The last Amiga personal computer rolled off the assembly line in 1996, well over 20 years ago. Of course, they had their real heyday in the late 80s, so obviously if you have any around now they’ll be in need of a little bit of attention. [Drygol] recently received what looks like a pallet of old Amiga parts and set about building this special one: The Vampiric Amiga A500.
The foundation of this project was a plain A500 with quite a bit of damage. Corrosion and rust abounded inside the case, as well as at least one animal. To start the refurbishment, the first step was to remove the rust from the case and shields by an electrochemical method. From there, he turned his attention to the motherboard and removed all of the chips and started cleaning. Some of the connectors had to be desoldered and bathed in phosphoric acid to remove rust and corrosion, and once everything was put back together it looks almost brand new.
Of course, some other repairs had to be made to the keyboard and [Drygol] put a unique paint job on the exterior of this build (and gave it a name to match), but it’s a perfect working Amiga with original hardware, ready to go for any retrocomputing enthusiast. He’s no stranger around here, either; he did another extreme restoration of an Atari 800 XL about a year ago.
Is phosphoric acid easily obtainable? It is perfect for silvervare…
It’s used in paint-on rust inhibitor gel such as Jenolite and Kurust. It’s also a major ingredient in Coca Cola. If you soak parts in Coke Zero, you don’t get such a sticky residue from all the sugar either!
Naval jelly is about 30% phosphoric acid, but sometimes contains a little sulphuric acid for good measure. Good idea with the Coke zero!
It’s an ingredient in lots of common limescale removers
You can get it from the hardware store, it’s called Naval Jelly, or rust dissolver gel.
Well, it is standard rust removal component. Sometimes it is in its pure form. You just have to read a product info ;)
Wow, great job!
I would have tossed that one in the trash…
Nice bit about the electrochemical bath method for rust removal. Gotta try that sometime. :D
Not a fan of the color scheme though.
Thought the same, love the revival, the paint job is a little to gaudy for my tastes lol
very interesting restoration. But how exactly were the keys painted red, because the print still shines through, while the color red seems to be very vibrant. Is this special paint or a special technique or was the text on the keys reapplied?
Any way, this thing looks awesome! It’s actually even more awesome realizing that it looked like trash to begin with. Very cool job well done!
I’d imagine that they were dyed red, then clear-coated.
These were actually painted red. The trick is to use a car paint for rear lights :D
I think there was a re-release of brand new keycaps made from restored moulds recently… I don’t know if red was was of their options.
The fabric dye for nylon does work well on some plastics.
From the name I assumed he would include a Vampire 500 V2 FPGA-based accelerator. But no, just the paint job. Nice work, but a lot more can be done inside.
Except the Vampire 500 never seems to be available which is a bad sign.
As far as I can tell, there’s a small team of people designing them, but only one person actually building the boards, in their spare time.