After selling off my last proper Amiga six years ago I decided now was a good time to play around with one again.
The older Amiga 500’s (launched in 1987) can usually be found much cheaper than the Amiga 1200’s (from 1993), but most are difficult to upgrade beyond 1MB of chip RAM which can limit what software you want to play around with (most games can be installed to a hard disk using WHDLoad, but this requires more chip RAM than floppy disk load).
The Amiga A500 Plus (from 1991) can easily be expanded to 2MB of chip RAM so that’s the one to go for; the downside being Commodore put a battery on the motherboard, and they are almost certain to leak and cause problems if not cleaned up in time.
Anyhow, one grubby Amiga 500 Plus found with photos of it working, and thus purchased:
…and the battery had indeed leaked so removal and a clean with white vinegar was the first job:
The motherboard is pretty much the same as the earlier A500 and was even used in some A500’s. It’s a revision 8A board from 1991 and contains a the Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) which supports a few more video modes than the Original Chip Set (OCS) which was launched in 1985 on the Amiga 1000. This version also shipped with a new Kickstart ROM version and Workbench - which caused some game compatibility problems, but nothing I’m concerned about.
Cleaning up the keyboard and replacing missing springs and broken plungers was next. This is a Mitsumi membrane keyboard. Legend has it that some early US Amiga keyboard had cherry switches but I have never seen one. Allegedly a Commodore logo instead of the Amiga logo on the bottom left key (next to Alt) is what you need to look out for. If you find one don’t give it away, a collector will likely pay top whack - even a standard spare keyboard is now $100+ on ebay if fully working and not to yellowed.
After cleaning up the keyboard I inspected the rear ports. The mouse port is missing a pin but still works. I’ve ordered a new DB9 port to solder in, but no rush to do it.
Finally for usage as is I needed a new mouse and a VGA adapter (23pin to 15 pin) for my 17" multi-sync BenQ TFT 5:4 aspect screen. These were easily obtained from AmigaKit. A multi-sync monitor is essential as nearly all Amiga games and software is designed for a 15KHz PAL or NTSC screen modes. VGA works at 31KHz and most monitors can only adjust to a slightly lower frequency. Scan-doublers do exist but are either cheap and crap or expensive.
The mouse is a cheap PS2 mouse with a female DB9 adapter and an all important Amiga logo.
More posts to follow.