Amiga A1200 Update

So, after my efforts to restore my beloved A1200, he's been sitting under a chair for the last year or so. But now I have a re-purposed laptop LCD screen that can use composite inputs (another post maybe) so I might be able to get him out a bit more and actually use the hardware rather than emulating through UAE4All.

After dusting him down I noticed something rather disturbing. He was no longer white. Nope. He's gone yellow again. After all that effort, he's back to almost the same colour he was before I started the restoration efforts. This was a rather unpleasant surprise to say the least.

As I left him in June 2014

Yellow again - February 2016

A bit more obvious next to the power supply

A bit of Googling revealed that this is a known issue with the Retr0bright method. Apparently:

"The original damage from light causes degraded or free bromides throughout the case from the fire retardants. Retr0Bright only takes these away from the surface layer. However these bromides can migrate fairly freely through the polymer. They don't need light to do this."

(From: http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2013-01-15-retr0bright-only-temporary.htm)

In other words, it's only ever going to be temporary. It will turn yellow again, eventually, no matter what you do. Curse you chemistry!

There are two alternatives here. Paint it or buy a new case.

Painting is an option but something that I would probably not bother with. There are loads of pictures of painted A1200s out there. Some are very, very cool. Some are, er, not. The potential for me to bugger it up far outweighs any benefit. I'd rather keep it yellow but unsullied.

Or I could buy a brand new case. Yes, you can buy a new Amiga A1200 case (if you're quick) for the princely sum of 79euro. An amiganut ran a kickstarter to create new injection moulds of the A1200 case and it was successful! Those who pledged to the kickstarter are going to get some pretty cool custom cases. Those of us who didn't know the kickstarter was there have to go to:

http://amigastore.eu/en/468-brand-new-amiga-1200-cases-from-new-molds.html

White is supposedly the only colour available but I suppose it depends on the demand as to whether other colours are made too for us non-kickstarter supporters. The big thing with these cases is that they will be made of ASA not ABS and ASA is NOT affected by UV so no more yellow. Ever. EVER.

Now all I have to do is persuade Mrs Crashed that 79euro is a bargain...