I had serial number #31. Which I loved because it was 11111 in binary. This computer was sent to COMPUTE! Magazine for review. I was an assistant editor for COMPUTE!'s Gazette. I asked Selby Bateman, our Features Editor, if Commodore would let me buy it instead of us sending it back. They did. It was the computer I used when working on the book Mapping The Amiga.
Top Tips. The 68000 CPU has some interesting features. Connect a SPST latching switch to the 68000s PAUSE pin, instant pause for ANY program. Ditto the RST pin and there used to be a hack taking a 14Mhz signal from somewhere near Agnus and then disconnecting the CLK pin from the CPU and then attaching the 14Mhz pin to it and doubling the apeed of your A500!!! God, i loved my Amiga!!
Hi, i work at a Company wich used to make the Moulds for the C64 and the Amiga Cases. A few Years ago they threw away a lot of the older stuff wich included the insert of a Mould wich was the Embossed Text on the bottom of your Amiga, wich i saved from the Trash. I never saw an actual Amiga with the embossed Text until now.
Hi, you could point at another difference, the grey cursor keys! Only the very early A500 keyboards got those. Starting 2019 through 2022 I managed to have bought three 1987 A500, two boxed and complete (rev5 and rev3), one loose (rev3). One of the boxed A500, the most well preserved one, got these grey keys that I'd only spotted on the A500 manual. Great video, thanks and Happy new Year!
How nice it is to see a pro working with electronics, antistatic wristband and mat, there are so many pearl gravel mechanics (amateur mechanics as we call it in the DK) who had just messed around in the old Amiga.
My A500 (bought by me in New Zealand, late '87) seems to have been built in the 26th week of 1987. Serial number HB4 001208; Externally identical to the one in this video, but the innards are a little different :) Mechanical "space invader" keyboard with C= key instead of the left Amiga key; White-on-grey C= logo instead of embossed plastic C= above the power LED; Revision 5 motherboard; "Chinon" branded floppy drive.
I got my Amiga 500 back in May 1987 in Germany. It had a serial number of about 6000. When I bought it, there was still no German instructions book available. It came with a US book and a coupon to get the German book afterwards. I sold it later to get my A2000. Now my oldest A500 is an early one with a number slightly above 10,000. It has still Kickstart 1.2 and the case is unaltered.
I think that's the first rev 3 board I've seen "cased" in over 30 years lol. The Gary is rare - has a bug which I talked about on a few videos in the past. Hope you had a good Christmas Jan! Have a Happy New Year!
Haha, I guess the Rev 3 was not a very loved revision, probably many boards got replaced with newer ones over time. Interesting that the Gary has a bug, I'm going to have to rewatch some of your Amiga videos then. :D
My Gary says CBM 5719 TC176008AP-0025 JAPAN 8708E. Is that one with a bug, and what is the bug? What problem does it cause? I remember my A500 would flicker the ship sprite (I think it was the ship) on a shoot-em-up called Sidewinder (1988). It's the only thing that played differently on mine to everyone elses.
@@JanBeta One thing I noticed - test Dune, it plays the music at a varying tempo! I also heard that the "original" Rainbow Islands has some issue with it - either failing to load or some problem in-game.
@@jaycee1980 I did wonder about DTACK tbh, since I have a video on a similar kinda problem which I just pushed out on early access. That made me wonder if it was a similar problem with that old Gary. That transistor bodge sounds interesting!!!
Hi Jan. FINALLY! Finally someone backs my theory that sub-10000 serial A500s have a) an early badge logo rather than chicken lips and b) a big label on the bottom rather than the thin sticker. I own a German A500 with a serial in the 4000s (and had a second one in the 7000s) which are like this one except two things: it has both the big label plus the molded „sticker“ next to each other. Obviously the bottom case was updated in between Stephane's A500 and mine. Also it has a Chinon F354E instead of this Matsushita. My #4000 board has the serial number 1680 and was produced in KW13. I think the top case was changed to chicken lips around serial 10000 and the bottom sticker was changed to the thin thing a little later, let’s say 12000. Both regarding the German end production. HK end production is different.
Have you written anywhere about your theory? When I got this machine, I searched a lot for information and found just enough to be pretty sure that this theory is true (for the WGA machines, the HK and CA ones were apparently produced a bit later). Since there are so few surviving very early machines, the apparently false accounts that the first Amiga had an embossed logo is otherwise very strong online. It would be nice that this video (series) would help establish new knowledge about the very first models.
Exactly. Information is as hard to find as the machines. I posted something about both named machines at A1K (German). Can’t post the URL here, search for „Mein 4000er A500“. When you scroll through the discussion, you'll find further links and info I collected there. There are even examples of known-original machines, one with chicken lips but big label, serial around 10000. Note the PDF of the 87 CeBIT which contains pictures of an obviously pre-production 500, which also has the sticker logo we are talking about. You can see that it was quite a fight to discuss the theory there, but over time I’ve gotten somewhere.
@@al.d9592 That bit about the prototype is really interesting and would finally validate that theory and give evidence to the sceptics. I wasn't able to find the forum link you hinted at, probably because my knowledge of German is very limited. Jan might be able to dig further than me.
Hey, thanks for sharing! I'm going to try to find that link. So far, I think the theory with the bolder C= badge cases being the earliest ones is correct. Several other people with very low serial number A500s have contacted me and they all seem to have the badge on the case.
Klasse! Das ist tatsächlich der älteste A500 on record. WOW! Mein Rev3 ist KW14 87 produziert mit Hi Tek Keyboard Chicken Lips und eingestanzten Gehäuse Nr. 18271. Die Boards wurden ja in HK produziert und die Gehäuse in Braunschweig und führen unterschiedliche Seriennummern. Ich denke tatsächlich, dass der hier vorgestellte Amiga also der 190. Amiga A500 ist, der fertigstellt wurde. Das ist echt schon was besonderes!!!
I could actually smell it when you opened the box. I will never forget the smell of my Amiga, the discs, the power supply, the monitor and all the other stuff. Crazy 🤔
Super interesting Jan. I purchased the A500 in April of 88 but around the 99-2005 time frame I had several friends donate theirs to me. I am now going to check them out to see what Revs of the board I have, I wonder if there is a comprehensive thread or document on the various 500 systems that is thorough and all inclusive. (I’m in the US) I’ve seen some efforts but never anything definitive, maybe it would just be extremely hard given Commodores propensity to mix and match, lol. Regardless, thank you for this, I’ll keep an eye out for your follow up! The 500 will always be my personal soft spot, it was the first computer that made me realize that the possibilities were truly infinite.
That certainly is a nice find. I remember buying my Amiga 500 I’m the late 80’s. Sadly I swapped over to PC but the Amiga did get a lot of use. I’m looking forward to watching progress in this one. Regards Graham
Yes, these RAM expansions were super common and also often the switches were added to the case in similar spots. I'm kind of happy that the RAM expansion in my origianl A500 was permanently switched on (it was the Commodore expansion which didn't have the option to switch it off from factory). :D
Really one of the legendary ones with Cherry keyboard. My 500 only had a serial in the 1 or 2 thousands, got it from a tiny but very active shop. I think most of these very early ones went to magazine reviewers and such to make the best impression possible.
Interesting - I'm approximately 95.4186237% sure my (first) A500 did have the embossed logo, & I'm 100% sure it had a C= key. Unfortunately, I don't remember when it was originally bought (my parents bought it second hand for me in summer '87, but the seller included the original receipt) though.
I got my A500 in December 1987. Obviously it was a very early machine. It had the early keyboard as well. The keys were slightly different. The key caps had a different shape (shorter) and pressing the keys felt more tense than on all other Amigas i've been working with. I never saw another A500 with "my" keyboard until watching your video. It had the Commodore key and the solid Amiga-Logo-Key as well. The case felt "heavier" than the younger ones, and it had the grey-white Commodore logo as well. The power supply was different compared to the one in your video. The power-switch was in the center of the case. Some of my friends got their A500 at the same time - with different keyboard, case, logo, etc. I have to check, if I can find some old pictures.
Great info! I picked up my very first A500 a little over a year ago from an estate sale and it was identical to this model with the Commodore key, chicken lips badge (not embossed), and the mechanical keyboard. It has a higher serial # though: CA1003936. It's in good working condition but unfortunately did not come with the box. The Hi-Tek keyboard is by far the nicest to type on of all the Commodore models I've used so far.
That's a nice specimen! Also notable on the really early rev 3 is that they has the Y1 crystal populated down to the left instead of the X1 oscillator above the kickstart. They should also have different feet than the regular white rubber ones. More like plastic, slightly translucent ones.
This one is missing its feet unfortunately. :/ I noticed the oscillator. Interesting that they have two footprints for oscillators on the board, I guess they were still testing what worked better after finishing the board design.
Hi Jan, nice video!. Just a little heads up; the common language in Belgium is not just French, there's also Flemish. To put this in numbers: 60% speaks Flemish (or Dutch), 40% speaks French, and about 2% speaks German. Luckily I speak all three, more or less :-). As soon as they bring out TheA500 MAXI, I might buy one.
Whoops, I assumed French would be the predominant language, sorry. I was aware that there are more commonly spoken languages in Belgium but didn't know about the statistics. French is the official language though, or is it? Sorry for my cultural ignorance... :D
Arguably, you could throw English in as a fourth unofficial language, because that seems to end up being the compromise fallback language for everyone.
This is an amazing find, computing history and yeah, I was as enthused about it as Jan was. Also c an we all take a moment to appreciate the beauty of Jay Miners board designs, everything is neat, sectioned perfectly, symmetrical and I always loved to way he puts all his resistors in neat little banks.
Those old keyboards are so sweet. I remember being slightly disappointed when I got my first own Amiga in 1988, and it had the membrane key switches. But hey, that disappointment lasted for 5 seconds, then I was in total Amiga bliss. (Still am.)
Yeah, I guess the slightly wobblier keyboard is a small price to pay. The Amiga awesomeness was still absolutely mind blowing at the time (it still is apparently). :D
Today was the perfect day and time for watching the whole video, which I very much enjoyed. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a successful restoration of this beautiful machine. A happy new year to you and all the best for 2023, Jan!
Nice Amiga and nice video. I like that you split it into an unpacking video and one or more repair videos. 30 minutes is the perfect length of videos for me. If it's one hour or more I have a hard time finding time to watch it.
It also gives me more time to find all the faults (hopefully). I usually aim for around 30 min videos. Sometimes it works, sometimes I get carried away a bit too much. This time, there's definitely going to be at least one more episode. Currently troubleshooting and hopefully fixing the faults.
I definitely had a very early A500 model which my dad bought in Italy for my 15th birthday in August 1987. Il had exactly this keyboard with the "cicken lips" commodore logo button and the american layout. Il had the Kickstart 1.2 and actually had better compatibility than my friend's later model (kickstart 1.3). I sold it in 1992 to buy an A1200.... But luckily I found one more last year in France where I live and it is in a nice condition inside its box. I have to check the serial number.... ;-)
Et le numéro de l'autocollant de la carte-mère, qui est encore plus mystérieux. 16ème PCB d'Amiga 500 jamais sorti d'usine ? Quand je suis tombé sur cette étiquette qui était tombée sous le lecteur de disquettes, j'étais comme Jan dans cette vidéo ! 🙂
I vote in favor of fixing the poor thing, even if that means some (little) deviation from the original "museum" condition. I wish a great new year, Jan.
This A500 looks very familiar: I also had one with the Commodore key on the left and the exact same 'silver' logo. I bought mine in June '88 in a shop called Bits&Chips, which was located on the Ceintuurbaan in Amsterdam, for halve price! Because it was a shop demonstration model that didn't come with a mouse....I mean: who needs a modern thing like a mouse when you are coming from a Schneider CPC464 before ;) BTW: about a year later I discovered that there was a memory expansion in it, which the shop forgot to remove before selling it to me :)
Very cool! I the Caps Lock kinda stand out to me right away along with the bigger Shift keys. Also probably the video with the most use of the word Careful ever! :D Keep it up Jan. Best wishes for the new Year from Switzerland.
I had such a machine, I found it in the early 2000s in Hungary in some electro-junkyard in an extremely sorry state. The case and keyboard was very broken and beyond repair already , but the mainboard was up and running. It had the chickenlips keyboard and Kickstart 1.2. Watched TRSI Megademo on it, because that worked with 512K... :) I had to give the remaining parts away when I moved to Germany about 10 years ago, along with a bunch of other stuff. Glad these are still out there tho'. Great find, thanks for sharing.
I bought a knackered A500 from a car boot and it was serial number 600 and something and had similar keys. I cannot remember much but compared to my own A500+ it looked completely different and so I compared to my mates A500 and it was different to that. We decided it was a Frankenstein Amiga A500, but may have been an early run. It never got fixed and i sold on for spares and repairs.
Very nice looking early Amiga 500, and interesting to compare the details to mine, which is manufactured at 52nd week in 1990, according to the yellow sticker on the motherboard, and serial number in that yellow sticker is over 2 million. Serial number sticker at the bottom of the case is over 1,4 million, made in W. Germany, and mine has C= sticker, but with thinner print than the early one. My box image also has both Amiga keys, no Commodore key anymore, and box doesn't have any stickers. Oh yeah and my Amiga is Scandinavian version as I live in Finland.
I remember getting my Amiga500 in 1987 with my "children savings", but it wasn't till July though, so I guess it was kinda old ;) I remember that it was July, because it was vacation, and I vividly remember the busride home, thinking that this computer would change my life. It did.
I will definitely be watching out for part 2! I have an early Amiga 500 (serial number 342901) with the same keyboard that also doesn't work (go figure! lol).
Halo Jan, in 1988 I bought my first A500. The case is identical to the older one you showed in this video, same little C= square badge, same centered label on the bottom shell but it doesn't have the Hi-Tek keyboard. Furthermore it has a rev.5 motherboard with the buggy Toshiba Gary chip and what it seems to be a kludge fix for it but that it's not present in the rev.3 motherboard. Years later I bought other two A500s, they are quite similar, they both sport the Space Invaders keyboard and a rev.3 mainboard but a different plastic bottom shell. One is identical to the one of the Amiga you bought back in the day, the other one has the same little sticker in the centre showing only the serial number but it doesn't have the engraved / embossed information about the computer model, FCC information and other things. All three A500s were made in W. Germany. So, why I'm speaking about all these stuff? Because the strange thing is that the Amiga I bought in 1988 has a serial number that is in between the other two I bought later as numeric progression but from the cases and motherboards revinsions standpoint it is incoherent. The only thing I can suppose is that there were many assembly lines inside the factory and each one used the components they have in stock, serial numbers were of course in numeric progression but at some point there must have been upgrades in the components they used to make the computers, maybe not on all the assembly lines. This could be the reason why a computer with an earlier serial number sports components that usually were mounted on later production. I hope this little story will be informative to you. Cheers from one of your Italian followers!
If you have cleaned the Agnus socket and Agnus chip and it still doesn't work, have a look at EMI406 (right next to Denise). This is equipped with a 1 ohm resistor on these boards. It is often defective. It supplies U40 and U41 with 5 volts. regards botfixer
Amazing job, I learned a lot with this video and enjoyed a lot. I am looking forward to see the next video. Thanks Jan and I wish you a very happy 2023.
Great video, waiting for the next episode. I have an earlier Amiga 500 boxed, with embossed logo, embossed information on the back, AZERTY keyboard, serial No. 89140. I'm living in France, very close to Belgium.
Do you know if yours already has a Rev 5 board in it? It seems like it is of similar vintage like my own first A500 (which was purchased in Summer 1987). Mine has the embossed logo and the German keyboard layout (as I've shown in the video). My theory is that the very first ones all had the US chicken lips keyboard and then shortly after they produced localized keyboards and slightly changed the case molds.
Nice. I had no idea about the earliest Amiga badge as my early 500 has the chicken lips keyboard and embossed emblem. Also a mitsumi disk drive and Rev 3 motherboard and none of the chips are named as on later versions.
The C64 had a very long life, it's sales were basically funding the development of this machine. Makes me wonder if they sold more C64's after the Amiga was created than they actually sold Amigas.
I had a Rev 3 like this with no Video Sync at all...after replacing the factory *resistor* at EMI406 it worked perfectly..later models have a EMI filter here. At 19:33 in the video you can also see you have a resistor there at the bottom right of the picture - just to the right of where the bodge wire goes to the board
@@JanBeta Apologies....I just came across this video....didn't see the 2nd part ! keep up the great work, love your videos they are very educational, thanks :)
15:155 i heard that mechanics when you pressed that commodore key the first time already ... soundcheck would have been cool :) this dude should let someone clone the keyboard so we can make new mechanical keyboards :P i know there are others but the original would be awesome
i got an early Norwegian model, with Norwegian keyboard but same style sticker underneath as the old one here. same style top too but not the space-invader keyboard. mine is serial number 013001 so means at least after 10k made they started with newer type keyboard. (interesting enough is that the motherboard is a serial number 000255)
though, as most Rev3 boards its riddled with faults, case have had a very hard life with cracks everywhere and the keyboard makes a washing-board look completely straight... (PSU have died a long time ago.)
Oh, I thought I had an early one but this is a step further! Interestingly my enter key has the type in a different position, and all keys have the letters as far left as they could possibly be. Also has the c= key. Mine has a rev3 v2 board with the embossed case badge, commodore info on the back with a transparent serial number sticker. I understand its been boxed until I got it, its quite white compared to any other Amiga I've seen (paper white). Not as compatible with demos as later Amiga 500s even with RAM expansion. Some of the cutom chips & 68000 are third party. Mouse has no commodore logo underneath. Box is the same as yours. Wonder if any Amigas have that odd escape key that is in the box artwork?
I have a chicken lips A500 with the embossed logo on the case. It was sealed when I first got it. It has a rev.5 motherboard. Oh, and mine also has the same floppy drive as shown in the video here
This is an early A500 for sure. I own one with serial 538 I think and it has the same features including the fat logo and fat plastic case etc. Even the keyboard controller from 1986. So it seems like Commodore made At least a couple of thousend of this set-up. Also note the old school ”commodore” type set on the sticker.
Yes, that's my theory, too. I think the thicker badge case predates the more common one with the embossed logo (which was probably a cost reduced version using less plastic). I didn't notice the old school Commodore logo, thanks for pointing that out! :D
I had that model 0190 of Amiga 500 when I was a teenager. It was 100% identical to that one. The one I had had to have the floppy drive replaced in it though and I upgraded the ram to 512kb I think. I know I doubled the ram
I like the "New! Now includes disk 'First Steps' " stickers on the Amiga boxes. 😀Even the one with the SN190 had it (in French). I guess the first 189 units were sold without the disk then? 😉 Quite telling, they didn't waste much time or employ marketing experts to design these boxes. "Just make a box, put the photo of the unit on it. And, ya, add a sticker that it even comes with a startup disk...". Done! 😆
We used to sell Commodore back in the day, and I can remember getting the first shippment of Amigas delivered to our shop. A huge stack of these white boxes with the picture of the A500 on it. 2 EPAL's full of these, like 50 or 60 units. By the end of the week they were all gone... I would advice against doing anything to this unit to fix it. There's lot of working Amigas around, but few that are this old and totally original. You should keep it that way.
The dilemma of Theseus' boat. How much fixing is acceptable so that it remains the original Amiga 500? On the other hand, museum pieces (paintings, for example) are regularly carefully restored so that they can be displayed as they were created (sometimes involving new pigments and such). I guess, as Jan says several times in the video, "careful" is the operative word.
I had one of those... I worked in the trade back in the day and got my hands on one of the first batch in the UK, a few days before they hit the shop shelves... I really wish I'd kept it... :(
Hey, I am Belgian and French speaking... Never say it is the common language. We do speak Flemish (close to Dutch) French and also a bit of German. Flemish is the most spoken language as more people live on the Flemish side, the comes French. What is strange is that we usually have product labeled in both French and Dutch. But being from the 80's, it might not be the case.
Oh, I didn't know about the pronunciation, thanks! I was aware that Matsushita, Panasonic, Technics, National Panasonic etc are all basically different names/brands from the same manufacturer.
My A500 is from week 20 (on the yellow sticker) and has the exact same C= key Hi-Tek keyboard (date 8707), but without the caps on the 6570 keyboard chip. My case is also like yours, with the moulded info and just the serial No. on the sticker (38165 on mine). Also the moulded C= logo on the case.
No, the first A500s with an onboard battery were the A500+ models which came much later. Many people added RAM expansions with a clock circuit to the earlier models though (this one came with a 512K expansion which has a leaky battery, too).
I remember my college getting the amiga prototypes upgraded to 1MB on a workbench 1.2 .. we done a lot of programming projects on that we also tested the Amstrad PC with VGA prototypes at more or less the same time.. funny how we all mostly went out and bought news A500 after that .. I was still just developing on C64 and could not afford one until I waited for it to be more settled in the market .. actually i think the A500 we had only had 256K but upgraded to either 512 or 1MB cannot remember now
Lights coming on but then fading out is definitely power supply related. It may be worth disconnecting the floppy drive as I have seen them fail and excessively load the 5v line in the process
Yes, that's my initial thought, too. I disconnected the disk drive and keyboard before trying to power it on actually. Troubleshooting in progress now. Voltages at least arrive at the connectors on the board, 5V seems to go into the ICs, too. We'll see if I can pinpoint the fault.
I had serial number #31. Which I loved because it was 11111 in binary.
This computer was sent to COMPUTE! Magazine for review. I was an assistant editor for COMPUTE!'s Gazette. I asked Selby Bateman, our Features Editor, if Commodore would let me buy it instead of us sending it back. They did.
It was the computer I used when working on the book Mapping The Amiga.
Wow, that is cool. I bought that book back in the day and had subs to both COMPUTE! and Gazette for many, many years. Thank You!
@@RacerX- A friend of mine I worked with at Dynamix and Pipeworks told me that he eventually used Mapping the Amiga to level his dryer.
@@RhettAnderson haha Ouch! Well I think I still have my copy in my book case. It ain't going under the dryer. 😂
Top Tips. The 68000 CPU has some interesting features. Connect a SPST latching switch to the 68000s PAUSE pin, instant pause for ANY program. Ditto the RST pin and there used to be a hack taking a 14Mhz signal from somewhere near Agnus and then disconnecting the CLK pin from the CPU and then attaching the 14Mhz pin to it and doubling the apeed of your A500!!! God, i loved my Amiga!!
Hi, i work at a Company wich used to make the Moulds for the C64 and the Amiga Cases. A few Years ago they threw away a lot of the
older stuff wich included the insert of a Mould wich was the Embossed Text on the bottom of your Amiga, wich i saved from the Trash.
I never saw an actual Amiga with the embossed Text until now.
Hi, you could point at another difference, the grey cursor keys! Only the very early A500 keyboards got those. Starting 2019 through 2022 I managed to have bought three 1987 A500, two boxed and complete (rev5 and rev3), one loose (rev3). One of the boxed A500, the most well preserved one, got these grey keys that I'd only spotted on the A500 manual. Great video, thanks and Happy new Year!
How nice it is to see a pro working with electronics, antistatic wristband and mat, there are so many pearl gravel mechanics (amateur mechanics as we call it in the DK) who had just messed around in the old Amiga.
My A500 (bought by me in New Zealand, late '87) seems to have been built in the 26th week of 1987. Serial number HB4 001208; Externally identical to the one in this video, but the innards are a little different :) Mechanical "space invader" keyboard with C= key instead of the left Amiga key; White-on-grey C= logo instead of embossed plastic C= above the power LED; Revision 5 motherboard; "Chinon" branded floppy drive.
I got my Amiga 500 back in May 1987 in Germany. It had a serial number of about 6000. When I bought it, there was still no German instructions book available. It came with a US book and a coupon to get the German book afterwards. I sold it later to get my A2000. Now my oldest A500 is an early one with a number slightly above 10,000. It has still Kickstart 1.2 and the case is unaltered.
I think that's the first rev 3 board I've seen "cased" in over 30 years lol. The Gary is rare - has a bug which I talked about on a few videos in the past. Hope you had a good Christmas Jan! Have a Happy New Year!
Haha, I guess the Rev 3 was not a very loved revision, probably many boards got replaced with newer ones over time. Interesting that the Gary has a bug, I'm going to have to rewatch some of your Amiga videos then. :D
yep issues with !DTACK... i have one in a rev 5 board, and there's a transistor bodge to fix the bug :)
My Gary says CBM 5719 TC176008AP-0025 JAPAN 8708E. Is that one with a bug, and what is the bug? What problem does it cause? I remember my A500 would flicker the ship sprite (I think it was the ship) on a shoot-em-up called Sidewinder (1988). It's the only thing that played differently on mine to everyone elses.
@@JanBeta One thing I noticed - test Dune, it plays the music at a varying tempo! I also heard that the "original" Rainbow Islands has some issue with it - either failing to load or some problem in-game.
@@jaycee1980 I did wonder about DTACK tbh, since I have a video on a similar kinda problem which I just pushed out on early access. That made me wonder if it was a similar problem with that old Gary. That transistor bodge sounds interesting!!!
I’ll never forget when I bought my first Amiga 500, was a glorious day!
Wow what a find. I look forward to seeing it work again.
Wow, such a beautiful early example! Looking forward to seeing it brought back to its former glory 😁
Hi Jan. FINALLY! Finally someone backs my theory that sub-10000 serial A500s have a) an early badge logo rather than chicken lips and b) a big label on the bottom rather than the thin sticker. I own a German A500 with a serial in the 4000s (and had a second one in the 7000s) which are like this one except two things: it has both the big label plus the molded „sticker“ next to each other. Obviously the bottom case was updated in between Stephane's A500 and mine. Also it has a Chinon F354E instead of this Matsushita. My #4000 board has the serial number 1680 and was produced in KW13.
I think the top case was changed to chicken lips around serial 10000 and the bottom sticker was changed to the thin thing a little later, let’s say 12000. Both regarding the German end production. HK end production is different.
Have you written anywhere about your theory? When I got this machine, I searched a lot for information and found just enough to be pretty sure that this theory is true (for the WGA machines, the HK and CA ones were apparently produced a bit later).
Since there are so few surviving very early machines, the apparently false accounts that the first Amiga had an embossed logo is otherwise very strong online. It would be nice that this video (series) would help establish new knowledge about the very first models.
Exactly. Information is as hard to find as the machines. I posted something about both named machines at A1K (German). Can’t post the URL here, search for „Mein 4000er A500“. When you scroll through the discussion, you'll find further links and info I collected there. There are even examples of known-original machines, one with chicken lips but big label, serial around 10000. Note the PDF of the 87 CeBIT which contains pictures of an obviously pre-production 500, which also has the sticker logo we are talking about. You can see that it was quite a fight to discuss the theory there, but over time I’ve gotten somewhere.
@@al.d9592 That bit about the prototype is really interesting and would finally validate that theory and give evidence to the sceptics. I wasn't able to find the forum link you hinted at, probably because my knowledge of German is very limited. Jan might be able to dig further than me.
Hey, thanks for sharing! I'm going to try to find that link. So far, I think the theory with the bolder C= badge cases being the earliest ones is correct. Several other people with very low serial number A500s have contacted me and they all seem to have the badge on the case.
What a great piece of history, I look forward to the restoration. Happy New Year!
Klasse! Das ist tatsächlich der älteste A500 on record. WOW! Mein Rev3 ist KW14 87 produziert mit Hi Tek Keyboard Chicken Lips und eingestanzten Gehäuse Nr. 18271. Die Boards wurden ja in HK produziert und die Gehäuse in Braunschweig und führen unterschiedliche Seriennummern. Ich denke tatsächlich, dass der hier vorgestellte Amiga also der 190. Amiga A500 ist, der fertigstellt wurde. Das ist echt schon was besonderes!!!
I could actually smell it when you opened the box. I will never forget the smell of my Amiga, the discs, the power supply, the monitor and all the other stuff. Crazy 🤔
Super interesting Jan. I purchased the A500 in April of 88 but around the 99-2005 time frame I had several friends donate theirs to me. I am now going to check them out to see what Revs of the board I have, I wonder if there is a comprehensive thread or document on the various 500 systems that is thorough and all inclusive. (I’m in the US) I’ve seen some efforts but never anything definitive, maybe it would just be extremely hard given Commodores propensity to mix and match, lol.
Regardless, thank you for this, I’ll keep an eye out for your follow up! The 500 will always be my personal soft spot, it was the first computer that made me realize that the possibilities were truly infinite.
Great find in an historic Amiga 500. All the best for 2023 Jan. Thanks for all your hard work!
Thank YOU! Happy 2023! :)
That certainly is a nice find. I remember buying my Amiga 500 I’m the late 80’s. Sadly I swapped over to PC but the Amiga did get a lot of use. I’m looking forward to watching progress in this one. Regards Graham
I smiled when I saw the switch for the RAM upgrade. I installed mine in exactly the same spot.
Yes, these RAM expansions were super common and also often the switches were added to the case in similar spots. I'm kind of happy that the RAM expansion in my origianl A500 was permanently switched on (it was the Commodore expansion which didn't have the option to switch it off from factory). :D
Really one of the legendary ones with Cherry keyboard. My 500 only had a serial in the 1 or 2 thousands, got it from a tiny but very active shop. I think most of these very early ones went to magazine reviewers and such to make the best impression possible.
Interesting - I'm approximately 95.4186237% sure my (first) A500 did have the embossed logo, & I'm 100% sure it had a C= key. Unfortunately, I don't remember when it was originally bought (my parents bought it second hand for me in summer '87, but the seller included the original receipt) though.
I got my A500 in December 1987. Obviously it was a very early machine. It had the early keyboard as well. The keys were slightly different. The key caps had a different shape (shorter) and pressing the keys felt more tense than on all other Amigas i've been working with. I never saw another A500 with "my" keyboard until watching your video. It had the Commodore key and the solid Amiga-Logo-Key as well. The case felt "heavier" than the younger ones, and it had the grey-white Commodore logo as well. The power supply was different compared to the one in your video. The power-switch was in the center of the case. Some of my friends got their A500 at the same time - with different keyboard, case, logo, etc. I have to check, if I can find some old pictures.
Great info! I picked up my very first A500 a little over a year ago from an estate sale and it was identical to this model with the Commodore key, chicken lips badge (not embossed), and the mechanical keyboard. It has a higher serial # though: CA1003936. It's in good working condition but unfortunately did not come with the box. The Hi-Tek keyboard is by far the nicest to type on of all the Commodore models I've used so far.
Wow such an early machine. Great to see how much care you're taking. Excellent video.
Dave Haynie was the main designer of the A500; he's a *big* B-52s fan-to the point where the PC was submitted to the FCC as the "Model B52".
That's a nice specimen! Also notable on the really early rev 3 is that they has the Y1 crystal populated down to the left instead of the X1 oscillator above the kickstart. They should also have different feet than the regular white rubber ones. More like plastic, slightly translucent ones.
This one is missing its feet unfortunately. :/ I noticed the oscillator. Interesting that they have two footprints for oscillators on the board, I guess they were still testing what worked better after finishing the board design.
What a sweet piece of history. Have a Happy New Year and see you in 2023!
Hi Jan, nice video!. Just a little heads up; the common language in Belgium is not just French, there's also Flemish. To put this in numbers: 60% speaks Flemish (or Dutch), 40% speaks French, and about 2% speaks German. Luckily I speak all three, more or less :-). As soon as they bring out TheA500 MAXI, I might buy one.
Whoops, I assumed French would be the predominant language, sorry. I was aware that there are more commonly spoken languages in Belgium but didn't know about the statistics. French is the official language though, or is it? Sorry for my cultural ignorance... :D
@@JanBeta Well, no worries, but to the honest, all 3 languages are the official languages for Belgium.
And we can't know everything.
Arguably, you could throw English in as a fourth unofficial language, because that seems to end up being the compromise fallback language for everyone.
I'm saving the money towards a Mister😋
I was about to rage about this :p
This is an amazing find, computing history and yeah, I was as enthused about it as Jan was. Also c an we all take a moment to appreciate the beauty of Jay Miners board designs, everything is neat, sectioned perfectly, symmetrical and I always loved to way he puts all his resistors in neat little banks.
Those old keyboards are so sweet. I remember being slightly disappointed when I got my first own Amiga in 1988, and it had the membrane key switches. But hey, that disappointment lasted for 5 seconds, then I was in total Amiga bliss. (Still am.)
Yeah, I guess the slightly wobblier keyboard is a small price to pay. The Amiga awesomeness was still absolutely mind blowing at the time (it still is apparently). :D
Today was the perfect day and time for watching the whole video, which I very much enjoyed. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a successful restoration of this beautiful machine. A happy new year to you and all the best for 2023, Jan!
Nice Amiga and nice video.
I like that you split it into an unpacking video and one or more repair videos. 30 minutes is the perfect length of videos for me. If it's one hour or more I have a hard time finding time to watch it.
It also gives me more time to find all the faults (hopefully). I usually aim for around 30 min videos. Sometimes it works, sometimes I get carried away a bit too much. This time, there's definitely going to be at least one more episode. Currently troubleshooting and hopefully fixing the faults.
Brilliant piece of history. Looking forward to seeing it working with Turrican 2!
Happy New Year Jan! You definitely have to get that old beauty working again!
Wondeful piece of Art and History! ❤ Happy New Year Jan! 😊
I definitely had a very early A500 model which my dad bought in Italy for my 15th birthday in August 1987. Il had exactly this keyboard with the "cicken lips" commodore logo button and the american layout. Il had the Kickstart 1.2 and actually had better compatibility than my friend's later model (kickstart 1.3). I sold it in 1992 to buy an A1200.... But luckily I found one more last year in France where I live and it is in a nice condition inside its box. I have to check the serial number.... ;-)
Et le numéro de l'autocollant de la carte-mère, qui est encore plus mystérieux. 16ème PCB d'Amiga 500 jamais sorti d'usine ? Quand je suis tombé sur cette étiquette qui était tombée sous le lecteur de disquettes, j'étais comme Jan dans cette vidéo ! 🙂
This is our christmas gift! another quality video from you!
I vote in favor of fixing the poor thing, even if that means some (little) deviation from the original "museum" condition. I wish a great new year, Jan.
I really enjoyed watching it. Happy New Year
Thanks! Happy new year! :)
This A500 looks very familiar: I also had one with the Commodore key on the left and the exact same 'silver' logo. I bought mine in June '88 in a shop called Bits&Chips, which was located on the Ceintuurbaan in Amsterdam, for halve price! Because it was a shop demonstration model that didn't come with a mouse....I mean: who needs a modern thing like a mouse when you are coming from a Schneider CPC464 before ;)
BTW: about a year later I discovered that there was a memory expansion in it, which the shop forgot to remove before selling it to me :)
hej nice story. what happened to your cheap A500?
I have to look at mine in the attic; I bought it upon release in France in March/April 87. Workbench 1.2
As always a very entertaining video from you, Jan.
Peter from Sweden
Best Wishes for 2023 and Many Vids :-) Thank for this history moment !
absolutely fascinating breakdown of this valuable part of computing history.. can't wait to see that famous 1.2 boot screen again. :)
Thanks for all your videos. Looking forwards to next year. All the best.
Thank you Leigh! Happy 2023 to you. :)
Very cool! I the Caps Lock kinda stand out to me right away along with the bigger Shift keys. Also probably the video with the most use of the word Careful ever! :D Keep it up Jan. Best wishes for the new Year from Switzerland.
I had such a machine, I found it in the early 2000s in Hungary in some electro-junkyard in an extremely sorry state. The case and keyboard was very broken and beyond repair already , but the mainboard was up and running. It had the chickenlips keyboard and Kickstart 1.2. Watched TRSI Megademo on it, because that worked with 512K... :) I had to give the remaining parts away when I moved to Germany about 10 years ago, along with a bunch of other stuff. Glad these are still out there tho'. Great find, thanks for sharing.
I bought a knackered A500 from a car boot and it was serial number 600 and something and had similar keys. I cannot remember much but compared to my own A500+ it looked completely different and so I compared to my mates A500 and it was different to that. We decided it was a Frankenstein Amiga A500, but may have been an early run. It never got fixed and i sold on for spares and repairs.
War ein Super Video Jahr 2022, Danke Jan, mach weiter so und einen Guten Rutsch in 2023!
Very nice looking early Amiga 500, and interesting to compare the details to mine, which is manufactured at 52nd week in 1990, according to the yellow sticker on the motherboard, and serial number in that yellow sticker is over 2 million.
Serial number sticker at the bottom of the case is over 1,4 million, made in W. Germany, and mine has C= sticker, but with thinner print than the early one.
My box image also has both Amiga keys, no Commodore key anymore, and box doesn't have any stickers.
Oh yeah and my Amiga is Scandinavian version as I live in Finland.
I remember getting my Amiga500 in 1987 with my "children savings", but it wasn't till July though, so I guess it was kinda old ;)
I remember that it was July, because it was vacation, and I vividly remember the busride home, thinking that this computer would change my life. It did.
Good luck with that one Jan. I wouldn't like to touch it - far too rare! 😆 Have a Happy New Year!
All the best Jan. A happy new year indeed.
What a piece of history, thanks for sharing! All the best for 2023.
Thank you! All the best to you, too! I hope I can resurrect this museum piece in the new year. Would be a good start. :)
Hi Jan
This Amiga 500 rev.3 is fantastic! 😀
Happy New Year 🎆
Happy new year! :)
What a wonderful machine! and well done presentation as usual. Jan, lets hope for a better and peacefull future 2023. Jan
Great video to end out the year. Thanks Jan. I can't wait for the next episode...
I will definitely be watching out for part 2! I have an early Amiga 500 (serial number 342901) with the same keyboard that also doesn't work (go figure! lol).
Halo Jan, in 1988 I bought my first A500. The case is identical to the older one you showed in this video, same little C= square badge, same centered label on the bottom shell but it doesn't have the Hi-Tek keyboard. Furthermore it has a rev.5 motherboard with the buggy Toshiba Gary chip and what it seems to be a kludge fix for it but that it's not present in the rev.3 motherboard.
Years later I bought other two A500s, they are quite similar, they both sport the Space Invaders keyboard and a rev.3 mainboard but a different plastic bottom shell. One is identical to the one of the Amiga you bought back in the day, the other one has the same little sticker in the centre showing only the serial number but it doesn't have the engraved / embossed information about the computer model, FCC information and other things. All three A500s were made in W. Germany.
So, why I'm speaking about all these stuff? Because the strange thing is that the Amiga I bought in 1988 has a serial number that is in between the other two I bought later as numeric progression but from the cases and motherboards revinsions standpoint it is incoherent.
The only thing I can suppose is that there were many assembly lines inside the factory and each one used the components they have in stock, serial numbers were of course in numeric progression but at some point there must have been upgrades in the components they used to make the computers, maybe not on all the assembly lines. This could be the reason why a computer with an earlier serial number sports components that usually were mounted on later production.
I hope this little story will be informative to you.
Cheers from one of your Italian followers!
I got my Amiga back in December 1987 for Christmas in germany and it had surely the embossed logo.
If you have cleaned the Agnus socket and Agnus chip and it still doesn't work, have a look at EMI406 (right next to Denise). This is equipped with a 1 ohm resistor on these boards. It is often defective. It supplies U40 and U41 with 5 volts. regards botfixer
Next video tomorrow (spoilers: I managed to fix it)! ;)
Amazing job, I learned a lot with this video and enjoyed a lot. I am looking forward to see the next video. Thanks Jan and I wish you a very happy 2023.
Love watch your videos Jan all the best for 2023 :)
Thanks! Happy 2023 to you, too!
Happy new year Jan!!
Hope you have a happy new year, too! :)
This is very cool. Hope you can get it going with minimal repairs!
Great video, waiting for the next episode. I have an earlier Amiga 500 boxed, with embossed logo, embossed information on the back, AZERTY keyboard, serial No. 89140.
I'm living in France, very close to Belgium.
Do you know if yours already has a Rev 5 board in it? It seems like it is of similar vintage like my own first A500 (which was purchased in Summer 1987). Mine has the embossed logo and the German keyboard layout (as I've shown in the video). My theory is that the very first ones all had the US chicken lips keyboard and then shortly after they produced localized keyboards and slightly changed the case molds.
@@JanBeta It is the REV3 type 2 motherboard. 2287 is the maximum date on MOS parts
i have some pics and questions for you.
Thanks Jan for the videos. Have a great 2023!
Hau’oli Makahiki Hou (Guten Rutsch!), Jan!
Nice find... Happy New Year!
Happy new year!
Nice. I had no idea about the earliest Amiga badge as my early 500 has the chicken lips keyboard and embossed emblem. Also a mitsumi disk drive and Rev 3 motherboard and none of the chips are named as on later versions.
Can't wait for part 2. Happy new year!
This amiga is older than my c64.
The C64 had a very long life, it's sales were basically funding the development of this machine. Makes me wonder if they sold more C64's after the Amiga was created than they actually sold Amigas.
I had a Rev 3 like this with no Video Sync at all...after replacing the factory *resistor* at EMI406 it worked perfectly..later models have a EMI filter here.
At 19:33 in the video you can also see you have a resistor there at the bottom right of the picture - just to the right of where the bodge wire goes to the board
Watch the second part of the series! ;) Spoilers: It was exactly the same problem in this one.
@@JanBeta Apologies....I just came across this video....didn't see the 2nd part ! keep up the great work, love your videos they are very educational, thanks :)
15:155 i heard that mechanics when you pressed that commodore key the first time already ... soundcheck would have been cool :) this dude should let someone clone the keyboard so we can make new mechanical keyboards :P i know there are others but the original would be awesome
i got an early Norwegian model, with Norwegian keyboard but same style sticker underneath as the old one here. same style top too but not the space-invader keyboard.
mine is serial number 013001 so means at least after 10k made they started with newer type keyboard.
(interesting enough is that the motherboard is a serial number 000255)
though, as most Rev3 boards its riddled with faults, case have had a very hard life with cracks everywhere and the keyboard makes a washing-board look completely straight...
(PSU have died a long time ago.)
My A500 serial # 19809 has the chicken lips key, large Caps Lock led and gray logo. Yet, it's German layout, like Jan's. Go figure...
Thanks Jan, Happy new year.
Oh, I thought I had an early one but this is a step further! Interestingly my enter key has the type in a different position, and all keys have the letters as far left as they could possibly be. Also has the c= key. Mine has a rev3 v2 board with the embossed case badge, commodore info on the back with a transparent serial number sticker. I understand its been boxed until I got it, its quite white compared to any other Amiga I've seen (paper white). Not as compatible with demos as later Amiga 500s even with RAM expansion. Some of the cutom chips & 68000 are third party. Mouse has no commodore logo underneath. Box is the same as yours. Wonder if any Amigas have that odd escape key that is in the box artwork?
I have a chicken lips A500 with the embossed logo on the case. It was sealed when I first got it. It has a rev.5 motherboard. Oh, and mine also has the same floppy drive as shown in the video here
This is an early A500 for sure. I own one with serial 538 I think and it has the same features including the fat logo and fat plastic case etc. Even the keyboard controller from 1986. So it seems like Commodore made At least a couple of thousend of this set-up. Also note the old school ”commodore” type set on the sticker.
Yes, that's my theory, too. I think the thicker badge case predates the more common one with the embossed logo (which was probably a cost reduced version using less plastic). I didn't notice the old school Commodore logo, thanks for pointing that out! :D
Interesting video and machine, i still get butterflies in my stomach looking at my A500... ❤
Great video, happy new year!
I had that model 0190 of Amiga 500 when I was a teenager. It was 100% identical to that one.
The one I had had to have the floppy drive replaced in it though and I upgraded the ram to 512kb I think. I know I doubled the ram
I like the "New! Now includes disk 'First Steps' " stickers on the Amiga boxes. 😀Even the one with the SN190 had it (in French). I guess the first 189 units were sold without the disk then? 😉 Quite telling, they didn't waste much time or employ marketing experts to design these boxes. "Just make a box, put the photo of the unit on it. And, ya, add a sticker that it even comes with a startup disk...". Done! 😆
We used to sell Commodore back in the day, and I can remember getting the first shippment of Amigas delivered to our shop.
A huge stack of these white boxes with the picture of the A500 on it. 2 EPAL's full of these, like 50 or 60 units.
By the end of the week they were all gone...
I would advice against doing anything to this unit to fix it.
There's lot of working Amigas around, but few that are this old and totally original.
You should keep it that way.
The dilemma of Theseus' boat. How much fixing is acceptable so that it remains the original Amiga 500? On the other hand, museum pieces (paintings, for example) are regularly carefully restored so that they can be displayed as they were created (sometimes involving new pigments and such). I guess, as Jan says several times in the video, "careful" is the operative word.
Great video. Thx!
Thank you! :)
Thanks
Hey, thank you! :D
I had one of those... I worked in the trade back in the day and got my hands on one of the first batch in the UK, a few days before they hit the shop shelves... I really wish I'd kept it... :(
Happy New Year!
Hey, I am Belgian and French speaking... Never say it is the common language. We do speak Flemish (close to Dutch) French and also a bit of German. Flemish is the most spoken language as more people live on the Flemish side, the comes French.
What is strange is that we usually have product labeled in both French and Dutch. But being from the 80's, it might not be the case.
Received mine Christmas 87. Now I need a time machine
The disk drive manufacturer is actually pronounced Matsushta, the „i“ is silent. The name of the company changed to Panasonic in 2008.
Oh, I didn't know about the pronunciation, thanks! I was aware that Matsushita, Panasonic, Technics, National Panasonic etc are all basically different names/brands from the same manufacturer.
Moin Jan, alles Gute im neuen Jahr, möge dein Content nie enden...👍
Fingers Cross 😉
Vielen Dank! Ich habe noch jede Menge Material für neue Videos in diesem Jahr, also gibt es auf jeden Fall noch mehr. Frohes neues Jahr!
That SCART cable should be original, check for the C= logo.
amazing 😍
My A500 is from week 20 (on the yellow sticker) and has the exact same C= key Hi-Tek keyboard (date 8707), but without the caps on the 6570 keyboard chip. My case is also like yours, with the moulded info and just the serial No. on the sticker (38165 on mine). Also the moulded C= logo on the case.
Where is the Varta of death, no clock on rev 3?
Happy New Year mate.
No, the first A500s with an onboard battery were the A500+ models which came much later. Many people added RAM expansions with a clock circuit to the earlier models though (this one came with a 512K expansion which has a leaky battery, too).
I remember my college getting the amiga prototypes upgraded to 1MB on a workbench 1.2 .. we done a lot of programming projects on that we also tested the Amstrad PC with VGA prototypes at more or less the same time.. funny how we all mostly went out and bought news A500 after that .. I was still just developing on C64 and could not afford one until I waited for it to be more settled in the market .. actually i think the A500 we had only had 256K but upgraded to either 512 or 1MB cannot remember now
The most common language in Belgium is Dutch (60%), followed by French (37%) and German (3%).
Lights coming on but then fading out is definitely power supply related. It may be worth disconnecting the floppy drive as I have seen them fail and excessively load the 5v line in the process
Yes, that's my initial thought, too. I disconnected the disk drive and keyboard before trying to power it on actually. Troubleshooting in progress now. Voltages at least arrive at the connectors on the board, 5V seems to go into the ICs, too. We'll see if I can pinpoint the fault.
Just if anyone is unfamiliar with the floppy drive manufacturer, Matsushita typically goes by Panasonic outside of Japan.