Amiga Restoration

Skerries

I decided to get the old Amiga's and other stuff out of storage and put them on display in the man cave so I bought some shelving units and stuck RGB in.
The only thing was looking at the grubby Amiga's didn't look right so decided I'd try my hand at Retrobriting them.
Thanks to the guys on here I bought the peroxide from Boots and made up the paste using Vanish as a drying agent and went to town on the A1200 first, unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of it before hand, only when I had the keyboard out and then at the end for the finished project
I made sure to take more photos when doing the A500



A1200 Keyboard before



A1200 Motherboard



A1200 after



A500 Before



A500 Keyboard (Ugh!, the A1200 was worse!)



A500 Motherboard



A500 after the initial clean



A500 covered in paste and left in sun for the day



A500 and A1200 Keys (did A1200 keys twice)



A500 after the retrobrite

Skerries

I wasn't as happy with how the A500 came out compared to the A1200 so decided I'd go a different route and spray paint the A500



A500 after spray paint



A500 underneath



Final product with spray painted keys and Amiga key sticker set


I have tested the A500 and it works and takes disks but it looks like the keyboard membrane is gone

I am going to mod the A1200 now so just have a few questions about it

I have bought a scart cable to test it and it works, luckily no leaky caps but I might send it off to get recapped

Based on it working I have just sent off for a mouse adapter as my original isn't great alongside an 8mb expansion and an IDE CF drive which comes with 3.1 installed

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/131657369433?hash=item1ea7640759:g:dA4AAOSw0vBUk029

My question is do I need to get the 3.1 ROMs in order for it to work or will it still work with stock ROMs?

https://amigastore.eu/en/16-rom-31-amiga-1200-two-chips.html

Also would I be able to upgrade to the newly released 3.2 from 3.1 without the ROMs?

The Last Bandit

3.1 Workbench will boot ok on 3.0 roms but to upgrade to 3.2 you need to install 3.2 roms or softkick them (but this eats up 512KB of your RAM).

itguyinaction

Awesome work!

The biggest issue I'm always afraid of is that old plastic materials are terribly fragile and it's easy to break something...

Skerries

the plastic is still very sturdy, the only thing I did do which is my own fault which you can see on the under side of the A500 is the expansion door has a piece missing.
I dropped it into the bath too early when I was filling it and a bit broke off but I have glued it back and once I sprayed it it now looks seamless

Doge

Excellent work! Love the blue!

itguyinaction

@Skerries, btw, what paintings did u use exactly (the manufacturer, type etc.). This paintings looks really well, without any marks etc. And this blue color looks quite interesting. A bit pity that you didn't prepare any video although I know it's very time consuming.

Skerries

I bought them from ebay

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/264322213210

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/254503641296?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=554181941264&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/254503641296?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=554181941255&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

itguyinaction

Thx, I stored the links. If i need painting, I will think seriously about them as they seems to give good effect. I like your work.

itguyinaction

One question more - when paining keys how did u protect them in order not to loose characters to be visible?

Skerries

This is why I painted it black as you need to buy a sticker set

all the euro shops were out of stock so I had to buy from the US

https://www.4keyboard.com/commodore-keyboard-stickers/586-2820-commodore-commodore-a500-a1200-a1200hd-non-transparent-keyboard-stickers.html#/21-key_size-11x13/32-background_color-black

only about €6