This is what I call dedication! Such an incredible amount of work put in there. Love how you don't spare any details! I did a similar thing on a C-64 that had been resting next to an old portable cassette deck, with four leaking batteries. It was saved just before it got crucial. Basically removed every component from the motherboard, spent 6 hours to clean the PCB! Then put on new sockets, checked the traces... put the ICs back. Made a smaller retro prayer, turned it on and... no magic smoke or damaged at all. So yes it really pays back to put effort into the restoration to get a perfect result :) Great job Jan!
Thanks so much! Nice job on that C64! I always find that the more work I put into a project, the more rewarding it gets in the end. What a great hobby this is. :D
Thank you for this video, Jan! I just recently pulled my Amiga 500 and Amiga 2500 out of storage after 25 years. I came across your video while looking for how-to videos on replacing batteries and recapping Amigas. This was super helpful and inspiring, and I hope to start work on my machines in the next month or two. My father used to help me with electronics work and, to be honest, I'm a bit nervous about starting this work myself, but you have definitely inspired me. He passed away a few years ago and I'm going to give it a go and see if I can do him proud. Thank you for posting this!
Hi Jan, I have had the same keyboard for 30 years and the keys look exactly the same. I think the keys have some kind of protection, except the spacebar for some reason. Thanks for your videos, because they really help me getting my old A2000 back in shape.
I realize this is an old video but want to thank you. I dug out my Amiga 2000HD over the weekend (20 years in storage... and it fired up as if I'd turned it off yesterday... good luck seeing if this laptop still works in 2042) and removed the battery as per your directions. One thing that was a little unclear for me at least without more googling was that removing the battery only affects the clock, there's no downside other than that and only upside so yank that baby out, people. My battery had leaked just a touch more than yours, but not as bad as other commentors, so I'll take that as a win and it's now removed forever.
Hey, glad you removed that battery in time! If you find the energy and time for it, it's definitely a good idea to neutralize the battery leakage on the board with something acidic (white vinegar or lemon juice) sometime and rinse carefully with distilled water and alcohol afterwards. The basic battery leakage is going to continue to eat the traces over time otherwise even if the battery itself is removed!
You got lucky there. The battery leakage and corrosion looks not too bad. The Amiga 1000 & 2000 were my first computers and I still have them both packaged up in their original boxes. I removed the battery from my 2000 a couple of years ago and its quite a bit worse. I had to remove the 68000 socket and hopefully I can find a nice new machined one. You have inspired me to get back to restoring these beauties.
@snowdog993 Oh, I did a couple more videos about this A2000 in the meantime. It’s been permanently set up on my desk for a couple of years now and works beautifully. I have yet to do some cosmetic work on it but the hardware is very reliable at this point. :)
Hi Jan, again an awesome video. One thing to consider; you did a lot of nice cleaning up around the battery area. However, in my experience, the corrosion under the CPU socket is the real silent killer. Perhaps replace the socket?
You are totally right, always replace the socket! It could work now but there would be problems in the future, especially if you have corrosion on the CPU itself.
Thanks Stefan! I wish I had this kind of patience for other (probably more important) tasks, too... But then again, what's more important than a happy Amiga. ;)
I never was so lucky as to own an Amiga (I think we are of similar age 40ish :)) , as it was not available în my country (only spectrum clones), but I learned a lot from your videos and Internet about these wonderfull (and ahead of their time) machines.
Nice work. I have the same model A2000. A couple of things I noted: 1. The fan is a ball bearing one, and is ridiculously loud. It can be annoying since it runs full speed all the time, but it's quality and will last forever, not like the quiet but junk sleeve bearing PC fans. It would be at home in a rack mount server. 2. I noticed that big Commodore sticker on the back next to the power connector was peeling. Same happened to mine so I removed it and underneath the exact same information was silk-screened onto the case. The only difference was it said "Made in Germany" and possibly had no serial number (going from memory - it's been packed away in the garage for over ten years). 3. I have the 20MB version of that hard disk, and the stepper motor shaft rotates about 600 degrees between track 0 and 615. There's an arm sticking out of it (next to the floppy) which breaks a beam for it to tell where track 0 is. To initialise it steps toward the end of the disk some number of times, then back until it detects the arm, counting the steps. If the heads were already near the far end of the disk it hits an internal end stop during the process making a nasty crunch sound, but this is normal. It's the same thing that happens with an IBM 360K floppy during the type detection seek test. It might be worth giving the hard disk another chance. 4. Mine actually had a dual colour Power LED. Plug it in one way it's green, the other it's red. No idea why they did this. I swapped it with the HDD LED and made a splitter circuit so the IBM HDD flashes it one colour and the Amiga HDD the other. I have a 286 bridge board in mine.
Nice work bought one of these brand new back in the day with 1084S monitor ICD hdd card with 8mb ram 105mb Quantum SCSI hdd and new Commodore flicker fixer .... 30 years later bought A2500 /030 from the USA shipped it to AU restored it converted it to PAL put a GVP Tekmagic 060 128mb ram and Commodore flicker fixer, 128gb sd and scsi2sd v6 2mb chip ram ACE2 from Individual Computers its a super reliable war horse leave it on for days... well done !!!
Thanks! My last Amiga back in the day was quite similar, had a PC card and a 2630 accelerator. I'm aiming to recreate that setup as closely as possible. Lovely machines. :D
Just a suggestion for the battery replacement, you could try the Amiga Lithium Coin Cell Clock Battery Adaptor with a rechragable battery so you'll won't be cursed with that Varta battery. Great Video
It was such a lovely moment when you first got the 1.3 disk screen to appear. Lovely. Never seen inside an A2000. Fascinating. Another great video Jan, love them.
Thanks Rob! I love that it has Kick 1.3 as that was what my original machine also had (actually it had switchable 2.04/1.3 Kickstarts). This one must have come with 1.2 originally judging by its age. :)
Jan, I'd consider a Buddha IDE controller and add CF hard drives. I've just upgraded my A2500, and while WB 3.1.4 boots off a CF, I still have the A2091 SCSI drive. CFs make it so easy to transfer stuff from my PC to my Amiga.
Nice project and nice recap. Have seen that solder mask before. It's a lot easier with a desolder you got. What kind of desolder and solder station do you use? Do you have good ventilation when you are working?
Your battery destruction is WAAAY better than mine was... I have such a mess to clean. I have lemon juice soaked all the traces, the large wide band traces are completely eaten away on mine. I’ve pulled capacitors, an the cpu socket. Glad I have a weller desoldering station. I have a few Motorola cpus... even a ceramic one!
I got an Amiga 2000 years ago for $75. Included a keyboard. :-) But I have to restore mine too. But before I do, I want to fix/restore my A1000. Great video as always.
Nice. Thank you. Great timing as I have just purchased a broken Amiga 2000 to fix up. I had the A1500 back in the 90's (B2000 with a 2nd floppy instead of a HD for the UK Market). So I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of this series.
Jan Beta : indeed. I have a A500plus that is testament to the destructive powers of alkaline. Thankfully it was a happy chip and case donor allowing 3 other Amigas to live again. I’m hopeful as the pictures don’t show any obvious corrosion. Given the vague “does not power on” I’m hoping it’s problem is isolated to the power supply. Looking forward to finding out. Thank you again for the time and you put into your videos.
The A4000 I picked up for repair had a FOREST of green corrosion all around the battery, which extended into the Real Time Clock circuitry and the memory simms. I fixed it all (including new simm slots, a new RTC, and all new SMD capacitors), but it wasn't fun! I'm glad to see that you got lucky on your A2000 :)
Late to comment, as usual. Great video. It's good to see you working on an Amiga 2000. Well done on the battery leakage clean-up - very thorough. I think I need to get myself some proper UV curable conformal coating. Can't wait to see what's next for this A2000.
Great work as always! I recently revived my dead Rev 6 A2000 after much procrastinating. I obtained a handful of small enhancements after that and I then did the unplanned thing and got an '030 accelerator for it. My final upgrade will be a ROM switcher. I still want to swap between KS 3.1.4 and 1.3 but have not decided on the best way to do this yet.
My first run-in with the Amiga 2000 was in high-school - editing video tape with Amilink and the Video Toaster. It was the first machine I ever used that really felt like you could do anything with it (Lightwave 3D helped!).
It makes more sense to put an external AA (or even C sizes, since the AA can fit in it) battery enclosure linked by detachable wires. That means no battery can leak on the motherboard again (and it easy to replace). The a2000 with expansion cards is so awesome and with the terriblefire expansions, networking can be included with the CPU and RAM so that render-farms (just like babylon5) could be set up on a LAN or by tunneling over the internet. So Lightwave might be a 3D software example used.
In case the clock circuit is anything like the one on the A501 - and why it wouldn't be - you can do the same mod as well and have a non-rechargeable coin cell to backup the clock. That's one great looking Amiga BTW :) ... I have no idea why C= went with the ROM based OS for the big box Amigas as well. It's fine for the home line, but for these they really should have kept the original design and load the base OS from HDD. Great video Jan, as always!
Thanks! I think the clock circuit is very similar to the one in the A501. I will do a coin cell mod at some point but it's not my top priority at the moment. I think ROM based systems surely have their pros and cons. In that era, I guess a ROM based system was much faster because HDD were pretty sluggish still. Plus, they didn't update the base systems that often anyway.
Hallo Jan I use ELECTROLUBE SAFEWASH 2000 ESWA400H 400ML To clean old boards and it looks new after follow after with Electrolube Saferinse 2000, then it's totally clean and protected. I have fixed a lot of old boards to old cnc machines.
I was lucky finding an A2000 in a dumpster about 10 years ago. Only a bad floppy, otherwise working, harddrive and all. It had the battery leak issue, but i cleaned it up and replaced with diode and buttonbattery. Installed a PC floppy (modded) and a raspberry pi floppy emulator.
I'm not sure about that. Some of the supercaps I've replaced in AV equipment certainly didn't have any reservations about leaking corrosive goo all over the PCB.
Looking forward to watch more videos about the Amiga 2000 series :) Glad I managed to catch the battery problem in time with my Amiga 500 when it just had started forming the green crusties and hadn't leaked yet to the PCB. Recently managed to find the Lotus Trilogy for Amiga (3,5" disk version), what a nice racing game series and the music especially :)
Thanks! There's more Amiga videos to come shortly. :) Yeah, I love the Lotus games. Nothing quite like it even today. And the music still blows me away. :)
So far, I added a Buddah Zorro to IDE adapter and am fiddling around with an old HDD and a CF card reader. Gotek is definitely an option but I haven’t decided yet.
Ok, on my rev 6 board I cleaned the mess, but some resistors and a cap near the battery failed... I need a capacitor size info. The cap near the battery, what size is it? Also need a resistor bank or 3...
The white keyboard keys seem to be normal. The keyboard of my very own 2000 looks pretty similar: Only the housing and the space-key are showing significant yellowing. Very strange, if you ask me.
Awesome. Congrats on your A2000 find. I have not been nearly so lucky. Great job! Because the Amiga's are so expensive I've been focusing on Atari 8bits which I had just as much fun with its games back in the day, except perhaps Dungeon Master which was incredible. I do have a working A500 and replacement caps ready to go. Need to install the gotek mount.
Jo. Also hab ich mal meinen original A2000 aufgeschraubt. Gleiches Bild. Also wo bekomm ich jetzt alles her? Hast Du nen Link zu dem Lack? Glasfaserstift find ich bestimmt so…
The Varta corrosion farter strikes again :-( The first thing I did with my A2000 and A500 Plus when I got them too, remove the battery. Both had already started to leak but luckily very minimal amounts. Good luck on your Amiga 2000 journey.
Just a simple case of the designers not taking into account that 10+ years later any one would be still using it or appreciating their work. I few 386/486 computers back in the day had the seperate battery pack mounted away from the main board and any major components. They could leak and meltdown to their hearts content and be swapped out for any similar battery source with no major fuss. It’s amazing how much computing relies on accurate time.
I am looking at an amiga 2000 for over 700euros, and they are still bitting on it. its literally the only amiga 2000 i found in my country, and its gonna cost me my kidneys, but i really want one of these beautiful machines
You know, you should have made some comment about it being the 25 years anniversary of the Commodore bankruptcy declaration, almost to the date!...would have been a nice touch...release it on the same day as you finally re-establish your original home setup...! Ausgezeichnet! (it's my favorite word)
I really liked this and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series. I hope it will motivate me to restore my two A2000s. The only thing I’ve done with them was remove the batteries and that was four years ago. I never powered them up and have no clue if they work.
Is it necessary to replace the battery or just remove it? I am waiting on my first 2000 that I will be getting next week & am a little lost as I have no experience in repairs!
Great timing - I also just acquired an A2000 - actually an A1500 - which also has the dreaded battery rot; new CPU socket at a minimum required. It also has a GVP 040 card, GVP HD8+ card and an Emplant card. But it cost a lot more than yours and it's also non-functional until I fix it (battery is out, but the rest needs to be fixed)..
Also would a pico 3.5amp or 5amp fuse ok if 4amp isn't available? i'd think 3.5amp would be close enough and safer than 5amp. but maybe fuses HAVE to be amperage specific? I have to replace mine and wanted to buy the part today not order and wait a week.. i know i could bypass but having not owned the unit when it popped i don't know what caused it to pop originally so i'm cautious
if i remove and replace the varta, do you think it would be ok to just top insert a new one? i'm debating if i want to remove the entire board or could just remove old (non leaking!) varta from the top.. assuming the whole pin comes out.. i have to replace the pico fuse for the mouse as well. same question. would it need board removal to do it well or would the solder get down to the bottom safely?
As much as the A500 is a great machine, this is so much better with those wonderful slots for accelerators and tons of RAM and 24-bit video cards and PC emulators and oh man am I so jealous right now! :P
The pads are plated through to the other side of the PCB so it won't matter much if the surface is covered. I did scrape some of the solder mask away before soldering in a battery holder though (which is easier to do than to leave the pads clear while painting on the lacquer). :)
Thank you for the video. I see in the comments there are a lot of people that have experience with fixing motherboards. I have yet to fix my own but have enough knowledge to be dangerous while soldering. Can anyone recommend a good motherboard repair channel for Amigas? My old A4000 needs recapping and the battery leaked so I took it out and cleaned the area with alcohol. I don't know how to identify or where to purchase the capacitors. Thanks!
Thumbs up for the beard, Jan! Looks great! As for the repair: Do you happen to have a (maybe non-public) shopping list of the products that you found worked for PCB repair and similar jobs? I'm never quite sure what to try out.
I know this is a couple of years old but how long did it take to scrape all of that mask off with the fiberglass pen. It seems like I'm making no headway.
Congrats on your repair work. I just bought an A2000 rev 4.4 MB that also has the battery leak earlier. I got my work cut out since I get the red screen during boot for a rom issue so I guess the corrosion has impacted the rom traces?
Yes, that may very well be the case. It might be a problem with the ROM socket, too. The IC sockets Commodore used are extremely prone to not making good contact. Sometimes contact cleaner helps but I've had to replace a lot of those cheapo original sockets in Amigas.
I have an A2000 that had the battery removed years ago...when turning it on it flashes dark grey, light grey white and then black...cannot get it to show up with the insert disk part...but DIAGROM boots up and runs all the tests perfectly...could there be some cap that needs to be replaced that is causing the hang or reboot...?
Sounds like some weird issue with the KickROM to me. If it passes the initial tests and goes through all the colors up to white, the next thing should be the Kickstart screen coming up. Which version of Kickstart are you using? Maybe try swapping the ROM with another?
Nuts are not by design. Those ports were replaced. Look at the notches on the mouse/joystick connectors: 3 on the original one, 2 on the replaced one. Side note: right bottom side of the case is bent... and is bending the motherboard too.
I enjoyed your video. I may be trying to bring a 2000 back to life soon. It had more battery corrosion creep than yours did. It won’t start up. I may try to start it with a work bench disk. Hopefully I can figure it out.
Hope you manage to recover it! I got really lucky with mine, usually the corrosion is much worse. Most of the times, you even have to desolder the CPU socket and clean up/fix traces underneath.
Retro computers your like a kid in a toffee shop or with a new toy! :D bless you Jan :D - those batteries were always crusty I had an old 386DX with one of those batteries it fell off before it done any serious damage thank god! heard so many stories of those batteries destroying peoples retro dreams !
Haha, yes, that's exactly what I feel like when I get a "new" vintage computer, especially if it's one that I had back in the day like this. Ha, sometimes the Vartas seem to be so destructive, they destroy themselves before they can damage the boards they are sitting on... :D
Kickass video! I never had one of these, but I had a hand-me-down Apple Mac II ci from my dad that used the same processor architecture (I think it had a 60830 CPU?) so I can sort of relate to its generation. I really wanna get a II ci again and make some videos on it, as well as a PowerMac 8x00 series (8500, 8600, etc) to make videos on too since I had those in my childhood as well. Great video! I've subbed and am curious to see how this project continues!
You did a great job. I wouldn't be able to do all that. Eyes are not what they were. But where did you order all your parts from? For us, that may give it a go? I have been watching a few of your videos. I believe My A600 needs to be recapped. It was an eBay buy. The hard drive didn't always boot up. Even with CF Card. It has been some time. May have been floppy drive. Gee. years.
Yes, they are lovely machines especially because there are so many possible expansions. As I said, I was looking for one for years. Really happy I found this. Hope you are going to find an affordable one sometime, too.
I miss my Amiga, it was so far ahead of its time. It was putting out graphic workstation quality graphics at a fraction of the cost. I always wanted the Video Toaster graphics card but couldn't afford it.
11:20 - Your hard drive is not broken, that is the normal noise that Miniscribe 8425 drives make at startup. And if such drives with stepper motor as actuator for the heads suffer of head/track misalignment, they're pretty easy to restore just by low-level formatting them. Of course you'll loose all the data stored in them, but as that data is already unaccessible due to the misalignment it's not a big problem. Then just reinstall the OS and you'll have again a finished working A2000 :-)
Interesting to see Kickstart 1.3, the one my friend had was 1.2, these days you could probably throw what you want in there. I got my A500 quite late 1987/8 ish with the fatter agnus 1.3, as most of my friends had again 1.2 on the A500. Perhaps this is a great platform to put in an actual coincel holder and rechargable coincel ..
The Kickstart must have been upgraded by the previous owner. I remember it was pretty common to do so. My father did the same at the time with his A500. I think I will put in a coin cell at some point but it's not my top priority at this point. :)
Yep the A2000 was Commodore's first "real" looking computer. Still got one since some 30 years ago stashed away somewhere.... one day before I die, I might refurbish it. :)
Ahh, what could be better on a day off work? Full mug of coffee and a Jan Beta video. Great!!!
Hope you enjoyed both your day off and the video, Wim! :)
Is it a day of the tentacle mug?
I always add a big plate of custard creams to dunk.
It is! @@raggededge82
This is what I call dedication! Such an incredible amount of work put in there. Love how you don't spare any details! I did a similar thing on a C-64 that had been resting next to an old portable cassette deck, with four leaking batteries. It was saved just before it got crucial. Basically removed every component from the motherboard, spent 6 hours to clean the PCB! Then put on new sockets, checked the traces... put the ICs back. Made a smaller retro prayer, turned it on and... no magic smoke or damaged at all. So yes it really pays back to put effort into the restoration to get a perfect result :) Great job Jan!
Thanks so much! Nice job on that C64! I always find that the more work I put into a project, the more rewarding it gets in the end. What a great hobby this is. :D
Thank you for this video, Jan! I just recently pulled my Amiga 500 and Amiga 2500 out of storage after 25 years. I came across your video while looking for how-to videos on replacing batteries and recapping Amigas. This was super helpful and inspiring, and I hope to start work on my machines in the next month or two. My father used to help me with electronics work and, to be honest, I'm a bit nervous about starting this work myself, but you have definitely inspired me. He passed away a few years ago and I'm going to give it a go and see if I can do him proud. Thank you for posting this!
Hi Jan, I have had the same keyboard for 30 years and the keys look exactly the same. I think the keys have some kind of protection, except the spacebar for some reason. Thanks for your videos, because they really help me getting my old A2000 back in shape.
I realize this is an old video but want to thank you. I dug out my Amiga 2000HD over the weekend (20 years in storage... and it fired up as if I'd turned it off yesterday... good luck seeing if this laptop still works in 2042) and removed the battery as per your directions. One thing that was a little unclear for me at least without more googling was that removing the battery only affects the clock, there's no downside other than that and only upside so yank that baby out, people. My battery had leaked just a touch more than yours, but not as bad as other commentors, so I'll take that as a win and it's now removed forever.
Hey, glad you removed that battery in time! If you find the energy and time for it, it's definitely a good idea to neutralize the battery leakage on the board with something acidic (white vinegar or lemon juice) sometime and rinse carefully with distilled water and alcohol afterwards. The basic battery leakage is going to continue to eat the traces over time otherwise even if the battery itself is removed!
You got lucky there. The battery leakage and corrosion looks not too bad. The Amiga 1000 & 2000 were my first computers and I still have them both packaged up in their original boxes. I removed the battery from my 2000 a couple of years ago and its quite a bit worse. I had to remove the 68000 socket and hopefully I can find a nice new machined one. You have inspired me to get back to restoring these beauties.
amazing work! restorations can be so rewarding when done with time and care
Thank you! Yes, these restorations take some time for sure. But as you said, it's well worth the effort I think. :)
@snowdog993 Oh, I did a couple more videos about this A2000 in the meantime. It’s been permanently set up on my desk for a couple of years now and works beautifully. I have yet to do some cosmetic work on it but the hardware is very reliable at this point. :)
Your video has convinced me I need to take apart my A3000 and do the same inspections and re-cap. Must be 10+ years since I fired it up :-(
Hi Jan, again an awesome video.
One thing to consider; you did a lot of nice cleaning up around the battery area. However, in my experience, the corrosion under the CPU socket is the real silent killer. Perhaps replace the socket?
You are totally right, always replace the socket! It could work now but there would be problems in the future, especially if you have corrosion on the CPU itself.
Yes also i think for a good repair you have to rework every soldering in "the green area".
Oh man, with the battery leakage I was totally convinced you were at least going to need to replace the CPU socket. Talk about lucky!
You are a man of perseverence.... Only the though of so many capacitors...... Well done!
Thanks Stefan! I wish I had this kind of patience for other (probably more important) tasks, too... But then again, what's more important than a happy Amiga. ;)
I never was so lucky as to own an Amiga (I think we are of similar age 40ish :)) , as it was not available în my country (only spectrum clones), but I learned a lot from your videos and Internet about these wonderfull (and ahead of their time) machines.
Yes, the Amigas were like a revelation even though we had access to a few other machines. Still impressive machines from today’s perspective. :)
Jan was especially excited in this one :)
Nice one Jan thoroughly enjoyed it and thank God that battery leakage wasn't severe mate 🤗 🤗🤗 Kim 🤗🤗🤗
Thanks Kim! Yeah, I got really lucky with the leakage, seen much worse. There's more Amiga videos to come very soon. :)
Nice work. I have the same model A2000. A couple of things I noted:
1. The fan is a ball bearing one, and is ridiculously loud. It can be annoying since it runs full speed all the time, but it's quality and will last forever, not like the quiet but junk sleeve bearing PC fans. It would be at home in a rack mount server.
2. I noticed that big Commodore sticker on the back next to the power connector was peeling. Same happened to mine so I removed it and underneath the exact same information was silk-screened onto the case. The only difference was it said "Made in Germany" and possibly had no serial number (going from memory - it's been packed away in the garage for over ten years).
3. I have the 20MB version of that hard disk, and the stepper motor shaft rotates about 600 degrees between track 0 and 615. There's an arm sticking out of it (next to the floppy) which breaks a beam for it to tell where track 0 is. To initialise it steps toward the end of the disk some number of times, then back until it detects the arm, counting the steps. If the heads were already near the far end of the disk it hits an internal end stop during the process making a nasty crunch sound, but this is normal. It's the same thing that happens with an IBM 360K floppy during the type detection seek test. It might be worth giving the hard disk another chance.
4. Mine actually had a dual colour Power LED. Plug it in one way it's green, the other it's red. No idea why they did this. I swapped it with the HDD LED and made a splitter circuit so the IBM HDD flashes it one colour and the Amiga HDD the other. I have a 286 bridge board in mine.
Nice work bought one of these brand new back in the day with 1084S monitor ICD hdd card with 8mb ram 105mb Quantum SCSI hdd and new Commodore flicker fixer .... 30 years later bought A2500 /030 from the USA shipped it to AU restored it converted it to PAL put a GVP Tekmagic 060 128mb ram and Commodore flicker fixer, 128gb sd and scsi2sd v6 2mb chip ram ACE2 from Individual Computers its a super reliable war horse leave it on for days... well done !!!
Thanks! My last Amiga back in the day was quite similar, had a PC card and a 2630 accelerator. I'm aiming to recreate that setup as closely as possible. Lovely machines. :D
@@Okurka. yep got pi3b+ and a V600 Vampire as well
Just a suggestion for the battery replacement, you could try the Amiga Lithium Coin Cell Clock Battery Adaptor with a rechragable battery so you'll won't be cursed with that Varta battery. Great Video
Yes, I'm probably going to use a lithium cell at some point. Not the top priority at the moment, though. :)
It was such a lovely moment when you first got the 1.3 disk screen to appear. Lovely.
Never seen inside an A2000. Fascinating.
Another great video Jan, love them.
Thanks Rob! I love that it has Kick 1.3 as that was what my original machine also had (actually it had switchable 2.04/1.3 Kickstarts). This one must have come with 1.2 originally judging by its age. :)
We will don't have Commodore NO more, but we are Happy...Long Life to Commodore!
Long live the Commodore! :D
@@Okurka. The rest is no more Commodore.
Jan, I'd consider a Buddha IDE controller and add CF hard drives. I've just upgraded my A2500, and while WB 3.1.4 boots off a CF, I still have the A2091 SCSI drive. CFs make it so easy to transfer stuff from my PC to my Amiga.
An upload with super content from Jan! The evening is saved!!
an A2000 was my first computer i also grew up with, until I got my first x86 secondhand. love them.
They are lovely machines! Working on this one again in one of the next videos. :)
Vintage Jan Beta! Great video. Looking forward to the following videos of this classic beast of a machine. :)
Thanks! I have a lot of plans & things to try with this machine. :)
Hey Jan, recently found your channel (via RetroRecipe), great content and super engaging! Keep up the great work! Gut gemacht!
Nice project and nice recap. Have seen that solder mask before. It's a lot easier with a desolder you got. What kind of desolder and solder station do you use? Do you have good ventilation when you are working?
Your battery destruction is WAAAY better than mine was... I have such a mess to clean.
I have lemon juice soaked all the traces, the large wide band traces are completely eaten away on mine.
I’ve pulled capacitors, an the cpu socket. Glad I have a weller desoldering station.
I have a few Motorola cpus... even a ceramic one!
Great job Jan. Looks great. Much neater solder mask coating this time around. Looking forward to seeing more of this computer in the future.
Clear nail polish works fine too. ;) Its only purpose to keep air away from the traces.
I got an Amiga 2000 years ago for $75. Included a keyboard. :-) But I have to restore mine too. But before I do, I want to fix/restore my A1000. Great video as always.
Nice. Thank you. Great timing as I have just purchased a broken Amiga 2000 to fix up. I had the A1500 back in the 90's (B2000 with a 2nd floppy instead of a HD for the UK Market). So I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of this series.
Ah, nice! Hope you get as lucky with your A2000 as I got with mine. Those batteries can be VERY destructive. More A2K videos coming shortly. :)
Jan Beta : indeed. I have a A500plus that is testament to the destructive powers of alkaline. Thankfully it was a happy chip and case donor allowing 3 other Amigas to live again. I’m hopeful as the pictures don’t show any obvious corrosion. Given the vague “does not power on” I’m hoping it’s problem is isolated to the power supply. Looking forward to finding out.
Thank you again for the time and you put into your videos.
The A4000 I picked up for repair had a FOREST of green corrosion all around the battery, which extended into the Real Time Clock circuitry and the memory simms. I fixed it all (including new simm slots, a new RTC, and all new SMD capacitors), but it wasn't fun! I'm glad to see that you got lucky on your A2000 :)
Yeah, these batteries can do a lot of damage. Glad you took the plunge and got the A4000 working again. I really got lucky with the A2000. :)
Late to comment, as usual. Great video. It's good to see you working on an Amiga 2000. Well done on the battery leakage clean-up - very thorough. I think I need to get myself some proper UV curable conformal coating. Can't wait to see what's next for this A2000.
Great work as always! I recently revived my dead Rev 6 A2000 after much procrastinating. I obtained a handful of small enhancements after that and I then did the unplanned thing and got an '030 accelerator for it. My final upgrade will be a ROM switcher. I still want to swap between KS 3.1.4 and 1.3 but have not decided on the best way to do this yet.
My first run-in with the Amiga 2000 was in high-school - editing video tape with Amilink and the Video Toaster. It was the first machine I ever used that really felt like you could do anything with it (Lightwave 3D helped!).
Are you going to install a new battery holder, say perhaps a CR2032?
I think I'll do that at some point, but it's not my top priority at the moment.
It makes more sense to put an external AA (or even C sizes, since the AA can fit in it) battery enclosure linked by detachable wires. That means no battery can leak on the motherboard again (and it easy to replace). The a2000 with expansion cards is so awesome and with the terriblefire expansions, networking can be included with the CPU and RAM so that render-farms (just like babylon5) could be set up on a LAN or by tunneling over the internet. So Lightwave might be a 3D software example used.
Great video, can't wait to see the rest of this restoration.
Thanks! More to come very shortly. :)
In case the clock circuit is anything like the one on the A501 - and why it wouldn't be - you can do the same mod as well and have a non-rechargeable coin cell to backup the clock. That's one great looking Amiga BTW :) ... I have no idea why C= went with the ROM based OS for the big box Amigas as well. It's fine for the home line, but for these they really should have kept the original design and load the base OS from HDD. Great video Jan, as always!
Thanks! I think the clock circuit is very similar to the one in the A501. I will do a coin cell mod at some point but it's not my top priority at the moment. I think ROM based systems surely have their pros and cons. In that era, I guess a ROM based system was much faster because HDD were pretty sluggish still. Plus, they didn't update the base systems that often anyway.
Hallo Jan
I use ELECTROLUBE SAFEWASH 2000 ESWA400H 400ML
To clean old boards and it looks new after follow after with Electrolube Saferinse 2000, then it's totally clean and protected.
I have fixed a lot of old boards to old cnc machines.
So awesome! I'll be following this like a hawk. Nicely done Jan!
Thanks Pete! There's a lot more Amiga 2000 videos to come. :)
I was lucky finding an A2000 in a dumpster about 10 years ago. Only a bad floppy, otherwise working, harddrive and all. It had the battery leak issue, but i cleaned it up and replaced with diode and buttonbattery. Installed a PC floppy (modded) and a raspberry pi floppy emulator.
You make recapping look so easy!
Hi Jan!
Try using a supercapacitor as a battery replacement. They keep their charge pretty well and, most importantly, they won't leak.
I'm not sure about that. Some of the supercaps I've replaced in AV equipment certainly didn't have any reservations about leaking corrosive goo all over the PCB.
@@Okurka. with the added bonus of setting the thing on fire.... Believe me!!!
At the moment, my plan is to use a coin cell like I did in the A501 RAM expansion recently. It's basically the same circuit so it won't be hard to do.
Looking forward to watch more videos about the Amiga 2000 series :) Glad I managed to catch the battery problem in time with my Amiga 500 when it just had started forming the green crusties and hadn't leaked yet to the PCB.
Recently managed to find the Lotus Trilogy for Amiga (3,5" disk version), what a nice racing game series and the music especially :)
Thanks! There's more Amiga videos to come shortly. :) Yeah, I love the Lotus games. Nothing quite like it even today. And the music still blows me away. :)
can't wait to see what you do next and thank you for sharing THIS
Nice find, Jan! Also unusually easy to fix. I hope I haven't jinxed your next video :D
Looking forward to the next episode.
Thanks! More to come shortly! :)
Nice score Jan. Can’t wait to see your next video.
Thanks Edwin! More Amiga 2000 videos to come shortly. :)
Jan Beta nice, are you going to use a Gotek? And a SCSI to SD adapter?
So far, I added a Buddah Zorro to IDE adapter and am fiddling around with an old HDD and a CF card reader. Gotek is definitely an option but I haven’t decided yet.
Jan Beta, oke CF is almost the same as IDE. There are good CF to SD adapters and that make it easy to exchange data with other systems
Yes, that’s the plan. :)
@Jan Beta Do you have a list of the capacitors to replace on the A2000? Been looking around and not having much luck with that. Thanks!
Congratulations for a fantastic job. Mine is in same the conditions. Do you receive orders to repair?
Yay, Amiga. And the music was much better too.
Oh, that was a track by Focus 10 who kindly provided his work for use in my videos -> soundcloud.com/user-993847645
Ok, on my rev 6 board I cleaned the mess, but some resistors and a cap near the battery failed... I need a capacitor size info. The cap near the battery, what size is it? Also need a resistor bank or 3...
The white keyboard keys seem to be normal. The keyboard of my very own 2000 looks pretty similar: Only the housing and the space-key are showing significant yellowing. Very strange, if you ask me.
Great video as always, thanks Jan. Are you considering to replace the original power supply with a new one?
I want to own an Amiga so badly omgggg
Awesome. Congrats on your A2000 find. I have not been nearly so lucky. Great job! Because the Amiga's are so expensive I've been focusing on Atari 8bits which I had just as much fun with its games back in the day, except perhaps Dungeon Master which was incredible. I do have a working A500 and replacement caps ready to go. Need to install the gotek mount.
Jo. Also hab ich mal meinen original A2000 aufgeschraubt. Gleiches Bild. Also wo bekomm ich jetzt alles her? Hast Du nen Link zu dem Lack? Glasfaserstift find ich bestimmt so…
The Varta corrosion farter strikes again :-( The first thing I did with my A2000 and A500 Plus when I got them too, remove the battery. Both had already started to leak but luckily very minimal amounts. Good luck on your Amiga 2000 journey.
Thanks! Yeah, the Vartas did quite some destruction on many vintage computers. :/
Yep. Even some of the Amiga's arch enemy PC systems suffered the same fate!
I did the same with my A500 plus too - those Varta batteries do a lot of damage.
Just a simple case of the designers not taking into account that 10+ years later any one would be still using it or appreciating their work. I few 386/486 computers back in the day had the seperate battery pack mounted away from the main board and any major components. They could leak and meltdown to their hearts content and be swapped out for any similar battery source with no major fuss. It’s amazing how much computing relies on accurate time.
I am looking at an amiga 2000 for over 700euros, and they are still bitting on it.
its literally the only amiga 2000 i found in my country, and its gonna cost me my kidneys, but i really want one of these beautiful machines
Dear Jan,
there are two analog Oscilloscopes in the background - can you tell me the model numbers please?
You know, you should have made some comment about it being the 25 years anniversary of the Commodore bankruptcy declaration, almost to the date!...would have been a nice touch...release it on the same day as you finally re-establish your original home setup...! Ausgezeichnet! (it's my favorite word)
I really liked this and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series. I hope it will motivate me to restore my two A2000s. The only thing I’ve done with them was remove the batteries and that was four years ago. I never powered them up and have no clue if they work.
Thanks Pierre! I find these restorations very rewarding, especially if things work out in the end. More A2000 videos to come shortly. :)
Is it necessary to replace the battery or just remove it? I am waiting on my first 2000 that I will be getting next week & am a little lost as I have no experience in repairs!
Great timing - I also just acquired an A2000 - actually an A1500 - which also has the dreaded battery rot; new CPU socket at a minimum required. It also has a GVP 040 card, GVP HD8+ card and an Emplant card. But it cost a lot more than yours and it's also non-functional until I fix it (battery is out, but the rest needs to be fixed)..
Also would a pico 3.5amp or 5amp fuse ok if 4amp isn't available? i'd think 3.5amp would be close enough and safer than 5amp. but maybe fuses HAVE to be amperage specific? I have to replace mine and wanted to buy the part today not order and wait a week.. i know i could bypass but having not owned the unit when it popped i don't know what caused it to pop originally so i'm cautious
if i remove and replace the varta, do you think it would be ok to just top insert a new one? i'm debating if i want to remove the entire board or could just remove old (non leaking!) varta from the top.. assuming the whole pin comes out.. i have to replace the pico fuse for the mouse as well. same question. would it need board removal to do it well or would the solder get down to the bottom safely?
As much as the A500 is a great machine, this is so much better with those wonderful slots for accelerators and tons of RAM and 24-bit video cards and PC emulators and oh man am I so jealous right now! :P
Ha! Yes, the A2000 may be ugly from the outside but there's so many things you can do with it. More adventures to come shortly. ;)
Video Toaster!
Hallo Jan! You put the green enamel on the pads. Won't this prevent the current between the battery and the PCB?
The pads are plated through to the other side of the PCB so it won't matter much if the surface is covered. I did scrape some of the solder mask away before soldering in a battery holder though (which is easier to do than to leave the pads clear while painting on the lacquer). :)
Great video. Jan, you don't happen to have a list of all the caps I need to purchase to do this project do you?
Maybe you can try Perifractic's idea about leaving parts in the sun to 'retrobrite' and see if that front faceplate will go brighter?
Is it possible to run amiga 500 software on a 2000? Ist es möglich Atari 500 software auf nem 2000'er zu nutzen?
Thank you for the video. I see in the comments there are a lot of people that have experience with fixing motherboards. I have yet to fix my own but have enough knowledge to be dangerous while soldering. Can anyone recommend a good motherboard repair channel for Amigas? My old A4000 needs recapping and the battery leaked so I took it out and cleaned the area with alcohol. I don't know how to identify or where to purchase the capacitors. Thanks!
Thumbs up for the beard, Jan! Looks great!
As for the repair:
Do you happen to have a (maybe non-public) shopping list of the products that you found worked for PCB repair and similar jobs?
I'm never quite sure what to try out.
I am also interested in a kit guide for a beginner to do similar work! :)
As usually very interesting video. Are you going to record something more about amiga monitor as i wonder if you can fix that cathode problem.?
Hi Ian mi am restoring my 2000 and wanted to ask what cable are you using for the pc monitor
I know this is a couple of years old but how long did it take to scrape all of that mask off with the fiberglass pen. It seems like I'm making no headway.
Congrats on your repair work. I just bought an A2000 rev 4.4 MB that also has the battery leak earlier. I got my work cut out since I get the red screen during boot for a rom issue so I guess the corrosion has impacted the rom traces?
Yes, that may very well be the case. It might be a problem with the ROM socket, too. The IC sockets Commodore used are extremely prone to not making good contact. Sometimes contact cleaner helps but I've had to replace a lot of those cheapo original sockets in Amigas.
@@JanBeta Thanks, I picked up some contact cleaner and will try that. I hope changing the rom socket is the last resort.
I really need to pull my A2000 HD off the shelf and look at the battery. It's been about 4 years since I last fired her up.
I'm scared to even look at mine which was stashed away for some 30 years and never turned one since.
I have an A2000 that had the battery removed years ago...when turning it on it flashes dark grey, light grey white and then black...cannot get it to show up with the insert disk part...but DIAGROM boots up and runs all the tests perfectly...could there be some cap that needs to be replaced that is causing the hang or reboot...?
Sounds like some weird issue with the KickROM to me. If it passes the initial tests and goes through all the colors up to white, the next thing should be the Kickstart screen coming up. Which version of Kickstart are you using? Maybe try swapping the ROM with another?
Nuts are not by design. Those ports were replaced. Look at the notches on the mouse/joystick connectors: 3 on the original one, 2 on the replaced one. Side note: right bottom side of the case is bent... and is bending the motherboard too.
I enjoyed your video. I may be trying to bring a 2000 back to life soon. It had more battery corrosion creep than yours did. It won’t start up. I may try to start it with a work bench disk. Hopefully I can figure it out.
Hope you manage to recover it! I got really lucky with mine, usually the corrosion is much worse. Most of the times, you even have to desolder the CPU socket and clean up/fix traces underneath.
Retro computers your like a kid in a toffee shop or with a new toy! :D bless you Jan :D - those batteries were always crusty I had an old 386DX with one of those batteries it fell off before it done any serious damage thank god! heard so many stories of those batteries destroying peoples retro dreams !
Haha, yes, that's exactly what I feel like when I get a "new" vintage computer, especially if it's one that I had back in the day like this. Ha, sometimes the Vartas seem to be so destructive, they destroy themselves before they can damage the boards they are sitting on... :D
The hard drive looks like an old ST-506 pre-ide drive... neeat! Is it on a ZORRO card, or in the bridgeboard?
I have an A500 NTSC board. Would you be interested in fixing it and what would you charge per hour?
Kickass video! I never had one of these, but I had a hand-me-down Apple Mac II ci from my dad that used the same processor architecture (I think it had a 60830 CPU?) so I can sort of relate to its generation. I really wanna get a II ci again and make some videos on it, as well as a PowerMac 8x00 series (8500, 8600, etc) to make videos on too since I had those in my childhood as well. Great video! I've subbed and am curious to see how this project continues!
Yeah! Jan! Awesome!
Thank you sir! :D
You did a great job. I wouldn't be able to do all that. Eyes are not what they were. But where did you order all your parts from? For us, that may give it a go? I have been watching a few of your videos. I believe My A600 needs to be recapped. It was an eBay buy. The hard drive didn't always boot up. Even with CF Card. It has been some time. May have been floppy drive. Gee. years.
Looks fantastic! This is my dream-machine. Been on the lookout for one for a long time, but damn are they expensive.
Yes, they are lovely machines especially because there are so many possible expansions. As I said, I was looking for one for years. Really happy I found this. Hope you are going to find an affordable one sometime, too.
I have a complete A2000HD stored in my basement... Original monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Couldn't imagine the cost of shipping such a beast
Another Great Project from You👍
I miss my Amiga, it was so far ahead of its time. It was putting out graphic workstation quality graphics at a fraction of the cost. I always wanted the Video Toaster graphics card but couldn't afford it.
Yes, the Amiga was magical when it came out. Sadly, Commodore didn't update the architecture in time. :(
Another great video - keep them coming!!
Yay new vid... "WHAT A DAY, WHAT A LOVELY DAY!"
Haha, thanks. Hope you enjoyed it. :)
The VARTA barrel of DOOM!!! Still would have loved to have had an Amiga 2000. Sigh! I did love my Amiga 500 though.
11:20 - Your hard drive is not broken, that is the normal noise that Miniscribe 8425 drives make at startup. And if such drives with stepper motor as actuator for the heads suffer of head/track misalignment, they're pretty easy to restore just by low-level formatting them. Of course you'll loose all the data stored in them, but as that data is already unaccessible due to the misalignment it's not a big problem. Then just reinstall the OS and you'll have again a finished working A2000 :-)
I'd check out the floppy drive too, clean the heads, maybe swap the belts
Yes, definitely a good idea. :)
Very nice sir 👏🏻
Thank you! More to come shortly. :D
So far so good, think I might have replaced the CPU socket, but that's the OCD speaking.
Great stuff Jan!
Thanks Matthew! :D
Interesting to see Kickstart 1.3, the one my friend had was 1.2, these days you could probably throw what you want in there.
I got my A500 quite late 1987/8 ish with the fatter agnus 1.3, as most of my friends had again 1.2 on the A500.
Perhaps this is a great platform to put in an actual coincel holder and rechargable coincel ..
The Kickstart must have been upgraded by the previous owner. I remember it was pretty common to do so. My father did the same at the time with his A500. I think I will put in a coin cell at some point but it's not my top priority at this point. :)
While you had the board out, wouldn't it have made sense to install a new battery?
Yes, probably. But it wasn't my top priority for now. (plus I misplaced my stash of coin cell holders...) ;)
A fibreglass tip on a dremal would be handy.
Mine had a number of destroyed vias, the holes themselves were no longer plated.. Had to poke wire through them to reconnect top to bottom.
Yeah, I think that’s quite typical.
The Amiga 2000 really is a great machine. Cool think yours works :-)
Yep the A2000 was Commodore's first "real" looking computer. Still got one since some 30 years ago stashed away somewhere.... one day before I die, I might refurbish it. :)