Back to the Amiga 500+, Because I Cannot Leave It Alone
Pictures to come soon.
The Amiga 500+ is in a much happier place.
This is the machine I already repaired after the leaking battery damage, and the real-time clock is now fixed. It has been tested, it works well, and really I should probably just enjoy it.
Naturally, I have found a few more things to do to it.
The first job is not really necessary, but it has been bothering me slightly. Now that I have copper repair wire, I would like to remove the existing bodge wire and repair the broken original trace using 0.3mm copper wire instead. I can then cover the repair with green UV solder mask and make it look much neater.
The Amiga already works, so this will not improve anything electrically in any meaningful way. It is mostly about making the repair feel finished. Maybe that is a silly reason to take a working machine apart again, but the current wire repair was done when I was still slightly amazed that I had fixed anything at all. I would like to go back and do it a bit more neatly now that I have better materials and a little more confidence.
Of course, the broken trace is under the coin-cell battery holder, because nothing can ever be quite that simple. That means removing the holder, taking the motherboard out of the case, and unbolting the rear connectors so the board can come free from the metal shielding.
It is not a huge job, but it is just enough hassle to make me put it off until I have a few other things to do at the same time.
The Keyboard That Needs a Firm Talking To
There is also a small keyboard issue to investigate.
Some keys do not register unless they are pressed very firmly. The keyboard already has one of the newer hard membrane replacements fitted, so I do not think the membrane itself is the obvious culprit. It may be something as simple as the screws on the back of the keyboard needing a little tightening.
Another possibility is that the conductive pads on the key plungers need cleaning or replacing. I already have spare conductive pads, so that should not be a difficult repair if it comes to it. I just need to resist the urge to turn a five-minute check into a full keyboard archaeology session.
Still, while the machine is apart for the trace repair, it makes sense to look at it properly.
Too Many Kickstarts Is Probably Just Enough
The next upgrade is one I am genuinely looking forward to.
I have bought an RPROM board by Niklas Ekstrom and Per Bengtsson. This is intended to go inside the Amiga 500+ and let me switch between different Kickstart ROMs. My original plan was simple enough: switch between Kickstart 1.3 and 3.1.
Then I remembered the RPROM has eight ROM slots, which is the sort of feature that immediately turns a simple plan into a small experiment.
I would like to try Kickstart and Workbench 3.1.4.1, along with a proper hard disk installation of Kickstart 3.1.4, for which I have a valid licence. I am curious to see how newer Workbench setups behave on the A500+, while still keeping the machine close to the Amiga 500+ I originally had.
That is the balancing act with this machine. I want it to be more practical and easier to use, but I do not want it to stop feeling like my old Amiga 500+.
Replacing the Big Old Sidecar
I have also bought a CDTV-RAM-IDE style CPU-slot expansion from Sordan.ie. It is the 8MB RAM and IDE board that plugs into the CPU slot and then has the CPU plugged into it.
This should replace the old, bulky, power-hungry AlfaPower sidecar hard drive that I have used with the Amiga 500+. The sidecar is wonderfully retro in its own right, but it is also huge, clunky, and not something I want attached every time I just want to test a Workbench setup. Though I do love the sounds of its full-size 40MB hard drive clunking away.
The new board gives the machine 8MB of Fast RAM and a bootable IDE interface, which should make it much easier to try different Workbench installations. I plan to use it with my collection of small WD SiliconDrive CompactFlash cards, so I can have a few different AmigaOS setups without constantly repartitioning the same card.
I am especially interested in Workbench 3.1.4.1 on this machine. The later 3.1.4 setup seems to depend more on a proper disk-based installation than the older ROM-only style setups, so having a convenient IDE and CF arrangement should make experimenting with it far less painful.
Workbench 1.3 and Other Dangerous Curiosities
I would also like to try a more period-style Workbench 1.3 hard disk installation.
Part of me wants to see how close I can get to the sort of hard disk setup someone might have used back in the day, without having the enormous external drive permanently bolted to the side of the machine. I am curious whether this needs a custom Kickstart 1.3 ROM to boot properly, especially with older hard disk drivers such as the oddly named Oktapussy driver.
No idea how far I will get with that, but it feels like one of those experiments that will either be surprisingly easy or consume an entire weekend.
Compatibility with older games is still important to me, so I also want to test how invisible the CDTV-RAM-IDE board can be made when needed. The board has jumpers to disable Fast RAM and hard disk autoboot, which should help with fussy older software.
Longer term, I may fit an IDE-to-CompactFlash adapter so the CF card is accessible from the side expansion area. I have a spare expansion slot cover that could be modified to hold a small bank of switches. The Amiga 500+ already has the HDMI connector from the RGB2HDMI adapter coming out of that area, along with the button for the Pi RGB2HDMI settings menu, so anything extra needs to be done neatly.
I do not want the side of the machine to end up looking like the control panel from a budget spaceship.
A Working Machine That Still Has Plans
So the Amiga 500+ is not really broken anymore. That is the important bit. The battery damage has been dealt with, the RTC works, and the machine is already very usable.
The jobs left on it are more about tidying, experimenting and making the machine easier to live with. The trace repair can be made neater, the keyboard deserves a proper look, and the RPROM plus CDTV-RAM-IDE board should let me try a few different Kickstart and Workbench setups without dragging out the old sidecar hard drive every time.
As usual, none of this is something I would suggest doing blindly just because it worked for me. The machine is already working, which means every extra job needs to be treated carefully. Still, it should be a nice way to turn the Amiga 500+ from a rescued machine into something a bit more flexible, while still keeping the feel of the machine I remember.