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New Plastic For Old Amigas and Commodores

Posted by timothy on from the new-old-stock dept.

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.

9 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How about a Raspberry Pi case for an emulator? by viperidaenz · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you read the kickstarter, the new molds will include mounting holes inside for a Raspberry Pi, as well as another keyboard controller board.

  2. Case signatures by pipedwho · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. The problem is keyboards by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have a C64-Reloaded board with one of the newly produced transparent C64C cases. I have to admit it looks pretty cool.
    I only had to find a broken C64 to salvage the keyboard and chips from it. ...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.

    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
    1. Re: The problem is keyboards by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Pretty much.

      It would be nice if someone was making new keyboards, but there isn't anyone.
      There IS an indiegogo by some guy in Australia making new C64 keycaps... (in various colours and translucencies), but not new keyboards.

      https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

      Personally I'd like a mechanical keyboard for these computers so that they can shed their "toy" status a bit, but good luck getting Unicomp or some other mechanical keyboard maker to make replacements.

      --
      READY.
      PRINT ""+-0
    2. Re:The problem is keyboards by Ichijo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can find new old stock UK-layout Amiga 1200 keyboards on eBay for a reasonable price. All that's missing is the Help key, and the Power/Floppy/HD LEDs.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
  4. Re:How about a Raspberry Pi case for an emulator? by damnbunni · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. This is all well and good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But how can we use this to encourage more women to join STEM fields?

    1. Re:This is all well and good by robi5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm gonna whoosh on this but there was something about the approachability of computers for kids in the Commodore era. Kids of course including girl kids too. You took out a keyboard-sized device, plugged it in the wann and a tv, switched it on mechanically, and you were instantly greeted with a REPL prompt. There was no facebook or web or 'online', so you had a chance to explore what it does, do some programming initially with a book or magazine article on the side, and of course gaming.

      Now, a kid has to wade through lots and lots of unappealing layers (the OS, installing some language, selecting its application etc.) and alternative diversions (social, slashdot etc.) and the programming part, to a beginner, can feel really artificial, they can't create anything like what surrounds them on the desktop.

      So, in the past, using a personal computer typically meant programming, and the meaning first shifted to using Lotus / Excel / Word, then to just browsing. From programming, to content creation, to content consumption.

  6. Re:Yellowed plastic is the least of your concerns by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The thing is, it's sunlight/UV that turned the cases yellow in the first place, and the Retr0brited stuff is turning back yellow far, far faster than the initial yellowing - and it's doing it even if the computer was stored in an opaque cardboard box.

    No, it's not the UV that's doing it directly.

    It's the flame retardants put in the plastic that make it yellow, specifically, Bromine-based retradants. The plastic is mixed with it, and over time the bromine compounds change and brown the plastic, encouraged by UV breakdown of the plastic.

    Modern plastic doesn't do that because we don't bother with fire retardants anymore - if you want to see a story that played out like tobacco, lead and now climate change - the big chemical companies did the whole "without flame retardants your house will burn up instantly" thing. Complete with family-friendly lobby groups funded by the chemical companies. In the end, it turns out the health of the children won out especially since the flame retardants, while they worked, didn't really do all that much in the grand scheme of things. Because when the room's on fire anyways...