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… or a great combo … isn’t it?

<Intro>

The CD32

Yup, CD32 this time as I’ve realized I’ve never covered this machine on my blog.

This particular machine was bought for my client and it needed standard SPA plus some other stuff which I will describe in this post.

It came in a nicely preserved, original box with all the gear like, PSU, original PAD, and some extra CDs.

This post shows how the refurb/refreshing process goes if the base machine is in the good shape. Nothing spectacular this time … sorry :*

Disassembly and re-cap

Right after opening the case, it turned out that the metal shield was a bit rusty.

It had to be addressed. I’ve performed my standard procedure – de-rusting and spray painting.

Right after that, a standard re-capping process was done.

I usually mark (with a pen) all caps that will be replaced.

A freshly re-capped PCB.

Case cleaning and cosmetics

Next, as usual, is case cleaning. That did not require a lot of work this time. It just needed a nice bath and some mineral oil spa 😉

While the case was drying, I also did a quick service job on the CD drive – lens cleaning, de-dusting, and lubricating.

Left side – after cleaning but not treated with mineral oil

Right side – after cleaning and with mineral oil treatment

Testing and running the Amiga CD! magazine

Looks like the whole work was FAILless this time 😀

Some CDs came along with the machine.

I chose to run this Amiga CD! magazine disc to test the drive and it had a pretty cool video.

Funnily enough, it says “… ask the android..”, interesting if you look at it in 2023 😉

Controller

The controller received a similar treatment – cleaning + oil SPA

Controller tests

Sachy/Joker^Lamers^DinxProject^Wanted Team … (and so many other demoscene groups lol), was working on his CD32 and made a bootable CD with Amiga Test Kit by Keir Fraser. He’d burned one CD for me for such jobs as this one 🙂

You can get that ISO HERE

The mouse was tested through the mouSTer, our ultimate mouse adapter for retro computers 😉

btw. the mouSTer is currently undergoing a serious firmware rebuild with a custom Amiga wheel scroll driver and more.

TF330 + case

The TerribleFire TF330 is an awesome card for CD32. I’ve got it with a USB CD32 Adapter created by S.J. Leary& A.Makarenko. I’ve also added a CF2IDE adapter and the CF card with a system on it 🙂

However, the whole thing was missing a case and with this build I wanted it to look nice.

Since there were no models for 3D printing, I had to create a model by myself -> STL

The first attempt was not the one I liked so I had to improve – the usual stuff while working with 3D printers and models 😉 … plus, yes I now know that the CF2IDE adapter was the wrong way around ;P

The second version of the case requires some DSUB connector trimming. Here is how it looked.

Now, with the model printed and tested, I had to make it look cool with the rest of the system.

This is why I’ve used some putty and structural paint to match the original CD32 🙂

The end

Yup, this is it. This was a rather smoothly done refurb. It also (IMO) came out nicely.

Final pics.

See ya in the next post 🙂

Outro

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