Restoring the Amiga 1200 to Like-New Condition
Recently, I have acquired old Amiga 1200 (via eBay), with the idea of restoring it for experimental art installations that my wife is planning to work on for her future personal digital art exhibitions. Amiga arrived in a decent shape and in fully working condition, however it still looked as it was like 30 years old = lot of dust there and there and there, yellowed plastic case and keys, broken pins. etc. I decided to refresh it so it looks as it came directly from the factory line.
First stuggle was to connect it to a modern TV that had no composite or SCART inputs. Decided to get buy cheap AV2HDMI Converter that converts RCA (AV, composite, CVBS) signals into HDMI signal as a quick solutin. Not a perfect image quality, but it worked and allowed me to visually inspect installed system and run few old classic demos, such as Andromeda’s Nexus 7.
The restoration started with opening computer’s case and progressively cleaning up all dusty parts, removing rusted metal case components, and separating keyboard. I also removed old hard-drive, with the idea of replacing it with a Compact Flash (CF) memory card.


To replace old hard-drive with a CF memory card, I needed to get a CF Memory Card to 2.5-inch 44Pin IDE Adapter and 4GB Ultra II Compact Flash memory card. I reused the same IDE cable that was used earlier to connect original hard-drive (see below). I formatted CF memory card via FS-UAE Amiga Emulator on my Mac, installed Amiga Workbench and transferred CF card to my physical Amiga and it worked - booted the system well (= this is topic for yet another possible blog post).
With keyboard separated from the motherboard, it was very easy to remove every (yellow) key. I used a simple knife: in a delicate way putting its tip under a key and gently lifting it until it got removed. Under each keys there was also one or more precision springs designed for keyboards with Mitusmi Hybrid switches (those springs were crafted to provide consistent resistance and bounce-back).


I found on several forums, that Hydrogen Peroxide solution was used to make old plastic de-yellowing process successful. I could not find though any references to any products I could buy these straight away locally. I visited a local Whole Foods Market and found 365 Hydrogen Peroxite topical first aid antiseptic (as below). Initally, I decided to do a simple test with four cursor yellowed keys, that were left swimming in the solution directly from the bottle for four hours, exposed to the sun. It worked - in just four hours, four keys were visibly whiter compared to other keys (see below).
WARNING: when operating with Hydrogen Peroxide, always wear protective gloves!
After initial test, I put all keys inside Ziploc Sandwich bag filled with Hydrogen Peroxide solution and placed it on the balcony exposed to the sun. To make it more effective, for two days (~6 hours a day), I was flipping sides of the bag and randomly repositioning keys so they all would see enough sun rays. And that’s about it - in just two days, my keyboard looked like a brand new one!



For external computer’s plastic, several folks were recommending to use Hydrogen Peroxide cream. I decided experiment with Yexixsr 5Pcs Professional Salon Hair Coloring Dyeing Kit and Super Star Cream Peroxide Developer with 20 Volumes. After initial cleaning of the yellow plastic case of Amiga 1200 under the shower, I applied thin layer of cream all over it, and placed it directly exposed to the sun (as seen below). Again, I was repeating this process several times during day, for two days, also moving case around to make sure it got the maximum exposure to the sun. The end effect was amazing!!!




My next experiment was to use Raspberry Pi as Amiga 1200 accelerator (= topic for another possible blog post). It may amaze you though, that your Amiga 1200 can be 712x faster using Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and 1273x faster using Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. The Raspberry Pi can emulate the native 680x0 CPU at much higher performance than the original CPU - read more about Pistorm-Lite.



Enjoy Reading This Article?
Here are some more articles you might like to read next: