My Retro Collection

  1. Current Working Machines
    1. Acorn Archimedes A3000
    2. Acorn Archimedes A3010
    3. Acorn Archimedes A5000
    4. Acorn RiscPC 700
    5. Acorn Atom
    6. BBC Master 128
    7. Amiga 500 Plus #1
    8. Amiga 600
    9. Amiga 1000
    10. Amiga 1200
    11. Amiga 2000
    12. Amiga 3000
    13. Amiga 4000
    14. Amiga CD32
    15. Commodore CDTV
    16. Commodore 64 (Australian case)
    17. Schneider Euro PC
  2. Machines To Be Restored / In Progress
    1. Acorn RiscPC #2
    2. Atari 520 STe

Current Working Machines

Acorn Archimedes A3000

Acquired viaeBay
Acquisition DateMay 2023
Work DoneBattery damage cleanup
Light general clenup
Used unpopulated battery door and PCB area for new battery
Current StateWorking!
UpgradesHard disk upgrade
RISC OS 3.11 upgrade
Restoration BlogsArchimedes tag

This Archimedes is an early revision with a 1MB RAM upgrade installed. Luckily the battery damage was minimal.

Acorn Archimedes A3010

Acquired viaFacebook
Acquisition dateUnknown
Work doneExtensive battery damage repair
Ports replaced
Current stateWorking!
UpgradesRAM upgrade
Hard disk upgrade
Restoration blog postsArchimedes 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 viaeBay
Acquisition dateJuly 2023
Work doneBattery damage repair to floppy and IDE area
Replaced failing electrolytic caps
Repaired damage traces in audio area
Replaced faulty CMOS chip
Current stateWorking! (needs cleaning)
UpgradesRAM upgrade
SimTec IDE podule + CF card
Restoration blog postsArchimedes 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 viaeBay
Acquisition date2022
Work doneCleanup
Battery damage repair
Current stateWorking!
UpgradesNew 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 postsRiscPC 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 viaPrivate purchase
Acquisition DateOctober 2023
Work DoneReset 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 StateWorking
Restoration BlogsAcorn 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 viaeBay (Cambridge Centre for Computing History)
Acquisition dateAugust 2020
Work doneCleanup
PSU recap
Current stateWorking!
Possible RAM issue in top 96KB
Restoration blog postsBBC 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 viaGumtree
Acquisition dateAugust 2020
Work doneRemoved 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 stateWorking!
PSU to be rebuilt
UpgradesTerrible 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 postsAmiga 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 viaDiscord
Acquisition dateMay 2022
Work doneNone
Current stateWorking!
Restoration blog postsN/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 viaeBay
Acquisition dateMay 2022
Work doneCleanup
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 stateWorking!
Restoration blog postsAmiga 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 viaNorwich Amiga Group
Acquisition dateJanuary 2021
Work doneFloppy drive repaired
Current stateWorking!
UpgradesACA1221lc accelerator
SD to IDE with KA 47 for activity voltage correction
RTC module
Kickstart 3.1.4
Restoration blog postsN/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 viaLocal friend
Acquisition Date2021
Work DoneExtensive 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 StateWorking!
UpgradesRGBtoHDMI
8375 Agnus / 2MB chip RAM
(photo has a PiStorm, but that was removed)
Restoration BlogsN/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 viaFacebook user in Canada
Acquisition DateJuly 2023
Work DoneConverted 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 StateWorking!
UpgradesBlueSCSI 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 BlogsAmiga 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 viaeBay
Acquisition DateJuly 2023
Work DoneNew PSU + wire hardness
Retrobrighting
New 3D printed parts
A lot of cleaning
New front LEDs
Parts swapped with another A4000 I was restoring
Current StateWorking!
UpgradesTBD
Restoration BlogsAmiga 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 viaA friend
Acquisition DateSeptember 2023
Work DoneNew casing
New CD drive
Recap (all capacitors were missing)
Repair broken colour (IC replacement)
Current StateWorking
UpgradesNone
Restoration BlogsAmiga 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 viaeBay
Acquisition Date2021
Work DoneFan replaced
PSU recapped low voltage side (caps failing)
Current StateWorking! Floppy drive needs a little work.
UpgradesRGBtoHDMI
68010 CPU
8MB RAM
SCSI card (to be fitted, nothing to use with it yet)
Restoration BlogsN/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 viaeBay
Acquisition DateAugust 2022
Work DoneDead logic chip replacement
Dead CIA replacement
Regulator replacement
Keyboard repair (membrane clean)
Cleanup
Sunbright based retrobright
Current StateWorking!
Restoration BlogsCommodore 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 viaeBay
Acquisition DateApril 2022
Work DoneCleanup
Battery leak cleanup, battery replacement
Replace failed tantalum capacitors
Replace PSU insides with Meanwell
Current StateWorking!
UpgradesCPU upgraded to an NEC V20
BIOS EPROM replaced with a Y2K patched version
XTIDE with NEC V20 ROM and CF card
Restoration BlogsEuro 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 viaeBay
Acquisition DateMay 2023
Work DoneBattery damage cleanup
Repair backplane
Current StateUnknown
Restoration BlogsRiscPC 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 viaFriend donation
Acquisition DateOctober 2020
Work DoneComing soon
Current StateHangs after a few minutes usage
Restoration BlogsComing 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.