Total Restoration of an Amstrad CPC 6128

[@Terkzorr]

A few days ago I learned that the old computer with a black and green screen that I vaguely remembered and we had back when I was a kid was a CPC. I have even found some games here on KZbin that I hadn't seen in over 25 years yet I could immediately recognize by just watching 10 second clips of gameplay, powerful stuff. Now my KZbin is full of CPC recommendations and videos like these are what have been missing in my life. :-)

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Hahaha, welcome to the modern Amstrad CPC world! 😃 If you haven't already, get a good emulator like RetroVirtualMachine or WinAPE and have a blast! Go to CPCPower to download any games you may remember too.

[@Terkzorr]

@@NoelsRetroLab Thanks for the suggestion. It will be weird for me to play some of my old games in color since that green retro screen is all that I remembered. I even had to install a Firefox addon that could remove the color from KZbin videos, otherwise I wouldn't have recognized half of the games I had. Haha

[@NoelsRetroLab]

@@Terkzorr They got you covered! Just about every emulator allows you to select a green, monochrome screen. Ta-dah! 😃

[@TaberBucknell]

Great video! Small suggestion, from the model airplane world, for using two part glues ... put the blobs of glue **beside each other** before mixing. There are two advantages to this method: 1) it is easier to measure equal parts because they are side-by-side, 2) it prevents accidentally getting the two parts into a tube cap (which is very frustrating when the cap is glued closed next time you try to use it). I’m really enjoying your videos!

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Thank you for the tip. Yeah, I don't have very much experience with glue in general :-) Glad you're enjoying the videos!

[@jacobpalm]

Fantastic project, and the result is so good looking. Hadn’t thought of using that car dashboard shine on old computer cases, I am absolutely going to be experimenting with that. I’m having a great time watching your videos, thanks for sharing them!

[@VintageProjectDE]

Thank you, Noel! I have a Schneider CPC6128, which is pretty identical to yours, and I was really hesitant to pull the key caps. Now I know that most of them just come off like expected and that there are only a few where I need to follow a sequence. Nice!

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Glad I could help! 😃

[@nok_sp]

Head over Heels is the best!😀 Good work with the 6128!👌

[@LFOSyncToo]

I liked your repair and restoration videos on this Amstrad. I hope you are going to do some more with other 'patients' :)

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Of course! I have a different patient on the table already for next week :-)

[@josemigarrido]

They sold a lot of CPCs in Spain from the 85 onward. The 6128 was really popular for small business and professionals, it was the first "serious" computer affordable outside big companies, as the IBM PC was very expensive in Spain.

[@michaelelsy2209]

Great video as usual and the sound is back to normal from the part 2 video.

[@bergarteric5713]

Amazing !!! Merci Monsieur for this lesson and thanks for the share !!! God bless you and your familly Eric from France ....

[@HothEchoBase]

Well done Noel! Thank you for the quality content!

[@NoelsRetroLab]

You're welcome. Glad you're enjoying it!

[@jamesrizzo295]

Brilliant result! I need to get one now. Search alerts now on all the major marketplace but I don't see to many of these in Australia unfortunately. Thanks again for the great content. On to watch more of your back Catalog. Adios! 😁

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Glad you enjoyed it! Yes, it's a fantastic machine. If you can get one, go for it. Maybe even importing one from Europe might be reasonable? I don't know how much shipping would be.

[@retrocomputeruser]

Hi Noel, I have only recently found your channel after years of watching others so I don't know why it took so long. I have two of these CPC6128's and one CTM644 colour monitor. Also I have a box of 10 still sealed 3 inch disks. The asking price for these computers are incredible lately. Keep up the good work and stay safe. Subscribed.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Thanks, Andy! Glad to have another 6128 fan. They really are great computers!

[@EC5ABG]

Buen trabajo Noel.👍

[@DavidBrant]

Loved this restoration. Have been binge watching your other work. Great stuff! I was an Amstrad CPC464 owner when i was a young teen, HoH was also one of my fav games. Would love to get hold of a 6128 but sadly it seems retro computer prices are way too much these days to get a look in.

[@aml4149]

Great job!

[@retronexusio]

just love your channel

[@moterov4]

I like the spanish keyboard with that sun tan. It shows and is the seal that it is 35 years old and still in top form. ;-)

[@NoelsRetroLab]

:-)

[@FernandoelChachi]

About retrobrighting the keys and how uneven they could get, I would retrobright them in place, once installed. If you retrobright them in a plastic bag they are each one facing wherever in the sun. Afterwards you could clean them with soap and water and finishing with "Pronto" (and a hair dryer). Yep, the furniture's spray wax. That will protect them and will also cover the metal springs avoiding future rust too. About plastics, using a product for cars' dashboards has to be very good for sure, but you can also use Pronto as commented before, mostly when the plastic isn't so bad or in any case just to maintain it clean and shiny the easy way ;)

[@SteveHacker]

Perfect!

[@andrews2840]

I had one of these when I was a kid :)

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Me too! And they're just as much fun now :-)

[@matthiasmartin1975]

I just realized that those metal bars under the long keys act exactly like the anti-roll bar in cars. They even are shaped identically.

[@somosdeamstrad]

I have noticed a curious behavior in the keyboard of my 6128 Plus. From time to time the keys start to fail progressively. Given a certain time most of the keys won't work. Then I open it up, take both keyboard cable buses out, plug them again and... tachannn all the keys work again for some months... Have you ever seen this behavior before? In such a case, do you think there is anything faulty? Thank you

[@NoelsRetroLab]

That's weird! I've never seen anything like that. I would start looking at the keyboard connectors and making sure they're clean. Maybe they corrode a bit over time? When the keys start to fail, is it a whole group at once, or just a single key at a time? If it's a whole group then it's likely to be the rows/column keyboard connectors. If it's one at a time then it has to be in the keyboard membrane. But it's odd that it would fix itself just by unplugging it and plugging it back in.

[@somosdeamstrad]

@@NoelsRetroLab It is like 2-4 keys stop working at a time...after a couple of months none of the enter keys neither the space key is working... Then by plugging and unplugging the situation is solved. I have noticed this behavior with two different keyboards. Membranes look good in both cases and they are clean... Connectors look fine too but I will give a look to the female end in the motherboard. Could it be related to the sound chip? Sounds and music are ok, but I ve read that it controls the keyboard right?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Hmmm... if it's 2-4 keys at a time it's not likely to be a whole row or column. But I have a hard time believing it would be due to an IC with the way failures accumulate over time and then get fixed by unplugging the membrane. Tough one. I would clean the keyboard connectors on the board really well with a tooth brush and contact cleaner just in case.

[@BertGrink]

Sorry to be late to the party, as it were, but i have a question... does the CPC+ get very hot when it's in use? If that's the case, it could be caused by the PCB flexing when it warms up and cools down; there is an (in)famous case about Apple _III_ computers where that was happening a lot, causing the ICs to become loose in their sockets, and Apple's official recommendation was to lift the computer about 6 inches up and then drop it back on the table. The reason for this behaviour in the Apple _III_ was that it was designed without any ventilation at all, because it had to be completely silent! SMH So back to my question... if the CPC+ does indeed get hot during use, this could be the explanation.

[@thepenultimateninja5797]

With those keys that were yellowed on the sides, I would be tempted to just wet sand the worst of it away. It wouldn't noticeably affect the texture, and since it is on the sides rather than the tops of the keycaps, it wouldn't hurt the legends.

[@BertGrink]

I have a feeling that a few of the screws that hold the keyboard in place in the case have gone missing... hmmm. No blame on you, Noel, of course, I assume this was how you got the computer. In any case, what a nice-looking machine at the end - well done!

[@DaveVelociraptor]

You mentioned that you weren't happy with the retrobriting on the keys from a previous attempt. How did you do the retrobriting?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Back then? I used plain 4% hydrogen peroxide in a bag and left it out on the sun. But some of the keys developed some very visible patterns of lighter colors. It's as if they used two kinds of plastic in the creating process and they reacted differently.

[@DaveVelociraptor]

@@NoelsRetroLab was it the cream or was it liquid?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

@@DaveVelociraptor It was the plain liquid they sell on pharmacies. I put it in a ziploc bag to avoid any bubbles. I think I have a video showing that, but with a different computer. Right, like what I did here with an Amiga: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iXini2qpl5eUh5Y I normally don't put cream on keys because it's hard to keep even and moist anyway.

[@drgusman]

Nice :D Try to retrobright those keys, it will look brand new :)

[@NoelsRetroLab]

I did some retrobrighting on 6128 keys in the past with bad results, so I'm a bit gun shy about it. I'll have to make a video with some experiments. Have you tried on it on these keys? Which one your favorite method for retrobrighting them?

[@drgusman]

@@NoelsRetroLab On this concrete one no, the 6128 I have has the keys as new but I have retrobrighted a good bunch of other keyboards with zero problems. I use 40º peroxide cream with a 20w UV LED focus. Also, I'm experimenting with ammonia, the yellowing comes from bromine, it gets decomposed and gives those plastics that yellow tint, ammonia accelerates that decomposition and makes the retrobright process a lot faster, I get nearly perfect results in just 4 hours while without ammonia it takes more than 12 hours with my UV focus. The process I follow is this: Bath with hot water, a good ammount of ammonia and KH7, that cleans the part and accelerates the decomposition. After three hours I remove all the residues of the previous bath and with a brush I give a good layer of peroxide cream on the parts, then wrap everything on a transparent film to avoid any part to get dry and place it for four hours under the UV focus. I have a good ammount of my experiments about retrobright on Twitter, if you understand spanish you can check it here twitter.com/i/moments/1176906838777966592 :D

[@NoelsRetroLab]

@@drgusman Nice. I'll check it out. I've had good results with Amiga keys, but not so much with Amstrad ones. Different plastics I guess. Y sí, me leeré el hilo detenidamente. Gracias! :-)

[@kjamison5951]

You may wish to try a different method of retro-briting. There are many variations on the process. Some use a mix of H2O2 with other products to form a paste or gel. Some use a gel version of H2O2. Some use H2O2 in a liquid form on its own. Some methods use sunlight and others use UV lamps. It’s just about trying different ways to get the result you want.

[@atec9228]

Great channel. I see in many of your videos that Spanish products appear, I don't know if it's because you live in Spain or have family here, maybe you buy them online, I don't know, I found it curious. Thanks for every video and input for retro enthusiasts.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Thanks! Yes, I live in Spain at the moment, so that definitely explains all the products and computers 😃

[@johnwilliams7999]

Can u not spray paint the keys?

[@opentheskyy7]

what is the model of this Sony TV?

[@aggelikhmoschoteli9904]

ΜΠΟΡΩ ΝΑ ΣΑΣ ΣΤΕΙΛΩ ΤΟΝ AMSTRAD CPC 6128 ΝΑ ΜΟΥ ΤΟΝ ΦΤΙΑΞΕΤΕ??

[@pierregrancher7881]

Les touches ont été laissé jaune...c'est pas beau...

[@oscarrigol9787]

spanish keyboard