The Scarlet Amiga - Where is he now?

My regular readers will remember the horror that was the Scarlet Amiga. He had endured a tough life and one that no 16-bit 1990's home computer should have to suffer. Having rescued him from eBay, I set about making things right.

I didn't quite finish his story so this post brings an end to that and gives some closure to this tale of betrayal and intrigue*.

*does not contain betrayal or intrigue.

Firstly, all of the red abomination has gone. After picking off the gloss red paint I spent some considerable time sanding the case to remove all remaining traces. If you look closely in the 'vents' and ridges at the back you might see a few specks but in normal use, this Amiga is now beige. You might also notice that the top section of the case is rather lighter than the bottom section. It's not clear of this is as a result of my sanding or if the paint layer on the top case actually offered some protection to the colour and prevented the dreaded yellowing effect.

Almost looks completely normal. Almost. 

Two tone case - Note also chip in top case
near the numpad 'Enter' key.

I could sand the bottom section so that it would match the top but a) that would remove the original surface patterns etc from the bottom case and b) I'm far too lazy to do that. The case is clear of the red paint. It's time to move on....

One final point on the case. The plastic material for it seems very brittle in comparison to the A500+ that I used to have. The later 500+ seemed to be a more 'oily' plastic that was more flexible and, bizarrely, felt softer. Perhaps the age of this particular case means that it's just naturally that bit more brittle. Perhaps the production material was changed as time went on. Feel free to comment below if you know (or have an opinion!).

I've kept the keyboard. Its dual membrane loveliness stays with me. So there.

Why am I obsessed with the dual membrane keyboards?

Without KB or shielding - note Rev 8 board

Faithful A501 - survived the Varta onslaught

The more eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that this is actually a Rev 8 motherboard. In fact, it is the same motherboard that I repaired here. The original 1.3 motherboard went to eBay after I replaced its mouse port. I have always had a thing for the A500+ as it was my first Amiga. There's something comforting about watching the little blue disk disappear into the drive on the purple background. Much nicer than a plain white screen with a picture of a floppy disk on it. And I know that the consensus is that KS1.3 is the most compatible for games etc but, to be honest, I've found very few games that didn't work with the A500+. I certainly have far more trouble with the A1200 and games...

Along with the scarlet Amiga I also got a scarlet external drive. The case of this has also been relieved of most of its ghastly red covering but the results have not been as satisfactory. Underneath the red was the original cream paint and, in my rush to rid myself of red I managed to scrape through some of that too. It needs a really good sanding down, almost all the way to the bare metal before I spray it a more appropriate colour. I'm sensing beige. Or maybe beige. Possibly beige. No, wait. I know. Beige.

That case still needs some work...

More upsetting was that the drive would not read any pre-written disks. Not Workbench2.04, Extras, Fonts or even Workbench1.3. Another job of aligning the heads was in order which took some considerable time because of the way the drive is held in the case. To be able to adjust the read head I need to have the drive 'floating' but this causes problems because the platen underneath the drive is not covered. It was all too easy to knock the drive and then hear the scraping of the platen on the case underneath... It was, to put it simply, a major pain in the rear. After a lot of faffing I managed to get it to read 99% of disks but more importantly, disks formatted and written to on this drive were readable by my other drives. The one exception was an original Workbench1.3 disk I had. No matter what I did the drive just would NOT read it at all. I have no idea why. The disk works in my other drives but not in this one. But all the other original disks I have do now work in this drive. I will just have to put it down to the vagaries of floppy disks in general.

To be fair, this drive is nearly 30 years old...

...and needs some new feet too. :)

And here, gentle reader, ends the tale of the scarlet Amiga.