A couple of months ago, I did a video on the Commodore 64 that got some… attention.
Seriously, thank you for all of the views, likes, subscribes, and other dopamine hits
you’ve given me since I put that video out.
Since it seems like the internet likes the retro stuff, I’m going to go full steam
ahead with some more vintage-themed fun.
This time, let’s do some clean up work on my Amiga 500.
[SID chip intro music with loud guitar at the end]
Greetings, and welcome to another Commodore-tastic episode of Veronica Explains!
I’m Veronica, and today let’s talk about my Amiga 500, and the new black case I just
bought for it from A1200.net!
This video is *not* going to be a deep explainer of the Amiga and its history.
I’m planning some deeper dives into the Amiga, how to use it, and its history, but
first- I need to set this one up the way I want it!
Anyway, it seems like there's some affinity between Linux users and Amiga users, at least
in my head.
Maybe you feel it too- I don't know.
But, I digress, this video is just about the case transfer, why I did it, how I did it,
and what I think of it.
Now, normally I don’t just go buying new cases for vintage electronics.
I mean, I don’t even like retrobrighting old stuff, because I tend to appreciate the
story that a yellowed piece of plastic tells.
This was different, though, because this Amiga was dremel’ed - is that a word?
- dremel’ed all around the floppy drive when someone replaced it with a GoTek some
time ago.
This was… a choice, and a choice I would not have made.
But honestly, picking up an Amiga 500 locally was next to impossible, so I was just happy
enough finding one in any shape at all.
Luckily, the seller still had the original floppy drive, and a bunch of floppies for it, which
was awesome.
And they did a great job of explaining the GoTek process to me, even providing a bunch
of software on a flash drive.
For folks who don’t know, Amigas and other vintage electronics often get “modded”
to include a GoTek USB drive replacing the floppy.
I’ll be doing a deeper dive about the GoTek at some point, but basically, it lets you
boot an image of a floppy.
I appreciate the convenience of a GoTek just fine, but I really want to learn how to use
an Amiga like, well, an Amiga.
Specifically, like a period appropriate Amiga, warts and all.
I have big plans for this Amiga in the future, including some fun mods, expansions, and even
putting the GoTek back in it at some point.
But I wanted to start with a good baseline to learn how the Amiga works off-the-shelf,
and the only way I can do that is by stripping out the mods and restoring it to spec.
And why not replace this hacked out case while I’m at it?
A clean look for a clean Amiga.
Oh, and word to the wise if you own vintage electronics: please don’t hack plastic parts
out of the case if you can avoid it?
Anywho, why’d I choose a black case?
Simple- I think it’s pretty.
And of course, at the time of purchase - and I did buy this with my own money - they only
had two options at a1200.net, crystal clear and black.
I chose “black” because I thought it would look better with the slightly yellowed keys
that I currently have, knowing replacement keyboards or key caps might be quite a ways off.
I would love to get green or red keycaps for this.
I don’t know, something about the black/white/red or black/white/green look with one of these
feels fun and different.
I ordered my case about three weeks ago, and it arrived about two weeks after I ordered
it, give or take.
It was packaged in a very cool retro-Amiga-inspired box, which I very much enjoyed.
There wasn't much for shipping protection inside the box, but that's OK, since it's
pretty much just hollow plastic, anyway.
Now, I ordered the package a1200.net was selling that included some extra goodies.
Including breakout cables, some funky Ethernet stuff, and one of these SD-card-mover-thingies
if you want to load any files from an SD card.
I figure, I'll probably do that someday, but it's not going to be today- I'm trying to
make this as stock as possible for now. For educational purposes.
I did think it was nice that they were able to fit the goodies and the Amiga case itself
into one box for shipping.
Better that then two things to ship and take up space.
Then we arrive at the case itself, and it is gorgeous.
I love the black color, and I think it'll actually go pretty nicely with the gentle
yellowing of my stock Amiga keys.
That being said, and I think I mentioned this before:
I plan to replace these keycaps with something else as they become available.
I can see plenty of projects out there to create fancy new keyboards for Amigas, and
who knows, maybe I'll end up with an Amiga with a mechanical keyboard!
There were some very mild imperfections in the plastic in the case, and I feel like the
camera makes them look worse than they do in real life.
I don't know if this is "plastic marbling" or something like that, but it's not all that
noticable when you're actually using it, in person.
And still, it's a dramatic improvement over what I had.
One thing I very much like about this is that unlike the original case, this one has threaded
inserts to connect the two halves of the case together.
This makes it much easier to play with the guts of your Amiga, since the older plastics
in the older cases are definitely brittle.
The trapdoor has been modified as well, with some slots to allow air in for cooling with
expansions and whatnot.
A very nice touch, which feels robust.
It's also got this fancy new trapdoor on the right side, with extra I/O slots for all sorts
of expansions and gizmos and whatnot.
I'm very excited to be using that as I learn more and expand this Amiga as I go.
Anyway, enough of the unboxing.
Let's transfer the Amiga.
I had to unscrew the two sides, and again, this is brittle plastic, so I'm glad I won't
be doing this anymore to this case.
I had to be careful about removing the keyboard, as it was attached to the GoTek with this
screw, in addition to the input terminal here on the motherboard.
I removed the keyboard, then I removed the GoTek, which was held in by this one screw
through the back.
That was fun.
Anyway, out with the GoTek, [me imitating the sound of throwing something] and then the shielding.
The Amiga had this original RF shielding all over it, and at first, I was planning on keeping
it, but I got so sick of working around it that I ditched it at the end, and you'll see
more about that shortly.
With the shielding out of the way, I was able to get a closer look at everything, and get
the board removed from the original case.
It was wedged in there nice and tight, so this wasn't easy.
I gave the board a good once over to make sure I didn’t see any bulging caps or anything-
so far it looks good.
These boards do not have an onboard battery- with many older computers, you'll need to
check for an onboard battery, and then remove it if necessary.
It's usually best to remove the battery if found.
And now, the fun part.
Putting it all back together in the new case!
First, I placed the old board in the new case, and it's a tight fit, just like it was in
the original case.
Then, I ran into a little problem.
Unfortunately, the standoffs for the floppy drive were totally missing- apparently the
Gotek never needed them in order to stay in place.
I wasn’t totally sure what size I’d need, so I 3d printed some approximations of M3
standoffs, and they seemed...
ok, so I went to the store in search of something compatible.
And sadly, they were nowhere to be found.
I went to every Ace, Menards, and Hardware Hank I could handle in this lousy smarch weather.
But unfortunately, nobody had the specifics standoffs I needed. [pretend "throwing something" noise again]
So, I ordered some new ones off of some crummy website, but for now I’m just going to use
some nylon spacers.
Not ideal, but maybe it’ll work for a while.
[Final Fantasy VI wind sound, don't sue me Square!]
Next, before I installed the original floppy drive, I needed to get this expansion port
thingy swapped out.
This is super nice, and I appreciate that it’s available, but I’ll wait on using
it until I actually get to set a GoTek up the way I want it set up.
The A1200 case came with an excellent black eject button, and I know from watching Jan
Beta’s excellent video about the A1200 crystal case that I’d need to remove the shield
from the floppy in order to swap the button.
There are three screws holding the shield on.
Removing them, I was able to slide out the mechanism and see the button.
It was in there very tightly, but with a little bit of work, I was able to slide it out and
slide the new button on.
[Windows 3.1 "tada" sound- wait, is this a mixed metaphor?]
Note that there’s a little pokey bit here on the button element, and I found it was
helpful to poke my screwdriver through it in order to force out the button.
I tested the button, and it feels pretty good.
So now, I get to actually install the floppy drive.
To be honest, that button was probably the hardest part of the entire setup.
Plugging in the drive was a snap, pretty much like any old floppy drive I’m used to from
my PC days.
I tested the floppy eject with the case on, and it needed a bit of pressure, but it all
seemed to work OK.
In hindsight, I probably should have waited for the standoffs, and you'll see why in a
minute.
Next, I tried to put the RF shield on, and I had some trouble, but managed to get it
in, at first.
However, this grippy bit near the expansion port didn’t seem to want to go in.
It’s possible the screws I have work with the original case, but not the A1200 one.
I don’t get it, but I decided to leave this grippy thing off.
Putting the keyboard on was pretty easy- just the inverse of how I removed it.
Getting this grounding screw into the floppy was a bit of a funky angle, but I was able
to get it done.
Once the keyboard was on, it was time for a function test!
I made a workbench diskette on my Linux box, and everything worked like a charm.
Oh!
You didn’t know you could write Amiga disks right from your modern computer!
Don’t worry- I’ll be covering that in a future video.
I put the top on, and used the six included screws instead of the ones that were in my
original Amiga 500 case.
Everything snapped together pretty well, but I noticed that the floppy drive kind of stuck
when trying to eject.
By this point, I needed to call it a day and actually go back to the real world for a while,
so I put the project on hold while I waited for metal standoffs.
I figured that the nylon spacers might have been collapsing a bit under the pressure,
which is frankly relatable, all things considered.
When the replacement M3 standoffs arrived, I opened it back up, and checking it out seemed
to confirm that the nylon did seem to warp a little bit.
I decided at this point to just ditch the RF shield entirely, because I figured I’d
be doing this eventually when I upgrade the 500 some time down the road.
And I think it was a good decision, because the tabs started popping off as soon as I
started removing the shield.
Clearly it wasn’t meant to take this kind of abuse.
Oh well.
I screwed the motherboard into the case directly, and then added my standoffs to the floppy
drive.
As I was dry fitting it, I noticed that the front-right post is much lower than the others.
That’s odd, and I think might be some of my issue, as it could mean that the drive
is slanting downward instead of upward.
The original Amiga 500 case had a large built-in standoff here, but this doesn’t seem to
have it.
So next, I tried washers along with the 10mil standoff to build it up a little bit.
And that seemed to work.
Anyway, it would have been very nice if A1200.net would have provided these standoffs along
with the other screws.
I can hardly fault them for not including it, but still.
I reassembled the whole thing, and the drive now worked like a champ.
All that was left was to put on the nice badge they provided with the case.
And I do think it looks gorgeous.
I'm pumped to have an Amiga 500 that's about as close to "stock" as I could hope for.
Now, all of the mods I do are my mods, and they're not someone else's.
And I do have plans for this Amiga 500- I have a Terrible Fire expansion card that I'm
eager to get dropped in here, once I learn a little bit more about how the Amiga 500 works.
[child counting in some punk rock] "1, 2, 3, 4!"
One thing I'm very much hoping to do is to get some kind of ROM switcher going in here.
I'm not sure how easy that is to do with an accelerator card, but we'll have to see another day.
Anyway, ending.