I’m on a roll upgrading the Amiga 1000. This time, I replaced the PSU fan. The Amiga 1000 PSU uses an ETRI Model 126LH metallic fan that is AC-powered 220/110V. These fans are pretty good, silent, reliable, and used in computers and industrial-grade equipment. However, they all suffer from a common problem: after long years of continuous use, the fan bearing starts developing an annoying grinding noise due to a lack of lubrication.…

On my last post “the first perfect computer” I mentioned that I wasn’t done with the A1000. I finally upgraded it with an internal RGB2HDMI adapter. For those unfamiliar with RGB2HDMI, it’s a brilliant and affordable open-source project that converts “digital” RGB video signals from vintage computers into crystal clear HDMI video with very low latency. At its core, there’s a combination of a RaspberryPi Zero running bare-metal code and a CPLD (complex programmable logic device) programmed to do level shifting and pixel sampling on the TTL RGB outputs from a vintage computer and feed the processed data into the Pi’s GPIO pins.…

This is a story about restoring and upgrading a Commodore Amiga 1000, the first model of the Amiga series. Many of you might be familiar with the popular Amiga 500 or later models, but the Commodore Amiga 1000 was actually the first model of the Amiga series produced. I consider the A1000 a significant piece of home computing history. Arguably one of the most important machines of the 16-bit revolution period, considered by many to be the first multimedia computer, it marked the beginning of Commodore’s last cycle, after the huge success of the C64, in the history of personal computing.…

The CP/M, short for Control Program/Monitor, was one of the first operating systems of the personal computer revolution. It was launched in 1974, and it celebrates 50 years this year. It was ported and made available for many 8-bit machines with different CPUs and was related to running productivity software. If you ever used CP/M, then, well, I hate to say it, but you’re old. I had a brief encounter with CP/M when I was 14 or 15 years old; I can’t remember exactly.…

The C128 is a fascinating and unusual machine. It was the last 8-bit Commodore machine before the Amiga and co-existed with the C64 series for a while. They sold ~8 million units worldwide (vs ~17 million C64). I never owned one, but I fondly remember playing with one at my friend’s place and seeing them in computer shops. It’s fully 99.8% backward compatible with its predecessor in C64 mode, but in native C128 mode it takes advantage of its 128 KB RAM, higher clocked 2 MHz 6510 variant (the 8502), and the improved VIC-IIe graphics chip.…