Amiga 1500 Trash to Treasure (pt2) | Unexpected Problems
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ส.ค. 2024
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Part 1 - Fault Fixing: • Amiga 1500 Trash To Tr...
Part 2 - Unexpected Problems! : • Amiga 1500 Trash to Tr...
Part 3 - Classic Power Upgrades: • Amiga 1500 Trash To Tr...
Amiga at the Movies Live Stream: • RMC Live | Amiga at th...
● Episode Links
Wire Wrap for trace repairs: amzn.to/2ICtik5
● Description
The Commodore Amiga 1500 has unexpected problems! The audio is broken at a key time, we need to live stream with this machine and we need to fix it, fast!
● Music
Retro Show - Timm Richter
Ether - Text Me Records / Bobby Renz
Meadows - Density & Time
Species - Diamond Ortiz
The Morning After - Bad Snacks
Water Lillies - Density & Time
Thanks for watching, and here is the live stream this A1500 was used for: th-cam.com/video/zIYX6wKqTcQ/w-d-xo.html - and it performed beautifully. Hopefully there are no more unexpected problems lurking inside and we can now source some upgrades. Thank you for watching, Neil - RMC
Just Vampire it and be done with it mate. You know you want to.
How about a Catweasel floppy controller?
One thing i can recommend: get Knipex small snips. You won't be disappointed, other snips don't have to be so expensive but the smallest ones have to be Knipex.
@@JesusisJesus
Yeah thought of that with my 2000 but that is the easy way out. I like it hard.
ForOdinAndAsgard your "2000" Honda?... Instead of a $400 eBay turbo kit you bought 10x $39.95 leaf blowers from Walmart and stuck em together with gaffer tape!
That kind of hard?
You’re coming dangerously close to being my favorite Retro channel on TH-cam, great stuff!
That's very kind thank you
Great video, love the quick and clean way to tackle the Audio Problem !!
That Amiga is coming together beautifully Neil ☺ Great work as always !!
I love this series, but please Neil, don't run the UV light in the same room as your big box games, it'll make their colours fade.
I know it wouldn't be "stock" but I really think you should replace that sticker on the front.
It still baffles me how they thought it was OK to sell it looking that bad!
So therapeutic watching someone restore a little slice of history back to its former glory!
Very interesting. I learned something! Well done getting it from plinky to plinky and plonky.
"Even an Atari ST owner can do it."
Yeah, I caught that too. Even Atari ST owners follow your channel. Commie owners were never given a chance to see what a real system was like, otherwise they wouldn't be Commie owners...
Ya know, after owning various Amiga machines for 20+ years, somehow an ST landed on my doorstep. So after playing around with it I came to realize, the ST is a really decent machine from the 80s. Except, the Amiga wasn't the 80s. It was the future.
Shots fired LOL
@@Dev_olution Exactly what I thought.
@@chainq68k i kinda think of the atari st as a 16 bit amstrad cpc 464, as neither have dedicated hardware sprites/scrolling
That's some quick trouble shooting. Nothing like a deadline to motivate. Got to love that desoldering station (ZD-915). Just got myself some extra filters and parts in case I ever need them. Should have enough to last me a good few years. Nice to see more of the cave. Looks great.
Thanks for sharing. Still have my original Win95 system and actually run it from time to time. Something about After Dark Totally Twisted screensavers and those crazy Dos games. I cannot get away from them. Hard to find people who work on these old machines when they break down.
"Fully working" 😄 Gotta love eBay! 😬 Great video again tho Neil, top quality as usual!
It's wonderful getting schematics with electronics back in the day. HiFi and radios came with schematics too and they're the items I still have. Nice Amiga project. Tomorrow I should be receiving my Mouser delivery to build the A500++ PCB, thanks to you, bringing it to my attention. Fingers crossed...
For the broken key stem using baking soda with the super glue will help build up a much stronger bond and can be used to build up any gaps for a longer lasting fix.
Great to see this machine restored and working, thanks for another great video
When looking for breaks in the PCB measure continuity from via to via along the circuit, looking at the diagram. That way you can narrow it down to a small area before the visual inspection.
In awe of the size of that board. An absolute unit.
The a10 Tank Killer box is a great touch. I loved that game
This series is turning into one of your best. Very much enjoying it and I've never even used an Amiga.
I love that Gotek being in the bay and would like to re-create that on my 1500.
Just wanted to say thanks very much for these two videos - very informative. Just picked up an A1500 last week, and although 'working', one channel on the audio doesn't work and the battery has leaked, so it does need a little TLC! Keep up the great work. :)
Nice fix on the sound mate ... I do really have to get one of those solder pumps .....Another machine rescued in the cave
Tip for your supergluing efforts: Baking soda. Place down your superglue, then put a very thin dusting of baking soda on, then stick on your part. The baking soda accelerates the drying and forms a much stronger bond. It goes from just an adhesive to like a cement.
That's a great tip thank you!
@@RMCRetro on some plastics you can also weld them togehter with acetone. Normal super glue isnt really very suitable for most plastics.
@@RMCRetro there is also stuff called Zip Kicker which makes superglue harden extremely quickly. It comes as a little spray bottle. You can either glue pieces as normal and spray the outside of the joint, or spray one surface, put glue on the other, and stick them that way.
The baking soda method works too but the zip kicker is a bit cleaner and faster, and you aren't dealing with pastes or powders.
Used it for years track side repairs on vintage RC cars as fast fix to get back out for next heat
Another excellent video Neil, thank you very much! Am I the only person who noticed the Japanese ad at 9:54? The Amiga was not widely distributed in Japan, so this ad is also something of a rarity.
I missed the live stream because I was busy with some things, but this video was great to watch 👍🏽
"Even an Atari ST owner could do it"
Savage...
Could you try checking R230? Strange thing is the two capacitors are not on the board (from the schematics : c230 and c240 :( ).
I am thinking the resistor is on a dodgy solder joint.
It wouldn't have taken more than two minutes to trace from Paula's right-hand output to the audio-jack.
Firstly big thumbs up... what a lovely technically detailed video!
Secondly Howard? Where's my secondly??
Dude! :)
The whole circuitry thing was always a black art. Can i just say thank you for the education and for such an interesting well edited high quality video!?
This was bloody tremendous sir. I doth my cap to you
Cheers! And thanks for taking the time to watch
Quick wargaming tip for superglue, add some baking powder around the glued area for a really really strong fix.
I got a great suggestion for broken keys:
I had multiple keyboards with broken stems and after a while I started using some glue used for model building. I use UHU (a German brand) modelling glue and it works perfectly since it sorta "melts" the plastic in a little way. I also use it to repair all sorts of plastics to restore computers and consoles.
I can't recommend it enough.
Sweet, sweet Retro Man Cave. Great work. Love this channel.
Love your videos, never stop making them
Thank you, I hope to make them for a long time to come. Here's hoping
That is a beast of a machine. I look forward to seeing it in action on Saturday.
If you can get Gods or Magic Pockets playing on it even better :-)
I used to use an RCA phono Y-splitter cable to make the Amiga output 4 channel mono and it worked a dream when wanting to record in stereo, albeit from a mono source. A single RCA jack into the back of the Amiga (any socket) and 2 RCA jacks into a stereo input but I'm not sure of it working on anything other than a 500+, 600 and 1200 (all tested) but it's worth a try.
I do feel like the opening titles should perhaps have gone about 2:00 in or so, just after the introduction. Lovely video, as always.
You might want to have a search for a buddha ide controller (some of which are still manufactured) :)
If you want to go the graphics card route something like a picasso II+ should be easy enough to find a cybervision 64 or 64/3d where also pretty well sold back in the days :)
Murphy's Law. Bene. If it isn't working, the fun is in the challenge of getting it working again.
Ouch! Fast repair. Very nice.
Wish I could afford donating an oscilloscope to the cave. Imho, alot easier/faster/cheaper to isolate the problems by looking in the diagram and then look at the signals in the relevant sections. But everybody has their own method and it worked :)
Best retro content on the net!
TRY using an acetone based cement that melts the plastics as it bonds. I've had amazing success with fixing plastic pieces using Plastruct Plastic Weld. Bonus, when it dries it disappears as it actually melts the plastics together instead of gluing them
I think you should still find the break in the audio trace and determine its cause; it may be due to additional corrosion on the board, with adjacent traces at risk; if that's the case, you want to remove the corrosion and repair any damaged traces before you get another failure.
This refurb was awesome to watch!
Looks like a cool Amiga machine too, hope you enjoy it :D
If you want 3 internal floppies it should be a relatively simple task of building a custom 3 way floppy cable, with the select line for the final connector running off to the _SEL2 pin on the even CIA, kind of like the external DF0 adapter but in reverse.
It would have been interesting to see, where the actual break in the trace was, though. A break doesn't occur for no reason. Maybe it would have indicated another problem.
Indeed. I was a bit disappointed that this wasn't investigated further. It might be a simple/cleaner fix then a hookup wire across a third of the board.
It was likely a scratch on the PCB severing the circuit, there's no easy fix for that unless you have the hands of a surgeon and micro-soldering experience and if the scratch (likely from careless screwdriver use) had severed any other circuitry then any other problems would have been obvious.
Brilliant video as always :) I feel like re-capping one of the best 2000/1500.s I have. Do you know a of a full capacitor list somewhere? Tia.
I like the idea of hiding an rPI in the case and using as a 'co-computer' to route things like mail/web traffic through via AmigaSSH to be able to use it securely in 2018 perhaps with some X11 forwarding and the rPI doing the work you could have chrome on your amiga (kind of), never seen anyone try anything like this to make it a viable daily driver in 2018.
I'm glad the recap went OK for you. I just got my SCART cable recently. Need to set aside some time to play with it and my new up-convertor (OSSC). I think my next A2000 upgrade will be a quieter cooling fan, possibly swapping out the old PSU fan for a Noctua or similar low-noise one...
Cheers,
- Eddy
Thanks Eddy, it's a surprisingly noisy fan on that PSU, good idea I think I'll look into swapping that out too
4:54 You seriously made me think that my computer just hard crashed. It makes this exact same noise.
What if... your reference magazines yellowed with time?
Hehe well yes that's possible, but the inside of the plastics is a good indicator as to what the original colour should be.
Retrobrite the magazines then, of course.
Now I'm wondering if there is a technique for that, I'd retrobrite my Action Comics #1
Martin I think your eyes needs retrobrite!
He just do retro-reprint ;)
I really enjoyed this video! Very interesting - thanks for posting :)
Thanks for watching
Still wouldn't mind seeing a 386 adapter in it.
Could you please add links for your soldering equipment and the retrobrite light? Great video as always, I love the look of your desk and display setup.
I wonder what caused the break in the track? And it performed flawlessly throughout the live stream. Excellent episode as always Neil 😀😀😀 Kim 😁😁😁
Its really sad when the machine you had as a young adult is now the subject of a retro restore....
Well yes, time marches on. It's also great to be able to experience it still, that's my glass half full opinion.
Glue the whole of the internal structure of the keys with 2 part epoxy right up to the edge of the key, (leaving only the center pole untouched) this will make them super strong and they will never break again. they will be as tough as concrete.
Super glue really is a poor choice for a repair like that.. unfortunately, it's become kind of a "go to" glue for people who don't understand its limitations.
Super glue's strength relies on having a sufficiently large contact-surface area to bond to. The tiny surface area involved in that small piece of plastic just isn't enough for it to achieve a strong bond. For a key repair like that, I'd recommend using a small quantity of two-part epoxy glue instead.
Also, pro tip for working with super glue.. NEVER let it get anywhere near expanded polystyrene. As the 'cyan' in its chemical name, "Cyanoacrylate" hints at, a side effect of the chemical reaction between the glue and polystyrene is the production of cyanide gas. Cyanide, of course, is a pretty nasty poison that you do *not* want to inhale. I'm aware of a case where someone (who was aware of the danger) accidentally got a small drop onto expanded polystyrene, and had a tiny puff of the vapour rise up into their face. They went completely blind... for 15 minutes. Which is long enough to seriously scare you that your eyesight might be gone for good.
yeah you're just a shill for big epoxy trying to scare everyone away from using superglue...
LOL!
I got cyanoacrylate on a piece of toilet paper once and it had some weird reaction where it smoked up.
Perhaps it was the perfume or ink they used in the paper that reacted.
Nasty stuff but super effective.
I also think that some super glues are different to CA glue, I've used super glues that were totally useless and then CA glue that did wonders on a tiny piece of plastic.
Your comment would be a lot more useful with a recommendation rather than a complaint.
Fair point.. thanks for the feedback. I'll try to keep that in mind in future.
('tho I think calling it a "complaint" is a little harsh - it was more of an observation, to my mind)
Nice fix Neil 🤙🏻
Thanks Neil
Nice job!
Sorry, but I just couldn't stop staring at Jackie, sat up there in the corner of the screen. What a beautiful man.
Nice work, fortunately it was such a small problem with the sound after all. I'm trying to fix an Amiga 1200, which has really nasty scratches on the PCB mostly under the ROM sockets, because someone had removed the chips in a somewhat violent manner. Desoldering components from A1200 is also a big pain in the behind. Usually the soldering iron gets soldered on the ground plane instead, I suppose I need at least 60W iron for that. I also need to replace few sockets for a badly corroded A2000 motherboard and I'm not really looking forward to it. And I'm not gonna even congratulate you on the desoldering gun, because I'm dying of jealousy here.
I have an A1200 that needs some TLC so it's interesting...and annoying... to hear it has the same stubborn ground plane as the A2000, thanks for the heads up
I think I said this last time, but I still say I'd love to see it setup as a multi-system machine, with a PC bridgeboard in it, as well as running Macintosh emulation. 3 (or more) machines in the one case, that was my dream machine back in the day - so I could run virtually any software available at the time, no matter what platform (well, within reason). I know I'm in the minority there, but honestly I'd love to see that, say a 386 bridgeboard, along with a 68030 and a good 4MB or more of 32-bit fast RAM, and a nice hard disk system (although to be honest, I think it would be best to skip actual physical disks these days and use some flash memory storage), would make it a very nice system and show one aspect of what the Amiga could do that many other machines couldn't do.
Mmmmm.... Amiga keyboard. Woaaa!!!?? 🤔 No springs? Need springs.
Great vid have a better way of fixing the bust key a product called plastex and is usable on just about any type of plastic ..U se it alot in vintage RC car repairs of abs chassis and it's good and strong chassis and can be coloured or painted .
Thank you for the tip that's really useful
If the keys are ABS plastic, then you can weld the plastic with acetone, it will remelt it together.
Hmm, the noise from the right channel is mainly present when the left channel is mainly silent!
The 5.25" drive bay was mysterious populated between 10:05 and 13:20. I'm assuming it's a FDD emulator to load disk images from a USB stick, but I'm not sure if it was covered in this or the previous video.
Yes I think I mention near the start I've put a gotek in it for the live stream episode. The A2000 supports 2 floppy drives so 1 of the originals is still working alongside the gotek emulator
Superb video....very interesting !
Great video, thanks for this.
I would replace both the paula chip wires with silver shielded thin phono cable (pc cd drive audio cable) this is stereo cable so one wire will do both channels, silver cable is the best conductor and the best for sound quality at line level.
I need to check my speakers now. After you fixed the audio, I still can't hear it! hahaha!
Yup. A speaker was unplugged. I never noticed. Wow.
Hmm... I just noticed that the @ and the " characters are swapped out than on a normal-layout keyboard layout. It jogged my memory because I *think* my Color Computer 2 was the same way, at least as the quotations being a shift-2 keystroke. I guess there were other machines like this if it were on these two! Also, as usual, great job!
Having worked 'broad support' (everything from software problems through to hardware repair - usually cannibalising dead units to make working one) in a biscuit factory, I have something of an atavistic horror of opening keyboards.
In my repairs I've found cockroaches, maggots (w/rotting ham), caterpillars and a spiders nest inside keyboards. I have a real phobia of opening the things now.
@@medes5597 Holy shit, I don't blame you
@@slipknotboy555 worst one was the cockroaches, which were also inside the computer (a fairly new one too). It took 3 weeks to get rid of all the ones that escaped into my flat. I was almost impressed they survived the post though.
The owner tried to say I must have cockroaches and they got inside at my house. He eventually paid for extermination after he realised he wasn't getting his computer back otherwise.
Fiverr repair jobs are always full of surprises. Never good ones. (Like the Amiga that looked like it had been attacked with acid, the board was corroded and the case warped - zero idea what they thought I could do with that, and they didn't even want it back.. So they paid me the agreed on fee for nothing, with absolutely no resistance - still super confused by what they were up to with that)
@@medes5597 Oh, man, they escaped into your place? That really sucks. You gotta love how he tried to blame you for it, too, haha. I would've hated the spider one (well, I'd definitely be unhappy about them all) - I hate those things, heh. The one with the maggots is pretty gross, too.
With the last one, at least you basically got paid for nothing, I suppose, heh (well, you did have to take care of the Amiga, though). I hope you don't have to worry about much more of that
@@slipknotboy555 I actually got my girlfriend who isn't afraid of spiders to deal with that one. Luckily it was just two or three spiders and some unhatched eggs. I opened it a little, saw legs, shut it and called her. So spiders wasn't so.bad. All were unpleasant though, as you can imagine.
I really wish someone would do a decent documentary type video about the Amiga 2000 project, which actually started out as quite a different machine. The idea/prototype to build a higher end option for Amiga users was initially worked on by the Los Gatos Amiga 1000 design team before they got sacked/shut down and replaced with the much more underwhelming C= GMBH A2000 that came out a year late in 1987. The Amiga 2000 from Commodore GMBH is not much more than a cannibalised A500 (another project that was a year late, hence complete lack of promotion for the superb Amiga 1000 for a year).
BTW, I have seen a comment online somewhere that the whole audio part of _all_ Amigas is actually faultily constructed - I think it was something like one-way signals or some chips used backwards to what would be natural in audio use (and from studying the schematics it should supposedly be clear). But I'm not an electronics guru so I couldn't check and verify...
Yes I've seen this too and the original fault was copied into all subsequent designs. Very interesting story
On some of them the output coupling capacitors were installed backward... which makes the capacitors fail quicker than they otherwise would
Nice video.
I’d love to see some modern tech upgrades.
The Lavian considering that original equipment is getting harder to find at affordable prices, it seems reasonable to want to see how some of the modern hardware people are developing for these machines perform.
I retro brited a a2000 keyboard aswell, and most keys were alright except for the space bar..
Hi Neil great video it made me dig out my A1500 from the loft and give it the once over. Ive replaced the battery and looking now to replace the capacitors. Did you by any chance make a list of what capacitors are needed and which brand you recommend?
Great job
I had a similar problem with a SNES I bought on Ebay, right audio was not working. I checked the schematics and plug an oscilloscope at various points of the circuit to identify where it failed. It appeard a trace was faulty but it didn't solve the problem anyway. I followed to the op amp, sound was coming in but not out. Just replaced this sucker and now it works fine.
The ports of the opamp that was not working were oxydized so I think the console had liquid spilled in it what damaged the traces and the opamp.
Nice catch well done
you are the man. Love your videos.
No You're the man!
I'am in my basement fiddling around with my precious Amigas, doing improvements in a sensible way. Mostly old original Commodore hardware. It's so inspiring to watch your well made videos, mate.
Thank you it's always nice to hear from others fixing up their Amigas. Not too much work I hope?
Thank you it's always nice to hear from others fixing up their Amigas. Not too much work I hope?
no big issues. More like sorting out smaller problems:-) For the moment I am sorting out an A3000. Stripped down and clean. Cut the battery off. No damage at all. I'ts going to have a recap. Keyboard just had a retrobrite. Looking forward to place my dream Amiga among the others;-)
Amigas support 4 drives in hardware... though some cable modification may be required
Nice video, but why did you not solve the trace issue instead of bypassing it?
I don't have a microscope and time was against me. I'll happily follow the trace when I'm in possesion of the tools and share my findings. Often though it's just as valid and easier to run a new wire point to point than to bridge a trace and risk damaging surrounding traces where the break is.
I hope you checked for shorts to ground when you were measuring the circuit. You don't want to solder jump wires in and then realize you are just bridging the chips to ground or, worse, +12V or something.
Good advice and yes there were no shorts to ground.
You need to scan, print, and replace that crooked 1500 label.
Looking good
Always informative. I wonder why they used those rubber thingies instead of springs...
Thanks Jari. Price most likely comes into it
Wonderful video. I do have a question tho. What Mixer is that you are using and how do you like it? I'm looking to replace my old one.
It's early days but we used it for the live stream here: th-cam.com/video/zIYX6wKqTcQ/w-d-xo.html - and I took the advice of Craig who you see operating it in the Live Stream. If you drop into my Discord server we can chat about it and Craig can offer more technical advice from an audio engineer POV than I can - discord.gg/7qYtGcz
In before Larry Bundy Jr comment ;)
Never seen an Amiga 1500 !
That poor Alt key! 0:29
Mine I recall was a creamy white not yellow at all
Great episode!
I was wondering if you'd mind sharing the specs of the desoldering gun and solder iron you are using?
I'm looking around to get set up myself and any advice is pretty darn welcome :)
Full review of the desoldering gun is showing to patrons tomorrow, public on Monday 👍
great! Already looking forward to it! Thx for the reply :)
Hi! Just a quick editing question. Do you colour correct your videos? They are visually quite striking and the colours come out great! Many thanks.
Yes I colour correct and edit in Adobe Premiere. The Cave is a windowless basement so I try to counter strip lighting with white studio lights but a little correction is needed to take the yellow tinge off. The coloured back lighting pops nicely with a tiny saturation bump.
That A1500 sticker on the front is a little janky. I wonder if you could create a new one somehow? Garamond Bold Italic is the Amiga logo font I believe.
I'd like to replace it for sure. Thanks for the font tip. I may be able to photograph it and touch it up in photoshop before printing a new one
I seriously love that theme song. Did you write that?
A viewer kindly wrote it, credit should be in the description. I love it too and try not to over use it
@8:00 Why gunshots are still only in the left channel though? And channels sound so different. Doesn't that indicate there's still something wrong with it? It's like the left one plays only PCM and right is only playing MIDI or whatever you have for BGM.
No that's correct. The Amiga has 4 sound channels and is notorious for its stereo seperation. Sfx are only on 1 channel in Batman. When streaming I mix the audio down to mono to make the seperation less annoying, but this is all working as it should.
Just wondering. Did you replace the capacitor on the keyboard?
Wouldn't you be better using the ozone method?