Current Working Machines
Acorn Archimedes A3000
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition Date | May 2023 |
| Work Done | Battery damage cleanup Light general clenup Used unpopulated battery door and PCB area for new battery |
| Current State | Working! |
| Upgrades | Hard disk upgrade RISC OS 3.11 upgrade |
| Restoration Blogs | Archimedes tag |
This Archimedes is an early revision with a 1MB RAM upgrade installed. Luckily the battery damage was minimal.
Acorn Archimedes A3010
| Acquired via | |
| Acquisition date | Unknown |
| Work done | Extensive battery damage repair Ports replaced |
| Current state | Working! |
| Upgrades | RAM upgrade Hard disk upgrade |
| Restoration blog posts | Archimedes tag |
I bought this from a school teacher who in-turn purchased it from their school. It came with an Acorn printer which I haven’t tested yet and an Acorn monitor which was given away to a member of the Norwich Amiga Group.
Acorn Archimedes A5000
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition date | July 2023 |
| Work done | Battery damage repair to floppy and IDE area Replaced failing electrolytic caps Repaired damage traces in audio area Replaced faulty CMOS chip |
| Current state | Working! (needs cleaning) |
| Upgrades | RAM upgrade SimTec IDE podule + CF card |
| Restoration blog posts | Archimedes tag |
This is an ex-BBC World Service machine I bought from eBay. I thought it would only need very minor repairs based on the photos and description, unfortunately it required a lot more work than I expected. But it is now running very well.
Acorn RiscPC 700
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition date | 2022 |
| Work done | Cleanup Battery damage repair |
| Current state | Working! |
| Upgrades | New CD drive RAM upgrade VRAM upgrade (soldered) CPU upgrade (StrongARM 233) IDE podule upgrade 2x SD -> IDE upgrades Ethernet upgrade (and repair) ROM upgrade New keyboard PS/2 mouse converter |
| Restoration blog posts | RiscPC tag |
This RiscPC was acquired via eBay and luckily was in quite good condition, just really dirty and some battery damage to take care of. I added many upgrades to this machine as I love using it.
Acorn Atom
| Acquired via | Private purchase |
| Acquisition Date | October 2023 |
| Work Done | Reset fix Converted to use a 5v PSU Video RAM replaced by Noise Killer board CPU swapped to R65C02 (lower power) Main RAM swapped to SCM21C14 (lower power) RGBtoHDMI added Cleaned |
| Current State | Working |
| Restoration Blogs | Acorn Atom |
This Acorn Atom was purchased along with a boot load of Acorn parts. It was mostly functional, but needed a little bit of work to reduce the heat / power stress on the machine.
BBC Master 128
| Acquired via | eBay (Cambridge Centre for Computing History) |
| Acquisition date | August 2020 |
| Work done | Cleanup PSU recap |
| Current state | Working! Possible RAM issue in top 96KB |
| Restoration blog posts | BBC Master tag |
This BBC Master 128 was acquired in an eBay auction which was to raise funds to keep the computer museum open due to Covid-19. It has a “BBC Radio” branding stamp on it, the history of which is unknown. It is speculated that the machine was used to communicate with broadcasters about incoming callers.
Amiga 500 Plus #1
| Acquired via | Gumtree |
| Acquisition date | August 2020 |
| Work done | Removed leaking battery (and cleanup) Fixed keyboard membrane (caps lock LED) Cleanup Replaced rubber feet Repaired external floppy drive Replaced internal floppy drive with Gotek |
| Current state | Working! PSU to be rebuilt |
| Upgrades | Terrible Fire TF536 Accelerator SD Card IDE Interface Micro SD extension cable Internal Gotek IDE LED Exposer board (custom design) Flash Kickstart Relocator with my custom firmware Kickstart 3.1.4 |
| Restoration blog posts | Amiga 500 Plus #1 tag |
This Amiga 500 Plus came with hundreds of disks and many accessories. The accessories alone were worth what I paid for it. I know it had changed hands at least once before and person I had bought it from had never turned it on. It has been fully restored and is my main home Amiga.
Amiga 600
| Acquired via | Discord |
| Acquisition date | May 2022 |
| Work done | None |
| Current state | Working! |
| Restoration blog posts | N/A |
This machine was acquired already recapped and fully working. It was one to add to my collection to test Amiga 600 upgrades.
Amiga 1000
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition date | May 2022 |
| Work done | Cleanup PSU repair (caused audio problems) Floppy drive replacement (modified A500 drive) Keyboard repair New 3D printed covers for front and side New rubber feet |
| Current state | Working! |
| Restoration blog posts | Amiga 1000 tag |
This Amiga 1000 was an eBay acquisition and needed a little work and some careful restoration. It is now used at Amiga shows because it is a functioning part of Amiga history.
Amiga 1200
| Acquired via | Norwich Amiga Group | |
| Acquisition date | January 2021 | |
| Work done | Floppy drive repaired | |
| Current state | Working! | |
| Upgrades | ACA1221lc accelerator SD to IDE with KA 47 for activity voltage correction RTC module Kickstart 3.1.4 | |
| Restoration blog posts | N/A |
This Amiga 1200 became available on the Norwich Amiga Group at the end of 2020 and arrived 2nd Jan 2021. It came as the bare unit with a PSU. The machine has yellowed at the front and on the keyboard, the floppy drive was also not working. Internally it is a revision 2B motherboard with Kickstart 3.0.
Amiga 2000
| Acquired via | Local friend |
| Acquisition Date | 2021 |
| Work Done | Extensive battery damage repair Extensive CPU socket repair Replacement mouse fuse with polyfuse New PSU fan Replacement PSU Rifa cap (it blew in my workshop, a lot of smoke) |
| Current State | Working! |
| Upgrades | RGBtoHDMI 8375 Agnus / 2MB chip RAM (photo has a PiStorm, but that was removed) |
| Restoration Blogs | N/A |
This Amiga 2000 I originally restored for a friend and then ended up purchasing from him. It had been badly battery damaged and a previous owner had drilled out the CPU socket holes. It required a lot of patch work to fix the motherboard.
Amiga 3000
| Acquired via | Facebook user in Canada |
| Acquisition Date | July 2023 |
| Work Done | Converted from 120v to 230v Converted from NTSC to PAL New PSU fan Repaired LED board New rubber feet New front drive cover Retrobright keyboard |
| Current State | Working! |
| Upgrades | BlueSCSI v2 12MB RAM upgrade (for a total of 18MB on motherboard) 68882 FPU SCSI chip swapped for more stable AMD revision SCSI terminator resistor pack added BFG9060 accelerator + 68060R5 CPU + fan Picasso II RTG card |
| Restoration Blogs | Amiga 3000 |
This Amiga 3000 was imported from Canada and required conversion to UK voltage and video signal (this isn’t too difficult). The machine is a 16MHz 68030 with 68881 FPU. It came with 2MB Chip RAM and 4MB of Fast RAM in ZIPs, it also has a 100MB SCSI hard drive and Amiga OS 3.1.
Amiga 4000
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition Date | July 2023 |
| Work Done | New PSU + wire hardness Retrobrighting New 3D printed parts A lot of cleaning New front LEDs Parts swapped with another A4000 I was restoring |
| Current State | Working! |
| Upgrades | TBD |
| Restoration Blogs | Amiga 4000 |
I acquired two Amiga 4000s in August 2023. Restored them piece by piece and assembled two new Amiga 4000s out of the parts. The one I’m keeping is a 68040 25MHz based machine with 16MB of RAM, a new PSU, and a reproduction motherboard.
Amiga CD32
| Acquired via | A friend |
| Acquisition Date | September 2023 |
| Work Done | New casing New CD drive Recap (all capacitors were missing) Repair broken colour (IC replacement) |
| Current State | Working |
| Upgrades | None |
| Restoration Blogs | Amiga CD32 |
The CD32 came from a friend’s stock, he had already removed the capacitors ready for a recap, but the new ones had not been installed. The drive had been snapped off the casing and itself was damaged. Which meant a new case and drive were also needed. In addition, there was no red colour output on the video due to a bad IC.
Commodore CDTV
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition Date | 2021 |
| Work Done | Fan replaced PSU recapped low voltage side (caps failing) |
| Current State | Working! Floppy drive needs a little work. |
| Upgrades | RGBtoHDMI 68010 CPU 8MB RAM SCSI card (to be fitted, nothing to use with it yet) |
| Restoration Blogs | N/A |
This CDTV did not require a lot of work. It is typically used to play the CD version of Xenon II at Amiga events.
Commodore 64 (Australian case)
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition Date | August 2022 |
| Work Done | Dead logic chip replacement Dead CIA replacement Regulator replacement Keyboard repair (membrane clean) Cleanup Sunbright based retrobright |
| Current State | Working! |
| Restoration Blogs | Commodore 64 tag |
This is a breadbin Commodore 64 in an after-market case designed by an Australian company to make it look a little like the C64C. It required some repair work but is now fully functional.
Schneider Euro PC
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition Date | April 2022 |
| Work Done | Cleanup Battery leak cleanup, battery replacement Replace failed tantalum capacitors Replace PSU insides with Meanwell |
| Current State | Working! |
| Upgrades | CPU upgraded to an NEC V20 BIOS EPROM replaced with a Y2K patched version XTIDE with NEC V20 ROM and CF card |
| Restoration Blogs | Euro PC tag |
This machine was extremely dirty when I received it, but actually in very good condition relatively speaking.
Machines To Be Restored / In Progress
Acorn RiscPC #2
| Acquired via | eBay |
| Acquisition Date | May 2023 |
| Work Done | Battery damage cleanup Repair backplane |
| Current State | Unknown |
| Restoration Blogs | RiscPC tag |
Unfortunately this one has had significant damage due to insufficient packaging when it was posted. It will take some time to repair and restore it.
Atari 520 STe
| Acquired via | Friend donation |
| Acquisition Date | October 2020 |
| Work Done | Coming soon |
| Current State | Hangs after a few minutes usage |
| Restoration Blogs | Coming soon |
A local friend who is into the retro computing scene gave me this Atari 520 STe to repair along with an Amiga 500 shell and keyboard that had yellowed. The Amiga parts will be used for a future project.
I have been told that the Atari has had a 4MB upgrade and since then it hangs after a few minutes of usage. When the original RAM was put back it was still hanging.
LinuxJedi's /dev/null 