I recently pulled my A500 (NTSC, KS1.3, 1MB), which I picked up a few years ago, out of the closet to play around with it and do some much needed maintenance.
The first thing I did was to remove the battery from my A501. It was covered in nasty white crystals and there was some damage to the board. Fortunately the damage is isolated to an area with no traces or components, and the removal was easy.
However, when I powered up the Amiga, all I got was some noise from the floppy drive. No LEDs lit up and there was no video output. After removing and re-installing the A501 a few times the machine began working normally, but I'm still concerned because I could not figure out what was causing the problem. All of the pins were lined up properly to start with.
My next job is to replace the left mouse button, as it is becoming less responsive, but I'm wondering what the best option is for a replacement component. Is there a 'softer' switch that has the same dimensions? I find the original buttons a little too stiff and loud for my liking, so if I'm going to replace them, I may as well address this as well.
After that, I may consider some internal upgrades, but I need to figure out which revision I have. I know that it is a later revision than my childhood A500 (NTSC, KS1.2, 1MB) since it has two Amiga keys and a Commodore case badge, whereas my old computer had one Commodore key and an Amiga case badge.
I also noticed that this machine uses the A501 as chip RAM, while my old machine used it as fast RAM.
I'm not sure if that's enough information to figure out which motherboard revision it has, but I'd rather not disassemble the machine at this time unless absolutely necessary.
That's about it for now. Any insight is appreciated.
