I have recently acquired an Amiga 500 that was marked as faulty and having a black screen whilst turning on. It turned up in the post today so I thought I would take a quick look to see where to start.

First things first, I plugged it in and turned it on. The fan with digital controls plugged into the same extension lead instantly turned off. No fuse blown or anything tripped. So for starters the PSU needs looking at.

Let’s open the main unit up…

So, we have a rev. 6a board (score!). It is a bit dirty inside. A very corroded 1MB upgrade card with RTC and some slight corrosion on resistor R402. The resistor shows about 1K ohm, it should be 4.7K so that will need replacing.

This is a closer look after I started to pry it out.

With a lot of work I managed to get the expansion board out.

My wife was not too happy about the green dust on the dining table. This board is going in the bin. A new expansion board can be obtained very cheaply. I’ll still need to clean up the edge connector and straighten it up a bit.

I’ve put it all away for now. Next steps, cleanup, replace the bad resistor and inspect the PSU.