It's good to see you wearing a grounding strap. I don't know how others get away without one. I cringe when I see IC's handled with ungrounded hands. I guess some just roll the dice and take their chances.
I've been wearing one ever since I accidentally zapped a Commodore 64 SID chip in one of my earlier repairs. Definitely taught me a lesson about ESD safety!
Yes, I think that should work on most drives. Some lack the READY signal (or so I've read) so you have to connect that up to make them work in an Amiga. Never tried myself though.
I feel I would want to replace those two resistors where the PSU's PCB was showing burn marks and leave the replacements more leg length so that they were not directly against the board, passing their heat through it. Also, while it's not something Commodore bothered with I would be tempted to also include a small fan just to help the cooling. Not strictly necessary, but I think these are extra little measures could increase its service life into the future.
I'm definitely going to replace the resistors (although I don't think they are the cause for the problem with this PSU) and take a look at the burn marks (which sometimes become conductive).
I like watching these restoration and also modding videos. I wish I could have a real Amiga an A600 with AGA and HDMI out and CPU upgrade would be so awesome. I know that doesn't exist I just wish I could have one that seamlessly run a High-res display and play games through the one video/audio output no flicker etc. I had a few Amigas a 500, 600, 1200 CDTV CD32 the A600 was always my favourite I remember adding a 2.5HDD from a PC to it I just loved gadgeting my computers. I kinda wanted to get an A500 Mini I was watching some videos modding it to run Workbench - but I wanted something more usable so I just ordered a Pi400 with some accessories it cost about the same as the A500 mini. Obviously the Pi400 can do more than just be a Pimiga I love IOT type gear I've had Pi's and even Aduino's with lost of gadget stuff to mess with. The first Amiga I ever used was my friends dad's Amiga 1000 - I had a Plus/4 at the time I loved it as a kid. But yeah my a600 fantasy machine - I wish I had an A1000 I could modify in the same way I know some of the Pi based CPU upgrades go most of the way providing a good HDMI output on workbench but when you play games you need a second CRT (or to switch inputs on your modern display to AV) to play them. Theres just no perfect solution for original hardware. I've used emulation quite a lot to run Amiga stuff - but I wanted an Amiga that was just itself for so long... So I've Pi'd I just want a dedicated Amiga. I still wish I had an A600 again the closest I can get that's practical is unfortunately a Pi400 - the A600 form is just so practical for modern days I could just plug it in and go just being sensible about space and being able to put it away. Maybe I need a bigger house and an extra spare room I'd just love to have an A1000 sitting there. You're so lucky to be able to have all that and do what you do and it works with your life. Thanks for sharing it with us. I can't wait for my Pi400 to arrive It will be a few days it's coming from the eastern states (of Australia I'm in Western Australia). I guess I can also use it to emulate other systems I was watching TH-cam videos - the Plus 4 didn't have the software range of the C64 back in the late 80's - there's some really awesome stuff to mess around with for it I couldn't get or afford as a 10-ish year old back then. Anyway thanks for what you do and sharing it with us all.
Thanks so much for sharing! If you want an all-in-one real Amiga solution, you can mod an A600 with a RGBtoHDMI and maybe an accelerator and a CF or SD card as a harddisk replacement. It would be almost everything you need except for AGA. :) My "living room Amiga" is my A600 (I made a couple of videos about upgrading it to its current state if you are interested).
Haha, I try not to end up with that. Working on the PSU now, should not be too difficult to fix (there's not a lot in there and I found some good schematics already). :)
Great patience and determination 👍 While you are back into the PSU I would suggest replacing those resistors as they are showing obvious signs of thermal stress. I would recommend replacing them with higher wattage versions. Great result with the FDD - the original may be period correct but it's no good if it doesn't work! Good luck with the mouse. It looks great, now all you need to do is get it working too 🤞😁
The only problem with changing the floppy drive is that that makes it sound different than it originally did! But sometimes sacrifices have to be made, of course.
Yes, it's a bit quieter than the original drive. Still makes some comfy clicky noises. I tried to source the same model drive like the original one for a while but all the ones that popped up in my eBay search were broken. Probably not the most reliable drives anyway. :D
I have a modded PC drive in one of my Amiga's. It works pretty well, but it has a white 3D printed button that is the dead giveaway that it's not the original.
Great work! Feels kinda risky using the old PSUs at all still, but admire how much passion and patience you put into this. Thanks for preserving this and thanks for the video!
Thanks! The Amiga PSUs are not that dangerous in my experience. They mostly fail with undervoltage or no voltage at all (unlike certain other Commodore PSUs) so the Amigas are not in danger of blowing up usually. :)
Great to see this coming together so nicely! Regarding the power supply, maybe it's worthwhile to replace those charred resistors by 2W equivalents (they aren't much bigger these days), and install them so they float a couple of millimeters above the PCB, without touching it. This helps with ventilation.
Thanks! Yes, I already ordered replacement resistors. I had the same idea after looking at the PSU again. I think the fault is not the resistors but the PWM chip but I have yet to confirm that. :)
I would replace the two 90ohm resistors with a higher wattage and mount them higher so they don’t touch the board. Commodore shouldn’t have mounted them on the board in the first instance. The board is getting very brown and it if it carbonises it could get conductive.
Yes, new resistors are already on order. They are two 180 ohms resistors in parallel actually (hence the 90 ohms reading). The originals are still good but I guess it won't hurt at all to use some higher wattage ones and stand them up from the pcb a bit. :)
They look like 1/2 watt resistors at a glance. Which is probably sufficient seeing as they haven't drifted in value. I would want to replace them and space them further from the board. I would be interested to know what the voltage drop is over these when the power supply is operating. Also whether the voltage drop varies depending on the amount of load at the output.
The fuse is good in this one. I would suggest you take a look at the capacitors in your PSU, the fuse doesn't pop without a reason, maybe you have a marginal filter cap in there (which is very common in these power supplies as far as I know).
My A500 Plus PSU case ended up looking about the same despite having been hidden away in a box out of the light, must have been something about those particular plastic mixes that makes the bromine let itself be known, cos it looked as orange as a certain jailbird ex-US president... :P
Oh, the yellowing is caused by quite a few processes. It happens even without exposure to UV because the plastic just keeps degrading. Bromine is only a small part of that, as far as I know. Lots of chemicals fighting in there. ;)
Thank you so much! I always try to point out my mistakes. That's how I learn and hopefully the viewers are not going to have to go through the same mistakes themselves. :D
I was hoping you might have an explanation of why that mouse or the 1351 wont move in certain directions, my 1351 moves very slowly moving up using GEOS
Check if this Samsung drive can fully format a floppy, in the past I have modded several SFD-321B and they can read but give lot of errors on write or format. Sony and Teac worked fine.
I considered plugging it with plastic filler but I'm probably going to end up leaving it as it's not that visible (plus I'm afraid I'd make it look worse trying to fix it).
Wow, the retrobrighting did wonders for that plastic, especially on the tank mouse! Also, I believe the date code for that chip in the mouse is the 19th week of 1987.
Yes! The retrobrighting went surprisingly well. I was quite amazed myself! 19th week of 87 would make perfect sense. I guess chances are it's the original tank mouse that shipped with the Amiga. :)
Hallo Jan! I stopped using plastic wrap. I prefer to leave it in the sun and, from time to time, apply a new layer of the product. The plastic leaves it with a marbled aspect.
Die originalen SCART-Kabel führen kein Blanking-Signal und geben deshalb an den meisten Geräten nur ein weißes, verblassendes Bild. Das ist normal. Diese Kabel sind dafür gedacht, an einem Commodore 1081 oder frühen 1084 Monitor benutzt zu werden, die man dann manuell auf RGB umschaltet. Die Kabel lagen ausserdem den Monitoren bei, nicht dem Amiga selbst. Manchmal haben sie das Commodore-Logo, manchmal nicht. Originale sind sie trotzdem.
@@JanBeta Auch an einem CRT Fernseher werden sie (meistens) nicht funktionieren, aus dem gleichen Grund. Es MUSS ein Monitor wie der 1081 oder 1084 sein, der das blanking-Signal ignoriert und komplett manuell umgeschaltet wird :D
Hi, would you be able to fix a commodore 1702 monitor? I found one in my attic and I fixed the sound and picture but then while fine tuning it I shorted a potentiometer and now it only shows fuzz.
I'm not experienced with CRT repair at all unfortunately so I'm the wrong person to ask. Trying to learn more soon (I bought some books at this point but didn't have the time to dig in yet). :D
From my experience PSU retrobrighting never worked, the yellowing on them is so stubborn.. Always ended up spraying them.. For sure they used different type of plastic for those..
As for the FDD and the Pin 1 placement, that original drive is the oddity, as the majority of 3.5" FDDs have Pin1 on the left side (looking at it from the rear), though certain manufacturers were a PITA (Sony!!) with flipping their connections about between models and not marking them clearly, so it was a bit of a lottery as to whether you got them connected the right way first time, from experience during my time building & repairing PCs when FDDs were still fitted as standard... :)
Ah, I see! Seems odd that there was no standard pinout (or orientation) for that! I think in later years they kind of settled for the positions that the PC drive I used has (at least that's the same as on the Gotek drive replacements and most more recent PC drives I've seen).
@@DavePoo2 For hard drives, yes, but with floppy drives, no, not always, it really did vary. The biggest giveaway that you have the cable wrong is that it is permanently 'active' (and will probably trash any disk you insert by overwriting whatever track happens to be under the heads)
This is pretty much how it goes when you are trying to restore old stuff. You fix, it works, then 10 minutes later, it's stopped working. You basically have to carry a screwdriver around with you.
That filthy mouse reminds me... When I was in high school, in the mid-2000s when optical mice were first starting to become popular, my school still had all ball mice, and the students developed a bad habit of stealing the mouse balls. What did the school do? Replace the mice with brand-new optical mice? Nope! They glued all the mice shut. Which was exactly the WRONG thing to do, because then the mice got dirty on the inside and stopped working properly, and since they were glued shut, they were impossible to clean. (I actually still have a mouse ball from high school, but I found it in a stairwell. Didn't take it out of their mouse. Honest.)
Call me all the names, but I would be _SO_ tempted to upgrade the mouse to a laser mouse, in an original Amiga mouse case. (Maybe even with a grenade launcher and oil slick creator too, for the full James Bond experience!)
even art that is in a museum needs maintenance, amazing job, probably your best yet
Very good the use of heat shrink tube to measure the voltages in the power supply! I always learn some new trick in your videos, love it 😊
It's good to see you wearing a grounding strap. I don't know how others get away without one. I cringe when I see IC's handled with ungrounded hands. I guess some just roll the dice and take their chances.
I've been wearing one ever since I accidentally zapped a Commodore 64 SID chip in one of my earlier repairs. Definitely taught me a lesson about ESD safety!
okay you explained my question
Hi Jan- we used to use PC drives in our Amiga's. when we did we just swapped around some of the ribbon cable wires. No need to mod the drive.
Yes, I think that should work on most drives. Some lack the READY signal (or so I've read) so you have to connect that up to make them work in an Amiga. Never tried myself though.
I feel I would want to replace those two resistors where the PSU's PCB was showing burn marks and leave the replacements more leg length so that they were not directly against the board, passing their heat through it. Also, while it's not something Commodore bothered with I would be tempted to also include a small fan just to help the cooling. Not strictly necessary, but I think these are extra little measures could increase its service life into the future.
I'm definitely going to replace the resistors (although I don't think they are the cause for the problem with this PSU) and take a look at the burn marks (which sometimes become conductive).
I like watching these restoration and also modding videos. I wish I could have a real Amiga an A600 with AGA and HDMI out and CPU upgrade would be so awesome. I know that doesn't exist I just wish I could have one that seamlessly run a High-res display and play games through the one video/audio output no flicker etc. I had a few Amigas a 500, 600, 1200 CDTV CD32 the A600 was always my favourite I remember adding a 2.5HDD from a PC to it I just loved gadgeting my computers.
I kinda wanted to get an A500 Mini I was watching some videos modding it to run Workbench - but I wanted something more usable so I just ordered a Pi400 with some accessories it cost about the same as the A500 mini. Obviously the Pi400 can do more than just be a Pimiga I love IOT type gear I've had Pi's and even Aduino's with lost of gadget stuff to mess with. The first Amiga I ever used was my friends dad's Amiga 1000 - I had a Plus/4 at the time I loved it as a kid. But yeah my a600 fantasy machine - I wish I had an A1000 I could modify in the same way I know some of the Pi based CPU upgrades go most of the way providing a good HDMI output on workbench but when you play games you need a second CRT (or to switch inputs on your modern display to AV) to play them. Theres just no perfect solution for original hardware.
I've used emulation quite a lot to run Amiga stuff - but I wanted an Amiga that was just itself for so long...
So I've Pi'd I just want a dedicated Amiga. I still wish I had an A600 again the closest I can get that's practical is unfortunately a Pi400 - the A600 form is just so practical for modern days I could just plug it in and go just being sensible about space and being able to put it away. Maybe I need a bigger house and an extra spare room I'd just love to have an A1000 sitting there.
You're so lucky to be able to have all that and do what you do and it works with your life. Thanks for sharing it with us. I can't wait for my Pi400 to arrive It will be a few days it's coming from the eastern states (of Australia I'm in Western Australia). I guess I can also use it to emulate other systems I was watching TH-cam videos - the Plus 4 didn't have the software range of the C64 back in the late 80's - there's some really awesome stuff to mess around with for it I couldn't get or afford as a 10-ish year old back then.
Anyway thanks for what you do and sharing it with us all.
Another option would be an A600 with an Apollo Manticore v4 or a standalone Apollo v4.
Thanks so much for sharing! If you want an all-in-one real Amiga solution, you can mod an A600 with a RGBtoHDMI and maybe an accelerator and a CF or SD card as a harddisk replacement. It would be almost everything you need except for AGA. :) My "living room Amiga" is my A600 (I made a couple of videos about upgrading it to its current state if you are interested).
Thx Jan ❤
Thank you! :)
Thanks!
Congratulations Jan for passing 50k subs! Well deserved and hope you reach 100k very soon! 😃👍
Thanks a lot! I never thought this would be possible at all! :D
Perfect example of why replacing caps just for the hell of it is not always a good idea.
Maybe! Although I don't think that's causing the fault. Looking into it as we speak.
Good job, Jan!
Thank you! :)
The amount of pure love that went into this restoration is from beyond this planet.
Thank you so much!
Jan next week: "Let's build a new power supply for the AMIGA! I accidentally ran over the old psu with my car, so today we are making a new one." :D
Haha, I try not to end up with that. Working on the PSU now, should not be too difficult to fix (there's not a lot in there and I found some good schematics already). :)
Great patience and determination 👍 While you are back into the PSU I would suggest replacing those resistors as they are showing obvious signs of thermal stress. I would recommend replacing them with higher wattage versions. Great result with the FDD - the original may be period correct but it's no good if it doesn't work! Good luck with the mouse. It looks great, now all you need to do is get it working too 🤞😁
Thanks! Yup, I already have some new resistors on order (although as far as I can tell at this point they are not causing the fault). :)
Fünfzigtausend!! Supi, weiter so!!😁
Vielen Dank! :D
The only problem with changing the floppy drive is that that makes it sound different than it originally did! But sometimes sacrifices have to be made, of course.
Yes, it's a bit quieter than the original drive. Still makes some comfy clicky noises. I tried to source the same model drive like the original one for a while but all the ones that popped up in my eBay search were broken. Probably not the most reliable drives anyway. :D
I have a modded PC drive in one of my Amiga's. It works pretty well, but it has a white 3D printed button that is the dead giveaway that it's not the original.
The scorched part of the PSU eventually becomes conductive. Besides of the capacitors, optocouplers also are prone to fail and need to be replaced.
Indeed! I'm definitely going to replace those resistors and see if I can stand them off from the board so the scorching doesn't get any worse.
Great work! Feels kinda risky using the old PSUs at all still, but admire how much passion and patience you put into this. Thanks for preserving this and thanks for the video!
Thanks! The Amiga PSUs are not that dangerous in my experience. They mostly fail with undervoltage or no voltage at all (unlike certain other Commodore PSUs) so the Amigas are not in danger of blowing up usually. :)
@@JanBeta Thanks, did not know that but always avoided using them altogether 😅
I have an earlier 1351 that used the Bubble switches
I'm finding replacing the IRLEDs is helping a lot with old ball mouses from this era. I just buy 3mm and bend them to the right shape.
Definitely something I'll take a look at, thanks for the tip!
Great to see this coming together so nicely! Regarding the power supply, maybe it's worthwhile to replace those charred resistors by 2W equivalents (they aren't much bigger these days), and install them so they float a couple of millimeters above the PCB, without touching it. This helps with ventilation.
Thanks! Yes, I already ordered replacement resistors. I had the same idea after looking at the PSU again. I think the fault is not the resistors but the PWM chip but I have yet to confirm that. :)
I would replace the two 90ohm resistors with a higher wattage and mount them higher so they don’t touch the board. Commodore shouldn’t have mounted them on the board in the first instance. The board is getting very brown and it if it carbonises it could get conductive.
Yes, new resistors are already on order. They are two 180 ohms resistors in parallel actually (hence the 90 ohms reading). The originals are still good but I guess it won't hurt at all to use some higher wattage ones and stand them up from the pcb a bit. :)
They look like 1/2 watt resistors at a glance. Which is probably sufficient seeing as they haven't drifted in value. I would want to replace them and space them further from the board.
I would be interested to know what the voltage drop is over these when the power supply is operating. Also whether the voltage drop varies depending on the amount of load at the output.
I have always enjoyed your happy and comedic personality! I always smile when you release a new video, too! Keep them coming.🙂
Thanks so much! :D
My old a500 psu once stopped working too, so I replaced the fuse.
After that it worked again.
The fuse is good in this one. I would suggest you take a look at the capacitors in your PSU, the fuse doesn't pop without a reason, maybe you have a marginal filter cap in there (which is very common in these power supplies as far as I know).
Been enjoying this series. Looking forward to the conclusion if the next one ends up being that.
I hope I manage to finish the series at some point! :D
My A500 Plus PSU case ended up looking about the same despite having been hidden away in a box out of the light, must have been something about those particular plastic mixes that makes the bromine let itself be known, cos it looked as orange as a certain jailbird ex-US president... :P
Oh, the yellowing is caused by quite a few processes. It happens even without exposure to UV because the plastic just keeps degrading. Bromine is only a small part of that, as far as I know. Lots of chemicals fighting in there. ;)
Been watching for years now, always good advice and the errors and issues just make it all real.
Thank you so much! I always try to point out my mistakes. That's how I learn and hopefully the viewers are not going to have to go through the same mistakes themselves. :D
RetroBrightingFolie?
Ja!
Or: Just regular cling wrap from my kitchen. ;)
Oh joy, just that, didn't even watch it yet, thanks for uploading. :)
Hope you enjoyed! :)
Amazing A500. I need to clean mine up. Love your videos.
I was hoping you might have an explanation of why that mouse or the 1351 wont move in certain directions, my 1351 moves very slowly moving up using GEOS
Check if this Samsung drive can fully format a floppy, in the past I have modded several SFD-321B and they can read but give lot of errors on write or format. Sony and Teac worked fine.
Loving following along with this one. Do you have any plans to fix the small hole in the case to the left of the floppy drive?
I considered plugging it with plastic filler but I'm probably going to end up leaving it as it's not that visible (plus I'm afraid I'd make it look worse trying to fix it).
Wow, the retrobrighting did wonders for that plastic, especially on the tank mouse!
Also, I believe the date code for that chip in the mouse is the 19th week of 1987.
Yes! The retrobrighting went surprisingly well. I was quite amazed myself! 19th week of 87 would make perfect sense. I guess chances are it's the original tank mouse that shipped with the Amiga. :)
Hallo Jan! I stopped using plastic wrap. I prefer to leave it in the sun and, from time to time, apply a new layer of the product. The plastic leaves it with a marbled aspect.
SO TRUE.
Matter of taste! :D
What exactly does low ESR capacitors cause in terms of problems?
Jan, a small tip, the pin1 on the floppy drives is usually on the same side as the power connector, rules of thumb...
Makes sense! Thanks! :)
Would you mind sharing the link to where you bought the floppy drive?
It was a private seller on German eBay, they sold a couple of modded drives but there don't seem to be any more available currently.
Isn't there a laser mouse mod for the tank mouse? I have seen it somewhere.
Yes, there is indeed. Not going to convert this one though because of the "museum" approach of the whole restoration so far.
'Malarkey' 😉 Where did you pick that up ? 😁
I've been watching a lot of Adam Savage's videos recently who uses it a lot. I love using some strange vocabulary from time to time. ;)
Die originalen SCART-Kabel führen kein Blanking-Signal und geben deshalb an den meisten Geräten nur ein weißes, verblassendes Bild. Das ist normal. Diese Kabel sind dafür gedacht, an einem Commodore 1081 oder frühen 1084 Monitor benutzt zu werden, die man dann manuell auf RGB umschaltet.
Die Kabel lagen ausserdem den Monitoren bei, nicht dem Amiga selbst. Manchmal haben sie das Commodore-Logo, manchmal nicht. Originale sind sie trotzdem.
Ah, das ergibt Sinn! Daran habe ich nicht gedacht, danke für den Hinweis. Ich werde das Kabel mal an einem meiner CRTs ausprobieren. :)
@@JanBeta Auch an einem CRT Fernseher werden sie (meistens) nicht funktionieren, aus dem gleichen Grund. Es MUSS ein Monitor wie der 1081 oder 1084 sein, der das blanking-Signal ignoriert und komplett manuell umgeschaltet wird :D
Yo, hab ich auch so verstanden. Ich meinte meine Commodore (bzw. Philips) Monitore! :)
And I can confirm that when I bought it, it came with a 1081! Which works perfectly.
Jan bel lavoro,i problemi si risolvono
Hi, would you be able to fix a commodore 1702 monitor? I found one in my attic and I fixed the sound and picture but then while fine tuning it I shorted a potentiometer and now it only shows fuzz.
I'm not experienced with CRT repair at all unfortunately so I'm the wrong person to ask. Trying to learn more soon (I bought some books at this point but didn't have the time to dig in yet). :D
Has the psu gone yellow again?
Not a lot, it still looks better than it did when I got it. The PSU I used for testing is another, slightly newer model.
I bought an amiga 500 2 years ago, and I am yet to find the time to make it work
keep up the great work
That old PSU must've got hooked on the tanning salon scene?😅
That must be it! :D
Looks like fake tan to me
From my experience PSU retrobrighting never worked, the yellowing on them is so stubborn.. Always ended up spraying them.. For sure they used different type of plastic for those..
Worked okay for a couple of Amiga PSUs I did. But it's always kind of a gamble with retrobrighting, sometimes things look worse than before.
As for the FDD and the Pin 1 placement, that original drive is the oddity, as the majority of 3.5" FDDs have Pin1 on the left side (looking at it from the rear), though certain manufacturers were a PITA (Sony!!) with flipping their connections about between models and not marking them clearly, so it was a bit of a lottery as to whether you got them connected the right way first time, from experience during my time building & repairing PCs when FDDs were still fitted as standard... :)
Ah, I see! Seems odd that there was no standard pinout (or orientation) for that! I think in later years they kind of settled for the positions that the PC drive I used has (at least that's the same as on the Gotek drive replacements and most more recent PC drives I've seen).
I always thought that the rule was that pin 1 was always next to the power input, but that might be wrong.
@@DavePoo2 For hard drives, yes, but with floppy drives, no, not always, it really did vary. The biggest giveaway that you have the cable wrong is that it is permanently 'active' (and will probably trash any disk you insert by overwriting whatever track happens to be under the heads)
try using hot glue on a screwdriver to get the 4 bottom screw covers off
Worth a try I guess!
This is pretty much how it goes when you are trying to restore old stuff. You fix, it works, then 10 minutes later, it's stopped working. You basically have to carry a screwdriver around with you.
All the time! :D
That filthy mouse reminds me... When I was in high school, in the mid-2000s when optical mice were first starting to become popular, my school still had all ball mice, and the students developed a bad habit of stealing the mouse balls. What did the school do? Replace the mice with brand-new optical mice? Nope! They glued all the mice shut. Which was exactly the WRONG thing to do, because then the mice got dirty on the inside and stopped working properly, and since they were glued shut, they were impossible to clean. (I actually still have a mouse ball from high school, but I found it in a stairwell. Didn't take it out of their mouse. Honest.)
Call me all the names, but I would be _SO_ tempted to upgrade the mouse to a laser mouse, in an original Amiga mouse case.
(Maybe even with a grenade launcher and oil slick creator too, for the full James Bond experience!)
Haha. No, I'm not going to do that for this "museum" restoration. I think the mouse is fixable with some effort. :)