What a treat, 30 year old NIB Amiga 500's!

Jeff_Birt

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A few weeks ago I bought a couple of Amiga 500's at a warehouse liquidation auction. The only photo was of two orignal boxes propped up against a shelf. I paid a bit more than I wanted speculating that maybe, just maybe, since they had saved the boxes that they had taken care of the machines.

Imagine my surprise when opening the two Amiga 500 Bonus Pack boxes to find that they were both NEW IN BOX. They had never been opened before! Wow! What a treat! I'm not big on 'unboxing' videos but I had the camera rolling since this was my foray into the Amiga world (Commodore 64 die hard).

I'll have the camera rolling again when I crack open the cases to see what horrors might await. From the research I have done it seems like the through hole caps on these were not prone to leaking but the Varta batteries were. Who knows what shape these two 30+ years old NEW Amiga 500's are in? Join me on an adventure with some new/old Amigas :)

All input welcome. I'm an Amiga newbie...

 
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Smells like 80s.
 
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Nice find!

Unless they are A500+ you won’t find a battery inside.
 
Nope, not a 500 Plus. Whew! I'm forcing myself to get a few other thigns on my list done before cracking them open and firing them up. It won't be long though. :)
 
Great find indeed! Based on your video these appear to be stock A500s (chicken lip case badge) so no batteries to remove luckily.

Very nice content on your channel by the way!
 
Thanks for the tip about the battery. As I understand, now, only te 500+ had the battery.
 
Plain Amiga 500 models fortunately don't have batteries that wreak havoc (and seems these don't have any RTC modules in the trapdoor expansion either) so the biggest threat is absent. You will probably find very nice and clean motherboards inside just like when it was manufactured.

If the machines are indeed unused (and they pretty much look like they are) then chances are the capacitors will be in relatively good shape (not popped, or leaked) and the machines will likely function fine. Check the safety vent state on the top of the large, through-hole electrolytic capacitors, if they are not bulging, and the area around them appears dry and clean then there is no major damage.

However this does not mean the capacitors are working fine. They are way past their shelf life and there is a risk that the sponge separating the plates that is soaked with base electrolyte has dried out meaning the capacitance of the part is greatly reduced. In short the capacitors might not be doing their jobs. So a prolonged use of the machine might not be a good idea, but testing for under an hour or so is probably fine.

I would say considering the excellent condition of these might worth it to replace the capacitors (by a reputable place specialising in Amiga hw) for a peace of mind.
 
1980's capacitors = usually still good
1990's capacitors = almost always bad, especially surface mount.
 
1980's capacitors = usually still good
1990's capacitors = almost always bad, especially surface mount.

This has generally been my experience as well with the exception being low profile through-hole. I have pulled and tested various older caps from C64s etc. with both my cheap component tester and with lab grade equipment at work (EE dept at university) and have not found that they tend to be bad. If I do find a bad one in a piece of gear I tend to replace them all since I'm already in there though (especially if it is a job for someone else, don't want them to have more problems 10 years from now).

I have done a few TRS-80 M0del 100's and these have a few low-profile through hole caps that are prone to leaking (strangely it looks like all caps are the same manufacturer, but only one value leaks). I just did a Convergent Workslate (1983) which has a lot of surface mount parts but uses low-profile through-hole electrolytic caps. What a mess it was, it took 2-3 hours to replace 20 caps with all the cleaning required. (I suspect maybe they originally thought of using tantalum as they marked the + lead on the silkscreen.) I have one more of these to do but will play with the A500s first.

I just cleaned up my video capture set up this evening so I can capture the output of both the A520 composite adapter and the RGB (provided I can get one of my Extron video scalers to sync to the A500 output).
 
A large warehouse full of computer stuff in Dallas recently had to be closed and was in danger of having all of the inventory scrapped. Luckily people were ready to jump in to help sell at least some of the stuff in there as the owner fell ill and couldn't run it anymore.
 
The second episode of the NIB Amiga 500s is now up. In this video, we look in detail at the first of the two New-In-Box Amiga 500’s we unboxed last week. Follow along with this bit of Amiga archeology and see what we uncover inside a new-in-box Amiga 500. Will it work? Can we get Tetris to run? Let’s dive in and give it a go.


The power supply is inspected, and load tested. We also crack open the A500 itself and do a visual inspection to make sure all is well before firing it up for the first time since it left the factory over 30 years ago.


We do a quick test using the built-in greyscale composite output to verify that the computer works at all. Then we plug-in the A520 video adapter and try color composite video. Both video outputs are routed through an Extron IN1502 Video Scaler and displayed using a VGA hookup.


In the next episode, we’ll see about using the Amiga’s RBG output for better picture quality and try to take care of any maintenance issues we might find during this inspection.


Video: https://youtu.be/o9qjfX0w1TQ
 
Nice video. I really like/appreciate your thoroughness/patience with that fire-up.

Yeah those square 5-pin PSU connectors are a bit of PITA .... hard to get now - but I did hear there's some nutty guy in the USA somewhere who's having new ones made !! :-;
 
The second episode of the NIB Amiga 500s is now up. In this video, we look in detail at the first of the two New-In-Box Amiga 500’s we unboxed last week. Follow along with this bit of Amiga archeology and see what we uncover inside a new-in-box Amiga 500. Will it work? Can we get Tetris to run? Let’s dive in and give it a go.


The power supply is inspected, and load tested. We also crack open the A500 itself and do a visual inspection to make sure all is well before firing it up for the first time since it left the factory over 30 years ago.


We do a quick test using the built-in greyscale composite output to verify that the computer works at all. Then we plug-in the A520 video adapter and try color composite video. Both video outputs are routed through an Extron IN1502 Video Scaler and displayed using a VGA hookup.


In the next episode, we’ll see about using the Amiga’s RBG output for better picture quality and try to take care of any maintenance issues we might find during this inspection.


Video: https://youtu.be/o9qjfX0w1TQ

So much busying around about what we already know, A500's without battery usually run just fine especially if they are unused and clean (not stored in a damp basement). :)Just as I predicted in my post above. ^^^^^^^ And apart from capacitors you are unlikely to find any "maintenance issues". This could have been done in less than 10 minutes, and the rest of the time used to replace the capacitors. :) Apart from the video, you should be testing one of the most important function which is the left and right audio out channels. Two electrolytic filter capacitors sits on the output of those, and if they have dried out your audio could be bad. But you seem to enjoy yourself with all this stuff so I guess for you, it was worth it.. ;)
 
So much busying around about what we already know, A500's without battery usually run just fine especially if they are unused and clean (not stored in a damp basement

Testing the power supply is essential on any piece of old kit though.

I did find problems though. The non-functioning return key and the floppy drive did indeed need some new grease the old stuff was pretty stiff. But, the neatest part was looking inside a 30 year old A500 that had not seen the light of day since it left the factory. This unit was not stored in a damp place but it was not stored ideally which I think helped cause the return key issue. The fix/patch for that is in the next video :)

- - - Updated - - -

but I did hear there's some nutty guy in the USA somewhere who's having new ones made !! :-;

Yeah, what a nutter! Actually, it was just something I happened upon having a contact with a manufacturer that still had some NOS. Then they were kind enough to dust off the tooling and make new ones for me! It was very exciting to see new Amiga and C128 power supplies being produced for the first time in years.

I've been trying to get the 23 pin dsub connectors reproduced for the Amigas. I have not had the same luck though finding a manufacturer that still has the tooling on hand. Getting new tooling made would be very expensive. I have seen some decent and pretty sketch attempts at cutting down the DB25 connectors though.
 
So much busying around about what we already know, A500's without battery usually run just fine especially if they are unused and clean (not stored in a damp basement

Testing the power supply is essential on any piece of old kit though.

I did find problems though. The non-functioning return key and the floppy drive did indeed need some new grease the old stuff was pretty stiff. But, the neatest part was looking inside a 30 year old A500 that had not seen the light of day since it left the factory. This unit was not stored in a damp place but it was not stored ideally which I think helped cause the return key issue. The fix/patch for that is in the next video :)

I guess then it WAS worth fussing around with it. Some (newer) FDD drives have an SMD capacitor on them that could cause trouble, but it's unlikely A500 drives had those. And agree on the PSU, I've seen quite a few smoking by now, especially C128 and C64 ones.
 
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This is the third video in this series about the 'new' A500s' In this video we look at the non-functioning Return key and find out the source of the ‘oily’ substance on top of the key. The floppy drive is pulled out and a quick service is done. That 30+ year old grease was due to be replaced.

After reading the documentation that came with Tetris and some tips form views, I was finally able to (badly) play a game of Tetris.


https://youtu.be/fq6XhDpeb2A
 
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