Some of our readers may remember a certain Commodore 64 rescued from the elements a few years ago. That was a project by Adrian on the YouTube channel Adrian’s Digital Basement and recently he’s back at it, this time with a Commodore Amiga 500. Its outward appearance doesn’t seem all that bad at first, but the corroded and oxide-fused connectors hint at a true Lovecraftian horror inside…
The Commodore Amiga 500 turned 36 last April. For many friends and colleagues living in Europe, it was their first home computer, and they learned much of what they know thanks to its environment and resources.
With five million units sold, the Amiga 500 achieved great popularity, mainly for gaming: its graphics and sound walked ahead of its direct competitors at the time. The fan community is still so large that today we can find advanced projects like emulators and PCB reproductions, but no one denies that there are fewer and fewer machines out there, and rescuing them is a priority. That brings us to the Adrian’s Digital Basement channel, where he decided to repair an Amiga 500 in a... calamitous state.
An Amiga 500 in a grave of rust. Will it live?
Imagine rust so deep that it’s impossible to remove the RCA connectors without help. That’s the state the Amiga 500 arrived in to Adrian’s hands. An overdose of WD-40 on the connectors was essential to separate them, but once he got in into the machine, he found the horror of the electromagnetic shielding, which basically came out in pieces.
Another problem (believe it or not) is that many chips on the Amiga 500 use sockets that usually end up devoured by corrosion. Adrian removed the second shield from the PCB, and the one covering the memory expansion (with the battery still intact, it was saved by a miracle), spreading rust dust everywhere. He also prepared replacement ports for the connections, but the chips demanded a good part of his attention.
The video stretches for almost an hour, although the first results didn’t take long to arrive. The Amiga 500 displays its error codes with different colors on the screen, but the constant purple color forced Adrian to use his oscilloscope to get a precise diagnosis. The second half of the video is certainly more technical, includes several chip swaps, and the use of another Amiga 500 to compare states.
There are also some errors (the diagnostic chips don’t work without mods), however, all he needed in the end was a good cleaning of the chips and sockets, along with two capacitors. From a certain point of view, the video serves as a testament to the resilience of the “old electronics”, and if someone has one of these computers at home, it most likely only requires a little love to work again.
