Rämixx 500: Open-source hardware remake of the Amiga 500+

The Commodore Amiga 500+ was officially introduced in 1992. The A500+ is an enhanced version of the original Amiga 500 computer. It introduced new versions of Kickstart and AmigaOS 2.04, and some minor improvements in the Enhanced Chip Set. Viewed primarily as a game machine, especially in Europe, this model was criticized for not being able to run quite a few popular games, and some people took them back to dealers demanding an original A500. Many Amiga 500 computers are suffering an early death because of the built-in barrel battery that powers their internal real-time clocks. Such batteries have long exceeded their planned lives and in many cases have started to leak alkaline liquids over the mainboard, corroding copper traces and destroying components. Amiga Pioneers ‘Open Retro Works‘ started with redrawing the schematic and recreated the circuit board. The initial objective was to come up with a new mainboard as similar to the original one as possible, while including minor modifications that would improve its usability. First the schematics were drawn from scratch in KiCad and then the board was routed, staying close to the original layout. The Rämixx 500 project is not for noobs and will require hardware skills and some tweaks, you can find more information on the GitHub project page. The Commodore Amiga 500 is probably the most succesfull Amiga ever released and sold about 6,000,000 units worldwide.

news source: Github / image source: Wikipedia/Bill Bertram (CC-BY-2.5) / watch on Youtube

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