Hey guys, so the A500 Mini is just around the corner and the main reason I'm getting one is to show my kids what daddy used to play when he was a kid (mainly Wiz n Liz).

I have my USB stick with the WHDLOAD package on and a bunch of games I had as a kid all ready to go, theres just one more thing I need...

The Axe Throwing Heimdall demo, I had it on an Amiga magazine cover disk although I'm not sure which one.

Its probably incredibly unlikely but if anyone has a WHDLOAD version or knows where to download it I would be eternally grateful.

Thanks all! 👍

Tl;dr: Finally got courage and tools to recap A1200 after decades of ownership, it still works after the two hour job thankfully.

I've owned my A1200 for over fifteen years now, with some appropriate upgrades to it over that time. It's got the holy-grail of accelerators in the Trapdoor (the Phase5 Blizzard 1230 IV, with a 32Mb stick of ram, and a 50Mhz 68882 FPU), and a 30Gb laptop IDE drive running a legal copy of OS3.9, a registered WHDload and nearly every Amiga game released/available stored on that drive.

I had been meaning to get around to the recapping for a few years now, but I had a few prerequisites to complete before I was happy to take the soldering iron to my beloved computer. First off I had to actually learn how to solder (practiced over the past two years), then to get a proper soldering iron with temp and swappable tips (Weller WE1010). I also figured I'd get a hot-air rework station and a desoldering gun, and those are well-used in one of my other hobbies of amateur radio for fixing and building transceivers. I've had the spare recap kit for about three years now and hadn't yet been brave enough to start the job.

Today was the day that I had earmarked for the job. I was expecting it to be a bit harder honestly, and I think that the soldering practice of late made today's work a lot smoother.

The disassembly was easy enough, and I did note that there was some discolouration starting on the solder legs of the SMD caps, but nothing showing up on the board surrounding them. I desoldered the through-holes with the desolder gun. That tool just made it so easy. Then, I took my leaded solder and a needle-cone tip, and added a decent amount of new solder to each leg of the surface-mount, to dilute the lead-free solder and ease the removal. I tried hot-air with kaptan tape protections, but I didn't get anywhere useful with that, I was afraid of cooking things. So a change of plan was needed. With the needlecone tip alternating on the SMD cap legs, with some very gently levering upwards using some dental pick tools, each surface mount cap slowly and efforlessly came away from the board, and I now had the A1200 mainboard fully decapped of electrolytics.

Then, the slow and careful process of preparation of the solder pads took place. This is what took the most time, and I was happy to take that time and do it right, once. I added new beads of lead/tin solder to each pad, then I cleaned each pad with some fluxed wick, to make sure all of the old solder was away and I had enough space to check for trace damage or the like. Each pad came up shiny, no corrosion in the board, and no trace of corroded traces. That was a relief at this point at least. SMD solder paste was added to each pad, and the relevant replacement cap was placed on each pad. For each cap, I melted the solder paste with the soldering iron and I then checked with the multimeter that the connection across the cap was good. My multimeter is very fast to give the continuity beep, so putting the ~1v during the continuity across the cap meant that I would get a very tiny bip from the meter beeper if the contacts were good between the solder pads and the capacitor legs. Each cap was tested before moving onwards to the next cap's location.

Upon completion, the Amiga was reassembled and tested, and everything appears to be in order. It still boots, it still plays the WHDLoad games as it used, and I got to run a Sysinfo on it for the first time (v4.4; 8493 Dhrystones, 8.86 Mips, 1.33 MFlops). Very happy it's still alive.

Currently awaiting an RGB->SCART cable for clean video output as it's currently outputting over composite to my flatscreen TV and the quality is pretty crappy. Also in that package from the supplier is a memory expansion for my A500. I'm still tempted to put a PiStorm in that computer, but with a semi-tricked-out A1200, I have to ask what would I gain. Certainly there are worse projects to contemplate.

Having the IDE drive out of the A1200 allowed me to put it in a USB drive caddy and take an image of the drive for use with my emulators as well as adding some updated installers back onto the drive for updating the A1200. I've been able to add the drive image to AmikitXE and access all of the game files, as well as being able to copy everything useful to my Pi400 also running AmikitXE. I now (finally..) have the Pi400 fully set up for proper retro Amiga with my own game collection and my own WHDLoad registration file.

It's been a busy few days for my Amiga bits. Apologies for the text wall.

Tl;dr: Finally got courage and tools to recap A1200 after decades of ownership, it still works afterward the two hour job thankfully.

I need a keyboard. They're pretty much unavailable unless you want a broken one or one with a European layout.

Amiga on the lake used to have a reproduction keyboard from Kipper2k. But it's been sold out since forever.

Are there any good solutions to this?

Hi people! I was wandering if you still run your original PSU's?

I have an A1200 that I am planning on using more often. The PSU works great, but I am just thinking about the age of it etc.

Should I get one of those replacement PSU's from eBay or, should I run the original?

What are you thoughts? Thank you.