Poor Broken and Battered Amiga A2000 – Can We Fix It? [video] | Hacker News Reader

Poor Broken and Battered Amiga A2000 – Can We Fix It? [video]

youtube.com

43 pointsdoener20 comments

I thought it was going to be one of Adrian Black's videos. He's been finding and fixing Amigas (Amigae?) recently too: https://www.youtube.com/c/adriansdigitalbasement/videos

The plural of amiga in Spanish and Portuguese is amigas. The Latin equivalent would be amica, pl. amicae.

In the IT world, they are collectively known as "Amigas"

Get in line buddy, i'm still on a mission to teach hackernews the correct plural of 'Lego'

For people unaware, LEGO would like this to be “Lego bricks”: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10839/what-is-th...

“Legos” does seem to be a specifically US affectation. In the UK it’s always just the uncountable “playing with lego”.

As Michael Nyman wrote, Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn1_vUe_Vws

I discovered the Adrian's basement channel recently. It's amazing! Been watching repair videos that are over an hour. Somehow he can keep me interested. I like how he explains things and his enthusiasm is very contagious. "It freakin' works!"

Nice video. I have an Amiga 2000, Amiga 1200, and an old Mac SE in my garage that all worked 30 years ago, but probably need refurbishing at this point (I shudder to think of the damage from battery leakage).

Maybe someday I'll have time to do it...but these videos are nice inspiration and an indication of what's in front of me.

If you can get at them, it would be best to take out the batteries as soon as possible to minimise future damage. It might not be too late.

One critical tip with these old computers: Don't just plug them in without checking first that the power supply isn't giving out bad voltages. Not sure about the Amiga specifically, but older power supplies can fail in a way that they deliver excess voltage.

Very important advice, especially for C64 (and same era devices).

The ZX81 has the older RAM chip (just one!) that required an extra -5V bias voltage. A failure mode is that either the non-switch-mode power brick and/or the internal voltage regulator can fail and deliver 9V or more into this pin, with very unhappy results.

> Nice video. I have an Amiga 2000, Amiga 1200, and an old Mac SE in my garage that all worked 30 years ago, but probably need refurbishing at this point (I shudder to think of the damage from battery leakage).

During the Covid lockdown I was bored (and far from my family) but, by chance, near old computers of mine. So I watched Youtube videos and decided to open/test them all.

Atari 600 XL: still working

Texas Instruments Ti-99/4a: starting but garbled output, know issue, apparently a relatively easy fix

Amiga 500: dunno, lost the power supply (and have to be super careful not to mistake it with the power supply of the C128: same form factor, different pin-out, guaranteed to fry the computer).

Commodore 128 (not 128D, sadly): still working and about 1/3rd to one half of the 5"1/4 floppies still working too.

Macintosh Classic (which I think is the successor to your SE): still working but I took care of first removing the battery on the motherboard, which had started leaking.

Amiga 2000 and 1200: no battery right? (unless you've got an expansion card)

Even if you start it, at least just open the SE and remove the battery today (I take it the SE has battery). Just open a YouTube video showing how to do that.

So: take the battery/ies out, check the power supply, try to turn them on.

Now the other issue is capacitors that begin to leak after 30 to 35+ years: I haven't tried yet to "recap" these machines but... "one day".

All least I took the battery out of the SE!

> Amiga 2000 and 1200: no battery right? (unless you've got an expansion card)

The 1200 won't have a battery on the board, but the 2000 likely will. The number 1 killer for A2000 motherboards is that bloody Varta battery.

If you've opened your A2000 and you've had a look around and couldn't see anything, it /might/ be OK, but snip that battery out ASAP (they're soldered on the board).

Now the other issue is capacitors that begin to leak after 30 to 35+ years: I haven't tried yet to "recap" these machines but... "one day".

The SMD caps in the A1200 and Mac Classic will have almost certainly started to leak, and the fluid will eventually corrode traces and vias if it hasn't already. On multilayer PCBs this can make for at best very annoying repairs.

Ironically the older machines like the Atari, TI and C128 are most likely fine. Those older, larger through-hole caps are generally of high quality and don't leak.

Even if you’re not going to restore them right away, I’d suggest removing the batteries ASAP. If you’re lucky, there’ll be no damage to the motherboard. If you’re unlucky, you can treat and stop any further corrosion by treating with white vinegar and an old toothbrush. Leave for a while then clean that with IPA (not the beer!). That’ll buy you the time to restore at your leisure.

I've booted up my Amiga 1000 with external harddrive enclosure several times during the last decades and it is still working (including the drive and floppy drives). I'm kind of amazed. I have lots of older PC hard disks that have just completely broken down and seized up that are younger than this beast.

Sometimes old stepper motor hard drives can be surprisingly resilient just because everything is bigger and chunkier and dumber. The bits on the platter are physically bigger. You can hand-crank the spindle motor to help it get going, oil the motor bearings if you need to, you can whack the side with a screwdriver to get the heads unstuck, you can brutally low-level format the entire thing to get it going again after the magnetic media has become corrupted... And even a more modern dead drive that could theoretically be resurrected might have firmware that refuses to continue when it discovers abnormal conditions -- a big dumb MFM drive will just power through it until the bearing grease gets unstuck, or whatever the case may be.

If you have old drives like these they probably have a lot of years left in them still if one does what you do -- spin them up and let them exercise a little bit every once in a while.

Please take the time to go remove those batteries

My eye was drawn to the levitating Amiga Boing ball lamp in the background (of course I would) - and I found his video on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzLTEEfZ7o8

Reply on news.ycombinator.com