Bringing it back to life... A500

[Rick Dangerous]

Hi,

don't know if it is the right section in the board, but 2 days ago I brought back my A500 into the world of the living.
Exact that machine I purchased back in december 1986 when I was a boy aged 16 years!
Now in the year 2015 I am 45 years old and a big grin was running over my face that this 29 years old Amiga 500 is still running!
I just connected it to our modern LCD-TV via the Video/Audio-Plugs and it worked!
This A500 was boxed on the attic for about 10 years until now. Before that I collected many Disks from people who wanted to get rid of the old stuff and I stored them far away from magnetic influence.

Two days ago the first floppy I inserted was 'Emerald Mine', which I copied in early 1987 from a friend.
It worked! A 28 year old floppy still works. Fascinating!

Let's go back in to time...

This special A500 had some problems over the decades. Early 1990ies I plugged in and out the mouse/joystick on port 1 to often and oviously a short-circuit occured. The controller-chip for the joysticks and the mouse was killed.
Someone gave me the advise, to replace that certain chip.
I've had at that time a soldering iron but nothing to remove the old soldering.
My first working solution: I soldered away the damaged chip an then I cut 16 thin cables and soldered it onto the board. The other ends I solderered to the 16-pin-chip. It looked like a Skeleton or a Human Corpse.
But it worked. The Amiga-case did'nt fit but I ran this for about 2 years.
Until I got a solder-remover.

The other thing that happended was something with a magnet located at the disc-drive. The magnet ist glued and is responsible for writable/non-writable. Mine was jumping around in the area. I catched it and glued it back into position.

Ahhh! Memories!!!

Cheers,
Rick

[junosix]

Awesome! Sure it wasn't 1987 though? The A500 came out in October that year.

I assume you've kryoflux'd all those disks you whorer of boxed copie

[Boom^]

Its nice to see something old still have the ability to give enjoyment again Also great to see she fired up and worked great after being in storage for so long!

Enjoy

You could look at getting the ACA500 expansions to give it a bit of a modern kick with some extra ram, storage and WHDLoad for running games and programs.

[Zerotech]

Well when I was a young kid, my cousin had an amiga 500, it was an awesome machine while I had the commodore 64.

Now 20-30 years later I still have a Commodore 64 but also have got a hold on an Amiga 600 with expansions I did later on, soon I will be getting a hold of an amiga 500 for a review, mods etc I managed to purchase a US keyboard layout PAL Machine that were released in Australia/New Zealand as well as South-East Asia - [ Show youtube player ]

Ill probably to a tech review over my old vintage machines as soon as I get a hold of an amiga 500. Stay Tuned.

[Hodor]

My C64 is about 30 years old and it works like the first day.These machines are an absolutely amazing piece of hardware and hard as rocks.

[LieutLaww]

My newly aquired A1200 is in such good condition, you would have thought it came from the factory yesterday !