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.
we'd all 3D print these at home with digitally downloaded anti-Luddite files?
If you read the kickstarter, the new molds will include mounting holes inside for a Raspberry Pi, as well as another keyboard controller board.
Remember the signatures of the designers that were molded onto the inside of the original Amiga 1000 enclosures? Well, I see an update on that kickstarter page that the new A1200 boxes will get a similar treatment with at least one signature.
I still fondly remember the day back in the mid '80s when I opened up my first Amiga and found those signatures. It showed the designers really cared about what they'd created.
Kind of like the 'easter egg' hidden in a later version of Workbench that after a magic disk/in/out/mouse/press/etc incantation, would put up the message "We made Amiga, they f*cked it up". Implying they == Commodore.
I must dust off my old hardware and check out this kickstarter page in more detail.
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.
My experience says that electrolytic caps dry out after 20-30 years, which is the age of these machines. Not sure what else goes bad, I haven't worked on old hardware for about 20 years now.
/. really change 'Reply', which tells me I'm replying to the current article, with 'Post', which tells me I'm creating a new story? Dafuq Dice, are you driving anybody with more than 12 happily co-existing neurons out?
Did
But how can we use this to encourage more women to join STEM fields?
I owned a Commodore and an Atari, there were some great games for each of them.
My Atari was outfitted with the "Happy Drive", does anyone remember that? :) You could copy any game with one of those, and I do mean any game, regardless of all the funky copy protection schemes they came up with. Missing sectors, duplicate sectors, "fuzzy" sectors, sectors written outside the normal cylinders, etc etc.
My old Atari has been stored in a box for so long I'd be afraid to turn it on for fear of something blowing up (like the electrolytic caps). I have tons of cartridges and loads and loads of floppies, all lovingly stored away. I have no idea if the floppies could even be read now, but who knows. Sectors were gigantic back then so they might just still be recoverable.
I know there are software emulators out there for it, but a new Atari hardware gadget or re-make or whatever would be something I'd probably pony up some bucks for.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I would like mine yellowish.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Why????
Exact same reason people buy and restore old cars. They're part of our history and some of us grew up with them, so they're part nostalgia too.
The Amiga 4000T uses a standard AT form factor motherboard. Both Commodore and ESCOM shipped it in an Enlight full AT tower case. If it wasn't for the Commodore/Amiga branded on the front, it looked like a run of the mill PC clone!
It's not really any easier to cram an ATX motherboard into an AT case than an Amiga 2000 case.
Either way, you have to hacksaw a big hole in the back and fabricate mounts.
Not sure what the deal is here but it sounds like you have a personal problem with Individual Computers. They're not deliberately creating a lock-in, they're just saying that it's only guaranteed to work with their add-ons. You're more than welcome to add your own accelerator cards, and most of them should work, it's just that they don't want the hassle of people coming crying back with "I bought your new motherboard and it doesn't work with my 25 year old CPU daughterboard" sort of complaints. This is especially important since many A1200 accelerators exceeded the A1200 bus signal specifications, requiring modification of the motherboard to get them working. If I was Individual Computers I wouldn't touch those old cards with a barge pole.
And that piggy-backing method of attaching expansions is a method that was in use 15 or 20 years ago by many vendors, it's only that Individual Computers are one of the very few left that are still manufacturing add-ons like that. And given that they've been around for 20 years and new motherboards are only coming on the market now, I can't see any possibly way that it's a conspiracy to generate sales of new motherboards. Care to suggest an alternative way of extracting the digital video signals from the custom chips on the motherboard? Or the keyboard MPU signals? I build custom hardware myself and I use the same connection method. It's not ideal, no, but other than soldering directly to the chips, there's no other way of doing it. I even have some hardware (not from Individual computers) installed that way for 15 years without causing problems, and adaptors I've built myself working that way for 10 years.