I love my retro tech. Old computers are just great things. I moved to the Amiga after the Commodore 64 in the early 1990s. I stumbled upon this site and now I want to turn to my aging Amiga 1200 and black it out.
So, why would I want to do this to my Amiga 1200? Well, my old case is yellowing and so are the keys. The keys and I have never really liked that biscuit and gray look. When I saw the Amiga CDTV with its black keyboard and case, I thought how cool and sleek it looked but I wanted a more traditional computer (at that time) not something that was meant to go on your Hi-Fi stack. Now, today, you can have both the cool black look along with the full fledged Amiga Computer.
What a great time to be an Amiga 1200 owner! Things I only dreamed of, some 25 years ago are now availale today.
Case
There are a lot of colors from which to choose. Many more options than just black but I am not sure why anyone would want any other color than black. The color computers are supposed to be. Regardless of these color variations falling far outside of my preference, they do look pretty cool.
At the time of writing your options are the original white it called “Escom”, black, light grey, grey, pink, light blue, dark blue, orange, rubine red, violet, purple and translucent.
Link to Gallery of Amiga 1200 cases
I would personally go with black or dark grey for the cool factor. Outside of wanting a different color of case, if you were anything like me, your computer was opened up with some kind of frequency and being an uncoordinated young teen, your case may be damaged from insertion and removal of the screws or breaking the plastic clips along the back by opening it up in the non-recommended fashion. These new cases have screw brass inserts in all 6 screw towers. So, unless you ‘Magilla Gorilla’ those fasteners, you are not likely to have issues. Also, it’s all screws that hold the case together, no more clips to break. I understand why Commodore did the clips, screws cost money and also add complexity into the manufacturing. They were always looking to pinch a penny.
The bottom trapdoor, instead of being a slab of plastic now offers better cooling with extra vents. The rear trap door (that I never used) has 3 options: The Plain door, like you would have had on your original A1200; a VGA hole for VGA out; and a DVI hole. No HDMI, but I’m good with that. I’m sure that can easily be remedied.
If you don’t have an actual Amiga 1200 motherboard to put in this, that is NOT a problem as this supports more than just the original board. Smartly, you can use a Raspberry Pi, MiST FPGA, Keyrah V2 keyboard adapter, RapidRoad DoubleUSB and Lotharek HxC Floppy emulator. So essentially pair this with an original keyboard or a new mechanical keyboard designed to fix this case and you are off to the races!
Keycaps
Since my keyboard is in good shape, I haven’t ever spilled anything on it or eat Cheetos while playing games as a young teen, I am looking to replace the keycaps. It should also be noted that the new mechanical keyboard isn’t ready for purchase yet. The look of these keys are great. Black and dark grey looks absolutely fantastic. My keyboard has the UK layout so this would fit perfectly.
Final Thoughts
I am pretty excited about having access to new things for old hardware. What an exciting time to be into Retro Hardware. I hope that this is a successful venture. In order to buy a case, you will have to go to one of the partner site.
This is a great time to be a nerd into 1990s or earlier tech. I have explored a lot of the Commodore 64 side of things and I think it’s time to play in the Amiga sphere a bit now.
References
https://www.a1200.net/
Commodore 64 references on CubicleNate.com
like many kickstarters, many miss the boat, and for the backers too the keys/boards come out waay too late.
anyone who can actually source something realtime (ie, China), will make $$$