For restoring ABS bodyshells on radio controlled cars, I used to use brake fluid to remove paint. It has to soak a while (24 hours+) but removes most paint finishes without hurting the plastic. I've also had some success with mild oven cleaners over the years too.
When you mentioned acetone, I thought "Oh, no, acetone is used to WELD ABS plastic." I've read online that oven cleaner can be used without damaging the ABS. But great job anyway!
Great score! And good video, thanks. I just got an A1200 myself (had an A600 back in the 90’s). My A1200 was in bad shape as well, but cleaned fine and after a recap it runs great. I was also surprised to find a Blizzard 1230 Mk IV card in there, which also works. A happy surprise, as I paid less for the entire unit than the Blizzard goes for online these days.
Oh and mine also had the Amiga logo coloured by a sharpie or something. It was a pain to clean. Tried IPA, acetone, baking soda… finally cleaned using cotton tips, toothpicks and a toothbrush. And all those chemicals.
I think respraying that is probably an better way to get it sellable. Although it wouldn’t be considered “original”. But the wet sand did a lot better than I’d thought it would and it’s a lot better neo for sure. For the future thinner or Benzeen (naphtha) work great on paint removal too.
I had a SNES controller I painted back in the 90s. I soaked the shell in soapy water and purple power for over a week and the paint just came right off with a toothbrush. Just have some patience.
WOW that A1200 looked so bad! I was very lucky to get my A1200 almost 5 years ago in GREAT shape! It had just been recapped and came with a working clean tank mouse and an 8GB CF card as an internal hard drive. I had always wanted an Amiga since the mid 80's and when I saw this SWEET looking A1200 I grabbed it for more than I should of! At that time in July 2018 only a few were being listed and they looked worn. Most were A500s so when the only A1200 popped up one day as a new listing I clicked the buy it now of $750. I know I over paid but no A1200s were coming up for awhile and this one was just so nice. 1st thing I bought for it was 8MB fast RAM because WHDload needed the RAM to run all the programs. The next thing I bought was a ACA1233n which gave me an 030 @ 25MHz & 128MB of RAM. A year later I bought the Vampire V1200v2 which was not cheap, and way over kill with an 080 @ 85MHz & 128MB of RAM. I wish I had just stuck with the ACA1233n. TY for all the GREAT content! You are looking well!
An 080? Wow! That was some SERIOUS computing power. I didn't know these existed. I thought the 060 was the prime 68k. That stuff must have set you back a bit (financially).
@@RetroWK The 060 was the fastest real CPU. The 080 in the Vampire uses FPG (or something like that) to make what the 080 was going to be if they kept making that line of CPUs. Many don’t like it and get mad at you when you tell them you have an 080! Like I said I wish I had just kept my ACA1233n with its 030. It ran all the games great. I saw a YT video on the Vampire and how it ran all the 060 demos and programs like elite super good and had to have it. The Vampire back then cost me around $500 back then with shipping. That was before all these new boards have come out for the A500 & A1200 that you plug a Pi into them, and the Pi becomes the CPU. They are so cheap compared to what I paid.
You may consider investing in a ultrasonic cleaner and/or a sandblasting station, would prolly have gotten that paint out of the grille. And saved your arms in the paint removal. ;)
If I were you, I would test some "gentle" paint removers on the inside of the bottom half to see if they melt the plastic. Also cellulose based paint thinners might have worked too. I wouldn't take a sanding paper to it for sure since it would remove the texture as you soon discovered. Nice find though, it is best to put it in the new casing you mentioned.
Yep. Many ways to go. I am thinking about doing a whole video about those methods. ... and at the end of the video I did put it into a new case ... and it looks great!
I’m fuming at the original state of that beautiful 1200. But it looked good enough once you had your way with it ;) Top work, didn’t know you could use those caps on it, might look at that for my next project!
I wonder if the dodgy silver spray job was done after the original colour began to degrade, it would would be hard to imagine anyone looking at a beautiful pristine A1200 and thinking "Hmmm, what these needs is to be covered in cheap paint" :)
I tend to go for a scrubbing brush and warm soapy water first, if that doesn't shift it I move on to methylated spirits and then IPA if meths doesn't work (but check because it melts some plastics and never use it on polycarbonate). That shifts a lot of paints or at least softens them up so they can be scrubbed off with a stiff brush and has the advantage that you can soak things.
@@RetroWK definitely test the plastics with the solvents because IPA can be very aggressive, I ruined the front of an old radio because I didn't realise it was being dissolved.
@16:27 I am surprised to hear that, only because I saw Vipers advertised a lot in UK magazines and they were one of the cards I fantasised about getting for our A1200 (never bought an accelerator in the end, not much use for it with the Amiga market being pretty much dead after 1995). I sometimes saw accelerators advertised as M-Tec but I didn't realise it was the same as the Viper.
It's quite interesting, that you can buy recap kits for the 1200, where the electrolytics were replaced with ceramics. It's a controversal topic, but I think it's always better to replace with the "original" electrolytic caps. I bought a 1200 last year, which was recapped. But it's a wild mixture of SMD electrolytics and ceramics, "recrap"! 🤨 Although the machine (with TF1260) works fine, I think I'll do a right recap one day!
We had that discussion here too. I stand to my choice. The argument that Commodore engineers choose these for a reason is ok, but I think the reason was to reduce noise on RF (I don't care about) - that was a big deal back in the day since many used a TV set ... and price. The others were just cheaper and Commodore and ESCOM especially was very price sensitive.
Well, we can tell the audio section is working properly because we hear high quality dog barking samples with echo at 12:33, but that is a very strange choice for a startup sound. 😁
I once worked with the guys that made Gloom. I learnt a lot from Mark the programmer. Hans and Kirt (the artists) are cool dudes. I wish I had have stayed in contact with them especially Kevin (the musician for Gloom).
From Gary/Neil or Lee (I called him Neil mixed up his name, so it’s now a running gag) his c64 repair to Wolfgang’s Amiga 1209 repair The spiders seem to like it 😂😂😂
In meinem Land, Ungarn, kann man in der Apotheke reines Benzin in einer kleinen braunen Flasche kaufen. Es schadet dem Kunststoff nicht, aber es löst die Farbe auf. (Translated with DeepL!)
@@RetroWK I remember i payed 349 Dutch guilders for it , i bought it from Amigis computer shop ( was a AMIGA only computer store) here in Netherlands. I also put the FPU on it. It was not installed form the factory. It was a ok card at that time and i had it it until 1994 when i sold my Amiga and got a Escom Commodore pentium 1 @ 66 mhz. I was Commodore brand loyal from the beginning until the end. I cried when they went bankrupt and hoped Esom made a Powerpc Amiga with A 603 processor and DSP for sound. But it never came out. Instead they announced the walker A1200. Escom killed the Amiga !!!
@@Pinman1973 I wish there wasn't all that brand confusion and legal shit with Commodore and Amiga right now. I think you could make a real successor to the Amiga. ... at least in spirit.
Wait why is the CF card in plastic zip lock bags. What does that do? The outside was ugly but one good sign, when you opened the case the RF modulator casing seemed 'newish' rather than having a tinge of rust that you might expected. Well done on the elbow grease..... I would not have done it. So what now are you going to resell it?
I found an MTEC1230 somewhere in my mess of stuff with a SIMM socket on it. I remember as trowing it out one of my 1200's as non working. but maybe i should give t a try once. maybe some jumper setting were wrong on it. have to check the mem sort though . dim simm edo ??? ;)
It's all good ;-) There are loads of discussion going on about this and nobody was able to really argue against it. I did some research beforehand (including asking a few pros) and it is all just a matter of opinion, not fact.
Please correct me, if I am wrong: I did some extensive (maybe not extensive enough) research into this and this is what I came up with: 1. Ceramics (the one I used) have a lower tolerance. This should not be a problem in the context I use them, since the engineers did a good job. 2. Ceramics introduce noise. This might be true for RF/Compostie, but the RGB I use looks fine. If there was a problem, I would switch to the electrolitics. 3. Ceramics are brittle ... true, if you bent the board after soldering or if the board would not be mounted into a case. 4. Price - and this seems to be the real reason there are no ceramics in place in the first place. Ceramics are more expensive ... back the day a lot, nowadays a little (if you go for volume that might still hurt, but I am doing a one off here). Please let me know if I missed something. That is all I could come up with!
@@RetroWK The thing is, electrolytics and ceramics have completely different electronic "profiles". If the computer is at all stable with ceramics, I'd say you're very lucky. I've done a few years with electronics in school many years ago, and what I basically ended up with was "if you didn't design the circuit, and don't completely understand how it works, don't replace part a for part b" :) Commodore's engineers had access to both ceramics and electrolytics, and they chose electrolytics for just these ones. I'd say "trust them" and just get the same parts. They are a bit harder to solder though, so you may have to desolder the keyboard-header or the audio-plugs to get the one behind there in place in a proper fashion. I usually go for the keyboard-connector, since those pins are small and easy to desolder with a vacuum-pump. Atleast you didn't use tantalums. When they go bad, they just explode. And leave a nice little crater if surface mounted.. Try turning on an old IBM 5150 and count the seconds before one of them just go pop. Usually with a nice fireworks display. I still replace those with tantalums.. and have a batch at hand when they go out :)
Ingesamt war der Deal ok. Ich habe sogar diese Woche noch ein Paket mit einer weiteren Diskettenbox und einer 1531 Maus nachgeschickt bekommen. Musste nur das Label zahlen. Alles in allem ist der Wert so bei 600 - 700 und ich habe 400 bezahlt. Damit kann ich leben. Für das Case und die Tastatur habe ich schon 130 zurück, somit habe ich (bisher) 270 für einen A1200 mit einer 1230 bezahlt.
Lol, bloody hell, what a disaster - NEVER put undiluted acetone on ANY plastic unless you are wanting to destroy it for a laugh. You can use acetone to remove paint/stains etc from plastic, but it MUST be diluted - the amount of dilution required varies from plastic to plastic and you are best off testing in a small area INSIDE the case where you will not see it. I have good success with a mix of 20% acetone to 80% methylated spirit.
Thanks! I knew that this would happen, but I still wanted to see what it does to the plastic. I am planning on doing a whole video about cleaning cases and stuff.
It might seem so, but I also found dozens of machines that were not worth the money I paid. I just didn‘t make videos about those. Nobody wants to see a stock Amiga 500 that just barely works and is in poor condition.
Bis auf das Bundeswegr Game, hab ich alle gezockt. Super Arbeit mit dem 1200er. 👍
Danke!
For restoring ABS bodyshells on radio controlled cars, I used to use brake fluid to remove paint. It has to soak a while (24 hours+) but removes most paint finishes without hurting the plastic. I've also had some success with mild oven cleaners over the years too.
Great job refurbishing the A1200! 🙂👍
When you mentioned acetone, I thought "Oh, no, acetone is used to WELD ABS plastic." I've read online that oven cleaner can be used without damaging the ABS. But great job anyway!
10:15 lol! Another great video, Wolfgang... love watching these adventures!
Thanks!
Great score! And good video, thanks. I just got an A1200 myself (had an A600 back in the 90’s). My A1200 was in bad shape as well, but cleaned fine and after a recap it runs great. I was also surprised to find a Blizzard 1230 Mk IV card in there, which also works. A happy surprise, as I paid less for the entire unit than the Blizzard goes for online these days.
Oh and mine also had the Amiga logo coloured by a sharpie or something. It was a pain to clean. Tried IPA, acetone, baking soda… finally cleaned using cotton tips, toothpicks and a toothbrush. And all those chemicals.
I think respraying that is probably an better way to get it sellable. Although it wouldn’t be considered “original”. But the wet sand did a lot better than I’d thought it would and it’s a lot better neo for sure. For the future thinner or Benzeen (naphtha) work great on paint removal too.
Thanks! Will try next time ... took me HOURS to remove that s**t in all the cracks!
I had a SNES controller I painted back in the 90s. I soaked the shell in soapy water and purple power for over a week and the paint just came right off with a toothbrush. Just have some patience.
If I remember it was called a G-Force card. I had one of my 1200.
Damn, that looks like it's been through the wars.
WOW that A1200 looked so bad! I was very lucky to get my A1200 almost 5 years ago in GREAT shape! It had just been recapped and came with a working clean tank mouse and an 8GB CF card as an internal hard drive. I had always wanted an Amiga since the mid 80's and when I saw this SWEET looking A1200 I grabbed it for more than I should of! At that time in July 2018 only a few were being listed and they looked worn. Most were A500s so when the only A1200 popped up one day as a new listing I clicked the buy it now of $750. I know I over paid but no A1200s were coming up for awhile and this one was just so nice. 1st thing I bought for it was 8MB fast RAM because WHDload needed the RAM to run all the programs. The next thing I bought was a ACA1233n which gave me an 030 @ 25MHz & 128MB of RAM. A year later I bought the Vampire V1200v2 which was not cheap, and way over kill with an 080 @ 85MHz & 128MB of RAM. I wish I had just stuck with the ACA1233n. TY for all the GREAT content! You are looking well!
An 080? Wow! That was some SERIOUS computing power. I didn't know these existed. I thought the 060 was the prime 68k. That stuff must have set you back a bit (financially).
@@RetroWK The 060 was the fastest real CPU. The 080 in the Vampire uses FPG (or something like that) to make what the 080 was going to be if they kept making that line of CPUs. Many don’t like it and get mad at you when you tell them you have an 080! Like I said I wish I had just kept my ACA1233n with its 030. It ran all the games great. I saw a YT video on the Vampire and how it ran all the 060 demos and programs like elite super good and had to have it. The Vampire back then cost me around $500 back then with shipping. That was before all these new boards have come out for the A500 & A1200 that you plug a Pi into them, and the Pi becomes the CPU. They are so cheap compared to what I paid.
@@Charleshawn66 True. So the Vampire is basically a more expensive PiStorm and at $500 not cheap!
You may consider investing in a ultrasonic cleaner and/or a sandblasting station, would prolly have gotten that paint out of the grille. And saved your arms in the paint removal. ;)
I hope, this is kind of a one off. This was just for the video. I would have simply (over)painted the case otherwise.
If I were you, I would test some "gentle" paint removers on the inside of the bottom half to see if they melt the plastic. Also cellulose based paint thinners might have worked too. I wouldn't take a sanding paper to it for sure since it would remove the texture as you soon discovered. Nice find though, it is best to put it in the new casing you mentioned.
Yep. Many ways to go. I am thinking about doing a whole video about those methods. ... and at the end of the video I did put it into a new case ... and it looks great!
Labor intensive enterprise, but it paid off in the end. You did gamble a bit, but A1200 is one of the coolest retro computers that exist. keep it up!
It was a lot of work and the machine is a timeless classic. Thanks!
I’m fuming at the original state of that beautiful 1200. But it looked good enough once you had your way with it ;)
Top work, didn’t know you could use those caps on it, might look at that for my next project!
Thanks! These caps are the a1200.net ones. Only available in black.
I wonder if the dodgy silver spray job was done after the original colour began to degrade, it would would be hard to imagine anyone looking at a beautiful pristine A1200 and thinking "Hmmm, what these needs is to be covered in cheap paint" :)
I tend to go for a scrubbing brush and warm soapy water first, if that doesn't shift it I move on to methylated spirits and then IPA if meths doesn't work (but check because it melts some plastics and never use it on polycarbonate).
That shifts a lot of paints or at least softens them up so they can be scrubbed off with a stiff brush and has the advantage that you can soak things.
Thanks! I will try that in my "how to remove paint from retro cases" video.
@@RetroWK definitely test the plastics with the solvents because IPA can be very aggressive, I ruined the front of an old radio because I didn't realise it was being dissolved.
@16:27 I am surprised to hear that, only because I saw Vipers advertised a lot in UK magazines and they were one of the cards I fantasised about getting for our A1200 (never bought an accelerator in the end, not much use for it with the Amiga market being pretty much dead after 1995). I sometimes saw accelerators advertised as M-Tec but I didn't realise it was the same as the Viper.
I checked ebay and there are just a handful sold in the last years. So either there are actually few or people won't part with their cards.
It's quite interesting, that you can buy recap kits for the 1200, where the electrolytics were replaced with ceramics. It's a controversal topic, but I think it's always better to replace with the "original" electrolytic caps.
I bought a 1200 last year, which was recapped. But it's a wild mixture of SMD electrolytics and ceramics, "recrap"! 🤨
Although the machine (with TF1260) works fine, I think I'll do a right recap one day!
We had that discussion here too. I stand to my choice. The argument that Commodore engineers choose these for a reason is ok, but I think the reason was to reduce noise on RF (I don't care about) - that was a big deal back in the day since many used a TV set ... and price. The others were just cheaper and Commodore and ESCOM especially was very price sensitive.
You should have used chemical paint remover for the case. Often, furnace cleaning spray also works.
Simple green, concrete cleaner, are also good for removing paint
Well, we can tell the audio section is working properly because we hear high quality dog barking samples with echo at 12:33, but that is a very strange choice for a startup sound. 😁
I am sorry if this has been recommended before but a toothbrush will be able to reach behind the vents for the final clean :)
Thanks! I did that, but the dirt was in the paint. I assume whoever sprayed that did not clean it beforehand.
Maybe a stiff bristle brush would help you clean the grill?
Hi,
i have Played UFO Enemie unknown and Oldtimer ( Both on Pc )
That is nuts!
Gloom is a great game.
It looks better in the new case. :)
I think it looks WAY better too. Just played a round of Gloom. Thanks for the recommendation.
I once worked with the guys that made Gloom. I learnt a lot from Mark the programmer. Hans and Kirt (the artists) are cool dudes. I wish I had have stayed in contact with them especially Kevin (the musician for Gloom).
@@stephenwhite506 That's so cool. Nice one.
Die Arbeit hat sich echt gelohnt👍🏻 🤩
From Gary/Neil or Lee (I called him Neil mixed up his name, so it’s now a running gag) his c64 repair to Wolfgang’s Amiga 1209 repair
The spiders seem to like it 😂😂😂
In meinem Land, Ungarn, kann man in der Apotheke reines Benzin in einer kleinen braunen Flasche kaufen. Es schadet dem Kunststoff nicht, aber es löst die Farbe auf. (Translated with DeepL!)
Ja, das gibt es bei uns auch. Probiere es im nächsten Versuch ;-) Danke!
Will you be imaging the disks? they look interesting :)
Which one do you mean? I think the games are around. Do you need anything specific?
I used to have that Mtec 1230 back in the day
Do you remember how much you paid for it and was it considered any good?
@@RetroWK I remember i payed 349 Dutch guilders for it , i bought it from Amigis computer shop ( was a AMIGA only computer store) here in Netherlands. I also put the FPU on it. It was not installed form the factory. It was a ok card at that time and i had it it until 1994 when i sold my Amiga and got a Escom Commodore pentium 1 @ 66 mhz. I was Commodore brand loyal from the beginning until the end. I cried when they went bankrupt and hoped Esom made a Powerpc Amiga with A 603 processor and DSP for sound. But it never came out. Instead they announced the walker A1200. Escom killed the Amiga !!!
@@Pinman1973 I wish there wasn't all that brand confusion and legal shit with Commodore and Amiga right now. I think you could make a real successor to the Amiga. ... at least in spirit.
Wait why is the CF card in plastic zip lock bags. What does that do?
The outside was ugly but one good sign, when you opened the case the RF modulator casing seemed 'newish' rather than having a tinge of rust that you might expected. Well done on the elbow grease..... I would not have done it. So what now are you going to resell it?
The plastic bags keeps the IDE-PCB from shorting out the A1200 underneath. ... and I will keep that machine. After I put so much work into it!
@@RetroWK Thanks for answering and fair enough.
I found an MTEC1230 somewhere in my mess of stuff with a SIMM socket on it. I remember as trowing it out one of my 1200's as non working. but maybe i should give t a try once. maybe some jumper setting were wrong on it. have to check the mem sort though . dim simm edo ??? ;)
These things have some value. I think the one with the memory slots is a little more common, but still.
wait are you changing the electrolitic for something else? hope you are right... it's for the rf?...maybe...
I would not risk it...
It's all good ;-) There are loads of discussion going on about this and nobody was able to really argue against it. I did some research beforehand (including asking a few pros) and it is all just a matter of opinion, not fact.
maybe soaking the case with wd40 might losen the coating so you might just brush or blow the old coating off
Another thing to try next time. Thanks!
Really boulder dash after all of that
It's a classic!
I really do enjoy your channel, but changing the caps from electrolytics to smd is ... Let's just say they are electrolytics for more than one reason.
Please correct me, if I am wrong: I did some extensive (maybe not extensive enough) research into this and this is what I came up with: 1. Ceramics (the one I used) have a lower tolerance. This should not be a problem in the context I use them, since the engineers did a good job. 2. Ceramics introduce noise. This might be true for RF/Compostie, but the RGB I use looks fine. If there was a problem, I would switch to the electrolitics. 3. Ceramics are brittle ... true, if you bent the board after soldering or if the board would not be mounted into a case. 4. Price - and this seems to be the real reason there are no ceramics in place in the first place. Ceramics are more expensive ... back the day a lot, nowadays a little (if you go for volume that might still hurt, but I am doing a one off here). Please let me know if I missed something. That is all I could come up with!
@@RetroWK The thing is, electrolytics and ceramics have completely different electronic "profiles".
If the computer is at all stable with ceramics, I'd say you're very lucky. I've done a few years with electronics in school many years ago, and what I basically ended up with was "if you didn't design the circuit, and don't completely understand how it works, don't replace part a for part b" :)
Commodore's engineers had access to both ceramics and electrolytics, and they chose electrolytics for just these ones. I'd say "trust them" and just get the same parts.
They are a bit harder to solder though, so you may have to desolder the keyboard-header or the audio-plugs to get the one behind there in place in a proper fashion. I usually go for the keyboard-connector, since those pins are small and easy to desolder with a vacuum-pump.
Atleast you didn't use tantalums. When they go bad, they just explode. And leave a nice little crater if surface mounted.. Try turning on an old IBM 5150 and count the seconds before one of them just go pop. Usually with a nice fireworks display.
I still replace those with tantalums.. and have a batch at hand when they go out :)
I am about to.
das gerät stande auf ebay und wurde als amiga 500 angeboten
Yep. Genau der isses.
Mtec 1230 war jetzt aber nicht das Geld wert
Ingesamt war der Deal ok. Ich habe sogar diese Woche noch ein Paket mit einer weiteren Diskettenbox und einer 1531 Maus nachgeschickt bekommen. Musste nur das Label zahlen. Alles in allem ist der Wert so bei 600 - 700 und ich habe 400 bezahlt. Damit kann ich leben. Für das Case und die Tastatur habe ich schon 130 zurück, somit habe ich (bisher) 270 für einen A1200 mit einer 1230 bezahlt.
Insgesamt gesehen war der Preis sicherlich gut-sofern man das für einen a1200 sagen kann 🤷.
Lol, bloody hell, what a disaster - NEVER put undiluted acetone on ANY plastic unless you are wanting to destroy it for a laugh.
You can use acetone to remove paint/stains etc from plastic, but it MUST be diluted - the amount of dilution required varies from plastic to plastic and you are best off testing in a small area INSIDE the case where you will not see it.
I have good success with a mix of 20% acetone to 80% methylated spirit.
Thanks! I knew that this would happen, but I still wanted to see what it does to the plastic. I am planning on doing a whole video about cleaning cases and stuff.
You are right, I don't believe it. You put that card in there yourself.
Nope. I don’t do that kind of shit.
Ok then, unbelievable you are that lucky 😉@@RetroWK
It might seem so, but I also found dozens of machines that were not worth the money I paid. I just didn‘t make videos about those. Nobody wants to see a stock Amiga 500 that just barely works and is in poor condition.
What a whinger
Why did you bid on it if you didnt know what you were bidding on ?
I saw blurry photos and took a risk. Also I wanted to make a video with the worst looking A1200.