Amiga 1000 Restoration

 G'day everyone, this blog is my journey and experience with purchasing and restoring my favourite computer of all time, the Amiga 1000, and hopefully will help other people in their journey too.  My experience would see parts delivered from 9 different countries across the globe, and has been 4 months in the making.

Disclaimer: There is no sponsorship or payment in kind, and all comments are my own experience / opinions unless stated otherwise.  I am a private individual member of the public, I am not a business, nor am I representing any business.  This blog is not to be taken or used as advice or instruction, replicate at your own risk.  I have destroyed 1 x accelerators, 1 x GOTEK drive, and possibly 1 x Amiga 1000 (at time of writing) in my adventure so far 😅

September 2022:

After years diving into emulating the Amiga on PC, Mac and Raspberry Pi systems, even TheA500 Mini, and failing to find that Amiga feeling, I started looking around for a 'project' to dive into.  

If you just want to play Amiga games, save yourself a LOT of frustration, and just buy Amikit   I liked the product so much, I joined the beta testing team, but these days I have not been actively helping as I'm buried in the real hardware.  Amikit is the best of the setups I have used (and I've tried most), comes already configured and ready to play and avoids all the messy chip ram, library, IDE drives etc issues.  Plus you are supporting the Amiga community.

I also tried the Vampire 4 StandAlone , which advertises itself as 100% compatible.  But Gunnar and I have a different definition of 100% compatible.  I found in 2018, about 50% of the games worked, Nitro, Last Ninja, Nuclear War were not amongst those that worked - I was doing a lot of testing and reporting results back to the Apollo development team).  It also, still did not feel like an Amiga - it was something else, trying to be an alternative for modern computing.  Anyway, it wasn't what I was searching for, so it was sold off about 12 months later.

If you want a modern computer, buy an M1 Mac or for Amiga emulation, an Intel based machine and run WinUAE or FS-UAE (Noting that I found the M1 Mac took excessively long to start WinUAE or FS-UAE, even using the ARM build - but maybe that is just my experience).  Or the best all-round solution in my opinion, buy a Raspberry Pi 400 and run Amikit on that - it is the closest I came to feeling like I had a real and modern Amiga, and you can't beat the price/performance.

It took me a while  to forget about value for money, return on investment, or any benefit outside of it's a hobby, hobbies don't need to be justified, and it's good for everyone's mental health to indulge in a hobby (at least a little).

We have a local alternative to eBay here in Australia, called Gumtree (which is now owned by eBay anyway), and an Amiga 1000 came up for sale in a coastal town called Moruya, in NSW.  About 2.5 hours from where I live.  It came with a 1081 monitor, and external 1011 floppy drive, and a 2MB RAM expansion.  It was listed as "worked last time we turned it on", but was missing a keyboard and a mouse which were all warning signs, but exactly what I was looking for - a project.

The ask price was $1,000AUD, and I bought it without negotiating as the previous owners were really lovely people, and it happened to be my birthday, so the universe was telling me to do this (well, that's what I told my wife and kids).

In hindsight, buying an Amiga 1000 without a keyboard is not the best idea.  The keyboards are hard to come buy, and cost a fortune when they do come around!  

Later on I would purchase another Amiga 1000 for spares, and took the Amiga 1000 keyboard from that.  In the short term, I ended buying an Amiga 2000 keyboard on eBay and having it shipped from the US ($450AUD), while also purchasing an adapter on eBay (digital illusions) to go from DIN to 4-pin RJ10.  Note - the keyboard uses an old landline phone-like cable to connect to the Amiga, but it is NOT an RJ45 which is standard in Australia - it is a slightly smaller RJ10!!

I found an RJ10 cable at the Telecom Shop to replace a mangled cable that came with another Amiga 1000 I would also buy later.  DigiKey also sell these, so not too hard to find a replacement keyboard cable if needed.

Amiga 1000 day zero

After getting it home, I couldn't wait to plug it in and see if it would work.  Part of me hoped it would fail 😈

Failed to Boot

After plugging my new friend in, using the Commodore RGB cable, I was greeted with....nothing.  No picture, floppy drive light not coming on, power light on but no one was home.  Woohoo!  I got my wish 😜

At the same time, I had started corresponding with the creator of the Parceiro card, Mr David Dunklee based in the US.  David is a very interesting guy with many accomplishments and accolades to his name, plenty of info on the net about him, so I won't repeat that here, my focus is the Amiga 1000.  

The Parceiro is a must-have for any Amiga 1000 owner, you can make enquiries at: amiga.parceiro@outlook.com.  And you get to talk to the man himself!  David has been critical to my project, I really owe him a great debt of gratitude.  Anyway, more on the Parceiro in a later blog.

Mr Dunklee had the following advice which helped troubleshoot, even when I had no mouse, no keyboard, and could not get a picture:

"I’d check to see how far the Amiga can get in its boot cycle.  Even if you don’t have a working monitor, you can still power up the Amiga.  After the chime, you’ll be prompted to insert the Kickstart disk.  (Do you hear a constant click every ~1second from the drive?)  Put a kickstart in and it should load 23 tracks (23 clicks) on the disk.  If it gets that far, your Amiga is 99% good!  If it doesn’t get that far, then there’s a few other things we can do."

I was getting the chime, but my floppy drive was not activating (and no kickstart screen), which was a dead CIA 8520 EVEN chip (U6S on my PAL Amiga, U6N on an NTSC Amiga), which once replaced fixed that issue.  I will come back to the troubleshooting in a later blog.  BTW - I found the correct chips from the Phoenix Manual on amiga-storage.net.

It is not uncommon in 2022 to have problems with a 37 year old computer (the Amiga 1000's birthday is July 23rd 1985).  And now, I felt I had a free licence to strip the Amiga 1000 back to bare metal!

Bare Metal.  It's like Death Metal.  Except harder, faster, and more punk:

Step1: remove the power, all peripherals, remove the plastic front cover (in the middle of the front panel), unscrew the RAM expansion, and remove the 256KB RAM expansion module:

Middle plastic cover and 256KB module removed

The 256KB RAM Module

The MiniMegs 2MB RAM Expansion (plugs in to side port of the Amiga 1000)

The inside of the 2MB RAM expansion

A quick side note, this MiniMegs 2MB expansion from MAST was somewhat a breakthrough at the time as it found a way to drastically cut the cost by expansions by using ZIP chips instead of DIP chips, read more about it on the bigbookofamigahardware.com.

Step 2: Flip the Amiga 1000 over and remove the 5 screws from bottom, plus another 2 screws holding the front-panel in place:

A magnetic tip screwdriver is your best friend here

There are no screws on the back to remove:

Step 3: Carefully prod the groove on the side to pop-out the catch and enable the lid to be released.  I should have used something with a plastic tip, not metal as a hard plastic tip means less risk to scratching or damaging the case.  But the lid came away pretty easily:

Under the lid are the famous signatures of the amazing pioneering engineers, including Mitchy (Jay Miner's pet dog), Joe Pillow and Ron Nicholson whose signature is also on the original Macintosh!!  You can read more about Ron Nicholson at Byte Cellar.  And more about Joe Pillow at The Amiga Museum.  

See what I mean about this being a key point in the universe where amazing people crossed paths and created something wonderful?

The outside looked in pretty good shape, the insides were another story, and proof this computer had spent a lot of time down at the coast :).  Note this looks bad, but it's actually just surface rust, and not corroded through - Amiga 1000's are tough...like yer grandma's boots tough!!

Rusted shield

Closer inspection shows rusted pit-marks

It smelled old, and not in a good way.  But now I could carefully remove the the front panel, and remove the wires connecting to the Power and Floppy drive LEDs.

Power LED is not removable from the mainboard

I had to remove the Power LED from the front panel, there was no  intermediary connector, and it was permanently fixed to the mainboard, hence could not be removed.

The Floppy Drive does have an intermediary connector and much easier to remove.

There are a LOT of screws to remove the main RF Shield from the Amiga 1000, and there are some small metal tabs that may need to be 'twisted' to make them straight so that the Shield can be easily removed.

Shield removed...sooo many screws!!

The mainboard is thankfully in good shape, no obvious damage, just dusty.  The rectangular RF Shield over the clock crystal and circuits is also rusted, you may not recognise the same cover later in this blog.  Wait till you see how they all come up...

I've then removed the floppy drive, and the ground cable connected to the floppy drive chassis.  I have read that this ground cable is important for reliable reading of floppy disks, however if you are removing your floppy drive (to make room for an accelerator or an internally mounted GOTEK drive) then you don't need it.  But, don't cut it - you might need it in the future if you put a floppy drive back in!!

Don't forget to also unscrew and remove the brass cylinders (there are 4, either side of the screw I'm removing in this pic)

Floppy Drive Ground Connection, be careful when removing your floppy drive.

Ugh!  37 years of dust build-up

I was going to have to take everything out, strip everything back for this restore, so out came the mainboard, the expansion port shielding, and the power supply (after disconnecting the molex connector from the mainboard).  Note the rear panel just slides up and out, it has enough flexibility to manipulate off the mainboard and up and out without breaking anything and without much force.

Removing the back panel - no screws

Expansion port shielding also rusted

Removing the expansion port shielding

Under the mainboard is a bottom shield and polyurethane sheet to remove.  It comes away easily after twisting the metal tabs on the mainboard so that they are straight and slips though the holes on the mainboard.

Bottom shield

Polyurathene sheet that protects the mainboard from shorting-out on the bottom shield.  Very important, DO NOT lose this!! 

And finally, out comes the power-supply:

On the topic of replacing caps:

With the computer now in pieces, I could start a closer inspection, starting with capacitors.  There is a lot on the net about replacing caps, and I ordered a replacement set from eBay, this was a mistake as the caps that arrived were rubbish Chong X caps, that you would never put these in anything you didn't see as no value and wouldn't throw away.  If you need caps, go to Digikey or Mouser and take the time to carefully order the right ones for YOUR Amiga 1000 there are differences in the cap values on different mainboards AND the in the power supplies).

I have found there are two power supplies, Shindengen and Mitsumi (which is what I have, and the one shown in the picture below).  The  Shindengen seems to be more common, especially outside Australia and you can easily find schematics for it (I've added the links here).  The Mitsumi is hard to track down schematics for.

From my observations, I think the Mitsumi Cap list is as follows:

Mitsumi Power Supply:

1x  180uF 400V 25mm diameter (C106, max height ~35mm tall)

3x 3300uF  10V 15mm diameter (C207, C208, C209)

1x 1000uF  35V 15mm diameter (C204)

2x  470uF  16V 10mm diameter (C201, C205)

1x 2200uF  10V 15mm diameter (C210)

1x  330uF  10V  8mm diameter (C202)

1x    1uF  50V  5mm diameter (C12)

And some Mouser Part #'s I was considering for replacement:

ECA-1CM220B

ECA-1CM101B

ECA-1CM470B

ECA-1CM221B

ECA-1CHG471B

Or checkout Retro-Rewind who sell a complete Amiga Cap kit, and advise they only use the top quality capacitors, I've ordered a set as I think I may be having some power issues inside my Amiga 1000:

Cap   -  Value - Rating - Type
C48   -  22uf  -  16v   - Radial
C49   -  22uf  -  16v   - Radial
C50   -  22uf  -  16v   - Radial
C63   -  22uf  -  16v   - Radial
C64   -  22uf  -  16v   - Radial
C65   -  22uf  -  16v   - Radial
C66   -  22uf  -  16v   - Radial
C78   -  100uf -  16v   - Radial
C79   -  100uf -  16v   - Radial
C80   -  100uf -  16v   - Radial
C175  -  100uf -  16v   - Radial
C93   -  220uf -  16v   - Radial
C95   -  470uf -  16v   - Radial

(Daughterboard)
C10   -  100uf -  16v   - Radial
C11   -  100uf -  16v   - Radial

Be prepared to wait a week or 2 for your order to arrive, so hurry-up and be patient!

Visual inspection did not show any problem signs - no caps were bulging/looking fat, tops blown, no leaks on the board, no signs of needing replacement.  I did do some further testing with an MESR-100 which I picked up from eBay.  This is an Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR) meter that I was using in-circuit to gauge if my caps were still within spec.  YouTube has heaps of videos on how to use an ESR meter, how they works etc.  I liked this one from TampaTec.  

I also like that the MESR-100 won't break the bank at about $30AUD but still tells me that the capacitor is good if it within a certain range, and if not - I likely need to replace it.

Looks darn good for 37 years old!

You can't check whether a capacitor is good with a multimeter.  And really, you should remove capacitors from the circuit before you can trust the readings, but I was just looking for an indication, not a specific measurement.  

I did have a fews caps out of spec, and took the power supply to Prestige Electronics in Canberra for a professional second opinion and repair - being AC and such a critical system in the computer, I did not want to risk doing it myself (be prepared to be patient, repairs take a few weeks to be looked at; the resulting job is worth the wait) .  That, and Prestige Electronics was the only place in town still willing and able to work on CRTs and power supplies (it's a dying art).

I did a lot of research into the world of capacitors at this point.  There is a LOT of info out there.  The quick version then, a quick internet search shows any of these capacitors brands are considered trusted and high quality:

• Nichicon
• Rubycon
• NCC
• VISHAY.
• Panasonic
• KEMET
• TDK

In my Amiga 1000 and in my Mitsumi power supply, all capacitors are Rubycon brand.  Japanese, German and Taiwanese made capacitors are considered the most reliable (the best).  Chinese brands are not recommended at this time due to the varying quality, and avoid eBay at all costs due to fake capacitors being sold (yes, fake capacitors, where a smaller/lower rated capacitor is put inside the package and marked as a larger capacity!).

Avoid "can" capacitors unless you are replacing a can.  'Can' capacitors were used on later Amiga's, and are the one's that typically leak/go dry and require replacing about now - lowered cost of later Amiga builds, but the Amiga 1000 did not compromise and usually does not need recapping (Thank you Mr Dunklee for the advice). 

Stick with the electrolytic capacitors to stay as close as practical to spec, although a modern replacement might see polymer capacitors as a viable and long lasting alternative to electrolytic if you have too, or just can't control yourself.  The only other type of capacitor in your Amiga 1000 that I am aware of are in-line ceramic capacitors (they are a light-blue colour and look a bit like resistors..more on this in a later blog entry, when I blew one out of existence with an SMD rework station).

Last piece of advice, and again received from Mr. Dunklee.  You will see lots of advice about replacing capacitors with a higher voltage rating type.  Do not do this - you want the capacitor to blow before your Amiga 1000 don't you??  Stay to the same spec as much as practical as 'enhancements' are likely to do more harm than good.

1081 CRT Repairs:

I also took my 1081 in for service as it definitely needed repair, and while I've done work on arcade CRT's in the past, I really did not enjoy discharging the cobra.  The current in a CRT Tube is still powerful days or evens weeks later, so discharging is a must.  

I am deliberately not talking about how to discharge here, because it really should be done by a professional, and the charge is enough to throw you across a room, into a wall and then you are likely dead.  The world then cries, as another Amiga is orphaned.

For monitor repairs, here is a starting list of what to ask to be done:

   1) Re-solder High Voltage (HV) coil to main board

   2) Check/replace all electrolytic capacitors 

   3) Clean off dust and oil

   4) Check for burnt or heated spots

   5) Resolder SCART solder points - often cracked/dry joints from years of plugging in/out.

I also read somewhere that a standard failure is for the monitor to "pop," then go dark. Hitting it may bring back the picture. This is often caused by cold or cracked solder joints on the flyback transformer, which resoldering should cure.  

And finally (not the monitor, but the mainboard this time.  Noting I did not need this mod, and cannot vouch for it fixing anything), The composite video of the Amiga A1000 needs colour correction.  Your red, greens, and blues may not look correct.  The modification is simple; just remove resistor R140; located on the rear-left of the motherboard. On some A1000's, R140 will have to be replaced with a 470K ohm resistor instead.  

I have not attempted the R140 mod, my RCA output is rubbish, but I use RGB to SCART to connect to my 1081 and get an excellent picture! 

 

BTW - On a side-note, I read that a 1084S is the same tube and circuit, but with updated input connections and stereo speakers, but that's it.  You are not missing out on anything from your 1081.

Wayne Johnson has a great blog on a 1081 repair worth reviewing.

Last word on Caps:

Next I turned to my Amiga 1000 mainboard, testing of capacitors here showed they were all good, no need to do anything.

In discussion with Mr Dunklee and from my own real-life experience, the Amiga 1000 was built to a far higher quality standard than all future models.  It's built like a tank, and the Caps are unlikely to need replacing at all - meaning, don't add unnecessary and completely avoidable risk to your Amiga 1000 by replacing things that aint broke!!  Control yourself!! (Mr Dunklee had to tell me at least 3 times to stop!)

My cleaning obsession:

With that done, it was time to move on to the cleaning, bring on the IPA (Isopropyl)!  Do not use water to clean your electronics, not even methylated spirits, or vinegar.  Go down to your local hardware store and purchase as close to 100% IPA/Isopropyl as you can find:

I found this one in Australia, at Jaycar Electronics, don't drink it!
 

Just spray it straight on

Use a toothbrush to scrub the years of neglect away.  A toothbrush is ideal because it it non-conductive, and it is soft on the electronics.  If you did happen to break something, then it needed replacement anyway.  Also use cotton-buds to softly wipe away foreign material, you will go through a LOT of cotton-buds!

The result is amazing, and your electronics will love you for the wash.  IPA / Isopropyl will evaporate off the board in just a few minutes, but I always wipe down my board with a micro-fibre cloth, and use a can of compressed air to blow away the last residual foreign material.

After the IPA / Isopropyl bath, Brasso can be used to clean the expansion connectors, it does a fantastic job of renewing the connector to new.  Don't go overboard, but give them a good clean with a soft cloth.

Elbow grease and patience.  Rub, rub, rub!

Brasso/silver polish is also great to use on the peripheral connectors - use elbow-grease to bring them back to a shiny mirror finish and remove years of tarnish.  unrelated tip: Brasso is also great on cleaning your car lights, removing the foggy/discolouration that can occur in plastic over time and refreshing them to as-new!

These were tarnished blackened brown

I spent probably 3 days, maybe 5 days, in my dismantling and cleaning, and that won't be everyone's cup-of-tea, so do what works for you.  I am planning to keep my Amiga 1000 operational until I die, and I don't expect that to be any time soon. In fact, I am planning instructions for my Amiga's to come with me, even then! 💀

Putting the mainboard aside for a bit, I look again at my rusty shielding, and put all the metal shielding into a plastic tub purchased from the Reject-Shop:

Some pre-cleaning with a wire brush and WD40, but still not good

In researching on how to renew rusted metal, a novel option of using Coca-Cola came up, so why not give it a go?  nearly 9 litres later, the acid bath begins....

I checked in on the acid bath each day, and gave each metal piece a good scrub with steel wool to help it along.  While it was working, it was just too slow.  So on the 5th day I added vinegar, bi-carbonate soda and lemon juice to increase the citric acid.  

By the 7th day, I popped down to my local hardware store for some rust remover to increase the Phosphoric Acid already present in the Coca-Cola (which is why Coke is a candidate for removing tarnish on metal surfaces), and bring this part of the project to a close.

It was a fun experiment, but the most economical and fastest solution is easily to go to the hardware store and buy rust remover.  Much cheaper and far more effective than 9 litres of Coca-Cola, but not nearly as much fun :).  Don't drink the Coke from the tub...it is now toxic!!

Here is the result after 10 days - finally took it out of the acid bath, washed it down and dried it off:

Remarkable result, but not good enough

Now before I go on, Mr Dunklee did point out that the Amiga shielding is not really useful today, it's purpose in the olden times was to minimise interference with things like rabbit-ears TV antenna's.  My secondary interest was an experiment with reducing EMF transmissions (a topic surrounded in conspiracy theories, there is no evidence to say EMF in the home environment is a problem).

The acid wash has made a remarkable improvement, but the rust had done its damage, and I would not be able to restore a shiny surface yet.  I looked at painting it, but not only would that risk paint flaking off over time, it also looks a bit rubbish.  The only solution for my use-case was electroplating.

Regarding electroplating, to be honest, I just wanted to do it for fun.  I wanted a shiny, mirror finish, which would require chrome plating, but chrome won't stick to tin, which the shielding is made from.

To get around this, I chose dual plating, with the first layer being nickel - a highly conductive material which would do a superior job of catching, trapping and dissipating EMF radio waves, and then chrome plating over the top.  I could have also used Silver instead of Nickel for another $300AUD, but I think this was going too far - and Silver tarnishes, who wants to increase their cleaning burden?  

You can find more info on the electroplating process here.

Find more information on the conductivity properties of electroplating materials here.

And this article talks about the choices for EMI Shielding.

2 weeks, and $600AUD later, I had dead-sexy shielding, thanks to Electroplating Technology in Queanbeyan (no website (02) 6297 0535). Even Apple would have to admire this!

From this:

 

Filthy beast!

To this:

OMG!

You

Sexy

Thang!

Fast forward a bit with some of the case back on

The rust had pitted the tin, and there was no recovering that, so there are some slight blemishes, but the difference is out of this world!  I'd love to find somewhere that could take a mould of the A1000 top cover and create a clear perspex copy so this could always be on display it's so good!  But I know it's in there, a hidden treasure!  Fingerprint marks come off very easily with IPA / Isopropyl in case anyone else loves their Amiga enough to electroplate their shielding 😍

As for the EMF Emissions (a good excuse to use with a partner who does not understand the value of shiny shielding...you're doing it for the kids!!).  You can read more here if EMF is a concern for you.

A quick explanation, you know in the movies they have those Gieger counters?  A Gieger counter measures radiation is units of Gauss.

1 Gauss = 100 Micro-Tesla's (uT).  Above 0.4uT may be harmful (depends what you read)

Power lines are usually less than 100 Micro-Tesla's (less than 1 Gauss) from what I have read

10 Gauss will damage credit cards etc..So in my opinion, even at 0.4uT, we are well within safe limits in our homes....

V/m = Volts per meter.  Above 40 could be potentially dangerous (depends what you read)

Before any treatment (top half is V/m, bottom half is uT, both are warning 'Harmful'):

And After Electro-Plating (top half is V/m, bottom half is uT, both are showing as 'Safe'):

So, yes it made a difference, HOWEVER....Turn the CRT Monitor on, and V/m stays the same, but uT jumps up to 1.54...oh well, I'm lowering the total cumulative exposure?

Using a Flat-Screen LCD reduces uT significantly and drops V/m.  The other fact to note, is that EMF drops significantly and very quickly the further away you are from it - stand next to your microwave oven and the radiation hits dangerous levels, step back 1 or steps and it drops right back to safe levels.

Final note - readings fluctuate around, so treat these screen grabs as a very rough guide only.

Reading using a modern Flat-Screen monitor via an OSSC

Do it for the kids!😇

To finish off my cleaning obsession, there was the keyboard, which despite paying so much for, was filthy!  

Flip the keyboard over and remove the screws from the bottom cover top pop the top cover off and to lift the keyboard out.  Popping off the keys was not really difficult and did not require a key remover tool, but be careful as the plastic can become brittle due to age and the dirt and grime weakens the plastic.

Almost there....

Some keys, like the Spacebar, Enter Key, Shift keys, Tab Key - have a small wire to help keep keypresses feeling consistent and even.  Pay attention and note where these go so you can put them back easily.  Be patient, a pair of pliers will help.

All keys removed from the A2000 keyboard, ready for cleaning

Brining back my handy toothbrush and IPA / Isopropyl, I went to work scrubbing in and around the key mechanisms.  The individual keys I popped into the dishwasher using the cutlery basket to keep them together.

An Amiga 1000 Keyboard I applied the same treatment to

And then putting it back together...all cleaned up!

Maybe 6 hours from when dismantling started?

Ahhh, much better...

While that was happening, I also popped the rest of the plastics into the dishwashers, and then rubbed in some Oxy from Aldi (contains the hydrogen peroxide needed) and let them in the sun for a couple of days in an attempt at retro-brighting.  I then popped them through the dishwasher a second time.  They were very clean, and smelled great, but the retro-brighting didn't really make much difference, maybe a small improvement.  Lucky I didn't have bad yellowing to start with.

I did not really do the retro-brighting correctly, and my results reflect that.  It wasn't really an issue that I had to resolve remember, so I didn't pay much attention to it, my Amiga 1000 looks awesome.

  

That's a very long entry, I'm, going to pause here, next blog: Modding the mainboard to prepare for the life-changing, Parceiro.

The ultimate result