Amiga 1500 Trash To Treasure (Pt1) | This was sold as working!

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you for watching. The A1500 History video can be found here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rn7biKl7otunn5Y So what should we put inside this big empty case? An accelerator of the period, something newer? A vampire? I'd love to hear your suggestions. Oh and the vacuum desoldering station can be found here amzn.to/2MsY4w2 (Amazon Affiliate link) Neil - RMC

[@boherrmannsen8219]

i noted a crooked label on the front, a bit damaged label. Not sure if a replacement is easy to get

[@philiprowney]

[ pauses video at 2:33 ] Rule 1 of any cheaply made electronics from 80's/90's that has no 'distinct' problem, change the electrolytic caps because they are cheap crap back then. [ unless you were IBM ] Insert an ARM :0þ [ presses play with his bet placed ]

[@endersgambit]

Hardrive controller and memory expansion to 8M and maybe an accelerator card. Opalvision card. Want a video toaster ?

[@mark12358]

I would like to see a "particular" HD controller card, the ICD Trifecta LX (it had both a SCSI and IDE internal interface, plus a SCSI DB25 connector), and back then, on ad-magazines it was marketed as a very fast interface for HD. Oh, unfortunately, the Video Toaster was made only for NTSC market, no PAL version available.....unless, on EAB I found this note from an user : "Not for Amiga. But if you have an Amiga Videotoaster, you can always use the GVP TBC+, which was a very good transcoder back in the day, and allowed you to use the Videotoaster on PAL TV signals." eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=53556

[@MichaelKnight821]

Hello Neil, It depends on you what to do with your A1500 ! You allready have an A500 which you can use as an gaming Amiga. Why not make your A1500 an awesome Workstation like for Video Editing or an good balanced mix between Modern Amiga and Oldfashioned Amiga stuff ?So U can either play or just work with it the way U like . Cheers ....Keep on making these good Vids 👍🏼

[@gogades]

I always enjoy watching Neil do repairs - takes his time and does a proper thorough job. Warms my engineer heart!

[@HeadsetGuy]

Yes, I'd love to see a review of the desoldering station.

[@cleetusmacfarland9453]

I got the links to all that from Neil, sadly the one he has appears to be UK only and would set me back 80 pnds shipping on top of the price, so between $425 and $450, he also gave me a link to a slightly cheaper model, but its coming from the states so after shipping, tax and import fees and tariffs, it will set me back about $345, so till I can sit down and search for one in Canada, stuck with the big blue spring sucker for a while yet

[@Emilmarch]

I genuinely admire your Amiga collection. I am not gonna say you are lucky, cause you created this collection, not luck. Thanks man for sharing. Loved my little 500 since day 1.

[@fluffycritter]

Of course you should add in a Video Toaster. And use it for producing your next video, in glorious 576i. :)

[@cardigansrule]

Video Toaster 2.0, GVP 030+SCSI card, and LIGHTWAVE

[@BrooksterMax]

Love my A1500. Glad to see you tidied up yours. Have an A2286 bridgeboard for giggles, an A2630 for a small power boost and an Oktagon IDE clone card from Amibay for a hard drive and possible cd rom later. So many options!

[@RetroJay1974]

This one of the Amigas that I lusted after back in the day! Then around 1997 I was helping an old guy out after he snagged a bunch of amiga bits including an a1500. I only recently managed to acquire not one but 4 of these things! 3 are 2000HD's and one is a genuine 1500. I have the same desoldering station plus heat gun and some other bits. I will get around to looking at all my machines at some point! they all seem to have minor faults that need sorting. Things like the cpu socket on one board, the other a joystick port that kinda thing. Great video btw :D

[@LozzoAmiga]

Ahhh. My favourite Amiga. *sits back, sips tea*

[@ContractCAD]

Man I wish I still had my 1500! I’ll never forget the nervous excitement of taking the cover off a £900 computer to fit a £350 upgrade card (GVP hard disk with 4mb ram on the same card.). I gave it away in ‘95 about a year after I moved onto PC as I simply didn’t have room to keep 2 beige boxes set up.

[@CantankerousDave]

Back in the nineties, I put a GVP accelerator combo board in mine. 030, 8MB RAM, 120MB HDD. Wing Commander suddenly became playable. Oh, and a Fatter Agnus card. I miss that huge, beige box.

[@chainq68k]

I have an Amiga 2000, massively expanded. It sports a Blizzard 2060 CPU board with 128MB RAM and a FastSCSI-II controller, a SCSI2SD v6 drive with a 32GB class 10 SD card, a PicassoIV graphics card with a TV tuner and sound module, an Ariadne Ethernet card, an IOBlix for faster serial ports, and a Commodore A2386sx Bridgeboard, accompanied with a Gravis Ultrasound 1MB in one of the ISA slots. I have also added the 16bit "part" of the two additional ISA slots, they work just fine. For this A1500, I'd look around for an A500 CPU expansion which goes in the CPU socket, they're more plentiful and available these days as the CPU slot expansions, something 030 based maybe. I'd probably also get an USB expansion which is more useful these days than a networking card. I'm not sure I'd go for RTG tho' for a gaming system, but a Picasso II and some scandoubler (maybe an Amber flicker fixer? Did you even mention the video slot in the video? Can't recall.) could never hurt. :) But something tells me you already have a better plan... ;)

[@CommodoreFan64]

Awesome video, and I would say an SD card, or CF card upgrade, along with Amiga OS 3.9, but if you ever come across a PPC accelerator card, then Amiga OS 4.1 would be good for a future upgrade as well.

[@loughkb]

The tape is a good idea to hold the socket for soldering. One additional step I like to do, is I'll solder one corner pin, and the opposite corner pin. Then, with the board on edge, I'll press the socket with my finger, while heating the nearest corner. In nearly every case, I'll feel the socket snap down against the board for a truly flush fit.

[@gulskjegglive]

I had to smile when I saw "Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain" running. Our pet Conure bird loves your intro music too, she even started singing along.

[@sjarken3979]

Upgrade? Network card, graphics card, hardrive controller card maybe with ide/scsi to flash adapter and a cpu upgrade card. Any cpu upgrade card would do, but something similar to the vampire or a 060 with 604 powerpc would be optimal. Also should consider a rom upgrade, preferably with a rom switcher, so you could change between 1.3 and 2.0 for compatibility.

[@Ar-kx4hp]

I had a 1500. I put 2 upgrades in it; a 68030 board with matching floating point, and a year later a 24 bit graphics board. That was an amazing upgrade

[@MartinKronstrom]

Poor Agnes being fat shamed worldwide. She thought her nightmare was all over until retro computing became à la mode.

[@sheep1ewe]

Lägg bajs i mina händer, så att jag kan klä av mig naken och smörja in mig med det, över hela kroppen, över varenda liten del av min kropp...

[@raywt3237]

haha you don't know how funny that is!

[@RonLaws]

On the contrary! The fat lady has a lot to love, and she's enjoying act two under the limelight!

[@thatroom]

when the shoe fits.

[@HarryP457]

I used to have a 1500. Played Their Finest Hour and many other games on it. Loved that machine. I was lucky enough to have a Barco 28" monitor able to run RGB via a Euro Scart connector so had a kicking setup for gaming.

[@stephenfalken]

Lovely machines. Have a 1500 myself. An excellent upgrade for speed and compatibility is a GVP GForce030 Combo which is a CPU/RAM/SCSI card. I have the 40Mhz version with 16MB and its awesome. I also have an A2320 scandoubler (aka Amber Card) in the video slot. A couple of other expansions I have are a SupraSCSI card and SupraRAM 6MB both Zorro cards (not much use with the GForce tho!)

[@Dr.Dawson]

I just got the morning coffee made and then I spot a vid from RMC, what a great morning. I can't wait to see how this turns out!

[@hernancoronel]

At 11:13 a good tool to perform that kind of cleaning is a normal pencil rubber. Thanks for the great video!

[@jameswestwood]

I had one of these back in the day. I had a Nexus SCSI card with 52Mb HD onboard, I also had the XT2088 card, which was for running some light DOS programmes. Happy days, loved the fact you could pull down the screen for DOS over the Workbench and vice versa, what a versatile machine for the time.

[@Checkmate1500]

Great video as always, my A1500/A2000 is back in the loft awaiting more room in my mini Amiga zone. The reason for A1500/A2000 is that it was an original Amiga 2000 but the board was ruined by me trying to get Toaster to work so I replaced with an Commodore A1500 motherboard :-)

[@Nukle0n]

The A1500 motherboard is just an A2000 motherboard though, it even says A2000 right there, the differences between the 1500 and 2000 is just that the 1500 has the HDD and HDD Controller removed.

[@Checkmate1500]

@@Nukle0n yes I know :-)

[@philrob1978]

Super job Neil, look forward to whatever you do next with it! Having just watched Barry Lewis nearly burn his house down by plugging a US "Grilled Cheese" maker into a UK power supply, this calm, methodical episode was just the ticket to calm my nerves!

[@Rip-Van-Tinkle]

Man I love it when you fix an Amiga, it just makes me happy to see it alive again! Can't wait to see what you end up putting in there, lots to choose from. Also liking the new "suck and solder 5000" ray gun... that looks sweet 😂

[@kimlebrocqu692]

Those bloody batteries what was commodore thinking? I'm glad you got it going again Neil 😀 must see pt 2....great vlog as always.....Kim......😁😁😁

[@kcharles8857]

Love this channel. Even though I have not owned a physical Amiga for a long time, my emotional attachment is such that simply watching you bring an old A500 or C64 or in particular the A4000, back to life, somehow ameliorates the painful side of nostalgia (Russian word 'Tosca' is a better term). Thank you and don't stop. BTW, Would lover to see an A3000 getting the treatment. Very underrated machine.

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks Kim. A 3000 would be amazing, great machines

[@kcharles8857]

:)

[@eformance]

Another trick for cleaning up the pads is to flux them and use some solder wick, this will lift the corrosion off with the flux. Sometimes "acid flux" is needed to REALLY get a good clean, but that stuff needs to be thoroughly removed afterwards.

[@maxheinrichliebow]

Thank you for the memories. I had an Amiga 1500 through the early to mid-late 1990s, and I often preferred it even when our family finally got a PS1. I loved WONDERLAND which was ahead of its time, and I loved Indiana Jones and Zool II, Their Finest Hour was incredible too!

[@davidward2219]

Great video. Brought back memories. I had one with a 68020 expansion card and a GVP 80MB HD. Cost me an arm and a leg in the day! I peeled off the crappy paper 1500 sticker and found a nice metal A2000 badge underneath, instant value bump!

[@GameTechRefuge]

Cool project. Great to see "Their Finest Hour" again. Can wait to get my Amstrad PC3086 project finished so I can fire it up and play it again. It's crazy how allot of us have the same de-soldering station now ( Thanks Janbeta :) ). Out of the box I had to resolder the connections on the socket for the gun. The wires to the thermocouple part hadn't been done right in the factory. Other then that a nice bit of kit.

[@williamlewis3486]

Mine had a GVP 030 accelerator board, AT 386 bridge board. Picasa video card and a board the could run mac software and a modem card. Loved that machine. Could run Mac, PC, and Amiga all at the same time. You could even cut and paste between some software.

[@TheRetroNobody]

You make such a replacement look so easy. Very nice.

[@cpnnpr]

Never before has a channel become my favorite so quickly!

[@RMCRetro]

That's kind thank you!

[@MichaelGisiger]

Back in the days, I had a 68030 card (25 MHz, if I recall correctly) and a 20 MB hard drive in my A2000. Later I also had one of those PC cards and a 5.25" floppy installed. I used that machine well into the second half of the 1990s.

[@awagentx]

I would want a Video Toaster just for fun ;) make those great 90's edits lol

[@DubiousEngineering]

And a big thumbs up!! Cracking work Neil ... definitely steer clear of lead free solder it’s rubbish if you like nice shiny joints!!

[@RMCRetro]

Cheers Howard. You'll have to put me in touch with your supplier :D

[@MarkFixesStuff]

Lead free is a pain. I can understand why manufacturing aren't allowed to use leaded any more, but lead free is ugh to work with.

[@robbyxp1]

Farnell supplied me - 419308

[@eraserVsilesia]

Great video! In fact, i have just got an Amiga 2000 for my 40th birthday from my girlfriend! Already bought an AT-Bus IDE 2008 clone card, now i just need to hunt down some extra memory, set up a CF hard drive, and off we go to Amiga heavens :)

[@heyarno]

With stubborn solder joints, it helps to circle the desoldering nozzle gently so the pin in the hole wiggles a bit and the airflow can reach every spot.

[@retrojem8531]

Love your videos and happy the piece of Amiga history could be saved. A sound blaster card and an ram upgrade would be nice to see.

[@Dr.D00p]

I have toothache, really bad. This video took away the pain for 15mins.

[@RMCRetro]

Heh I hope that's a good thing and I'm not simply more painful XD

[@curiousottman]

RMC never disappoints. Such sweet memories of the 80s.

[@SPOONman4000]

i have an A2000 with a SCSI card, RAM board with additional 2MB of a max 8MB, and a bridgeboard with a 386. It's currently not working, likely due to the ever common problem of battery corrosion. Whenever i get around to fixing it up i'd like to also replace the SCSI board and hard drive with some sort of CF or SD card based adapter. Possibly some other stuff too, tbd when i get it working again. for example will definitely put in one of my soundblaster cards to go with the bridgeboard at some point .

[@drdrumbeat3010]

I've enjoyed watching a number of your videos and this one is no exception. Putting the wonderful Amiga restoration aside, I've just realised that the RetroManCave set and the laid back atmosphere within reminds me of the programme Take Hart, which was on childrens BBC a long while back. I realise the thought/comparison is a bit out there, but I can imagine 'Morph' running across the 'desk' in an mischevious interlude, perhaps knocking over some your gadgets and the 'Gallery' music kicking in at any moment. I'm must be really losing it in my old age :)

[@Lorfarius]

Actually can't wait for part 2! Been watching the Steve Jones Kickstarter stuff with much interest, big box Amiga's are something I just never even saw back in the day. For a quick and easy upgrade it must have a Gotek to allow USB. I know CF HD's remove a lot of the need but just being able to drag stuff over as if it's on a floppy is always useful.

[@SteveStoltz]

I just recently got one of those de-soldering stations, I'm never going back lol. As for upgrades Id love to see the features/performance from the new ZZ9000 (the successor to the VA2000) that is currently in pre-order status. It looks to include an RTG, Scandoubler, 1gb ddr3, Ethernet and SD card interface. Everything an old zorro2/3 Amiga needs :)

[@Dhalin]

Hah. Very observant, you found the problem almost instantly. That's something that's sadly missing in many people these days, the ability to observe and critically think about what the problem might be. When I was watching your video, and you mentioned that thumping the case causes it to behave oddly and unpredictably, I immediately thought "loose chip or something like that". Turns out that was rather close to the actual problem! A lot of people would just sit there and stare, and go "uhhhh?" or something lol. Now, mind you, I'm not hugely knowledgable about retro computers, but I have diagnosed/fixed a few issues in newer computers I've owned... nothing component-level, maybe someday I'd get into that... sadly, things like soldiering guns etc are not cheap so I doubt I'd get into full-on component repair. It looks fun, though, tinkering with old retro computers. I just don't have the resources/time/money to do that kind of thing myself.... so instead I'll watch guys like you do it lol.

[@UnicornStorm]

I'd like to see modern upgrades like SD to IDE replacements for the harddrive and floppydrive. I would also love to see the installation of an accelerator board and then see some accelerator action. Then I would also love to see the installation of the DOS board, a Soundblaster card, and of course see it in action.

[@brostenen]

SCSI SD card drives. SCSI is better than IDE from that era. And since SD drives for SCSI bus is out there. Then why not? Just think of it as the SCSI version of them SD/CF-IDE adaptors.

[@flapjackboy]

I have that exact same desolder station. Works a treat.

[@TheGamingMuso]

Wonderful, simply wonderful 😊👍🏻 I never owned an Amiga and boy do I want one!!

[@SNLionStar]

Glad to see some more Amiga love on your channel! I have an old A2500 from my dad, he passed away so I don't have much help with fixing it up. It seems fairly healthy since I did manage to reach the 2.4 Kickstart screen before, just don't have any floppies because my dad got rid of them. I want to upgrade my A2500 with: -a faster SCSI card -a CD Rom drive because they look so nice on older computers -maybe a cpu upgrade but the 68030 cpu that came with it should be fine -some type of graphics/output card -a CF Card with a Workbench install on it Honestly who knows what I'm gonna get, but slapping a CPU accelerator in is a must if you want your big box Amiga to be worth while!

[@MrDDawson]

'Ive already watched this but it's so damn good I'm back. Love RMC, best retro viewing on the net! Keep it up man, your rockin it hard!

[@electronash]

Nice. ;) I was using my Duratool station again about two hours ago (on Dr A's 68000-based Snow Bros arcade board). You did a fine job there, Neil. You can see why I'm often singing the praises of the proper desoldering stations - not only is it SO much faster and easier, but it minimizes the risk of damage to the board. A few tips, though - on older boards, it's sometimes worth adding fresh leaded solder to all pins / pads first. If you can work with the board vertical, it all helps get more of the solder out. Also, after pulling the trigger on the gun, it's best to do "the truffle shuffle", to wiggle the pins back and fourth, so it allows it to clear the solder from each side of the pin / hole. But, importantly not putting any real pressure on the pads. Wiggling the nozzle (or the pins, post-desoldering) helps break the "sweat joints", too. Good tip about using the hot air station, as well - Sometimes you still end up with small amounts of solder just on the top side of the vias. The hot air station definitely helps free up the sockets, and you were absolutely right not to pry the socket up if it wasn't completely loose. Looking forward to part 2, some games, and perhaps a few upgrades. ;)

[@RMCRetro]

Cheers Ash. The truffle shuffle was a technique I quickly adopted and it's very handy. Out of interest what do you use to support your boards when working on them? My PCB holder is great for handhelds but a little small for this size

[@electronash]

@@RMCRetro Ahh. That's yet another thing I've yet to invest in - a proper PCB holder. For all these years, I've pretty much been balancing the board on-edge while using the desoldering station. Earlier today, I was even using the soldering iron on the top side of the pins, and Duratool underneath, with the board balanced. I'm not even sure how I do it. lol It helps to have the board on the non-slip ESD mat, of course. These larger boards would need a hefty holder, but I've seen some of those plastic once that are a bit like a Black & Decker Workmate (tm). Those don't look too bad. The really nice metal board holders (like on rework jigs) are probably a bit too expensive for me to justify atm. Then again, I haven't really looked recently, so they could be about £6 on Banggood. :p

[@electronash]

@@RMCRetro I guess the PCB balancing act is another acquired "skill", but likely completely unnecessary with the correct tools. Another one I do like, though - "the claw / pincer" technique. ie. where you hold in a through-hole component AND solder in one hand, and the iron in the other. hehe I used to do what 8-bit Guy did in his recent vid, where you try to position the solder so it sits close to the board, so you can then hold the IC socket or whatever, then hold the iron in the other hand while "offering" the whole board towards the dangling solder. Obviously you can't do the claw thing on really large boards, but you'd be surprised. I had a coffee, btw, and it's nearly midnight. lol

[@elmosexwhistle]

Get an 030 in there with some fast RAM! Plus an IDE controller and CF Card. Honestly it’s so much fun setting up your perfect Workbench on WinUAE then dumping the CF card into the real machine and seeing it come alive.

[@brostenen]

Yup... I have done that for my a600, using FS-UAE on my Linux laptop. And later when I got the IDE splitter and SD card reader installed in my a600. No more CF cards for me in any Amiga. SD cards are the way to go.

[@endersftd]

Another quality relaxing vintage repair. Thank you

[@brostenen]

What would I put inside? Hmmm..... Lets see. An SCSI controller and a SCSI cdrom drive. An IDE controller. A scandoubler (ScanPlusECS or IndevisionECS). A CPU upgrade card (030). A PC bridge-board with a 486. An ISA soundcard (Audician32). A Dreamblaster wavetable/midi-board on the soundcard. And finally an ET4000 ISA card, if there is room for it. Install lots of storage. Like 4gb. And max out the memory capacity at its fullest.

[@huguia]

This mentioned by @brostenen and also a network card of some kind, you know, just because why not? Great vid as always!

[@brostenen]

@@huguia Yeah.... It will be an extreme upgraded Amiga. Go for the fastest possible accelerator as an alternative. Vampire perhaps?

[@brostenen]

Ahhhh.... For the kicks of it. Why not install a dual-rom kickstart from Cloanto as well. It has 1.3 and 3.1 in one eprom, mounted on a pcb with a switch attached to it. You have access to old school 1.3 for old compatibility and then 3.1 for some sweet hdd action and more.

[@eireian4939]

Why does the mention of Amiga still cause me pain? Maybe a memory from my earlier years as a 500+ owner who managed to save for an age, enough funds to finally buy a CD32 and 2 weeks later Commodore disown it...Great times indeed. :)

[@nosferadu]

Great video as always and especially useful to me at the moment, since I'm looking to do my first de-soldering job this weekend - have to remove the tuner from my TV. Unfortunately I don't have one of those fancy de-soldering guns, so wish me luck!

[@RMCRetro]

Good luck! Lots of patience and not too much coffee 😁

[@woksrandomchannel]

Your solder work is breathtaking. So meticulous.

[@Skaera75b]

I love your videos, dude. Thanks for this. And thanks for keeping the sponsorship to a reasonable minimum, this is amazing.

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you, you're welcome. I hope some day to be able to disable KZbin adverts and create with the support of my two sponsors and patrons. If you ever fancy throwing $1 in the bucket you can head over to patreon.com/retromancave

[@Skaera75b]

Once I'm working regularly, rest assured I will. It's about time I put my hand in my pocket. I really hope this machine becomes a dream Amiga!

[@DanielWillisIT]

Really nice video; I learnt a lot (I'm more a car mechanic than a electrician, but I have some retro stuff to "fix"). Thank you.

[@DerMartexus]

You're very lucky, that the problem was just the broken socket and perhaps a broken CPU. That was easy to find and a very good repair by you. :)

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks, yes I got pretty lucky. The CPU is now cleaned up and in an A500 board which I'm hoping to put in the new Checkmate 1500 case if the kickstarter is a success, so that's working fine. Looking forward to upgrading it now

[@DerMartexus]

Sounds good. And the A500 board in the Checkmate 1500 case sounds like something worth to make a video about. :D ;) There is never enough videos about the good old/refurbished machines.

[@bunfighter]

Yes I am interested in the de-soldering tool review and thanks for all the great videos!

[@EngineeringVignettes]

This is surreal for me as I have an A2000 apart right now, re-capping the mainboard and the PSU. I have been staring at that mainboard for several days now... Cheers, - Eddy

[@RMCRetro]

At least two people in the world are currently looking at an A2000 motherboard :D - How did the recap go?

[@EngineeringVignettes]

As an aside, regarding the A2000 mainboard: the traces for ground do not have a thermal relief so it makes desoldering the ground pads a major pain. Surprisingly the board is only 2 layers; an advantage when repairing it!

[@EngineeringVignettes]

Oh, and you are missing the metal shield that fits under the mainboard... did you receive it that way?

[@RMCRetro]

Interesting, yes this is as purchased on ebay

[@EngineeringVignettes]

Recap went well... just a heads up, you need to really give it some heat for the ground pads due to the lack of thermal vias though. I still have the board out, doing the same as you and replacing the CPU dip socket. MY CPU pins were the same as yours only more corrosion. I only have myself to blame... its my machine :) bought it back in the mid 90's brand new. I checked the board out mainly to look for battery damage (looks ok apart from pin corrosion) and decided to do a re-cap while it was apart. I probably will do the same as you, try to upgrade it. It already has a SCSI controller (A2091) and a memory expander (SUPRA 30-0054-3) with 2 MB RAM. I really want to put a Vampire in it, not sure if the A500 one could be adapted though... Congrats on getting yours back up and running. Cheers, - Eddy

[@andrewpercival1427]

Really excellent content with professional production, great to watch and very interesting, keep up the great work!, love the trash to treasure episodes.

[@robbyxp1]

good work on the visual inspection.. always the first place to start!

[@Dr.Dawson]

nice save. I would guess previous work done by someone who knew what to do but just rushed the job a bit a missed that corrosion. Now to stuff it full of goodies, that will be some good fun indeed. Anything kicking around the cave your thinking of using? love the channel, keep it up!

[@Rockythefishman]

What a machine, wish I had picked one up when they were cheap years ago

[@timrb]

Good to see you using the right tools!

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

That is a super, super clean soldering job.

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

Also, if I had any Amiga and could afford it, I'd get one of those Vampire boards. Those things look awesome, I love that people are using new technology to make upgrades for old computers.

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks man!

[@tracyscott3261]

This is fascinating. I love that desoldering station. Thank you!

[@jdryyz]

Wish I had my ZD-915 when I attempted my socket replacement. I will need more repairs than I started out with.

[@Phantomhm1]

Ive got an A2000 that needs a button-cell battery replacement! Will definitely be checking the CPU socket now. I'd love to see a PC bridge-board in there

[@draketungsten74]

I'm trying to refurbish my Bridgeboard from a leaking battery currently.

[@radfoo]

Be interested to see a bridgeboard working, never seen one. I also have a bare A2000 in need of some Zorro so keen to see what you do with yours. Thanks.

[@TristanBuckley]

Nice Job! I always wanted one of these but I only had a lowly A500. Please soup this A2000 up!

[@delimitnc]

I'd love to see it with one of those PC bridge boards, sounds sweet to have "two systems in one" so to speak.

[@corty1980]

I still have my Amiga 2000 which hasn't been used for 20+ years due to the monitor dying. In it, I had a 68030 accelerator card with a hard drive. Also had an OpalVision Graphics card and a flicker fixer. I also upgraded the Ram and the kickstart. I did spend a lot on that computer and really need to get it out again and see if it still works.

[@TezzAtari]

We've all bought the same desolder station! It's certainly the most useful tool I've bought and after a couple of years it's still going strong. I will quite often still need to use hot air to finish the safe IC removal however.

[@ILOVESTARK]

Eyy! More amiga things!

[@RMCRetro]

And more to come :D

[@10p6]

Amiga HDMI Zorro card, Macintosh Zorro card, PC Zorro card. CD drive, Flash HDD, and maybe a faster CPU.

[@brianh2771]

I think a Commodore branded accelerator, like the A2620 or A2630, plus an A2091 Commodore SCSI controller, SCSI2SD, A2286 Bridgeboard, and of course a Video Toaster.

[@RETROCENGO]

Great vid, and congrats on the repair work. I am working on my A2000 that only gives me a white screen, maby I should pull off the cpu socket. Which desoldering station do you use? Again thank you for this video

[@goncalodumas]

Great video! I was just worried the clock battery was there during the repair, I usually remove all power sources - as little as they might, before diving into repairs

[@geoffreyhoffmann8007]

Hi. Loved the vid. You're desoldering wrong. You need to work the tip in a circle around the leg, keeping the leg in contact with the tip as you go. This moves the leg slightly as it desolders, getting more solder out. I had an A2000, and I had a flicker fixer, a 4meg memory board with 1 1/2 Meg fitted, a scsi card and hard disk, a 2086 bridge board, a hard disk on a card for the IBM side, and a ega graphics card. Loved it. Keep it up.

[@RMCRetro]

Hey thanks Geoff. This was the first outing for the desolder station and I quickly adopted the jiggle method, I'll mention it in the review

[@CRG]

Nice save. What solder sucker are you using? Would be nice to see a quick video on it as you suggest as I've been looking one. Oh and for the upgrade route I'd actually like to see the pc card with sound blaster you eluded to running some old dos games.

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks. There should be a link on my pinned comment at the top of the comments here

[@unregistredhypercam]

I bought an A2000 that was sold as broken but it works! It's had battery leak far worse than this one that's chewed on some of the traces, but I don't think it's made it into the cpu socket. Allegedly it had a green screen issue, but I've had it since may and it's never done that once, although occasionally it boots with some graphical glitchy line down the screen, but that goes away on a restart. I suspect it had a loose agnus that got reseated in the post... The floppy drive is as dead as the dodo so I've put a gotek in there. I did modify an old PC floppy drive but that crapped out after a few months. Other than that it's bare. I'd really like some way to give it a HDD and possibly some acceleration, but the cards are so expensive now that I'd probably have an easier time making my own damn expansion cards. Swapping disks is more of a pain with a gotek than it is with actual floppies in some ways. I'm tempted to swap it out for an A1200, but the 2000 fits so neatly into a space under my desk and I can grab the keyboard and mouse and sit back somewhere else, which actually makes the big box amigas more practical for me. Oh well.

[@Ragnar8504]

I'd be wary about the power supply - electrolytic caps have already been mentioned here and that applies to the power supply as well. I bought an A2K with defective power supply about ten years ago and tried to have the PS repaired, to no avail. Last year, knowing a lot more about electronics, I gave it a try myself and just shotgunned the electrolytics. Worked like a charm! There are at least two different versions of the A2K power supply for the European market. The first one is Made in Germany and contains plenty of golden Frako electrolytics. Those were high-end and expensive at their time but failed by the dozen within less than two years. Mine was the newer Phihong version that used Japanese caps but it still had a shorted one in the 5 V supply that obviously prevented the machine from booting. On the internet you can read plenty of advice, essentially telling you to get rid of the original power supply at all cost as it might burn down your house. Personally, I absolutely can't see any reason why a restored power supply shouldn't be at least as good as a brand-new one but I'd strongly recommend having someone restore it who knows their way around switching-mode power supplies - there ARE lethal voltages in there and they can remain stored in capacitors for some time after turning the machine off, even if the PS appears to be dead!

[@RetroWorkshop]

Great fix. I’m putting a desoldering station on my wish list.

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks! How's that Sinclair C5 coming along?

[@RetroWorkshop]

RetroManCave The C5 is coming along slowly. Changing jobs at the moment so it’s been a bit hectic.

[@benbaselet2026]

I just bought the same desoldering unit shown here for about 90 euros, really worth the price no question about it.

[@PaulLemars01]

A network card, although I don't know if there's a server you could connect to today. We started out with Novell 2.2 when we first started in Burbank but by the time we were in Valencia, CA I had Novell 3.3 running. There was a guy in Long Beach, CA. That had just developed them and I bought the first ten. They only worked with Novell but that was OK because that was everybody's server of choice at the time. A Video Toaster (dongle) so you can run Lightwave and a Progressive (I think) 68040 card with 32mb of memory and of course a SCSI hard drive controller with a drive big enough to load the OS and applications. 300mb If memory serves me correctly. We had 5 A2000 machines for workstations and another 8 for render engines. We didn't realize it at the time but we were driving the first nail into the coffin of Silicon Graphics. In Valens name that was a long time ago.

[@namakudamono]

Friday night, just came home from the office, wife’s not back from work yet so I fire up the KZbin app...Retromancave, yes! Trash to Treasure, yes! Amiga A1500, A W E S O M E!

[@ireway1988]

I would do as you suggested and stick a hard drive in and duel boot it, Amiga and Dos to run both sides of the retro scene.

[@Ichinin]

My dream upgrade for a bigbox Amiga would be EMPLANT. I remember dribbling saliva over a review of it in CU Amiga and tried to imagine having a hardware accelerated PC/MAC inside an Amiga that would all run 3 operating systems at the same time. But i was just a poor teenager back them...

[@incrediblySmart]

Yesssss

[@MarkFixesStuff]

Looking forward to this one!

[@leighchallinor6945]

I always wanted a 2000 , I would definitely want a picasso and a hard drive in one. Great work as always

[@Dev_olution]

Great video as always, love that new desolderer ,erer..... desoldering tool.

[@jameslewis2635]

Nice video. That was a neat job on the CPU socket. I can see that if you are doing a bit of regular pcb repair work that the new desoldering gun would be a pretty good investment. While it works well enough for a point or two, using a solder sucker and soldering iron can be fiddly and time consuming. In terms of upgrades to the A1500, I would be looking towards one of the Terrible Fire acceleration boards (he was back at to doing his projects last I looked which was about a month ago). I have never seen one of the PC compatibility boards, so that could be interesting as well if you can track it down. It would be interesting if that could be upgraded as well with an overdrive chip as the only ones I am aware of were 286 based which at the time seemed old hat. A sound blaster style card with a midi wavetable board would be a good use for the ISA slots. I assume that the video for the PC mode would run through the Amiga graphics solution, otherwise you could well end up needing to track down an ISA graphics card. Something like a memory card in place of a hard drive would be another decent upgrade, if unoriginal. The reason I don't suggest period accelerators is because right now they are as rare as hens teath and cost an arm and a leg to purchase. For other people getting into upgrading such machines, it could be useful to know how far you can get with gear available on todays market rather than period items that could well be unavailable to them. Another possible upgrade, and I don't know how practical this would be, that I have heard much about but never seen in practice is the much fabled video toaster.

[@Horzuhammer]

Wohoo, for once I can think of myself as 'more observant.' :D As for the upgrades, I'd probably be happy with just flash gubbins, and perhaps extra RAM & a faster CPU, but seeing that thing run some IBM software would definitely be super neat!

[@Matmus]

How about a NewTek Video Toaster for those retro video effects if you can get hold of one along with an upgraded processor of some kind?

[@RetroRecipes]

Lovely stuff!

[@kcgeil]

Lordy, I wanted a big box Amiga sooooo much.