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Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« on: July 26, 2016, 02:57:41 AM »
Hey everyone. This thread will be dedicated to restoration of an Amiga 1000 that I have rescued from a leaky barn. Some of you may have already seen my post in the software section about my troubles getting it to boot to Workbench, but I have since managed to get that far, so I will continue the updates here of the project.




Here is the Amiga 1000 as it was after pulled out of the barn. Notice the boing ball logo instead of the Amiga check.




Under the memory expansion cover is a module that is not identified and pretty rusty looking.




The disk that was in the drive. It seems to indicate a boot disk of some sort, but would it be the kickstart disk or the workbench disk?




Testing the Amiga without disk to see if it will even power on. To my excitement it does power on and am greeted with the insert kickstart disk screen.




Starting up with the disk in drive, I see this. Somewhat odd boot screen, it says Kickstart + Workbench 1.2.




After a few seconds, I get halted at this screen. Uh oh, there is a problem with the boot disk, the drive, or it is looking for possibly an external drive containing a file that isn't available. I will have to find another kick start and workbench disk to try that.




Meanwhile, lets take a look at the keyboard that was with it. It also has the boing ball logo on it. It is so dirty... ick.




The inside actually looks worse than the outside, believe it or not...




I desoldered all of the switches to remove the PCB for cleaning. All of the switches need cleaning and work since they are either frozen or don't activate properly.




One of the very bad switches from around the middle of the keyboard.




Inside the switch. Notice the small piece of spring sitting in the bottom that has rusted off. These switches are going to be a large task to repair.




Returning to the barn, I found a lot of disks. Among them I found these that may help me to get the Amiga to boot. Half of them seem to work, however the problem now is that the disk detection doesn't seem to work properly. After the kickstart disk loads and I need to insert the workbench disk, it goes no further. I may need to finally open the Amiga to see what is going on in there.




The bottom of the Amiga, showing the serial number.




Under the hood, she looks a bit rusty on top.




The power supply was produced in October of 1985.




A little deeper into the system. I am relieved that the inside is much cleaner than I expected, and not like the keyboard.




The three girls. Denis is R5 rather than R6 so it is indeed an early American release without EHB support.




Some of the other ICs. I don't know if any of these are different on the early models, but they are here to look at if you know more about them.




On to the disk drive. The eject button doesn't seem to line up where it should. Maybe this is not the original drive.




New holes were drilled in order to fit this other drive into place.




The side of the Mitsubishi disk drive that was in the system. This is likely the problem why it is not detecting when I insert the workbench disk, and why it had a Kickstart + Workbench disk in the drive when found.




I had a clean and functioning Samsung SFD-321D that could be modded to work with Amiga systems. Here is the drive with the modifications done. Information found here on how to mod it. https://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.ca&sl=de&u=http://honi.hucki.net/samsung.html




Success! The new drive detects when I insert the Workbench disk and starts up. 954376 free memory? Hmm, another mystery.




Here is the memory expansion cover before cleaning.




The memory expansion cover and keyboard case after cleaning. The plastics are cleaning well.


I will continue adding more to the project as I go along. If you have comments, questions or suggestions about any of it, feel free to make a post. This is my first Amiga, and I have wanted one for a long time, but don't know all the ins and outs.

Currently I am trying to test to see if the keyboard's PCB is actually functional. I am having my doubts, as I have booted to Workbench and tried to jumper arrow keys and enter key to see if anything changes on screen, but so far nothing. If anyone can tell me what keys will produce a visual response after booting to Workbench 1.2, that would be very helpful. The keyboard is being connected to the Amiga using the cord from a phone that connects the receiver to the base. I fear that the custom IC may be dead.

Also I have not yet located the original mouse. Can anyone tell me what other mice may be compatible?
 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #1 on: July 26, 2016, 05:04:43 AM »
Quote from: klx300r;811649
WoW! MB still looks in great condition so congrats on the find!

I don't see any RAm expansion on the board but yet your screenshot tells a different story ???
Yeah, I have no idea what is going on there. I am not aware of any expansions for the front memory expansion to take it over 512kb. I haven't taken a good look inside it since that screenshot though, so I'm guessing there is something in there to explain for the extra memory.
 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2016, 08:31:01 PM »
Sorry I have been quite for a few days on this. I have been a little busy, but now I shall answer your questions.

Quote from: tonyvdb;811664
Yuck!, that keyboard is a mess. how long do you figure that Amiga sat in the barn?

This Amiga 1000 was in the barn for a minimum of 8 years. Likely much more though.

Quote from: Khyron;811666
There were a couple front memory expansions that  added 512K.. but in this case, You can see the wires from the  piggybacked expansion done on the motherboard in the pics (under the  daughter board)

Yeah, I saw those, and they are the reason I haven't dissembled further yet as I want to make sure not to pull any wires.

Quote from: Ilwrath;811667
Heh... Nice find.  I'm always curious what a  machine found like that was used for.  It seems like it had some strange  purpose to have somehow ended up where it was.

Having a kick/boot disk with Comm on it (and I see another VT100 disk)  seems like they were using at least sometimes as some type of  terminal...  But to what?  And to what end?

Also, having a Supra boot, seems like it had a HD controller in it at some point in time.

As for your question about compatible mice...  Any Amiga mouse.  (And  only Amiga mice, or mice with a specific Amiga adaptor.)

I am not sure what the machine was used for, but likely business purposes. There are a lot of other computers and parts stored in the barn, he seemed to use it for storage of his obsolete equipment. I have no idea what Comm or VT100 are, as I'm still new to Amiga.

I did forget to mention in this post that I found a SupraDrive 4x4 SCSI controller in another box, however the hard drive portion is still missing. I hope to find it as well. There was also a modem found next to the Amiga. Weather or not it was used with the Amiga is unknown to me at this point as there are modems scattered around everywhere since the previous owner used to run some kind of communications business.



The SupraDrive 4x4 SCSI controller.




The modem found next to the Amiga 1000.


Quote from: blakespot;811668
What is the story on the boing ball mouse and  keyboard? I've not seen any US or Euro Amiga 1000's with those badges. I  know Miner in crew disliked the double check, preferring the ball logo,  but as far as I know the double check was there every time (and the  Commodore label lower for Euro units).

Hmmm...


bp

As far as I can tell, the boing ball logo on the system and keyboard were on the first run of Amiga 1000s in America.

Quote from: JamesG;811706
Neat. Regarding the case, first thing I would do is  clean the dirt with Formula 409 or something similar. Then I'd get into  the Magic Eraser (cut them into cubes) and using soapy water scrub that  case good. The Magic Eraser really gets some of the harder stuff like  stains or adhesives.

If it's faded, you can buy this stuff off Amazon called Salon 40 volume  creme. It's basically RetroBrite. Soak the plastic in this stuff out in  the sun inside of a clear plastic bin (with clear lid) or bag.

Good luck and be sure to post the results!

Soapy water and a soft toothbrush have been working well for the most part, and I have used magic eraser on a few things that wouldn't come off with the soap, but I prefer to use them sparingly as they are an abrasive and can diminish texture on things that aren't smooth, but only by a little. Just don't go overboard when you use them.

As for retrobrite, I haven't used the stuff yet but have been aware of it for some time. I may try it on some of my old console controllers as a test run before using it on the rare Amiga 1000.


As for today, I may work on the keyboard switches some more and finish cleaning that out. I have a feeling that the PCB is dead though. Can anyone tell me what keys can be pressed in Workbench 1.2 that would show a visual response so I can at least see if it still works?
 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2016, 08:38:39 PM »
I just found this http://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/Using_the_keyboard_to_control_Workbench
I should be able to test if the keyboard is working with these keyboard shortcuts.
 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #4 on: August 14, 2016, 07:08:00 PM »
Quote from: paul1981;812058
So the first 100 units or so may not have been Commodore manufactured? This makes this particular Amiga EXTREMELY rare. Rare in any case due to its boing ball logo. This Amiga could be the earliest example still remaining in service/existance besides the serial No. 1 A1000.

The first units in America were released with the boing ball logo. I do not know the number of units that were made at that time, but I'm sure it was well over 100. I doubt the unit would be considered extremely rare, but still more rare than a later produced unit.
 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2021, 12:34:51 AM »
I am back again with a small update on this A1000. I am sorry that it has taken so long to get back at this, but I moved residence and shortly after, all of my disks were damaged in a flood. The Amiga is fine, but I have lost all my disks including kickstart disks, so I had put working on it aside for a while.

Now I feel like having another go at this thing. Tomorrow I am picking up a Gotek floppy drive emulator to use in it for now as it seems the most cost effective way to get me going on it again. I will be trying to repair the keyboard again, now that I have more space to work on it.

To be a smarty pants, how is the barn? :D

My new residence is actually almost right across the road from the house and barn. Sadly, the barn and the house I was working on was burnt down by an arsonist. He was caught the next morning when he was wo during around the area and got spooked by the police and tried to flee up my driveway but was stopped by our dog and apprehended by the police.

Now onto the more exciting news. In preparation for installing the Gotek drive, I opened up the case once again. This time I was able to get the stripped screw out that was holding the front pannel on. What I found under the daughterboard was what I was thought might be going on.




Someone had preformed the ram stacking mod on this machine. Altough a bit sloppy. I beleive it is up to 1MB chip ram with this mod. This has me excited as I had found word of this mod being posible, but no documentation about it online. I don't want to touch it just yet though, as I want to run some tests on it to see if it is stable. This will require me having a working keyboard and/or mouse, so the testing might be delayed a while. Afterwards, I want to carefully pull up the daughterboard and document how the mod was done and share it with everyone.

Feel free to ask any questions. I am very happy to be moving forward with this project again.
 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #6 on: May 30, 2021, 05:09:34 AM »
Picked up the Gotek drive yesterday and flashed the firmware with flash floppy. Today I was able to get it to boot kickstart 1.3 from the Gotek and load up some test software.



And now for the really good news. I was able to load up amiga-testkit and try they keyboard. To my surprise, the keyboards PCB still.works! I thought it wasn't functional from my attempts to do anything with it a few years back. I tested each key switch position and every single key press registered as it should. I am very excited that it works, but it will need a bunch of work. Each and every keyswitch needs to be cleaned and repaired.



I still need to figure out a solution for a mouse, but for now I saw a simple adapter that I can make with an arduino that will let me use a PS/2 mouse.

The memory testing is a lot closer to being able to done than I thought. Technically I could donit at this point, but I want to recap the boards and especially the PSU before leaving the unit on for extended time.
 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #7 on: May 31, 2021, 09:48:01 PM »
Yesterday I started a bit of work on the keyboard. Starting with the rust removal, I used a wire brush and emory paper to remouve most of the rust, but there is a fair bit of pitting in the metal that still has rust, so before I paint it, I think I will put it in my electrolysis tank for a bit to get all the rust for sure before priming and painting it.




I also remouved the motherboard and the power supply from the case, so I can give the case a good cleaning.

The power supply is in need of a good cleaning. I also verified all the values of the electrolytic capacitors, and placed an order for them.



The shield on the bottom of the motherboard and port connectors could use some rust removal, however I don't know what kind of metal it is, so I don't want to put it in my electrolysis tank. I will have to see what method I use.



After the caps arive and I install them with a good cleaning of the boards, I should be able to preform the memory tests and see if it is all functioning as it should.
 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #8 on: June 08, 2021, 02:54:21 AM »
Work has been a bit slow on the A1000 due to life but I have a couple updates of progress. Firstly, the caps arived and I have installed them in the power supply, as well as giving the power supply a cleaning. I did however count incorrectly, so one of the power supply caps is yet to be changed, but it's capacity and esr read fine, so it will do until I put in my next component order.





There is more rust on the psu case than I thought so I think I will clean that off and repaint. That will wait until I get the missing capacitor though.

I started cleaning the case. It is mostly clean now, but have some deep crevices on the bottom half's inside to clean before I put the motherboard back in. Caps need to be installed on  motherboard and lower shield will need to be cleaned of rust spots.





 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #9 on: June 14, 2021, 02:49:30 AM »
Lower portion of case is finished cleaning and reinstalled the motherboard. Motherboard has new capacitors installed. Something I noticed however is a group of 4 capacitors were installed correctly, but the PCB would indicate two were backwards. I checked the schematics, and it would seem the polarity markings for two of the capacitors is in fact wrong, but capacitors were installed in proper direction at factory. I installed a 16x2 display on the gotek and will need to build a new enclosure for it.



I also put together a quick and dirty PS/2 mouse adapter to use for now until I get an adapter or an amiga mouse.


 

Offline Alley_Cat_JackTopic starter

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Re: Amiga 1000 Barn Rescue
« Reply #10 on: June 24, 2021, 04:12:01 PM »
Been a little busy, but still pushing forward. I have started the very tedious task of cleaning and repairing the keyboard switches. Half of them don't spring back up, and almost none of them register key presses. So far only a couple that will need replacements, most I should be able to get working again.