big loss.
I agree it doesn't look "bad." But I do want it to look "original" for the purposes of a documentary.
@@The8BitGuy Understandable
@@The8BitGuy you could cover it with a piece of non transparent tape during retrobright
@@The8BitGuy Totally Agree!
One question: I remember very well that my original 1986 Amiga 1000 top case was internally "signed" by Jay Miner and his team (and his dog too!) :-) It seems that your A1000 case doesn't have it this "feature". Am I wrong?
Can't wait to see the full documentary...
@@CharlieCheetah Does it even need to be non-transparent? Isn't it enough to prevent the chemical he uses from touching the surface?
These restoration videos are cathartic to watch. Please don't ever stop making them.
I bought one of those M1 Mac Minis back in February. Definitely the best bang-for-the-buck Mac you can get, as long as you don't spend stupid amounts of money on the built-in storage. Upgrade to 16GB of RAM, yes. Upgrade from the base 256GB of storage, yes. But don't pay Apple for more than 1TB of storage -- external Thunderbolt 4 SSDs are cheap enough these days that it's just not worth the Apple tax on that internal storage larger than 1TB.
Nothing is "too big to submerge". Just need a larger tub.
The A1000 looks terrific! Makes me want to take mine out of storage and attempt the same.
Same here. I have an A1000 stored away as well. The company I worked for in the late 80's was getting rid of it and gave it to me. I also have a C128D that I bought around the same time. Haven't dug either of them out for over 20 years now.
It seems it's Amiga season again, Adrian Black just posted a Tweet about figuring out the keyboard of a weird Amiga 500 :) What a coincidence!
A little tip that might help with the UV light. Have a mirror under the piece if it's not too big: I mean the bag of keys in your case. If the bag is not tightly packed and the keys are spread out nicely somelight can go between them, hit the mirror and hit the keys from under too. Maybe it wouldn't help much here.
Adrian talk about old foam that are disintegrating and sticking on the legs of his spare chips he's holding them in said foam. He said submerging the chips' legs in alcohol helped dissolve the foam. I don't know how gentle alcohol is to the rubber cable, but maybe submerging it would work here too (if you have some sort of fitting container that helps reduce the amount of alcohol needed).
Submerging the cable in alcohol would probably be a bad idea, since the process seems to have removed a layer or rubber already. Just rubbing like he did is probably the right thing for rubber.
BTW. I added the keyboard to the Wiki Adrian had complained it not being in ... and using Adrian's video clip as reference. :)
Acetone would melt the foam straight away, however the cable could melt as well. 😁
@@bufordmaddogtannen Just throwing it in a fire would be easiest :-)
@@benbaselet2026 well, it depends. It wouldn't melt straight away, so rubbing the cable with acetone, then rinsing it as soon as the foam dissolved could do the trick.
The Amiga 1000 was overengineered and built like a tank. I remember picking one up the first time, it was HEAVY, much heavier than I anticipated from my experience with the 500.
Great as usual! All retrobrighting and I enjoyed all of it. Sorry to hear about the Mac Mini though! Hopefully the new one will make things faster and easier for you though!
It's amazing that your old Mac Mini was still working after 10 years which is funny seeing the significantly older tech that you have working
Sorry to hear about your data loss. I highly recommend running a Time Machine backup to your NAS, it's simple and forgettable, which is the best kind of backup IMO.
Also, thanks for the restoration video! They might not be the most complex thing, but they're pleasant and satisfying and one of my favorite parts of this channel.
Backup. Thats why all saves form my project on Media Composer (every 15 minutes) are in real time sync on Onedrive.
Yes, I'm really surprised he's not properly backing up his machine!
@@jmreagle His source files were on his NAS. The edit files were on the Mac mini. While that is a shame to lose, as long as the source files are available, you can always recreate what you were busy with. Something likely to happen anyway after restoring any type of backup. If you had spooled back a backup you created you would have known.
While RAID isn't (and never ever should be considered) a backup, it does keep a pretty recent copy of whatever you were working on. But I don't know (or care) if this is an option in any Mac mini. I assume it isn't, because of the form factor. Besides that, sometimes it takes quite a long time to 'resilver' a RAID setup after a drive in the RAID gave up the ghost. So it might be even faster just to spool back a backup and do whatever you were doing for the second time.
Doing something creatively the second time around goes way faster, as your mind is already made up and you'll have the narrative already worked out (for the most part).
Oh, and before I forget: the tone in your post suggests that you do make backups. Did you test those? So, not a hash check, but actually spool it back onto a (similar) system? Because if you don't, I can tell you now already that when push come to shove, you will find out that the content you backed up will not work as you think it does. How severe that result is for you, I cannot guess.
But unless you properly test your backups, at the most inconvenient moment you will find out that what you thought was a backup is nothing more than a useless pile of zeroes and ones on your NAS and/or SAN and/or Cloud drive and/or portable HDD and/or portable SSD and/or pen drive(s) and/or tape(s).
Time Machine backup would have been very useful, even if you don't keep your source files on the Mac. You could have bought an SSD, restored the whole thing from Time Machine, and been back in business. I recently went to an SSD on my 17" Mac Book Pro (similar vintage) but didn't need the time machine, just went off of the old hard drive via an adapter to the USB port, transferred without a hitch.
This is why I learn the hard way about backing up data onto another hard drive. Wish I cloned the 60GB contents to my 80GB before it went down hill on my Tualatin build and do a backup onto my laptop over the network.
David, this is one of the most successful retrobriting sessions I have ever seen... Great Job!
And we'll be looking forward to that Amiga Documentary, no matter when it arrives.
It's cool that you can get this restoration videos to fill in the wholes between longer episodes, it's always nice to see you do that.
Thanks for another great episode!
PS: Curious to see if you do something in collaboration with Dave's Garage.
Seeing that pristine A1000 certainly brings back memories! I bought one of the first ones (after buying the ROM kernel manuals and a book on "C"), and got one of the first "Insider" memory expansion cards from DKB. Was frequently on the Michigan Software BBS, and learned a lot from those guys. Met RJ Mical, Copper & Michael Bittner, and a bunch of other Amiga GURUs at the 1989 SIGGRAPH in Boston. I eventually wrote a bunch of articles for AmigaWorld Tech Journal, and published a periodic table program called Elements on various Fred Fish disks that helped pay for pizza money in college. Those were the days!
Amiga was the first (and maybe the only) computer to have a personality. Thanks for making it, mr. Jay Miner, wherever you are now.
First computer was a hand-me-down A3000. No idea where it went, and I really really miss that thing. Glad to see another Amiga vid
Great job restoring it, I'm most impressed with that horrific mouse cable, I thought for sure you'd replace it! A little grunt work goes a long way.
It's just so satisfying watching old computers comming back to their former glory. Looking forward to the Amiga documentary, I have owned the Amiga 500, 2000 and 4000.
The final result of this Amiga looks so beautiful, I love whenever people go through the trouble of retrobrighting old machines like you did.
By the way, any progress on the CBM hard drive challenge?
You'll love your new M1! That's what I'm using for my daily driver.
Damn, my condolences on the lost data. That's always painfully frustrating. Looking forward to the documentary! And great work on the restoration here, of course.
Have you thought about using an ultrasonic cleaner for cleaning key caps? A friend of mine uses it to clean plastic buttons etc from 80s electronics. Seems to work great for him.
Commodore sourced their keyboards from various manufacturers, and as such some had individual switches even, usually by Hi-Tek.
@UCuVsTSmGD9Ddr3JEJvEGtgw Only the core chipset was designed by Amiga. Amiga didn't have the case design, glue logic, timer system, or even the idea for the sidecar before Commodore bought them. The original Amiga design sketches had a "stacked module" design more in common with the Mindset computer. I'm glad they didn't build that monstrosity, as it was insanely ugly and impractical.
If I remember correctly, Amiga commissioned Sanyo in Japan to build the machine, which ticked off Commodore big time as it was incredibly expensive. The A1000 used a lot of Japanese parts, rather than the Philippine parts Commodore usually bought.
I absolutely LOVE these restoration videos. There is something so satisfying watching an old piece of equipment being fixed up and made like new.
Amazing restoration. Amiga 1000 was my dream computer. I saved up for this as a teenager, and was in heaven when I got it.
I love Davids smiling face and great positive attitude while facing a massive inconvenience, that’s great to see Dave!
These videos are your bread and butter, we love to see them, and it’s why I subscribed years ago and got me interested in repairing old electronics and vintage computers. You made it feel very accessible and like I could do it, and because of these videos I’ve saved a lot of old junk from winding up in the trash and learned about a bunch of stuff I never knew before. I want more of these kinds of videos, if anything.
My uncle worked with Jay Miner. He bought me this Amiga ages ago. Love to see it again.
2:22 "I'm amazed how good's shape it's in. No corrosion on it at all."
That's a great computer right there.
The A1000 was a staple in my local cable tv days. Not only did we run the popular infochannel and scroll guides on them, they were also used to control rack after rack of playout decks. Amazing machines that could take a beating and survive the worst power surges
been running a M1 mini since it came out, your gonna love it! I replaced my 10 year old intel based iMac, you will have a better time as most of the cool software has been made native and runs even better. it also uses less power, doesnt get hot at all, its been one of the best computers I have ever bought, and I am old school, I started out typing in games on my TRS-80!
Wow, beautiful job restoring that Amiga. The Amiga was always my favourite computer to use. I owned an A500, A1200 and A2000HD. I miss those days. I used to run an Amiga BBS using TransAmiga BBS software back in the day.
I hope even those who voted for a behind the scenes restoration will enjoy this video and wonder how they could ever get to think missing it was a good idea. Really neat!
Always love to see the restoration videos with the music and whatnot! Just fits together so well! Thanks for the share David! Keep up the good work. Looking forward to seeing the Amiga documentary in 2022.
The Amiga was such a game changer in the computer world. I remember it was so advanced, nobody had ever seen graphics that good and it would be a few years before any other computer got close. Always like watching your restoration videos. Great to see the computer restored to its original glory. Great video as always.
I'm still impressed by the owl's animation in Agony.
Thanks. The A1000 was the very first Amiga I ever saw "in person" running at a friend's friend's house. So cool. I can't wait to see the documentary.
love this! I had an original 1000 back in 1985. (and then a 500 and a 1200) Also worked with 2000's and 2500's with video toasters! Way ahead of their time compared to everyone else.. Hope you show the signatures on the underside of the cover next video!
Your restoration videos is the main reason I'm subbed to you.
Restoring a lovely Amiga is the main reason I will never unsub from you.
That is super! I sure miss playing games on my friends Amiga 1000 and animating with D-Paint on my Amiga 500 ! Plus I love the history of Commodore and how Jay Minor designed the Amiga chipset, lightyears ahead of everyone else!
Thank you for putting in the effort to re-editing this video. I really enjoy these!
I love these restoration videos. David, I feel your pain re the hard drive failure! That must have been galling having to re-edit the whole thing but the results are just great.
There is something deeply satisfying about watching you getting that Amiga back into shape.
I love watching your restoration videos. Going through and cleaning it on camera can document the history that a particular machine might have gone through, which is always interesting to me.
I am definetely pumped for the Amiga documentary. I have binge watched the other Commodore documentaries of your's twice at this point. So the suspense being left with this long-lasting Amiga cliffhanger is killing me.
Go 8-Bit Guy!
Those UV lights are surely magical!
Yes, they might be weak in comparison with the sun, but at least you have better control over them, and they can work 24/7, independently of the Weather!
And the results really show how great they are!
Actually I think they pack more UV light per square inch than sunlight cus his first test with them went faster than it'd be with sunlight. His own words.
David, this has, I think, instantly become my favorite of all your videos. I have the same machine, a stock A1000, with the 256k expansion, in the styrofoam, in the original box, with Kickstart/Workbench 1.0 through 1.2, sitting about 20 feet from me in a closet, and I've had this for 36 years since it was purchased for me for Christmas of 1985 from BrandsMart in Kansas City (I was a persuasive and lucky 13 year old). I also have the Amiga 1080 monitor, an Amiga 1010 external 3.5" drive, and a Perfect Sound parallel port sampler (the white case). Some of these switched over to my A500+ years later (KS/WB 1.3). I've been debating either selling or restoring them for years now, and I think seeing this video is giving me the motivation to, once I clear out some space/time/money, to do the restorations. I'm sure mine is in equally yellowed and dirty condition, but seeing yours shining like a new dime gave me a feeling I hadn't felt since the early 90's. I have to wonder if all my floppies still work or if bit rot has set in. Maybe this will also encourage me to do something with the passed-around Apple ][e I inherited sitting in the same closet. Thank you!
David shows us his dead Mac Mini, explaining how it crapped out on him at the worst possible moment…meanwhile, the twice-as-old Amiga 1000 just quietly sits there running and demo-ing as if it was nothing special. It made me smile.
As they say, they don't make 'em like they used to. I have a ~31 year old IBM PC which still boots and runs like it did in 1990. In the intervening decades, I've had a couple dozen other computers, but that one just keeps chugging along. If I ever get into writing, I'll probably use that PC.
The positive vibe from your synthwave soundtrack always makes your videos so enjoyable David!
I'm just curious, have you ever tried using a paint roller for large case pieces like that when applying the cream?
That’s actually a good idea! I was thinking about using an airbrush. To get a nice even coat. But a roller will properly work better. Good idea! Goes into the memory cabinet :)
@@CallousCoder if you happen to remember, let me know how it turns out, thanks =)
It was wonderful meeting up with you and seeing the preproduction of this video! Keep up the great work!
Hey David, for the indoor Retrobright you might wanna consider not only submerging in water and using the UV light, but also adding a cheap sous vide maschine to keep the temp at maybe 40 degree permanently, or whatever the plastic is tolerating. That should drastically increase the speed in your submersion method.
Didn't he already try that once? I remember him trying lots of methods until he found the best results.
@@DiestroCorleone yeah he tried boiling them in a pot. I think it was a good result but he didn't like it due to limited capacity.
Instead of a single purposes sous-vide machine, why not an immersion heater dipped into the peroxide tank. Put a temperature sensor elsewhere and either switch manually or with a thermostat outside the radiation zone.
I thought it was 50°C?
Restoration videos are always nice to watch and nothing is more heartbreaking then a hard drive crapping out on you.
The Amiga was my first computer back in '85, and I cannot describe the wonder that came from using one compared with MS-DOS computers that ruled at the time.
The best thing ever for scraping mouse rollers is a cap from a bic pen. No scratching, sized just right for the job.
Such a joy to watch you restore this Amiga - you've got a great process and touch with these beloved computers that really deserve to be preserved
Man, I loved that computer! It completely blew my mind the first time. The 1000 and to a larger extent the later 3000 was my favourite computers of the era.
OMG I just realized right now that the "little TV" at 11:04 is the same TV used in the very first video ever on this channel, which was about modding an Amiga 1000 for S-Video output. Surely he *must* have done that on purpose, right?
I love the restore videos. Its just as interesting as restoring an old car to me and honestly from time to time I rewatch some of the older videos from time to time. I could be washing dishes and re watch a restore video or the part of the commodore documentary and such.
For cleaning keys, have you tried an ultrasonic cleaner? I've seen impressive results on grimy car parts, I wonder if it'd work for you here. Saves alot of mechanical work
Great work as always on the Amiga restoration! You're going to love the M1 once it arrives. I used a stock M1 Mac Mini for a while and eventually switched over to the M1 Macbook Pro. Both have been wonderful machines!
can't wait until the new Amiga documentary is done.
it's a big chapter in Commodore history to cover and there are so many variations right from the Amiga 1000 to the CD32 (that are very rare but here in the UK easy to pick up)
So cool to see Lotus 2 on the Amiga there, the Lotus games have always been some of my absolute favorite
Perfect. Having David restore an old computer to music from Anders is meditation for me. I simply feel more happy afterwards. That is a part of what we call Hygge here in Denmark 🙂
Who R U sir? A engineer, a electrician, a explainer, a coding master , a game developer, a reconstruction man, a vintage pc & component collector, a 3d designer, a musician etc. Love & respect from India Sir❤️
So sorry to hear about your data loss! I hope you'll start keeping Time Machine backups of your Macs from now on. Nevertheless, we're all glad to hear about the Amiga video(s) making progress!
I’ve always been confused about Amiga’s place in history and models. I’m excited for the documentary!
That M1 chip with its hardware accelerated video encoding is going to make video editing SO MUCH faster. That Mac mini will pay for itself in no time.
Restoration videos are my favorite. I will always watch them 8bit guy!
Thanks for doing this video, the Amiga was the mythic computer that everybody wanted, but nobody I knew seemed to have (when I was a kid). Also, impressive that you were doing all your final cut editing on a Mac Mini from 2011 (even in 2021).
Probably why it died, the cooling on Apple machines is terrible.
Back in 1990 over half the people I knew who were into computers bought Amiga 500s. A comparable PC setup would have been at least three times the price.
VERY satisfying restoration David, thanks for sharing this - and yes one of the many eagerly awaiting your Amiga Documentary! Simply because your previous Commodore documentaries were so good :D thanks!
For 20 years before becoming a UA-camr, I was in the IT consulting space. Backups and power protection were 1/3 of what I really sold, because SO MANY PEOPLE refuse to do them... David, I love ya man, but really? That was just an unnecessary event with the Mac Mini...
Thank you for sharing the restoration with us. I have seen all of your videos at least once. I have watched your restoration videos multiple times each. I love your commentary. It is one reason I prefer yours over most other channels that just show the process. I look forward to your next video!
Sorry to hear about the Mac Mini. I have a Mac Mini M1 and it is amazing. It has 16GB RAM. I edit in 4k and it works great. I had the same thing with my 2010 iMac. I used it for a long time but eventually it got to slow and would not boot. That’s why I got my Mac Mini M1.
Ive had the M1 mini since summer its incredible. You’ll love how fast it renders
Ahhh this is like the computer I've always wanted, it's neat to get to see this
I want(ed) an Amiga 2000 ever since I discovered those at 14.
Two years ago, I was given an A500. I guess I can't complain.
It's the one I wanted for my collection. But it's too late now, not much chance of getting a good one for a sensible price, same with the CDTV. But I have two 1200s, a CD32, A3000 and A3000T so I guess I can't complain.
Hi David, first off all greetings from Belgium. I love your content! Thanks to your channel I've discovered a couple of years ago what retrobrighting is all about. I didn't even know this existed. I thought that yellowing on plastics was impossible to remove and thanks to your channel I've found out that it is possible to achieve the original color. Also amazing content about electronics as well. Because of your easy way of explaining things about the inside of a computer, how electronic components work, I've learned a lot about this amazing subject. Keep on doing what you're doing! And I will keep enjoying your videos! 🥰👍
I gather you don't use Time Machine on your Mac? It might have saved some of your updates closer in time to the crash.
Love seeing these old machines restored, and also lotus esprit turbo challenge at the end!
Dropbox is a pretty great solution for (automatically) backing up lots of little text files.
We appreciate your efforts, not only to show the how and why of the topic at hand, but to give us the behind-the-scenes updates. Really enjoy all the different content -- never boring on this channel or 8-Bit Keys!
It's sad how the badge lost some of the color in the checkmark, other than that it's looking pretty fine, the innards are absolutely mint.
Sucks these things cost so much now days, i'd like to get one eventually..
Edit:
Just realized David probably didn't notice this because he's colorblind.
Sorry to hear of your Mac problem. Nicely done on this restoration -- you're an old hand at this by now, but you keep improving your methods and practices. I have learned a lot from you about care and feeding of retro equipment. Thanks again! I'm looking forward to your Amiga documentary.
i do like Restoration videos because they are satisfying
do u like it too ?
Yeah
Just discovered your channel - seeing the Amiga 1000 got my attention. This was my very first computer. I bought a used one in 1987 (I think) from a friend. It was an exciting computer for its time and I used it for several years until the Mac Classic came out. By then, I needed a more practical computer (read…with hard drive) so the Amiga got sidelined in favor of a Mac. But the Amiga with its color display and speed remains a great memory for me. Sadly, at this point, I don’t even remember what became of it.
This is why you use an Amiga to edit your video and not a mac
lmao
WoW! Nice Restoration! Looking forward to the documentary! That should be a nice addition to all your other Commodore videos!
This machine seems to be too good in quality to have been manufactured by Commodore 😅
It was very expensive to manufacture. The Amiga 200 and 500 were much more profitable for Commodore. Commodore also cost reduced the C64 with the C64c and the C128D with the C128DCR. They also did it with the VIC-20 when they switched to using the C64 keyboard and the C64 PSU.
That's why they were so much more expensive than the 64, even comparing their launch prices. And that price gap probably was what made adoption so slow; why pay $1000 for an Amiga when a Commodore 64 could be had for $200?
@@stevethepocket i remember my father sold the c128 in our family shop which cost twice the c64 in 1985 and nobody bought it to just run the same software.... the amiga arrived slightly later with the 500 which was the more popular model.
The A1000 was contracted out to Sanyo in Japan.
I had fabulous luck with Commodores, all the way down to their Colt PC clone
I just saw a commercial for auto trader that had your new studio background as a backsplash in the pitch man’s kitchen. Mr. Trendsetter!!! I also get great pleasure from restoration videos!