Restoring A Long Neglected Amiga 1200 Power Tower!

In this video I'll be restoring a very sad looking Amiga 1200 Power Tower. Stay tuned for an epic adventure of cleaning, retrobriting and amateurish recapping! :D
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:45 Brief look at chaos and decay
01:13 Disassembly
03:20 Cleaning the motherboard in the dishwasher
04:44 Cleaning and retrobriting front panel
06:41 Cleaning and retrobriting the keyboard
08:22 Recapping the motherboard
10:37 First boot after cleaning and recapping
11:30 Retrobriting result
12:13 Keyboard reassembly
13:41 Reassembling the computer
17:22 Final test boot
18:19 Stickers
18:51 Booting up Frontier Elite II and ending video
Music used in this video:
Blue Intermission by Congus Bongus [ / blue-intermission ]
Right On Time by Congus Bongus [ / right-on-time ]
Other music from epidemicsound.com/
#retrocomputing #amiga #restoration #retrobriting #recapping

[@ChairmanMeow1]

I like these restorations just because they're calming to watch. But I also really like the fact that you're preserving history.

[@stanpiro]

As a huge fan of Amiga, i've loved this video! Thx

[@mutzbunny]

i fallen in love with the amigas a while ago. and i now bought myself an amiga 2000... I love to see now everyone else making awesome stuff with their amiga machines.

[@davidculp1402]

I think this video has convinced me to towerize my Amiga 1200.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Yay, the KZbin algorithm lead me here. Great channel!

[@nathan386dx40]

Thank you for restoring this old Amiga! Your soldering work looks very clean to my untrained eyes, and I also appreciate you including your cat's commentary near the beginning.

[@TAGMedia7]

I just checked your channel hours ago to see if there was anything new, then this pops up on my feed! I am so excited to see your new video! It'll be my top priority after work!!

[@OddObsolete]

Hope you enjoy!

[@bryndaldwyre3099]

Awesome video. I'm watching this 9 months later so going straight on to the followup video. Also, good choice of game to display on it. I put so many hours into this on my Amiga 500+ and then bought it for my pc and put many more hours into it again.

[@endian675]

Excited for the follow-up deep dive on this one. Great content!

[@datassetteuser356]

Very nice! Was never into these tower solutions for Amigas, but strangely, they grow on me the older I get. Anyway, looks pretty great. Cheers!

[@a4000t]

They really didnt make much sense to me..the best part of a 1200 was it was semi portable in the stock case. An A4000 expanded would be faster still than the 1200 expanded.

[@siteczek]

Great work!

[@SithlordSigma]

Awesome video as usual 🙏🙏🙏

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

Un lavoro di retrobright perfetto al tuo AMIGA,complimenti

[@UncleAwesomeRetro]

The Amiga looks very nice :) Great job!

[@DarylLewis]

What an awesome video! That keyboard is absolutely glistening, sparkly like new! Just found your videos - subscribed 👍🏼

[@adkenzo]

Great vid love the channel man 🍻

[@marioserrano5087]

Very nice video COMMODORE AMIGA FOR EVER

[@goeland4585]

The 80's rock that starts when you say "retrobrighting" had me laughing haha. So cheesy

[@TheSudsy]

Who would have thought 20 plus years after selling my towered up a1200 - I would be watching you restoring a similar system. I was at one point thinking this could actually be my old system, it had an 060 though, and mediator and voodoo, and soundblaster etc. The networking was not PCMCIA it was i think a PCI card on mediator. But wow the memories. subscribed.

[@OddObsolete]

Well who knows how many times this one has changed hands and gotten reconfigured in the past. You never know! :)

[@R-Tech]

Nice resto! Subscribed for more Amiga content 😀

[@tulfnulf3039]

New french viewer: congratulations. Great video and cool contents on your channel. Only 2700 subscribers ? Hope it will increase rapidly !

[@TheTurnipKing]

0:58 thats pretty par for the course for late 90's cable management

[@DavisMakesGames]

1:08 It looks like that was a molex splitter that someone just cut the extra wires off of? That's a... unique... method of cable management right there!

[@OddObsolete]

Yup, that’s exactly it! I soldered on a mini molex there later, off camera.

[@NoobixCube]

As far as I know, kapton tape isn't really thermally protective. It's stable across a broad variety of temperatures, so heat doesn't affect the adhesive, or cause it to expand or contract, but it doesn't reflect heat. They used to use it on 3D printer heated beds, because the tape didn't expand under heat, and stayed stuck, until everyone decided regular masking tape was fine. If you want to protect nearby components from heat, you can use kapton to stick some aluminium foil down, I guess?

[@OddObsolete]

You’re probably right, though it does work pretty well as long as you actually cover the part you want to protect :)

[@judgewest2000]

you really have brought 'sexy back' man!

[@PBobbenB]

Well, talk about a small world, that is actually my old Amiga! Just casually browsing KZbin, not looking specifically for Amiga videos, just showed up in recommended videos, what are the odds? 🙂 Oh, I do have pictures to prove it's my old Amiga...

[@OddObsolete]

Wow, small world indeed! I’d love to see those photos! :)

[@PBobbenB]

@@OddObsolete Odd, I made a post which now seems to be gone, are one not allowed to post links in the comments?

[@OddObsolete]

@@PBobbenB Weird! KZbin auto-moderates comments sometimes, but I couldn't find anything held for review either. Perhaps you could email me? [e-mail]

[@DolezalPetr]

this video is very high quality

[@SteliosSioulas]

Great restoration and beautiful Amiga, but you need some more badging. For example if someone only sees it from the top or the right, they wouldn't know it's an Amiga 😛

[@rhysholdaway]

That is really cool. You should add one if those PiStorm accelerator cards to it (think that will fix the video output too). Would also replace the hard drives with a more modern solution.

[@GordiWan]

wow, I have that identical tower but without the acronym AMIGA :D

[@DOSmanager]

Really enjoying your content, sir! If I've learned anything from Voultar (which is debatable), is to keep the nozzle on the rework station moving. It's slower, but that will keep the damage to the surrounding components to a minimum. Keep up the good work!

[@OddObsolete]

Good tip, thanks!

[@Coronavirus-sj3tv]

Just a suggestion: submerge the motherboard in a tub with distilled water than scrub it with a toothbrush or something. Than after you scrub it, rinse it off with more distilled water. After that's done use 99% alcohol to displace the water on the board since alcohol is more versatile than water and let it sit to dry overnight.

[@OddObsolete]

I saw that method used on This Does Not Compute the other day. Looked like it worked really well! An added benefit is that it should take care of any flux residues that might be left on board from old repairs and stuff. The downside, of course, is that it uses a boatload of IPA. Perhaps the IPA can be saved and reused a few times though. Either way, thanks for the suggestion!

[@Rakadis]

I have heard that if you intend to wash PCBs you should use carwash soap as this does not contain any added salts.

[@OddObsolete]

Interesting! I used the hand dish washing soap for the same reason. Incidentally, I’ve used the same stuff to clean my car on several occasions with good results :)

[@cocusar]

Pretty nice! How weird that the previous owner did that triangular LED arrangement instead of using the original LEDs of the case... Interesting to hear more about that USB thing, what's its purpose?

[@OddObsolete]

Yeah it’s weird! Maybe they where into Predator or something ;) The RapidRoad connects to the Amigas clock port to provide a USB interface. Super handy for transferring files from USB sticks!

[@HoldandModify]

Oh wow! This thing! Good score sir! Thanks for the video! I have some A1200 videos on my channel, but my channel is ... not good. I do it 'cause I love, not cause I'm good at it. :)

[@MrLurchsThings]

“Flat” Amigas wedged into tower case I’ve always found kinda…. odd. I guess it’s neater once you add a couple of hard drives and a CD-ROM. Great resto. Looking forward to seeing wat you do on the video side of things to replace the old GBS board.

[@OddObsolete]

Yeah, it's kind of a poor mans big box Amiga I guess. Especially with the insane prices of real big box Amigas these days! And it does open up some expansion possibilities that are hard to fit in a wedge, like PCI bus boards for instance.

[@enigma776]

Its what we did, couple this up with a PPC and a Mediator PCI board and you had the best A1200 money could buy.

[@TheSudsy]

I couldn't afford an A4000 (which I lusted after) so over the years beefed up the a1200 and pimped to destroy a4000. The mediator had PCI and there was quite a support with drivers, cant remember if it had Zorro - one of the boards did cant remember which.

[@a4000t]

@@TheSudsy Your dreaming,the Cyberstorm ppc (604e vs 603)was way faster than the blizzard PPC and had ULTRAWIDE Scsi,40MB/s! most a1200 tower conversions didnt even support zorro3, except one. even the mediator for 1200 was crippled in speed compared to the 3000/4000 version. The 4000T also had 2 video slots.

[@roberthazelby4424]

Great video. I have a Power Tower which looks to have the same inside layout, but the front panel is different. I love the Amiga tickers you used on yours. Would you be kind enough to point me in the direction of where you ordered yours from? A quick search online shows various stockists, but I really like the ones you've used. Thank you.

[@OddObsolete]

Sweet! I got the stickers from Red Bubble. I think these were the ones: www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Amiga-Tick-Word-by-ChoccyHobNob/39318423.O9UDB www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Amiga-by-SkidCrashwell/29115303.O9UDB Make sure to select “transparent” in the options.

[@dave4shmups]

Nice work! I didn’t know that there was an Amiga 1200 tower. I’ve only heard of the A4000T. Was this Amiga 1200T built by Escom?

[@OddObsolete]

These were sold by ELBOX as conversion kits, so there was never an official A1200T. In fact, ELBOX still sells a similar kit to this day, but with a modern black case.

[@proteque]

Looks great! Back in the day when I had a 040/40 it had to have a fan on it. Does this one run stable without that?

[@OddObsolete]

Yes, it ran stable with only a heat sink as far as I could tell. Only used it for a short while though, because it had a very sketchy edge connector that caused it to sporadically refuse to boot. Gonna replace it at some point when I get around to it.

[@proteque]

@@OddObsolete all that fan noise in my life was for no reason then :D

[@djwaveshark]

Hi mate, Gooooood video and great restore!!!!! now.....PLS.. I need THIS 180º POWER ADAPTOR!!!!!!!! OMG!!! Where can pick this one????? In my setup, I need to put the original cable from inside of the tower to outside for direct connection to the motherboard, is horrible!!! I spend years lucking for this one..... Thx.

[@OddObsolete]

The power adaptor would have come with the Elbox Power Tower kit. I'm not sure if they can be purchased separately, but Elbox still sells a tower conversion kit for the A1200: amigastore.eu/en/584-blackbox-1200-mk-ii.html

[@wizardjd64]

Nice! It turned out really well, I have the exact same tower case too but with a Mediator TX. I'm looking forward to see what more you can do to enhance it. If you don't mind me asking would you have 3D print .stl files for those drive bay covers as I would like to try and print some replacements for my own case. Thank you!

[@OddObsolete]

Sure, here you go: drive.google.com/file/d/1KAtCNQ0zcx_laX7wN9n7k79nRmK4QFK3/view?usp=sharing

[@wizardjd64]

@@OddObsolete Thanks a lot, ideally I'd like to have a cover like this but with both a USB slot and SD card slot which would run from the PCI ports on the Mediator but I know nothing about designing 3D printing models. Is it possible to design such a thing?

[@OddObsolete]

@@wizardjd64 Yes, that should be pretty straight forward. Get the free personal edition of Fusion 360 and go through some beginner tutorials on KZbin and you can probably get it done in a few hours.

[@wizardjd64]

@@OddObsolete Thanks, I'll do that.

[@dcfuksurmom]

I actually dont mind slight yellowing on old computers, I think it adds character, there are limits though. I've personally never retrobrited anything though. (Edit: just want to ask what is the name of the track around the 12:13 mark?)

[@OddObsolete]

Agree on slight yellowing, as long as it is fairly even. But when it looks piss stained it’s time for a retrobrighting! :) The background music in that part of the video would be this track: www.epidemicsound.com/track/wuDujKwWoW/

[@dcfuksurmom]

@@OddObsolete thanks

[@SithlordSigma]

for those smd caps i cant recommend enough you just twist and snap them off. Its pretty much the definitive way of doing it with zero damage risk.

[@SithlordSigma]

Heating with the heat gun and having it pop was always a fear of mine lol funny to see it happen on camera like that.

[@OddObsolete]

Yeah, so far my success rate is definitely higher with that method as well! I don't know about zero risk though, but then again, there's always a risk of damaging something when working on old hardware, no matter what you do.

[@SithlordSigma]

@@OddObsolete oh totally im exaggerating at zero risk lol. It felt amazing having my first SMD recap work perfect going with the twist n snap method, that about instilled the confidence given i was new and the risk of further damaging a sega saturn was certainly weighing heavy on the mind.

[@sebachludz]

Dishwasher may damage the z22x elements. These are the video output filters. not available for purchase now. very unprofessional approach , As a result of such actions, it will be necessary to replace the cxa1145 system with a newer one, which does not require rgb path . you were very lucky

[@OddObsolete]

Yes, I am by no means a professional at this stuff. From what I understand, these parts are only used for composite and RF output, which I don’t use, so it’s possible they were damaged without me noticing it. How come these are especially sensitive to water?

[@TheLevitatingChin]

How do!