Slashdot Mirror
New Plastic For Old Amigas and Commodores
Ichijo writes: Several years ago, Slashdot reported that the Amiga community had developed a way to restore old, yellowed ABS plastic to like-new condition, and they put the recipe for the gel, dubbed Retr0bright, into the public domain. Since then, it was discovered that the effect of the gel is only temporary, and plastic treated with the gel soon reverts to its original yellowed state even when efforts are made to block it from additional UV light.
Now, Amiga enthusiast Philippe Lang has created a new Kickstarter campaign to design and build new, improved molds for Amiga 1200 housings and do a licensed production run using anti-UV ASA plastic in the original color plus black, transparent, and 9 other colors. His team is also investigating the feasibility of producing new Amiga 1200 keyboards if this campaign succeeds. This follows a successful production run by Commodore 64 enthusiasts of new C64c housings using the original injection molds and new C64 motherboards designed to modern standards and production methods. And a new Amiga 1200 clone motherboard is also in the works.
Now, Amiga enthusiast Philippe Lang has created a new Kickstarter campaign to design and build new, improved molds for Amiga 1200 housings and do a licensed production run using anti-UV ASA plastic in the original color plus black, transparent, and 9 other colors. His team is also investigating the feasibility of producing new Amiga 1200 keyboards if this campaign succeeds. This follows a successful production run by Commodore 64 enthusiasts of new C64c housings using the original injection molds and new C64 motherboards designed to modern standards and production methods. And a new Amiga 1200 clone motherboard is also in the works.
If you read the kickstarter, the new molds will include mounting holes inside for a Raspberry Pi, as well as another keyboard controller board.
I have a C64-Reloaded board with one of the newly produced transparent C64C cases. I have to admit it looks pretty cool. ...and that's kinda of a problem. For all the replacement boards and cases for these retro projects... there are no replacement KEYBOARDS or chips.
I only had to find a broken C64 to salvage the keyboard and chips from it.
For this A1200 replacement board and case, there are no replacement keyboards. You have to rip an old one apart to put one together - or find a broken one and refurbish it.
It's a pity that we can't completely rebuild these computers part for part without salvaging broken units.
Indeed in the case of the C64, the chips are hard to replace or replicate exactly (particularly the SID sound chip, which is highly sought after by electronic musicians)
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I'm not sure about where to get Amiga Populous legally, but you CAN buy an emulator: http://www.amigaforever.com/
Of course you could just download WinUAE by itself, but Amiga Forever includes licensed ROM and Workbench disk files for most versions of AmigaOS. It's also got a wizard for setup; handy if you're not used to fiddling with emulators. WinUAE has a lot of obscure, arcane, and weird settings. (Amigas had a lot of obscure, arcane, and weird hardware to emulate.)
If you just want the original Populous and don't much care that it's the Amiga version specifically, GOG.com has the PC port of the original game for $6.
The Playstation game was a later sequel, not a port of the original. Give the GOG version a shot.