The Amiga 500 was an extremely popular personal computer that Commodore introduced in the late 1980s, and this replica Amiga motherboard could be the key to fixing broken ones! Commodore’s Amiga line of computers competed directly against both Atari’s ST line, and the IBM PCs and clones. Those who used Amigas truly loved them — in fact, there are still many Amiga users today. Some people are even still running bulletin board systems using Amigas!
The need for this replacement board arises from a common foe of many retro computers — the dreaded leaky backup battery. Most computers of the time had lithium rechargeable cells on-board to keep time and date, as well as BIOS options. Unlike modern computers which use easily replaceable CR2032 batteries, older machines would often use batteries soldered directly to the board, or odd batteries that were difficult to replace. To top it all off, many would forget about these batteries when storing their old computers. Twenty years later, they open the case and the acid has leaked, causing extensive, often irreparable damage to both the PCB and the components on it.
A PCB this size is no small feat and we commend Bob’s Bits for taking it on! He has also added many improvements, including better and more understandable silkscreen identifiers and quality-of-life improvements for the end user. If you’ve been looking to restore a damaged Amiga 500, this could be your ticket! Or it can be used to build the new and improved A500++ as seen in TheRetroManCave’s video below. We haven’t seen many products focused on the Amiga computers, and we’re very glad to see this one; hopefully it inspires others to take a look at these awesome classic computers.
