Yes, I’ve been at the eBays again! This time I got hold of an “untested” Amiga 600. It looks to be in reasonable cosmetic condition. It’s yellow, but clean – the previous owner appears to have made the effort to get rid of those dead spiders and toenail clippings that often seem to lurk inside old tech – although there’s a crack in the case by the floppy button, so either the wrong floppy has been previously fitted, or this one was badly secured.
Which raises another question: one of the two warranty seals is still intact (or possibly it’s a replacement seal?) yet someone must have been inside the case for the floppy to have caused the case crack. A mystery! If we believe the seal it means that the board will not have been recapped, so that has to be my first priority, since the surface mount caps in the Amiga 600 are notorious..
Fortunately capacitor kits are readily available from most retro outlets for all Amigas. So I grabbed one and fired up the soldering iron…
This is my first time replacing surface mount caps, so right now I don’t have a “favourite technique”. For this video I’m using what I shall describe as the “Ravenwolf Snip”, since that’s where I first saw it. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhUpcBpJUzg and be sure to check out and sub to Ravenwolf Retro Tech’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@RavenWolfRetroTech
The Amiga 600 was the pariah of the Amiga line when it was launched in 1992. Overpriced and under appreciated it was widely not bought by most people. But looking at it in 2022, I kinda like it. Sure it doesn’t have the numeric keypad of its bigger-but-lower-numbered brother the A500+ (still not working! Had to get a link in there for the SEO!!), but it does have an IDE header and a PCMCIA slot (and a modulator. Although, why??). I’m looking forward to expanding this A600 once it’s been restored, and look forward to reading your suggestions either here or on the channel.
I want to thank my favourite PCB maker https://www.pcbway.com for sponsoring this video. Be sure to check them out for your PCB needs.