The Scarlet Amiga

I saw this Amiga on eBay. I could not let it go. I had to save it...

A package arrived. Cautiously, I unwrapped it and, miracle of miracles, it had survived the journey with MyHermes. Good show!

A Mysterious Package

Bubble Wrap Goodness

Who can see what's not quite right?

First things first. Does it have a trapdoor expansion? Yes, an A501 still in it's shield. This almost certainly means the battery is still attached. This has to be dealt with first. Batteries that are in equipment this old will leak and they are not known for containing nice neutral compounds that are safe on PCBs and components. They contain chemicals that destroy PCBs so I have to get inside this and quick.

A501 With Shield (and Evil Battery)

I tried to de-solder the shield properly but my iron could not get hot enough given that the whole shielding acts like a huge heat sink. I resorted to cutting it off. Sure enough, the battery was still there and there was some corrosion. It wasn't too bad though, and a quick splash of vinegar (no lemon juice available) and a gentle scrape with a screwdriver got rid of the green stuff.

Battery Removed & Corrosion Cleaned

The Affected Area - I've seen worse...

Next, clean the 'slightly' grubby keyboard. This thing was filthy, with a capital 'fetch me Kim and Aggie!'. It looked like it had been under somebody's bed for a good number of years given the amount of dust and fluff and other crap that caked the whole thing. I first used a small screwdriver to scoop off the biggest bits of fluff (nice) then prised off each key carefully.

Flufftastic

Number Pad & Cursor Keys Removed

It doesn't get much better with the rest of the keys removed...

By now I had realised that this is an unusual type of keyboard. Most A500s have a Mitsumi manufactured keyboard but this one is actually different. It does not have the usual spring under each key - which are very easy to lose - rather the spring is under the plunger of each key. Also, instead of a single membrane connector this is the rather unusual double membrane type. The keys are also a very subtly different shape, being a bit more angular at the edges (and they are also made of thinner plastic - especially the space bar). As I understand it, this type of keyboard was manufactured by Samsung.

Normal A500 Keyboard by Mitsumi

Samsung Keyboard - note the double membrane connectors

This Samsung keyboard makes me far happier than it should do. It may not be that rare but it is unusual and so it makes me happy. :)

Each key was washed in warm, soapy water then left to air-dry thoroughly before being put back onto the keyboard. This is not my favourite activity, after all there are over 100 keys on these things... It also gave me the chance to put a few things right. Firstly, the 'Tab' key was upside down. Also, the bottom row of keys were in the wrong order. Instead of the usual 'zxcvbnm' they were arranged as 'zvcxbnm' so someone had clearly been messing around with this Amiga.

Keys. Lots of them.

All back together and CLEAN!

At this point, I'm ready to try and switch this thing on. Trapdoor expansion? Check. Keyboard? Check. Floppy drive? Check. Hideously painted top case hidden out of view? Check.

And....... red screen. ROM fault. Bugger.

I have a spare 1.3 ROM so I thought that this would be an easy fix. It turns out that it was even easier than that. The previous user had obviously been inside the case and, for reasons unknown, had taken out the ROM chip. And then put it back. The. Wrong. Way. Round. A quick switcheroo and try again.

Success! We have a Kickstart 1.3 boot screen. Now to try and boot workbench. But then the next problem rears its ugly head. The workbench disk is not recognised by the floppy drive. This IS a big problem. This symptom normally means that the heads need to be aligned which is no easy task. It requires that the screws holding the heads (or head motor - depending on drive model) need to be loosened and the heads moved by a fraction of a fraction and then the screws tightened again before testing to see if there's any difference. Repeat until the end of time...

Inside the Floppy Drive

Adjustment screws either side of the main motor

Fortunately, a chap called Thomas Richter (who is still active on the Amiga forums) created a clever program to assist with this. What happens is that a blank disk is written with a series of basic sound tones across several tracks with the highest pitch being track zero. Between the tracks is just noise (or silence). The small utility then reads the disk and outputs the sound based on the location of the heads on the disk. While the disk is spinning the heads are adjusted until the tone from track 0 can be heard and then locked into place. It sounds great in principle but does it work in practise?

Yes, is the short answer. The longer answer is that it took a lot of patience and a fair bit of too-ing and fro-ing but, ultimately, I got the floppy in this Amiga to read disks. It took about an hour or so to get it 'just right' but, at the end of the day, it was time well spent. The drive now reads all disks including the Workbench, all original games and even some floppies that last saw the light day about 15 years ago.

So that's the basics covered. Now, what the hell am I going to do with that awful paint job?